I was bored during the summer of 2002. I didn't have enough sets to really MOC, and I didn't have a camera to take pictures, so much of my time was spent on my Windows 98 desktop. My site that had really piqued my interest during this time was bioniclemusic.com. It had a flash application that let you mix several tribal/techno tracks together to make music. It was beyond awesome. Another Bionicle-related thing that I found on the 'net was this BIONICLE flash game, where you would choose a Toa and then battle Rahi in several levels, increasing your score. They had a contest where the highest scorer got a free Manas set (still curious on who was the lucky person). Well, these two sites (along with a painful longing of anything remotely similar to the cancelled PC game) are what ultimately got me started on my quest for BIONICLE multimedia. This being the time before the BIONICLE Media Project or even BZPower however, my searches were not very fruitful.

One day, I stumbled across a BIONICLE site that I can't name. Since I can't really discuss it in detail, I'll just say that it was the first fansite that I had ever encountered and was blown away by the set reviews and official BIONICLE images that they were able to put up from time to time. Continuing on... there was another site that Google returned in my search: "Xitan's BIONICLE Corner". I guess Google was not very fast at updating their links, because when I encountered this site, it had been moved to another domain for some time. This domain: bzcommunity.com, would be my second fansite that I encountered. Honestly, I didn't like it. You were greeted with the disembodied head of a maskless Toa with fiery red eyes gazing into your soul, and I barely was able to notice the BionicleZone under it. Not to mention, this being the very first forum I encountered, I simply couldn't make my way around the site. There were links everywhere going to all kinds of different places, with little icons and images strewn about everywhere. It had been the oddest website I had ever encountered, boasting what looked like thousands of webpages with URLs that I couldn't make out. It was through this heap of links that I discovered Brickshelf, where they supposedly hosted pictures of peoples' MOCs and BIONICLE figures. The folders were never public though, so I ignored it and continued on, searching for any more BIONICLE multimedia.

Finally, Google showed my Kanohi Power, another BIONICLE fansite that (IMO) looked miles better than Bionicle Zone. Everything was clean and not too many links. I reminded me of the first BIONICLE site, but with less pictures. At the time, I need pictures and videos to keep my interest in anything, so I quickly moved on.

However, every time I'd try to search for something BIONICLE-related, I'd generally always find myself at one of those three fansites, and mostly, I just wound up at either BZCommunity or Kanohi Power. I had also managed to grasp what a "forum" was, and consequently had an easier time navigating BZC. I finally just stuck to BZC - the Toa head didn't bother me anymore, and I learned that people were making all kinds of cool stuff in their Creative Outlet, including a 3D BIONICLE game in the works (written in C++ no less!)! As you can probably guess, that particular project fell through.

I continued following the discussions on BZC until one day when I saw that BZ's layout had changed dramatically. It turns out it merged with Kanohi Power - that other site that I paid little attention to! Well, that was convenient! BZP then felt like a brand new site (cause it was!). Contrary to what I thought, it doesn't look like I felt the need to post in the FotR topic at all, considering it was almost a week after I joined before I did. I guess I just decided to join just-cause. Anyway, three days later (technically 2 days later, and I joined a little bit after midnight), I decided to sign up.

And that's how I found BZP!