My name is Linkandzelda, and this is my Official Website. On here you will be able to find everything that I do with my online life as the name Linkandzelda. All the projects and websites I work on are listed here with information about them. This page will serve as a history of the time I entered the Internet until now.
Games Consoles & The Internet
When I was a kid I wasn’t allowed to access the Internet on my computer until about 2005 when my household got Broadband access. I’m guessing my mum restricted access to it to protect me, but I’m glad she let use it eventually. Not having Internet access on my computer made me turn to offline materials, such as the numerous Game demo discs I had laying around my house. I remember I counted all the games I had, was about 143 at the time to keep me busy at home without Internet access.
Something else my mum did, was only allow me to have a PC, which I was given at the age of 8. She would not allow me to have any Video Game Consoles to play with, only PC games. Why she did this? I do not know, but it means I completely missed the Retro Era of gaming.
I remember a few accounts where I was given Video Games Consoles or “Borrowed” them, such as when I saved up for months to buy a used GameBoy Advance for £23 of a friend at my school. This was officially my first console and came with Super Mario Advance 2, which I learnt later was effectively Super Mario World. My friend also had a GameBoy Advance, and used to talk about a game called Megaman Battle Network, which I remember hating when I first saw it. The music and style was just not my type at all, yet he insisted I played it. At the time, a new version of Megaman Battle Network had been released in stores which was the 4th game. Being optimistic I went to pick it up and play it. Turned out that I quite enjoyed the game even though, I later learnt that this was the worst game in the series even though I enjoyed it at the time. That’s when I picked up Megaman Battle Network 3 and throughly loved playing the game. That’s about the same time when I got the Internet connected to my computer for the first time.
I had to pick an online name as a friend registered me for a Hotmail email address. I picked Gigaboy2005 as it was based off of Megaman but with the 2 words swapped. Mega = Giga, Man = Boy. My password was also something from the Megaman series, and still is to this date.
2 years later my mum bought me a Nintendo Gamecube one Christmas, and that’s when I was entered into the major Console world, and the world of Zelda. The first Zelda game I played was the Ocarina Of Time Collectors Edition which came with a Nintendo Gamecube as a limited edition disc. It included on it Ocarina Of Time, Majora’s Mask, Legend Of Zelda, Zelda II and a demo of Zelda: The Wind Waker. After Playing them all I was completely obsessed with the Zelda series, as it became my favourite ever game series. You might say this is responsible for my current Internet name; Linkandzelda, which came from my suspicion that Link and Zelda were in love, but trying to keep it a secret.
Later on in time I got a PSP and a Wii as my mum gave in to allowing me to have them. The Wii was primarily to play Zelda: Twilight Princess which was just released. Being a fan of the older games I couldn’t resist, since my friends had already got the game. At the same time I was getting more deeper into the internet discovering all the Retro games I’d missed out on like Pokémon Crystal, Super Mario Bros and other classics. The consoles I had missed out on were Playstation, Playstation 2, Dreamcast, SEGA Megadrive, Gameboy Color, Nintendo 64, NES and the Super NES. That was a huge list of things to catch up on, so I began to google things like “Play X on the PC”. This led me to Emulation and ROMS that allowed me to begin my Retro adventure.
Being an emulation guy, I began to think how great the PSP was and how great it was to be able to play some of these games on it. I also wanted to be able to play Zelda games like Twilight Princess and The Wind Waker on it, since I believed the processing power of the device was good enough to handle it. You could say this was the first time I started thinking about Game Programming. It also spawned my first MSN account and second internet name; Twilightpsp. Stands for Twilight Princess on the PSP.
Then 2007 game, and I was bored in Summer as I just broke up from my school and had 8 weeks off. I took looking for ROMS to the next level and, thanks to a gift from the gods I discovered ROM Hacking, my first entrance into the world of Game Development.
ROM Hacking Adventures
I just remember when it first happened, I discovered hacked ROMs like Pokémon Aqua which had new maps and item names. And another one called Pokémon Revolution, which let you pick from a legendary bird as the stater. I used to play these games with my friends and surprise them. they thought it was cool and got naturally interested, just like I did. I had a lot of questions such as how did someone do it, why and where can I start. After days of intense research I stumbled across Pokémon: Shiny Gold, the Pokémon Gold remake for the GBA. After I played it I also discovered all of the tools, tutorials and documents which were available on Pokécommunity. That’s when I made a spontaneous decision, to make my own Pokémon Crystal remake for the GBA using Pokémon: FireRed as a base ROM.
I just remember the first day that I decided to make the game, I was excited and had life breath right into me. The feeling that I had just started something amazing was surging through me, and I felt like my life suddenly had a good purpose. I opened Advance Map and began to map out the first town of Pokémon Crystal. It was as if I had done this before as everything was naturally to me. That’s when I showed it to my friend and my mum, and we thought of a name. I wanted to base it off the same naming structure as Pokémon: Shiny Gold. So it had to have Crystal in the name. My num suggested the name Pokémon: Liquid Crystal, and me and my friend looked at each other with that look of “That’s it!”. That was the day that Pokémon: Liquid Crystal was born.
Music
When I was a kid, my gran got me a Guitar which was supposed to be a secret. I didn’t find out about it until 2001, when I was looking inside my mums cupboards. I came across the Guitar and wanted to play it a lot, but my mum said I was too young to play the Guitar and it went back into the cupboard. Later in the future I got it out again and secretly tried to play it. Mum heard me and this time let me keep the guitar out, so I could play it when I wanted too. Soon I realised that the Guitar was meant for a small child, but a child smaller than me. So the Guitar was too small for me. Mum got it traded for a larger one of the same type, and that’s when I had my first Guitar. But i couldn’t play it without lessons, so I stopped playing.
At my school a new year just began, and we had a new classroom assistant working with us. I discovered that he was a pretty good Guitar player, and asked him to teach me. He accepted and taught me the basic chords and bar chords, as well as a small amount of fingerpicking. This knowledge was enough for me and I felt like I could play anything. So I pursued my Guitar playing again. I learnt all the classic songs like Smoke on the Water, Stairway to Heaven, Layla and songs like that, but it wasn’t enough. I needed to play something else. That’s when I discovered Melodic Wings by Sean Gordon, one of my favourite songs in the world.
Learning Melodic Wings was the best thing I could of done for my Guitar playing. It improved my skills greatly and I was opened up to a new level of playing I wasn’t previously able to do. Then I started College and ROM Hacking and saw all my time fly out the window. I gradually stopped playing the Guitar as much as I did as I focused on College and ROM Hacking. Then in 2010 I made a decision one summer, to record one of the songs from Megaman Battle Network 3 but on the guitar. This was when I began to make my first Home Studio to record songs.
Today, I’m still working on my first album, with that song as the first one I ever recorded placed as track 1. I’ve got more albums planned and will hopefully be playing for as long as I live. Eventually I’ll compose my own music for my Video Games that I plan to make.
Web Hosting
As mentioned on the Forums page on this site, I originally got my first Forum from the Webmaster at PHO. After about a year of having free service, he asked me to pay. I agreed to pay for the hosting since he gave me it for free up until then. Then he presented to me a Hosting company which he was running, and asked me to be a volunteer Tech Support guy for the site. I agreed to this and was pretty excited, since it was my first “Job” so to speak. Unfortunately the company didn’t work out, and he started a new one without me.He then later on suggested I was Tech Support, so I agreed since this company had lasted longer than before. But sadly again, it didn’t work out and he set off to create a new company of his own.
At the time of this which was the beginning of February 2011, one of my friends at school had proposed to me a question. “Let’s start a Web Hosting company together!”. Since I had a fun time working as Tech Support in the past I agreed to do it, and we setup a small Hosting company. Funnily enough it was hosted by the PHO Webmaster, the same guy that gave me the Support job in the past. I had a company now that I co-cowned with my school friend. It worked out well for a few months and we almost broke even in sales, until there was a problem. PHO’s server crashed and we lost everything, It was offline for almost 2 days. During this time all our clients had quit and left us, leaving us with a bad reputation and no clients.
This is when I contacted PHO’s Webmaster and made a suggestion, I asked if I could own 50% of his current Hosting Company, named HostinGazel. He agreed and that was that. We then shared expenses in exchange for 50% of the company. At the same time me and my school friend were trying our best to find a new provider, while I tried to keep it secret from him that I joined forces with another Hosting Company. After that failed I revealed that I owned 50% of HostinGazel, and we parted ways for a while. I worked for some of his companies throughout the year as 50% owner and Tech Support, but the companies did not last. During this time I also had HostinGazel to manage.
And then came the year of 2012, when my school friend was still at it trying to make a success in the Hosting industry. He created a company which was so well formed and official, that I thought it was the one. I thought finally this company will be a success. He asked me to be the Assistant Manager at the company named Cyber Snake and I accepted. After about a month of work, he came to me and said that he could no longer run Cyber Snake and will be closing it instantly. Obviously I thought this was a mistake and a real shame, since I loved Cyber Snake. After some negotiations, he agreed to turn over 100% ownership of Cyber Snake to me so I can continue to run it as I like.
Today, HostinGazel merged with Cyber Snake and the Co-CEO of HostinGazel stepped down from his position. This leaves me as the CEO of Cyber Snake, providing some of the cheapest and best quality hosting on the Internet.
1337squad, 1337mods & Techmantis
Back in the summer of 2011, I’d just finished my college and was getting ready to start university. I set myself a task of finishing as much of Pokémon: Liquid Crystal as I could. Then Zeikku, my co-owner approached me with an idea. Since he’d been writing for Dashhacks at the time he wanted to pursue his route in Journalism. So we decided to make a new site called 1337squad, dedicated to providing Game news and Reviews. The site was going well and had a great theme, but there was areas we wanted to explore that we could not, such as technology and hacking.
At this time a major problem happened at Dashhacks, as the site was sold to a new owner. Zeikku’s pay decreased dramatically and eventually he lost his job. Also, all of the forum staff of Dashhacks got demoted and banned from the forums. Something had to be done, so me and Zeikku gave them a new home called 1337mods, a news site for Tech and Hacking stuff as well as a brand new forum. This then formed what was known as The 1337 Network.
Today, 1337squad and 1337mods merged into a single site called Techmantis which provides Console hacking, tips and tricks as well as Gaming News and Reviews.
iMetro
Ever since Windows 8 was announced and demoed, I was incredibly interested in the new design. Especially for use on a tablet PC. It was intuitive, sexy and looked very nice. The problem was that this was going to become the new Windows 8, going on a PC system without a touchscreen. This is the reason why I think that Windows 8 is very annoying for a PC system as the Metro UI is one of the most informative interfaces I’ve ever seen. I’m a lazy guy, and want to have all my information in one place. That’s why the Live Tiles are incredible for the home screen.
I’m a complete fan of the OS7 theme for the iPhone, which makes your iPhone look like a Windows Phone 7 device. It’s Microsoft’s version of the Metro UI on a Mobile Phone. I’ve been running the theme for a long time, and decided that my iPad needed the same love. I started looking into OS7 themes for the iPad, but there was none available at the time. So what do you do if you can’t find something you want? You make it yourself. And there we have, iMetro for the iPad.
Other Stuff
Besides these things I’ve become involved with a lot of other projects and sites. But mainly the things and info above is what spawned everything I do today. You can check out the rest of the site to see what I’m up to. You can send me a message if you want to talk to me about anything. You can also Follow me on Twitter to keep updated with all the things I do.
