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How did you find the scene?
Topic Started: Jul 16 2017, 07:27 PM (426 Views)
strx10
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Sexy Beast
I'm just kind of curious as to some of the history behind how you guys found the scene.

I've been looking at NES sites since around 99/00 and mostly lurked messageboards. I joined a few here and there under throwaway aliases in about 01-02 and finally decided to participate on boards and with a site in '03 right when NES Forums started. The rise of NA and the fact that everyone else bailed is what lead to me quitting in about 05-07.

BONUS POINTS: How I joined these forums. Claw had been talking about doing this type of forum for god knows how many years and one day actually went through with it. He then sent me a link to it and demanded I join and set it all up.

So that's really it. What are your guys' stories for joining the scene?
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FlowingMindspin
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BIG BUTT BABY
It was late '98 or early '99, we had just gotten dial up internet at home. I found my NES in the basement, hooked it up, and started playing Ironsword. I wanted to look up some passwords for it and stumbled upon NESFan. Joined the forums there... yep.
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calgone
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calcron
Fall of 2002. The funny thing is it was my best friend at the time who was familiar with a lot of the fan sites, particularly Big Stu and Nes Chedda and now I haven't seen him in over ten years and I'm the chump who got pulled into to the scene whereas he got new and better hobbies. I know I posted on NESplayer's boards and then finally took the plunge into irc in 2003. I really enjoyed those times. I was home for summer break and definitely did not have many IRL friends leftover from high school so my days would largely consist of a part time job, checking out Funcoland and Goodwill's inventory on an almost daily basis, checking who updated which site (Nesplayer was king) and then chatting with fellow weirdos at night. I'm probably making it sound bleaker than it was haha, but it was a big part of my life for sure and I'm very grateful that we still commiserate.

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Qix
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I was looking for something about "Natural Ear Services" and discovered a Quizzle's NES Page instead.

And a preemptive move, Edsel: Fuck off.
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clawx
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I found tsr's nes site in like 1998. Posted as NESJoe.


I can't believe that was almost 20 years ago. God damn.
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Bratwurst
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BIG JERK
I came in late and discovered |tsr's website a few years after he stopped updating, but I knew about Nesticle in the 90s. It and MEKA on DOS allowed me to try all the games I might have been interested in before I tried to find them at flea markets and used game shops. I didn't even bother with SNES emulators until 2001/2002 because they ran so choppy on my computer, good times.
LOOK Posted Image LOOK AT HOW AMAZING THE FORUMS ARE NOW
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portnoyd
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WET NOSE
I was in college and was growing my NES carts with generous Funco stops. I did some searches and came upon NESFan first in... 1999? 2000? 2001? And it was fine. Then I realized they were lol bundle of sticks and joined with you guys. I think. I'll be honest, I don't really remember it all to well.
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Jin
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I joined the scene in mid-1998 on IRC with #nes98 in the throes of channel breakup drama. I emigrated with some of the #nes98 people to #retrogamers with SteveX and Octopooki (Tom).
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Percy
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I remember going to a relative's house who had the internet in early 1996. It was the first time I had ever used the internet and got quickly bored looking up N64 news, so I typed "NES" into a search engine.

The first site I clicked on was NES Nation. The gigantic, ugly banner image SANG to me. I was 11 years old and only a couple years removed from playing the NES (mine had been broken for a while) but I just felt waves of nostalgia. Video games were really starting to change, and I really missed these types of games. The Nation went down not too long after, but it really feels like the Ur-NES site.

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In the fall of 1998, I finally grew tired the N64's "one good game a quarter" release schedule. I discovered Funcoland, bought a used NES and began collecting. I was a madman, every penny went to purchasing NES stuff. Collecting NES games transformed my obsession with video games from a dumb distraction to something resembling a real hobby.

Spring 1999 my family finally got the internet. I spent all night trawling the web and discovered |tsr's message board. It was the first internet community I was ever a part of and learned some hard lessons about basic internet etiquette (I was a total asshole to a few people and was chided for that). When that board went down, I migrated to NESescity. I never ran a website, but I wrote reviews and articles for a few. I posted on the board and hung out in ##junkyard and #neschat. Participated in one of the NESfan message board floods and tons of chatroom raids. Hey, I was a bored 14 year old asshole with a lot of pent up aggression, what can I say.

Around 2001, my interest started to wane. I was in one the chats and realized I was never going to have a real social life or kiss a girl if I was spending my Friday nights idling in a chat until 3 AM. It didn't help that Funcoland began to liquidate their NES stock either. The day the music died for me was when I walked into Funco and the shelves behind the counter that used to have rows of NES games had been replaced by pre-order bonuses for PS2 games. I still checked NESescity but I was done with IRC and my collecting really slowed down. The Scene, or at least the Scene as I knew it, seemed to die off around that point as well. I went out and made an attempt to have a social life (I was successful).

I was definitely a lonely loser of a kid during my early to middle teens, but for some reason I look really fondly on my times on the board and the chat, writing shitty reviews for games and visiting every NES page I had bookmarked looking for updates.

I just realized I'm essentially being nostalgic about...being nostalgic. Yikes.
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calgone
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calcron
Good post Percy. I completely get it.
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DamienC
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I was the weird kid in school who didn't get rid of my NES when the 16 bit era started. There was a true golden age of collecting in the late 90s, when NES was considered worthless and I got lots of stuff dirt cheap. Then the internet came along.

I lurked around |tsr's NES pit and whatever other early NES fan sites were around, I don't remember. I found the Gameboy emulator GB97 in a Usenet group, then I found Nesticle and ROMs around 1997. Eventually I discovered ROM hacks and translations. That led me to Zophar's Domain and Demi's ROM hacking board, and from there I stumbled across #nes98 and the rest is history.
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bigbangblackbillyboatbeautiful
BIG BUTT BABY
...
Edited by bigbangblackbillyboatbeautiful, Jun 13 2018, 04:43 PM.
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Jin
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edsel,Jul 17 2017
08:55 PM
In 1999, I had my own NES site on homestead. I had no idea the NES Scene existed. I had a shitty contest on my site where I hid a link and wanted people to find it. Only one person found the link. It was Sappy. He told me about TNCA. I followed that to the forums.

sorry but that's actually adorable
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Percy
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calgone,Jul 17 2017
06:22 PM
Good post Percy. I completely get it.

Thanks, I was worried that post was a little too self indulgent.
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Evil_Spock
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Jizzlord
I got back into NES gaming/collecting maybe '96 and onward, b/c I would play my old games while home from college for the summer. Me and my brother would sometimes go to Funcoland, in those halcyon days, and get games we'd never played as kids. One of the first things I "legitimately" used the internet for (aka non-porn) was to exploit the Funcoland website for cheap games. (AOL 1,000 free hours). My first big collection bump was 90 games at $.99 per, ordered from Funco online. That was probably '98, contemporaneous with my discovery of emulation, so NES games were basically all I thought about in my spare time.

Once me and my school friends had our off-campus apartment set up with a sweet-ass 56k modem, I inevitably started *searching* (almost wrote "googling," but it was probably Yahoo or Alta Vista) for NES collecting and NES emulation. First websites I found were probably Martin Neilson's NES World, Unofficial World-of-Nintendo, and |tsr's nes butthole ("a font of information about the Nintendo Entertainment System" omg he is so fat). Also Zophar's Domain + Classicgaming.com, for emulation and NES hacking stuff.

I also am insanely, ridiculously, please-seek-medical-attention-ly obsessed with NES Metroid, so it might be accurate to say that I found Metroid Database first. I can't recall.

Anyhoo, one fateful day, |tsr's message board went offline b/c |tsr in all his fatness spilled a deadly combination of Mountain Dew and Cheetoh dust on his web server...
...and that created a certain NESescity...
that's how I found you fucking guys.

Then I started making bad websites and no don't ask me how that archiving project is going I have bad time management skills ok
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