The talented Mr. Belmonte

The talented Mr. Belmonte has been on my mind for a while. He is rumoured to have been behind the ON clip. I would like to contact him, but there is very little info to go on. So I´ve decided to compile everything we know about that elusive person.

1.) HISTORY

To briefly recap, the name was first mentioned on this Spanish forum entry. The thread was started by someone calling himself Yugulator. He posted these high-res pictures, which supposedly prove the ON clip to be a fake:

Picture 0
Picture 1
Picture 2
Picture 3
Picture 5
Picture 6

The first is the important one. It shows the Mario castle from the end of the ON clip, two Marios and a message from the alleged creator, nicknamed ´Psyco3ler´. It reads:

It is not about it being a "fake", its about a complaint, It (the video) is an attempt to not simply stay with my arms crossed before the sickening ocean of commerciality that is affecting the industry of videogames, especially my loving Nintendo (the only company that preoccupies itself with contributing new things). Commerciality forces companies to put out new consoles every 2 or 3 years with the only intent being to erase the limits (set by current consoles) for game developers, This does not allow game developers to let their imagination run wild and delight us (the gamers) with transcendent new games. [The function of commerciality] is to make "good," "pretty"-(thanks to better consoles) and cheap (not precisely for the users) games in less time in order to sell faster.

It is not my style to vindicate my principles by chaining myself in front of some office or setting myself on fire at E3, I do it the best way I can, demonstrating my disagreement by sacrificing a week to make a video that demonstrates some of the most attractive qualities of a "real" console, that is, to imagine and project [these qualities] using today's technology, that despite its high cost, it allows; being inside the games, handling any kind of command made in a virtual manner via hands, using your own body like a joystick, using (for example) one hand to elevate in it Mario and taking him to the top of a palm tree and onto a platform to continue playing the game, allowing those who use glasses to use a visor that adjusts to our own vision, allowing players to create our own games, modeling characters with our hand, creating decorations using elements and "connect-a-dots" as if they were a Lego creation, Offering the possibility of playing a game on a television using the "eyes" of the console to "read" your hands by your commands, Multiplayer compatibility from only one console that shares a signal to other visors, and makes use of an "alpha" function in the visors that, joined with the “On” console, will allow you to play freely with friends in a first person shooter while the console projects a virtual world with explosions, enemies, and items.

Today, there exists technology for just that system I have described. In a few days Nintendo will present its "revolution" and I hope that it will not be another one of these deceptions that I have experienced over the last few years; hopefully Nintendo will not base the revolution on the idea of making new systems so simple as to not result in too much complications in fabrication and development, but enough innovation to attract the attention of the grand majority of conformist people (the casual gamers; the ones who don’t care about the true meaning of playing video games). If this happens, by misfortune, it will buy over “true gamers” (that are not conformist) because we love video games and there is nothing better to play. This philosophy is great from a business standpoint, but not right and lacks worth because it puts innovation aside along with betraying its followers (for this, there are other companies). I only hope that this 2005 E3, Nintendo demonstrates once again to everyone that they are the best, and that like the best company in the world that they are, present ideas that are ahead of its time that a simple fan cant think of.

(translated by Minotaur64)

Now, Yugulator wrote in his post:

ah, bueno.. por mi parte mi mas sincera enhorabuana a mi colega Pablo Belmonte, que cada día me sorprende mas

y xa los k decían k una persona no podía hacer eso... pues no estaban en lo cierto, a lo mejor una persona no puede, pero el, en una semana ha hecho esto (tenia preparadas mas cosas antes, pero se le borró el ordenador y solo fue esto lo que le dio tiempo a hacer)

todo esto podía haber sido mas creíble? por supuesto, pero gracias a Perrin Kapplan se tuvo que adelantar para poner el vídeo antes de que se desbaratara todo, jeje

A friend of mine translated it for me:

I´d like to send regards to my colleague Pablo Belmonte, who surprises me more each day. And those who said that one person couldn´t have done this... guess they were wrong. Maybe a person couldn´t have done it, but he did it in a week.

He had prepared more, but his directory got deleted and he only managed to prepare this in the short time left.

This whole thing could have been more credible? Sure, but thanks to Perry Kaplan it had to be rushed, before it all fell apart.

Perry Kaplan should be called Perrin Kaplan and is VP for marketing and corporate affairs at Nintendo of America. Perrin did tell media before the Nintendo press conference that the Revolution was going to be "very, very sleek". The phrase "the most sleek" appears in the clip. Kaplan said that on May 13th. If I remember correctly, that was the same day the ON clip started to circulate. So this doesn´t really show anything. But apparently, as Yugulator suggests, Kaplan was the reason why the ON clip had to be rushed. Perhaps because of these comments. I am not sure. It doesn´t make sense to have to rush the clip because of her comments or actions. Their deadline, so to speak, was going to be the press conference. Or should they have aimed at pre-empting Kaplan´s comments about the console being sleek, in order to stir up rumours? In that case, how did they know she was to use that word?

Anyway, I tried to send Mails to Yugulator as well as to Pablo Belmonte. Naturally, no reply. I guess I´m not the only one trying.

What we are left with are a whole bunch of questions. Does Yugulator truly know the clip´s creator? Yugulator´s forum profile lists him as 18 years old and from Madrid. He registered three years ago. So he might be 21. In fact, he better if he is working with someone who can animate this well. Anyway, in case it was true, I checked the Spanish white pages for Pablo in Madrid. I found someone called PABLO ANTONIO LOPEZ BELMONTE, but haven´t tried to ring him yet. If it was the wrong guy, it would be kind of embarrassing. Especially not speaking any Spanish at all.

2.) RESEARCH

2.1) Animestyle.Info

The best leads should be the websites involved. Let´s start with Sachit.Animestyle.Info. This one is apparently Psyco3ler´s website. It´s a directory listing full of impressively rendered animations much like the ON clip. There are apparently some scenes in those files that are also in the clip. I haven´t downloaded all the content, so I haven´t checked this myself. But the clips on this site actually do bear the nickname.

Tracing the domain is tricky. It belongs to a Matt Langdon of Ontario, Canada. Two domains are referenced in the info. His email suggests that he is the webmaster at Blue Spark, which is an internet company located in Sevenoaks, England. A Whois search of this URL, in turn, lists a Mark Ryder in the same town.

The registrant´s company is named as Shadowcloud, which is a no-frills webmaster site, recording internet traffic. This URL, in turn, belongs to a Nickelas Brady of Santa Rosa, USA. His company is listed as Big Grip Productions (URL now defunct), apparently a music production company. From here, things get very confusing. This guy is seemingly involved in a number of websites and projects, together with a few other people, notably: Probizmedia, Midnightcurve, Stylish101 and Probizmedia. Now, you might think I´m insane for following this all the way up to this point. But I´m presenting this to you only because some of the sites registered by these guys are to do with games. One, in fact, is described as "A game dvelopement and Next Gen Gaming site!" Unfortunately, it is defunct. That´s all, probably no clue here.

EDIT: Just so everyone reads this, I am copying a disclaimer from the comments to this post.

Thanks for the mention, but for what it is worth, we are not connected with Shadowland.com, ANIMESTYLE.INFO or Matt Langdon

We registered the domain bluesparkonline.com when it was left to expire recently, as it fits our main business
bluespark.co.uk
Therefore I can only assume that whoever had it registered before had simply given up with it.

Regards

Mark

2.2) El Rellano

Now, our good friend Yugulator posted links to the pictures linked to above. They are found at Corral.ElRellano.com. This site has some stylish flash animation, featuring the stickman-type character that you see on all the mentioned pictures (though it is not shown in the actual ON clip, it should be noted).

The site offers three main options: past, present and future. ´Past´ links to a number of flash offerings and video clips, on and off the main site. Some are game related, like "Fecal Fantasy", a spoof on the "Final Fantasy" movie. The ´present´ option takes you to a fanpage for the ´Sims´ showing some kind of episodes. And the ´future´ option links to two projects: A Matrix spoof called Thes Madrix and some train project I can´t make sense of, showing two weird trailers.

But there is also a fourth option. In the left lower corner on the main page, you can click on a small figure. This will take you to another flash object which asks you questions, to which you can answer yes or no to. I answered yes a few times and received this riddle:

psyco3ler ordenó que jamás se le volviera a llamar asi. y por eso se le quedó de mote.

Again, I had to use Babelfish to translate:

to psyco3ler ordered that never it became to him to call asi. and for that reason it was had left of mote.

You are supposed to enter some kind of answer into a field below and proceed. Regardless of what I put in, nothing happens. But whatever that means, this site is definitely associated with the talented Mr. Belmonte. Or, at least, with Psyco3ler, should they turn out to be separate people, after all). For it must be noted that the flash objects and movie clips on this site are either crudely animated or contain live action footage. They seem worlds apart from the impressively animated clips on the other site. Either way, we are close.

A Whois search for El Rellano, as well as Thes Madrix returns an Antonio Barragan of Sevilla, Spain. He is linked to a company called Magic Touch, another web design company, frightfully reminiscent of Melee Web Design, the mysterious designers of the British Nintendo On site.

I believe that this is the closest we can get to contacting the alleged creator of the ON clip. I´ll try to contact Magic Touch tomorrow. Maybe I´ll even bother to get in touch with the people in Santa Rosa, USA. Also, I might give PABLO ANTONIO LOPEZ BELMONTE a try after all. I´ll let you know as soon as I have any kind of reply.