This will be the first in what I hope will be a long series of articles in which reid and I will discuss how the site came to be, all the crazy events that took place in the 4 years since we started the site, and all kinds of other interesting stuff that not everyone might know about already. What should make it even more interesting is that you will get to see all of these things from 2 different viewpoints - reid's and mine. As this is the first article, it's naturally about the beginning of the site.

For me it really started back around maybe May or June of 1998. I had looked on the net for EB sites before but there were very few results and the sites were pretty small and all seemed to offer the exact same things, so I didn't really bother getting involved in any of them. I remember seeing Ms. Saturn's EB page way back in '97, some other site, and then I remember finding reid's You Are Now EarthBound site. It wasn't quite as content-full as that archive is, but it was clearly the best EB site out there. I think I might've bookmarked it and stuck it in with a bunch of other random bookmarks, but I otherwise forgot about it.

I really liked MIDI files back then, especially since I had basically been using really old machines until 1998 or so. My main machine used to be a 12Mhz 386 with 2 MB RAM and DOS 5, with CGA (4 color) graphics. So when I finally got a computer that could play sound, much less MIDI files, I was so happy. So I liked to collect MIDIs, mostly game MIDIs since they sounded the best. And there weren't all that many EB ones. I think there used to only be this one store MIDI, this really bad bus one, this really bad Mr. Saturn one, and I think that was it. Those were the "classic" EB MIDIs.

Anywho, one day I stumbled upon a lonely site that had EB MIDI files I had never seen before. As geeky as it may sound I was pretty excited to make a find like that, and the MIDI files turned out to be pretty sweet. So shortly after finding them I remembered You Are Now EarthBound and mailed the webmaster dude. He freaked out and put 'em up. When he replied I replied back with something and then ended with, "BTW, how is EarthBound.Net going?" since his site was going crazy about this new EB.Net that everyone was working on. The actual EB.Net site had only a picture of a stopwatch saying it was coming soon, and it had been that way for a bit so I was just curious. I also remember that his exact response to that was, "Kinda sorta."

So I left it at that. Oh yeah, the dumb YANEB webmaster never put me in his Hall of Fame. I answered all his stupid quiz questions right but he never put me in the HoF. I must get revenge!

Okay, so that was basically that. I didn't do nothing related to the EB community for more than 6 months or so. Then I remember one time that Loco-san said he had found a "debug menu" in EB when he looked at the ROM with a hex editor. So one day in late October I went and checked it out for myself. Sure enough there it was. Incidentally I believe that was the 1st EB.Net article. Bow down to it!

Highly intrigued by a debug menu which I sorely wanted to get access to, I decided to check out what other EarthBounders knew on the subject. Only problem was where to find a bunch of EB-ers in the same place. YANEB was the best chance I thought, and luckily reid did have a messageboard. It was a cheapo free one at something like pluto.beseen.com or something. It wasn't very active though, and people were just like "Huh? I don't know what you're talking about, never heard of a debug menu in EB." I think MTEKevin was the first one to reply and his reply was basically the same thing.

Well that was a disappointment so I didn't hang around too much. I just went back to my wacky boring stuff. Around December I decided to teach myself cascading style sheet stuff since I was a nerdy Computer Science major and I felt I should keep up with stuff like that. I do remember at one point checking out EB.Net again because I suddenly remembered it, and it had some crappy weird map of Saturn Valley on it and that was all.

In late December of 1998 I picked up Windows Game Programming for Dummies - which although it was a "Dummies" book - was REALLY good and everybody was recommending it at the time. I started working with the examples and the book was so good that I was able to get DirectX (which was what the book was actually really about) programs running. I had done lots of game programming in the past so now armed with DirectX I wanted to make a game to build up my Windows game skills. But I needed a game to make. It had to be simple, but somehow fun and maybe with some sort of theme so other people would play it. But what kind of game, and what sort of theme?

I remember trying to figure the answer to those 2 questions for like an hour with no luck. I decided to take a shower and I had 2 ideas for the kind of game: a Space Invaders/Galaga type game, or Arkanoid. Both were relatively simple and had some fun action and quick reflex requirements. I decided to go with Arkanoid since I wouldn't have to worry about so many moving objects and trying to plot out enemy movements. All that left was a theme. I tried to think of various things that I liked - the 3 Stooges, StarTropics, Final Fantasy, GhostBusters, but then when my mind hit EB I just absolutely had to make it EB themed.

So, now freshly showered, armed with answers, and jumping with excitement to get started, I got programming immediately. Within like 2 hours I had most of the game working. I had Ness bouncing around (I added his spinning thing since EB had 8 direction sprites, which would look awesome) the screen, you could control a bat at the bottom to keep him from falling, and I managed to program the first thing to kill - a cow that I managed to animate in such a way that it seemed really psychotic. The next 2 or 3 days I spent adding MIDI support (using all those MIDIs I found!) and adding new levels, special effects, title screen, blah blah.

The problem was that making the backgrounds for each level took so much dang time that it was keeping me from working more on the actual game and game code. So around mid-January I emailed reidman and EBounding (who was mentioned on every page of reid's YANEB because EBounding was always sending him something or other) who seemed like the 2 biggest, respectable EB fans. I got responses from both. Both were soiling their pants, and so there were agreements made and stuff. I forget what but reid made me a few backgrounds. I forget if EBounding did anything but knowing him he probably played the game a lot and stuff.

In the course of me and reid corresponding for the next week or two, I just popped the question, "What's up with EB.Net? I do sites and stuff if you want help." He was really hesitant and stuff since a guy called Buzz Buzz was really in charge but he had been gone for a long time. But I persisted and told reid I could spiff up those (crappy) EB maps on EB.Net. I made a sample of what I meant using JavaScript and image rollovers so that when you moved your mouse over a house or a building that building would change color and you could tell where the link was going to take you. reid was pretty impressed so he decided to let me jump on the bandwagon. I remember when I asked about FTP access reid was like, "OK, just e-mail someweirdemail@somethingdumb.com and say you're with Buzz Buzz and that you need the username and password."

How naive is this kid, I thought to myself. As if anybody would ever answer an email like that. Plus it turns out EB.Net was hosted on a small record company's server. It wasn't an ISP web account, it wasn't a free web account, it wasn't a normal plae where you can maybe find web space, it was a FREAKING DINKY LITTLE RECORD COMPANY. How the heck EB.Net got tied up with Trip Records is anyone's guess but my god that was dumb. Anyway since they would never really respond to me reid finally got me the info himself and I put the new maps up.