Fifteen years ago I published my first gaming FAQ guide to the Usenet, in this case it was a guide for the game Mortal Kombat 3, which was in beta testing at the time. I have been proud to be a part of the Mortal Kombat “Kommunity” ever since. To this day I still help run the now longest running MK fan site The Realm of Mortal Kombat aka TRMK. I sure didn’t think I’d be doing it still be covering the MK games for fifteen years, but I can say doing it has been a valuable part of who I am today.
I can’t say my early FAQs were any good, as I was just a pimply faced freshman in high school with no previous writing experience when I started. Today I can barely read the first FAQ without squirming. I learned quickly and my writing quality and accuracy increased over time, except for my habit for replacing C with K in many words. For instance one of my final MK3 FAQs is much less embarrassing. I went on to write guides/websites for non-MK games like: Killer Instinct 2, War Gods, Mace: The Dark Age, The Grid and Gears of War. My information was even published at times in various gaming magazines like Electronic Gaming Monthly and Game Informer.
When Mortal Kombat 4 began testing around Chicago in 1997, I joined up with friends who ran the website The Realm of Mortal Kombat. I’ve been working on covering all Mortal Kombat games for TRMK ever since. We are the longest running Mortal Kombat website still in existence. We to this day are still trying to continue to help fans in the “Kommunity” as well as we can. It’s not easy to do right along side a real job, but I will continue to do this as long as I believe I’m contributing in some form or another. We’re currently anticipating the release of Mortal Kombat 9 which is rumored to be coming sometime around Christmas 2010.
While working on these guides I developed many key skills I use in work still to this day. I made the first of many computer applications, an Interactive Mortal Kombat 3 Guide for Windows 3.1 written in the computer language Clarion. I sadly have no pictures of this original guide anymore. Then with the expansion of the world wide web I taught myself HTML by backwards engineering HTML source code on various websites. I continue to grow my web design skills as the internet technology advances. All this technology use made me firm in my desire to pursue a career in computer programming. All the jobs I’ve ever had were working with computer technology in one way or another from support to software development. Currently, I’ve got an awesome job developing iPhone (and iPad) games as well as applications for MobileAge.
Through out the past 15 years I have also met and become friends with many great people. Everyone from the developers behind the games, members of the professional and amateur gaming press and of course all the other legions of game fans out there. Many of which provided great inspiration to me, and have been great friends over the years. I would make a list of these people who have helped over the years, but then I’m likely to forget someone. So I would just like to say thank you to everyone who has been a part of this journey over the years, as without you I probably wouldn’t be where I am today. I really appreciate everything.
To celebrate this anniversary I’ll be giving away a few Mortal Kombat product packages to readers on The Realm of Mortal Kombat. So be sure to check there later today, or follow @TRMK on Twitter, for more details as I put the contest details online.