One year to the minute after the infamous FBI raid on his mansion, Kim Dotcom launched new filesharing service Mega the only way he knows how – with vaudevillian levels of absurdity. 

On Friday, Dotcom’s MEGA interface – not be confused with record label alternative Megabox – opened for business, promising users 50GB of cloud-based storage. Dotcom has also stressed that erstwhile Megaupload users will be able to access files removed as part of Megaupload’s high-profile takedown in 2012.

As NME report, Dotcom officially launched the service last night at his New Zealand mansion by putting on a campy recreation of last January’s raid. In front of an audience of over 200 invited guests and media representatives, actors in FBI garb scaled the walls of the mansion and burst into the property. A faux-FBI helicopter also swooped over the assembled crowd. In a particularly memorable set-piece, Dotcom was introduced to the crowd as “a multimillionaire maniac, heavyweight champion, three-time Academy Award winner and qualified veterinarian”.

Dotcom used the launch to trumpet MEGA’s success, noting that the site had received more than a million visits within 14 hours:  “I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve done a bit of PR and got a bit of attention, that’s certainly helped. But I never expected 250,000 user registrations in the first two hours – I think it’s unheard of. I don’t know of any other startup that has had this kind of early success”.

You can sample MEGA for yourself here.