The History of The Sonic Tales and Kaisonic's Other Websites

Return to Help & Information

Last Updated: September 8, 2011

This is the history of Kaisonic's websites. You don't really have to read this, I just put it here for fun. You can read it if you want to. I would, if I were you. It's pretty interesting.

In the early parts of the year 2003, a 14-year old boy, going by the name AgentTad005, wrote a walkthrough for James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire, his favorite video game at the time. After seeing how people from around the world can observe and enjoy his work through this strange thing called the Internet, he decided he wanted to show them more work. He tried to write FAQs for various other games, but these failed, and he finally dwelled on making a website.

By the time he had finally decided on a website based on Golden Sun, his new favorite video game, it was late summer of 2003. He also decided not to limit his site just to Golden Sun content, so he named his site GoldenSunETC. He made a logo with Paint and used Frontpage to make the simple site layout with one navigation bar in a frame on the left and the content in a frame on the right. He began the content, which merely included news and a small music archive of some of the songs from Golden Sun. He then used a more advanced editor called Cool Page to make the website a little better, and he also learned the basics of HTML in the process. At this point he was using the oldest computer in the world to do all this: a Gateway with a 200mhz processor and a 3GB hard drive.

The search for a host was a big thing to AgentTad005. He had no money, and was forced to use a free host. After numerous host changes, taking up most of the summer time, he finally ended up with HostUltra, a fairly good host. School began again, and HostUltra held the site up until Christmas vacation, where more work could occur. Most of the site's development happened that Christmas of '03, with a few more pages going up, GSETC being added to various topsites to attract visitors, and AgentTad005 got very "in tune" with the GS fan community. He learned a lot through various resources like Golden Sun Realm, Golden Sun Anonymous, and Isaac's Revenge (which eventually became Golden Sun Adept's Refuge). He met some people and made his first online friends. Unfortunately, he saw what he was up against, and saw no point to continue GSETC. The site ended around Spring of '04, and he was upheld by schoolwork.

In summer of that year, he got very bored, and decided to take another crack at the whole website thing. He decided to generalize his website and settled on the idea of helping others with video games, an idea similar to sites like GameFAQs. From a suggestion from his mother, he came up with the name Video Game ER, ER standing for Emergency Room. By this time, he knew more about HTML and was willing to learn, so he coded the site himself. It consisted of a simple "box" theme, where the top section of the box has the navigation links, the middle section the content, and the bottom section the copyright info. And for some reason, he thought running a website wasn't enough, so he applied for a staffer position at Rustboro City, a Pokemon fan site run by Kemosabi, someone he met in the GS community around the beginning of 2004. Kemosabi was willing, so AgentTad005 helped out with Rustboro City as head of the anime department. All in all, he probably did more work for RC than for VGER. At this point, AgentTad005 decided he needed a new name, so shortly after a failed attempt at Elite Salamence, his new name was Kaisonic, which stems from Kaiser (meaning "emporer") and Sonic (his favorite video game character of all time). He was also armed with an awesome laptop that he received as a gift in summer of '04.

Kaisonic worked and worked, but VGER only came out to be everything it wasn't supposed to: it had a topsites, forums, shoutbox, everything, except what was really supposed to be there: the Master Game List. In the fall of 2004, Kaisonic felt overloaded with work, so he quit everything. He stopped helping with Rustboro City, and shortly after, stopped working on VGER. (Unfortunately, Rustboro City also went down sometime early in 2005.) Christmas of '04 was a resting period for Kaisonic, and he somewhat enjoyed it, while it lasted.

One day, in January of 2005, Kaisonic and his brother were playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on their GameCube. Just playing around, they bobbed the heads of Sonic and Tails, saying funny things. They had always done this, even as kids with a Sega Genesis. With a glimpse of Red vs Blue in his mind, Kaisonic suddenly had the crazy idea to create a machinima based on Sonic the Hedgehog. He then thought of how he missed the whole business of maintaining a website, and he also loved to edit videos. He knew it was perfect, so he grabbed the idea by the horns and ran with it. First, he created the name he would use for his sister and brother, who both wanted to help with the machinima. RTC Fusion Productions became their name, based on their individual names, and the name of the machinima became The Sonic Tales. (An interesting name suggested by Caddie, because the machinima is the story (tale) of Sonic and Tails). Kaisonic immediately began coding the website using his vast knowledge of HTML and PHP. He ended up with a very simple site similar to what VGER used to be and he was very happy with it. Hosting, however, arose as a problem yet again.

He started with a free host he had used for a short time with VGER, 100WebSpace. After a short while, however, this host added ads to the pages, which totally screwed everything up. He moved to a better free host with ads, but was still unhappy. However, Kemosabi came to the rescue! His site, Golden Sun Adept's Refuge, had recently aquired their own domain name and was offering free hosting services. Being close friends, Kaisonic was the first to be offered the hosting package. He immediately set up The Sonic Tales on GSAR's server, and was very happy! He then went and bought TheSonicTales.com for 8 bucks to redirect to GSAR's server. TST's website was ready to go!

The videos themselves, however, were a little more difficult. Kaisonic was able to find a Sega Genesis emulator and Fraps so he could record the footage directly off of his laptop. He made a small trailer with ShowBiz, cheap video editing software that came with his laptop. He was able to release the trailer with the website, and visitors liked it. Advertising was mainly done through the forums at Red vs Blue, which worked out pretty well.

Unfortunately, his new website, now going by the name of the productions group (RTC Fusion), came to a stand-still when his equipment decided to stop working and school decided to continue working. So Kaisonic was unable to continue his work until June, but with his new video capturing equipment fully functional, and a fresh motivation set in his mind (and of course the lack of school), RTC Fusion looked like it would pick up a lot of steam throughout the summer.

However, that summer of 2005 was almost the opposite of a productive summer. Kaisonic pretty much relaxed - he absorbed the niceness of really having nothing to do, and just sat around, watching RedvsBlue DVDs and playing video games. Mainly Halo 2, his Christmas gift the previous year. He was feeling giddy and used his new capture equipment to film a Halo 2 montage instead of working on what he was supposed to. The Sonic Tales was more or less pushed into the background - after Episode 2 was released at the end of May, other things occupied Kaisonic's mind, mainly his Halo 2 machinima idea. Due to his current (and still existing) obsession with Halo 2, RedvsBlue, and machinima in general, he came up with the Halo 2 machinima "Kill Faz", based partially on the fact that Faz is super-gay and a guy named Josh Potter has always wanted to go to KillFaz.com and see Faz get killed. So, with the help of his friends, they created a trailer for the series, which really turned out to just be a bunch of Faz deaths. Not really a bad idea, but not necessarily what can be considered as a trailer to a comedy series.

That fall/winter of 2005 turned out to be a fairly productive time, despite the random appearance of a social life for Kaisonic. The trailer for Kill Faz was released, along with his Halo 2 montage (a lot of work) and finally, in December, episode 1. But, Kaisonic sulked back into a relaxed feeling once winter break started, mainly because he went to both Florida and New York City in the same month (January). It wasn't until February of 2006 that he started working again. And let me tell you, from that point on (the release of Episode 2 of The Sonic Tales), Kaisonic worked his butt off. It was the final stretch in his high school career, so he had motivation for... well, everything. He did quite a few Halo videos for his final projects, and actually succeeded in producing about five videos for the website. They got most of the filming done for Episode 2 (which turned out to be episodes 2-4 of Kill Faz), did a wonderful Crunchbite Tribute for a contest on RedvsBlue.com (which was also entered in a film festival that spring - unfortunately, those people apparently neglect machinima), finished a PSA in March that explained the gayness that occurred with a burnt hard drive, and, just after May ended, a live rendition of a RedvsBlue episode for another contest (all of these videos can of course be found over at KillFaz.com). The beginning of that summer was one heck of a summer. Episodes 2-4 were finalized and released, and a new form of the website appeared somewhere in that time - a brand-new PHP-Nuke version that was very community-orientated. I'll go as far to say that the first half of 2006 was the most productive time for RTC Fusion Productions and Red-Light Green-Light Entertainment (the new name for the group that does Kill Faz).

However, nearly quite literally the day after he finished what he had hoped to finish, Kaisonic's so-called "social life" reared its rather pretty and pleasant head in his life, and took it over for the remainder of the 2006 year. Not only did he spend the rest of the summer doing things with his friends and a crazy thing called a girlfriend, college started in the fall and certainly left no time for video production or website work. Yet another stand-still was reached - filled partially by a short Halo 2 montage Jay did in August. But really nothing happened from then to January. Once the new year started and Kaisonic got back on his feet, he came to the sad realization that he still had a website to run. So, he made a news post and vowed to make videos. And really, he did just that. He first completed Episode 4 of The Sonic Tales, a rather difficult episode to make, near the end of January to get the ball rolling. February, another small gap, was filled by Music Catt (formerly Horse Lover) when she released a music video done in The Sims 2. Then in March, Kaisonic and Jay got back together and made three new Kill Faz videos. The first of which was titled the Season 2 Prologue, and is meant to be a connector between a continually-productive time and a continuously-productive time (hopefully). The two other videos were really extra - one being a PSA about Facebook that was originally made for a variety show at Kaisonic's college, and the other being a short April Fools continuation of the prologue.

In the years between the crazy spring and summer of 2006 and the fall of 2008 into the spring of 2009, not a whole lot happened. A short video was released here and there on KillFaz.com or TheSonicTales.com, but that was it. However, in November of 2008, a new version of the Kill Faz website was rolled out, and the new season debuted in the following August. But after the January '07 release of Episode 4 of The Sonic Tales, it was set in the background until September of 2009, when Episode 5 was released, along with a brand new version of the website. To this day, Kaisonic continues his struggle with laziness and productiveness.

So that's the history of Kaisonic's (my) websites. I hope you enjoyed reading it. Now go download the videos like you meant to do when you came here!

~Thomas "Kaisonic" DeBell

cron

x