It's Thanksgiving again and today I want to do another one of my long-ass/longwinded posts!  This Thanksgiving is special.  You see, ten years ago on Saturday, November 23rd  I got my copy of TMBO.

Like most old school fans, my love of Twisted Metal began in the late nineties with Twisted Metal 2.  It survived through the dark times of 989, and my faith was rewarded a few years later in 2001 with Twisted Metal: Black.  

By the fall of 2002 I easily considered Twisted Metal: Black my favorite game of all time, but I was by that point only playing it once through on co-op with my bro every few weeks.  Like most games, even the best ones, the passion starts to die off.   When I look back at my years of Twisted Metal fandom though, it really doesn’t start until 2002.  That’s when I discovered a whole new level of enjoying a video game series.  A passion that wouldn't die off in days, weeks, or even months, but years . . .  if ever.   

Somewhere around September I was reading an Electronic Gaming Monthly about Sony’s new online service, and I found out from the magazine that TMBO was only going to be available for a limited time, for FREE, if you bought a network adapter.  You bought the adapter for $40, mailed in a coupon, and TMBO would arrive a few weeks later.  Best deal ever!

Up until that time, I had never planned on buying a network adapter.  I was a poor, broke, college kid, and I didn’t even have internet.  However, the thought of never being able to own TMBO scared the crap out of me and so I hunted all over town . . . and then the towns next to me, for a network adapter and finally found ONE to purchase.   I quickly filled the form out, mailed it in, and forgot about it.

And then came the 23rd of November.  As I looked down at that package sitting on my desk I suddenly had an overwhelming desire to try it out.  I realized that somewhere out there people were testing their skills on other human beings, and my head imagined a million online battles in a split second.

My parents were away for a week on vacation, and from my apartment I somehow managed to recall my father’s login information for his dial up account (remember dial up?) and pretty soon I was witnessing the TMBO lobby.  I couldn’t join broadband games, only 1 on 1’s due to my slow connection speed.  That night, I didn’t join any.  It was late, and I had the next day off.  I wanted to wake up refreshed and ready to face my toughest opponents.  I looked at the rooms for a minute, and logged of.

I can still remember how anxious I was to play the next morning.  Error free, I logged into the TMBO server and looked at the rooms.  I still remember the first broadband room (out of my reach) that caught my eyes.  It was called, “Morning Murderers.”  Ah memories.  

I played almost nonstop on dial up for a week.  I felt invincible . . . there were so many schmucks new to car combat that I didn’t lose any matches.  It was easy to believe you were the best in those early days if you were a longtime Twisted Metal fan.  So many players, and so little skill.  Eventually my Dad grew tired of me always calling up to ask if I could borrow his internet and so I sprang for my own DSL connection.  It cost a lot and I had no idea how I would pay for it .  .  . but it was SO worth it.  All I had to do was never eat dinner and I could cover the cost.  

My undefeated status didn’t last more than a week at best.  Roket from TMA provided my first challenge.  Evil Ed was the first player to absolutely kick the shit out of me.  It wasn’t even close . . . that was humbling.  In the early days of TMBO no one knew about the chat, and so people naturally gravitated towards TMA as for a while it was the only place to really communicate.  Alliances were formed, friendships, rivalries, and in fact, entire Twisted Metal nations formed and crumbled.  
The best players remained in a state of flux.  Old champions either left, or were vanquished, and new ones took their places.  Incognito, who built the game, continued to play with us and comment from time to time on the message boards.  It was truly a golden age for many of us to be a Twisted Metal fan.

Eventually the community, like all online communities, shrank big time.  Oddly enough, it is these times that are my fondest memories.  There are some of us who pretty much lived through the entire server right down until there were only a handful of us left.  We played right up until the final night the server was pulled.  For those who adore the new game, there’s a lesson in this.  It might be freaky that the community is shrinking . . . but there are some serious upsides to it too.  Eventually, it will feel like your game.  

With TMBO, one night we were having an eight player broadband match, and the next morning the server was gone . . . March 2007 . . . a day that will live in infamy.  There was no warning, no goodbyes.  For nearly five years we lived in Sweet Tooth’s head, and then one day we were back in the real world.  It was, perhaps, as it should be.  A goodbye really didn’t fit the universe.  The sudden death of the server could be interpreted as a tip of the hat to John Doe or Agent Stone.

Perhaps the hardest thing for TMB fans like me is how agonizingly out of reach a proper sequel was.  I realize now, at least in some way, what the hardcore of fans of TM2 felt that could never really move on.  All of us knew EXACTLY what a proper sequel should have been.  We even believed one could be fashioned that would also appease the huge fans of TM2.  Throw in a working voice chat, a mode to remove healths, a larger universe, stronger ramming for those Nazis, and the same complex balance of offensive and defensive car combat and you had a winner.  Damn it.  

In a world of sequels it only made sense that such a successful and critically acclaimed game would get a sequel.  Yet, one never came.  When finally we were given TMHO, many TMB fans laid down the $350+ just to play the damn thing only to discover to our chagrin that TMHO was Twisted Metal: Light.  Seven years later, when we would do practically the same thing for Twisted Metal Head On: Rebooted . . . well there’s only so many times you can keep hoping for the sun to come out.

It is so weird to me, as I move through life, that so many things come so CLOSE to perfection only to suddenly lose their steam and drizzle out (Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Star Trek, Star Wars, Sony).  Perfection is always tantalizingly, or perhaps agonizingly, just out of reach.   C’est la vie . . . people have said that nothing is real until it’s gone.  Maybe that is where true Thanksgiving comes from.  It’s that point where you look back and realize you’ve lost something, or worse, someone special.

I know some on here rage when I say such things, and probably they notice just a wee bit of “this is personal” with me, and others.  It’s true . . . there is a bitter tragedy to a hardcore fan like myself.  I am genuinely glad for those who can adore the new game, and genuinely a bit bitter that I was unable to do the same.

This is not about the new game though.  The chapter of Twisted Metal fandom, at least for me, is winding down.  It isn’t a “never say never” kind of ultimatum, it’s more of a “time to get with the times buddy” for me.  I have now missed the fan bus on two Twisted Metal releases (TMHO/TM:PS3).  There is no certainty of a new Twisted Metal anytime soon, and if it comes, there is no reason to believe I will love it.  After all, looking at the history of the series, I loved four titles (TM, TM2, TMSB, TMB) and was left either disappointed or despising four others (TMHO, TM:PS3, TM4, TM3).  Those aren’t good odds.  Fifty/Fifty.

Before I end this post, I wanted to mention every player’s names from TMBO that I could recall . . . while I still CAN remember you.  Sadly my memory keeps fading over the years and I know I’ve already forgotten some important ones.  I am only mentioning them if I ever saw them in a game. I owe them a great debt, even if we hated each other. Looking back now, you created the flavor that is what I truly miss most.

Roket, Evil Ed, Son of Calypso, Desert Colossus, Crystal, White Knight, In Blood, Godfather Grimm, Night, Joker, C4, Snake Pit, In Flames, Slice'n Dice, Whattup Dog, CAPT, Finger of God, Rabid, All the KFC players, Thumpy and the Dev Inc. Crew, Nightshade, Mortimer, Xizor, Simkar, Roadie, Maartyrr, Eakius, Carnage, Magnum, Drop Gems, Canadiens 8, Devilgene, Angelique, Alunkiel, Lemmywinks, Surgeon, SynthR, Methid Man, Casper, LivingColour, PsychoSeven, BJYman, Jmotruck, Joe Twisted, Enjakill, Killer the 1st, Toasty, Slayer, jailbird, Yellowjacket, Dr. Jones, Mapster, Aldo Mex,Zivhin, YUCK><FOU, Rice in my Sock, Mixed Emotions, Violent Energy, Guardian, and Cujo.

Now, a special shout out to “The Night Crew.”  These are the players who pretty much stuck it out from start to finish.  They were the best of the best, and they knew it, and all of us had the most fun.  It felt like our server.  It kind of was.

Stitches, Legend, Terror Weapon, Mito, Mikey, Sinnistergrin, Venom, Darkforce, Kemmler (we kind of adopted you, but you were playing on the Europe server BEFORE so you were a diehard too), Apocalypse, Evil Adolph, Vicente, Tony, and Hi.

Finally, I’d like to give a shout out to the revival group.  TMBO: The Next Generation.  There is a lot of overlap here since it’s mostly made up of vets from the old era, but this group has kept TMBO alive for a little over a year now.  We’re a shrinking group, and we might be in the twilight of it all, but your efforts allowed for us to say this game lived to see its tenth birthday, and some of my fondest memories of TMB have been with this new crowd:

Roadie, Darkforce, Onion (sorry . . . it’s HONESTLY out of respect Orion, really), Klrgrn, Night, Mikey (RIP), and Tony.  Mito for a short time too before you left . . . you bastard.

Ten years is a third of my life.

My memories of TMBO are bizarrely vivid. I can play them in my head like remembering scenes from a seemingly never ending Japanese manga. I remember hundreds of specific games, scores, and especially specific images of battle, often turning points. I remember the context of the games and hundreds of quotes from my opponents and my teammates. If TMBO were a real place, and took tourists, I could be a tour guide and walk everyone through every level, pointing to places where intense brawls and even massacres happened, locations where highly respected players quit out of games after getting hit by reticles, where game turning and even POLTICALLY turning engagements occurred, including narratives from the afterward repercussions on TMA's TMBO board. I could tell you all several "(player name)'s Last Stand" stories.

I could tell you all of game-changing strategies, who developed them, when they were implemented, how they affected the landscape, and how long it took players to find counters. I could tell you all about how certain new strategies, tactics, and discoveries completely mutated the car tiers (with "Axel is GOD" being the only constant, of course), and how certain cars got phased in and out of gameplay as a result of these developments. I could talk about the dozens and dozens of major mistakes and errors in judgment that the community made, why the mistakes were made, and even the bullshit that lives on to this day as a result and how it influenced TMHO and TM2012. I could tell you who hated who's guts and why, and which grudges still live on to this day. I could talk of which game setups became popular at what times, how they were developed and evolved, and how they either fell out of favor or became classic game models.

Wow.

Many people have passing interests in their lives. They end up just "tasting" many of the hobbies and interests that are available to the world. That's never been the case with me. When I find something captivating, I tend to latch on and milk it for all it's worth. Holy crap, I spent so much time with this one. Only a couple of my hobbies have had more time invested. It's tragic that so much of the memories, knowledge, experience, and skills I gained from my five year run with this game are so contained and exclusive to the game and not applicable to other things, but I can safely say that the game made me a better problem solver, and can also say that I was freakishly good at this game.

Yes, that's right. There is no one on this planet who I haven't played before that could even make me break a sweat. The game just has too many secrets. I know a lot of new faces here find that offensive for some reason. Nearly every gamer dreams of being a BOSS, I guess. Hahaha consider it a challenge then. Come and get me if you're curious! Heck, while you're dying on the other end, I could be telling you hilarious stories and silly history and explaining exactly how I'm doing what I'm doing over skype or something, and then we can post a recording here. HAHAHA

Oh man. I have to admit, part of me must be Klingon. I so thirst for battle, and after so many years of no game, part of me still dreams of quenching my thirst. Hopefully, I can get online soon and party with TMBO's new undead night crew. I haven't played in so long.

Too bad it's over. It's not coming back.

I miss playing. Halo 4 has been absorbing all of my time as of late, but I'll be ready to jump back in the fray if any of you message me.

Long live TMBO

Even though I never played TMBO or any TM online until TMPS3, I will say all of you guys have a flaming passion for this series and I wish I would've joined in on all the fun. But unfortunately I had no understanding of the internet at the time since I was too young to comprehend it, so I am very jealous. Someone post some gameplays up on this thread so we can see what went down.

I once thought about buying TMBO. I never played my PS2 online before. Does it let you play the multiplayer only stages like the Power Plant in single player?

Great posts.  

Magnum, yours was especially awesome to me.  Yours always are because you had such a unique perspective on it.

It was cool to see the image you attached.  It's like a relic of TMBO history.  Good stuff, and it's awesome they sent you a free game and adaptor for testing that.  You were more than just a casual tester, and so it's neat that they recognized it.

I definitely feel bad and pity everyone who missed the awesome TMBO experience.  It was a cool time to be a fan . . . in my opinion the best.  I can understand how you missed it though, like I said in my post above, I came very, very close to missing it myself.  


Psycho Se7eN wrote on 11/25/12 at 21:16:55:



That is a very good question.  Honestly, this is an unsolved mystery.  However, our initial investigation revealed three possibilities, in order of the most likely:

1.  Mikey died tragically while helping an old woman across the street.  He was suddenly  t-boned by a bus.

2.  Mikey never actually existed.

3.  Mikey joined the circus as "The World's Ugliest Man."


We continue to hope for some type of confirmation.