20th Anniversary Recap!

posted by Gauntlet101010

October 4th, 2020

Yes, it’s been twenty years! TWENTY YEARS! I can’t believe it’s been twenty years of this madness, but it has! I never thought I’d be at this for so long, but I guess that’s a testament to all the friends who have been with me during this wild ride called the Mechanical Maniacs.

And what better way to celebrate that than a clip show?

This is a continuation of the Epilogue Summaries I did for the tenth anniversary! And, while there’s not as many stories to go through, there’s still PLENTY that went on during series 7 and 8. Including that mysterious 15 year gap that reset the universe. So why not start with that?

 

And the X-Force stories have been touched up as well! At some point in the past, Ben re-ordered a couple stories, throwing off the references for all the subsequent references – those have been fixed. Missing sprites and unsprited stories have been sprites! And, finally, I’ve rummaged through his waste bucket to dig up some old, lost adventures he’s totally embarrassed to see the light of day after all this time! It’s classic, team scene action from back in the day!

In fact I’ve went through my (somewhat limited) archives and Archive.org’s (somewhat limited) archive and saved what I could to restore a semblance of the X-Force’s old site.

Additionally, I’ve added some old, unfinished adventures to the Sinister Six’s library, spriting them all while I was at it. It’s a shmorgishborg of unfinished adventure!

Retro Rewind: Old stories return! And The Mechs Meet 2018!

posted by Gauntlet101010

November 2nd, 2018

The past is present as old stories return! First up is SanityisOverRated’s Darkman’s Robot Warriors series! This was quite the hit right at the beginning of the Team Scene, but hasn’t been seen online in years. Back in the day the Mechs were briefly hosts for these stories while Stoneman switched servers.

These are posted without permission, which gave me pause. But I don’t think he’d be TOO mad about my desire to unearth his old work. So if I’ve misjudged apologies in advance.

If you scroll just a bit down you’ll notice a new banner – one leading to the Sinister Six! That’s right, the Sinister Six is now a part of the Mechanical Maniacs, retaining it’s own layout and all it’s content. It’s stories along with those of the X-Force and Darkman’s Robot Warriors can all be found on the Fiction page. It’s looking … really crowded, actually.

You see, a few weeks ago the Sinister6.com domain has expired and it took me over two weeks to even notice it was gone. After talking about it with Rich and Ben we felt we no longer really needed that domain, especially since the Mechs and the Sinister Six have shared the same site since the Planet Megaman days. So instead of buying it up again the decision was made to let it go and merge the Sinister Six with the Mechs. I’ve also taken the time to reorganize and rename a few folders to, hopefully, make a bit more sense internally.

As for as epilogues go you may think it nearly impossible to make sense of it all, given the sheer amount of content. Well, I’ve got you covered. I’ve created and greatly revised the Epilogue Timeline which contains the adventures of the Mechanical Maniacs, Sinister Six, X-Force, Cossack’s Comrades, AND Wily’s Warriors in a comprehensive, chronological list detailing points of convergence and filters! This list has been and will continue to be updated.

And, last but not least, the real life adventures of the mechanical Maniacs have been posted detailing this year’s photos and log! This has been ready for quite some time, actually, but just hasn’t been posted yet. So have fun reading up on our latest trip to Montreal!

We haven’t had n update this substantial in quite some time, so I hope you enjoy it.

Encore Part 2

posted by Gauntlet101010

February 3rd, 2018

It’s the first new epilogue of a brand new year! And what better way to start things off than to dwell on the distant past? Encore Part 2 is now up! And this one actually contains the long-lost intro to the new Sinister Six (which I re-purposed to fit their current continuity).

But that’s not all! I finally noticed that the old Sinister Six Epilogue Contest was never sprited. Yeah, the winner of that thing has been lost to time along with every single other submission. But now the runner ups can be read as proper epilogues. And, yes. I do, occasionally, preform site maintenance on the old site.

Encore Part 1

posted by Gauntlet101010

December 10th, 2017

A few years ago, when I was making the long lost origin of the S6 I had totally forgotten this epilogue even existed!

Back in the day Gary really struggled with how to introduce the "new" Sinister Six and went through several ideas. I remember he asked for my help on it once, but I didn’t like some of the ideas presented and couldn’t really think of a good way to get them to work. Years passed by and I made a "filler" story for him as a joke and shortly afterwards he died. And the story went completely forgotten.

And then I rediscovered it right after filling in the gap myself. Welp, it can still be salvaged! Presenting Encore Part 1! This story deals with some of Gary’s old ideas for an S6 revival that just didn’t see the light of day.

Continuity-wise the story takes place shortly after Ice VS Red and at the end of Series 4.

What’s New is Old

posted by Gauntlet101010

September 4th, 2015

So now you know the untold story of the New Sinister Six. But did you know the Mechanical Maniacs played an integral part in it all? It’s true! Read all about it in What’s New is Old.

Also, all this S6 stuff made me nostalgic, so I updated a bit on the S6’s old page. I remade the Nostalgia Section so it has a layout like one of the S6’s old ones (and added an old Main Page to complete the look). That version of the site was never properly saved anywhere and it kind of went through an evolution. I also found (and archived) Ben’s version of the site (which is probably by favorite version). It’s a pity Archive didn’t have the background (and that Ben himself didn’t have it anymore either). There was also a mess of broken backgrounds and tables, so I fixed that as well.

What’s Old is New

posted by Gauntlet101010

August 13th, 2015

It’s throwback Thursday! After compiling notes for the Megaman Teams Wiki I couldn’t help but be reminded that the story of the New Sinister Six’s introduction was left to notes on the site and references in a joke epilogue I made to fill the void at the start of their series. You see, the Sinister Six stories weren’t written in order so there was once large gaps in the series with placeholders for half formed ideas and half written stories. A big hole that was never filled was the introduction to the New Sinister Six.

Well, no longer! It’s high time the hole was filled! So it must be, so shall it be! Based on the notes Gary left behind I bring you the intro of the New Sinister Six: What’s Old is New!

More Soccer Sprites

posted by Gauntlet101010

November 27th, 2013

The Megaman Soccer Conversions Revival sees another update – this time featuring characters form the Sonic crossover! I made most of these, but Radix helped out as well. I also revised The version at the Sinister Six as well, removing most of the new addition there. It feels wrong to constantly update the S6, so I kept the sprites that seemed within the confines of his project and removed the rest.

Raijin has a good thing going with his AXE farewell story, so I’ll leave the updates to him for a time …. and prepare more of my own. And if there’s ever more new characters added to the Classic Megaman canon you can bet there’ll be another Soccer Conversions update!

Guestbook archive

posted by Gauntlet101010

September 19th, 2013

Speaking of old stuff only I really care about, here’s something else everyone’s forgot about – the Guestbook! For a long, long time we had a guestbook here at the Mechs. It moved around a bit, but we eventually settled on Lycos’ Guestbook. That worked out well enough …. until Lycos decided to discontinue the service back in 2012. Now, everyone knows I can’t let minutia like that simply die, so I archived not only all the Mechs content, but the Sinister Six’s as well. And those entries really meant more to me than the ones for the Mechs. It’s just evidence of how long lasting and well loved the site was back in the day. And so, I have painstakingly restored saved copies of the Mech’s guestbook and the Sinister Six’s.

The S6 guestbook presented a bit of a conundrum. Gary experienced a lot of problems and there were actually flames in his book. So I decided to keep flames he responded to and delete those he didn’t. I feel it shows a bit of the site history, so I opted to include them. Anyway, for those interested feel free to browse the archives.

Soccer Re-Revivial and a Lost VI Adventure

posted by Gauntlet101010

March 2nd, 2013

This project was completed some time ago in the forums, but I’m only getting around to posting it now. A big thanks to Snakeman, Spark Mandrill, Kaos, and General RADIX for their contributions to this ever-expansive project. View the entire gallery here and at the Sinister Six.

What’s more is that a long-lost part of Viral Infection’s history has now been found by Spikeman. Thanks, Spike! Now Chapter 1 of VI’s saga is viewable in it’s entirety.