Five years. Five years on this website. I can hardly believe I'm saying that. I never thought I'd make it this far but... wow. Here we are. Here I am. Holy macaroni. For now, let's step into the past. It's 2019. I had just turned 11 years old. I had gotten a Chromebook for Christmas and I wanted to learn coding and make m own games. For a few weeks, I started to learn Scratch, mostly making low-quality Mega Man X animations and whatnot, but the appeal of sharing my projects to the world always stuck with me. I convinced my mom to let me make an account on the site. And thus, I was born onto this website (Fun fact: The username retrokid104 was one I came up with on January 4th of that year. I was playing... something, probably a browser game and decided to change my little kid-ahh username to something I could use better. Original one was spicypickles14. Laugh). For a while, I dabbled in making these sprite animations before getting involved in the early iteration of the community we now know as the SCMM group. I met great people who I did some roleplay stuff with on here, sadly many of whom have long since moved off this place. Things were swell. Then COVID-19 hit, and business was BOOMING. While most things shut down during the pandemic, the internet was, if anything, better than ever. With nothing better to do, cascades of people like me poured into Scratch. I took a few weeks off for personal reasons, but when I returned, suddenly I'd jumped past 100 followers and had consistent messages on my profile. I'd become integrated into the early community as a core member. I upped my game and started producing more regular projects. In 2021, the major community studio was created, and people started to centralize around the Mega Man community, forming it into the hodgepodge of ideas and people that it is today. I decided to up my game, too, and taught myself how to make AIs for my boss characters. Also around that time, I completed my first iteration of the MegaNext engine (which if you remember, was HORRIBLY flawed). Things started going well. Later that year I also hosted MaGMML2S to pretty good entry turnout. I made more various AIs. In 2022, I created Skullpunk for the Plant Man's Boss Contest. I began learning Famitracker. The community flourished. Then, disaster struck. In late December, my account was banned. For about two months, I was stuck migrating between shell accounts, trying to interact with a community that might have left me in the dust if I didn't return. I learned from my mistakes, though, and eventually was able to reoccupy my main account and return to the platform. I continued making music and bossfights, eventually sharing true Mega Man-styled songs, a dream I'd had for years. I continued to chat, interact, and have fun times with people for about a year until... Now. Five years from the making of this account. How things have changed. I've matured as a person and as a developer. My time on Scratch has taught me how to interact with people online, how to communicate, how to collaborate, and how to use one's skills to benefit a greater project. This place will always remain a reminder of my humble beginnings as some kid who liked Mega Man. No matter what direction life takes me in the future, Scratch remains a memory I will never forget. This party is a bit of a bittersweet one. I've decided that once this is over and my big going-away project is shared, I'm going to take my leave of this place. I'm moving on from Scratch. Yes, it's true. Honestly, it's been a long time coming. I'll post a project going into more detail when that finally happens, but for now, have fun. Be festive! Let's celebrate what we've had together. Thank you so much for the memories, fun times, and lessons, people of Scratch. It's party time.
