About

Hiya! My name is Michael. I'm a multi-disciplinary creative nerd-person who got my start on the web in the early 2000s. With roots in small fansites and being an active member of the RPG Maker community, I've grown into a professional programmer who hobbies in game development, music, and art — oh! and I've started keeping freshwater fish! 🐟🐟

I have even released some video games for folks to play - most of which were made for game jams: My games on Itch.io

Professionally, I am a web software engineer, but Black Star Fantasy is my personal site to dive into the nostalgia of my early days on the web whilst also exploring my creativity with the medium I have grown up with.

What's in a name? Origins of Black Star Fantasy

When I was getting my start making websites, I frequented an affiliate ring of fansites with the shared moniker of "Black Star", a homage to the black star dragon balls in Dragon Ball GT. Well, I just had to be a part of that - and I was obsessed with Final Fantasy games - so thus, Black Star Fantasy was born. You can even see some remnants of it to this day on the Wayback Machine.

Unfortunately, most of the layouts and designs were lost to time, but it is quite hilarious to go back and see my 12 year old self on the internet. I have attempted several other little ventures over the years, but nothing quite hits the feels like Black Star Fantasy, so reimagining it here has been a blast!

The Future of Black Star Fantasy

BSF is really just a fun project for me to explore my creativity and nostalgia for the web. I'm not sure where it will go, but I'm excited to see where it takes me.

Largely, it will be a blog and a place to share my non-tech related hobbies. I also think it would be fun to write some tutorials like I did as a youngster. This time around, I'll probably focus on how you can use modern web technologies to make managing even a simple Neocities site even easier.