Team Saikyo logo

Back in my junior year of college, 1998 specifically, I was first learning HTML (version 3.2) and how web browsers work. I built a website based on my fandom love of Street Fighter in general, and Dan Hibiki in particular. Nothing like having a specific interest to help you learn a new technology faster.

I also had made a new friend who shared my interest in Street Fighter, and was a graphic designer which rounded out my lack of any photoshop skills. Together, we would spend the next 4 years working on various upgrades to the site, eventually creating a message board and running local fighting game tournaments. This also led to us forming our own (un)official group, Team Saikyo.

As luck had it, we happened to live relatively close to each other which made real world interactions possible; meeting people from the internet was quite thrilling in those days since social media wasn’t even an e-zygote yet.

To the uninformed, Geocities was one of many companies that get you a massive three megabytes of space for free, which was supported by web ads. It wasn’t a big deal back then like it is now; free was free.

The original address of this site was http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Arena/5554 (don’t bother looking; Geocities was killed off by Yahoo! years ago). Thankfully, before it was deleted I was able to retrieve it for posterity, knowing one day I would like to have it hosted again for both laughs and reflection on how far the internet, and I, have come in almost 15 years.

About a year later, still before 2000 (which seems like another lifetime), I didn finally purchase a domain for my site, and we gave it a huge facelift. The much more presentable http://www.saikyo.com was our home for the next few years before we grew tired of its maintenance and let it linger in the ether. Now, this domain is being squatted by who knows.