It was the year 2020. A year that saw some improvement in my personal life, as I wasn't necessarily the best person to be around with way back then.
The year that saw me joining the DOSBox Deathmatch Club Discord community. Which resulted in me making new friends, becoming a staff member of the community and later became a administrator by the near end of the year. But next to the Deathmatch Club, there was Razorback95. It was a website compatible with older web browers from the 1990s. You know? like Internet Explorer 3 for instance. It was also a community ran by Kugee. Honestly I recall finding the existence of the site and the Discord community during the times of it's launch. I decided to join the community because I am a fan of Kugee's content on YouTube at the time.
Before I found out about the existence of Razorback, I vaguely remember stumbling across Kugee's YouTube channel itself and watched videos like "bass use a computer" and "the Dell that pleads for life" but that I ended up delving more into his content with the likes of the Hardcore Windows series, 240P POLITICS, and even a series of other videos featuring Basifuk and DETH IBEX. Mainly I liked his demonstrations of various programs like NetMeeting because I never thought many retro tech channels at the time would go into lengths to have it all setup like the way he did. Not only that, but it was his humor in his videos thats what kept me watching.
But again that was many years back. Admittedly I never thought I would've been able be in contact with Kugee given that I didn't want to have another repeat where I acted like some obsessive fan boy turned internet troll towards another content creator many years ago. I was young and immature, even reckless way back then.
Though the only time I interacted prior to joining Razorback was on a livestream from 2019. I think it was where Kugee played some of the Microsoft Internet Games that came with Windows Me and onward, However it was during that time when the servers for the Internet Games were shutting down. I recall the chatter there was decent, talked about my vintage computers a bit and cracked a few jokes. But I believe that was the only interaction I had prior, so let's fast forward to 2020.
Originally I joined Razorback95 maybe to lurk at first, but there was a voice chat going on during the production of BIGEYE, A project where he played through the entirety of Quake on various other configurations. Having been more social during my time at the Deathmatch Club, I felt like I am confident enough to join the voice chat.
Unlike my past self, I seemed pretty chill, similar to my experiences as a viewer of his 2019 stream. Now keep in mind that this was during the time when I became more of a regular turned moderator of OpenRift's DOSBox Deathmatch Club community. It was that server when helped build up my confidence in socializing with more people. Before that I only chatted with a few specific people on a frequent basis.
However by the time the third episode of BIGEYE was near it's completion, I may have recall chatting with the community for a bit and said that it's a shame I missed out on a Quakeworld session which usually happens after the launch of each episode of BIGEYE. A particular match from that event was set to be featured on the final episode of BIGEYE.
The next thing I know, Kugee messaged me stating that he still had time to splice in a QuakeWorld duel and asked if I was down to join. I made sure to check if I had any appointments or anything else in the way, thankfully there was none so I accepted.
This would be my first game session with Kugee on October 11, 2020. It was a QuakeWorld 1v1 taking place at his Razorback95 server at DM4: The Bad Place. I did win the duel by reaching the frag limit of 35 while Kugee had 16 frags. I would say it was a decent matchup but not only my social confidence got better, so did my skills in multiplayer games. I remember someday after my duel with Kugee, I dueled against a former friend of mine in another game called Blood (released in 1997 by Monolith Productions) who kicked my ass prior, and the game ended with me reaching 100 kills and my opponent reaching 38 kills. I found out later on that this duel was done and recorded during chrunch time, two days after the first episode premiered. Regardless, this match made it to the third episode of BIGEYE as "System 0: Embrace Modernity?" and you could watch that specific part of the video thanks to the remastering efforts from Kugee's friend who maintained Razorback Legacy at the time but it was rebranded to Drevonor once ownership of the channel went back to Kugee himself.
By the time the final episode of BIGEYE premiered, I was very happy to see myself being featured in the credits for my QuakeWorld duel. Of course I ended up playing more Quakeworld with the members after watching the premiere but in a way I honestly never thought I would have a day where I got involved in a video from a well-known content creator (I didn't get past 300 subscribers yet.) and this ended up being my first involvement in one of Kugee's videos but it certainly wasn't the last.
It was 2021 and while that year wasn't a very great one for many people including myself, there where some milestones that were achieved. I became a Babiniku VTuber testing the waters as a Live2D model of So Dakki from Senkaiden Houshin Engi and started out my livestreaming hobby on Twitch following inspiration from my involvement in a friend of mine's Twitch streams and watching OpenRift's streams at the time. I also reached 300 subscribers on YouTube which prompted me to do a Q&A special and I've played through several games which was something I barely done for years.
I originally ran my personal site on many hosting services way back then, and that was when I was new to website making using HTML editors. I ended up settling on using GitLab because it somewhat allowed later versions of Internet Explorer to access the site. Following my promotion as an administrator of the DOSBox Deathmatch Club, I wanted to help spread the word of this community so I opened the DOSBox Deathmatch Club website on my personal site. However I was feeling a bit unhappy of the sites because I wanted these sites to be compatible the same way Razorback95 was. I ended up voicing about this at Razorback's Discord and Kugee was nice enough to provide me hosting access as a subdomain to his site. Both this site and the Deathmatch Club became part of Razorback's site as subdomains. If you ever visited Razorback's website during this time, you would see various websites at the bottom.
It was during this time that I became close friends with Kugee and a few others in the server, I even remember the time when there was a partnership/alliance between Razorback & DOSBox Deathmatch Club. Whenever there was a QuakeWorld event happening, the primary go to server would be Razorback95's "Phoebus Apollo". Kugee would also make sporadic appearences in some of my livestreams, the first time was when I did a stream where I messed around with Windows XP via VMWare playing various games and browsing the internet. He and some of the regulars of both Razorback and Deathmatch Club were present during the stream. Also whenever I felt like I needed a small break from Deathmatch Club, I would also spend time over at Razorback.
Towards the end of 2021, Kugee would go on to produce a couple of more videos like a new version of Hardcore Windows XP leading up to the final video titled "Project Sunfish". This would be the finale of the Hardcore Windows series and this would also be my second involvement in his videos where I voiced myself as a confused Dell user calling tech support to ask why their computer was running slow. Several months leading up to that, I befriended ZNukem, who would voice as Duke Nukem in both the introduction and the post-credits scenes. I was introduced to him after chatting with my brother who joined his ArcaneSpy community trying to assist finding an old artwork of Duke Nukem from the Internet Archive. I joined in as well to help and that's where my friendship started. I eventually learned later on that it was Z's friend, BabblingBrook who met my brother through a public server and invited him over to ArcaneSpy prior.
Anyway, not only me and ZNukem contributed to Project Sunfish but also various members of the DOSBox Deathmatch Club as well. As Kugee requested to hold Freeform Friday events for both Quake II & Quake III Arena which OpenRift accepted. Various footages from those events and "The AnnoyBoard" featuring the perspective during my Twitch stream playing Blood Multiplayer. At the end I kind of had a bit of fun contributing to the project, however ZNukem strained his voice temporarily during the production of Sunfish.
Sunfish would be the last major video coming from Kugee as he wanted to focus on Razorback and programming, but however...
After a rather decent but at the same time an outright terrible year for me *personally*, I decided work on myself a bit more and ended up rebranding myself to a more original persona. April 8, 2022 saw the debut of Redhead with Glasses, who later became Akage Megane. I still spent time over at my own server, Deathmatch Club and at Razorback via Discord. There was also a time period where I tried to help promote Kugee's MS-DOS game programmed in x86 assembly titled "The First Cell". It was a simplistic arcade top-down shooter game made in text-only.
From what I recall, Razorback's Discord originally had people actually chatting about vintage technology but as time went on following the premiere of Project Sunfish, the server's motive started to phase out and became more of a shitpost dumping ground. I was a moderator during this time and I remember one of the admins losing motivation and decided to step down. However the admin stated that I should be a good candidate to be promoted as administrator.
I eventually accepted to become an administrator of Razorback's Discord. However what I didn't expect was becoming the last promoted administrator of the server.
This was an announcement sent by Kugee himself on July 10, 2022.
"I've been in talks with the staff about this for a few weeks now, and now it has come time to announce that effective today, this Discord server will shut down.
This server got its start on May 26th, 2020, at a time when I was in an uncertain position, nor did I have the foresight of what Razorback would eventually become. Over this server's growth, it has facilitated some many unforgettable moments, from the last recordings of Bigeye to the launch of The First Cell. Some of the people here I didn't even know before came in and helped me propel my endeavors further, and made the Razorback website what it is today.
But as time goes on, some things start to disintegrate, and we evolve yet more. I am no longer a YouTuber, my close friends have moved on to other aspirations, and this is no longer the Windows 95 forum it once was. Moreover, Discord is basically the antithesis of what Razorback stands for now, and so it is for the best that this server is laid to rest. I, too, have much greater ambitions to turn to in the future, and I do not want to let this server continue to strain me."
- Kugee
Kugee would also extend his gratitudes to various members like Blue Horizon, blurry, Scan Lines, gogo and his friend group and more. I was also mentioned as well and honestly looking back, this actually struck me in a positive way.
"THEBaratusII - an invaluable companion who's extremely dedicated to keeping DOS gaming alive with his comrades OpenRift, Sharkie, KAAN, ZNukem, and the like; he also helped put the spotlight on The First Cell through one of his streams. It's really a pleasure to have played a part in getting you out of a ditch, for you've also done a lot for me."
Sometime before Razorback's Discord server was eventually nuked, he informed everybody to check out the other communities linked in the server. I joined in on the final moments of Razorback by hopping onto the voice chat one last time. Admittedly I was very emotional during the final moments myself, so much so that I had to spend the rest of the day off. As I was writing this, I got emotional myself looking back.
Following the demise of Razorback's Discord server, Kugee would also leave Discord later on as well. Razorback95.com itself, my website and the DOSBox Deathmatch Club would continue to operate until November 14, 2023 when the website quietly shut it's doors. As a result, my website and Deathmatch Club would get their own domains and the hosting made it's move to the upcoming Drevonor.
Sometime after the Discord server was put to rest, many of the regulars and staff members went their seperate ways. Some even stayed for a while but later became inactive or left the House of THEBaratusII community. The only regulars that are still active in my group nowadays is my friends gogo and ZNukem. ZNukem went to focus on working with his libre asset replacement/total conversion for Duke Nukem 3D titled Luke Ken 3D. He also runs a Duke Nukem community server titled, Duke Nukem Central. blurry (last-time I saw) runs a icecast based radio station named, blurrycast. Given the end of the alliance between Razorback and Deathmatch Club following the Discord server's shutdown, Deathmatch Club continued on as normal and would still use Razorback's QuakeWorld servers and then Drevonor's server once Razorback95.com was gone.
I, myself stayed as a Twitch streamer for a while until 2023 where I would move to YouTube for streaming in May. I finally got my click in content creation with my Unreal review video a month after. There I moved on to focus as a content creator (and do livestreams whenever I felt like it) while I manage my own friend group and administrate the DOSBox Deathmatch Club community. At the end of the day, I've learned a lot from Kugee and the times spent at Razorback and I really thank him for that. I had a lot of fun memories there, but things come and go and that's normal.
I believe Kugee disappeared for a while, but before his disappearance. he commissioned a friend of his to remaster the videos that were in his channel (along with content that were originally on Razorback's website) in 4K. Though I may assume that it may have been a response to the reuploads of his content from another archival channel I've noticed gaining some traction. Kugee's friend, opened a YouTube channel titled, Razorback Legacy and began progress remastering his videos. This was in the same year my channel reached a thousand subscribers.
By the near end of 2024, Kugee would make his return by taking over the remastering duties for Razorback Legacy, now rebranded as Drevonor. Outside of remastering more of his videos, he has went live for the first time since 2021, attempting a 1CC for Dragon Spirit, a SHMUP from 1987. He was also featured in one of my recent livestreams as a mystery guest, where me, him and ZNukem reunited to play Doom II Deathmatch via Chocolate Doom. You can watch the VOD here.
Drevonor has an upcoming content engine being worked on titled the Sardine Engine. A backend focusing on a robust foundation for streamlining the process of producing websites and publishing media in optimized formats for those under limited resources. Blue OS Museum, Deathmatch Club and likely this site would adopt the Sardine Engine and is expected to be deployed in the summer of 2025.
Anyway that concludes the story of my times over at Razorback95.com. Be sure to keep an eye out for updates regarding the Sardine Engine at Drevonor.com
