TLDR Version.
Scene was dying. And it was a long slow painful fucking death.
FPC site died. MDK pulled the plug after years of it becoming increasingly dysfunctional. FPC FB page was a desert where I had exactly two active posters: D-Man and the newly arrived Professor Voodoo. I got to run the page when Otaku lost interest for it. Can't blame him. Fire Pro was no longer my main hobby anymore either. I had become a roster maker at Operation Sports for MLB The Show. And I had told them that the only reason why I would leave was for a new Fire Pro.
DJKM still did his edits. People still ran their feds at the Arena.
Ceese & Fullbug passed away.
Lord Worm vanished after being caught buying hash online.
JB vanquished the FPR checksum. I thought this would be the last hurrah of the scene. Freem did an editor.
And then it came: Spike Chunsoft asked the people on Twitter if they wanted a new Fire Pro. I remember telling Dave Kracker, the PR guy for Spike, that I guaranteed it would be supported by the community. Others did. And then later they posted the video that had these two anonymous wrestlers tie up in that way we're all so familiar with....
People got excited.
I spoke to Hoss and I told him the FPC had to return under a new form. My idea was social media and a Wiki. Wiki never got off the ground. FPC on Twitter came March 2017.
And then the confirmation came. I can't explain to you how it was.
You know when it rains on a desert all kind of stuff sprouts that had been dormant for so long? My desert of a FB page just blossomed.
I remember going around to all the creators at the Arena and getting confirmation over confirmation of people that were coming along for the ride to create edits... I remember thinking, woah, this is going to be great.
A week before the game came out, as the defacto guy in charge of the dead but resurecting FPC I got to play it, along with Rev, D-Man, DJKM, Hoss, Stevie Richards and Ron McRae... I made the first edit for Fire Pro World. A Misawa.
The game came out. We were elated. Edit makers kept their words. Last time I checked we had what, 30000 edits in the Workshop?
And then the moment of discovery came... MODS.
Slowly but surely, Carl started making editing everything in the game possible. And everything was edited. The future was here, but not just the future. The eternity was here. This game will live forever.
Everything was going swimmingly and then... I get this message from C-Drive on Twitter asking me to help him get in touch with Tiger Sword about the site being down so I go on FB and I tag him. C-Drive gets back to me and tells me that TS won't answer. I ask if anything's wrong with him and he tells me to Google it. I did it and I found out.
Slammed my hand on my desk. Frankly, got emotional. This wasn't what I had in mind on sunday when I started porting FPD Rally edits. This wasn't good. I informed Hoss the Arena was lost. Not fun. David Bixenspan of Deadspin picked up the news. A group of vets, a always growing group of vets came together and agreed that we had to leave.
So overnight between Sunday and Monday, we built the Critical Club. Had a GREAT opening.
And now I'm back to porting FPD Rally edits.
