Another important Quake and gaming news site from the late 1990s was sCary's.
The site was started by Steve Gibson and Maarten Goldstein.
Originally it was called "Scary's Quakeholio", later "sCary's ShugaShack" or just "ShugaShack", and eventually "ShackNews, it's modern incarnation.
Shacknews was founded in 1996 by Steve "Scary" Gibson, 20 years old at the time, as a website dedicated to following news about the then-upcoming game Quake from id Software. The original name of the website was "Quakeholio".
-- Shacknews, Wikipedia.
Throughout the day, we've been celebrating the 25th anniversary of the day Shacknews was brought into the world. This website started life as Quakeholio, then spent years as Shugashack, and finally morphed into the Shacknews of today.
-- The Shacknews Origin Story, as told by sHugamom
Starting at least April 25 1996 until August 1996.
July 24th
What Was I Thinking?
I added a couple of links that should've been here a while ago: The Quake RC Archive (no it has nothing to do with soda, it's aliases and config file stuff), and sCary's Quakeholio, if not for the name alone, for the fact that it's the world's finest (onliest?) collection of Quake deathmatch demos around.
-- https://www.bluesnews.com/archives/july96.html
Link from news piece:
Cool QuakeC hacks are HERE
Ryan McClelland
31 July 1996
Scary's Quakeholio has the following patches
Fraggren.zip: This is a great 2 in 1 pack, first off, nails from the
nailgun (impulse 4) stay in the
walls ala duke3d, and secondly you get a coolbeans new weapon, the
nail grenade. you lob it in a
room, and then it shoots to the ceiling and explodes, unleashing a
shower of nails!
JSFiend.zip : This was sent to me by Mr_D, its great for deathmatch!
Whenever you pick up the
invulnerability gibs fly all over the place and then you are
transformed into a Fiend! You can jump
and slash and everything!
Homing.zip : This is great! turns rockets into heat seakers, but it
also slows down the rockets
some as they approach the target, you are even notified when a
heatseaker is after you!
Lasergn1.zip : Well you like that laser gun that the enforcers use
huh? This patch will let you use
it! Be cautios though, this thing will eat up that precious ammo
pretty quick.
exbpk001.zip : Dont like how all that ammo just piles up after a
while? well now the backpacks
explode! w00! adds a new dimension to those real big deathmatches.
Drunkm3.zip : Drunken missiles! sorta like those wonderful ROTT
weapons, but well, a lot
cooler. I havent had a chance to mess with it, but all Ive heard was
how cool this thing was.
Gibgun.zip : The gibgun! ya! just crap flying everywhere, we all love
that, it doesnt change
gameplay at all really, it just makes sure you have a constant flow
of gibs on the screen.
Solidmn2.zip : Solid monsters, so when they die they remain solid and
can still be gibbed when
they are there on the ground, personally i think that should have
been a feature already in quake,
but well, here it is.
Violence.zip : Add just a bit more blood and gibs to your games, also
just for entertainment value,
no real changes are made to gameplay, more blood, more guts.
Checkum out at http://www.rockisland.com/~phook/scary/
Ryan McClelland
mc...@wam.umd.edu
-- rec.games.computer.quake.misc
N K Laurance
2 Aug 1996
From sCARY's Quakeholio page: http://www.rockisland.com/~phook/scary/
(1) start quake with "quake -listen"
(2) bring down the console (~)
(3) fraglimit 50
(4) record <demo name> <map name>
<map name> - eXmY i.e episode X, level Y
- dmY i.e deathmatch level Y
- start, end
cheers Neil
-- rec.games.computer.quake.playing
August 21st
More #Quakecon
Check out Scary's Quakeholio for sCaryname's account of #Quakecon.
-- https://www.bluesnews.com/archives/august96.html
Very little was archived:
Staring around August 25 1996 to September 1996:
August 25th
Scary's Quakeholio Moves
Here is the home of the new Quakeholio. This has always been one of my favorites (deathmatch demos mmmm), and now sCaryName dropped me a line to say he thought he should be able to update it more regularly now that he has direct access to the site. Cool!
-- https://www.bluesnews.com/archives/august96.html
Link from piece:
Steve Price
2 Sept 1996
Go look on sCary's Quakeholio (http://www.canweb.net/~smiles/). It's in
the QuakeC files section. telew11.zip to be exact.
-- rec.games.computer.quake.editing
Starting around September 12 1996 until perhaps October 1997:
It may have been mirrored at:
Although almost nothing was archived, e.g.:
These pages link to quakehole.com.
I suspect the move was to the "gamesmania" network. The first address was "gamesmania.com/quakehole", before "quakehole.com" was adopted.
September 12th
Pretty sCary, Huh Kids?
Go check out my buddy sCaryname's new location for the Quakeholio... he has, in his own words: "m00ved to a noo ereet syte," working for the Gamesmania people. Actually, you won't notice much of a difference, but that's a good thing. sCary's site is a favorite, and I wouldn't want to see it change.
-- https://www.bluesnews.com/archives/sept96-2.html
Link from piece:
Kent_haug
20 Sept 1996
Try sCary's Quakehole. http://www.quakehole.com/ (or
http://www.gamesmania.com/quakehole/ if the first doesn't work)
He has a really good collection of deathmatch demos.
-- rec.games.computer.quake.misc
Some of the earliest news posts on the site that survive are dated from October 25 1996, announcing the released of the reaper bot version 8.0.
Not a lot survives from this early version of the site.
The archive.org capture of the site is spotty and mostly contains later versions with unrelated content by subsequent owners of the domain.
Some key pages that do survive from this time include:
And others.
The links page is really quite impressive.
Only portions of the news on the site survives.
For example:
The exact date that the site was shutdown is not known. It was likely September 1997, based on some of the last dates of news articles.
A final message posted in October 3rd 1997 comments on the migration of the site from quakehole.com to hipnotic.com.
I'm workin on it.. 5:15pm - 03/10/97
I've gotten about 3/4ths of a bare bones news page ready at www.hipnotic.com for you guys.. hope to see it on line within 24 hours. We are also hoping to have a bit of tutorial ready to help everyone put rotation in to their maps.
-- http://www.quakehole.com/frames/home.html (archived December 10 1997)
A capture by archive.org on December 1997 of (one of) the homepage shows a redirect message to a news site on hipnotic.com.
sCary's Quakeholio is now sCary's Sugar Shack hosted on www.hipnotic.com/news.htm
As for the future of www.quakehole.com,that is undecided. please visit www.gamesmania.com though in the mean time.
All the files / demos / stories / morons.txt stuff will be available on the new page within the week.
-- http://www.quakehole.com/standard/default.htm (archived December 10 1997)
The site moved to Hipnotic Interactive and was focused on quake news.
They were responsible for the development of the first official mission pack for quake titled "Quake Mission Pack No. 1: Scourge of Armagon".
Portions of the news written by Steven Gibson from this time survive in archive.org.
For example, posts in late December 1997 survive, including a news post about the first version of the Omicron bot v1.00.
- News (Dec 7-11 1997)
The news archive page, captured in December 1997, has archived news from March 6th 1997 to December 6th 1997.
Sadly, the actual archive of news on the site was not appear to have been captured by archive.org:
Some pages that do survive and were captured in December 1997, include:
The company later changed their name and became Ritual Entertainment, perhaps in late 1997.
Based in Dallas, Texas, Ritual Entertainment was formerly known as Hipnotic Interactive, during which period they began development of their signature video game SiN.
...
In late 1997, Hipnotic changed their name to Ritual Entertainment in order to avoid a trademark conflict with another video-game developer, Hypnotix.
-- Ritual Entertainment, Wikipedia.
The site later changed to:
A capture by archive.org on January 21 1998 suggests that Steve did not come to the new site and instead parted ways.
This page will auto forward you to www.ritualistic.com
sCary's News page has moved to:
http://scary.vrgames.net
-- http://hipnotic.com/news.htm (archived January 21 1998)
The new news site on ritualistic.com does not appear to feature Steve although links to his new site.
While checking out a Trespasser preview I saw linked at sCary's, I saw that they had an extra page talking about the other 3D games coming out this year, like of course, SiN.
-- http://ritualistic.com/ (archived April 29 1998)
The site moved "Virtual Reality Games Network", perhaps in early 1998.
The site was accessible via:
Blues news mentions this page in January 1998 in his guide to Quake news webpages.
sCary's Sugar Shack is another veteran in the gaming news business. sCary's original news site, the Quakehole, was shut down after he accepted a job with Ritual Entertainment. The Quakehole has been reborn into the Shuga Shack. Now, sCary has moved the shack to the Virtual Reality Games Network. sCary presents the news with his own, unique brand of humor. In addition to the all of the features expected from a news site, the Shuga Shack also houses a large collection of Quake and Quake 2 demos.
-- http://www.bluesnews.com/guide/newspage.htm (archived January 29 1998)
Little of this version of the site survives, I suspect because it did not last long here before moving to a dedicated domain.
Those files that do survive were captured 10 years later and were likely left on the server accidentally.
For example:
By this time, quake mod development and Quake bot development was thin. Most effort was focused on Quake II and other games. Our interest in the site wanes at this point.
It later became shugashack.com, probably in early to mid 1998 and focused more broadly on 3d gaming news, not just Quake.
The news archives are archived intact.
News archives:
- http://shugashack.com/archives/archives.htm (March 1997 - Nov 1998)
- http://shugashack.com/archives/archives.htm (March 1997 - Jun 1999)
Eventually, the site became "Shack News" at shacknews.com and the seeds of the massive gaming news site of today.
Importantly, shacknews was responsible for contracting David Craddock to write "Rocket Jump", a biography of Quake and related games in 2017.
It was shared for free in the site, where it remains accessible today.
It later became a book, publushed with the same name in 2019.
- Rocket Jump: Quake and the Golden Age of First-Person Shooters, David Craddock, 2019.
I highly recommend reading the online or book version.
- http://www.bluesnews.com/guide/newspage.htm (archived January 29 1998)
- Shacknews, Wikipedia.
- Ritual Entertainment, Wikipedia.
- The Shacknews Origin Story, as told by sHugamom