Sonic Stuff Research Group
From Sonic Retro
Template:Infobox Website The Sonic Stuff Research Group (aka SSRG), now known as the Sonic Game Modification Community (aka SGMC), has long been considered the birthplace of the Sonic hacking scene.
History
The site was initally called Sonic Stuff. (Known today by its incorrect name of Andy's Hacking Station) Formed in the fall of 1996, this site was actually a subsection of Emulation Zone. Over time, it grew in content and contained a modest collection of Sonic the Hedgehog oddities collected by Andy Wolan and Stealth. The most famous were hidden names found in the title screen of Sonic 1 and the "Lock-On Technology Guide", the scene's first hacking guide.
As the site grew, so did its popularity. In the fall of 1998, Stealth directed Andy to an interesting site maintained by Andre Dirk with screen shots of a beta version of Sonic 2. After some discussion, Andre agreed to join Sonic Stuff. With the increase in personal, a name change was necessary. And thus, the Sonic Stuff site became the Sonic Stuff Research Group.
Over time, the site was expanded and was joined by many rising stars in the Sonic Community, including Jan Abaza, Saxman, Simon Wai, and numerous others. The site also won numerous awards, including TSSZ's "Best Sonic Site" Emmy for 1999, 2000 and 2001.
In 2001, things started to take a turn. After running Emulation Zone for 5 years, Andy felt it was time tor step aside and move on. Initially, Andy wanted to pass control to Saxman that summer, but for some reason, Saxman was unreachable. (Unconfirmed rumor was that Saxman was grounded for bad grades.) And so, Stealth was named the new sucessor around Sept of that year. Some SSRG staffers had bad blood with Stealth and did not like his rise in the SSRG ranks. As a result, some staffers decided they wanted to leave SSRG. This would be the beginning of the break-up of SSRG. In addition, Stealth was involved in numerous arguments on the forums, causing flamewars to brew. Andy took back control in early 2002 in an attempt to restore order. His intention was to later find a new successor that would not create any new conflicts within the community.
In 2002, Saxman felt he should split from SSRG to start his own site. He got the idea from his father, using the analogy that if someone works at a motorcycle shop for many years, there was nothing wrong with him leaving and starting his own. What Saxman failed realize that by splitting his site from SSRG, he was also tearing up the Sonic Community that he, Andy, and the rest of the sceners formed over the years. He also claimed that he was not getting any recognition for his work from Andy. This is considered puzzling, given that Andy tried to hand him SSRG a few months back.
Nevertheless, over time a flamewar between Saxman and Stealth formed. Andy pulled both to the side to have them cool down. Stealth surprisingly agreed, Saxman did not, bad mouthing Andy in return. Andy then temporarily pulled Saxman's hacking site offline in an effort to have him cool down. Saxman incorrectly assumed that Andy was jealous of his site and decided to leave. For whatever reason, he joined PACHUKA, the same person he said he despised for years prior. Later, ??? site was kicked off of SSRG after he revealed he would leave SSRG as soon as Saxman's site came online.
Throughout all of this, the community was in turmoil, and flamewars, arguments, politics, profanity and PACHUKA's rampant trolling arguably did little more than made things worse. But, throughout this, Andy was determined in selecting a new successor for SSRG to hopefully unite a troubled community. After a lengthy selection process, and after a long internet radio broadcast, Chaos was selected as the person most capabble of achieving this objective, in accordance to Andy's judgement. The community rejoiced. Everything was looking good.
Chaos' reign as SSRG head would be short lived, however. Pachuka, who refused to enter any sort of peace with SSRG under Andy, spoke to Chaos over IM after he was announced as the new head. He was confronted by Pachuka that he wanted to establish a friendship between SSRG and Sonic CulT. Chaos accepted Pachuka's offer.
What Chaos failed to consider was that Pachuka had been given numerous second chances by other community members, including Andy. Pachuka would then go back on his words and continue to cause trouble like he always did. Not only that, Pachuka released an altered copy of Andy's radio broadcast announcing the new head of SSRG, adding racist comments about the French. (Chaos was from France.)
Andy was not amused that Chaos was to form this peace deal, as he believed that it would only suit PACHUKA's interests, and that PACHUKA would break the deal at a later point in time. Pachuka said he would shut down Sonic CulT unless the deal was restored. Andy claimed that he would rather have SSRG shut down than have it affiliated with Pachuka. And thus, on January 23, 2003, SSRG was shut down. It was stated that Andy would permanently delete SSRG, but rumor has it that a backup copy was made.
Allegedly, Chaos later admitted on more than one occasion to Andy that he believed he was wrong in accepting PACHUKA's offer, noting that PACHUKA had a clear track record of breaking numerous peace deals in the past. This observation would be supported with various actions made by Pachuka at a later point in time, such as intentionally sucking up bandwidth from competitor website Moogle Cavern to force the site offline.
After the site's collapse, the SSRG was illegally taken over by JohnnyUK and Ultima on the Shadowsoft Games' server. They claim that since Chaos was named the successor of SSRG, and that Chaos passed them control of SSRG while his was in a state of shock following the collapse of SSRG, they now owned SSRG. However, they failed to read a clause in the successor process that was listed on SSRG. In it, it was stated that Andy reserved the right to regain control of SSRG if he deemed the successor unfit to continue operations of the SSRG. Despite a cease and desist email from Andy, JohnnyUK and Ultima continued to run SSRG illegally on the site.
Eventually, Andy later did transfer ownership of SSRG, but to former SSRG staffer to Striker. As of November 2005 the site is now maintained by OrdosAlpha (the current owner), Striker and StephenUK on its own server. Currently, it hosts a variety of ROM mods, utilities and guides, as well as the current incarnation of Secrets of Sonic the Hedgehog and the Sonic Official Art Archive.
A spinoff of SSRG, named Secrets of Sonic Team, was formed in secret by former SSRG staffer Rlan. It was launched on January 23, 2004 (?) after rumors that Andy was reviving SSRG. SOST was a fully independent operation hosted on Emulation Zone. Maintenance on the site was stopped in 2006 as Rlan pursued other interests.
In July 2007, the SGMC went down due to hosting issues and to make it worse, OrdosAlpha's hard drive died, which unfortunately had the SGMC backup due to his CD burner not working. A fresh message board opened on the 10th of August, the site is currently offline although the Art Archive is up & running.