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Blue Streak

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<forumuser name="Blue Streak" /> Blue Streak (real name Andrew Shevchuk) has been a member of the Sonic Community since late 2001. Originally a visitor at sites like Sonic Pandemonium, he discovered the SSRG in early 2000 and began to frequent Jan Abaza's Area 51 message board there as a lurker. When he finally registered at Area 51's first EZBoard incarnation on October 6, 2001, he chose the alias Blue Streak 14. "Blue Streak" is the opening phrase of the SatAM theme song and by definition a "blue streak" is something that moves by very fast. The name stuck (although the "14" didn't last long -- he was fourteen years old at the time).

As 2002 rolled in, Blue Streak became very active at Area 51 and posted on the message board nearly everyday. Early 2002 is sometimes referred to as the "Golden Age" of hacking in the Sonic Community due to the vast number of discoveries found in the 16-bit Sonic ROMs during this era. Although he was never a hacker back then, he did enjoy the friendship (and rampant speculation) he found at Jan's site. At some level it even supplanted his real-world social life. Unfortunately, disagreements gradually arose among the community which forced heated debates and flamewars. Blue Streak weathered these issues because he valued the friendship's he'd made, but in 2003 his presence in the community dwindled with the continual rise and fall of Area 51. By 2004 and 2005 he had mostly disappeared from the Sonic Community and was not to be heard from for three years.

During this time Blue Streak graduated high school and went to study physics and astronomy at the Pennsylvania State University, from which he has since graduated. In June of 2005, he came upon a phenomenon known as the N-Game at the gaming website Moz La Punk and joined the forums there. The N-Game was about a big conspiracy surrounding Nintendo's then upcoming console codenamed "Revolution" and involved wild speculation (often centered around virtual reality) about how Nintendo might disrupt the console market with their new system. He spent a year-and-a-half in the community at Moz La Punk, but gradually all the hype diffused as Nintendo revealed their new system (the Nintendo Wii) and he was thus fated to leave.

Blue Streak spent most of 2007 in pursuit of non-gaming-related activities on the web. However, late in 2006 he discovered Speed Demos Archive and TAS Videos and became interested in videogame speedruns. He still regularly lurks at these communities, although he does not frequently post there and does not have the time to dedicate himself to speedrunning.

In January of 2008, Tweaker discovered a post Blue Streak had made on TAS Videos (through Upthorn) and asked him to come back to the Sonic Community in its current incarnation, Sonic Retro. Blue Streak accepted, expressing a desire to reunite with those friends he had known five or six years prior. After participating in drx's massive prototype release, he took an interest in the Sonic 2 HD project and has worked on producing art and music for it. Although moving on in real life to graduate studies at the University of Arizona (for astronomy), he remains an active member at Sonic Retro and is a moderator for the Sonic 2 HD community project forum.


Fun Facts

  • His birthday is February 27, 1987.
  • He is gay, and single.
  • He has donated (an undisclosed amount of) money to the general Sonic Retro fund.
  • When mentioned by name on Retro, he likes to be called "Blue" for short.