User:RyogaMasaki

RyogaMasaki joined the Sonic scene early in Area 51's forum history. He posted small tidbits of information, namely insights and theories, as well as factual information at times, on both the forums and at SoStH. After a year hiatus, he returned to the Area 51 forums as it entered it's ezBoard era. He contributed what he could, namely small bits of discovered Sonic CD tiles when their decompression format was discovered, and provided a Japanese aspect on a variety of subjects.

His site, the Shadow Zone, was relatively small and unpopular, but maintained a pretty devoted base of people. It was intended to be a more organized archive of lost information, much like Area 51 and SoStH were, but in more logical, laid out format. It was also a home a few unique articles, such as the Sonic Cliches and the DEBUG MODE, which was a monthly contest at recognizing a zoomed in, small part of a Sonic level. tSZ, originally hosted on the long-lost segasonic.net, tried to apply to join the SSRG, but was rejected, and the site was ignored, and died.

After the infamous schism at Area 51, Ryoga followed Pachuka and others in breaking away to join Sonic CulT, Pachuka's then small Sonic information site. Ryoga gave what was left of tSZ to Pachuka to use in any way he saw fit, and the basic design of tSZ was incorporated in the new CulT's design.

After founding the slow-starting #area51 irc channel, Ryoga also started #cult, which flourished with activity for a long time. Many of the #area51 members moved to this new channel.

In the actual Sonic hacking/lost information scene, Ryoga has contributed a fair amount, such as article and game ad scans, interviews with people involved in game development, detailed research on the Sonic Adventure 2 Chao garden leftovers on the dreamcast version, small lost graphics in Sonic CD, Sonic Adventure, and Sonic Adventure 2, as well as contributing translations from Japanese to English, and providing a method for obtaining Sonic Eraser.

Ryoga left the cult not long before Pachuka officially gave it up and sold it to Sazpaimon. Growing disinterest in modern Sonic games and problems with the cult's new policies were the reasons.

Recently he has been seen around Sonic CulT and the Sonic 2 Beta Message Boards (though not so much for the latter), but is only fairly active.