Jul -- Display Case: July's MotM: Tanks

— Anya —

Trudging Scribe

Post 8288/23359

Posted on 07-01-09 03:13:07 AM (last edited by Anya at 07-01-09 12:14 AM)

Congrats to Tanks!!

Anya: Would you like to be Jul's MotM for July?

Tanks: Sure. I'd be happy to do that. (unless someone else wants the slot...)

Anya: Well, lets start things off by the origin of your user name.

Tanks: Well... From what I remember, I had been big into Dragon Ball Z at that time. I always wanted to be like Trunks, at least in the sense of being the son of Vegeta. Well, for those who do not know, young Trunks and Goten fuse into Gotenks at some point in the series. I believe I took the name from there. I simply changed the 'e' to an 'a' so as not to make it seem like a direct ripoff.

Anya: Are you still a fan of the series? Looking forward to the DBZ movie?

Tanks: I have to say that I am a fan of the series still, even if I never watched every single episode of the Z saga. I nearly fell out of my chair when I found out Akira Toriyama made yet another episode. That and finding out Vegeta had a brother was quite surprising. I did not see that one coming. Personally, I prefer Dragon Ball over Dragon Ball Z since it covered the fighting, but also focused on the comical aspect of Goku's life.

The movie scares me. It really does. It scares me to the point where I'm debating even seeing it... I mean... The Oozaru monkey... Is a monkey right? Not some creepy alien thing... So far I'm pretty disappointed in what I'm seeing...

Anya: Yea, that screen shot from the movie just doesn’t seem right. When did you start watching Dragonball? What got you into watching it in the first place?

Tanks: Well... As far back as I can remember, on the station that was once UPN 20, there was a great Saturday line up. Dragonball, DoubleDragon, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, even Street Sharks. Most times I would opt out just to watch The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog "back2backs" on ABC. Even if I missed it most of the time, this was my first experience with Dragon Ball. After abandoning it for the much more popular Pokemon, I found my way back in 6th grade.

I had lost my final tooth and my 'tooth fairy' gift was usually a trip to the comic shop. I'd usually buy some old Pokemon comics (Technically manga, but they were comics to me then...). I went to look at the shelf where I'd usually find the comics, but I found I owned every Pokemon comic they were selling. I looked below the shelf in hopes of finding any different ones, but instead I happened upon Dragon Ball Z manga.

I was quite fascinated by it. I knew only a little about it from friends and my early Dragon Ball experience. I decided I'd buy a couple of those and I ended up going home happy.

Since then, I've been a subscriber to Shonen Jump to a regular library goer to a manga downloader. Once we got Cartoon Network, I taped the series from the beginning until it went off air. Now I'm left to the mercy of the internet and its manga and anime sharing ways to get my Dragon Ball/Z fix..

Anya: What about your current name on Jul: Shantae. Where is that name/layout from?

Tanks: Shantae is an AWESOME Game Boy Color game and one of the best platformers I have ever played. It was designed by Matt Bozon, an oldbie, in a sense, to a few old Acmlmers here. They knew him while he was a simple bum on the internet like the rest of us. The Musical composer is none other than Jake Kaufman, whom most know as 'Virt.' He's pretty famous on the internet as well for his various VG remixes and chiptunes.

One really notable thing about this game is that it came out right before the release of the Game Boy Advance. Because of this, Bozon implemented a GBA compatibility mode. This allowed the game, when played on a GBA, to have access to a much larger palette. This is, personally, my most favorite and quite possibly my only way to the play Shantae.

The character Shantae is actually a young guardian half-genie out to stop the nefarious pirate Risky Boots. She is the protector of a port village called Scuttle Town. After Scuttle Town is attacked and her friend's steam engine stolen by Risky Boots, the lady pirate, Shantea sets out to stop her.

Shantae is kind of a feisty girl. She has a good head on her shoulders and is quite powerful when it comes to fighting. There's not much more to say about her other than she's a true example of how most video game heroines should be.

As a side note, the layout picture is actually a quick sketch made by Matt Bozon himself. It's up on his Deviant Art page along with other sketches as well.

Anya: What brought you to Acmlm's originally? And then to Jul?

Tanks: Well, it started when I first took interest in emulation. I had just figured out about ROMs thanks to some Sonic 2 BETA fan site. I had been looking up ROMs and different sites for them when I happened up Simon Wai's Sonic 2 BETA site. Here I was exposed to ROM hacking for the first time. I was quite impressed. After a few google searches I discovered there was, in fact, hacked ROMs and hacks in the making for many other systems.

I eventually started checking if editors for specific ROMs existed. I only knew of one or two Sonic the Hedgehog editors, but I figured there must be others. Would you believe me if I told you my first search with this idea in mind was "Super Mario 64 ROM editor?"

Yes, I guess the cat's out of the bag. I was an SM64 noob. I found Acmlm's during the advent of VL-Tone's big thread on Incarnation III. I became active within the ROM Hacking forum, noobing it up of course.

I did some stupid things, but over time, I figured I could try the rest of the board out. I moved onto other forums. (I avoided femine's like the plague in fear of being banned) I also noobed up there as well. I can remember a time when I was actually reprimanded by Kattwah before we ever really got to know each other. I also messed around in IRC too. My first time on was during the release of Sonicandfails2.wav. Fun stuff that.

Eventually, you get the ||Bass incident, which lead to ||Board. I jumped off thanks to a link by, I believe it was Cirvante... Not sure though... Then we get Board II, which is where I became better known as not so much of a noob anymore. I guess I built up a much better reputation during that time. I jumped onto Justus League 2 right before the Board II debacle and hid out there for a bit.

JUL was just a natural flow really. Where all my friends went, I just followed along. I continue to dabble in ROM hacking every now and again. I also have some ties to the Sonic Retro community which is pretty much everyone from the old Simon Wai site.

Anya: What do you like to do in your spare time? Besides posting here?

Tanks: Well I am active outside of the internet. I play sports like summer and winter swimming as well as Lacrosse. Swimming has to be my favorite of the two. I'm a Division III Champion of the 200m Freestyle which happens to be my most hated event.

I'm also a Lacrosse State Champion for Division III. It's sad that my team is going to be Div. II next year, but at least I had my kicks.

I enjoy hiking and camping a lot. These are the sole reason I actually stayed with the Boy Scouts. I'd have to say my favorite mountain I've ever climbed is Old Rag. It's the third biggest mountain on the east coast. It has a few tight spots and death pits to it adding a bit of adventure to the climb.

I like gardening work. I help my family with a vegetable garden in the back yard. I love cutting down trees. I once took down a full size tree with a hand saw, but that's another story.

Of course there is a big video game side to me too. As a child I lost two consoles, the NES and the Genesis. I did get other consoles that replaced these, but I loved those two systems so much. Because of this, I've begun collecting consoles and games. I bought an NES last year with some of my old games and some peripherals I never owned. This year I bought a Genesis and am currently working on getting some nice mint condition Sonic 2 games. Sonic 2 is my most favorite game ever so I really want to keep at least one copy safe.

Along side of retro gaming, I do play the newer systems. I have a Wii and I play most of the good 360 games on PC since they end up there at some point anyway. I do PC game almost as much as I console game. I especially love Valve's Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life series. These are some of the FPS's I've fully enjoyed with very little gripes.

Other little hobbies include drawing and maybe some ROM hacking, but they don't really dominate my free time as much as the other activities I mentioned.

Anya: Wow, impressive. So now that you've graduated, what are you're plans now? Would you rather have an outdoors type of career or inside?

Tanks: As far as careers go, I think I'll be focusing on getting through College then looking into a government job. Northern VA is pretty much the big gov. job area so I think that's where I'll be heading in the future.

If I had no choice but to choose an outdoors career, I think I would be a swim coach. That's my current job right now and I think I would be pretty good at it when coaching a High School or League team. This could actually be considered both an indoors and outdoors job due to the seasons changing and the need to switch between indoor and outdoor facilities. The only thing is that during the summer I would be coaching a community team rather than a League team.

Anya: If you were trapped on an island, who would be the one fictional character that you would like to have with you and why?

Tanks: Hahaha... Well, I guess I'll have to use process of elimination.

Sonic the Hedgehog is no good since he can't swim. No use for him since he'll probably be hyperactive and never sit still to make survival plans.

Ecco the dolphin could swim, but it's not worth it since I can't carry a vocal conversation with it.

Link doesn't talk. He screams though. I'd say if we had a few guitars and maybe a drummer we could start a scream metal band, but who would come to the concerts?

Heavy Weapons Guy... He's a no go. He probably won't even share his sandvich.

Master Chief is cool. He could slaughter a whole alien army... But what's there to prevent his killer instincts from killing me?

Solid Snake... He could survive, but would he help me survive? He talks, but he's not one for conversations. He might have the same issue as Master Chief and snap my neck while I sleep.

Samus is dependable. She's been around the galaxy. She's got a space ship so I'm pretty sure I could get off the island. She can also talk according to the new trailer. She sounds like a good choice to me.

There are a lot of others I thought of, but I mentioned the most noteworthy of them on the list here.

OOC: I'm gone the next two days for orientation. I'm not sure if my university will have wifi up and running yet. I'll bring my laptop to try to connect so shoot me a PM with the next question. Just letting you know ahead of time so you don't worry if I'm not replying.

Anya: Enjoy yourself at the orientation., and no worries, there’s only one question left: Do you have anything that you would like to add?

Tanks: I'm awesome and you all know it.

And on a humbling note... Eppy, it was a crit. And you were eating a sandvich at the time. Sorry for your loss...

Ps. Hi mom.

____________________

Eppy37
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Posted on 07-01-09 08:41:44 AM

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