Welcome to the Interviews section. The idea for this section was to have interviews
with famous Game Developers and then list them here, but since that would be quite
troublesome, we decided to start interview the fans of Rockman/Mega Man instead.
For starters, we begin to interview RM/MM fans that has done anything meaningful
to the net community, whether if it's in the present time or somewhere in the
past. Famous net people we had in mind are those that would usually run a RM/MM
website, or has been helpful with art commissions, or pretty much anyone that's
been helpful for a huge pack of RM/MM fans in all the years the net has been up.
Enjoy the interviews.
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Where'd you come from and what's your age? |
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I live in Canada, but as for my age .... Now, THAT is a SECRET! LOL. |
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Damn you.... anyways, when did you get into MegaMan? And how did it affect
your life? |
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Well, I got into it waaaaaay back watching Captain N. When I finally
saw MM in a friend's Nintendo Power I was hooked. As for how it affected
my life ..... well, I have a MM website. Probably more my art style than
anything else. Looking at MM stuff makes me draw like Capcom. Yeah, so that's
how I got into MM and how it affected my life. |
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When did you enter the exciting world of internet and what amazing features
did that bring to your MegaMan experience? |
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Well, I looked MM up on the net when MM8 was coming out. Back then there
wasn't too many MM pages, but I was really interested in Pixelboy's MM sprite
page. (He had a collection from the NES games - his was top notch at the
time). This led to an idea: I would collect sprites to make a picture with
all of them surrounding MM.
To this end I looked through the net and found "Death Angel's Spritez".
He had single sprites from the Gameboy Games and that was rare at the time.
But I needed X2 sprites and X2 wasn't emulated yet. So I scanned in my Nintendo
Power mags and made some "sprites" from that - thusly completing my picture.
I send it to Angel, Nightmare Zero, and Lysekoid and hooked up with all
those guys. My first real work was the imfamous Lysekoid Sprite judgements.
But I wasn't too much "in" the community yet. Never posted on forums. Probably
a good thing since Zephiroth and his crew hated my guts (I was a tough judge
..... oh, Zeph wrote me a bitter letter recently too). Then I discovered
the Megaman Team-scene. I hung back until there was a MM3 team made. Then
I joined that. Made fast friends with Ice and MD and entered the community.
And that's how it happened in a nutshell. |
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Now... you run The Mechanical Maniacs, a MM3-themed site that recently
has updates on Rockman Strategy, and also contains information on the pirate
games and other american related products, like the MegaMan PC and Tiger
LCD games. And they are well-packed with details too. How do you get the
energy to compile all this information? And can you share some pointers
on the whereabouts of a few of these items? |
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LOL. Well, ebay's a good place to get items like these (it's where I
got MM3 Tiger). But Rockman Strategy is rare even in Taiwan, so good luck
to anyone trying to find THAT (haw haw!) As for making a site .... well,
there's two types of projects: big projects and small projects.
Big projects take a long time to do and make for a nice, large section (like
my article on RM Strategy). Those make yer site worth coming to. Small updates
keep your site alive though. Small updates are things like image gallery
updates - I have a ton of small things that work for when I don't wanna
work on the site much. And those come in very handy because nobody works
on a site 24-7. Small updates let me update the site in a couple of hours
which keep people looking at the site. It takes a mix of both.
Also... PATIENCE. My site was made bit-by-bit. I didn't throw anything away,
no matter how inane. Only if I'm forced (like with the old roms page) do
I toss content away. Too many people reformat their sites and lose most
of their content along with it. Not me tho. As for pointers: KEEP GOOD BACKUPS.
The site admin should ALWAYS be in charge of that because he's usually the
most interested. I can't count the number of times backups have saved my
ass. |
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The hentai-joke on your site, that fools people into thinking the site
has hentai hosted on it... what inspired you to that idea? |
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LOL. I dunno. I happened upon some doujinshis on the net and did some
reaserch (as is my lot) and stumbled upon a fairly large MM hentai scene.
I thought it might be a funny joke if I made a fake (but convincing) fake
page for that. My site also has a fake desktop theme and a walkthrough that
makes fun of other walktrhoughs too ..... I'm just a fairly sarcastic fellow. |
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How about those two Rock and Roll characters that pop up after you click
on the "Enter page" button, and them screaming "You want us to WHAT!?" to
the visitors? They were awfully cute... and quite shocked... |
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LOL. I dunno .... when I was researching it an image popped into my head
of Dr. Light asking R&R to do those poses. So I drew out their expressions! |
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The recent Gauntlet art contest you held where you gave out Rockman DX3,
the Game Boy Color pirate game, as a prize. Tell us a story about the actual
prize, where you got it, and a bit about the winners? |
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Everyone was making a contest so I wanted in! And what better way than
to make it a "Gauntlet" art contest? With shitty prizes? So that's exactly
what I did. As for the winners... Quick's been visiting my forum for a long
time and so had Cuts. Cut makes his own figures so I was really glad for
him to make this one. He even sent it to me! (it now rules over my stereo).
I don't wanna give out much about them - their life is their own affair.
You know, not many "got" the contest. It was flamed by people at the PMM
comments section. Maybe I should have made it more satirical. |
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When did you become a member of Planet MegaMan or any early MM sites before
that? |
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I was a member of ALOT of sites. A a few big sites before PMM. But I
was a member of PMM since it began. |
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Name a few of those sites and your primary task on some of them? You
must've been doing lots of weird things as a slave for the community... |
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Well, on Lysekoid's site I was a Sprite Judge (and earned imfamy in the
job). I helped Nightmare Zero on Megaman Masters as an advisor. On the Ultimate
Megaman forums I was an admin. Admin on several forums after that.
Helped found a site called Viral Infaction. Helped Iceman do many things
on the Sinsister Six (although I am not an official member). On Sprites
INC I helped with updates. And on PMM I was head forum admin and served
as advisor (although nobody listened to me). |
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That's quite alot for one man... |
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I've been in the community for a LONG time. |
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So you and some people created these different MM game-themed sites,
like you with The Mechanical Maniacs, which is MM3 themed, and The Sinister
Six, which is MM1 themed. You seem to called these sites "Megaman Teams".
How does that project go? Do you guys track alot of amazing sites like these,
or are they slowly fading away? |
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Yeah, it's an old theme. MM Teams nominated the community around 1999
or so. Ice and I are the last oldschool teams left, but there's several
others. I keep track of them all in the links section. They haven't faded
away, but they don't take over the entire community anymore. You know, there
was even ANOTHER MM3 site called the Xtreme Team. That was an event right
there. |
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That's too bad. That alone, could've been a nice community, containing
sites about everyone's favorite games, depending on taste... |
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Well, it had a bit of a backlash. At one point people were making duplicates
of games and taking on a million identities and not doing anything with
any of them. There were so many teams all at once that none were too special.
So the whole thing collapsed with some people having hard feelings. But,
like all of those "big" events nobody remembers it anymore. Pity because
Ariga (of Rockman MegaMix fame) was even involved at the tail end of that.
THAT was an event, I kid you not... |
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*ORGASM* Ariga-sama?! Oh hot diggity, that's alot of respect there! o_o |
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LOL. Yeah, he got involved because people were using his images on their
site and that exploded in the team-scene. He himself doesn't care, but his
publisher and Capcom Japan did. At the end he was forced to take down most
of his images (that were on his site) and the team-scene dissolved. I wrote
an article on copyright law after that. It's on my site somewhere... |
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I would have never thought that Ariga Hitoshi himself would observe other
webpages... on the other hand, he runs his own, so I don't blame the guy...
moving on... Besides the MegaMan/Rockman games you listed on your site,
are there any other games that you find interesting? You've listed up Rockman
Strategy and Pirate Games... surely there must be other rare games you've
seen or played that interest you to this very day? |
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Any of the Asian games released in Chinese and the cell phone games.
I'd like a chance at playing B&C too, that game looks fun. |
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It's very fun, but quite a simple game really... |
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LOL. Even so. |
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The later stages tend to get a bit harder, especially the Wily ones.
There's not much to do than winning car parts, and use them on either Versus
or Time Attack mode. |
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Yeah? Well, even so. I never played it, so it seems interesting... |
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OK, I don't think I even need to ask this question, but it's part of
the conversation, so... what's your favorite MegaMan/Rockman game? |
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LOL. Anyone who doesn't know that shouldn't be reading the interveiw!
Anyways, MegaMan 3 was the first MM game I ever played. And there's alot
to write about, what with the unused graphics. The plot takes more twist
than any NES or GB game if you think about it. And Doc Robot was a very
innovative idea and I like him alot too. And the music's cool. |
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Well, I don't have anything else to add, unless you'd like to do that?
Like how's the communication between fellow MM fans and friends going recently,
both old and new ones? |
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Communication is good, although I don't go on AIM much. I mostly hang
out at forums. I'd also like to mention the Xtreme Team again. Out of all
the various "events" I've been a part of the war with them was definately
the most eventful as they pestered me for three years (naturally I won -
and WHAT a win! *insert evil laugh*). Aside from that I'm doing fairly well
and the 'Maniacs live on! |
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That's good to hear... I thank you for this talk, Gaunty. |
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No prob. |
AbnormalGravity
