July 23rd, 2000 - July 23rd, 2002

2 years... It's been a long and fun journey to get to where we are today. DES has seen new many members come, a few go, and many new projects start up. Through all of it, we have stuck together as a group, and we have remained strong.

The Early Beginnings Do you have what it takes to win? The concept of DES was actually made before 7/23/00. Back in March of '00, I came across a web site that had something called Metroid X. I had no clue as to what this was, and so I emailed the author about it; Jay McGavren of Rage Games was a great guy. He responded to me, answered all of my questions about his MX hack, and even taught me how to ROMhack. I wish I could still contact him to thank him for all time he spent teaching me how to ROMhack. He actually took the time to teach a newbie, which is something that most of us ROMhackers won't do. Anyway, the hack he helped me start up was Metroid Zebian Illusion, and idea Dragon Eye Studios was created soon after. MZI was a pretty good hack for being done by a newb, and I think it's still one of the better Metroid hacks out there, but I decided to ice the project a while back due to the fact that I had too many other projects, and this one didn't have as much of a following as the other projects I was doing.

One of the projects that caused MZI to be dumped was Mega Man: Wily's Conquest. Back when I was still newbish, Jay told me that he was making a ROMhack of Mega Man 1. I was amazed, since MM is one of my favorite game series of all time. I asked him what editor he was using, and so he sent me MegaEdit (this was before it was readily available on the Internet, at sites like CG and ZD) in an email. I then started up a hack of MM1, which has been done, redone, and redone again due to the many new updates in MM1 information and editors. HyperMegamanZ has decided to finish up the project, since I once again have too many projects to handle.

I eventually ran across Challenge Games one day, and was amazed by the work that GameMakr24 was doing. I contacted him, and we began to chat. We became good friends, and I decided to contact the group leader, x-4000, and became good friends with him, too. This is important for later on. During the summer of 2000, I went to a computer camp and learned HTML and a little bit of TrueBASIC. I put the HTML to use by creating a simple web page for my ROMhacks called Dragon Eye Studios. The group was thus born.

The Early Hacks, the Second Member, and the Birth of the CGC ROMhacking, at its best I told GameMakr24 and x-4000 about my small site, which had my hacks up for download, as well as had a few pictures. x-4000 somehow saw some promise in that pathetic little page and two ROMhacks which I had showed him, and offerred to host me on CG. I accepted, and was moved to http://smb3c.darkmazda.com/dragoneye/, where he gave me more coding to work with; in other words, he gave me a nice new site!

I was eventually contacted by a guy by the name of Fx3 of RockNES fame about an editor he was making for Mega Man 2 called visine. He wanted me to be the beta tester, since I was a MM ROMhacker. So, I accepted his offer to test it and started up the original Mega Man Vengeance, a MM2 hack starring Bass that I recently canceled in favor of the MM3 version we are currently working on. [note: that link is for the MM3 version of the hack] With visine, DES was able to get a hard start on editing Mega Man 2. We got all of the new features before anyone else, and we helped influence it in many ways during its development.

Eventually, solid-tbone (known then as TBone2000) joined DES, thus finally making it a group. With him came Kid Icarus Remix, and later on, Castlevania Blue Shadows. However, this was the only new member the young, inexperienced hacking group would be getting for a very long time.

Eventually, DES was invited to join CG as more than just a hosted site. The offer was accepted, and thus we got a brand new layout, our link was moved from the hosted sites link section to right next to the CG hacks link, we got more publicity, and the CGC (Challenge Games Community) was formed.

The Big Boom Redefining the Next Generation of ROMhacking Towards the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2002, CG and DES moved to their new server, http://www.cg-games.net. DES got its 3rd member, HyperMegamanZ, and Mega Man: Wily's Conquest 2 was started up. The list of members then began to grow: Atma, Weasel, Thaddeus... It was a huge boom for the group which had previously been nothing but 2 people for over a year. Eventually, we had a problem on the message boards that followed Thaddeus and solid-tbone's retirment from DES. Someone gained access to the Admin CP and deleted the DES forum, as well as banned several DES members and changed titles/avatars. The whole thing got sorted out fairly quickly, which is good, but it caused a little bit of trust between specific members to be lost.

More members joined after that, including solid-tbone (who had recently quit), with many new projects being announced. Many of you should be able to remember at least this far back. ;-)

The Present Day Leading ROMhacking into its Golden Age And that takes us up to the present day, 7/23/02. I could always talk more about 7/23, but I'm not going to bother, since there is a gigantic news post on the main page with the info on it. I hope you all enjoyed 7/23. Hopefully we'll have another big update next year. Until then... -Vagla