User:TSA@legacy41957738
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Michael Brian Damiani, also known as TSA, HylianTSA, or MikeTSA, is an American video game journalist and former speedrunner. He became widely known for his speedruns of various games in The Legend of Zelda series, setting several world records, as well as his role in demonstrating The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass to an international audience during Nintendo's annual media briefing at E3 2007.
His work includes contributions at Zelda Headquarters (1998-2000), ZHQ2 (2003-2005), The Hylia (2005-2007), Zentendo (2007-2008), and GameTrailers (2008-present). He has also participated in special programs conducted by Nintendo of America, including the Nintendo Kids Panel (1997) and Wii Ambassador (2006) program. He is also the creator of the GANNON-BANNED internet meme.
Early Career
Damiani first ventured into the online sphere in the mid 1990s as a fan of Nintendo Power Source. After failing to establish his own online club for video games, he turned to other fan sites for inspiration. He then returned to the fan site scene once again, but was once again unsuccessful. In 1997, after winning a regional Diddy Kong Racing contest sponsored by Nintendo of America, he was selected to participate in the Nintendo Kids Panel. Despite the rocky start, it eventually proved fruitful, allowing him early access to both preview and review code of Nintendo 64 and Game Boy Color products.
Fansite Years
The experience motivated Damiani to get back into covering video games, prompting him to freelance for the fan site Zelda Headquarters (1998-1999). It was during this time he became fond of The Legend of Zelda series. After the site closed, he provided free lance coverage on other sites until settling down with the Zelda Classic project. Working with the user creation tool, he authored several custom quests based on The Legend of Zelda game engine. His work with the program was paramount to refining his skill at completing the game, which would later motivate him to try his hand at speedrunning. Though mostly a productive member, he eventually had a falling out and left the community in 2003.
The departure afforded him time to work on his side project. Damiani had expressed interest in re-launching the fan site Zelda Headquarters for some time, and finally made an attempt to do so. The decision was short lived after it stirred up controversy with the site's previous owner, so he re-purposed the site once more. It would undergo several revisions until he finally settled on a completely different site, The Hylia, in 2005. During this period, he also launched two other Zelda related sites; the obscure RPG forum Realms of Hyrule, and a site known as GANNON-BANNED. While the former never achieved more than moderate success, GANNON-BANNED exploded in popularity and eventually became an internet meme.
Breakthrough (2005-2007)
As early as 2003, Damiani had performed speedruns of various games and submitted them into Twin Galaxies as possible world records. He eventually made headlines with a speedrun of A Link to the Past, achieving the first officially verified sub-two-hour completion of the game in a single sitting. But it was his speedrun of Ocarina of Time two years later that earned him the most acclaim, finishing the game in under five hours in one sitting. His work, along with contributions by others of the time, propelled the Zelda franchise into the forefront of the speedrun community, making it one of the most popular and most competitive video game series for speedruns to date. Despite the success, he abruptly retired from the profession in 2006 to focus on pursuing a career covering the video game industry.
At E3 2006, he provided on-site coverage, focusing primarily on Twilight Princess. His work was noticed by Nintendo of America, who then invited him to become a member of the Wii Ambassador program. The program allowed him to get hands-on with the final version of Twilight Princess at two preview events before the launch of the Wii console. Nintendo also sent him a Wii console with various titles, including the retail code for Twilight Princess, a week in advance of the North American launch date, allowing him to provide one of the first professional reviews of the title.
The program culminated with Damiani being invited to demonstrate The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass at Nintendo's E3 2007 media briefing in Santa Monica, California. This granted him early access to Nintendo's presentation, as well as playable titles for the show, and he was able to spend time with Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto and series director Eiji Aonuma. He had previously met with the gentleman, including composer Koji Kondo, a few months earlier at the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco, Calfornia.
Professional Years (2008-Present)
Despite all this, Damiani expressed disappointment with his career and desired to go even further. After a brief stint running a Nintendo specific site, Zentendo, he joined the GameTrailers staff in 2008. His first major project was the Metal Gear Retrospective (2008), as well as occasional reviews. Since then, he's gone on to cover major international events such as GamesCom in Germany and Tokyo Game Show in Japan, interviewed numerous creators such as Yoshinori Kitase, Jun Taekuchi, and Hayao Miyazaki. More recently he provided the first US-based professional review of The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, and created the new web series Pop-Fiction.