Got a bit carried away today. There I was, minding my own business restoring a bunch of ancient site content from around 2003, and I come across some news articles for the Sonic Amateur Games Expo in 2003. Including a story about the debut showcase of plucky UK fan gaming studio, SHADOWTEAM.

I could have just restored the article. I should have just restored the article. But boy, oh boy, seeing those screenshots of our fledgling fan game, Sonic Avalanche, on that ancient microsite I made twenty years ago, just gave me intense enthusiasm to bring as much of that back as I could. It looks a bit bum by today's standards, sure, but forgive this old man for getting an attack of severe nostalgia.

THIS GAME IS OVER TWENTY YEARS OLD.

That's actually mad to think about.

Anyway, it has been a million years (well, twenty) since any of this was relevant in the community, so allow me to explain. SHADOWTEAM was The Sonic Stadium's in-house fan gaming crew, with a core UK-based unit consisting of myself, @Roareye Black and a chap we were both pals with called 'Anarchy Rat' (that wasn't his real name. Obviously...). Together, we felt like we could take on the fan gaming world with some unique and interesting concepts.

Sonic Avalanche was our first project, and became a bit of a cult classic (even if it was a little simple). It's a score attack game for up to four players at once, where characters had to avoid fireballs that fell in waves of ever-increasing speed. You could 'wall-grind' to gain points, and wall-jump to escape various traps, but it came at the risk of getting hit by flames. Green fireballs would restore health, but would appear at rare intervals - and only one at a time, meaning players had to fight over who got it in multiplayer.

It was a fun little game to make, and thanks to @Rlanthe entire game is still available via the Internet Archive (although I still have the zip here too, maybe one day I'll add it to this site - but the archive link works for now). You can visit the restored website by clicking here (warning, it might not be friendly to mobile devices!).

Bringing that micro-site back made me look back through the long lost archive of the SHADOWTEAM 'studio' website itself, too. There were some other great projects we pulled off - from Game & Watch-inspired micro-games to a hilarious tug of war game starring Eggman. Our big flagship project was 'Sonic the Fighters 2', and the engine Anarchy Rat had developed was insane for the time... but sadly we never got to finish it. As is the case with most community fan game teams, things fell apart and people went their separate ways.

A lot of stuff has been lost to time, but I'm keen to pull as much back together as I can. Maybe once I'm a little further in with the main site restoration than bloody 2003, I'll give SHADOWTEAM my full attention. In the meantime, I've made a wee landing page for people to find the logo (and a link to Sonic Avalanche) in case they're as old as me and fancy a trip down memory lane.

Conceptually, SHADOWTEAM was formed in late 2002, but I'm going by our site launch in June 2003 as our real starting point. So, as we're nearly 21 years in, let me get in there quick and say a late, "Happy 20th Anniversary" to the old crew.