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iKeygen music
iFebruary 22nd, 2018
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i
iI listened to Solderpunk's awesome new anonradio show, Half Hour
iof Power, which was a fantastic assortment of chiptunes. I had
iforgotten how fun chiptunes can be and I'd also forgotten about
ia similar school of music that I used to be really into, Keygen
iMusic!
i
iFirst, some background for those of you not immediately familiar
iwith the concept. When downloading illegal software you often have
ito find a crack or serial number to use it. Most software that
irequires registration uses some mathematical and programatic
imethod to validate the serial number that you enter. Fantastically
ibrilliant coders will use special software to freeze the operation
iof the program and step through its assembly operations in order
ito discover what these validation mechanisms are.
i
iIf they are amazing enough, they can write a small patch to the
iexecutable that will bypass or falsely validate a serial number as
ivalid. The patch literally rewrites the machine code to "JMP" past
ithe validation to a success area in memory. That's a crack!
i
iIf the coder is ever more amazing and sly, rather than changing
ithe application--like a crack--they'll write their own program
ithat can create a valid serial number by working backwards. If
ithey can decypher how a program is validated, they can create
ia successful string of data. This is a keygen, and in my opinion
isome of the most sophisticated and beautiful demonstrations of
icode in existence.
i
iI don't know when keygens started adding music to their little
iprograms, but the popularity quickly took off. Interestingly, the
imusic used for keygens often used the same technologies and
iformats as game chiptunes: MOD, XM, or S3M [0] for example. These
itracker formats have some amazing, unique sounds and offer quite
ia bit of control for their musicians.
i
iAs the years went by, I've saved my favorite tunes, often by
iripping them from the keygens themselves. I like to think of the
iact of "cracking" a keygen as a kind of computer nerd poetry.
iAlso, the music is awesome.
i
iIf you want to try out some keygen music for yourself, it's much
ieasier these days. There's a great site that archives so much of
ithe scene's music [1]. If you want to listen to my personal keygen
imusic mix, grab the rar of my archive here [2]
i
iPerhaps I should have made an anonradio show of it myself, but
iI'd rather share it secretly with all you foxy gophers.
i
HTML [0] S3M format
HTML [1] Keygen Music
HTML [2] Tomasino's Keygen Mix