This is from the ZA archive site and part of a very long thread. Posts by players/members.
This is part of the post Yellowrose did about finding ZT.
I was introduced to this wonderful game kind of late(Dec 2003). My nephew had a copy of Zoo Tycoon and I asked if I could borrow it to check out the game. I had watched the TV commercials for it and RCT 2 but had never really tried them. I brought his cd home and loaded it on the the system and played for about an hour. I got sooooo frustrated. He didn't have the manual that came in the box so I was just lost as to how to do anything beyond what the tutorial instructed. I left the game alone for about a week and then fired it up and again the frustration set in so i went looking for some info on the Microsoft site. Didn't find to much there and then spotted the fansite link so I checked it out and saw all these sites listed and started at the top which of course was ZA. I visited the others as well but came back to ZA for further investigation. I browsed the forum for about an hour and did a little reading then the cursed word caught my eye - yep - Downloads. yippee they have something that can help me I thought. Well I visited the downloads section to see what was afoot and 5 hours later....yes you read right 5 hours I downloaded. I got everything this site and a few others had to offer. I came back and read how to install them and use them ingame and then went and played the most enjoyable zoo...wish I still had that very first zoo but ...well...I went out abd purchased Zoo Tycoon Complete Collection and returned my nephew's cd to his care so he could someday regain interest.
After playing for 3 hours I came back to the site and joined. I figured it was the least I could do after downloading all the goodies I did, kind of a way to show my appreciation.
The first person I really met was Aussie Koala. She was the best and we became friends right away. We even got to playing a card game together off site on an almost daily basis. That frienship lead me to many other great people and over the last few years I have made some great friends including our resident Pesky Admin Texgnome who I consider to be one of my closest friends.
Not long after joining the site I discovered it was very easy for me to pick up the steps to simple designs and I started creating my own creations, then came a design team appointment, later moderator, Admin and now Network Admin.