Two Years Ago, or More Precisely...

In 2002 I was visiting one of my favorite stores the Anime Cafe to pick up some manga and ironically enough anime, when one of the clerks told me to look at this:

My introduction to sprite comics made from graphics ripped from games. I had never heard of this but I was immediately hooked. I had to know where these came from. Up to that point all I was doing was fanfiction in the hopes that one day I would get MiSTed. I had always wanted to do comics based on my favorite video games like Mega Man and Final Fantasy. Maybe even mix in my favorite anime like Tenchi Muyo and Sailor Moon.

Sprites opened up a whole new universe for me. I can now do the stories I always wanted to do but couldn't because of my total inability to draw. First I had to find where all these sprites came from. After many an MSN search. (Google wasn't much of a factor then.) Following links and suggestions on forums I found myself here:

Panelmonkey.org, The People's Sprites. I was in heaven. All those game rip and public domain sprites all for my use. They even had the legendary Dr. Wily sprite made by Deccus.

From 2002 to 2009 it was my number one place to go for sprites. 2009. We all know what happened. I don't need to get into it because I know about as much as you do.

I started making a daily pilgrimage to The People's Sprites that soon turned into every other day. Then once a week. Every other week. Once a month. Every other month. To about a couple times a year. Finally when ever I saw a link on someone's site I happen to come across.

In May of 2014 I was raiding the Internet Archive for sprites from dead sites to include in my sprite site, The Sprite Cemetery. I was on The People's Sprites trying to figure out how to mass download all the sprites when it occurred to me, I should check to see if panlemonkey.org is back. It wasn't, but this ad from GoDaddy was there:

(Oh how I despise GoDaddy. That's a story for another time.)

I couldn't resist so I looked into it. You can get a free account. That's a good selling point. It hooked me. To hire a negotiator was $70. There's a lot I could do with seventy dollars. That's a mighty fine couple or pizzas or five gallons of gas. I thought “What the hell, why not? The opportunity is too great to pass up. Think about all those sites still linked to panelmonkey.org. All that SEO could be mine. What's the worse that could happen? The owner says no and I'm out $70.”

After a week or so I get an email from GoDaddy saying there hasn't been a response and they are trying again. A few weeks later with no response I pretty much gave up.