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Razor 1911

The Norwegian crew that cracked games from the Commodore 64 to the PC, and was still making demos forty years on

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A cracking and demo group founded in Norway in 1985. It cracked Commodore 64 games, made Amiga demos such as Voyage, became one of the best-known names in PC game piracy, and was the target of a US investigation that sent one of its leaders to prison in 2004. Its demo section was still releasing work in 2026.

Razor 1911 started out cracking Commodore 64 games in Norway in 1985, and forty years later the name was still in use. In between, the group made Amiga demos that British public-domain libraries sold by post, became one of the best-known names in PC game piracy, and in 2004 saw one of its leaders sent to prison by a court in California. It was a demo group as well as a cracking group for all of that time, and its demo section was still releasing work in 2026.

Fast facts

  • Founded: November 1985, in Norway, according to the scene database CSDb.
  • Platforms: Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga and PC.
  • Known for: Cracks and crack intros; demos such as Voyage (1991) and Insert No Coins (2010).
  • Legal history: a target of the US investigation Operation Buccaneer; a leader of the group was sentenced to 50 months in prison in 2004.
  • Status: still active in 2026.

The Commodore 64 years

The founding story comes from scene sources rather than the period press. CSDb gives November 1985 and names two founders, Sector 9 and Dr. No, and says the group began that autumn under another name, which it dropped when it found an English group was already using it. CSDb’s trivia also explains the number: 1911 is 777 in hexadecimal, “the opposite of 666”. The database lists 65 Commodore 64 releases under the name, from a music loader in December 1985 to a crack dated 2025.

Demos on the Amiga

On the Amiga, Razor 1911 reached magazine readers through its demos. In February 1991 a public-domain library was selling “Razor 1911: Best Demos 1988 to 1990” as a single disk, and other libraries listed Razor utility and tool disks. The group’s best-known Amiga demo, Voyage, came third at The Party in Denmark in December 1991. Amiga Format reviewed it in April 1992 and thought it a step forward: Razor 1911 had “up until recently, been content with releasing demos with the pretty standard scrolly texts and vector shapes’ sections”, but Voyage opened like The Terminator and included “a blue cardboard cut-out man running around a wire-frame box”. The reviewer’s verdict was “nice to see someone trying out some new ideas for a change. Well done Razor 1911!”

The group was still making Amiga demos in 1994. A Hungarian magazine, 576 KByte, noted in March 1994 that “the re-formed legendary Razor 1911” had brought out a disk magazine, Propaganda, which it called, in translation, “not the best, but an enjoyable read”. That spring We Shave, a Razor 1911 demo, stood third in a Sheffield library’s list of best-selling demos printed in Amiga Format, behind Spaceballs’ 9 Fingers and Virtual Dreams’ Full Moon.

The PC years and Operation Buccaneer

In the 1990s the group’s cracking moved to the PC and onto the internet. According to the US Justice Department, Razor 1911 had “since the early 1990s” “sought to achieve a reputation in the underground Internet piracy community”. In February 1997 the Italian magazine The Games Machine could call the group TRSI “perhaps the most legendary group of hackers in the world, together with Razor 1911” (in translation).

That reputation also made it a target. On 11 December 2001 the Justice Department announced Operation Buccaneer, an undercover investigation by the US Customs Service whose agents had executed 58 search warrants in the United States and abroad. In February 2004 the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California announced that a man who had admitted being “a leader in the Internet-based piracy group known as Razor1911” had been sentenced to 50 months in prison, for copyright infringement and for a separate mail fraud against Cisco Systems.

The release called Razor 1911 “the first computer game piracy ring on the Internet” and said that the group “prided itself on cracking and illegally distributing the most popular software games, usually before their public release date”. His sentence was, it said, the longest yet imposed on the more than 40 people targeted by Operation Buccaneer. Retro Gamer’s first issue, in 2004, also reported that the leader of the Razor1911 group had been jailed “for over four years”, in a feature on the law and copying old games.

Later demo work

The demo side of the group carried on. Insert No Coins, a Windows intro that fits in 64 kilobytes, won its competition at the party Main in October 2010, and the Scene.org Awards for 2010 listed it as the winner of their public-choice award. Its source code is on GitHub under the group’s name. The Commodore 64 section kept releasing too, and Demozoo lists a demo named after the group, released in April 2026 for its fortieth anniversary.

Sources

  • Amiga Format issue 19, February 1991: public-domain library advertisement, “Razor 1911; Best Demos 1988 to 1990 – collection”.
  • Amiga Computing issue 39, August 1991: public-domain library advertisement, “Razor 1911 – Another nice utilities compilation”.
  • Amiga Format issue 33, April 1992: PD demos review of Voyage.
  • 576 KByte (Hungary) issue 43, March 1994: disk magazines, the return of Razor 1911’s Propaganda.
  • Amiga Format issue 59, May 1994: “Top 10 Demos” from Choice Software, Sheffield, We Shave by Razor 1911 third.
  • The Games Machine (Italy) issue 94, February 1997: TRSI and Razor 1911 as the most legendary groups.
  • United States Attorney’s Office, Northern District of California, via the US Department of Justice, sentencing announcement, 10 February 2004: https://www.justice.gov/archive/criminal/cybercrime/press-releases/2004/breenSent.htm
  • United States Department of Justice, “Federal law enforcement targets international Internet piracy syndicates”, 11 December 2001: https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2001/December/01_crm_643.htm
  • Retro Gamer issue 1, 2004: feature on the law and copying old games, reporting the prison sentence.
  • CSDb, group entry for Razor 1911 (web, secondary): founding, founders, the name, Commodore 64 releases. https://csdb.dk/group/?id=431
  • Demozoo, group entry for Razor 1911 (web, secondary): Amiga and later productions, the 2026 anniversary demo. https://demozoo.org/groups/519/
  • Demozoo, Insert No Coins (web, secondary): date, competition result and credits. https://demozoo.org/productions/302/
  • Scene.org Awards, archive for 2010, public choice (web, secondary): https://awards.scene.org/archive.php?year=2010&cat=public-choice
  • Razor 1911, Insert No Coins source code on GitHub (web, secondary): https://github.com/razordemo/Insert-No-Coins

See also

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