In 2002 someone with the creative username "dan crenshaw" posted three separate guides for the JRPG Suikoden 3. to gamefaqs.com. This consists of the most popular comprehensive guide to the entire game, a list of all the story scenes and endings in the game, and a list of all the things the private detective you can hire in the game can tell you about the underage anime girls that are part of your army (it's a JRPG).
After first going "Huh, that's weird" about the user name, I checked with the site howmanyofme.com to see if this was a common name. It is not. There are 13 Dan Crenshaws in the United States. There are 103 Daniel Crenshaws - which is his legal name - some of whom will be called Dan. Let's dive deeper.
The timing of these guides is just fantastic. Dan Crenshaw finished high school in 2002, presumably around summer, and these guides were written and published in the months after that and stopped being updated in ealy 2003, when his wikipedia article tells me that his university education was kicking off. Let's dive deeper.
Next step is a bit awkward because at this point I was losing focus and since I am not American I don't know your internet service providers, but he does leave an email adress, which is dshaw999@bellsouth.net. It does sound to me like someone with that adress in 2002 is probably in the south, which he was, but I haven't actually looked that one up too much.
Here's a link to the list of guides for Suikoden 3: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps2/536777-suikoden-iii/faqs The link for the post will have to be to a picture of main character Geddoe, the one-eyed mercenary that I am now convinced he has built his entire persona around.
Ok I'm gonna need like 10 more of you nerds on the clock figuring this out.
I'll check back in 24 hours and I expect the thread to be full of arguments and counter arguments! :mao-wave:
Currently using the wayback machine to look at all my favorite long-defunct Suikoden fansites. Seems like if a dude wrote 3 guides for a game he might also be an admin of some shitty geocities site or something. So far nothing though :(
Gamefaqs user-submitted text-guides are the best and full of soul. You can clearly see the author pours hundreds of hours for free just as hobby to help others, because he/she really loves the game.
Nowadays all we get is copy pasted article guides riddled with ads and cookies fishing for clicks.
I still much prefer them over the annoying guides IGN or other :joker-gaming: sites put out. It isn't riddled with unrelated media and ads and 200 pages to click through. Usually much more comprehensive table of contents too.
Do you think he lost his eye on purpose to look more like this anime man?
Of course. He clearly cares deeply about this anime man. and building an IED is probably easier than building a convincing cosplay costume.
Also I just downloaded Suikoden 1 and 2 with the hope of playing through them in order, but 1 really feels like a slog... How much would skipping straight to the second one harm my experience?
I've never played S1, but S2 is one of my favs. you can prob skip it.
Just play the second one. Anime bullshit aside, it's an absolutely beautiful game. Despite all I've said, I did notice this because I do like the series, anime bullshit and all.
So 2 has quite a few pretty important characters you meet in 1. It was really cool to me to see how things progressed when I played 2. I would personally recommend it if you like lore and getting to know the characters more but it's definitely not that big of a deal if you don't. Idk if it works for emulator but you can actually import some of the stuff you accomplished in 1 inside of 2. It's been so long idk what exactly it did but I thought it was cool when I was younger.
2 has some returning characters and a bonus character you get for having a s1 savefile, but honestly the first game is so generic and light sotry-wise you can probably skip it. 2 is amazing, though I think it takes a bit to get going too.
Suikoden 1 absolutely is a slog. It's not a terrible game, but it's kind of on the mediocre side, and I personally don't think it's super important. It's definitely cool to see the full series through though.
Hmm inconclusive. I looked into Bell South a bit. They didn't serve Texas where Crenshaw grew up.
Afte doing the bare minimum of research that I absolutely should have done before I posted at all, it seems that the Southeastern Bell company did not serve texas at that time, but AT&T, which is the parent company of everyone involved aquired the Southwestern Bell as early as 1993, and they are headquartered in Texas. Could this have affected email adresses in Texas or am I just crazy? I will, by the way, never stop believing this no matter how much evidence I am provided with, but I would like to know if it is a matter of pure religious faith on my part or if there is something more to it.
iirc, this was the early days for 'broadband' where DSL via phone lines was opened up to many providers outside of the normal incumbency status quo these days, so he could of easily had DSL provided through some other competing Bell corp
So the theory is not completely dead? My main evidence is the timing. which actually seems to be perfect. So if the internet service provider doesn't actually disprove it we're just back to looking at the number of Dan Crenshaws + whichever part of the Daniel Crenshaws are called Dan, and we could probably exclude quite a few of them because we DO have an expected age for someone writing this in 2002, and it's not that huge of an age gap.
They didn’t serve Texas where Crenshaw grew up.
He lived in Colombia when he graduated from high school. Which, interestingly, is a country that Bell South operated in at the time.
I'm going to e-mail him and ask. If the guide suddenly gets taken down, I'm going to consider that a confirmation.
I was about to answer that I don't think the e-mail adress I provided is valid any more, and then I looked at your screenshot and felt really, really stupid.
I also sent an e-mail through his campaign website (as a "media inquiry") and his house website (as a "constituent") so we'll see if I get anything back, though I'm not exactly holding my breath over it.
Probably not, but maybe we should steal the guides right away just in case they're taken down. Think I'll do that tomorrow.
Almost as funny as :pete: publishing his own Wikipedia page
That 'howmanyofme.com' website seems kind of sus. I searched a generic name like "Mohammad Khan" of which there should be hundreds in the US and it said "There are 2 people in the U.S. named Mohammad Khan."
Unfortunately that's a good point, and I absolutely did use the first page I found without doing any kind of source criticism. Is there a better source for the numbre of Dan/Daniel Crenshaws out there?
No idea. Is there still an active Suikoden community (sorry don't play the game so idk)? Would it be possible to make a post on their forums or subreddits to see if anyone knows the original Dan Crenshaw who posted that?
I did check this, but the suikoden forums I found seem to go for years without responses. Anyone with relevant knowledge would also have had to keep their interest for a dead game series going for more than a decade, so I think that's a dead end without a lot of patience. I only checked for official Suikoden forums though, I have all of Reddit blocked, so I don't know about them.
I'd try White Pages. You can do some semi quality e-stalking with just names and ages.
I want to believe this but I can't bring myself to accept Dan Crenshaw would be this cool
Can't believe Dan Crenshaw probably helped teenage me figure out how the best treasure bosses to farm and how the fuck to recruit Landis.
