Now, normally, I would have simply carried on my existence trashing all comers on the videogame without anyone being the wiser... But you know how it is with good ideas. Well, I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, anyway... Heh.Moving along, it seems that there are what are called 'Fantasy Sports' on the internet. This basically lets geeks, fat slob armchair quarterbacks and similar nimrods play at 'running' or 'competing' in team sports without breaking a sweat - or anything else. This did not appeal much to our 'creator', since the only team sport he follows is football, and Philadelphia has never trotted out much of a team on opening day, or any day, so why go through the same disappointment for 'fun'?
Don't get it twisted. We love the Eagles... We'd just like to see them finish a season with a winning record once in a while.
Back to the story, it further seems that one of the fantasy sports one can take part in is professional wrestling... Basically, you pretend to be a wrestler - 'real' (oxymoron?) or 'original' (made up), get 'signed/booked' to 'matches' with other folks pretending to be wrestlers as well, cut 'promos' (talk shyte), and whatnot - and some dweezil decides who did it better than whom and awards wins accordingly. For the most part, it's a sad sewer spew of 5th-12th graders cursing up a storm and generally copycatting their favorite wrestler - catchphrases and all. Sad, really...
The actual impetus to give the Dark Angel 'character' some character was brought on by my creator's brother... See, back in the late 80's a popular pasttime on some BBS's was what was called the 'War Board', in which people generally flamed each other indescriminately - childish, I suppose; given the benefit of hindsight, but at the time it was REALLY important to be on top with SOMETHING in order to be Cool/Elite... For me, it was the War Board. I ragged on people so bad that they wanted to fight me IRL (in real life, for the slow class)... Which was the REAL funny part, considering the esteemed Mr. Browne has been involved in martial arts since he was ten, and is not a small person by any means. So when he showed up, of course, for the most part it was to see the poor sap heading for the hills upon realizing what he'd called out. Sometimes the more stupid ones stayed to show they were 'not punks'... Sadly, while typing mean things on the 'puter and coding demos makes you 'elite', it does NOT make you much of a physical specimen - so they fared pretty darn poorly to say the least, even showing up two or three deep.
The point? Fantasy Wrestling was basically the same thing, only with someone to decide who was better... For two years, three different feds, and fifty-eight 'matches', I was undefeated. And that was on feds where I was NOT the owner, operator, or related to/friends with whomever was... Damn near unheard of, but what can I say? Mr. Browne - being a construction worker, former full-time dungeon master, and 'champeen ballbreaker' since '88 had both a talent and skill advantage that no under-20 fan of WWF could hope to match... Eventually, they stopped trying. Not that we blame them, of course, but when your best stuff isn't as good as who you're up against, why use it?
The 'official' debut of Dark Angel occured in 1995 on a piss-poor e-fed that isn't around anymore that was called Internet Power Wrestling Federation (IPWF). I was on an equally piss-poor computer (Compaq 66Mhz Pentium with 8MB RAM and a 500MB HD), but was able to handily smash all comers and win the Heavyweight Title...
Then I crashed. Big time. Surge protectors, contrary to what you may have been told, are poor protection against lightning. And computers were hardly as affordable as they are today - especially doing odd jobs for peanuts between soul-crushing minimum wage jobs... It took until 1997 for Mr. Browne to officially re-enter the online world with a tricked out top-of-the-line Sony VAIO 300Mhz Pentium ][ with 64 MB RAM, massive 6.4GB HD, and lightning fast 16x CD. As an added bonus, I had a CD-RW (Spiffy!)... Total cost, THREE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED BUCKS, with monitor. (Estimated worth today, $600 and depreciating fast). Mr. Browne hunted out a new venue to play and found one... Brawler86 on AOL had a nice fed called EEWO (E-Fed Extreme World Order), but sadly already had a character named Morbid Angel in the ranks... This meant if I used Dark Angel, I'd be seen as a copycat - despite no doubt predating his claim to the 'Angel' gimmick. What to do?
A new name... Something that was a similar dichotomy of light/dark... good/evil... friendly/nasty... cute/scary...
Bobo Fiendish.
Continue or Flee