Great thread.
'twas a short story. Around 2004 I found out about the French Bread doujin circle. Was looking for some small indie games back then and discovered Bike Banditz. Played it, was short fun. Looked into the circle, found about Melty Blood, which was funny since I was familiar to Tsukihime.
So I started playing the still-doujin-game when like 3-4 weeks afterwards there were news on ReAct. At this time I was already playing Garou: Mark of the Wolves and was really selective to fighters. But since it was a Tsukihime fighter and had godlike animations back then I started playing that as well.
Nothing much happened afterwards, I even forgot about it completely until around 2006 I learned that a next installment: Act Cadenza, was released. This was the first version I legitimately imported from Japan. Half a year later in 2007 I found out about Melty Bread and starting from there the rest is history.
More info:
It was late 2007 when I decided to start an independent community. The initial plan was to spread this game in Germany and after setting up a website with information, a translated wiki and 2008
a forum - we were even able to get about 35 members (39 until today) - and hosting a small netplay tournament.
Shortly after the launch I had my 2nd car accident which came along with high expenses to I had to cut my internet connection for more than 1 year. During this time I learned PHP and started the
CasterStats project.
While the German community alread died by then people were interested in CasterStats so I sided with Danielsan, a loyal fellow Melty player, to create and finish the statistics page. This bloomed for about 2 years until I had yet another accident and had to cut my internet again.
The site ran a few months without me but with the installment of Actress Again for PS2 people lost interest and were abadoning Act Cadenza in almost an instant. A few tries were to reanimate the page with new features and a new concept (was contacting mauve back then when he was giving me the proper tools) but that never came to be. So the site died.
When MBAA for PS2 was blooming I made preparations for the next CasterStats installment (Traybar icon, Lobbies, autohost + -join and all that shit,
that was even all already coded), but since the creation of a Caster client was abadoned the project died as well.
2009 I was trying to reanimate the German community with an
updated website but this time being demotivated from the events and attitude in the Melty scene I ceased development.
Thought you might be interested in this.