Community Interview: Sonic Hacking Community Creator, Damian 'Saxman' Grove

Damian 'Saxman' Grove is the creator of the popular website, Sonic Hacking Community (SHAC), and is a former maintainer of the Sonic Stuff Research Group (SSRG). Sonic_Hedgehogs has a chat with Saxman about his role in the Sonic research community as well as his musical interests.

TSS: Hey, Andrew here with an exclusive interview with Saxman. Thanks for taking the time to do this!

Saxman: Thank you for having me =)

TSS: Tell us why you're a big part of the Online Sonic Community.

Saxman: Well, I never really thought of myself as anything special really. It's the people that tell me this that think that. I've been around since 1996, but never really captured people's attention until late 1998, when I first released the Sonic 2 Hacking Guide. It was the first of it's kind (with the exception given to Tom who had some savestate editing information before me). I guess it's the information that I've given to people that has really help on many projects.

TSS: Now you have a Sonic Hacking type website, tell us about that and when you got the idea to do it.

Saxman: Well, I was working as maintainer of SSRG at the time, and I kind of got bored with doing things Andy's way. I mean, I had fun doing it for a while, but after 2 years of maintaining, I felt it was time to do my own website that was totally outside of SSRG. I had made several 'mini' pages on SSRG; these became sub-sections of SHaC.

Once SHaC was finished, I told the public about it on both the SSRG news and message boards. It took a while to catch on, but giving people exclusive things they couldn't find anywhere else really helped. It's a Sonic ROM hacking website with programs, ROM information, and some of my personal ROM hacks.

TSS: When did you join the SSRG and start maintaining it? And did this give you any inspiration or knowledge to help your SHaC website?

Saxman: I joined SSRG in late 1998...... sometime in December if I'm not mistaken. The Sonic 2 Hacking Guide was originally uploaded in a small text file to Simon Wai's Sonic 2 Beta website. Andy Wolan found it and he offered me a place on SSRG. I rushed into my answer and agreed to join because I didn't see any harm.

I can look back now and notice what I was missing -- SSRG was nice, but it wasn't friendly to other people's work. Regardless of what I think about SSRG now, I can still say that it gave me a lot of inspiration without a doubt. I don't know if SHaC would even exist if I didn't join SSRG to begin with.

TSS: Tell us more about SHaC and why you think it stands out from other Hacking/Secrets sites?

Saxman: SHaC has a lot of tools that other sites don't. 'Chaos' for example was exclusive to SHaC; nobody heard of the program until they came to my site. There's a lot of things on SHaC that are like that. Many people have found the site to be unique simply because I didn't always do what everyone else was doing -- I did things my own way, and that helped define SHaC has a Sonic ROM hacking database.

It's not as popular as it was at one time though. I haven't paid as much attention to it. I used to update several times a month -- roughly 10 times a month. Now, I average somewhere around twice a month. I have kind of lost a lot of interest in hacking (this doesn't mean I'll give up my site or any of my work -- I just go at a slower pace now). I'm more into music now. Music is my most favorite hobby of all.

TSS: Will you be planning any Sonic music-type things in the future? Tell us about your music phase.

Saxman: Well, I seriously thought about doing covers of Green Hill from the first Sonic game and Sky Chase from Sonic 2. I haven't gotten around to doing these -- don't even know if I ever will. I'm more into rock and roll. I do a lot of covers. I write my own material too, but none of it has ever really been finalized to where I'm happy with it.

I record a lot of songs -- I play sax, keyboards, and sing in all of them. It's hard to make these things mean something in a community where people are into 'Sonic' though. Many people don't care for any music except Sonic music. But I put out recordings just for fun.

My best ones are If This Is It and Hip To Be Square. I also have a newly recorded Heart Of Rock And Roll, but I haven't tried it to the public yet. Hopefully, they'll like it =)

TSS: Tell us about how long you've been a fan of Sonic. When did you become a fan and where did you first hear of Sonic?

Saxman: I've been a fan from the very beginning. I remember sitting in my bedroom and watching the TV with my brother. I saw the Sonic commercial, and I was amazed! I remember him sitting there and an older lady was talking about him.... then he suddenly speeds off really fast and blows dust on her -- it was hillarious!

The main thing that caught my attention was how fast he was though. At that time, many games played at a much slower pace, so it was a 'must-have' for me. I got the game for Christmas that year. I fell in love with the game and bought every Sonic game after that.

TSS: When did you start becoming interested in the secret hacking world of Sonic, and have you been into other type of things with other games?

Saxman: It was Tom -- he was 'THE' reason I started ROM hacking. He found a Hidden Palace code for Sonic 2 in a Pro Action Replay book of his. He did some work to try and figure out how to convert the PAR code to a savestate address. He did just that and released the information on the net. I had NO idea at the time that such a thing was possible. I didn't even know what a hex editor was! But I'm the type of person that 'has' to learn everything in my environment.

There was no turning back -- I wanted to see what more could be found. I hacked non-stop for hours and hours everyday. It was all because of Tom's work.

TSS: Are you also a fan of the cartoons and comics or are you just a Sonic game fan?

Saxman: I used to be into the cartoons and comics quite heavily. Still have a huge collection. However, these days, it's the games being the only real thing that still has my attention.

TSS: What are your thoughts on the current Sonic releases? Are you a fan of the 3D Adventure series and so on and what do you think of the Advance series?

Saxman: I love the 3D games. In fact, I like practically all the Sonic games. The Advance series is great -- although it seems to lack the same 'feel' of the old Sega Genesis Sonic games.

TSS: If you had a chance to create your own Sonic game or plan your own game with Sonic Team, what would it be like?

Saxman: I'd go back to the classic days -- I'd make a game similar to Sonic 2 and 3K and make it for Game Boy Advance (unless I have a better hand-held alternative by that time). I'd also include time travel (I love the time travel in Sonic CD).

TSS: Would you like to add in anything else before we wrap this up? ^_^

Saxman: I think that's about all.

TSS: Thanks a lot, please visit SHaC for your own good and good luck on any future projects!

Saxman: Thanks =)