We all have our favorites that we go-to overtime to meet our pirating needs. We’ve also watched a lot of big names in this year alone, go down in a blaze of glory and others in a whimper. I’m awfully curious what, to you, is the biggest loss to date?
For me it’s Uloz, first thing that came to mind. Uloz has served me very well in acquiring music albums through them, for a good 6 years I recall that I used them for getting albums. When they decided to switch the way in how they do their service, that to me felt like a sucker punch. No longer can I just collect album names, find a sacrificial wi-fi network and go to work.
I also remember missing ISOHunt, EmuAsylum, EmuParadise, OG Pirate Bay, AnimeSuge (soon HiAnime once the piss-ants of ACE get their way soon) and I really hope we don’t lose Internet Archive. But with the way it’s been hammered by shitty people and court lawsuits, I predict that it doesn’t really have much time on it’s side in the near future.
All I can say is just thank you to all of those sources and of course the ones everyone is familiar with. Helped save me a lot of money, helped me increase my interests and eh, can’t argue against free shit.
Nzbmatrix
Taringa, it was the go-to place for everything, especially content in spanish
Napster
Haven’t quite filled the void from 9anime/aniwave going down, hard to replace the king.
torrentz.eu, started my torrent journey in 2010 from this website.
You and another have already said it, but Emuparadise. It was…truly a shame. :'(
nzbmatrix
Demonoid. They had a community that put together a lot of high-quality torrents.
This and I believe it was called TvTorrents. Private tracker that was amazing for TV shows.
I remember using something called ourtunes back in college that just let everyone in the dorm freely access and download each others iTunes libraries on the dorm network.
Definitely Vimm’s Lair for me. I still play a lot of GameCube and N64 games and Vimm’s was always my go-to place for finding roms. They got hit with a lot of DMCAs and take down notices, and had to remove the vast majority of their Nintendo library along with anything related to Sega and Lego. The site is still up, but it’s like visiting a graveyard now
Could you give an example of a game no longer available? Just checked and was able to dl Luigi’s Mansion just fine
On GameCube, I can see that Legend of Zelda Wind Waker, Mario Party 6, Smash Bros Melee are all unavailable. On N64, Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, Pokemon Stadium are also unavailable
This one hurt me really bad. I was just getting started with retro gaming and then all of this shit happened.
Megaupload. It was like the Library of Alexandria burning down. Not just pirated stuff, either.
I remember to swear by megaupload because all the other upload sites uses extremely sketchy ads and allow the fake download buttons.
Now Jdownloader is the only way for me to download non-torrents
Deeeefonitely what.cd for me. RIP WCD. We have two great music trackers now, but nothing comes close to WCD.
What.cd and BitGamer were the two private trackers where I really put in effort not just to seed but to contribute unique uploads.
I stepped away from torrenting for awhile and when I returned both were ashes.
Edit- what are the two good music trackers you’re referencing?
Losing what.cd was like having a Music Library of Alexandria burn down. Such an amazing resource for rare, out of print, obscure, and or otherwise unobtainable media.
Opheus and REDacted are the two! RED has more and interview signups. I’m only on OPH because they welcomed WCD refugees and it’s been very good.
Easily the biggest loss imo. RIP WCD.
GrooveShark was a great music streaming service. If a track wasn’t available you could just upload it and it would be available to all users.
It eventually got sued into oblivion leaving us with the streaming platforms of today. I really wish it could have made the transition to being legit because it had a great interface.
GrooveShark, for me, particularly thrived on early Android as Tinyshark. It was probably one of the first ways I remember actively listening to whatever music I wanted to; no algorithm outside of the list of “most popular songs”.
Asiandvdclub (not the shady remake)
What.cd. - RED is great but there’s still a hole…
tntvillage
It was, hands down, THE place for every Italian media
omg yes