Background: As most of you probably know, I'm a Dutchman. I'm living less than a kilometer away from our coastline, which is especially relaxed during hot summer days. Some of my main pass-time activities would be collecting DVDs, going to the gym, random ornithology-related things, visiting concerts and raves, and stuff. Some of my favorite series would be The Sopranos, Lost, Carnivàle, 'Allo 'Allo, South Park, Futurama, The Simpsons, etc. Watching movies is another one of my hobbies. Some of my favorites include Rear Window, Das Boot, Donnie Darko, Mulholland Drive, Stalker, The Big Lebowski, Some Like It Hot, and Lord of the Rings. Frankly, I was more of a gamer back in 1993-1997 than I am now, but I still play stuff. I'm a fan of (old) adventures (Space Quest, Monkey Island, Quest for Glory, all that), some RPGs (Lands of Lore, Eye of the Beholder, Final Fantasy VII, etc.), some real-time strategy games (Warcraft!) and the FIFA series. As far as video games are concerned, I'm a big Nintendo fan. I own both a NES, SNES, N64, and GameCube, along with a stash of games.

I'm currently employed at the national museum of natural history. Before I ended up at the museum, I had some small jobs, including one as an office archivist (together with The Agonizer) and one at Domino's Pizza.

I also love to travel. I've been around the world, and spent five months of college-related research in Indonesia (Borneo and Java). I've also been to places such as Kenya, Tanzania, Curaçao (island in the Caribbean), USA (mainly California and Arizona, but also NYC), Turkey (Istanbul, southern & western coasts, central highlands, etc.), Italy, Greece, Spain, France, Germany and Belgium. As much as I like computers, I enjoy being outside, like a good relaxing afternoon on the beach.

Education: Between 2000 and 2006, I spent six years in college, majoring in biology at the University of Leiden. There, I graduated as an MSc, specialising in topics as environmental science, ecology, and taxonomy.

ZZT/MZX carreer: In 1993 I got my first PC. A really good friend of mine came over to my place with a bunch of old disks he found around his house. He started checking them out and accidentally found ZZT on one of them. He thought he had long since lost it and he was very excited about finding it back. Yes, if Sugeng wouldn't have found that disk back then, both me and Interactive Fantasies wouldn't be here. You might as well thank good old Sugeng. Then I started programming games and Sugeng taught me the basics of ZZT-OOP. My first few games pretty much sucked a lot (bad graphics, bad programming, but usually pretty funny with a lot of references to my real-life). I introduced a few real-life friends of mine to ZZT - Hydra (my cousin), DoggyShop, The Agonizer and The Avatar. I hardly improved my skills in all those years, mainly because of the lack of other games to compare mine to. In 1996 HM (back then, a real-life friend of Hydra) found out there was a whole online ZZT community. We managed to get a few ZZT games from the internet: Code Red, The Lost Crown and a couple of others. A little later in 1996 we got Super Toolkit, SuperZZT and various other games such as Sivion. That's where my skills really started improving. I had some good examples and STK to make better graphics with and I learned a couple of new programming tricks. On June 2nd 1996, I decided to form my own ZZT/SuperZZT company, Inferno Soft. I started programming games, this time with the intention to release them, even though we didn't have net access at that time. Later on, Inferno Soft got renamed into Interactive Fantasies and in November 1997 I entered the ZZT scene (I always surfed the web at my father's office). In May 1999 I got net access at home and voilà, I'm here. In the meantime I've released various ZZT, SuperZZT and MegaZeux products and have become a prominent figure in both the ZZT and the MegaZeux online communities. These days, I have faded away from the community, but I still keep IF and this website you're reading alive.

Interactive Fantasies portfolio:

• Fireball Engine (MegaZeux)
• The Search for the Lost Dog (SuperZZT)
• Quest for the Immortals (ZZT, together with The Agonizer)
• Savage Isle (ZZT)
• IF Mag issue 1 (ZZT, together with Hydra)
• IF Mag issue 2 (ZZT, together with Hydra)
• A Death Beyond Imagination Demo (MegaZeux)
• iFantasy issue 4 (ZZT)
• Bear/Beer Hunting (ZZT, together with Hydra and The Agonizer)
• Red Light Zone (ZZT, together with Hydra)
• Post Apopleptic Chill (ZZT)
• The Life of a Scotter (ZZT, together with Hydra)
• An Ewok's Life Demo v2.0 (ZZT, together with EvilMario)
• The Hague: City Behind the Dunes (ZZT, together with Hydra)
• Brotherhood (MegaZeux, together with The Agonizer)
• Deceiving Guidance (ZZT, together with Hydra)
• A Community X-Mas (ZZT, together with Leamas)

24 Hours of ZZT/Day of Zeux portfolio:

• Beyond the Clouds (Summer 1999 24hoz entry - 7th place)
• A Grunt in the Dark (Fall 1999 24hoz entry - 1st place)
• Fat Ghetto Bastard (Spring 2000 24hoz entry, together with DoggyShop - 5th place)
• No Restrictions, No Control (Summer 2000 DoZ entry, together with Trev MUN and BiG BuBBa - 3rd place)
• Their Way, the Soulful Way (Fall 2000 24hoz entry - 1st place)
• Self-rot (Summer 2001 24hoz entry, together with Robert Pragt - 2nd place)
• Maynard & Fritz (Fall 2001 24hoz entry - 9th place)

Background: I was born the 22th of august in 1982 and I'm living in Velp, which is a small town near the german border in the eastern part of the Netherlands. Yes, like Hercules, I'm a Dutchman too (In fact, I'm his cousin!). In my spare time I hang around a lot with friends (which I spend a lot of time on, at least a few nights or afternoons a week), going to (hardcore house) raves (people outside of the Netherlands/Belgium/Germany probably can't get a good image on that, since it's a typical Dutch phenomena), doing stuff on the computer (like working on my webpage about house music: the Killing Playground, or playing games, see below), cycling on my mountainbike when the weather is good, and let's not forget drinking lots of beer and other various alcoholic beverages in the weekend :).

Gaming-wise, I must admit that I rarely keep up with the games released nowadays. I still love old PC adventures and RPG's like Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis, the Eye of the Beholder series, Death Gate, etc... However, lately I've also discovered the phenomena known as emulators again, and I'm now getting into Japanese RPG's again, like the Final Fantasy series (old chapters), Golden Sun (Gameboy Advance) and Secret of Mana.

Education: I finished primary school, like any another kid in Holland, and spent six years on grammar school after that. Right now, I'm studying computer science at the University of Utrecht. It's a nice and interesting study, which, however, can sometimes take a lot of time. Also, having to travel everyday for about 3 hours isn't too great, but I don't really like the idea of living on my own far away from all my friends :).

ZZT/MZX carreer: I started ZZTing a really long time ago; in the autumn of 1993 to be more accurate. I was visiting Hercules' place and he just got a new computer. Among the games which were on it was ZZT. From the moment I saw it, I liked it (I know this was different for a lot of ZZTers :). Herc had some games on it, like the old SSWorld and ExKiller (both of which have been deleted, sadly :( ). I copied the game, and started to make games (in Dutch) for myself (back then I still had an XT with a monochrome screen). Then, in 1996, HM, a guy I knew from school told me he played ZZT too. There turned out to be an entire ZZT community on the Internet! I got STK and some other games like Code Red. In June of 1996 Herc and me decided to make English games. Herc formed a company to release his games under: Inferno Soft, and I joined it a week after it was founded. That's basically how the story goes :). Over the past few years my skills have improved a lot (you should have seen the first versions of Indiana Jones ;), and Inferno Soft is long since Interactive Fantasies. I've released quite a lot of games, of which you'll find a list below. Nowadays, I'm not active in the ZZT/MegaZeux community anymore, nor am I working on any ZZT games because of lack of inspiration and time. However, I still love to play ZZT games, and who knows? Maybe I'll work on another game in the future!

Interactive Fantasies portfolio:

• Fantasy of Freedom (SuperZZT)
• The Incredible Building (SuperZZT)
• Indiana Jones: the Search for King Solomon's Mines (ZZT)
• Freak da Cat (ZZT)
• King's Quest ZZT (ZZT, together with MeBo)
• IF Mag issue 1 (ZZT, together with Hercules)
• IF Mag issue 2 (ZZT, together with Hercules)
• Quest for Glory (ZZT)
• iFantasy issue 3 (ZZT)
• Bear/Beer Hunting (ZZT, together with Hercules and The Agonizer)
• Red Light Zone (ZZT, together with Hercules)
• The Life of a Scotter (ZZT, together with Hercules)
• Freak da Cat 2 (ZZT, together with MeBo)
• The Hague: City Behind the Dunes (ZZT, together with Hercules)
• iFantasy issue 8 (ZZT)
• King's Quest ZZT 2 (ZZT, together with MeBo)
• Deceiving Guidance (ZZT, together with Hercules)

Background: I was born, and still live, in Humboldt County, California, in the US.

Other interests? I do a lot of programming-type stuff, and some music creation as well. Real life? I’m currently going to college and working at two part-time jobs (at a retail store, and doing database management). After riding the bus everywhere, I got my driver’s license in late 2001. I have a small, ’80s-era truck which is pretty cool. I play bass guitar, sometimes with friends (playing punk, ska, or whatever). I’ve met the ZZTer Meantee in real life, which was quite cool (and sort of surreal). I also live close to Nanobot, who is about three hours (I think) away from me.

Education: Currently, I’m attending College of the Redwoods, a local community college located around 30 miles from me. Driving there every day or so is a drag, but the tuition is pretty low-cost, and the quality level is pretty high. I’m majoring in computer science, and minoring in music. After two or three years at this college, I hope to transfer to a four-year university.

ZZT/MZX carreer: I got started with ZZT when I found Super ZZT on AOL sometime around 1994/95. Ever since I got my first computer in 1992 (and even before then), I've been interested in ASCII games - they're just cool, somehow. The first ASCII games I played were mostly old Apogee titles such as the Kroz series and the little-known Caverns of Thor, which has a strong resemblance to Super ZZT in the gameplay style. (It also has excellent PC speaker music.) Shortly after downloading Super ZZT, I left AOL, having used up my free month, so unfortunately I never discovered the community aspect of ZZT. I played Super ZZT for a while, but eventually became bored with it.

Then, in 1996, I got an Internet connection and found ZZT. The first games that I downloaded were titles such as the Smiley Guy series, Yindle, the Best of ZZT collection, and most of Greg Janson's stuff. I wrote a few games, including a very long one, but they weren't much good because I had yet to learn of STK.

In the middle of 1997, I decided that I would try to write a ZZT clone. I went online looking for file format information, and thus discovered Epic's old (not the old ones, but the old, OLD, pre-Javascript ones :D ) ZZT boards. I asked about the file format and didn't get much help, but I had discovered the community aspect of ZZT. I stayed on the boards on and off until the beginning of 1998, when I began to participate more. Also, at that time I began the ZZT clone project, which was called NextZZT at the time, and is now ZIG. ZIG's history is too long to get into, so I won't try. :D

Sometime near the end of 1998, I decided to become more involved in the community aspect of ZZT, including making games. I started by making my first 24hoz entry in the Winter 1999 contest (topic: "violence"), where my entry (The Uprise) came in 2nd, much to my surprise. After that, I started a couple of projects and joined IF in early 2000.

Interactive Fantasies portfolio:

• ZIG v1.x, v2.x (Game Creating System)
• ZZT Music Player/Ripper (Music utility)
• ASC2BRD (Conversion utility)
• Total Fades (ZZT)
• Noise (ZZT)
• Scorched Earth ZZT (ZZT)

Music portfolio:

• 1 song for iFantasy 8 (ZZT, by Hydra)
• New Earth Operations Disc 1 soundtrack (ZZT, by Chase Bramlage)
• Stupid RPG: Third Flavor soundtrack (ZZT, by Knightt)
• 3 songs for Death Gate (ZZT, by Hercules, aetsch, WiL, Nadir and Hydra)
• 1 song for Deceiving Guidance (ZZT, by Hercules and Hydra)
• Operation: Obrian-2 soundtrack (ZZT, by Chase Bramlage)
• A number of title songs
• Music in my 24hoz entries

24 Hours of ZZT/Day of Zeux portfolio:

• The Uprise (Winter 1999 24hoz entry - 2nd place)
• Sandwich Quest (Spring 2000 24hoz entry - 7th place)
• Human Entity (Fall 2000 24hoz entry, incomplete - 15th place)
• Bobbo the (Corporate) Spy (Winter 2000 24hoz entry - 3rd place)
• Greek Fire (Spring 2001 24hoz entry, incomplete - 14th place)
• Artwork on future, winter and horror (Summer 2000 24ahoz entry - 8th place, 2nd place in team contest with Interactive Fantasies team)
• 3 small BKZZT entries