Sonic Stuff Research Group

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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.

The site was initally called Sonic Stuff. (Known today by it's 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 Hedgeog 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 it's 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 necesary. 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 Wi 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 year, Andy felt it was time tor step aside and move on. Initally, 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 staffer decided they wanted to leave SSRG. (This would be the beginning of the break-up of SSRG.) In addition, Stealth was involved in numerous arguements on the forums, causing flame wars 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 analagy 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 puzzeling given that Andy tried to hand him SSRG a few months back.

Never-the-less, over time a flame war between Saxman and Stealth formed. Andy pulled both to the side to habe 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 jelious 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.

And through-out all of this, the community was in turmoil, and flame wars, arguements, politics, profanity and Pachuka stupidity just made things worse. But throught-out this, Andy was determined in selecting a new succesor 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 capabilty of achieving this objective. The community rejoiced. Everythign was looking good.

Chaos' rain as SSRG head would be short lived. Pachuka, who refused to enter any sort of peace with SSRG under Andy, spoke to Chaos over IM after he was annouced as the new head. He was confronted by Pachuka that he wanted to establish a friendship between SSRG and SC. A tired Chaos blindly 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 annoucing the new head of SSRG, adding racist comments about the French. (Chaos was from France.)

Andy was unamused that Chaos would form a peace deal with someone that would only break it when it suited Pachuka's interests and broke the deal. Pachuka said he would shutdown SC unless the deal was restored. Andy said he would rathe have SSRG shutdown than have it affiliated with Pachuka. And thus, on Jan 23, 2003, SSRG was shut-down. It was stated that Andy would permanently delete SSRG, but rumor has it that a back-up copy was made.

Chaos later admited on two occation to Andy that he was wrong in accepting Apchuka's offer, noting that Pachuka had a clear track record of breaking numerous peace deals in the past. This observation would be later supported with actions by Pachukas such as intentionally sucking-up bandwidth from competitor website Moogle Cavern to force the site off-line.

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 sucessor process that was listed on SSRG. In it, it pretty much said that Andy reserves the right to regain control of SSRG if he deems the sucessor unfit to continue operations of 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 Novemeber 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 spin-off of SSRG, named Secrets of Sonic Team, was formed in secret by former SSRG staffer Rlan. It was released on Jan. 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 persued other interests.

External Links

• Former SSRG Website
• Sonic Game Modification Community (Offical SSRG Spinoff)
• SGMC Forums
• Secrets of Sonic Team (Supported Spin-off of SSRG)