I was just browsing through some old files when I found out a very old issue of Inquisition. I guess most of you have no clue what that is - and those of you connected with the scene won’t probably remember either. Inquisition was a warez bulletin released by sceners for sceners back in 1995 and it featured various scene-related charts, interviews, statistics and analyses. Yes, that’s the time when only few people knew about the scene and it was much harder to get involved. In those times, it was also very common to disclose much more details about group’s sites, leaders, members and BBSs. I thought some of you might find this 15-year-old interview interesting, so here it is for you:
—=[ 5. Interview - InsaneTTM - Razor 1911 Founder ]————————–
INQ: Okay, I’d like to welcome you to this Inquisition interview and would
like to thank you for taking the time. Very first question, what is your
full handle and where are you from?
TTM: Sure, no probs. As long as there are no emergency calls I hopefully can
answer all the questions. My handle is InsaneTTM, I come from Trondheim
Norway. TTM stands for The Tractor Maniac.
INQ: Could you briefly describe the founding of Razor 1911 and how the first
few years developed?
TTM: We were just kids. In 1985 the three founding members where at the
incredible age of 13, 14 and 14, so you can imagine that alot of games
were played. But, after a while we soon started to get interested in
demos. The specific date is not remebered but, during October 1985 three
guys, Myself, Secotr9 and Dr NO, decided to get a kewl name.
INQ: Who is “we,” that is, who helped you found razor and what did each of you
do?
TTM: After going through piles of bad ones we ended up with Razor 1911.
INQ: Where did the name come from? Why 1911?
TTM: Well in the beginning nobody had dedicated stuff to do; it was just
like - Hey guys lets start a group.
INQ: So Razor started as a demo group on what platform?
TTM: Well, a friend of ours called Hellmates came up with Razor and we
instantly felt that this one was great. The number was actually 2992 in
the very beginning but was later changed to 1911. The reason why we
wanna have a number is that every kewl group at the time being used
numbers - like Flash Cracking Group 1941, Section 8, Electronic Cracking
Association 1998, ABC 1999, Jedi 2001, 1103 and so on. The platform
Razor started to work on was Commodore 64. The number 1911 is $777 in
hexadecimal. Because at the time, a lot of kids used 666 and such
childish stuff; we just went the opposite way as 7 is the number of the
good.
INQ: How did razor grow and when do you think were the best times for Razor?
TTM: Hmm.. We grew up from the Commodore 64, to the Amiga. On the amiga, our
very first releases came. It wasn’t actually until 1989 our first
releases came. We had problems getting our hands on the originals, as
every new group with no structure had. But, then everything started to
roll. We got our first overseas member, Zodact, that had a board. So,
we went into the modem scene at the same time.
INQ: What was the competition like with INC? What about Fairlight or THG?
Who was the most competitive, and what was the competition for in the
early days? I mean, with the modem scene, and the distribution of
releases.
TTM: Now we did games on a regular basis for a while, and on the amiga until
91, we had some 50 releases. Then, the next step was to get into the PC
world. At the time we got into the PC, as you said INC and THg were the
leading forces, but after all the years in the business, we had a lot of
contacts everywhere and were able to get some real action together. We
were so fortunate that in our close neighborhood we had a young cracker
named Darwin. A lot of amusing stories about those days. He once had to
crack the game over the phone to some guy in the US before leaving for
school in the morning, didn’t have the time to upload it!! And then went
home during his lurch to check that it finally was released. And from
there on everything grew and grew.
TTM: The best days for Razor must have been on PC during the spring of 93. We
had enough cards to have the rule the entire scene. We’re talking about
the 1993 edition of Razor’s European courier team consisting of
RazorBlade, Devil, Hoppermania, GrimLock, Insane TTM, Slain and Digital
Justice which made the every other courier teams in the world look like
plain amateurs.
INQ: Was this around the time Darwin was busted?
TTM: Nope, Darwin wans’t busted. He actually was outta the scene in 93.
In fact as he was and still is a close friend of Razorblade. My most
memorable moment probably was the easter of 93. We had 5 huge releases
in 4 days. Trading round the clock; it was the most thrilling
experience. We just beat the crap out of everyone else on all 5
releases. I had almost no sleep for the days, should just go to bed.
When the phone rang and said “We got a release in a couple of hours, get
ready.” The sadly in a forthnight, when were at the ultimate top. I was
busted, together with Baal and Gene here in Norway. S9 and DRno luckily
escaped.
INQ: For cards?
TTM: After 10th of May 93, I have been out of the business. Just watching
what’s happening with the group, and I am proud to see that WE still are
a major force. I was busted for CC, yeah.
INQ: How were the releases being distributed? To what boards? What baud rate
were these at?
TTM: At the end, we had 14.4 and 16.8 modems. As mentioned above, the courier
team from hell did the most of it during the golden age. We had one line
at our main board, and one line at every other major board around -
covering everything. Hanging in there downloading all the disks except
the first where the cracks usually are being placed - waiting for the
cracker to upload it and then, BOOM! We get it everywhere in just
minutes. Ahh, what a feeling.
INQ: What major boards were memorable for you?
TTM: Hmm… Major board. Digging in the back parts of my brain - Elusive
Dream and Pitts are our rival board. We have had like zillions of
boards during the time, but getting into the rivals boards is always a
great deal of fun.
INQ: How do you feel about subsequent leaders? What about TRC, Butcher, even
today with TSR and The GEcko?
TTM: On the issue of our leaders. The one I have had most contact with is
probably Butcher. He was a very kewl guy when you got to know him. He
was sadly busted too. Today’s leaders I must say I don’t know at all. I
won’t get into the business again. As I have got a kewl job with full
INET connection.
INQ: What are you doing now? What do you think of the scene today? What
about BBS’s? Are they better or worse than before?
TTM: I ususally hang around on the IRC all day to see when we release
something. Since I was busted 2 1/2 years ago, Internet has taken over
alot of the distribution, plus the trading scene is being shut down in
one country after another. So alot of sites are replacing boards as we
used to know them.
INQ: What do you think of the internet and the effect it has had on the scene?
Do you think the scene will survive?
TTM: As long as there is games/utils being developed there will always be a
scene around.
INQ: Do you think that there needs to be some sort of “elite” for the scene to
function correctly? If so, what makes someone elite? Do you think that
the net has increased the lameness in the scene?
TTM: There will always be “elite” and there will always be wannabees. And for
the scene to function properly there will always be a need for elites to
be there. Elite could stand for somebody that can organize properly.
INQ: The CDRip/NET question.
TTM: Hmm.. CDRips. There are two kinds of CDRips.
1. The good ones by usually quality groups.
2. The lame/bad ones froim new groups trying to break into the scene.
The latter is like ripping everything that was suppose to be released.
Like 60 disk releases! If you are a SysOp and read this, nuke people
that upload such stuff x5 at least.
INQ: Do you think there will ever be a time when games are too big to pirate?
INQ: What would you say the disk limit for a rip should be?
TTM: Hmm.. Well I won’t say anything because the quality of games vary, but
more than 30 disks is like meaningless to me. One of my flatmates came
home with a 29 disk game here one day. I don’t understand why people
care about copying of all of the disks.
INQ: Well, thank you very much for your time, and it was very nice talking.
This interview was conducted on November 28, 1995 by Darwin/DWi.
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