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Mainman

From Sonic Retro

Revision as of 09:49, 16 May 2010 by Mainman (talk | contribs) (Grammar cleanup)

<forumuser name="Mainman"/>

"Really, the reason I think I stuck with the franchise all these years was the brilliant soundtracks."


Mainman is a full-time Scotsman and member of the Sonic Retro forums.

Possessing no abilities relevant to the 'Technical' side of Retro's specialties, he has instead turned his hand towards contribution and editing for the Sonic Retro Wiki. Most of what he contributes is well-meaning and meant to tidy up the wiki's 'loose ends', but inevitably his inexperience in wiki editing and/or lack of sleep causes a few unnecessary edits and headaches for the sysops.

Biography

Hailing from the Edinburgh-Glasgow belt of lowland Scotland, Mainman grew up primarily as a Nintendo fan, being given the Nintendo 64 and GameBoy Colour as Xmas/birthday presents. He had a neighbour who had once shown him a Mega Drive with Sonic 1, and there was a similar setup available at an 'After-School Club' (codename for 'Big Kids Crèche') he was forced to attend regularly, due to both parents holding jobs. He was never given time to get beyond the Marble Zone back then, so Sonic games on the whole were given casual attention at best. On a few occasions he would buy issues of Sonic the Comic, but the series was largely ignored until very late into the run (when they mostly or entirely contained reprints of earlier stories, to help new readers catch up).

A change came in the year 2000, when he and his younger brother were blown away by previews of Sonic Adventure. The brothers immediately collaborated to buy a Dreamcast to share, and bought both Adventure games (and numerous other titles) over the course of the console's lifespan. When the news arrived that the console would be discontinued, and the recent Sonic games would get updated re-releases on the upcoming Gamecube, Mainman passed ownership of the Dreamcast to his brother and bought a Gamecube with Sonic Adventure 2: Battle, after which he bought pretty much every Sonic game released on the Gamecube and GameBoy Advance. Suspicions that the series was in decline arose after finishing the stories of Sonic Heroes and completing most of the titles found in Sonic Mega Collection, and became painfully clear after an All A-Rank clear of Shadow the Hedgehog (A feat which, to this day, he's not quite sure where he found the patience for it).

Despite being almost out of his teenage years and with growing dissatisfaction with the quality of modern Sonic titles ('06 notwithstanding), Mainman continued to buy new releases in the series. Eventually, he pinpointed the reason he was doing this (see page quote) and began researching the various music albums released for the franchise...

Sonic Community History

Sonic Retro was Mainman's first true foray into the Sonic Scene, having been frightened away for years by the horrendous examples of fan-media that had become popular elsewhere on the Internet purely for their pathetic and/or horror-inducing nature. Retro was a different sort of beast though; the community were clearly intelligent and argued fairly, but were still intimidating because of the focus and wealth of knowledge dedicated to the disassembly and hacking of Sonic games. After initially discovering the site via Sonic 2 HD news, he eventually found his way to the wiki when researching the music albums related to the franchise, and had a side-goal of finding the issues of Sonic the Comic he had bought when he was younger. After spending some time exploring other areas of the website and wiki, he was impressed with the quality of the content, though less-than-enthused that he would frequently find little or no information about the specifics he was searching for (ie. Individual issues of the aforementioned comic).

The plunge was taken shortly after discovering a missing entry in the Music Albums section; it was an album he possessed, but the wiki had apparently never heard of it. In the space of one night, he applied on the forums, had such an impressive introductory post that he was immediately promoted to the Member level, and then finally gave Club SEGA its own wiki page. After that, he stuck around to fill in some missing information for 'Sonic the Comic', which lead to the creation of a wiki page on the first issue, which lead to a page about the second issue, etc. It's safe to say he's addicted to wiki contribution, trying to ensure that no other person who searches for official information here can say "Oh, I guess nobody knows about this after all".

Other Presences in the Sonic Community

Outside the Sonic Community

Like many confused teens, Mainman began his Internet life on Newgrounds and Habbo Hotel. After loyalty to these hormone pits for several years, he attempted to branch out into specialist communities, but would either give up after a few posts or lurk for a week. The one place he was significantly present at was the Press Start To Play forums, prior to their third provider switch. His major claim to fame at the time was paying for a one-year renewal of the site's ProBoards licence, when it transpired that neither of the webcomic's creators could afford it and announced that they'd have to let the forums die.

Following this, and until the present, he is mostly seen online through his Steam Community Profile, being involved in various groups and being an admin for a private community Team Fortress 2 server. Steam is the most reliable method of contacting him, as he's terrible at remembering to launch other IM clients and can't figure out how to get IRC working.

Projects