Part 2
So we had our new site! yay! But what to call it? with MK :Arnageddon announced and us waiting anxiously for it, being super stoked on it having every MK character ever in the game we decided on MKAC, or Mortal Kombat Armageddon Central. The site was run by someone named "MKAC Admin". Oddly enough he had no previous tag, no gamertag just seemingly came out of nowhere to help JTF run the site. We ended up asking who the hell he was and eventually learned that he was JTF's brother and had cancer and died or something, iunno.
A legend
Theres generally one person in a scene that rises above the rest, someone you can look up to and really admire. This person went by the tag "eazytobeat". Dont let the tag fool you though! he was anything but. He was without a doubt the TOP MKD/MKA player at the time. He was how we tested ourselves as it would be a few more years until we understood the offline scene.
Eazy was a stand up guy and wanted nothing more than to just play games with friends. He once made a tier list of all the players and how well they would do against him with Krayziebone(now known as EGP krayzie) Pig of the hut, MeSofly and I believe master Malone taking the top spots. He reminded us what it was to be a community and was always a stand up guy and mentor.
Back in those days the "GGs Thread" was a sacred thing. You ALWAYS posted in the thread after a series with anyone, if you didnt you were called on it. Games were always done in minimal sets of 10, 5 was acceptable if life was happening, anything less your god damn house better be burning down! It really helped us break down the game and I think is a rule that we really still follow to this day, which is why the older members of the community seem to thrive in the tournament scene. Training was fun, and at that time, tournaments weren't advertised on the front page, Clan wars were. They would be hyped up for weeks the same we do with tournaments today.
MKA arrived and with it the emergence of a kid we were unaware would become Possibly the greatest MK player of all time..
THE EMERGENCE OF REO
After MKA came out we decided to change the website name to Mortal Kombat Central so that we could accomodate future games. an influx of new talent emerged on the site but none as attention seeking and out there as the one we would soon call Reo.
Reo trolled the absolute shit out of that site, constantly getting banned from shoutbox and threads. At first he appeared nothing more than just your standard forum troll(that term by the way was not yet adopted. We called these people "Assholes"). But soon he caught on to a concept a lot of us found very foreign, the strategy of "playing to win".
Seeing as how I played on xbox and reo on psn, word started to get around about his sareena. We had a sareena player on xbox(bobby blaze) who would constantly mop us up, so eventually I got a ps3 and got a chance to play reo in a set. It was incredible what this kid was doing with sareena, the original IAGB. His spacing was spot on with a move she had, an OH advancing Launcher(think supermans F2 but an OH). I dont think I had ever lost a set that lopsided before and even though he'd been an absolute troll on the forums i still got a "gg" and sadly never got to play him again.
The community had adopted a set of rules to offset the many glitches the game had to offer but reo made us question this strategy, and showed us a more competitive way to play. If it wasnt for that I know a lot of us wouldnt have explored the game and our characters the way we did and developed fundamentals and a different attitude that would help us down the road. Like him or not, Reo was here to stay and he changed the community from then on.
The MKA era was one of the funnest I had the pleasure of being a part of. It brought in a whole new set of players such as burninoni007, Storms, Azuro(now known as THTB), and even some of the old MK3 guys came over. After MKAs run was done, MKDC was announced and that is the game that turned our community upside down and opened doors we never thought we'd venture into.
One man showed up and changed everything. Changed the way we thought about gaming, the way we played, the way we trained and more importantly where we trained.
In Part 3, the last and final part, I reveal who this gentleman is, the arrival of the offline scene, How TYM was created, and how MK9 saved the Franchise...that is if you the readers can wait to hear it
- STB|EGP Shujinkydink
I loved him in Mk 4 and in MKA, would be nice if Ermac got in there again too but who knows.
