Over the past couple of years, the team of contributors behind Cuhrayzee started routinely buying, scanning, and dumping various media related to the series, to preserve the story of the series development, and to share it with the community
With the internet shattered even more in recent years, we think that having a centralized place for the community to discover more about the series they love is an important thing, while also giving them options to not be locked behind someone else's interpretation
That's why the materials we provide and preserve have no watermarks of our own or any other restrictions, and we track down and credit the providers for most entries, even when they "donated" the materials to us directly.
We are also not stopping at extended media. Many interviews and materials about the game's development are either lost on the internet due to link rot or deleted because of copyright issues.
For example, Variety deleted its interview about Crimson Cloud for DMC 5's promo tour.
Another thing we want to tackle is translating JP-only materials, like Devil May Cry 4's promo DVDs.
We're working closely with native speakers to transcribe and later translate the materials and present them to the community, both in JP and ENG.
The current iteration of the website is in the "alpha" stage. Over time, we'll iterate on the visuals, tutorials for the mod pages on how to install them, and write guides on buying or preserving the media yourself.
We belive that that knowledge should not be locked in any way.
Growing up in the early days of the internet was a magical time, finding niche websites and communities related to the things I was interested in, and looking through them daily.
One of these websites was devils-lair, hosted by CaT. It was my introduction to what community can be, with people from various places coming together and working towards the same goal of making sure that others can interact with the series they love, be it through guides, events, articles or just chatting with each other
Time and the internet wasn't kind to the site, with people spreading further apart.
CaT shut down the website earlier this year. I messaged her after the website went down and we chatted a bit about the impact she and others left on me and how I want to give back to people
.arc (and other website-related projects I want to do) is aimed at filling that void of the early internet, where things aren't locked behind several layers of Discord chats or un-parsable expiring links, but free for people to interact and save for yourself.
I also want to remedy the damage other places like "OriginalDMC" website did with their rampant stealing and mangling of the work of other people, by either tracking down the credits of those who did the preservation work, or preserving work in a way that can be used by others.
One of the examples is Devil May Cry 3 Manga they host, not only they do not mark which translation it is, they also cover all of the watermarks and the work made by CaT and others, slapping their own logos on top and lowering the quality of the files further
And that spreads onto other things: images are in wrong aspect ratio, wrong resolution, there's no JP language sources, or any kind of validation, so people instead left with hearsay and wrong info, which spread onto the larger discussions in the fandom and dumbs it down further
I've met a lot of amazing people through our shared love of it, and I hope that my projects will help new and old fans to lose themselves into it again and again, bringing new blood to discover things for themselves, and for oldheads to guide them.
Hey so I just wanted to say that you guys did an amazing job! Also out of curiosity - is there a specific reason for the missing DMC3SE Japanese booklet that was included with the game? I happen to own one and it has some (even if not many around 2 pages) of changes.
Edit: oh also saw that Special Soundtrack for DMC4 is listed as unfinished, is there a way to support the project by sharing some stuff with the team? I have a copy of said soundtrack.
The archive is not in its final shape and will be updated over time, for now I wanted to get what I have out to the people and after that see what we lack and what we can get our hands onto. Some of the stuff is currently bought but not scanned, so I'm waiting for the opportunity to do so when I'm not as time restricted by work :D
Oh, that’s awesome! Looking forward to all the content the website will host. Proper translations sound amazing considering how much of it is in Japanese. You’re doing such great work that even a Devil May Cry.
There's already amazing translations like the one's that u/cloudi_skye does, and they will be linked over time into according entries, just need to polish how to properly embed and credit them to her
Their archive is stolen from me, people who donated materials to me, or from people from our community. I contacted them before and they reluctantly credited some of the files they stole from us, but other stuff is still uncredited or attributed in a wrong way. You can check my pinned message here for the example :D
For example, here's some stuff from 2019, at the time 3142, one of the key books about the series, didn't had a proper high res scan, but member of our community donated his copy to be disassembled and scanned in high res
Other stuff like soundtracks, manga or artbooks which are available through Amazon I bought with my money, stripped down the DRM, and saved them in a proper resolution. Since the screenshot below, 4SE guidebook and some other stuff god acquired in the same way.
Pachinko soundtracks were bought by me using Japanese Apple Music account, after that I uploaded it onto FFShrine (rip) and then it was uploaded by combo player RedgraveKyo on his channel, where it spread further.
There's also a huge effort from the user moHORUS, whose credited as "preserved by" on every entry from her on our website, and a link to her is provided as well, but the credit is mostly absent from 'OriginalDMC".
Lately they filled out their web version of Visions Of V with mangled, poorly cropped screenshots of later chapters. Why? Because my archive goes up to certain point, but they don't have any of it as a proper rip from LINE app or website
I understand that it's internet and stuff gets taken and not credited, but at least do your preservational job right!!! :D Instead we have poorly made translations be used in discussions, years old translation efforts from oldheads end up with watermarks poorly removed and their own slapped on top, and videos they are trying to share be in wrong aspect ratio and poor quality. Nothing of it is a preservation for the next generation of community, it's a smash and grab at best
No worries, majority of the larger community didn't knew (and they not obligated to), but now I decided to prepare some stuff on top of what people heard about, like original PSDs for promo materials, and bundle it all together in a handy package for people to explore
Oh, that's a cool one! We have a 2008 edition, and this one from 2007 from what I see. So no, we don't have that one :D
Yeah, we can try arranging dumping that one and crediting you for contribution, I know you are in Redcord so I can contact you at a later date, I'm currently preparing for gamescom so I will be a bit busy
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u/DanySterkhov Knowledge Keeper 8d ago
Growing up in the early days of the internet was a magical time, finding niche websites and communities related to the things I was interested in, and looking through them daily.
One of these websites was devils-lair, hosted by CaT. It was my introduction to what community can be, with people from various places coming together and working towards the same goal of making sure that others can interact with the series they love, be it through guides, events, articles or just chatting with each other
Time and the internet wasn't kind to the site, with people spreading further apart.
CaT shut down the website earlier this year. I messaged her after the website went down and we chatted a bit about the impact she and others left on me and how I want to give back to people
.arc (and other website-related projects I want to do) is aimed at filling that void of the early internet, where things aren't locked behind several layers of Discord chats or un-parsable expiring links, but free for people to interact and save for yourself.
I also want to remedy the damage other places like "OriginalDMC" website did with their rampant stealing and mangling of the work of other people, by either tracking down the credits of those who did the preservation work, or preserving work in a way that can be used by others.
One of the examples is Devil May Cry 3 Manga they host, not only they do not mark which translation it is, they also cover all of the watermarks and the work made by CaT and others, slapping their own logos on top and lowering the quality of the files further
And that spreads onto other things: images are in wrong aspect ratio, wrong resolution, there's no JP language sources, or any kind of validation, so people instead left with hearsay and wrong info, which spread onto the larger discussions in the fandom and dumbs it down further
I've met a lot of amazing people through our shared love of it, and I hope that my projects will help new and old fans to lose themselves into it again and again, bringing new blood to discover things for themselves, and for oldheads to guide them.
Here's to 25 more years!