The Actual News:
Ok so I’ve been cleaning up my room in order to turn it into a studio for YouTube video podcasting. That’s a big story in-and-of-itself, but in doing so, I rediscovered a bunch of archival CDs made in 2002 when I accidentally deleted my entire computer… along with basically all of my archives of PA!. Now at the time the files I recovered were barely readable, so I saved them all in the hope that they could be better decoded at a later date. Well, its 18 years later, and so there is no problems in reading the recovered files. Yay!
Now I’m still going through everything, because there’s A LOT to go through… but I do have a few things I can share already. So enjoy a quick look at some missing bits of PA!’s history!
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Speaking of “missing bits”, as I’m sure everyone should know by now, but my very first fake card was of Missingno. But this Missingno is not the same Missingno fake card that’s on the site, but the ACTUAL original Missingno that I made on a piece of paper, before I made it into a graphical fake. Wowzers!
Pretty crazy, huh?
As for other fakes that I lost in the crash and were never archived anywhere, I managed to rediscover these two fakes: Nick15’s Alakazam, and Rocket’s Fearow.
For the record, and from what I remember, these cards were for…
- Nick15’s Alakazam: if I remember correctly, this was a promo fake I made for the San Francisco qualifiers for the 2001 West Coast Super Trainer Showdown, dated Sept 8th, 2001. I also remember wanting to try out the VS style of having evolution Pokémon as a Basic.
- Rocket’s Fearow: meanwhile, this was a test fake card for the “Razzo Edition” set that I was going to work on with former PA! staffer, KaizernMyuu. Specifically, we were going to use a largely completely new blank for the set, which looks like brushed metal that had been shot at with bullets. But alas, the set was not meant to be.
Now that I think about it some more, I remember wanting to keep Nick15’s Alakazam as a card exclusive to the 2001 San Francisco qualifier… which is why it isn’t even numbered nor is there even an entry for it on the Other Fakes page. …uh… oops! I guess I ruined that idea!
That said, I certainly didn’t want the artwork for the card to NEVER be seen again, as really enjoyed doing the art, so I ended up turning it an intro page graphic. And so here’s a larger version for you!
Other site layout items which I found that I feel is worth sharing were these elements which I thought I had lost! In particular, here is the sidebar I used in PA! v2:
…which I always loved because of that rainbow effect I used. (However ssshhhh, don’t tell anyone, but the colors I chose were from Adobe Photoshop’s default color palette.)
Then here is the layout I created for the Version 3.5 update I released in December 1999.
Although… actually, I think this picture already exists on the PA! deviantArt page… however this layout was also foundwith isome other v3 stuff, so I’ll share them next time.
Finally, while poking through some old HTML files, I discovered an old copy of the PA! Forums when it was hosted on ezBoards. You can see the actual HTML file at that link there, although none of the links actually lead anywhere.
Or you can just take a look at the screenshot below.
Its neat seeing what everyone back then were thinking about. And I also remember a lot of these names, like Elroyhead64, LittleOD2, The Rob, ChikoritaCrazy, and wh… what the… wait a second here. Do you see what I see?
HOLY CRACKERS! SEREBII himself visited my forums in order to get some advice about running his website!
Well, I mean, this was 2001 afterall, and back then I was the more established site while Serebii was just another newcomer to the scene. And not that I want to take any credit for all the work he put into his own website… but hey, it’s crazy what hindsight can reveal about the people and the world around you. A lot can happen in 20 years, and now he’s the one with the huge site.
Now I really wish I could re-read his post and see what advice we gave him back then!
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Ok, that’s all I have to share with you guys right now. There is plenty more cool bits of Pokémon history and other PA! nostalgia to come, so keep your eyes peeled for the next update. Huzzah, good times.