Retronauts - 759: Love and Fandom in the Time of Dial-Up

Episode Date: April 6, 2026

Nadia Oxford and David Oxford talk about how early '90s online game fandom brought them together 25 years ago.Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

This week on Retronauts. There ain't no love song like the squeal of a 56K modem reaching out for a connection. Hello and welcome to Retronauts. I am your host for this week, Nottie Oxford. Friends, we live in dark, dire times, but I'm not going to dwell on that. In fact, I'm really hoping today's episode brings a bit of light and levity into your lives because I've decided to do something a little different, a little maybe corny and cheesy, but still very retro and definitely, definitely still games related. Let's talk about love, a special kind of long-distance love. This week, my guest is David Oxford, my husband of 25 years come this June, I'm pretty sure. And the way we shacked up might be of interest to some of you, because the 90s were sunseting, and internet technology was getting better, but it had a long way to go, so connections were a little harder to make.

But we still had emails. We still had those primitive old message boards, and they just worked just fine. and that's what many of us pioneers used to foster connections with each other back in the day. So without further ado, say hi, David. Hello. It's good to have you on the show. You've been on the show before. I can't remember.

I know you've been on Blood God for Battle Network, but I don't remember why I had you on Retronauts if you even were on Retronauts. But it's nice to have you here. Are you excited to talk about the story of us? I am very excited, and I am glad you decided to have me here for this episode. Yeah, that would have been kind of awkward without you, I guess. And yeah, I've been on Retronauts a couple of times. The most recent, we were talking about Mega Man 04.

That's it. We were for Mega Man 04, and it was Megamemann Battle Network. That was, I think, the Patreon episode. And yeah, that was Patreon. Sorry, Pantheon episode on Acts of the Blood God. You're a Mega Man expert. How the hell did that happen? How the hell are we both Mega, Menn experts?

That's just, it's kind of how it all started, isn't it? Uh, yeah, more or less. So let's just kind of start at the start. How did you first get online? Like, what was your, what got you onto the worldwide web of the 90s? Wow, I am trying to remember, but it was in high school. I remember that much. I don't remember the course.

I think it might have been, oh gosh, what was it called? I remember we basically went, it might have been like, I think, applied mathematics or something. Oh, yeah. for whatever reason, which for anyone who doesn't know, I think that's what it was called. But basically, it's like, you know, real-world math, balancing your checkbook, and I forget what else that probably doesn't really exist anymore,

but, you know. Yeah, real helpful shit. It was a fun, easy course. And I remember one time we went to a local internet cafe that I did not know existed, but I became a frequent patron of afterward. and yeah, that kind of helped set me on anyway. Yeah, you didn't get online from home for a long time, did you?

Long is relative, but it sure felt like a bit. But yeah, it might have been a couple of years, actually, because I would use the school library and stay, like, really late on the computer there. And they had a pretty good one. And like, that was like where I discovered Netscape. and web crawler and... Oh, boy. Nuts scrape, as they called it back in the day.

Ha, ha, ha. But, yeah, I would stay after school and use the librarian's computer for stuff there. Thinking back, I'm wondering if I looked up anything that would get me in trouble, but it never came up. Big anime, hentai, boobies. I never even heard of it back then. I mean, I'd heard of an anime, but... but not the H word, really. God, people were printing that crap out and passing around when I was in high school.

In fact, my story of getting online, thinking about it now, I'm pretty sure I went to a nerd high school because we had a focus on math, computers, science, and I wasn't good at any of those. But I did learn how to go online because we apparently, our school was apparently part of some program, was being tested for just, online connectivity in Ontario schools or Toronto schools or something like that. So one of the girls who was, I was kind of friends with this one girl who was like really into the geeky stuff. And when I say geeky stuff, and back in the day, it wasn't really the stuff I fed in with. Like it was like really Monty Python, D&D. My geeky thing was video games. So we were friends. We weren't like great, great friends. But she like came over and said, hey, you know, you want to learn how to use the internet. Or like, what the hell is that? So I sat in. I think she asked my friends. But I know, I know,

I sat in on like this presentation about like what the internet could do and how cool it was. And you know, you could look up things like traffic lights. And she literally said look up traffic lights. And someone literally said, I like traffic lights, but only when they're green because it was that kind of nerd gathering. Either way, I think I was intrigued enough by the end of it all that I went on to the schools, BBS, which we had at the time. And that was really my start into the online world before I really got on the web because that was like a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it was a BBS. It was like kind of a network, just loosely connected pages and whatnot and mailing lists.

Pretty much all text-based. Initially, it was just like a school connection, a school-wide connection, but then it expanded to the internet, like, by at large. And yeah, that was where I started running, like, my first gaming communities and stuff like that and kind of posted, I guess, like really primitive early stuff, like about like stuff I was seeing in magazines back then, about like second to set two. and, you know, Tales of Fantasia and stuff that we were not going to see at all in the West for a very, very long time, if at all. It was a very mystical experience.

Yeah, I think you got in a bit before I did, if I'm not mistaken. I think I was probably established by the time he came in because I would have been writing fanfaking crap like that by the time you found me, obviously. Yeah, I think so. because I wasn't able to get online I think it was my senior year of high school that I did that. So junior or senior year? Oh, gosh. I'd have to.

And as the Canadian, I have to ask, what the hell is junior year? What the hell is senior year? I forget this every single time. Junior is 11th grade. Senior is 12th grade. Oh, okay. It's just grade 9, 10, 11, 12 in Canada.

There's just no complication about it. But I, yeah, but when I got on initially, like my first like, holy crap, I'm on this BBS experience, that wasn't grade 10. It would have been in the fall. That's when, no, sorry, it was like, it started in the fall. And then by the spring of that year, I was, I was just flying. And that's when I discovered, like, that's when I discovered the internet. That's what I discovered, you know, more than the, than the, just the BBS. I went online.

I discovered what Netscape was and NetServe. and all that stuff. And I fought with my English teacher just over the ability to be able to type a report or assignment or whatever instead of having to do handwriting. That was a big issue for our generation. And I don't know why, like, boomers are absolutely obsessed over cursive. And if there is one thing that made my school life miserable was having to be docked for. for neatness, quote unquote. And I did have teachers kind of begging me to type my essays to be honestly by the end. And to be honest, like, I finally started getting accommodations

for being a weirdo when it comes to learning, like in grades 11, 12, 13, because I went, Ontario had grade 11, had grade 13 back then. And that's when I was started to be allowed to use computers more and use them to type out essays and stuff like that. Like I'd have my essay, I'd have my exam done in a special room apart from the gymnasium. And like a bunch of us would be sitting there typing these answers. And that's when I finally, at the very end of my school career, started to like school because I could finally, you know, write and say and express myself without having a headache and hand cramps. And I can absolutely believe, though, that there are, there would be a teacher out there who would say, like,

oh, you got to use cursive or I'll hit you with a ruler. I don't know that she's particular about cursive, just that it was handwritten, but I don't know what changed her mind, but eventually, I don't think it took too long, but she did. And I mean, I think that was just like kind of a, gosh, I don't even know how to describe it, because if I was not able to type, I, who knows where my life would go. No, absolutely the same thing. for the reasons you described. Like, my hands get crapped and everything, just the smearingness and just. It's just no fun.

You can't catch up to your thoughts. It's just, la. I have not handwritten anything. The last time I hand wrote something, my dad saw it. He's like, what the fuck is that? And he has no room to talk, but to be honest with you, I couldn't rebuke him because it was bad. It was bad.

And my signature, holy crap. Hey, if you ever want to. I was just going to say, my parents thought my handwriting was bad, so they'd make me practice in the, like, you know, on school nights or whatever. So you have beautiful handwriting. They were wrong. Yeah, I don't know. I basically wrote the same way I was taught. It's like, you know, I never really evolved my style very much. A few odd things. Like, I could never get the hang of a cursive cues. So basically I just, you know, put a tail on a cursive O and, you know, little things like that. But most of it was pretty much, like, you know, the same as they taught me in whatever. the heck great it was.

And I don't know. I'll be honest with you. The way my school worked, I kind of had like grades one, two, and three were all one big combined class. And it was a lot, it was a lot looser. Like there were no desks and no homework and stuff like that. And it was a lot better, frankly, that way. But the way that they taught us cursive is that they'd have us do a printing exercise every week.

And the people who did well on those printing exercises would be promoted to handwriting. and my nerd-ass brother who was in like the third grade or grade three while I was in the first grade one for that small for that small span of time he got like promoted instantly to like go do the handwriting class I was literally the very last class that they could teach because I handwriting was just that bad I never advanced they just taught me because they had to and by that point I don't think anyone had time to teach me capitals so I never learned how to do cursive capitals I just would do like, you know, N, A, DIA in writing, and the N was a capital N. And I can see why teachers started begging me to use computers.

Yeah, most, uh, most cursive capitals are easy enough, just like basically like the regular letter, but with like a lot more squiggly on it. How do they still teach that in schools now? Oh, there, there's a whole thing about that, but, uh, yes, but also no. I think it depends on the school. but before we get too embedded into handwriting, as interesting as it is, what was the fandom that spurred to get online?

Obviously, you probably went online to look for something. What were you looking for? I didn't go online to look for something. Like I said, I was brought there by a class, and I just kind of got to experience it. And from there, I started, like, you know, looking up my interests. Like, I remember, like, way, way even before

we're getting online, like reading stuff in, gosh, I don't know what it was, weekly reader or something. I don't remember what it was. Yeah, I remember that. Something many years ago and talk about, like, the future computers and people doing shopping and stuff and all the, and just all the things like people would be doing on computers. This is back when, like, we were looking at, like, a friggin Apple 2 with, like, a green monitor that. Yeah. And just, like, all that stuff. And I'm just like, oh, my God, no thanks.

I want nothing to do with that. The actual future, actually. made it all right on that front. But back to the question. The earliest thing I remember, like, really searching for at the time, it wasn't Mega Men, believe it or not. The earliest thing, like, it was probably, it was in there. But I think the first thing I started looking up was Sonic the Hedgehog stuff.

That makes sense. Yeah, I think by the time both of us got online, there was a really established Sonic presence. It's a zero surprise. Like, there was a huge fan there at Demar there already, at least when I got it. online. Yeah, I found this really neat fanfic community, I guess you could call it, which I didn't know what fan fiction was at the time,

like, you know, or any of that stuff. I'll explain how young and naive I was in regards to the internet on that in a second. But yeah, it was a neat community where they all seemed like kind of have like, you know, these like shared pool of characters and like stories that were all on the site.

And they basically took the Sonic SAT AM stuff and expanded on it. I guess not entirely unlike Archie, but it was more like their own direction. Like, I remember, I think there was like a lieutenant of a robotic named Packbell or something. Yeah, I remember Pac-Bel. Like, I think, as he said, there was like kind of a community, kind of a community pool of of fan characters that people could take and leave.

Yeah, I always thought that was like a really cool thing. That is interesting. Let's see. I would look up wrestling stuff at the time because I was still pretty new to that at the time. Yeah. I was not yet smart to the business, as they say. It was real to you, man. Honestly, yeah, compared to like the stuff I'd seen about wrestling prior and then, like, actually watching it.

I mean, I'm kind of trying to reconcile the two because it's like, okay, they're like actually hitting each other. You don't like hit the air and get a slap noise like that. So, you know. Oh, yeah. And eventually I'm going to learn that, oh, they actually just hit each other. They just maybe not as hard. but um sometimes uh

but eventually yeah I did end up looking up uh Mega Man stuff I remember going on like early early IGN.com yeah back when it was n64.com they weren't even IGN64. uh com yet Saturn world um I forget what the PlayStation one

my uh my best memory of n64.com was reading them in high school. They were it was one of of the first live previews I could remember because they went to Nintendo of America to play like just the opening dungeon of Ocarena of Time before it came out and that was just the hype of shit in the universe like this they described everything that went on in that dungeon and it described like the cutscene or the goddesses afterwards and it's just like man hype

you know what I must I must have been on the internet earlier than my senior year because I just remembered. At one point, like, I was looking up, I remember seeing the first screenshots for Super Mario 64. Oh, okay. Yeah, because I saw those in the magazine. I'm pretty sure I saw it online at my school library, so I must have been doing this stuff longer than I thought. Yeah, I remember seeing those screenshots and just being like, what the hell is that? Because, you know, the, Nintendo was using Killer Instinct and Donkey Kong Country and Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park. sells on the silicon graphics powered, you know, majesty of the Nintendo 64. And here Mario's coming out with like all these like, you know, polygon corners and stuff.

And I'm like, okay, maybe it's still early goings. No, that's what the game looked like. A little more polished by the end, but no, that's what it looked like. The generations definitely went into a different direction than I think any of us were anticipating at the time. And again, I was online at the time and I was already fighting with people. because it was the internet and I was a Nintendo kid and I thought that N64 was, I didn't realize at the time

because we didn't really have a concept of machines being fundamentally different from each other in such a radical way. Like the N64 can't play a Saturn game and vice versa. Like there could be some ports like say MegaN Legends and Mega XVI4 of course, but it's just Nintendo's machine was never meant to play like a 2D game. Of course it had some.

but they always looked a little bit crummy. Even mischief makers, God forgive me. Usually story looks all right for what it is. It looks all right. But it's always like this JPEG blur to it. That's a, it's like the end-se-4. I think that's just anti-Aleasing. Yeah, the NCC4 is anti-Aleasing.

It's not great. It's just not good. I don't know why they went for that. Well, actually, I know. It's just the way things worked out. But yeah, I, go ahead. Oh, I was just going to say, turning it back, I was going to mention

when I did finally at some point look up Mega Man, I remember the, and this is going to like a hit with you, I think the earliest thing I found, I do not remember the name of the website, but I remember finding a fan fiction on there that was called, I believe, the Zero Chronicles.

Oh yeah, yeah, that was on Prodom. No, no, that was on the Maverick Hunter headquarters. That was actually the first Mega Man site I looked up. Now, the way the internet went with me is when I I first got online, the first thing I looked up was Final Fantasy, because I was madly into Final Fantasy Six. I probably looked at Chrome Trigger as well. They were kind of in the same neighborhood. The unofficial Squarespace HomePage is where it ended up run by Andrew Vestall, who I still talk to to this day, who once told me that if you remember Dragonfire, you remember Dragonfire, right?

That's the server thing, right? Yeah, it was a server. You get like a meg of space. But like Geocities or tripod, right? It was like, yeah, exactly. And apparently it was like just a motherboard hanging from a chair like with fans running on 24-7. Are you being serious? When it comes to this stuff, I'm never quite sure. I'm being serious.

Yeah, I can. Wow. I mean, you've seen how Alana Pierce puts her, mounts her like, you know, hard drive on the wall, so to speak. Yeah, yeah. Kind of like that, but a lot less organized, purposeful. But anyway, yeah, Final Fantasy was my main thing. And then around the same time, let's say May 1995, Megamad X3 comes out. And I think it was Video and Arcade Top 10, a Canadian show,

long-running Canadian video game show that's now dead RAP. With an anger theme song, guys might add. Absolutely. Which, I mean, you're going to get that if you basically riff on Crashman's theme, but hey why mess with the best but uh they featured megaman x3 one day and i just i had been off x for a while and i just and megaman in general and i just looked at that and said uh you know it'd be nice so i just you know played a megaman x game again so i played x3 and obviously not the greatest x game but still has a lot of worth to it and of course when you finish the game what does it say

it says that to save mankind x must destroy zero and i'm like holy shit what's the deal with And I think that's what got me online for Mega Men. And that's when I found the Maverick Hunter headquarters, which was a site that was hosting the Zero Chronicles, which was that fan of fake you mentioned. Yeah. And on that point, I mentioned this earlier, good to kind of segue back around to this. I remember hearing all the stuff talking about the internet and it would be a source of information, you could find out anything on anything. and we weren't quite there yet. I don't know if we're quite there now,

but yeah, I took that literally. So I thought I'm reading this Zero story, and I'm thinking like, oh, this must be canon. Yeah, yeah. This must be, like, authentic. And then when I'm, like, reading other, like, stories that kind of contradict the games or each other, and I'm just, that was a little confusing for me

until I figured out, oh, these are people just, you know, writing their own things. This isn't factual. Yeah, yeah. It was definitely the early days of online fanfiction. And it's funny, this was around the time, maybe even earlier, when people like, shoot, I can't remember her name, Ann McCaffey, who did Pern. And there were other authors who were trying to fight legal battles against fan fiction. And thankfully, they all lost or lost for the most part. Yeah. Because I remember people were trying, Pern is a series about Barbie's riding dragons. Of course is popular. but she didn't want people like doing RPs or fanfiction of her work. And it's like, oh, you ain't untouchable, old lady. Anyway, so that was me getting on to Megaman.

And that's around the time. When I read Zero Chronicles, like, I was just blown away. It's reading it now, it's clumsy, of course. The author was 16 at the time. And it reads like something a 16-year-old would write, but I was 15. So, of course, it was the best thing I ever read in my life. Do you remember Zero Chronicles at all, David? Yeah.

I remember, like, I think Zero awoke in a skyscraper or something, and there was something about him looking different. I basically imagined him just, like, kind of having, like, you know, how his helmets kind of got that, like, you know, white apart and, like, underneath the red? Yeah. Yeah, I just imagined, like, you know, him, like, looking more, like, you know, without the red and, like, you know, the stuff there. So a little more basic and just, you know, like, if the zero we saw on the game,

game was like an upgraded version of this. Kind of sparked my imagination a little bit there. Yeah, it kind of insinuated that Zero was upgraded when he became the leader to be more of a moral boost to the rookies. I thought that was a very interesting point. And that was the kind of thing that got me starting to write my own fan fiction about Mega Man X. And most of it was goofy as shit. But it got me a lot of friends for being goofy as shit, I guess, including you. Yeah.

X and Zero finally have their fight over a, oh shoot, what was it? It was a CD. Yeah, I was got to say it was a CD for, oh, what's the name of that movie? It was the Pulp Fiction CD. That's it, that's the one. I was just writing whatever the hell I wanted. Yeah, that's right. Okay, so I remember now, this was at a time when everyone was writing there, why, you know,

why must X destroy Zero? Why are they fighting? And when I got online for the first time, that was when I saw the explanation that Zero had been created by Dr. Wiley. And that blew my mind. And I'm guessing the person who wrote it, just, there must have been like some Japanese stuff that, like, leaked over and or something of that matter. Because it was just, I think, like, it was planned from the start that Zero was made by Wiley.

But America didn't get quite as many hints as Japan, I think. But anyway, everyone was writing their stories about this. And there were some real bangers out there. Like a relic called Ragnarok was over the top. as hell, but it had like, again, zero, I think, became like the key part of a death machine, so X had to kill him for that reason.

Do you remember any others? Let's see. I remember I believe it was Jet Mode who wrote Timeline, a Mega Man montage. Who I still talked about the way. Oh, cool. Say hi for me. But, yeah, I remember like basically

burning out several of my colleges, printer, ribbons, or lasers or whatever, printing that out. That was an achievement. Gosh, it was just like such a huge file at the time that it had to be like in a zip. And yeah, I remember enjoying that one. I don't know. I believe there was one called Road of the Warrior, which...

Oh, yeah. That was by Slashman, who, again, I talked to him as well. Like, I still keep in touch with a lot of people. We both still keep in touch with a lot of people from the 90s. It's kind of crazy. Yeah. That one was interesting because it actually had it where the reploids were like a dead. downgrade, like, just something like light cobbled together to save Mega Man's life, like, you know, and basically ended up bringing back like a lot of the old cast and that was some wild stuff. I remember, like, I think that was the one that had an interesting aspect of the Sigma virus, where basically, like, if it infected you, like, you started to take on his appearance, like the marks around the eyes and the eyes. I'm like, if you had hair, I guess you'd lose it.

That's a very I would expect that from the Ruby Spears cartoon To be honest with you After the cave bots Yeah that tracks Yeah There was another fan fake It was so long ago

Do you remember Terror Nova? I remember the name But I'm not I'm a little I'm a little weak on the context here I think the name was Revkov Revokov Again I talked

I talked to him on Facebook. Yeah, yeah. So a lot of us just kind of got our start noodling around with fan fiction. And I decided, well, see, the one fan fiction I had really written that with like serious fan fiction, if you could even call it that up until that point, and even that wasn't serious, it was goofy as hell.

It was the Mario fan fiction I wrote as a kid, which is a complete mess. And I had the same kind of idea going in with my fan fiction, which was like, well, if it's stupid and goofy, nobody can laugh you know if people laugh at it nobody can like make fun of me if it's bad so i decided like also it was different i wanted to something a little different and my mind is always primed for chaos so i decided okay wouldn't it be funny and this is this is where all the trouble starts so i have that

thought wouldn't be funny if x and zero were fighting over a pulp fiction cd because my friends and i were really into pulp fiction at the time like we just listened to that soundtrack constantly when we were driving anywhere, which is funny when I think about it because none of us had a car. So how are we listening to that soundtrack all the time? Anyway. It's also funny to think about because it's implying that CDs are still a viable form of media 100 years from now. Yeah, like I first had my introduction to MP3s like a couple of years later. So the digital world was still quite far from us.

And if you look at some, even like some the old artwork and stuff from, I mean, heck, look at the instruction booklet from Mega Man X3. It was set up like a 1.0 webpage. It's absolutely brilliant. Yeah. That was gorgeous. The first time I saw that. It's absolutely gorgeous. Something like that belongs in a museum to be sure.

I actually, I did preserve it on my site, plug, plug, plug, which is a, it's Patreon. It's just like a place where I put like old writing, old articles, all stuff like that. just to kind of preserve it and have it up there somewhere. Nice. Speaking of the old articles and stuff, I remember, gosh, yeah, I remember, like, what I was saying about kind of believing everything I read early on? Yeah.

So, yeah, I had, like, false rumors back then, too. I remember one website where they showed basically these, like, scans from a Japanese magazine, and it was, like, it purported to be Mega Man X4, and it had, like, you know, X in this armor with, like, a beam saber, and Zero had his own armor. and like, it turned out it was actually from mega missions. It was the card, the card gamer, whatever they had going on. Yeah. Yeah.

Trading card story. I know the guy who, now there's one guy I don't talk to anymore, but I do remember who passed that around. He was just a jerk. He made shit up. That went around a lot in our time, by the way, folks. People just made shit up like they do now, except now they burn the environment and several gallons of water to make shit up.

No one wants to make shit up with their imaginations anymore. It sucks. Yeah. I mean, is AI going to get? us something like Bruce Campbell voicing X in the Ruby Spears cartoon or Fox wanting to do a

primetime Mega Man X show called, I think it was Maverick Hunter's X in Zero with Richard Mole from Nightcourt as RIP as Sigma. I actually wrote about that on the Mega Man Network when he passed because that was just, that's something that always stuck with me.

That's pretty good, yeah. There were some wacky-ass streamers out there at the time. People actually just kind of made websites that had, like, fake, you know, codes and whatnot just for the fun of it. It really was the Wild Wild West. They had a teenage wedding and the old book that Pierre did truly love the mademoiselle. And now the young monsieur and madame have runned a chapel bell. So, love me, say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell.

So how did you even find my stuff? Do you remember? Not specifically. I would just basically like, you know, I would look up Mega Man on like web crawler or Yahoo or whatever was up at the time because sometimes like that stuff would actually go down. And there were also web rings. There were link pages. But basically I would just kind of like, you know, look things up. And it's like the results would change like, you know, day after day sometimes. So it's like, you know, you could go to like to the search engine, look up Mega Man, like, you know, one day get all like these different results like for these fan pages and whatnot go there. Another day and like the order is changed. Maybe there's something new there

that, but it's not like a new site. Like, you know, it's actually been around a bit, but somehow it got bumped up in the order. I basically just like look through everything like on one site at a time and just like, you know, kind of soak it all in. So, um, I probably, I probably probably found it via links or back then, like you would have, like fanfix would often be on other people's websites. So yours was around, as I recall. And eventually I found my way to your actual website. But I did not start reading it on your website. I do not remember who's had it, though, when I found it.

Yeah, I was always really bad at updating my own fanfix on my own websites. But I remember back in the day when I started writing, first of all, it was like kind of a shameful practice. to write fan fiction back then. I felt like if I got caught, like my god, a little two brothers, they'd torment me relentlessly if they found out I was doing that.

So I kind of did it in secret, and I would write into like the email field of, you know, on my BBS or my school's BBS and just kind of save it there. And then I'd pass it on to God, his name was Protoman, like every other Megaman fan in the universe. His name was Protoman. And he had Protoman.com.

I don't know. if he still has it, to be honest with you. But I gave my fanfiction to him. He was a funny guy. He was a cool guy. So he hosted it for a long time. And when it started to get like some people reading it and some like people saying, hey, this is funny.

We like this. People would ask me, can I host it on my site? Can I host it on my site? Say, sure, go ahead. So yeah, got around. That was before we had like fanfiction. net or God knows before we had AO3. Yeah, I honestly had no idea that there was such a stigma attached to fanfic writing back

then because it seemed like everybody did it. Yeah, again, the legal aspect. Like, I think nobody was really sure what was legal and what wasn't back then. I mentioned how Ann McCaffey and Matt McRaffey and whatever her name is. And I think Anne Rice was also going after their fans. But meanwhile, like, on our end of things, it's like, what the hell does Japan care with some Western weirdos are doing? Like, I don't think we were ever in any kind of trouble.

So it wasn't the legal aspect of it. It was just like, I guess, you know, people, my family finding my stuff and making fun of me, I guess. Like, I had a big fear of that. And then finally, I learned how to write with Word documents that I could password protect. Oh, nice. Yeah, as I recall, it was your stuff that inspired me to start like, I got started, but I never really carried it out like a fan fiction about base, like way back when.

I remember that. You showed it to me. Yeah, it was like two chapters. I think you posted it on your stuff. It was a good fanfic. It was cute. It was okay, I guess. Yeah, it would be like, gosh, almost 25 years later, I think, before I would start writing fiction again. Yeah, it took a while, but here you are.

How did you find my, like, not how, sorry, but like, what attracted you to my stuff? What made you want to reach out to me? Or why did you like it? I guess the sense of humor gelled. Flatter me. Yeah, my sense of humor, I will say that. There's like, South Park references and just other like, you know, stuff like in that kind of vein. So it's like, you know. Yeah, there were a lot of South Park references back then.

I kind of went crazy. It was the 90s people. It was the 90s. Yeah, I remember you reached out to me and your first email, I think I recall, it's just very polite, very kind of basic. Like, hey, I really like your stuff. Thank you. Did you write to other authors? just me. I think it was just you.

Oh, that's nice. Was it because I was a girl? I don't know. I just... I just enchanted you, is what you're saying. I guess so, yeah. Just something about, like, your personality. Just kind of...

You know, I want to know this person more. Aw. Because, yeah, at that point... Okay, I don't think I reached out to you until I was, like, in college for as long as that lasted. I think I'd read this stuff beforehand. Prior to that, I actually had no way of reaching out because I didn't have home internet. I didn't have email. It was when I was in college that, like, you know, we all had to sign up for like a hotmail

if we didn't have an email address. RIP, my hotmail address, because, like, yeah, I couldn't log in for a while and I started making other addresses that would work. And then I didn't check it for a while. And then they deleted it. And it's like, oh, wow, thanks. But, yeah. That was at some point in all of that malarkey that, like, you know, I finally had a means to reach out.

So I did. You also had Garfield mail back in the day. Was that Gmail? Was that actually Gmail? That was the original Gmail until Google was like, you know, pulled the Garfield of their own and said, give me. And basically just had, they didn't even take it over. Like they took over the Gmail name and stuff. But, yeah, box and stuff just went off without like notice.

So unfortunately, I lost a lot of correspondence between us back then, which still pisses me off to this day, if I'm being honest. Just kind of the start of how, like, callously digital stuff is treated, isn't it? Just, or one button is all gone. Yeah, thank goodness I've got a lot of it out, but not everything, unfortunately. Really kind of shows us where the internet was going when I think about it. In retrospect, it's a little sad. Yeah. And Google for that.

that matter. Yeah. Throwing their damn way around. Yeah, we just kind of corresponded for a while. As I recall, I was working a terrible job for a lot of that time at a dog kennel that was just like my first job every day was to check and make sure all the animals were still alive just to give an idea of what this place was. And they sold these animals for thousands of dollars. And I just got really depressed while working at this place. I don't know if you remember that.

point in my life or if it came through in my emails. I think I do, yeah. I remember, gosh, I remember, I think you had a few jobs then. There was that. There was, I believe, a vet. Yeah, that wasn't a job. That was co-op. That was a vet technician.

That was fun. Oh, okay. I also remember the, I believe, the pet store that used to be at Yorkdale. That's the one that I was working at. It was a nightmare. Oh, oh, that was the same one. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I remember the, yeah, okay, I definitely remember that then. And when we- Sorry, I thought you were talking about like a different, like a breeder thing or something. No, no. But when we did meet physically for the first time, I was working at Canada's Wonderland, if you recall. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think I took you there on my, obviously I took time off. And, yeah, that's when I discovered. You don't like rollercoasters very much. And you didn't tell me. Well, you liked them. So it was like. Okay, I can handle this. No, you can't.

Here's the thing with me. If someone's not having fun and they're just obliging me, it makes me feel very bad. I would so much rather you have told me, I don't like roller coasters. I'll sit here. Or I'd be like, okay, let's go somewhere else. Let's do something else. Okay. In my defense, I'd never ridden a roller coaster in my life before.

Really? I didn't know that I didn't like it. I just knew I didn't want to try one until it came up. And it's like, okay, I can do this. And I mean, hell, at one point in my life, I was like actually looking at becoming a wrestler. So it's like, you know, if I can do that, like, you know, I can do this. I'm sure that was the mindset. Yeah, sorry.

There's not going to be any safety harnesses when I'm in the ring. Yeah, that's, that could go very dark in many cases, unfortunately, as we both know. But, yeah, we. We had a good time. I also took you to the Canadian exhibition, Canadian National Exhibition, aka C&E. Yeah, that was a fun time.

Yeah. That was the same visit? Was the same? I think it was, yes. Yes, it was. Because, yeah, I managed to win a couple prizes for you there, as I recall. You did.

And they were like, I was thinking those earlier because they were like real first edition Pokemon merch. And I have never found, like one of them was a framed poster. of, gosh, I can't remember at this point, but the other one was like this really cool, like wooden poster with, like,

original art of Professor Oak and Charzart and Bulbosur and Charmander and all looking at monitors together. It's really cute. And I don't know what happened to it, but I would have loved to keep it. It didn't look like it was like, because, of course, there's a lot of fake Pokemon stuff going around there at the time,

but it didn't look fake. I'd love to know what it was. Oh, man. Do you think that would be in your parents, at your parents' house? I think my dad might have actually throwing it out when they moved house, unfortunately. Oh, no.

I'll have to, oh, look, there's a, there's a chances down there in the basement of possibilities, but I'm not sure. Otherwise, I'll have to have some angry words with your father. Eh, he'll brush them off like he always does. But, uh... At least they'll be said. That is true. They will be said.

Now, after that, I've visited you for the first time, and that was My first experience in, well, I had been to the States once in like 1995, actually, not too long before I met you. That was my first time in the States went to Cleveland. So you were the second time I went to the States. And that was back when you could meet me at the lobby, if you recall. Yeah, that's definitely different. I thought you also went to Washington at some point. Oh, you're right, you're right, you're right. I went to Washington in 1990 around that. Yeah, okay. But going to, okay, put it this way, visiting you for the first time was seeing like rural America.

Yeah. And learning certain things like going into a Walmart for the first time like in America and seeing that like entire aisles dedicated to cereal and seeing things like sales and choices and just realizing, wow, American retail is way better. at a great cost nonetheless, but still way better. I just never, I guess I didn't realize what capitalism was until I visited the States. Yeah. Do you remember that? Do you remember like showing me around for the first time or anything like that? A bit.

Because, yeah, I visited you first and you visited me. We kind of went back and forth like that a couple times, didn't we? A few times, yeah, for a while. It got expensive, so we got married. Yeah, the cheaper option. Honestly, at the time, it really was. And we had to like seal it with marriage because back then it's like, well, it's marriage or nothing. You couldn't just like have a common law relationship.

Like you could, you can now and get to get your permanent residency, I think. But back then, if you wanted your permanent residency, you had to tie the knot. So we did. Yeah, we like being around each other just that much, I guess. Yeah, I guess it worked out in that regard. An interesting thing about our wedding, I think, is that. that it was... Sorry, before we get to that, I guess I have to ask.

Like, I don't know. Was there any apprehension about having, like, you know, some guy from the States come and visit you? Oh, yeah. I mean, my mom never shut up about it. That's why she came to, like, when you came the first time, she was there as well, if you recall. Yep.

I remember that was you, your mom, and your dad picking me up at the airport. Yeah, your first time in a big city. I mean, Charlotte was pretty big, but I think Toronto's a bit bigger. Yeah, yeah, I think Toronto's probably a little bigger, but yeah. I think you mentioned once, like, flying in over the lights, the lit up city. That would have been kind of cool, kind of overwhelming a little bit. Oh, yeah, yeah. That was, I love flying in at night and seeing the city all lit up and stuff.

It's pretty damn cool. Yeah, but before we got married, yeah, it's like, I was sending you stuff, too. I think before we even met, wasn't I? Yes, you're sending me. We got you a VCR for some reason. Yeah. Basically, my mom never let us have VCRs in the house because she thought it would make us turn us into zombies

who just watched videos all day, which I don't think that ever would have happened. I'm not the kind of person. But back in the day, back before quote unquote, quote unquote, back before autism existed, you had kids who would just watch the same tape over and over and over again until it, until it wore out.

But that was an autism. No, no, not at all. My mom was worried I'd do something like that, but it just, I don't like watching stuff, as you know well. But we did get a BCR. We did get, I got Moulon, and I got the South Park movie,

which was still goaded. And honestly, from there, I did not buy more tapes. I think we got a DVD player for a wedding gift for our friends, from our friends back when they were like a lot of money. Yeah, that is what happened. Along with it, we got Raising Arizona.

They gave us. That's right. Our friends gave us Raising Arizona. And our friends is funny. Obviously, I had like real world friends at the wedding. I swear to God. But I also invited a lot of people from this guest book I was on, which is kind of a makeshift message board. And it was based around Sweakidan, the game.

Swikeren one and eventually Swikidon, too, we included like, we each had icons. And my icon for a long time was Gen Gen. from Sucan Tew, who's like this cobalt, who's like basically a dog, he's very cute. And I had a lot of friends on that guest book, and someone were local, some of them weren't. And they said, hey, how many of you want to come to my wedding? And a lot of them did. Some flew in, many of whom I still talked to them. Some were local, and they just kind of came in.

And they were all put at one table. And they were a very, very loud, chatty table that were having a great time with each other because it was like a nerd gathering before that kind of thing. was filling up big venues. And they called themselves Tabelania. They called them, Yeah, I was going to say,

I think they declared themselves a sovereign nation. And I was trying to remember if it was Tabillania or not. It was tabalania. Oh, man. Yeah, that was a fun wedding.

That was, I know you wanted to have a more nerd thing, but my mom would not allow it. Nope. And she was funding the bills. Yeah, basically. I would actually love to circle back around to that

and just kind of do something like, you know, where we just like have some fun with it. Something for us. Yeah. Hey, you know what? Who's going to stop us? All right, money.

Yeah, I was about to say. We, you know, we still have not even had a honeymoon. No, we haven't. We kind of got married in haste, to be honest. Like, we wanted to be together. But I feel like I'm throwing my mom under the bust a lot for this episode. But she kind of rushed us a lot. And even though.

Which is funny when you think about it. It's extremely funny when you think about it. But I don't know about that, that American boy to like, you know, Okay, like, have you had a kid yet? Yeah, she just wanted me to have grandkids, to be honest, and thankfully it worked out for us. But it's been a long road, been a long and winding road, if you watch Golden Camoy. I remember us getting like, you know, a lot of, I remember like us getting stuff for each other prior to meeting up, I think. Like, I remember, like, I believe that, I got you that Pokemon hat, right?

Yeah, I still have a Pokemon hat. Someone haunted me yesterday with a Pokemon hat. a good honk. You know, the beep, beep, not the beep. Like, fuck you, Ash, Ketchum, beep, not that kind of honk. It was a good honk. Yeah. I'm like me when I was wearing my Sean Michaels at that time.

What happened? Someone, like, yelled DX sucks out their window. Yeah, basically. I don't remember if I was there or if he told me about it, but either way, I was dying. I told you about it, yeah. I died. DX sucks. What a thing to yell out of window at someone.

Some of the other stuff I remember getting you. Listen, I don't remember where I got you the hat, to be honest. I can't remember if it was a claw machine thing or... The hat is vintage. Like, people have Pokemon hats. This is not the... They don't have the original. I have the original.

You also gave me a key chain of zero. Yeah. That I still have... To this day. And I still have it on my keys. Where did you get that? Do you remember? I think I ordered it online, like eBay or something.

Wow, eBay. Yeah, I also got you like, I knew you were into Pokemon, so yeah, that ended up coming kind of a focal point because, like, that stuff was easier to get, like, in abundance. Because Mega Man Marshall's not as, you know. No, you had to, like, order, in my case, you'd have to go to Chinatown or something.

Yeah, but like the Pokemon stuff, I remember I got you the, were they beanie animals from KFC, KFC promotion? Yes, I. I actually put... Wasn't even any of the popular, like, ones, like, Pikachu or, like, Charzart or anything. It was like, I think, no, it wasn't Evie. What was the Red Fox looking?

It was, I remember, it was Dratini, who was one of my favorites, Volpix, another favorite, seal for some reason, and Zubat. And I actually put the Volpix, I had a little pocket in my, on my knapsack back in the day. And I put the Volpix with, like, his head sticking out. And everyone loved that. Nice. Because, yeah, we had that promotion in Canada, but it was Sue Shopper's Drugmark for some reason. Right, right. Yeah, I seem to remember something like that. Let's see. There's like a big stuffed Pikachu backpack I think I got for you from a crane game at my job.

That's still on the bedroom. It's on the shelf. Yeah, some Pokemon cards. I remember getting used some of the stuff from Burger King, like the gold trading cards and the fancy Pokemon display things. Our retirement fun. Let's see. And I remember, of course, like you got me some stuff that I got when I first visited you. I remember there's like a radio control car that you got from Canadian Tire. Yeah, I was working in Canadian Tire at the time. For some reason, we were selling these stupid remote control cars and they're just like, buy these cars.

Please, I don't know why we have them. Just get them off our shelves. So I bought one. And it's like a real, it's kind of cheap. But it's like one of those things where like you, it has one knob. And when you let it go, it starts turning backwards. And you have to kind of drive it. way. I got you that. I don't know why I got you that, but I'm kind of glad I did.

I think we had some fun with that with your dogs. Yeah, probably. You got me a WWF Stomp figure. Why did I do that? Because I was into WWF, I think. A Stomp figure. Yeah, which for anybody who doesn't know, Stomp was an acronym, and I do not remember what it stands for, but it was basically, let's make an elite military fighting force out of WWF superstars. and they had like, you know, like clip on armor and like accessories and stuff so you can make them like, you know, more like action heroes. Wow. And of course, the big one and the one that I regret most is it was a big like, I think it was Rissaurus, a Sonic Adventure figure that just like paired perfectly with this like Mario plush I've had since I was a kid. I don't know what happened to it.

Like when one of the times we were moving like early on and it just vanished and I've not been able to get a. another one and that it's just killed me since because like out of all the stuff you got me that was like the one thing that like I really loved and kept like you know displayed and everything and I just don't know what happened to it. I remember what I got that. I got that from the EB games

in Yorkdale and that was like a Dreamcast promotion of a figure of some kind because Dreamcast was out or coming out and it just seemed cool. 99 so that fits the time. Yeah, 999 that fits the time. RIP figure uh Sonic

our Lord and Savior. So one thing that's really fun about our marriage as well is that it was on June 9th, 2001. What do you think came next, boys and girls? Rockman Day! Rockman Day! Yay! Rockman Day! Oh, no, the towers. Yeah, so what was really fun. That was a few months later, to be fair. Yeah, that's true.

but yeah just just to like you know tie that bit off yeah it's like we got married on rock man day before rock man day was even rock man day and just how perfect is that that is pretty perfect but then you went home for a bit to get some stuff and uh 9-11 happened yeah i went like on like the start of the month and then like short time went like basically just trying to take care of some old business and then like in the middle of that uh the planes at the towers and all of a sudden

I can't watch Mobile Suit Gundam on Tsunami anymore. Did they take Mobile Suit Gundam on Tsunami? I think they did. I think we talked about that on Blood God once. Yeah, that they took out an episode or changed the English version of Transformers robots in disguise because I think the first episode has Megatron just kind of like, you know, bursting out of a building. Precedent. Megatron is at the second building.

they really had yeah the people really had to be on the ball there it's too bad because like i'm watching i did not like gendom wing at the time and it's like you know i decided to give the original a shot and i'm like oh hey i'm actually kind of digging into this so you know yeah that's i'm certainly not going to say like you know that you know gondom being taken off was like the biggest tragedy of the day but um i didn't get back around to it for like 20 years so i'll just say that. But yeah, that was the thing. As I recall, like, coming back to Canada was a bit tougher than leaving it at that point.

Yeah, yeah. Like, I mean, gosh, like I said, when you met me for the first time or the second time, like, you were there waiting for me at the gate. And when I was going to see you back of the day, I could get through with, like, my, birth certificate. I'd get in trouble, but I'd get lectured. But if I gave them my birth certificate and my health card, which has my picture, that's like, okay, cool, that's fine.

That, uh, that did not last. It did not last no more. Yeah, it was, uh, I remember, I remember calling you just like the day it happened because it was like, it was such a state of what the hell is going on, what happens next that like, you know, okay, so yeah, you know, looking back, they were probably not going to fly a plane into Yorkdale, but hell if I, hell if I knew that at like, you know, 10. in the morning, like, you know, after like, you know, three planes have, like, you know, hit the towers in the Pentagon and, like, you know, everybody's on edge. Yeah, that was that day I was actually working the afternoon shift as a custodian at Yorkdale, the mall that we've mentioned a few times here.

And I had a real asshole for a supervisor back in the day. And I was trying to let him let me go a little early so I could go home and call you because, of course no cell phones back then. I actually called my dad that day from a pay phone. And he's like, what's the big deal? It's not that big of a deal. And I'm like, my husband's in America, you stupid idiot. Can I go just go home? So I finally let me go home, but he was like really reluctant about it. But that day, that was a, that was kind of a haunting day of work because most of the stores like were closed long before the day ended. Like, remember the Disney store. It didn't open at all. And I was everyone, like the place was dead.

I've never seen them all that dead in my life except like, you know, an actual dead mall series. And then the fire alarm went off, when I jumped like 50 feet. Yikes. Yeah, that was a, that was a day. Yeah, it's, I've read about bosses, like, you know, that bad or worse. I'm like, not always right. So I am literally not surprised by you saying this. But I got a hold of you eventually.

And I guess kind of an aside, but you watching like, you're watching Tsunami again, which must have been kind of a nice change. from Canadian TV, which was not heavy on the anime at the time. Yeah, it was a hard four months without it. It was kind of nice to get to watch and see some of the stuff that I wasn't getting to see here, though. You didn't have the Intonautative Bunny here, though. Yeah, so, yeah, that's probably a big win. Dragon Ball was a little behind.

Dragon Ball was way behind, I think. Oh, and, oh, gosh, what was? the yeah it's like kind of funny because like cowboy bebop that was like that was like early 2000s like i don't remember if that was on tunami or if they had adult swim yet or one thing actually one one good memory i do have of visiting you is that i you know we'd watch anime because again canada wasn't getting a lot of anime at the time i think it was probably too expensive and if we did get it it was way behind so i was for the first time watching like you know try gun and mobile wing and mobile suit Gundam and Gundam Wing and whatever else they had running at the time.

Dragon Ball. Yeah, Dragon Ball Z. Rock the Dragon. We had Dragon Ball Z, but just the first little bit of it. So, yeah, it was pretty cool to catch up on all that. It was a cartoon network, Tuna me at the time, was definitely an aesthetic that I do kind of miss. Rolling it back for a second, we were talking about the different fanfix and stuff. I remember somebody, like, did illustrations for their story.

that like it was like Mega Man X but drawn in like in Akira Toriyama style and it actually worked pretty well. Oh yeah, I think I remember that. I remember the artist. It was named Lumina I think if I'm talking if I'm thinking of the right person because yeah, I think we we were friends for a bit and we decided

we're going to make a Mega Man X RPG and she, all we had literally was she drew a picture of zero and that was all we got. I think we had like some story ideas and then we're like does anyone know how to code? Because back end. It was like you didn't have game maker or even RPG maker. I think it was not really... Oh, oh, you're talking to that kind of RPG. I thought you're talking like freeform or like four-al-over.

No, no, everyone had this big idea. Everyone wrote stories for RPGs and they drew like concept art for RPGs. But then it came to like, okay, how do we make this? And obviously it all fell apart because nothing was really drag and drop then. I don't know what people coded in for the S&ES or the PlayStation or whatever. but it wasn't anything we knew. I got to introduce you to D&D when you visited one time, too, didn't I? Yeah, I played my first D&D game with you. That was fun. I think we played, I played a half-elf when I was married to you.

My name was Hawk Moon. I am trying to remember what my character was. Something in line with that, I'm sure. You were also a half-elf, but I don't remember your name. Yeah. And we encountered a dragon. And apparently we were supposed to say, this dragon is bullshit, and we didn't. Right. We were supposed to disbelieve, and it was just like one of those things as like, you know, I was familiar with it, but like it was just not coming to me at the time.

Like, despite the hints being dropped, it was like, like, they say it all the time in nights of the dinner table and like I'm just. Yeah. I haven't forgotten it since, but. I disbelieve in the moment. Yeah, because it was like an illusion or something. Yeah, exactly. Try, try, try to separate them. It's an illusion.

Try, try, try, and you will only come to this conclusion. Love and marriage, love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage. Oh, gracious. What a time. So we're coming up on 25 years, aren't we? We sure are. Still going strong as ever. at least I think so. You hesitated?

I'm just trying to think of like, you know, where strong falls in the scale of where we've been and hopefully where we're going. Well, we don't hate each other. Oh, yeah, for sure. There's that. And I'm assuming we love each other still.

Absolutely. Well, though, there you go. What else do you need? How do you survive 25 years together? How have you tolerated me for 25 years? I could ask you the same Yeah, I think that's what marriage comes down to I tolerate you What's wrong with us?

Let's break it off We'll hit 25 and then you're separate ways No, I mean, obviously I guess it's the fact that we can both laugh At a joke like that And just keep on with the things Is probably part of it I accept my shortcomings

And I'm sure you accept yours That we just sort of Yeah, yeah I try to accept it my shortcomings. But we prop each other up nicely, I think. We have, uh, we've even worked together on stuff. We worked on the Megamann X robot master. We worked on the robot, you say it. Because I, I'm missing. That's a lot of up. Robot Master field guide and the Mega Man X Mavercuntress field guide.

That's right. Yeah. And, uh, that was fun to do with you. I like working with you on things. And, uh, probably happened more than the future. I think we did we together for one up at one point, too, didn't we? God, did we? I thought we did. It makes sense. I'm sure we did some kind of Mega Man thing together for OneUp. Parrish would have seen to it. It might have been Mega Man, but it could have. It probably was.

There was that, I think that Mega Man Week that one time. Right. It was the Mega Man Week. I got to do some other stuff there, and that was a fun time while it lasted. One Up was a fun time while it lasted. We've seen a lot of websites come and go in our time, including the ones that we started off on. Yeah, unfortunately, I feel like I'm the Ted McKinley of a website sometimes. the hell does that mean?

The patron saint of shark jumping. I didn't even know that was a, I know shark jumping, but I know he was a patron saint. Oh, I hope I'm remembering the right name. He was the guy who played the Marcy's second husband on Mary with Children. Right. And often when he like appears on a show, although actually married with children lasted a while after he showed up. He was like such a great character there. But yeah, it's like when he would show up on shows and then like, you know, usually they

like a end after that. And it was like, I don't know that combos stuck around too long, but I left a while before they ended. There was, like, you know, one-up,

it felt like, I guess not just websites, like Nintendo Power. I was writing there. Yeah. Didn't combo. One of their last things was like some kind of like, I just remember a turkey with a bikini on it.

They had some stupid article about like Thanksgiving and something to do with tities. And there was a, there was like, a bra or a bikini on a turkey? I do not remember specifically. Someone will remember. Someone will remember because it was a disgrace to snakes. I do remember that, like, yeah, they let me go.

I didn't receive the severance they promised me. Right. Again, setting trends. Let's see. So, yeah, that kind of made things rough for a spell there. Yeah, basically, it was, I can't remember if it was like, combo for men or... Oh, something stupid like that.

I can't remember, like, the way they were aiming it, but man, they like kind of really... It definitely had kind of vibes like, what, what are those, like, Maxim or something? Yeah, yeah. There's like a real Ladd-Mag kind of vibe to it. Yeah. A lot of magazine. It was a kind of like rougher times where everyone thought they were funny and just like had attitude and yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, well, I can't say I was any different. I mean, I just kind of did my thing on there, like, with just kind of a same sort of thing I picked up from gameplayers, if I'm being honest. I mean, that's what kicked it off. That's part of what got me online, I think. That's probably one of the first things I looked up because, like, they're, like, pitching their website and stuff. That's right. God, EGM had nuk.com, and I think to myself, Christ, like, my brother works in, like, domain names, which is real estate online.

And I think about all these domains that were just thrown away because didn't mean anything at the time. But God. God, like protomand.com, nuke.com. Nuke.com is great. And it was just like a... God, I don't know. But yeah, nuke.com, that was a heck of a thing. I don't know that I ever actually got to go before they sent that on to Maryway.

But I certainly remember the ads in the magazines and wanting to check it out. I must have visited it at some point. I think actually last year or the year before, sorry, you were with me on. a panel about the early days of game journalism and how it kind of straddled the analog and the digital for a while there. And yeah, that's another thing you participated in with me and was very informative. That was a good panel. Yeah. I remember, like, reading back, like, I forget who it was talking about it, but I've seen stuff basically talk about how, like, they were basically, like, the online division was just, like, basically, like, in a closet.

Like, they basically had to fight for every scrap they got. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. IGN is IGN, so it's funny how that turned around. Sure is. And now one of the only survivors of this apocalyptic scorched bundle of circuits that we call the internet now, I suppose. Yeah.

Well, on that merry note, do you want to kind of, any thoughts you want to wrap up with, anything you want to say? Wow. Do you want to talk about, like, you know, how I kind of ended up becoming part of the Mega Men Network? Sure, go ahead. Okay, so yeah, originally it was like Mega Man X Online, and I remember you had some issue with Reeve, who Steve Watts, who I believe he's working for GameSpot now last I saw. He's like editor-in-chief, yeah, he's a good friend of mine now. We're cool, we're buddies. So are you and him.

Yeah, but back then you had certain words for him, as I recall. I called him the Pope of Megamantown or he thought he was the Pope of Megamentown. It's still something I use to this day when I think someone's like too big for their britches in a fandom. I think she's a pope of whatever town. But now, he's still get a kick out of that. Yeah. He found out too. He got pissed off, but we settled it.

Yeah. And eventually I ended up getting into that group and somehow the sites ended up falling to me. And I'm still running it all these years later. Yeah, you sure are. Good for you. It's very different now than it used to be. be then, but there's a lot of stuff that's kind of taken over the certain niches. Like, it used to be more of like a database of information.

And we were still finding out a lot of stuff from Japan that like, you know, info that hadn't been translated. And now there are like numerous wikis out there for all that. Yeah. Trying to kind of find where the Mega Man Network fits in today's world has been a challenge. I mean, just existing like in the way that you are is kind of fitting it in a way. If you endure, I think things will will write themselves. eventually.

You're hoping. I do miss, yeah, I guess this is probably a good way to bring it back around as as much great as there is in the internet now, the high speeds, the amount of data you can, like, not waiting for buffering and stuff, like, you know, for, like, going to the Capcom website and, like, trying to load up a jiff that may or may not work from a Japanese. It says Jelloman for some reason. Commercial, which, like, you know, I made sure to include in the Maverick's counter's field guide just for the record.

That's right. Yeah. I included that as one of doubles aliases because he's always going to be Jelloman in that form to me. I remember that website. I remember going on that X4 website back in my high school. And it's just like it was so exciting. But it was so, so basic. So very basic.

Yeah. Beautifully so. But yeah, I just missed the spirit and the websites and how basically anybody could do something back then and yeah now it just feels like gosh even just trying to keep up with the bills on just like you know for the site now and i don't know it just feels different in a way that i don't always enjoy yeah i certainly appreciate like where we are technologically but the sense of freedom is something very different now yeah i agree it's uh you gotta take to bad with the good as my father used to say.

I guess in a way, social media is kind of replaced having your own website, hasn't it? Oh, absolutely. That. And as I say, Wiki, like, the days of personal websites are long gone. But I think people are trying to make them return because,

well, look, the state of everything. People don't want to hang around in crap piles all their life. Sometimes they want to go out and do something different. Sometimes they want to fix things. And that's enough to hang on to, I says.

And, of course, there was, like, forums back in the day. Oh, yeah. Forums. But now we got like discords. Yeah, which have their own. There's always drama. There's always idiots.

There's always trolls. There's always morons. The real problem with the internet is that these trolls, idiots, and morons all found a place to consolidate and talk to each other. Whereas when I was a kid, if there was some freak show on the corner denying the Holocaust, my mom would just say, don't talk to him. If he tries to talk to you, just get me. And I'll take care of it.

Don't have the benefit of that anymore. Yeah. Yeah. There's always, you know, that they're always, you know, there always was some freak show in the neighborhood or a couple of freak shows, and they were just kind of angry and bitter and stayed in their house and got mad when they got anywhere near their lawn. But now they have a place to go.

And unfortunately, that hasn't been a net good for the internet, but there's still a lot of good on the internet. And I hope that we proved that a little bit today. Same here. And honestly, you talk about the guys on the corner. It just reminded me of when I first visited you. You remember when your mom got like a psych tickets, like for a lot of us to that blue Jay's was it like a practice game or something? Yeah, I think it was a spring training game or something like that.

It was some kind of practice game. But yeah, that was a nice day at the dome. The dome was open, as I recall. Yeah, and that was like my first time there. And yeah, after we left, I just remember these guys like, I don't know, these squeegee guys, I guess. You know, sweetie guys. Yep, welcome to the city.

Yeah, they were like fighting at each other. And I was just like, you know, ready. It's like, okay, if they feel like, you know, come this way, like, you know, be ready kind of. Ah, don't worry about it. They got their own beefs. They got it. Whenever like something like homeless people won't hurt you most of the time, they're just hanging out like us. They're just trying to survive like us.

And sometimes they scrap with each other, but they have no beef with you. Oh, I wasn't expecting them to like have anything personal against me. I just, you know, collateral, like, you know, something's spilling over. And it's like, you know. Someone throwing a bucket and getting wet. Yeah, I can understand that. sure. We're just getting pushed into someone or who knows.

You've actually adapted remarkably well to city life, I think. You seem well suited for it. Yeah, Toronto's my home now. It's, uh, and it just feels right. Like, just like, there's certainly something like, uh, I showed you last night. There was a guy on Instagram, like, you know, doing these PS1 versions of like different locales in Toronto. And I don't know.

It's just like I look at. And I just like, I get this like sense of home that like, you know, It's really cool seeing transformed like that. Yeah, I agree. And you're just good at experiencing different things. Like when you came here, like, there's a lot of foods. You hadn't even thought to try. But now you just eat them.

Sushi. Sushi is a big one. Not just sushi, but shishimi. Like raw fish. You like that stuff. I've never liked it. Yeah. It's wild because, like, you know, my parents would never like, you know,

stop going on about how picky I was as an eater growing up. And it's like, no, I think you just weren't putting me in front of the right things. Yeah, it's been a good 25 years. And I look forward to 25 more. So try not to die. I'll do my best. You do the same. I will.

I will. And that is it for this very warm and squishy episode of Retronauts. I hope we managed to lift your spirits and set your heart aflame. David, go ahead and promote some stuff. I know you got a bunch of stuff. Oh, sure. Oh man, we never even got to talk about us ringing in the year 2000 together with Y2K and all that stuff. We did. We rang it in and nothing blew up.

Yeah, thankfully. But yeah, it was kind of cool getting to spend that with you. Yeah, that was. But as for me, I'm on socials, LBD, N-Y-T-E-T-R-A-Y-N. That's L-B-D-Night train. And also, although I spend more time, really, with the M-M-M-N network, you know, posting and retweeting Megamman stuff. and that's also affiliated with the MMNetwork.com, which is the website. I do various things. Like I post my own, it's like an original but sort of fanficky. It takes place in the world of Mega Man Legends.

It's a fiction series called Legends of the House Sienero. Basically, it's like, if you know how like rival schools relates to Street Fighter or Maximo to Ghosts and Goblins, it's kind of a similar relation there. and I've also been posting the Start a effort there called the TMMN Archive Where basically I'm posting press releases from the past As closely preserved as I can. Retro

I just finished posting the last one for Mega Man Star Force 3 before the release of Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection later this week as of this recording And also we do Nadia and I, we've been doing live streams of Mega Man games, Nadia and David's Mega Man Mayhem. That's on the

Mega Man Network YouTube channel, if you want to check out the archives. Do it all as one word, or you're going to end up with a bunch of Battle Network stuff. And we also do the Nadia and David ruined video games where we play stuff that's not Mega Man, basically.

Yeah. And that's on the NightWorks YouTube channel, NYT-T-E-W-O-E-O-E-O-Games. R-K-S and it streams live biweekly on Twitch at the same channel name, Nightworks. Let's see.

What else have I got going on? I recently had Mega Man Legends Timelines number one come out from Udon Entertainment that's available in better comic books stores everywhere digitally on neon is it Ikebon or Ichibon?

Itchibon. Itchibon. which is basically a new, basically the story there is some guys founded a digital comics platform called Comicsology. Amazon bought them. And the guys who founded that I guess they didn't like the way that was going. So they founded a new platform and that's Neon Itchibon.

Good for them. And that's where the Mega Man comics are now. And I've also got another one for Mega Man Battle Network coming out. It's a backup story. for the free comic book day, Mega Man Showdown Special, I believe it's called. That'll be available the first Saturday in May at comic book stores. You can find out who's, like, look ahead, find out who's carrying it.

Check the free Comic Book Day website, I believe. That should tell you if anyone around you is doing it. And the Mega Man Legends timelines, it'll also be available in a trade paperback with the rest of the Mega Man Legends Timelines Comics this July. And I think that is everything I have currently that I can talk about. I also read for Nintendo Force Magazine. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Sometimes, too. We've been on that since the start. Yeah, I think that's everything for me, if that's not enough. Well, I think it's cool that you write the Mega Man Legend comic. I mean, that's awesome. Or you wrote it and you wrote the Battle Network thing. Thank you. But, yeah, if you like this podcast,

and I hope you do. Please contribute to our affairs at patreon.com forward slash retronauts. For an amazing $3, you get episodes a week early and ad-free. $5 a month gets you all that, plus two extra full-length podcasts and Discord access. Finally, the Nintendo Ultra-S64 level gets you all that, plus the chance to set a Retronaut's topic once every six months. This is your chance to ask about Cloud's boxy ass.

Come on, people. These spots are limited, so get in there while it's supply. last. As for me, I am Nadi Oxford, and I am also with the Axel of the Blood God RPG podcast. We talk about RPG's old and new, Eastern and Western. I also do a newsletter there every

week that kind of aims to recall the solid days of games blogging, which we talked about a little bit here. So please try us out at patreon.com forward slash blood god pod. We do a lot of cool stuff. Oh, by the way, by the way, I have a book

coming out from Retro Games books very soon. It is called From Pixels to Pros, what video games taught me about storytelling. Keep an eye on retro games books or keep it on my socials. I'm on Blue Sky as Naughty Oxford. I will let you know as soon as it drops.

But until then, thank you for listening and keep the love alive online. Just watch out for Digital Plimedia.