Wow, I haven't seen you around here in a while! I used to have you on MSN back in the late 2000s. I'm in a similar boat: registered on these forums as a dumb 11 year old, managed to get banned and eventually ended up ban dodging my way back into here (while getting caught in the act) in 2008. I've kept a ton of friends from Retro and the scene over the years and I'm happy with how the community has relatively stayed the same. I don't post as much as I used to but I still lurk quite often. I met up with KojiChao and Kurosan back in mid 2015 while they were over in my city for a wedding and they were both really nice. Not too sure what Koji's up to these days art wise (I didn't ask as I wasn't too familiar with her in the scene) but they both seem to be doing well. --- I'd like to thank all the friends I've from the scene over the years: SephyUK, Qjimbo, Armada, MSUK/Zehrfunk (RIP), Spanner, Vrantheo, LordofSquad, Fleet, SeanieB, ojdon, Ritz, Chimpo, Polygon Jim (RIP), Kurosan, Mikel, shagia, Hitaxas, Unlimited Trees & Slingerland (even if our friendship can be just attributed to joking around on the Discord, it was fun). Sorry for all the drama, guys! :v:/>/>
Long time lurker, short time member... Really enjoyed the Sonic 2 beta days of finding stuff (dust hill/hidden palace) and the epic saga of the Hill Top tree in Sonic 2HD. Seen old members come and go. Remember being particularly impressed with IceKnight's S2 knowledge, and Jason Christ's crude sense of humor cutting through the serious chatter. Sonic 1 beta(a), Sonic 4 reveal shitshow, Drx's leaks, watching Lake Feperd's ATS being developed and Andrew's Xtreme odyssey - not sure how it is possible to have great memories about reading a message board but I have! Maybe by another 20 years the real S1 beta will have been discovered. In the meantime I'm looking forward to and hoping for many more crappy fakes!
Been around since late 2001-ish as far as I can remember, going under the hideously unoriginal moniker "Knuckles Prower". I still remember the old Area 51 ikonboard with the neon outlines of prototype Sonic 2 badniks in the background! Those were the days when Nemesis, Saxman and Esrael were the absolute gods of hacking (anyone remember the SAXlight? Haha. XD), everything was distributed via IPS (or later RXL) patches, and theories about prototype levels/features were just made up with little to no basis and thrown around as 'common knowledge' with wild abandon. I'm sure if I could see some of my old posts from back then I'd absolutely cringe! XD Am I right in thinking there's still an archive of that board in existence somewhere? The journey from there to where we are today has been amazing, from Area 51 through to other forums like SSRG, SCARAD/SCARZ, and the SWS2B page. Sites like ICEknight's Sonic Database and Sonic CulT all gradually making efforts to separate the rumour (and the just plain made up theories) from fact, and nail down a clearer picture of the development of the games. Seeing things like Nemesis and Kosinski compression (as they were nicknamed then - no idea if we have proper names for those nowadays) figured out for the first time by people far more competent than myself. I can remember downloading one of the first publicly-released decompression tools for one of the formats and poring over decompressed Sonic 1 and 2 art for ages, occasionally actually finding things of interest like the art for the goggles in Sonic 1 or (much later on) the updated 'polished' Stegway art in drx's "beta 4" of Sonic 2, which always gets overlooked in favour of the more widely recognised art from earlier prototypes - even in the mobile remakes! = P Things like the eternal on-off development of interesting fan projects like Retro Sonic, Project Mettrix and Sonic XG have also been interesting to follow even though they've not necessarily surfaced in completed form, and have shown some of the passion and enthusiasm for the classic-styled Sonic games that fans have had over the years. And now, of course, it's all coming full-circle, with some of the minds behind these projects coming together to create official classic Sonic games for SEGA in the form of the Sonic CD/1/2 mobile remakes and the upcoming Sonic Mania! (Still hoping for console/PC releases of the remakes along with Sonic 3 & Knuckles to complete the set one day - come on SEGA!) And passionate development of projects within the community still continues - see Andrew75's Project AXSX, a labour of love that's restarted development a few times but is still going strong - part fangame, part research project, and all made with a hell of a lot of talent and dedication. I'm very excited to see what the Unreal Engine 4 version of it will bring! = ) Even if a lot of people have moved on over the years, it's great to still see some of the old familiar faces around and actively contributing - ICEknight, Overlord, Cinossu, Hez et. al. At the same time, some great new faces have popped up over the years - technical wizards like MarkeyJester, Morph and MainMemory who constantly amaze me with what they can achieve, and people like Strife who've managed to turn what started as a fan project into their own indie game series. And then there's people like me, who've enjoyed the ride whilst not actually contributing all that much, haha! XD Biggest events I can remember over the years off the top of my head include (in no particular order): that whole Sonic Heroes E3 demo/alpha leak kerfuffle back in the CulT days, drx's SEGA archive proto haul (including actual Sonic & Knuckles and Chaotix prototypes), the Sonic 2 "Nick Arcade" proto, the Sonic 2 GG rolling demo, the discovery of Marble Zone music in the SMS Sonic 1, the Sonic Adventure Autodemo and subsequent partial restoration of the original Windy Valley, and finally seeing new screenshots from the original Sonic 1 CES "demo" that show those weird goblin enemies actually got as far as having ingame art at one point!
I feel like we have one of these community commemoration threads every few weeks, hah. Regardless, I'm glad I've been a part of this community as an observer and then a participator for something like 15 years now. I've met some people who have become great friends here and it's always been a fantastic place to shoot the shit and get feedback on my artistic endeavours. Everyone here at Retro (and SWS2B and CulT before that) always felt like my crazy internet family to me, and I'll probably always feel that way. Running in this scene for most of my young life has somehow made me a better person ultimately, which is a super fucking bizarre thing to say about an internet forum situated around a blue hedgehog character from a beleaguered videogame franchise, but it's a bizarre world out there.
That's still going on? I've obviously been out of the loop on that one. I mean, it doesn't really count as a Retro meetup anyway. :P
Ah yes, the community. I remember the community. It was pretty awesome when Sonic games were being made. Really though, being a part of all this since around 1998, it's been a trip to see how the community has evolved from some people in their rooms on their PCs to a lot of people in their rooms on their portable devices.
What are you doing here now, then? See you in a few millennia. Seriously though, I joined Retro more than 10 years ago, but I've been active on the internet for a few years before, and I even did some Sonic-related stuff, such as the Sonic Triple Trouble VGM pack, which dates back to 2002. Back then, "nineko" didn't even exist yet (which is why I'm known as "Tom" on smspower, incidentally). Still, I used to bring this up whenever Tweaker or some other mod/admin talked about the Oldbie cutoff date, jokingly claiming that I should be an Oldbie because of the VGM pack. Needless to say, no mod/admin ever fell for that. Oh man, this is such a beautiful community, I'm happy to be a part of it.
I feel weird posting here since I rarely ever visit, guess it's time for a change. 2 decades of Sonic Retro, good gravy that's impressive. Congrats to everyone around these boards who've stuck around and contributed to the community and, in some cases, the Sonic series itself. Glad to be a member, even if I'm only here once in a blue moon.
I've been into Sonic since the early 90's, but didn't get a decent pc/connection until like six years ago which is when I started lurking here. I joined Stadium in 2012 and Retro in 2015. So I'm pretty much a baby compared to all you Oldbies! Retro is an amazing community which I'm proud to be a part of. Here's to the next 20 years :D
Damn, I can't believe I was 14 when I joined here. o.o I'm here for almost 9 years and it's crazy how time flies!
Been here on and off since 1998. I didn't realize the site was even older than that! So Mania is our 20th anniversary present? I'd say that's entirely appropriate. Made by one of our own, representing the pinnacle of everything Retro Sonic. How far we've come.
Wasn't Retro created in 2004? I think some of you guys are confused. Edit: Actually, I'm no longer sure when Retro was created. But I'm pretty sure it wasn't 20 years ago.
Area 51 was the original version of this community this thread refers too. I know I saw it around at least as far back as 98 and was lurking there BEFORE the wai-beta was released. People were going nuts over the possibilities in that first year when screencaps surfaced.
I'm mostly a lurker, but I've been following the scene since back in my high school days in '04 after seeing screenshots of Sonic 2 Beta online one day. SWS2B page and CulT were my favorite sites to browse back then. Reading up on the latest discoveries found within the games, compiled prerelease info, and unreleased/obscure titles in the franchise was always a blast. I also really loved the hoaxes section on SWS2B. Here's to the next 20 years!
Pretty wild that it's been so long since I made SFGHQ, and yet still chat with a bunch of people I made friends with back then. Found some old bits of stuff I did:
I was going to say I feel like I just saw this a while back, but now I see you're quoting from twitter so I'm not going crazy lol
Been a long time lurker since the Area51 days; it seems like such a long time since the LOst Mappings editor was a thing. So many communities have come and gone since then, this is a great accomplishment!
