Images For Old Friends at Sonic HQ

A blast from the past found its way to me through MSN Messenger tonight, as Vector -- an old friend of mine from the Mobius Forums at Sonic HQ -- sent me a message out of the blue!  We got to catching up and he told me that the Mobius Forums were moving tomorrow, and invited me over to look around.  I've been taking a long trip down memory lane tonight, and as other forumers have been sharing memories from the past... I've been touching up an old location in AWTeen where our community at the Mobius Forums met the community here in Activeworlds.

The Sonic HQ Building Ground Zero - AWTeen 2500s 500e

The Sonic HQ Building was built by myself in 2003 as a virtual representation of our website and our community.  Located on some prime real-estate at AWTeen 2500s 500e, the building is as large as a P-10 world and the surrounding builds and additions over the years make it even larger than that. Upon arrival in the building's central room, the familiar theme of Tidal Tempest begins in the background.  The Sonic HQ Logo greets you from all directions, flanked by several now-outdated coronas that shine under the glass ceiling.

The Sonic HQ Building Hotel.  Some familiar names may be seen.

The building featured a room for every major sub-page, with signs that linked to the site acting as a visual directory. Many of these links are now dead, although you can still navigate to them via archive.sonic-hq.net. In-jokes (scootered daisy-heads) dot the halls between the informative rooms.  There were many rec-rooms, an intricate monorail system, and also a hotel for visitors from the forums to leave their mark in the world.  Some went further and made builds out in AWTeen.

Below are some more pictures of the building and neighboring builds.  I'll also list all of the names of hotel guests and builders... hopefully some are familiar! :)

Dr Penguin's hotel room

Takinshoto
CJTails
RonPrower
Srol
Crystaltoad
Gale
Nuchtos
Duo MP
Archonn

A cave system built by forumers

Acrio teh Phox
Rico
Gray the Kitsune
James Crownfur
Saber Mage
Marty SkyWaLker
Dr Penguin
Sonicolas
Sonikorasu
...and more.  I remember other builds, but I wasn't able to locate them.

A secret tent-city in the cave system pictured above.  Several forumers worked together to build an intricate cave system with a number of secret rooms and passages.

A secret scene hidden behind the waterfall.  One of the builders left a note for anyone who wanted to come along and finish the project!

In-jokes and references abound.  The caption there on the left says "FexusFan Empire of Scootering DaisyHeads," and I think I'll just leave that without any commentary. :)

The Download Gallery.  Each sign in these rooms was clickable, and would take you to the associated subpage on the Sonic HQ site.  Each sub-section of the site had a room like this.

One of the less-believable scenes from the Monorail.  I was 12-13 when I created the Sonic HQ building, and I suppose only the mind of a young teenager could justify a monorail running through a glass tube in a lava room. :P  The monorail was fully automated via the warp command and took visitors across the entire building site.

Enough people wanted to build to justify a home-brewed tutorial room.  Notice the lava floor again... not sure how I thought that fit at all, but can you blame a wee tot for that sort of thing? ;)

This has been an enjoyable trip back for me.  I've cleaned up the entry point and fixed some broken images (the original Sonic HQ domain is down so all of the original links in the building are broken).  If you're from the forums and would like to stop by and visit, just take a quick trip over to Activeworlds and navigate to AWTeen 2500s 500e (the teleport window can be accessed from the top menu bar in the AW browser) and enjoy!