Honoring a Fallen Fan Site
If you’ve been keeping up with the community recently, you’re no doubt aware that long-running Sonic fan site Shadow of a Hedgehog fell victim to hacking a few days ago and collapsed into disarray behind the scenes, so much so that webmaster Dennis Spielman has decided to pull the plug, at least for the time being. This decision puts a temporary end to a site that has impacted thousands and thousands of Sonic fans for nearly fifteen years. With that in mind, this week’s Fan Friday is dedicated to the site and all those people that made it possible.
Shadow of a Hedgehog first saw the light of day on New Year’s Eve in 1999. It was briefly known as Total Neon Network before a hosting partnership with Sega-Zone changed the site’s name to Shadow of Light in June of 2000. After more changes in hosting and site content, Shadow of a Hedgehog as we know it today launched on PlanetDreamcast on April 28, 2001. With much more storage flexibility now available to the staff, it was at this point that the site became focused on hosting its massive compendium of Sonic music, and it became well-known within the community for its efforts in this regard. The site continued to exist in this way until New Year’s Eve of 2006, when the staff put up their own domain and took hosting matters into their own hands. It was in this form that the site thrived for six more years, offering comics, fan videos, and forums in addition to its trademark music. That existence continued until January of this year, when a malicious hack caused Shadow of a Hedgehog to close it doors.
Despite its swift and unexpected shutdown, the site is not completely lost to history. Some of the site’s content, including much of its music, is still publicly accessible. The old PlanetDreamcast version of the site remains online with some of its pages and content still more or less browsable. Additionally, you can find page crawls of the site thanks to the Wayback Machine, and plans are currently in the works to revive the site in its entirely. Until those plans play out, we remember the site fondly and hope its creators will continue to contribute to the community in amazing ways.
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:’(
And I just downloaded the osts for the sonic advance games two weeks ago…
RIP Soahcity
I downloaded all of my Sonic music from that site….except for Shadow the Hedgehog’s soundtrack…I didn’t download that soundtrack at all…LOLZ….(no offense to anybody who does like the music to that game…)
In all seriousness though…goodbye SoaH…you will be missed…
I will never forget those LOL Sonic’s…I used to check that area of the site out constantly looking to see what people submitted…some of that stuff was just down right hilarious. That running gag about the PEDO bear on there was just priceless lmao. I think I did nail some of the OST’s from that site too…I forget been too long. There was one site I nailed a pile of original artwork from a lot of the different sonic games. I’m not sure who that was that had it all though lolz…but never the less sianara Shadow Of A Hedgehog…you shall live on in our hearts
Sayonnara..Shadow..of a hedgehog.
*Raises hand slowly as walking away*
I wanted to visit Shadow of a Hedgehog before this happened but now I’m too late…thanks for the grand memories SoaH I’m gonna miss ya… *throws a rose in the wind*
Yeeeeeeeeah no. Member of Sonic Stadium here, this is false.
The site’s new webmaster came to the forums and told us that the site is coming back within a few weeks with a brand new site layout and forums.
Thanks for the history lesson though, gives these kids alittle backstory as to why this site was soo popular and still is.
SoaH City is returning. It’s far from dead. It will be built up from scratch with a complete makeover and will be up and running within a few weeks (possibly a couple of months). I’m an administrator there so I contacted Neon Chaos (the owner) explaining my plans to revive the site, and he’s happy to go ahead with it.
It’ll be back. I’m currently doing artwork for the site~ http://www.freeimagehosting.net/newuploads/xufhf.png
(EDIT – Thanks for the heads-up, I wasn’t aware of those efforts until after I finished my write-up. The article’s been updated to reflect the site’s brighter future. -Lou)
You know, a simple backup of the website could have prevented all of this.
Its not that. the site itself was dying, it wasn’t getting much updates and the forums were plauged.
It needed a reboot more then anything and now thanks to this hack its getting one.
I didn’t even know that the site still exists. Used to visit it many years ago though.
Do we even really need it back? All it had were music tracks which you can find anywhere else now, and the forums were the worst.
Question is, why are you against it coming back? if it wants to why not let them?
I’m not against it, I’m just saying I don’t see the point of bothering.
NiDcom and the rest of TRiPPY’s sites got hacked just a bit ago. So soon after this one. Think it’s connected? :U