User:TSA@legacy41957738

Biography
My name is Michael Damiani, but I typically go by Mike to everyone who knows me. I was born on March 5th on Long Island, which is part of the state of New York. When I was five years old, my family moved to Dallas, Texas, where I lived most of my life. After graduating from the University of Texas, I moved out to San Diego, California, to begin my job hunt. I eventually landed my first professional career a few months later and ended up in Orange County. After spending two years there, I wound up in the San Fernando Valley north of Los Angeles, where I currently reside.

Early Online Years
I first got into the bane of humanity's future known as the internet back in 1993 when I was visiting family friends back in New York. They had just gotten something known as America Online, which let you use a computer to go to these "documents" that were created by other people, and you could read them. You could also get news from various places instantly, and talk to people through electronic messages known as "email". A year later, we got a new computer and I put America Online on it. Thus began my foray into the unknown...

Origin of TSA
Most people online, outside of my immediate friends, know me by the online handle/alias "TSA". When I first got online, my original screen name was ThePro. I used that name because I thought I was good at video games and it was the handle I used at laser tag events as a kid, as well as for high scores in arcades (I put in PRO). However, in high school, my teammates on the football team gave me the nickname "The Silent Assassin" because I hardly talked, but was known for being the best "gamer" in school. Most of them associated gaming with shooters, so that's where the Assassin part game from.

I kept the moniker for years primarily because I was a huge Metal Gear fan, and it sort of applied to Solid Snake, my favorite video game character. However, as I became more entrenched with the Zelda community over the years, I eventually turned the name into The Silent Adventurer since it could apply to Link, the mute hero fo the Zelda franchise. Additionally, Hitman 2 came out and had the subtitle "Silent Assassin", which pissed me off because everyone began thinking I liked Hitman, and I hate it.

However, as I expanded beyond Zelda, I simply kept the name "TSA" and made it stand for absolutely nothing, just as AOL has done. Unfortunately mere months after adopting this, the US government established the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA. This has caused confusion amongst new people I meet online, and on numerous occasions people have asked if I work for them. However, since I have 15 years of history as "TSA", and because I came up with the name first, I have not changed it.

Ironically, my youngest brother informed me that back at my high school, some of his friends who are into gaming know me as "TSA", and since I left the school, apparently the name is still discussed because there's some stupid urban legend about how I went on to work for Nintendo and I was the kid from the movie "The Wizard" or something. That's not true, but I'll continue to let them think it is.

AOL Days (1993-1995)
As mentioned before, I got on AOL back in 1994. I was immediately drawn to Nintendo Power Source, Nintendo's AOL channel, and GamePro Online on AOL. I was active on both their bulletin board systems, and I also started my own AOL Member Club known as the World's Elite Gaming Member's Association, or WEGMA. I had a few people sign up, and we discussed beating games with high scores and doing various tricks in games.

Sometime in 1995, I unfortunately made the mistake of claiming I knew somebody who worked for AOL in a public chat room. A watch dog (nick name for AOL chat mods back in the day) was present, and kicked me offline and issued me a 7 day ban for "impersonating AOL staff". My parents called up AOL when we couldn't sign on, and they reported the account was banned for violating the Terms of Service. They re-activated my account, but my parents pulled the plug on AOL and I would go internet-less for a year.

Prodigy Days (1996-1997)
After my hiatus, we got a new computer in late 1996 that had a trial version of Prodigy. It allowed a 90 day trial of the service. I got online again, and quickly found most of my old keeps were gone (GamePro moved to a web address, Nintendo Power Source did the same and shut down their community area, and my AOL page was long gone). I had known that Lycos was a search engine from my time online before, and used it to seek out new sites. I did initially find Zelda Headquarters at this time, but I was not staff and was merely a fan of the site.

Cornerian Elite Force (1997)
However, I did stumble across a site called the Cornerian Elite Force. It was a Star Fox fan site run by a guy who lived close to me in Texas. I was really into Star Fox at this time (Star Fox 64 was coming out), and so I got involved. I helped write guide pages for the games, and eventually submitted high scores for the game. There was also a "ranking" system for members, based on the military ranks you earn over your career, and the level of participation was unlike anything I had seen.

During this time, a member named StarFoxAlpha got in touch with me, and let me know he had a bigger fan site known as The Lylat Alliance, and wanted to know if I had any interest in their group.

The Lylat Alliance/Tales from Nimbus(1997-1998)
StarFoxAlpha welcomed me into The Lylat Alliance, where I met several people would were very important to my formative years as a "webmaster". He, along with FrankenRoc from the Cornerian Elite Force, taught me about web hosting, HTML, and other basic internet stuff that is common place for a five year old today. While writing articles for The Lylat Alliance, I began to practice creating my own HTML pages as well, which I would submit for the site.

After a year of being with this crew, and posting on our message board - one of the first of its kind that was not a BBS (bulletin board system), I was formally asked to be a part of the epic community project known as Tales from Nimbus. I had not seen anything else like this back then, nor have I seen anything like it since. Imagine taking the Zelda community, turning it into a fan fiction, where we all had avatars and went on adventures, but it was Zelda themed.

My character, The Silent Assassin, was a ninja fox, and StarFoxAlpha drew numerous sketches and wrote me into the plot to be a significant "vigilante" hero type, though a supporting role to the main cast. I would say that this was the most fun I ever had online, and I've noticed that at this age, which was high school years for me, is when most people going online are into these types of things (fan art, fan fiction, message boards for the purpose of social chatter, etc). I believe a lot of this stuff is either still online, or you can find it via Archive.org.

Tripod Fan Sites (1997-1998)
I did a brief stint on Tripod trying to run my own three fan sites, The Mushroom Kingdom, The Lylat System, and The Kingdom of Hyrule. They were very basic fan pages, with very basic info and were my attempt at trying to learn more HTML and web hosting. I only did it for a year, and they are long gone with no trace (not even Archive.org could find them).

Nintendo Kids Panel
Sometime in the fall of 2007, Nintendo of America held a Diddy Kong Racing mall tour across the United States. 64 participants were selected at random to enter in a tournament for the game. It was a 4 player race, and the winner advanced to the next round. I made it into the finals and won the finals pretty easily, especially since I had played the game from Blockbuster a week in advance (they ran a special promotion). I won a pretty sweet amount of prizes, including another N64 and games, but I also got to fill out some paperwork for something called the Nintendo Kids Panel.

Six kids would be selected from the six regions of the US to represent Nintendo, and in the end, I got selected for the South region

Early Zelda Fansite Years
While my first attempt at running my own sites was a miserable failure, it was a good learning experience. I also started to realize more and more I was being drawn back to Zelda. While A Link to the Past really got me hooked on the series right before I got online in 1993, it wasn't until the build up to Ocarina of Time and its eventual release that got me completely hooked on the fandom and wanting to be so active in the community.

Zelda Headquarters (1998-1999)
I said earlier that I did find ZHQ.com back in 1996, but I was just a reader. I think I got my questions published in a few letters sections leading into 1998, when I finally began getting my own articles published on the site. I do not remember how, but I think I was submitting so much music that Conrad, the webmaster of the site at the time, invited me to run the Music section.

Now, at this point and time online, MIDIs were commonplace on web sites, and mp3s either didn't exist or weren't widespread yet due to everyone being on dial up still. However, my PC had a MIDI editor on it, which allowed you to edit each "instrument channel" in an existing MIDI, or if you had a keyboard, make your own MIDIs. But basically, aside from harvesting MIDIs from various sites, I would take existing MIDIs and edit the instrumentation and "remix" them as my own.

So, I became staff of ZHQ running the music section, and unknowingly was "taking" MIDIs from other people and not giving them credit. I was later told by the staff they got complaints after I left, but the honest truth was that I wasn't trying to take credit and I just didn't know how it worked online at that time with using content found on the internet (it was the wild west then).

Anyway, aside from that, I was active in helping with the Zelda V guide (Ocarina of Time), and posted on the staff e-mail listing, which served as our staff boards. Lots of my "tutoring" in terms of becoming a "Zelda Expert" as some of you claim I am began here, with Master of Hyrule explaining lots of his theories to me, and Rod Jones discussing Zelda strategies. I wasn't very active on the forums, though, which were called Kakariko Village Square, aka KVS, which I regret because I think some of the "beginnings" of "4chan" culture began in those forums...when I found KVS a few years later after ZHQ closed, it was really...crazy.

Unfortunately, as I just hinted at, ZHQ would come to a sudden end in 1999. Niels came back, was unhappy with ZHQ's direction, and had these new ideas. Essentially, he was going to change what made ZHQ what it was (all the fan aspects and personality) in exchange for modernizing it. In the long run, modernization would have been the best course for long-term high traffic, but even to this day, that would have killed off the essence of what made that site great. The two of us had a falling out, with me claiming the site would be dead in mere months with his direction.

Freelance Days (1999)
I was left without a home, though, and so I gave other sites a shot in the meantime. I started off by working as a staff member for Zelda Infinite (the same one that's still around today). However, nothing really got done on the site, and I was eventually contacted by some guys who wanted to start a site called Zlda.com. They were former staff of The Golden Land, and heard I used to help out at ZHQ. The project got off the ground, but quickly sputtered out, again due to inactivity from all of us. I then started submitting a few articles here and there to various fan sites.

Zelda Classic (2000-2002)
After aimlessly wandering around, I decided to check out Zelda Classic over at Armageddon Games Network. ZHQ had covered the project back in 1999, but I never managed to get the site to work. I quickly warmed up to the members and staff there, and during my first few months as a member, I was already engrossed by Zelda Classic and ZQuest - the program that created custom quests to be played on Zelda Classic.

At the height of my participation in making custom quests, an "official third quest" contest came about. I entered, along with several others, but was initially disqualified because my submission file had a virus in it. I eventually convinced the team to accept it and said it wasn't my doing, but unfortunately the person heading the judging team went inactive. So, I took on the task of judging the quests, and tossed mine out to prevent any conflict of interest.

After this event, though, I eventually became cynical of the staff, and became rather hot headed and reckless. I would continually pick fights with moderators and members, get caught up in flame wars, and along with a few friends, just outright create turmoil. I started a meme known as "Karma, Bitch!", which was to go to a random board or forum, and flood every topic with that phrase and an image of Tonberry from Final Fantasy X.

I also became extremely obsess with my post count, and when a board purge had me losing a lot of my posts, I protested and made a big deal out of it. Eventually I realized I was being consumed by this forum and site, and not only was it making me a moron online, but my offline life was suffering as well. I said goodbye to the forum, and departed for good, ending one of the more idiotic phases of my life. However, for a time during the start, I feel it was the most productive I had ever been. I also learned a lot about Zelda 1 which would aid me in speedruns down the road.

ZHQ 2 (2003-2004)
During my days over with Zelda Classic, I had made a really good online friend - Mak X, known better as Mak. The two of us began hitting up new Zelda forums, and eventually found our way to Legends of Zelda's forums, where we met with Davogones. I think it was then that everyone began getting real serious about "timeline" discussion, and the obsession with "Japanese" source materials and debunking NOA's theories.

Also back at Zelda Classic was Kris Smith, one of the staff members of ZHQ. While I initially had a dislike for him based on a stupid prejudice I had against all of ZHQ, I quickly realized I was being stupid and we became friends. Mak, Kris, and I constantly discussed making our own Zelda site, and other various things. It wasn't until my friend Hermit came along, who was also a Zelda Classic veteran, that our ideas would become a potential reality.

The idea of reviving the greatest fan site ever was our plan - ZHQ. We had most of the site files left over from the final zip of the site Niels put online before ZHQ closed. Our idea was to put the old ZHQ back online as-is, and continue updating it. But we didn't want to step on anyone's toes, so I found Niels' contact info, as well as Conrad's, who was now running Hyrule.com, and asked them their thoughts.

Niels never replied, and Conrad was against the idea, insisting he and the remainder of the ZHQ staff who went to Hyrule.com, had the right. However, when I tried to get time tables for his team to bring it back, I got the impression it was "never" because they were flat out lazy and spent all their time e-mailing each other like we did back at ZHQ. With Niels not responding, and my passion for bringing the site back at an all time high, I went forward with plan B.

Plan B was to re-use the assets from the old ZHQ, but make a new layout and design. Thus, ZHQ2 was born. I think initially I got a lot of e-mails from old-time friends praising the site for returning, but I got the impression there was a misconception going around. Still, I knew a site wasn't enough, and I wanted to have the best online community out of all the Zelda community.

Kris worked on graphics, and even made this really sweet Cowboy Bebop "Tank!" video with me that I wish to god I still had (it was a spoof of the intro with Zelda stuff, it was seriously pro stuff), while Hermit began work on what I still insist would become the greatest forums ever in the Zelda community. Initially, we started out on tripod and had an EZboard. Then I got the domains and a host, and The Gaming Universe - a community for fan games much like Armageddon Games Network was - hosted our forums.

Unfortunately, Niels found out about all this, and blogged about how I stole ZHQ. Kris and I were shocked, and tried contacting him. Eventually, Conrad, Niels, and I got into contact, and after it was all said and done, I think nothing got settled. Just a lot of bad feelings and agree to disagree remarks. But on my end, I said basically "piss off" to both of them, killed all ties to the "original" ZHQ by removing assets that weren't mine, and rebuilt the site with 100% original content and images. I re-hosted the old ZHQ so people could still see it.

The site never really made a dent until 2005, when I finally got my act together and began forcing myself to actually update the site rather than goof off online for hours. We really nailed E3 2005 and we weren't even present, and I remember that being the first time the site was getting any sort of respect from the community. Still, I realized just how antiquated my updating methods were.

Golden Years
Even before I realized I needed to move beyond ZHQ 2, I had started two other relatively big things that actually were earning me both good and bad reputations. These actually took place during my early ZHQ 2 years, and one of them was primarily responsible for why I didn't update the site as much.

GANNON-BANNED (2003)
I finally can clear this one up. GANNON-BANNED was started by myself and an online friend of mine back at Camp Hyrule 2003. There was a camp award known as the GANNON award for the person who was the worst speller. Little did Nintendo know, that they had in fact spelled Ganon wrong themselves, unintentionally. So we started trolling people in The Lost Woods chat room, where I held my annual trivia challenge, with the phrase "GANNON-BANNED" whenever people spellled Zelda terms incorrectly.

Later on, after the event, I thought it would be funny if I made the saying into an entire website with rules. I used the term quite frequently, and eventually it got old and people wanted me to stop using the term. However, the term spread to other forums, like GameFAQs and SomethingAwful, eventually becoming a meme. It earned me a bad reputation for creating the term, and it was even a bannable offense on the GameFAQs boards to use the term. In all honesty, while it did annoy me that some common mistakes were made back then, I've realized it's better to help out those who make mistakes than rub it in their faces. Also, much of the list now is simply me trolling.

Speedruns (2003-2006)
I've always been a competitive gamer, though I'm not typically skilled in the three modern competitive genres - RTS, FPS, and Fighting. What I've excelled at is beating single player games quickly and effectively. When Super Mario 64 came out, I would practice beating the game as fast as possible, so far as I ended up in some bet with the manager of a Blockbuster over whether or not I could beat the game in under two hours (which I won). However, it was always just something local or restricted to fan sites, I never knew anything existed for the sake of competitive "single player" gaming.

Then I think sometime in 2003 while I was in college, I saw a segment on G4 TV about a Tomb Raider "speedrun", and how the guy who did it had a brother who was going to beat Zelda 1 in the fastest time. I went to G4's boards and asked how you proved you did such a thing. I was directed to Twin Galaxies, and got in contact with Robert Mruczek, who informed me of what I needed to do. I eventually submitted a speedrun of A Link to the Past, which clocked in at under 2 hours (1:59:57 I think). Without my knowledge, the Twin Galaxies team submitted my record in the form of a write-up to various news outlets, and my feat was reported on all over the internet.

From there, I did runs of The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, and Ocarina of Time. But as I spent more time there, I was wondering about how I could show off my videos to people. Basically, Twin Galaxies accepted VHS tapes at that time, and they would hold the tape and not put the footage online. The video was kept secret. However, I wanted to show off the video since my intent was to "prove" I got the time. Something about another person "verifying" the video, but it still wasn't public, didn't sit right with me. So eventually a guy named Radix contacted me one day about my new A Link to the Past run I was attempting, and said he could host it online.

Speed Demos Archive was his site, and I would quickly learn that SDA was the type of community I had been searching for for a long time. I would eventually submit runs for The Legend of Zelda, The Adventure of Link, A Link to the Past, Link's Awakening DX, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, The Wind Waker, Four Swords Adventures, and The Minish Cap. I would submit multiple runs on a few of them as well. While the under two hour run of A Link to the Past got me noticed, my under five hour run of Ocarina of Time was a huge labor that paid off with a lot of respect from my peers. I never did these things for fame or fortune as some claim - I never saw a dime from my runs, and internet fame does not mean jack in person. I think one person I've met ever in my life recognized me in person as "that guy who beat Zelda fast".

It was an experience unlike anything else. Working with other hardcore fans to find every possible secret and trick to shave off time. It was insane and so much fun. However, there were always obstacles with this type of work. I had a lot of people accuse me of cheating and such. There were, I admit, some minor issues with a few runs due to technical difficulties by my lack of video encoding and capture at that time. Like my first A Link to the Past run submitted to SDA was in .wmv format in three parts. I had originally broke the run up into segments after capturing it all and encoded them in DivX. However Radix wanted it all together, but I was running low on space so I deleted the "original" raw file, and pieced together the segmented files back into three .wmv files. So there were numerous "DivX" watermarks popping up, which made it suspect.

With longer runs like in Ocarina of Time, the file size would have been WAY too great for a single capture. So I would sometimes manually "stop" a capture during play, saving the file, usually at a temple entrance or cave. I would be entering it during the capture before stopping, and then after stopping capture, I would exit immediately, re-enter, and start capture upon re-entering. Thus, sometimes clips didn't match up here and there. There was one Ocarina of Time run where I accidentally hit a bush with the sword while doing this, and I earned rupees so the rupee count didn't match up. However, regardless of these issues, all runs were done on REAL consoles by me in real time in a single setting, unless they were segmented and marked as such. The only thing is the capture might not have been continuous, due to limitations.

There was also the issue of TAS vs Speedrun. A Tool-Assisted Speedrun (TAS) was done with an emulator and used various features of that emulator, in particular save states, to piece together a more-than-human effort to achieve speedruns that were pretty much impossible on a normal console. There was a lot of bad blood between the two factions, but in general, the TAS was rendering the speedrun less "valuable" to some because they were far more entertaining. However, for me, I always viewed a speedrun as proving your skill, and it was never about entertaining people. But what did start to get to me was the increase of serious bugs/glitches in runs, such as Ocarina of Time, that were just flat out ridiculous. My passion is for beating games, within the confines of the rules of the game, in the fastest way as possible. Now, bugs and glitches are possible in a game, but many circumvent programming. Sure, some stuff was never intended to be done, like jumping over a large gap without a special item, but clipping through walls and hovering in mid-air with a glitch just seemed a bit too excessive.

This rise of new bugs and tricks, compounded with the fact that you'd spend months on a long run like Ocarina of Time, only to have your time beaten shortly after, really took its toll on me. I was no longer enjoying some of these Zelda games I had loved, and I was getting tired of people always asking me what game I would speedrun next, how they could beat my Zelda time, or just outright bombarding me like some celeb when all I ever thought of myself was as another fan like everyone else. So, I quit speedruns in early 2006 while in the middle of my segmented Ocarina of Time run, which was using serious bugs and glitches.

The Hylia (2005-2007)
Even though I had created my own version of ZHQ, I was not content to be associated with the old ZHQ and that all my "fame" or "reputation" came from being a staff member of that site. I wanted to exceed that notion, and prove everyone wrong. Thus, I set out to create a Zelda site I knew would be unlike anything done before, and would assault fans with content on all fronts. Basically it would pump out content fast enough to satisfy me, who was a Zelda attention-deficit-disorder victim.

Initially I hesitated to utilize any form of a CMS to handle the site's content, instead option for traditional HTML. The Hylia had a solid design thanks to Martin Anderson, aka MDTA, and I pretty much handled all content myself for several months. Almost immediately, the site gained notoriety among other fan sites, and our community, backed by Hermit's awesome coding skills. However, the one thing I noticed was really hurting us was updating when big news hit - we still hand coded pages and other sites would beat us to the punch of big stuff, though we were excellent at picking up smaller stories and putting up TONS of media and editorials.

Eventually I was convinced to switch to a CMS, and we also decided to change the site's design to be more "elegant". We relaunched in 2006 right around E3. Not only did we have a better site structure and design, but we were also at E3 providing coverage. Because we focused only on Zelda - Phantom Hourglass and Twilight Princess - we seriously rocked. We had more videos and more "exclusive information" tidbits than almost any site. For the next six months, The Hylia was skyrocketing with activity and coverage, hitting an apex with our advanced review and complete video guide of the entire game, both versions.

Wii Ambassador (2006-2007)
Now, not all of this was attributed to solely my staff and I's ability to get content up fast, and create good content, and get tons of media. We were also aided by the fact that Nintendo had selected me as a Wii Ambassador that year. In September of 2006, I was selected as one of these "ambassadors" who got to have a "Wii Party". Mine was the first in the US, and it was 1 day after the official press event in New York City that let the press play the system for the first time since E3. I got to play the demo again, though new stuff was present (like the Goron Mines boss name, Twilit Inferno Fyrus).

Additionally, I got my Wii and several games, including Twilight Princess, a week in advance of the launch date. This allowed me to be able to beat the game and write the review ahead of time, and get a lot of the video guide going. So when the game launched with the console, we had a blitz of content. Again, it had a lot to do with being one of these ambassadors, and being in an area they always gave priority to in terms of timing for receiving these advanced gifts. So, while Nintendo got me to be a spokesperson for their product, I was using them back to further The Hylia.

Zentendo (2007-2008)
In July 2007, at the height of its popularity, TSA launched Zentendo, an all-Nintendo news and media site. According to his own statements, TSA created this new site, despite having The Hylia covering the same material, because the gaming community in general associated the site with the Zelda franchise due to the name, and the site was labeled a blog for its layout and updating style.

Zentendo aimed to have a more professional look and feel, as opposed to a fan site or a blog. The site currently, according to analytics data from third party traffic suppliers, on the level of sites such as N-sider, Nintendo World Report and Nintendojo, though it still trails bigger sites like IGN, GameSpot, AMN and 1Up significantly, as well as blogs like GoNintendo, Kotaku, Joystiq.

In late 2007, TSA turned over The Hylia to a new owner and new content manager. According to metric traffic data, The Hylia now rivals blogs like GoNintendo and Joystiq, as it's Alexa ranking is now in the 10,000 range and poised to break 10,000 sometime in 2008. However, investigations turned up this is due to the new owner running a sub-domain anime hosting service using TheHylia.com domain, as Alexa indicates over 85% of the site's traffic and reach comes through this sub- domain. TSA no longer works for The Hylia as of August 2007.

Wii Ambassador
TSA was selected in 2006 to be a Wii Ambassador for Nintendo of America. While the program was merely a marketing tool to sell Wii to hardcore and casual fans alike, TSA used the program to gain exclusive info about Twilight Princess. He was allowed to hold a "Wii Party" in mid-September in which he played the final build of Twilight Princess, albeit only the demo areas from E3 2006 again, and also received his Wii and Twilight Princess a week in advance of the public, like most of the media.

Due to the fact TSA and his site, at the time, were not regarded as "important" enough to get an advance copy of the game and a Wii unit, many in the public claimed TSA was lying, especially with his review of Twilight Princess, which contained almost no conrete details not known to the public. However, TSA responded by saying he did not want the game spoiled for anyone, and the day the game released publicly on November 19th, 2006, he released a video of the final sequence of the game to prove he had the game in advance. The game clock showed 33 hours of playtime, which meant he had to have received the game and Wii at least sometime on Friday, November 17th, 2006, if he played non-stop.

However, in his review, he claimed it took 50 hours to beat the game, though he in actuality only took 33. This also lead to speculation he made up he had the game, though he revealed he beefed up the number because he is an "exceptional" Zelda player and average gamers would easily take 50 hours. Most gamers claimed to beat the game in the range of 40+ hours. Nintendo verified in a press release the Wii Ambassadors had their Wii units shipped to them in advance, vindicating TSA.

E3 2007
At E3 2007, TSA was on stage during the Nintendo Media Briefing to perform a live demonstration of the North American version of Phantom Hourglass. The segment lasted about three minutes, in which TSA played part of the Temple of Ice and demonstrated the use of the grappling hook. Though he did not speak, he claimed on forums he originally had dialog, but it was cut at the last moment.

TSA was under NDA for the event because he was privy to the entire media briefing content for several days before the actual event. Though he was caught leaking the fact he'd be in E3 playing Phantom Hourglass, he actually didn't leak any details relevant to the press, though he made a post on his website, Zentendo, about 20 minutes into the briefing revealing all the details to get a jump on all the livebloggers.

GameTrailers
In April of 2008, TSA was hired as an Associate Editor for GameTrailers.com, an MTV Networks company. As a result of his new position, he turned over Zentendo to his current staff to continue working on, which has carried on well in his stead (one staff member was even invited to E3 in place of TSA this year).

To date he was worked on several reviews, as well as participated in their weekly podcast Invisible Walls. His most noteworthy work so far is his major contribution to the Metal Gear Retrospective, and his name can be found in the part 6 credits. TSA wrote parts 2-6 and captured nearly all of the footage for the features.

Zelda Documentary Project
In mid-2008, TSA secured the rights to ZeldaDocumentary.com and is in talks with several sources in order to begin work on a Zelda documentary project chronicling the development history of The Legend of Zelda series to date.

Controversy
TSA has had a long history in the community, and while much of this has led to great success, a lot of his actions resulted in controversy.

Zelda Expert
TSA's online activities over the past decade have not been without criticism and controversy. The biggest criticism brought up is the fact that he constantly was too outspoken and was a self-proclaimed "Zelda Expert". His GANNON-BANNED website and general demeanor when arguing about the franchise was often regarded as pompous and arrogant. He also apparently was "never wrong" according to his critics. Many likened his behavior to that of a dictator, though the fact this is a fan community made such claims rather superfluous. Despite these claims, however, he has earned widespread acclaim for his skills at playing the series, as well as his overall knowledge on the franchise.

Hylia.com
Additionally, during his initial rise to fame in the Zelda community, many argued that he relied to heavily on the Zelda Headquarters name to get attention and credibility. He constantly brought up that he was a staff member of the original Zelda Headquarters, and therefore being a "legacy" of the community granted him elevated status among his peers. He was also later accused by the Hylia.com staff of ripping them off when he made The Hylia, though despite the name similarity, the sites' designs and content were drastically different, and The Hylia rose to popularity whereas Hylia did not.

Melora Controversy
While TSA was heading ZHQ2, there was a member who had an avatar that directly linked to an image at History of Hyrule, a website that was run by TSA's close friend Melora. Melora, after seeing this direct link, replaced the image with a questionably sexual explicit image. This caused TSA and Melora to get in an argument over the situation, where TSA exaggerated a claim and stated that his website might get shut down because it had a pornographic image. Melora, thinking she had done nothing wrong, did not remove the image, and TSA had banned her from the forums. TSA later played it off the whole situation as if he was punking certain members, in an attempt lighten up the situation. TSA has since admitted to his childish behavior for this incident and regrets his actions. Melora has since disassociated herself from TSA.

Bashing the Zelda Community
TSA, during his tenure as the head of The Hylia, had a history of causing drama in the community. In the days leading up to The Hylia's radical shift in coverage, he wrote a series of articles bashing the entire Zelda community, leading to an epic fallout in which many webmasters of other sites publicly scolded him.

April Fools Jokes
In 2005 and 2006, TSA pulled elaborate April Fool's pranks that caused major backlash. In 2005, TSA released a fake "trailer" at 12:01am April 1st, which was just every trailer to date merged together with a random movie soundtrack song. Though this prank did not earn too much criticism, several community members voiced their disliking of the serious nature of the prank.

However, in 2006, TSA claimed to have an exclusive interview with Eiji Aonuma that he was going to leak in advance of the date he claimed it could be published. Most anticipated it would be a poorly conceived joke, but the day before April Fool's in America (though he claims it was April 1st in the first time zone in the world), an interview was published on the site that was in every regards meant to be deceptive in nature and was believed by many to be genuine at first. So believable was the content that Nintendo of America's legal department contact TSA and notified him they were checking to see if he broke any NDAs, though TSA claimed he never signed any NDA and that was just part of the eventual joke.

Additionally, numerous NOA staff members came to the forum that day asking for TSA and requesting him to reconsider his actions. A member of Golin/Harris attempted to contact TSA to request he pull the interview, and a member of Nintendo's internal communications team also called him asking if this was a prank or not. TSA made all of this public, and also pointed out NOA's inferiority to ascertain the situation's truth by claiming he said he did the interview with Bill Trinen's help, and that NOA could have asked Bill if it was legit. Bill Trinen was apparently in Japan at the time working on Twilight Princess localization and couldn't be reached in time for comment to clarify the situation.

TSA also publicly scolded Nintendo's public relations agency, Golin/Harris, on his blog on IGN, which within the profanity-laden rant he called out Nintendo for numerous issues over the years. The entry drew attention privately in the press circle, and Nintendo of America made clear they did not approve of TSA's actions. The incident stemmed from the apparent promise of Media Briefing invites confirmed to him by Golin/Harris months in advance, and then only a few weeks before was notified this would not be the case. TSA argued other smaller fan sites got invites, and more than one, yet his site was denied them as an apparent black-balling for their April Fool's prank. TSA also claimed it was causing financial hardship on a staff member who already had travel arrangements to come out for the event. In the end, TSA and staff attended the event and E3 2006.

Hyrule.net and Land of the Legend
The most recent and perhaps longest-lasting controversy was the well documented "rivalry" between Hyrule.net (Land of the Legend) and The Hylia. The two sites were constantly belittling each other in updates, though most of the time it was The Hylia ripping the site's owner for content theft and false content. The two sites engaged in mud slinging for nearly a year, and it did not subside until Land of the Legend went off-line for an extended period of time sometime in mid-2007. TSA accused the site of stealing content such as exclusive photographs taken at press events, and not crediting his site with news reports. Land of the Legend accused TSA of making up information and lying. During the controversy, TSA contacted Webmasters of some Zelda websites, including Zelda Dungeon, that were associated with both Land of the Legend and The Hylia. TSA threatened to remove links to affiliate websites that would not break their partnership with Land of the Legend.

Advanced Information
This also was an issue on the popular game guide and message board site GameFAQs, especially leading up to the launch of Twilight Princess. TSA was notorious for posting "advance information" that was unverifiable, and many claimed that even if it were true info, he was doing it solely for attention.