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In 1989, Rolf Greven (Mr.Ammo) and I started XeNTaX as a graphics/demo group on the Commodore 64.
See our first release here: http://csdb.dk/release/?id=85097

To celebrate this 25 years of XeNTaX we will do various fun things. The first is the free registration as a forum member for an indefinite period of time. How about that? Next up will be free download of MultiEx Commander. Hold your breath for that one.

So what about the old days when XeNTaX started?
This was in a time when we had just been fiddling around as the Unidentified Software Busters (AKA Bastards).
Before that I had set up IKKE Productions on the MSX computers.

However, we thought it time to be more productive and join the scene properly with a new group, so XeNTaX was born. I remember we made a list of possible names for this new group at my parents' home late at night, and then selected this one.
It was also right there from the start the abbreviation would be XNTX. Hence, it being written as XeNTaX. On disk releases, files would have the abbreviation of the scene group responsible for the release next to the filename as such:

This way anyone could see who had made which file or release. Compare with FLT (Fairlight) and HTL (Hotline).

After an active time in the C64 scene, especially as a music group in the period 1991-1993, http://csdb.dk/group/?id=935 , we went off to other places, as high school had ended and I moved to study at the university. We did release some music for the Commodore Amiga, but XeNTaX started to compose music for PC and more serious programming.

In 1997, MultiEx Commander was born, after a bunch of other stuff for fun, some of which can still be found here: http://www.xentax.com/?page_id=114 . I created it first for DOS, in Turbo C and Assembly. Check out the vid of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rLlX9bQ8H4

Later on, I created the first Windows version (3.0) in 2001: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mydmznJpCWU
MultiEx Commander was received well over the years by the press, of which some articles you can find here: http://www.xentax.com/?page_id=183

Version 3.1 had background music by me, but 3.2 was a better version in terms of layout and had music done my C64 scene connections Drax, Jeroen Tel, Laxity and The Gee, as well as XeNTaX member Aymes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNB3_z6FCFE

In 2003, I began the Game Research Forum, first as a ways to help out users of MultiEx Commander to add new game resource archive file formats (I named "GRAF"), but then more and more as a true dedicated Game File Format Analysis forum. With friends like Watto of Game Extractor and Elbereth of Dragon Unpacker we then improved on my OpenGRAF website (a website I started to document known GRAF specifications) and build the XeNTaX WIKI (Game File Format Central) http://wiki.xentax.com

We then put a lot of effort in the Game Research Forum, working on an ever increasing number of requests from guests and more people joined that also started to do a lot of researching over the years. Great people, all of them!

For a decade the forum was completely free and it was only when costs started to become an issue, when we asked for donations. Due to the nature of the research, it is difficult to find proper funding as we have seen recently (but has been going on for a number of years now, several legal threats). It also has resulted in more strict rules. Nevertheless, everything is still possible here, and we have moved away from those sources of possible funding that are unfair or downright corrupted in their policy (e.g. Adsense and PayPal).

But forget about that last part! Let's celebrate ! At least we do!

GG Xentax

Congrats on seeing it through for so long Mr Mouse, here's to 25 more years :p

Glad to be here.. this 9 years?
For me the best site to mod (and learn how to) games, new and retro.

Thanks! to everyone

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I've only been here since 2006, I might not be much of a ripper or a hex wizard like a lot of you guys, but being able to extract things from various games over the years really gave me a solid understanding of how 3D Game development works, and, as a 3D Artist I got to learn a lot of new techniques that I'd not have otherwise ever known.

So Thankyou Xentax!

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"Lemons are people nice hardworking & honest people too..."

[out]

Great !The best one.

Great, great.

cool

Congratulations! Thank you for everything and the tools as well!
Hope things will keep going up for you guys

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

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I think we should all abandon file format research and go back to making C64 demos. It will be of greater benefit to humanity.

Actually, I've never released a single bit of C64 software, despite having written a generic 6502 CPU emulator some years (decades maybe now) ago and spent time doing random C64 graphics demos around the same time. I should probably right the wrong. I just don't have the actual hardware around to test on now, and only testing on an emulator seems blasphemous.

Happy silver birthday Xentax

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Great things require hard work!!

The time has come. MultiEx Commander is free to download as part of the 25th Anniversary !

Check http://multiex.xentax.com !

While the words "congrats" and "thanks" cannot express what I mean, but congrats and thanks anyway!

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Best retard: Csimbi