I'm seriously considering easing myself back into Super Mario World hacking. To do so, though, I'd need a Super Mario World ROM, which I have on one of many CD-Rs I've had since the 2000s. (Hard to believe stuff from the 00s can be considered "old" now.) While looking for the disc in question, I decided to have a look through the other CD-Rs, copying any files I deem interesting or useful to my computer before getting rid of them. Yeah, there were quite a few useless things on those discs, like screenshots from various Transformers shows that aren't all in the best quality. Still, there were some interesting things on the discs. Here's just a sampling of what I found.
BEAST MACHINES STARSCREAM
View attachment 249082
This was made by Photoshopping a headshot of Beast Machines Jetstorm as the inspiration came from an old fanfic I wrote involving the ghost of Starscream possessing one of the Aero Drones under Jetstorm's command. I don't remember what I had Starscream do in the fic, as I wrote it back in 2001 at the latest and no longer have it. It's probably not that great. Oh well.
ONSLAUGHT FROM A BROKEN GBA SP SCREEN
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This one is probably the weirdest thing I found., and the story behind it is pretty tragic. In my last entry, I think I mentioned having an abusive stepfather in my past. (Thank God he's long out of my life now!) If it wasn't on this blog, I'm sure I brought it up somewhere. Either way, one of his fits of rage resulted in my first GBA SP getting broken. Damage to the screen created a permanent image that, to me, looked like the Combaticon leader Onslaught taking a laser blast to the midsection. I decided to take a picture of the damage with the webcam I had back then and Photshop it to enhance the Onslaught image. Yeah, it's pretty crude, and I have no idea what's up with his right hand.
BLURR AND SOUNDWAVE IN BRIGHT LIGHTS
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Around that same time, I would occasionally visit Nick.com and play with some of the Flash stuff on their site. It was the early 2000s, so Nick wasn't a constant stream of SpongeBob SquarePants just yet. One of my favorite Flash things on the site was the Bright Lights Clickamajig. It was basically a virtual Lite Brite with patterns of several Nick characters as well as a freeform mode where you could make whatever you wanted. For me, that meant making some Transformers. I would edit the creations in Photoshop to change the colors of some of the "pegs/bulbs."
2039 OPTIMUS PRIME
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Ahh...Transformers 2039 AKA Transformers Beyond...It's a headcanon I had in the early 2000s about a band of Decepticons awakening on Earth and doing typical Decepticon things. It was the home for several GoBots that I didn't know were GoBots at the time. The one piece of GoBots paraphernalia I had seen up to that point looked a bit childish...or maybe it just seemed childish because it belonged to a kid who was no more than 5 years old when I saw it. It wasn't a toy either. It was some sort of coloring/activity book. Maybe it was a storybook. I don't remember what sort of book it was, but it gave me the wrong impression of GoBots. The introduction of a line of preschool Transformers called "GoBots" in the early 2000s probably didn't help with that. I thought these small, fairly simple, roughly Hot Wheels-sized transforming robots were Transformers. They looked too cool to be something as "infantile" as a GoBot, but that's exactly what they were. Either way, I treated them as Transformers for quite some time, assigning them Transformer names and faction alignments based on their color schemes and alt modes. The Autobots consisted of Stronghold (Crain Brain), Speedbreak (Turbo), and Streetfire (Major Mo). The Deceptions, meanwhile, were Deathwing (Fi-Tor), Nightshade (Geeper Creeper), Moonsniper (Twin Spin), and Road Rage (A blue Mini-Spy and an actual Transformer). Eventually, Optimus Prime would show up when things escalated, sporting a new form that was a hybrid of an 18-wheeler and a missile truck. I cooked up this little Photoshop job based on how I figured my Prime would look.
OLD G1 SCOURGE HEADSHOT
View attachment 249086
I'm not sure when I drew this, but I had to take a picture of it with a webcam instead of scanning it. The original picture is lost now. Maybe I should try drawing the old Tracker digitally in my current style.
KICKER
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This is a kitty I had between 2005 and 2007, and this is the only picture I've ever found of him. It was taken with a webcam, which is why it's so low-res. My mother used to have better pictures of Kicker, but they were lost when the computer they were on died. Maybe she backed them up on a disc somewhere, but I haven't found it.
OPTIMUS PRIME POSTER
View attachment 249085
I didn't draw this. It's one of many pieces of either fanmade or official art I found on the CDs. I'm not sure who made it because I had to have downloaded it no later than 2005. It could be a fanmade piece, or it could be something from Dreamwave Productions. Either way, it's a really cool picture of G1 Prime, and it's now the Home Screen wallpaper on my phone.
BEAST MACHINES STARSCREAM
View attachment 249082
This was made by Photoshopping a headshot of Beast Machines Jetstorm as the inspiration came from an old fanfic I wrote involving the ghost of Starscream possessing one of the Aero Drones under Jetstorm's command. I don't remember what I had Starscream do in the fic, as I wrote it back in 2001 at the latest and no longer have it. It's probably not that great. Oh well.
ONSLAUGHT FROM A BROKEN GBA SP SCREEN
View attachment 249084
This one is probably the weirdest thing I found., and the story behind it is pretty tragic. In my last entry, I think I mentioned having an abusive stepfather in my past. (Thank God he's long out of my life now!) If it wasn't on this blog, I'm sure I brought it up somewhere. Either way, one of his fits of rage resulted in my first GBA SP getting broken. Damage to the screen created a permanent image that, to me, looked like the Combaticon leader Onslaught taking a laser blast to the midsection. I decided to take a picture of the damage with the webcam I had back then and Photshop it to enhance the Onslaught image. Yeah, it's pretty crude, and I have no idea what's up with his right hand.
BLURR AND SOUNDWAVE IN BRIGHT LIGHTS
View attachment 249083 View attachment 249089
Around that same time, I would occasionally visit Nick.com and play with some of the Flash stuff on their site. It was the early 2000s, so Nick wasn't a constant stream of SpongeBob SquarePants just yet. One of my favorite Flash things on the site was the Bright Lights Clickamajig. It was basically a virtual Lite Brite with patterns of several Nick characters as well as a freeform mode where you could make whatever you wanted. For me, that meant making some Transformers. I would edit the creations in Photoshop to change the colors of some of the "pegs/bulbs."
2039 OPTIMUS PRIME
View attachment 249087
Ahh...Transformers 2039 AKA Transformers Beyond...It's a headcanon I had in the early 2000s about a band of Decepticons awakening on Earth and doing typical Decepticon things. It was the home for several GoBots that I didn't know were GoBots at the time. The one piece of GoBots paraphernalia I had seen up to that point looked a bit childish...or maybe it just seemed childish because it belonged to a kid who was no more than 5 years old when I saw it. It wasn't a toy either. It was some sort of coloring/activity book. Maybe it was a storybook. I don't remember what sort of book it was, but it gave me the wrong impression of GoBots. The introduction of a line of preschool Transformers called "GoBots" in the early 2000s probably didn't help with that. I thought these small, fairly simple, roughly Hot Wheels-sized transforming robots were Transformers. They looked too cool to be something as "infantile" as a GoBot, but that's exactly what they were. Either way, I treated them as Transformers for quite some time, assigning them Transformer names and faction alignments based on their color schemes and alt modes. The Autobots consisted of Stronghold (Crain Brain), Speedbreak (Turbo), and Streetfire (Major Mo). The Deceptions, meanwhile, were Deathwing (Fi-Tor), Nightshade (Geeper Creeper), Moonsniper (Twin Spin), and Road Rage (A blue Mini-Spy and an actual Transformer). Eventually, Optimus Prime would show up when things escalated, sporting a new form that was a hybrid of an 18-wheeler and a missile truck. I cooked up this little Photoshop job based on how I figured my Prime would look.
OLD G1 SCOURGE HEADSHOT
View attachment 249086
I'm not sure when I drew this, but I had to take a picture of it with a webcam instead of scanning it. The original picture is lost now. Maybe I should try drawing the old Tracker digitally in my current style.
KICKER
View attachment 249088
This is a kitty I had between 2005 and 2007, and this is the only picture I've ever found of him. It was taken with a webcam, which is why it's so low-res. My mother used to have better pictures of Kicker, but they were lost when the computer they were on died. Maybe she backed them up on a disc somewhere, but I haven't found it.
OPTIMUS PRIME POSTER
View attachment 249085
I didn't draw this. It's one of many pieces of either fanmade or official art I found on the CDs. I'm not sure who made it because I had to have downloaded it no later than 2005. It could be a fanmade piece, or it could be something from Dreamwave Productions. Either way, it's a really cool picture of G1 Prime, and it's now the Home Screen wallpaper on my phone.
Shhhhhhh