Ok, here goes. I was first introduced to first-person-shooters in the summer of 1996. The game was Wolfenstein 3D, and it was great. I used to play 8 hours straight whenever I visited my grandparents' house. Those were the days. Anyway, after a while, I got bored of it and I decided to move on to Heretic. That was a whole new experience for me. I really sucked at it so I would quite often find myself playing with a few cheats here and there, because hey, I'm sure everyone would like to be invincible once in a while.

Month by month, summer slowly dissolved into autumn, and Heretic was still fun to play, and watch as well. I remember watching my older cousin StarLord[GP] duking it out with Blackheart[GP]. All I could say at the time was WOW, heh. These guys were good, damn good. Every time I watched them, it left me wondering, "How the !@#@!% can they play like that?!?".

As the leaves fell, the snow fell just as quickly. Winter was always my most favorite time of the year, so I spent most of it away from the computer, building snow forts and secret bases with my younger cousin Ice[BH]. It was a merry time indeed. Winter slowly left the wonderful city of Toronto, and on came the spring of 1997. Heretic was finally dethroned by DOOM. What can you say about DOOM? It was one of the most fun games I had ever played up to that time, even if I sucked at it. DOOM only lasted for a few
months though, and like all of the other games that I had played, DOOM's time had passed.

After finishing up with DOOM, I kind of dropped out of the computer gaming scene for a while and started focussing more on school and the upcoming June examinations. In late June, I moved to Ottawa, and my dad bought me a brand-new, right-off-the-shelf Pentium 200 MMX, which was one of the best computers that you could buy back at the time.

And thus began my journey into the wonderful world of Quake and Team Fortress. After I had played the single player mode a few times, I decided to test out my connection and skill (heh what skill?) online against some other people. When I first got online, I downloaded Gamespy and Quakeworld, and I was finally ready to frag it up! My first ever game that I had played was Arena DM. It took me 30 minutes or so to download one map, and I spawned in the spectator area, which overlook the battle raging down below. As soon as one of the competitors defeated his opponent, in I dropped. Damn, I was nervous as hell, and a little bit scared as well (heh that rhymes ;p). Anyway, the battle ended as quickly as it had started. My health, somewhere in the negatives. My opponent's health, 100.

After playing a few rounds, I decided to go look for a better server. DM in general just seemed boring in general, and I immediately knew that it was not for me after playing it a few times or so. So, I just picked a random CTF server, and I hopped in. By the way, this is before any of the CTF mods had their own maps, as they do now. All the games were played on ID maps, which were still fun to play nonetheless. What a great game Quake turned out to be.

After playing various CTF mods, I stumbled upon a server, which contained the words "Team Fortress". "Hm..." I ponder to myself, "let's see what this mod is all about." It was easier said than done of course, and before I could join in on the action, I had quite a bit of downloading to do first. I downloaded all of TF 2.5 from a single server, which of course, took quite a bit of time. I can't believe how much fun I had just reading the death messages while waiting for the downloads to finish. "Bob rides Bill's rocket", "Fred is turned into Swiss cheese by John's buckshot" and many other entertaining messages as well.

After an hour or so of downloading, I finally was able to join in. But there seemed to be something missing; everyone had left the server a while ago! Heh, so instead of just quitting, I decided to try out this funky new mod by myself. I had a great time learning to do everything. And as well, I did not discover yet or know of +mlook and the wonders that it could do, so I was mainly a keyboarder.

While spending a few hours on that empty server, I realized that if I were to play against others, I might have been able to learn a few new things that I had not learned by myself. So, I quit that server and looked for one that had about 10 people or so in it. After quite a bit of searching around, I finally found a server that had 7 people in it. In I went, and as soon as I joined, I looked at the scores, and thought that if I join the team with the highest frags, then I will get more points for myself. And what a mistake that turned out to be, because, as soon as I joined, within the next 10 minutes or so, the blue team (the enemy) had pulled in 3 caps! I could not believe the efficiency and the great teamwork that was going on. It was just simply unbelievable. As the game ended, I found myself at the bottom of the frag list, with 3 frags.

I continued for months just playing on any public server that I could fun, and guess what, TF was fun as hell! And I really mean that.

I could spend hours at a time just on one server, and one map playing over and over until I got better and progressed. Then, one day, after chatting with my younger cousin Ice[BH], who was known as [DoW]IceDawg at the time, I was informed of +mlook and all of the possibilities that offered. Ice explained many things to me, one of which was a config. After hanging up the phone, I immediately turned on my computer, loaded single player Quake, and started creating my config. It was actually pretty easy. I have a very unorthodox configuration setup when I play than anyone I've talked to or met. The only real important keys on my keyboard are G, H, J, M, /, the comma, the period, and of course, the spacebar.

With time, my skill increased, and then one day, Ice mentioned a server that he frequently visited, which was the ATMnet server. This server was and still is the most perfect server that I have played on up to this day. ATMnet was run by Clan Green Panthers (GP), who are a great bunch of talented TFers. That server had a really nice map rotation, and it always gave me a great ping. It opened every evening at 6:00 PM EST, and it shutdown sometime during the early morning of the next day. It was great. The only downside though, was the fact that this server was so popular, that it was constantly full! I mean, I loaded up Quakeworld everyday at 5:55 or around that time, and I typed: connect hulkatm.btc.gatech.edu:27500, and I pressed it repeatedly for about 6 or 7 minutes until I connected. At around 6:10, the server was full. Absolutely full. It was great seeing all of the [GP]'s there. There was Kronos, Nemesis, Basenji, Magnum, Dorsai, Nicepants, Fishgills, and a bunch of others as well. It was a great learning experience playing with all these guys, because they taught me a lot.

As the months passed by, I became more used to using my mouse and keyboard while playing. It really gave us (mousers) an advantage over most keyboarders, but not all of them. Then, during the month of November of 1997, I was offered to join a clan called Dark Alliance [DA], and being as eager as I was, I accepted and joined [DA]'s ranks. But, I found out the next day that the clan contained only 2 members other than me. The leader went by the name of Mega, and the co-leader was Worm. Again, as I later found out, these two were very young, as in 11 (Mega) and 12 Worm years of age. Nevertheless, I decided to stick with [DA] for a bit, and after a while, the members started rolling in. In early January 1998, I joined clan [IcE], which was run by my younger cousin Ice[BH], but at that time he was known as [IcE]Spade. Being the great recruiter that he was, Ice built [IcE] into a very solid and organized clan. I played a few matches for [IcE], but I left in February because of several arguments with Ice. And as you would have it, [IcE]'s undefeated streak stopped at 5 (I think) as soon as I left. It may be a co-incidence, and it may not. That's not up to me to decide. [IcE] dominated after that, and finally disbanded in September because Ice quit to rejoin [DoW] after having a streak of 21 wins, 1 loss, and 2 ties. Not bad, not bad at all.

During all this time, I had never really quit from [DA], as it was having some trouble within. Then, in June or so, [DA] disbanded. [DA] was my first clan, and it was great being a part of it. Anyway, after that, I went clan hopping, trying out for several clans, but never really getting anywhere. I joined ]HM[ for a while, and the guys that made up ]HM[ were really cool. They had great sportsmanship, organization, and they also had a lot of fun. And I had a lot of fun with them as well. Another clan that I joined was [SiN]. This clan run by my buddies Taeglin-e- and [WM]Magilus-e-. We tried to make [SiN] as talented as possible, but it soon disbanded thanks to the great efforts of Newby\d3f. No hard feelings Newby!

After being clanless for a bit, I joined WoA (Warriors of Armageddon). Mega and Worm, whom I had made great friends with, were also in this clan, and that was one of the reasons that I joined. WoA was a pretty decent clan, but not very talented. I tried my best to give tips and help others in my clan, but it did not help much. Slowly, members began to leave, and after a while, WoA disbanded. I seem to be bad luck or something, because all of the clans that I have been in have disbanded, heh. :o!

Anyway, after WoA, I decided I was getting bored of TF (bored? OH MY GOD! Heh), so I decided to shift over CA, otherwise known as Clan Arena. My buddy Mega had migrated to CA as well, and joined a clan called [M] (not Megadeath heh) which stood for Momentum. This clan had some great DM talent in it, and when I tried out, I got spanked. Hard. After a bit of CA, I joined a clan called [ItK] (Impossible to Kill), which was a TF/CTF clan. I had a great time playing CTF again, using the grappling hook and all, which has always been one of my favorites.

[ItK] contained many ex-[IcE] members, and my tryout with them went pretty well. After [ItK] went all CTF, I decided to quit because I still had some TF left in me. This was around November 1998 or so. After [ItK], there was nothing. I was clanless. And it sometimes gets really lonely when you're clanless, but hey, deal with it. I did. In fact, a few weeks after that, I joined [CPF] (Clan PlanetFortress) thanks to my good buddy The Hal. [CPF] is a great clan, and I hope never to leave its ranks.

Soon after I joined [CPF], I got inducted into the Engineer's Alliance, which really boosted my spirits. I had been wanting to get into -e- for a loooooooooooooooong time heh. Then, on New Years Day, my dad accidentally killed my computer! It was hard to deal with being off-line for a month, or even without a computer. When I finally got online in early February, I missed a lot. But now, I'm back, and I'm better than ever.

I have a lot of people to thank for getting me where I am today and giving me the motivation to do incredible things, so here comes a great big long list in no particular order:

Hal, Spaceman Spif, Sailorscout, Billings, Guido Jones, Someone, Scatterblak, Killer69, Starlord, Ice, aWG, Crono, C3PO, Badsectors, Mega, Worm, Fizban, Crap, Osiris, Zerocool, Lord Frag, Chthon, Magilus, Taeglin, CosmicJim, Dave, Diehard, Vapor, Heraklit, Zang, Krunnch, Copperhead, Buzz Litebeer, KZB, Icehawk, Elf, Beowulf, Karnage, Ares, Nemesis, Kronos, Basenji, Rebel, Nice Pants, Sandstorm, GamerX, KingNothing, Sheepman, Cow, Griffin, Mascot, Ghouli, Bowdown, DCI-Raptor, Tangent, Pit, Dev, Hammerfist, Gate, Scorch, Tk0, Warlord, Doomshadow, Pepto, Danman, DANLM, Victim, Shield, Sephiroth, Babe, Halliwell, Shaka, Seretogis, ArmageddoN, Rampage, Boomer, Deadpool2, Mike, Myke, Drifter, Grifter, Jeff, Spunky, Cyrus, Sir Proverbius, Sir Sharks, Free_mason, Shield, Megadeth, MoS, Mr. Shih, Sacralige, Tritone, Magni, Magnum, Dorsai, Loudbob, Musashi, TyR, ManGoBoom, Dock, Turbine2, Vorro, Ecce, Zonk, and anyone else that I may have missed. All of you guys rock, and thanks for making TF so enjoyable for me. "If you can't beat 'em, then die trying."