History of FantasyAnime!

 
2007-2008 ~ Healthy year of updates
Yep, I would say this was a very healthy year of updates for my FantasyAnime. I added the usual beefy amount of desktop wallpapers, new maps, new music, new improvement patches, new movie clips, new emulators, new tutorials, new art, new screen shots, etc. Generally, everything that makes my site great has new material.

My save state project is still rolling out! This year I have saves for Ogre Battle MotBQ and Phantasy Star 2.

My FantasyAnime now officially has an RSS feed! Yep, I am keeping up with the times. Now my visitors can easily check up on my site updates with whatever RSS client they use.

I FINALLY added all the classic CD RPGs for download! Lunar The Silver Star & Eternal Blue, Shining Force CD, Ys Book, Ys IV, etc. - all of them. I'm using the split RAR file tactic to distribute them. It seems to be working well for my bandwidth.

I added two new RPG shrines!! Wow, it's been almost two years since I added one (Star Ocean was the last one). These two new shrines are for Shining Force: Final Conflict and Final Fantasy Tactics.

About the Shining Force: Final Conflict shrine -- Its fan-based translation finished quite a long while ago, and I was too lazy to add a shrine for it. But this year I really wanted to add it, but I was still too lazy to make a shrine for it. So I tossed it in my Sword of Hajya shrine and made it a dual shrine. It didn't feel right doing that, so then I finally made a shrine for it. It's a small shrine with only five sections, but better than nothing.

About the Final Fantasy Tactics shrine -- Now this is a REAL shrine. It took me like a month to make, working on it little by little. I really wanted to make a fancy Flash opening for its main page, but my test drafts were too heavy and lagged like crazy. I ended up settling with just a video opening. And just like SaGa Frontier, I have the ISO up for download. And from the looks of it, it's going to stay.

I officially announced that I will no longer make any shrines for 16-bit games. My passion for the 16-bit era left me. And now I'm getting more into the 32-bit era. Slowly I'm gathering content for new Playstation RPGs that will be shrined eventually. For my upcoming Parasite Eve shrine I finished collecting screen shots and game saves for it.

 
2006-2007 ~ Multimedia madness
I've further been getting into adding more movie clips (WMV and Flash video). Clips such as the FF7 PS3 technical demo, Tales of Phantasia anime ep. 4, the openings for all 5 Sega CD RPGs, openings to several of my most popular RPGs, and all of FF7's 3D sequences from CD 1. Ah, but I haven't stopped there. I've added CUSTOM TRAILERS. With a screen recorder I captured various gameplay sequences and put together my own trailers to further promote my games. The game saves made it possible to easily jump to any point of the game. However, these custom trailers are rather time-consuming to make. I only have trailers for Dungeons & Dragons arcade, Seiken Densetsu 3, Alcahest, and Shining Force 2.

My save state project is still rolling out. I've added saves for Dungeons & Dragons arcade, Final Fantasy Legend 2, Sailor Moon RPG, Chrono Trigger, Tales of Phantasia, Final Fantasy 4, Seiken Densetsu 3, and Final Fantasy 7. That pretty much covers my covered RPGs. Generally, the handful of games left that don't have game saves are the unpopular ones.

Geez, I'm embarrassed for getting all excited over Dreamweaver templates last year. PHP includes are my thing now for making instant edits to repeating page content (i.e. a navigation).

I pioneered into 3D Flash! I made a neato starship for Star Ocean's opening and a neato recreation of the world platform for Terranigma's main page.

I held my first contest! With the release of GBA Tales of Phantasia, a marketing company sent me two copies; one to keep and review, and one to give away. And so I did. I organized a fan art contest. There were about 20 participants. I asked the winner to send me a photo of her happily holding the game, but she never did. :\ Ah well. I promised to put up all the submitted fan art, but I never did. ^^;; Ah well. This contest was an interesting experience. I might do it again.

Hell froze over! I've added PSX ISOs! And not just temporarily, they're here to stay! Finally, Final Fantasy 7 and SaGa Frontier can be downloaded. For so long I've wanted to put them up. Now all of the games in my site are available for download. What's held me back is that my hosting package didn't have enough bandwidth. But they've upgraded so much that I pretty much have unlimited bandwidth. (Note: Lol, actually, I ended up having to take down the FF7 ISO in early '07. It got too popular and my host bitched to me about my high bandwidth.)

Besides adding some coverage for GBA Tales of Phantasia, there really isn't anything else new. I've started a shrine for SNES Cyber Knight 2 (recently fan translated), but I lost interest in continuing it.

 
2005-2006 ~ Pioneering Into New Areas
FantasyAnime pioneered into new areas of wonder and delight Firstly, I gained the ability to create my own movie clips. I re-added all the media from PSX Chrono Trigger and PSX Final Fantasy 4-6. I converted the movie clips of its CGI sequences to WMV, making them smaller and retain the same quality. For some movie clips I combined sequences to make viewing esaier, like my 'all sequences' PSX Chrono Trigger movie and my 'all commercials' Phantasy Star movie. With the release of Macromedia Flash 8 and the amazing compression of its new video codec, I added full-length anime episodes and Flash video versions of my popular movie clips! FantasyAnime now has up the Tales of Phantasia anime, the Chrono Trigger anime, the Final Fantasy 7 anime, and several episodes of Sailor Moon Sailor Stars & Live Action Sailor Moon.

Speaking of which, I remodeled my Sailor Moon site. It's the first time in years I touched one of my anime sites. And if you noticed on my main page, I removed my anime buttons. I came to the realization that I'm not going to revive the anime portion of my site anytime soon, so I felt I should cease drawing attention to my anime subsites on my main page with the buttons. I still passionately love anime, now more than ever since I've been renting them from Netflix like there's no tomorrow. But (sighs) the past several years I just haven't cared to make any subsites for anime, and I'm not sure if I ever will again.

I pioneered into hosting ISOs! Towards the end of the year I made a daring move to distribute all the Sega CD/TG16-CD ISOs as a holiday special. It was a test to see if I can have them up indefinitely. Unfortunately, the test failed. I even had to remove the ISOs early, due to the high bandwidth they consumed.

I pioneered into Dreamweaver templates! Templates allow you to easily modify repeating page content in an instant. For example, if I had a text navigation on 100 pages and I suddenly decided to add a new section, I can do so with no problem. Templates replaced frames.

I pioneered into Flash! I added Flash trailers for Secret of Mana, Treasure of the Rudras, and Ogre Battle. I remodeled my "Classic CD RPGs" main page to a nifty entirely-Flash layout, with the "other stuff" part having a neato interactive desk. I remodeled a few RPG sites with Flash main pages or added a Flash navigation to every page. I added a remodeled "The Bleu Shrine" to my Shining Force subsite, containing two hilarious Flash cartoons (er, but the second one is halfway complete).

I pioneered into game saves! One thing the internet lacks in is game saves. Sure you can easily obtain ending saves from Zophar's Domain, but what about saves from throughout the game? What if you accidentally deleted your current progress in an RPG? Is there any hope for you? Now there is. Thanks to the help of several wonderful and dedicated people from my board, nearly half of FantasyAnime's covered RPGs now have a complete collection of periodical saves.

I pioneered into high resolution wallpapers! FantasyAnime has prepared for the future, for I have expanded the 'default' set of wallpaper resolutions to include 1280x1024, 1600x1200, and 1920x1200 (widescreen). Every chance I get I try to make vector-based wallpapers in Adobe Illustrator, because vectors can resize to large sizes with no loss of quality.

I pioneered into interviewing! Yes, I interviewed the almighty Gideon Zhi (Treasure of the Rudras, Cyber Knight, Front Mission GH), Nightcrawler (Dual Orb 2), and FH (Front Mission, Alcahest). Since I've made FantasyAnime such a dedicated home to fan translated RPGs, it only seems fit to go to the next level and get more involved in the RPGs I love. Although because of the limitations of conversing through e-mail, I asked them the same set of questions.

I pioneered into ads - again! ^^;; I added a Google ad to the bottom of the main page. I hope you don't mind. It's been years since I've worked (due to college) and I need money. I also added the Google ad with a "please click it for hosting such large files for you" plea to my D&D Arcade Downloads and Sailor Moon full episodes sections. Trust me, I won't go any farther than this. One of the things I take pride in is that my Fantasyanime doesn't bombard you with ads and that everything is free.

As for the new sites, I finally added one for Star Ocean. It's a good reflection of how I create subsites now. It's a delightful harmony of eye candy from the game, Flash, CSS, and a Dreamweaver template. Besides that, to all my other subsites I've just done the usual bundle of small updates: new wallpapers, screen shots, art, various remodelings, etc.

That's the gist of it. 2005-2006 has been one of the most fruitful and enthused years of my FantasyAnime. A bright future lies ahead!

 
2004-2005 ~ The Rebirth of FantasyAnime
This has been my year of design enlightenment, for my design abilities have taken a dramatic jump to a higher level. I've mastered Adobe Illustrator and created several gorgeous desktop wallpapers. I learned CSS and used it to remodel many pages. CSS gives me much more control over how the page looks and it cuts a page's memory size in half. The year consisted of mainly remodelings and media updates. Tenchi Muyo, Ranma 1/2, and Sailor Moon still remain my only anime sites. I've started collecting material for two more anime sites, but I've been too enthusiastic with my RPG remodelings to devote time to them.

This year ended with a breakthrough - I learned Flash! :) Yes, I am now familiar with the standard for internet animation and interactivity. As an artist obsessed with cartoons, its only natural for me produce near-professional Flashes early on. A month or two after I learned Flash, I produced The Summoning, a fully-animated short, which I've been told is much better quality than many of the Flash cartoons at Newgrounds. >:D I intend to integrate Flash all throughout FantasyAnime. Most particularly, I intend to add all sorts of rpg-based Flash cartoons. Oh, I did add a new site, its Front Mission: Gun Hazard, and its my first Flash-based site! The navigation is a Flash and the site opens up with a short Flash trailer, displaying the prologue images of the game.

This year also ended with a host switch, I'm back with DreamHost. Yup, the host from three years ago that couldn't handle my bandwidth consumption. These past years Dreamhost has been occasionally increasing the stats of their packages to remain competitive. My host, Blue Domino, has kept their package stats locked, so it would only be a matter of time until DreamHost beat them. And boy did Dreamhost beat them! With DreamHost I'm now paying $15/m for 7.5 GB of space and 192 GB/m of bandwidth. With Blue Domino I'm paying a yucky $35/m for 1 GB of space and 60 GB/m of bandwidth. Now I'm saving $20 a month! With all this space and bandwidth, I can put up some large file downloads and I don't have to worry about putting large Flash cartoons. ^_^ (btw, if you decide to sign up with DreamHost, use "amitrius17" as your referrer ;D )

 
2003-2004 ~ RPGs/Emulation Galore & No Anime
My interest for fan translated RPGs is as vibrant as ever. I've added shrines for Live-A-Live, Treasure Hunter G, and Treasure of the Rudras. Several English translations will be completed soon and I am quite eager to cover them. I have also pioneered into the arcade realm and added both of the Dungeons & Dragons arcade games. Throughout the years I have received many e-mails with computer illiterate people struggling to understand emulation and getting it to work. In an attempt to end their frustrations, I created Video Game Emulation for Newbies, a subsite with a detailed introduction to emulation and tutorials for the #1 emulators of each video game system. Despite all this, all my updates have been RPG/emulation-related. The anime portion remains with only Tenchi Muyo, Ranma 1/2 and Sailor Moon. Unfortunately, that won't change until I decide to upgrade my account because I don't really have much web space left to cover another anime section.

 
2002-2003 ~ So Long, Pikachu
I eventually got a job! ^_^ With money in hand, I decided to sign up with Blue Domino. For the fourth (and hopefully final) time, my FantasyAnime is back up on the net! =D But... I am disgusted with my current anime websites: Pokemon, Tenchi Muyo, Ranma 1/2, Poltergiest Report, Vampire Hunter D, Sailor Moon, Ronin Warriors, Digimon and Dragon Ball Z. I removed them because (1) each one had nothing but hundreds of bad quality screen shots, (2) my Pokemon, Digimon and DBZ sites were way too popular and I feared their popularity would endanger my future with Blue Domino, (3) I didn't even like Pokemon, Digimon and DBZ anymore >_< and, (4) I didn't care to update most of my anime sites. They had to go. And then I grabbed my new anime DVDs and captured hundreds of new DVD-quality screen shots. I resurrected my Tenchi Muyo, Sailor Moon and Ranma 1/2 sites from the dead and remade them from scratch. But what about my rpg sites? Did they disgust me too? Yes! >_< I removed 1 or 2 of them and totally remodeled the rest, updating them to my current peak of web design skills. Besides all that, I've been coming up with a ton of new sections. I created RPG Lunch Break, Translation Nation and Classic CD RPGs. As for my RPG category, I've added Bahamut Lagoon, Arcana, Alcahest and Phantasy Star 2.

 
2001-2002 ~ FantasyAnime Vs. Bandwidth Limits
My website was shut down a total of 3 times. Why? Because the Summer of 2000 was when the internet started going downhill. Hundreds of well-known fan-based websites became broken links. My time came when my host, Digital Chainsaw, was bought out by another company and they decided to change all the rules. One Friday I received an e-mail from them which said I owe about $5,000 and I have until Monday to give it to them. I said "screw it!" and cancelled my account with them. My website was down for a couple months. I decided to give DreamHost a try. At this time, I had no idea what bandwidth was. After a couple weeks with DreamHost, they sent me daily e-mails which said that I was in danger of exceeding my bandwidth limit. Eventually, I learned that bandwidth is the total memory taken up by visitors by just simply browsing a website and downloading stuff. The dictionary definition is "The amount of data that can be passed along a communications channel in a given period of time." I had to cancel my account with DreamHost because I wasn't going to be able to afford the extra charges for exceeded bandwidth. It was going be like $3,000 a month! So I had to shut down my site for the second time. It was down for couple months. Then a devoted anime fan (who maintains his own server) offered to host me. I gladly accepted the offer. Eck, then he wanted me to manually put ads on the top of each page. >_< I passed down his hosting offer shortly after, but instead asked him to host just my main page (without ads) so I can put everything else on free places like GeoCities and Tripod. That idea worked pretty good and my site was once again up and running for several months. And then... heh... -_-;; ...he ditched me for no reason!! He stopped hosting my main page and removed my "account" with him. My site was officially shut down for the 3rd time, and possibly even the final time! I had no job at the time so my site was down for a looooooong time. A very long time. :*(

 
2000-2001 ~ The Trials of Webmaster-ism
The popularity of my Pokemon Picture Archive taught me many hard lessons about maintaining a fan-based website. I wasn't mentally prepared for the large masses of people copying my precious screen shots which took me so much work to capture and put online. I wanted all the credit for myself. And then there were the assholes who sent me negative comments and the selfish snobs who demanded more pictures or complained that I don't have enough of their favorite Pokemon. In an attempt to solve these problems, I typed up several long, detailed FAQs. I even lead my E-Mail link to them to make sure people read them. This probably worked well against the audience I wanted to silence, but my demands made me look like a total jerk to the nice people who were just passing through. To make things worse, I replied to many e-mails with impatience and negativity whenever people sent me stupid questions and comments. I would hear people say this at various places "Yeah, the Pokemon Picture Archive is the best! But the webmaster is such a JERK!" I learned that in order to be a successful webmaster of a fan-based website, you must have a lot of patience and tolerance. Negativity of any kind towards visitors is very bad for reputation. With my newfound strengths and respect, I continued on spreading the happiness that anime and rpgs have given me.

 
1998-2000 ~ The Birth of FantasyAnime
FantasyAnime first came onto the internet! If I remember correctly, I believe it was first dedicated to Pokemon and Final Fantasy Legend 1-3. My sections were mostly text and pictures were limited. Yup, things were pretty dull until that glorious day when my brother bought a TV tuner card! ^_^ That thing allowed me to capture screen shots from TV. I quickly took advantage of it and created the Pokemon Picture Archive. I blessed the internet with over 5,000 original Pokemon pictures. At one point, my Pokemon Picture Archive became one of the top 5 Pokemon websites out of the whole English-language internet. I got about 5,000-10,000 visitors a day. In the meantime, I created several shrines dedicated to some of my most favorite rpgs like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 4-6, Shining Force, and some others. I also created other anime websites with tons of screen shots, such as Vampire Hunter D, Ninja Cadets, Dragon Ball Z, Yuu Yuu Hakusho, Ranma 1/2, Tenchi Muyo, Sailor Moon and Digimon.