Viral Infection Archived

A little while back, Gauntlet archived a bunch of Sinster Six stuff due to the imminent closing of Geocities, the internet’s longtime favourite source of simple, free-hosted websites. Today, I bring you the results of my own Geocities salvage operation, the site of the original EXE1 Team, Viral Infection.

VI had a bit of a rough history with hosting. First we were on Geocities, then a couple of flakey servers belonging to friends of TRC. As a result of lots of moving, we racked up a lot of different formats and layouts in our brief 2001-2002 existence. After it was all over, it came full circle back to Geocities on my own account. With a lot of content lost with former servers and so many conflicting backups, I didn’t post much on this memorial site, just the sprites, links to the stuff Gauntlet already put here, and the new VI-related stuff like TRC’s reunion epilogues and the Virus Gallery.

When I started the move to this server, I figured I would just grab all that stuff and plunk it over. I wish now it were so simple, but I kept finding more and more extra stuff I wanted to add:

  • Files stored on the Geocities account I hadn’t posted any permanent links to anywhere like my name origins article or the navisceration checklist.
  • The other backups gathering dust on my hard drive I now had the technical know-how to convert and clean-up to fit with the others.
  • A lot more content thought long-gone courtesy of archive.org. I could have sworn I tried that place years ago. Maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough.
  • How about all-new stuff? Mostly out of necessity, I needed to whip up some new images replace lost ones in the bios and chip galleries, and when I decided all the script-based stories needed to be sprited like epilogues, I suddenly needed sprites for a few of the original characters.

It took a couple weeks longer than I expected (i.e. it took two weeks instead of one night), but it’s done. There’s a lot of nostalgia in there, things some of you haven’t seen in seven years. I highly reccommend a glimpse at the sprite gallery, and a quick read of the stories, or what I could recover of them. Also check the Downloads page for some avatars and wallpapers.

I gotta say I’m going to miss Geocities. There are a lot of old friends’ sites that look like they won’t be recovered like this, like Clownman’s Circus or Darkman’s Robot Warriors. I actually grabbed a few things from those sites to put on VI here because I don’t want the internet to be forever deprived of Stoneman’s sprite animation of Megaman’s exploding head.

Past updates added … as many as I could find

Those who’ve checked the ‘Maniacs blog over the course of the day will have found it increasing dramatically than what was once in the past updates section. Since the blog is very new it’s also very empty. What better way to quickly fill it up than with updates past? While most of these updates are ho-hum, there are a few nostalgic gems.

On February of 02 I debued the old Epilogues Characters Quiz with Iceman and Ben. It was a pretty big hit at the time and was great to plan. The epilogues were pretty fresh back at those times and these sort of projects just seemed like a natural step.

On December 12 of the same year longtime foe XT Gemini hacked the Sinister Six by guessing Iceman’s secret answer. Ice let too many details out and that’s deadly for Geocities pages. I subsequently got him back, but not before securing a place for Iceman on Classic Gaming under UMMXZW.

Which ended rather badly on October 8, 05. Which led to us moving to our current server in almost exactly one year later. On the PMM note,I feel it bears mentioning that the domain is close to expiration. Due to the financial crisis ZXP is looking for $10 in aid to help keep the domain his for another year.

One very good, lasting effect that the XT hacking the sinister Six all those years ago was that I became second-in-command of webmastering it. I didn’t want to XT Gem to kill the S6 so I scoured Archive.org and google cache for recent remnants of his page. I spent a long time cleaning it up and, although it was lost for a long time due to PMM’s frequent server crashes, my old computer still has some in-progress backups which I used to restore his site to it’s full glory on January 13, 07. But the site still received a few more updates in the meantime.

The forums are something that spring up a lot. They are never ever stable. The earliest still-existing record of forum trouble is from August 25 of 02. The Ultimate Megaman Forums had suffered so much trouble that my forum (then merged with several other team’s forums to make Megaman United) was merged with it. But it didn’t last long at at after that.

My favorite update has to be our grad reopening from May 13 of 02. 02 was a good year … so was 04. It’s when we moved to Classic Gaming. It has a few ironic bits in there now that I’ve re-read it after all this time, but it was a definite high point in the site’s history.

Many Sinister Six Updates

Wait, isn’t this site dead? Well, yes. But, due to a variety of reasons, a few links ended up broken. Upon inspection, it was a few more than originally thought. There were some things I had intended to post that were not. And the layout was spread throughout all the pages, making an update infuriatingly difficult.

No longer! I’ve spent the last few days bringing the S6.com up to snuff. The Nostalgia Section has a number of updates.

The Character Profiles, Meet the Six, Sinister Six 101, Ask Cyclone Man, and Sinister Six Survivor all have fixed images.

The Adoption Section, Manga Comic Series, Cartoon Show, Contest Page, Hall of Fame, Mega Man Sprites, PowerBattle Sprites, Conversions, Megaman VS the Sinister Six, Megaman and the Sinister Six Timeline, Megaman Trilogy, Card Game, Sinister Six News Section!, Smash Bros Melee (MMC Style), Awards this site won, Win Iceman’s Award, and the, Hall of Fame / Tribute Graves are all sections that were done a long time ago, but were never added … until now!

But there’s actually a bit of relatively new content too! The Fiction page boasts several stories unseen for years. At a height in the community the S6 went through a small sort of surge. Our own Magnetman created the Sinister Six AU as a way of being an unofficial Sinister Six member. This would lead right into our own event Business of War, made several years after these stories. Whoever was into War will definately want to check these out.

So, for the first time in years and on the Sinister Six ever check out:

Answers (unfinished)

Alone

Calling

Impact (unfinished)

Economic Ruin

and the Revenge of the Scissor Army (unfinished)

New Annihilation updates

Well it wasn’t “very soon”, but here it is. Check out the Fiction section for a couple stories introducing a couple of our new members, and another account touching us up on one of the guys that stuck around. These stories have been finished for a few months, but wouldn’t you know it was MY job that kept getting put off for weeks and weeks. I finally brought over the rest of the old site though, which means it’s shutting down. If you look around, you may find a few things that are relatively new in the sense they probably should have been on the old site but were instead just sitting unused on my computer for some reason. One such lost and found work is the Battlechip database which can be found under “Data“. There’s still a lot of unfinished projects laying around and hopefully we’ll actually complete them some day. Next update should see the start of the new main storyline, some special artwork to accompany it, and if we’re lucky, some other tidbits, and if we’re really lucky, it will actually be done within the month.

New forum! Old X-F epilogues!

Yes, that’s right! Although I don’t like to move after only a year, we’ve moved the forum anyway! The downtimes, spambots, accidental bannings, and everything else is done away with! The old board will be shut down about Sunday, so save what you want quick.

In other news, Ben has found some old X-Force stuff which lets me update the Sinister Six’s X-Force epilogues section to be more complete.

Firstly, their origin story has been posted. Along with their very first epilogue, long thought forever lost. Next a new Dawn’s intro and part one of an ep that would forever change the X-Force (it was never finished). This introduced the last X-Force team which had Class and Ice in it. I’ve also added the X-Force:AU eps. Ben was very excited about the whole concept when he started, but it fizzles out after only four eps (in two two-part stories). Now he hates them. Nevertheless it’s there (and was referenced in one of my own eps). Finally, all the old bios that Ben gave me (along with the ones I could find on Archive.org) are now in a member’s section. Which about rounds the X-Force Nostalgia section off, I’d say.

The X-Force eps (along with the S6 ones) really meant allot to me. They were part of my very first experiences here in the Megaman Community (and the internet in general) and seeing them all as a complete set brings allot of good memories back. They may not mean much to new people, but to me they’ll always be special. So check ’em out if you haven’t already!

Contest update! Old Stuff!

Here’s something I’ve received a request or two (or one) about – the Design a Villain contest!

I have to admit ….. I’ve been negligent on announcing things on this. I thought I already did announce it, but …. no.

So, a winner has been decided upon! And the winner is ….

A SECRET!!

Yes, that’s right. You’ll have to wait until Wanted comes out to discover who the winner actually is. However, the winner has been contacted and knows he/she won. Rich is still working on the prize. So, if you weren’t contacted, you didn’t win, but I thank you for participating.

What is up, however, is all the entries for the contest. So you can browse all the loathsome villains made for the contest.

In other news ….. I found some old stuff while going on my incessant search for some way of recovering the first Hardman’s bio (a thorn in my side for a LONG time). Skullman’s bio has been found! (The one he did for Megaman United). He got this site started and now his bio is up on the special thanks page. I also found the ORIGINAL bio for Topman, who was the webmaster here very briefly before I took over. Sadly I didn’t find Hardman’s bio.

The archive of the first layout has been updated with the original files I found on a CD (which had Top’s bio). The one on the site was a reconstruction I made base don my memory….. this is MUCH closer to the truth! Although I did change it to be more of a medium from where the site first started but before I fully took over and added a background image and took off the background MIDIs. Newbies take note: there is hope for you. Just look how much better I got at this. Don’t get discouraged.

Some (one) person has asked about ‘Maniacs Moments not being updated. The answer is simple. Hard hasn’t sent me any new ones. Send Hard some fan mail to get him motivated. But, unlike me, Hard has a life so unimportant things like jobs and girls get in the way of his work. Yeah, I know ….. for shame.

Sinister Six Closes

Yeah, that’s about the summ of it. After a 10 year run, The Sinister Six has closed. There was a long discussion on what the team members really wanted to do. Frankly, to survive there would have to be changes. Layout changes, and a change in direction since nobody had the heart to write more S6 eps without Gary. Nobody really wanted to make changes either since it’d be just messing with what Gary did. Some of the members couldn’t bear to even look at the site anymore.

Rather than have the site die off slowly and silently with one memeber fading away after another, it was decided to wrap things up and officially announce site closure.

But, even though it’s closed, a nice goodbye was made by yours truly. Thanks to a find on an old computor I have all the old files I helped reformat for Ice in the past. I put them all in a S6 nostalgia section. It houses all sorts of goodies from the past including Sinister Six Survivor, the Tribute to Plantman, Paper Mario and a whole LOT more! These things haven’t been seen since their grand re-opening on Planet Megaman, when they first got off Geocities.

I’ve also written the final epilogue for the Sinister Six. Something to wrap up all of Ice’s loose ends to give the series the sendoff it deserves. Considering I’m the guy who sometimes finished Ice’s epilogues when he was stuck, I’m glad it’s me who gets to finish things off.

Rich also launches a Megaman 1 Walkthrough that he’s been working on for a while. It all looks great, so be sure to check it out.

Although it’s closed the Sinister Six will stay up as a tribute to our friend Gary “Iceman” Martin. It’s been a wild ride and it won’t be the same without ’em.

Mess of S6 Updates

All week was spent on getting the Sinister Six up to speed, so here’s the whack of updates I did for our friends over there. So I’ll just make like a Megaman News site and just quote my exact words from over there.

This is one monster of an update by that zany ninja Gauntlet! It’s high time we get all of Iceman’s Epilogues on the site as well as some things that have been missing from here. So, here goes!

First off, Odin’s and Fusidane’s bios are up in the profiles page for the sake of completion. Things ended badly with Odin and Fushi was barely a part of the S6 before dropping out of sight … but I’m all about record keeping so there you go.

Next up are three new images drawn by Fushindane in the Guest Art Section. They’re all nicely drawn and worth looking at.

Finally, many, MANY epilogue updates!

Season 2 is finally complete as Ice’s old Season 2 ender is now online! Gotta love Ice’s way of moving on to new seasons before the prior one has been done. Welp, Violence on Television is now online.

Epilogue Specials sees an update with an ep I helped write. The Wonderswan Adventure is online! It centers around those crazy Wonderswan Robot Masters.

Season 4 finally has a proper start, with an epilogue created by me – The New team Awakens! It’s a very of-the-wall sort of epilogue and it had Iceman and the other people I showed it to laughing off their seats once it was done.

Iceman’s Terror of Gassman epilogue is now online. Featuring a character created by Dark Napalm.

A parody of Pokemon is now online in an epilogue called Poke’ Napped.

And, I think the final ep Ice made is now online. Titan Trouble – a crossover with the Teen Titans! Which makes every single epilogue Iceman had online and only showed to friends as a preview is now officially part of the site.

But the fun ain’t over yet!

To completely ram this update into the ground I’ve archived all of the old X-Force epilogues. They were a big part of, the S6’s and MM3’s glory days and they deserve a better home than Geocities. Now every single one of those epilogues is online and ready for reading! Ice was a big part of that team and Ben is now part of the Sinister Six, so it’s only fitting to find those old epilogues here.

And that about wrapps up all my planned updates.