Overlord, were those like some heavy metal versions of the Sonic 3 and S&K boss themes? I've had a S&K boss cover on my computer for AGES and I never knew who made it other than I downloaded it from SCARZ eons ago.
Which is ironic, given that Pachuka used to attack Andy Wolan and call him a thief for doing the same thing.
Back in 2003/2004 I was on AOL, and I had just found a map editor for Chip's Challenge, which got me wondering if someone had made one for Sonic & Knuckles Collection. They hadn't (yet), but the search brought me to Hacking Cult which had a download for SonED, and from there I found S2Beta (or whatever name it had at the time), what was left of the original SSRG, and Sonic Cult. I lurked around here and Cult until I finally got the courage to join here in August 2009 to share my findings in SADX, and I want to say it was in 2010 that I decided to also share my findings on the X-Cult forums. I posted about how I had figured out how to activate Super Sonic in normal levels... and I got suspended by a mod for posting a dumb model edit. Another mod shortly overturned the suspension (I think I may have done some explaining in IRC?), but after that, I mostly didn't bother posting there anymore. I did stick around #cult for a while, and I think I had a reason for leaving, but I can't remember what it was.
I think what made a lot of the stuff back then different from the alt-right etc is that it was done for the shock value or irony by a bunch of teens rather than out of some kind of hatred. Like a dead baby joke. That Sonic Heroes page aged like a bag of rancid meat for sure though.
I was actually thinking about this a little last night, but X-CulT really did have a lot of potential. It's a shame that the community sort of fizzled out around the switch from Sonic CulT; a community dedicated to researching and maintaining a catalogue of pre-release materials and prototypes, and making it all available freely could have still been going strong today had things have gone differently. I guess Hidden Palace is the nearest thing to what I'm thinking of, unless there's somewhere else I don't know about.
Guys - hopefully it's cool to say this - but we do have an existing SCARZ/Sonic Cult themed dark green site skin in the Oldbie Lounge. I could post a screenshot if you guys want. Perhaps we could make the theme optional for the main forum or something? It's really slick and cool. Awesome retro-throwback and tribute to Cult so might be a good idea.
Yeah, I'd love to use that as well. Some of us have been around since the dirt ages even though we weren't posting back then, we're not all oldbies.
Wat. Yea I would like to use that. Besides our current options are broken blue, that default brown theme (ekkk, no), and the Big theme which tbh is alright. But yes I know, "New board coming soon no changes" *TM/(C) Give me that black and green though. Besides, ya I started at CulT and despite not being an Oldbie I've still been around forever at this point.
CulT was one of the first communities I found in my teenage years. Certainly a product of the times, it will still be missed. I dug through the sidebar on the main page hundreds of times. Link x Knuckles picture got it all flooding back. Speaking of, I also blame it for introducing me the concept of rule 34, at the bottom of that sidebar, with the mustachioed gent I ignored, like all 18+ warnings. + - Amy getting a surprise Chaos enema in a back alley is etched in the back of my mind forever.
This is a weird one: I'm not even all that fussed by TSSZ nowadays (they do their thing, they do a good job at it, and that's fine) but I would like at some point to see an apology for the people who were given grief for no real reason--Sega employees and otherwise. That's about the extent of "beef." This is probably the biggest reason why Retro exists in the way it does today, and the site owes a big debt to CulT for that. Funnily enough, there are still people grumbling about "stealing" and "credit" even today on some things Retro does, but I dooooooon't caaaaaaare. There's a big difference between intellectual property and wanting credit for making a facsimile of someone else's work.
One can always rely on the wayback machine! https://web.archive.org/web/20180106094312/http://www.sonic-cult.org/
Oh yeah, quick update on that whole part of CulT archiving: basically, our hands are tied right now due to the outdated technology needed to run the site (NOT THAT WE WOULDN'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THAT!!!) and so a large part of it's going to be reviewing to see if it's worth stabilizing the code or just running it on some read-only container.
I find I have the opposite problem. People ask me if it's alright to use Sega Retro's images and content for their own articles/projects. Of course it is! Why else does it exist if not as a resource of images and research.
Just because it's a publicly stated goal hasn't stopped other sites with the same sort of a publicly stated goal from lashing out at people for using their content. Gotta play things safe.
