Sonic CulT
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Sonic CulT is a large information repository started by PACHUKA in February of 1999. It was inspired by Simon Wai and his discovery of the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Beta. Ever since then it has become known as one of, if not the, largest information repositiries for Sonic the Hedgehog in the community. It is currently run by Sazpaimon, who also runs the CulT side project X-CulT.
Contents
Early Days
PACHUKA began creating Sonic CulT by gathering all sorts of information from numerous websites, many times not crediting people, a habit the website became well known for as time went on. PACHUKA realized that the only way he were to get his site noticed was to cause a ruckus on other websites.
Sonic CulT vs. Saxman
As Sonic CulT began to grow, in 2000, Andy Wolan of the Sonic Stuff Research Group attempted to join the two together. This failed due to the SSRG's hosting on ZTNet, which also hosts sites such as Emulation Camp and Zophar's Domain, both of which had been hacked by PACHUKA in the past during the time EmuCult was open. The SSRG's host refused to host them, and PACHUKA was given access to the news script for the SSRG as a consoltation. A few weeks later, the news script was hacked by someone who then began to post offensive content. Andy blamed PACHUKA, as he believed the IP's matched, and publicly lashed out at him on the main page of the SSRG. This was later disproven due to the fact that PACHUKA and the hacker had both used AOL at the time, an Internet Service Provider who's clients do not have static IP Addresses. PACHUKA was proven innoncent, yet Andy did not apologize, instead claiming that Saxman wrote the news article and to ask him for an apology. Saxman refused to give PACHUKA and apology, which sparked a 2 year feud between Saxman and PACHUKA.
Sonic CulT vs. SSRG
Andy's hatred of PACHUKA began in 2002 when Andy shut down Saxman's site, due to arguments between the two. Saxman asked to have his work removed from the SSRG, and Andy refused, removing his entire site. Around this time Saxman and PACHUKA had recently made up, so the news of this angred PACHUKA, who posted news about it on the front page of this website. This infuriated Andy, who proceeded to say many harsh things in an IM conversation to PACHUKA [1]. PACHUKA began to publicly retaliate against Andy, in hopes of helping Saxman get his site back, resulting in a major flamewar, and ending with PACHUKA getting banned from the popular forum at the time, Area 51.
Saxman never got his site back from Andy, so PACHUKA offered to host it. He purchased the domain and hosted it on the server Emucult was hosted on. Saxman tried to reason with Andy on the SSRG's forums, however all of his posts were deleted. Later that year, GerbilSoft and Ultima were banned from the SSRG, because both expressed intrest in joining Saxman's new hacking community, SHaCNet. Eventually, Andy claimed that SSRG is dead, and began posting Anti-PACHUKA and anti-Saxman articles on his site. Saxman attempted to make a truce with Andy, who demanded that Saxman take down the history page on his site. Saxman did not wish to do this, but offered to edit out any negative comments towards Andy or the SSRG. Andy declined the offer and insited that the history page had to be removed completely. Exausted, Saxman gave up the truce:
Well it's official -- the truce is off. He's going to update his stupid little "Saxman" page to include the e-mails and probably a bunch more lies. I'm so SICK and TIRED of this. I just want it to end.... but I refuse to change my site in unfair ways just to end it. It he doesn't like my generous offer of modifying that Story page and all, that's his problem. He can whine all he wants. It'll end when people who support him realize that "hey, this guy won't let this thing die." It might take the longest time, but it'll happen sooner or later. Well, let's keep a watch for an exciting new update to the Saxman page shall we?! =D
--Saxman
The Fall of SSRG
Pachuka was later banned on the Sonic Secrets Center, but this proved to be a misunderstanding and the ban was lifted. [2]. When Andy found out about this he forced Digital Xeron, one of the administrators to re-ban him [3]
Around this time Andy had "retired" from SSRG. He gave ownership of the site to Magus. Chaos, as it turns out, cooperated better with PACHUKA than Andy and, as a result, managed to form a 'peace treaty' together. A topic called 'ENOUGH' was posted on CulT and SSRG, showing to everyone that there would be peace between the two sites. This infuriated Andy, who then proceeded to come out of retirement and ban PACHUKA from the SSRG. In retaliation, PACHUKA takes down the CulT in protest and refuses to bring it back up until Andy agrees for peace. Instead, Andy removes all of the SSRG and redirects it to a simple page saying the the SSRG had died.
Rise to Power
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With SSRG closed down Sonic CulT takes the spot as the largest Sonic research site in the community. Many of SSRG's previous members either migrated to Sonic CulT, or other smaller sites such as Sonic Classic.
Greenegg
Many members, PACHUKA included, weren't pleased with how the site was layed out. All pages were HTML based, and very disorganized. PACHUKA contacted his friend Martin, also known as Goomba, to create a whole new CMS for the site. This backend became known as Greenegg, which is still used by the site today. The CulT's main page was shut down for several days while it was being rebuilt for the new system. The resulting system was SQL based and much more organized. Further inspection of the code however shows that the system was very badly coded. The current owner of the site, Sazpaimon, took it upon the liberty of drx to code an entirely new CMS for the site.
Recent years
Between 2004 to present, Sonic CulT has had several changes.
CulT Buyout and Ownership Change
In mid-2004, PACHUKA announced that he was no longer interested in running his website, and decided to sell it to the highest bidder. Many CulT members up funds to buy the CulT, totaling $850. Member Tigress fronted the money, and was later paid back by others who had promised to pay. The concensus was that member and at the time maintainer Sazpaimon would be appointed as head of operations of the website. On August 18th, 2004, PACHUKA gave the team temporary hosting on his current server, which ended up being a bad decision, as the host was asking for sums totaling $200 per month, wheras PACHUKA recieved free hosting. Soon after Tigress gave her share of the site to InsaneSonikkuFan, her boyfriend at the time.
Many members of the site voiced their general displeasure of the ownership change, calling the site "TCR CulT," and became the source of frequent hackings, many of them by actual forum members. Soon after the ownership change the hosting was cut short for unknown reasons, and the site was taken offline without any form of a backup. A strategy for bringing the site back up was established, and on October 3rd the site was back online. Unfortunately, the team could not come up with the money to recieve hosting for the month of Decemver, and as a result of this and the general displeasure with the site's status, Sazpaimon decided to shut the site down, but not before being contacted by PACHUKA.
PACHUKA had noticed the team's difficulty with maintaining the site, and offered his hand in helping them. PACHUKA's plan was to pretend that he was returning to the site as owner, while Sazpaimon could do as he pleases with the site. As a reult, Sazpaimon would recieve free hosting from the server administrator if he believed the site was PACHUKA's. Sazpaimon agreed, and contacted InsaneSonikkuFan about it. ISF did not trust PACHUKA, and asked for a signed and written statement from PACHUKA. Sapaimon contacted PACHUKA about this, who did not understand why he was asking ISF about it, as Sazpaimon owned the sonic-cult.org domain, and could do what he pleased. Realizing this, Sazpaimon dismisses ISF and gives the domain to PACHUKA for him to use as proof to his host that he runs the site again.
This would end up being short lived, as PACHUKA would end up being arrested in late December due to molestation charges. The site was taken offline by a friend of his with no way of bringing it back. A temporary forum backup was put into place, however, the main site would be offline until February of 2005, when Sazpaimon stepped up and used his backup to resore the site under the domain name "sonic-cult.net," Where it would reside until later that year.
The Slow Return of the CulT
During 2005, the site saw numerous server changes due to problems with different hosts. In February, the site was hosted on a friend of Sazpaimon's server for a very low price. Random outages prevented the server from being online at normal times, and a few months later the entire server would go offline and, due to issues between Sazpaimon and his host, the site ended up getting removed from the server before getting a chance to back it up.
Shortly afterward, Sazpaimon recieved hosting from a member named Dark, a friend of Tweaker's. The CulT would reside on this server for a number of months before it was decided that it was not adequete enough to host a site as large as the CulT. The site was moved onto a more powerful server, however this was short lived when the server was DDOSed, and as a result the CulT was kicked off of the network.
The CulT now owns a dedicated server which is used to host a number of community sites, including The Sonic 2 Beta Page, Hacking CulT, Hidden Palace, and NiGHTSintoDREAMS.com. Since then, the site has since regained its spot and popularity in the Sonic Community.