/vr/ - Retro Games

What were compuserve and such like when they ran their own services in the 80s and early 90s? [ie, distinct from the www or usenet]

I see them mentioned on old computing shows or old magazines, but i've not found much online detailing what they were actually like to use as an individual, instead of as a marketing brief.

>>2734761
What was the site about?

My inner 10 year old hopes it's nude codes

>>2734781
Type the url in a search engine and the first link should be an archive link

>SMBHQ is dead
>The GHZ is dead
>Kirby's Rainbow Resort is dead
What the fuck happened to fansites

>>2734843
Sadly with the rise of social networks and the fall of services like Geocities and AOL hometown, people found it much more efficient to just make a group on shitbook or other sites.

It really sucks because I fucking loved those fan sites, they had their own unique charm, instead of just being another generic feed with just a banner and avatar to separate it from the others.

Tumblr is sorta neat with the ability to use custom themes and such, but sadly the community is just shit, not to mention I'm not a fan of the Heart and Reblog system.

My big motivation as an eleven year old was to create a site about Final Fantasy VI on angelfire. I even made my own fan art. I collected all the midis I wanted to play on each page.

My friends did the same thing with Dragon Ball Z. That was just the thing to do.

>>2734843
ZHQ is gone too, and the artist who created the art for the site has moved on to some other career. (Really friendly guy. Neils T'hooft? Can never remember how to spell it...)

>>2734843
>Kirby's Rainbow Resort is dead
>tfw reminiscing spamming an unused Kirby's Rainbow Resort forum on forumplanet
At least the website is still up, even if it isn't being updated regularly. I think fan wiki's killed/replaced fansites, although of course no fan wikis that I've seen show the same degree of love or content.

So I went through my archive of Geocities midis and decided to collect a few of them into a zip file and share them with this thread

http://a.pomf.cat/rsgjcv.zip

Hope you enjoy the music I chose... even the ironic ones

I haven't looked for any of this shit in a long time but I bet all of the Petz kennel websites are super dead.

>>2734772
They were just huge BBSes with no warez.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWq4DWfrpu8

Very relevant to this thread.

>>2735501
That's some nice music he's got going there, especially with the reverb

>>2734843
It's simple. Life happened.

I imagine a lot of them moved on and got families or more time consuming jobs. That's what happens with these things. Life just happens.

Also, what you find these days is that the information on those sites became common knowledge and condensed down into easier to digest YouTube videos and for the most part.

>>2735884
>information on those sites became common knowledge and condensed down into easier to digest YouTube videos
And the youtubers take/get all the credit. It's a crying shame.

>>2736134
Doesn't matter. The info's getting out there. The legacy continues. We know, so that's important enough.

Last time I checked about a year or so ago Y2Khai's website was still up with all the flash videos, so I was about to post it here.

But sadly it's gone now.

Truly the end of an era.

Youtube
Facebook
Wikipedia

Things being easier to find, took away the soul.

The original ape escape site is still online

http://www.ape-escape.com/

>>2736406
Space Jam movie website's still up

http://www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/jam.htm

>>2736586
It's too bad the Amanda show website died though.

I thought Nick was all about 90's nostalgia especially now with Splat actually taking off faster than 90's are all that ever did in 4 years, but I guess not if they closed the Amanda website

There are quote a few old internet relevant links in here amongst the more CGG specific things

http://pastebin.com/UdmipND6

Not included because it's not pre-1995 but it's still an interesting site nonetheless is

http://www.ftp-sites.org/

Quite a lot of these are dead but there are still many active ones to sift through.

Also I encourage anyone who's interested to join SDF and cyber1. If you leave your sign-on for either in this thread I can point out some of the more interesting features of either. If you make an SDF account I can validate it once my ARPA membership clears (they said I would get every feature of membership in a week or two).

http://olduse.net/ is also a very cool site

It's been circulated quite a bit but if you haven't seen gopher.su, it's a fairly active BBS with the best software I've seen in a modern BBS. You can access it by typing

telnet gopher.su 1234

in any shell that has telnet

Here's a list of dial-up BBSes:
http://www.telnetbbsguide.com/dialbbs/dialbbs.htm

Never been to one of these threads so sorry if any of this is reposting.

Again I mostly just post in the computer gaming general but I'm not sure how much crossposting there is so I thought I'd share some relevant links here.

>>2736670
*quite a few

>>2736274

Fuck..... no......

I really miss the charm of old internet. People just making content to make it. None of this google bux patreon shit. Sure we had PayPal but donations weren't expected.

>Nick
>90s nostalgia
I'd be more excited about it if one of the first things they aired wasn't that "All Grown Up" shit.

>>2736694
And finding good sites was like finding treasure. Communities were tightly knit, and people went by each other's first names, not to mention meeting up in real life.

>that one vidya forum you went to back in the late 99s/early 00s is long gone
>those two guys who absolutely hated each other
>you remember the day you got blasted by the mods for putting a large .gif in your sig
>that one poster who you and your friends thought was a girl
>the guy who went crazy and posted threads while doing acid and got banned

I want to turn back the clock. Before MySpace and Facebook...

>>2734992
>midi

Oh god, this. I remember having a bookmark list full of Zelda and anime sites just to listen to their midi pages. That was the best part of 90s internet imo.

>>2735154

Bless you, fellow anon. This took me back.

>>2736804
>and people went by each other's first names,
I thought before facebook that was considered a big mistake.

>>2736804
And that poster who everyone thought was a guy but actually WAS a girl.

>that first pair of anime tits you saw when you were just trying to look up art and midis

Thanks random Tenchi shrine.

>>2736804
>The one guy that went crazy

Oh man, the memories.

The one kid that had been on the site for a while who did something stupid, got suspended and then backlashed by either hacking the site or IMing the mods and complaining, and everyone heard about it because the site's community was so tightly knit.

Anyone recall a western fantasy fansite called Wrathgar Unlimited? (Or something like that) the site was a little out there but man was it fun to be a part of way back when. Usually people talked about D&D, Yu-Gi-Oh! and LoTR I think, and the site would constantly play the tavern theme from Daggerfall. There was a time when one of the moderators passed away and some kid named battle127127 who had been there a few months made everyone mad by making light of it with a joke and he got banned, came back like three months later by making the site read that "battle127127 has hacked your netz! 1337!" or somethin' of that nature. Eventually everything calmed down, but they never did take down the red banner that said "battle127127 has been banned PERMANENTLY from the site, so he will no longer be causing any problems! :)", I remember it staying there for years after it happened, eventually became a joke with the other members when newbies would ask who battle127127 was. God damn, memories. I miss the old Internet.

>>2736720
It's better than before when it was basically 2 of the same 4 shows reran over and over and some days you had fucking Rocket Power.

That and Splat has game show reruns

>>2736804
I love it when forum drama turned into forum lore.

>MTG Salvation lay relatively dormant and forgotten until January 1, 2005, when a number of staff members from MTGNews, including rancored_elf and urzassedatives, announced their resignation from the Staff on the website front page and as a forum-wide announcement. Their reason was in protest of the man appointed to oversee the forums, Subterranean Spirit, by Raa, the owner. Within minutes, several decided to use this to their advantage, spamming the MTGNews forums with links to MTG Salvation.

>When MTGNews was temporarily closed to the outside to remove the spam and lawlessness that had accrued since the announcement, a significant number of the most prominent MTGNews posters, including rancored_elf, began posting on MTG Salvation. Quickly, it became as active as MTGNews had been the day prior, and the presence of older members contributed significantly to the validity of the site. By the time MTGNews was reopened a few hours later, many saw it as "the new MTGNews".

>While MTGNews was open again, Subterranean Spirit began to enforce a policy of banning any member who mentioned MTGSalvation in their signature or elsewhere, which was in stark contrast to the previous policy of allowing any advertisements in signatures. This, coupled with the protests of important members and the banning of several others, led to MTGnews becoming partially abandoned. Most of the members who were banned relocated to MTG Salvation.

http://mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/MTG_Salvation

>>2736804
>And finding good sites was like finding treasure. Communities were tightly knit, and people went by each other's first names, not to mention meeting up in real life.

Traveling the webrings to find random shit. Eventually the SNES webring starts to get weird as shit as you progress into the 10k area.

There's a lot of old shit I miss. But as for forums I'm still active on Gamefaqs after all these years...

But the forums I miss the most are the ones in the early 00s that had avatars and battle systems built in. Think like Gaia but not complete shit.

Also I miss finding weird sites. There was this one site I knew of that had satellite pictures of cities, and if you clicked a box it spelled words using streets in these cities.


>>2737126
>>that first pair of anime tits you saw when you were just trying to look up art and midis
>Thanks random Tenchi shrine.

Mine was some badly drawn DBZ art someone scanned. I wasn't even looking for it. But when I became interested in hentai I remember lurking and searching through Yahoo groups to find it. Since at least for me finding decent hentai was hard as fuck at times.

>>2736785

Remember shit like Slingo and how shit loads of old people played it?

Also I use to be ranked really high in either MSN 'or was it Yahoo?' chess.

Basically I would have Chess Master running in the background and play the computers moves against the other player.

>>2737602
>Basically I would have Chess Master running in the background and play the computers moves against the other player.
I've heard this story before, and I always wondered what would make you guys do this

The Wayback Machine on the Internet Archive is very useful for this kind of thing - https://archive.org/

You can search for snapshots of old websites so long as you remember the URL. Some go back to the mid-1990s.

>>2737619

Yeah, but it's just no the same. No interactivity, most pictures and website assets are missing, and you're limited on how far back you can go per website. It's like looking up on Google earth your old house that you grew up in and was later demolished. No matter how many times you look at it, nothing new will come from it.

For me, it was planetnamek.com and vegetainsane. Used come for the music videos that were continuously posted, but I stood for the forums. I never posted a whole lot, just read what everyone speculated about.

>>2737674
>No interactivity, most pictures and website assets are missing
There is interactivity of sorts. If you click a link, it will look for the oldest archived version of that link. I don't often find an unarchived link. As for pictures and other features, perhaps you're just unlucky. Most of the sites I've found on there have plenty of pictures. Of course it'll never be the same as the original site, but it's usually this or nothing.

>>2737619
Oocities and reocities are also useful for looking up old GeoCities websites (and possibly your own geocities website)

>>2735027
ZHQ was the shit. Spent so much time just listening to the Zelda remix midis they had playing on the front page. Their forums were pretty active as well. Also you got the name right, it was Neils T Hooft and he has a personal website he posts shit to occasionally. ZHQ's "sister" site metroid-database is still alive and being updated fairly regularly, but it's lost quite a bit of its oldschool charm.

Remember the internet humor before rage faces and advice animals? This was the funniest shit I had ever seen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSGJObJkWf0

It's still pretty funny.

I'll leave this here

cameronsworld.net

Maybe not 90's but definitely from the start of the internet as it is today and a classic all the same

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fvTxv46ano

>>2737719
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqO5lNS094M

this was my lifeblood

>>2737719
>>2737774
>>2737846

It's pretty amazing how internet humor has evolved. Back in the days (which was only about 10 years ago) the whole idea of humor relied pretty much entirely on the novelty of having something animated. It didn't have to make any sense, just a bunch of random flying clip art, reaction images, and maybe some song that is funny/cool sounding on its own.

http://www.angelfire.com/realm/SLIPKNOT/aska.html

:)

Just out of curiosity, who was it that did the Asuka Slideshow ROM for SNES ?

It was the first porn I ever saw and I really wonder who could have done it.

>>2737846
animutations were my jam, hyakugojuuichi especially

http://www.cameronsworld.net/

>>2738119
A lot of those old ones had charm though. All Your Base is classic for that and it still manages to crack a smile. It's YouTube Poops that aged like milk. Obviously a lot of the CD-i stuff became legendary but the poops themselves just dissolved into nothing.

>>2735501

Glad to see the speed and functionality of IGN has largely remained unchanged.

I miss multiplayer games having communities that weren't utter shit.

This place is pretty bad and yet it's 10x better than any other shithole out there. Nobody wants to discuss things anymore.

So what guilty pleasure/weird shit have you guys browsed back in the day?

Picture is unrelated to me, I don't like dentures.

>>2738423
I was a frequent visitor of the "Assassin" portion of Newgrounds, which had the "kill annoying celebrity in hilarious ways" games. They were pretty stupid, but since of them were great. The one I remember the most starred the "Pico" mascot and tasked him with killing the Bear in the Big Blue House. I think they got a C&D for that one, so they changed the names and likenesses around.

Anyone remember the AIM profile website? It was a place you could make a text based website that often was linked in AIM profiles.

>>2734843
Unless they got exclusive insider info there's really no need for them anymore. Word travels so fast now that it's nearly impossible for them to do anything to keep them relevant. I'm honestly surprised Shenmue Dojo is still a thing despite close to 14 years of absolutely nothing to talk about until 3 was announced.

>IRC is still used, not only that but commonly
I'm kinda impressed

>>2738490
I've used IRC for 3 years (2011~2014) straight almost everyday and met a lot of people there.

>>2738492
How do I get into it? It's always the same thing
>Find a chatroom of a community I am kind of involved in
>Enter for the sake of it for some time
>Eventually realize I haven't entered in two days
>Don't give a fuck
>Forget about it a week later.

>>2738264
>It's YouTube Poops that aged like milk.
The ones that had their own jokes derived from the source material instead of cramming unrelated YTP memes into the work are still great.

>>2738498
You need to get a hobby with a strong community in an IRC channel. For example, I've spent one entire year joining the same channel about visual novels, and there was always someone to talk about what he was reading there.

>>2738498
Be like me, and get an irc client, and join a shit ton of channels you're interested in. Eventually you'll learn that your only friends are on IRC and that it's important to life.

>>2736694
I think an interesting aspect of the old internet is also how normal people acted on it.

I mean you have random old guys making personal pages on geocities about their gardens and stuff. It's beautiful, in hindsight perhaps even cute. That's what the internet should have been, it should have been personal, individual and yet optionally impersonal.

Instead, everyone fills in their mandatory data-box on facebook. I won't detail my reasoning too much, but the end conclusion is that we're more obsessed with individualism than ever while doing more than ever to suppress it.

>my face when I was 14 I asked a girl on Planet Namek's forum for nudes completely out in the open and got banned for it

God that sucked. I loved that place, but I was a bit of an idiot back then. I was paranoid for months that the FBI or someone was gonna raid my house and arrest me.

I hope I wasn't the only one who visited this place. There was a section all about Mario called Mario Mania! and there was a Zelda section called The Grand Adventures. I remember the Mario section had this adventure game, but the farthest I got was some elevator puzzle. The Zelda section had a bunch of fan fics. There was some recurring character named "Ofish" or something weird like that.

I just remembered this site a little while ago and remembered I could visit with the Wayback Machine.

>>2735501
>Touch Yourself starts playing
Ouch.

I used to play this game a lot when I was younger, cool to see the site is still up. http://www.synthetic-reality.com/wosHome.htm

>>2736624
Amanda was 2000's shit, and they reran the show outside the block before bynes fucked herself up

Drake and Josh reruns ftw

>>2738490
I've been using IRC for over 10 years now and I use it every single day.

>>2738439
I remember that game, I don't think anything got changed. It was a parody, so it was protected.

SCHLAMMER IN THE COOLER

One of my favorite things of old internet, still makes me laugh. Originally from Newgrounds.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J4FXUMOw8k

>>2738572

Agree. The best way I can describe the current Internet compared to like the Internet of 10+ years ago is it got gentrified.

The old internet was like a massive shantytown of cobbled together websites arranged next to each other. You could wander the maze of alleys, and side streets finding weird/unusual/strange things and stop off at major sites to get information/news/play games.

But starting around the MySpace era the Internet started to get bulldozed to make way for the next wave of users. With the release of the iphone in 2007 that all but sealed the fate of the Internet we knew.

Millions of people flooded into our space, corporations/corporate minded people took note and built massive arcologies over the ruins to house and entertain the new unwashed masses.

A second Eternal September.

>>2738591
Holy shit. I fucking loved that site.

>>2738591
I loved that site, it was my go-to source as a kid for getting the drop on all the other shitbags who thought they knew their Zelda lore.

anyone remember Detstar? I recall it had a page dedicated to weird Bros. Melee screen caps. A friend of mine was stoked his 'Pokesex' submission made it onto the site. I'll leave that to your imaginations.. as it doesn't exist anymore.

>>2738684
Yeah, I'd agree it's more 2000's, but it was initiated in 1999, and the website was an early example of an official website dedicated to a show.

Other than that, it had pretty fun madlibs

>>2736785
>Tanarus has literally one person who plays it.

>>2739259
That's a perfect way to explain it.

I MISS THE INTERNET /VR/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRNyGDRikSw
Good ol interbutts

>>2738439
I used to go on that section non stop, I'd bet its still up. I just went on it because I thought Steve from Blue's Clues flipping me off was the funniest shit ever

>>2739667
You made me hear Steve say "Fuck you!" happily in his voice

On the subject of Nick, remember those spooky halloween Clickamajigs?

> "Welcome to Hotline"

>google my name
>my old website from the late 90s shows up
>my real name plastered over everything
>embarrassing photos of myself
>original donutsteel sonic and pokemon art all over the place
>tfw anybody who has ever googled my name has probably seen it

Welp, time to sudoku. Or I could at least attempt to deny everything and claim it was someone else with same name.

>>2739664
One of my all time favorites. I once found the youtube channel of the guy who made that flash, he does some let's plays of old DOS games nowadays.

>tfw you will never browse internet with sweaty and oily Bret Hart

Why even live?

>>2739778
miss u hotline

I remember visiting...

Cheatcc.com and gamerevolution.com before I discovered gamefaqs.com.

Playing Bonus.com's "Battlefield," which you can now play on tankpit.com

Visiting http://planetquake.gamespy.com/ when Quake III Arena was still big.

Newgrounds.com and stickdeath.com

>>2737126

Dude. I remember visiting it back in middle school after becoming a fan due to Toonami. Nice.

>>2738591
Hell yeah, that was my go-to site every day after school. My favorite sections were Mario Mania and the Death Match Arena. It also introduced me to fan fiction, of all places.
>>2739305
Oh shit, I was trying to remember the name of this place just the other day. I submitted a few screen shots as well.
I actually purchased an Action Replay for the sole purpose of trying the Debug Menu exploits he showcased. Fun times.

Anybody hear of neocities?

>>2740045
It's not really the same though, not as many sites with cool gifs and midis, and no actually weird shit

discussion mailing lists

lol, BINARY mailing lists

arcade music rip websites that hosted entire soundtracks as WAVs and MP2s because MP3 wasn't big yet

Mondo 2000 and eventually "Hackers" being overdramatic about hacker/cyberpunk culture

a majority of people older than college age not knowing what email or websites even are

that one dang Japanese FF website designed like a town with all the character sprites all over

all those Geocities anime and jpop websites

1994-1998 Mac websites (holy crap MacInTouch.com is still THE SAME)

finding my dial-up ISP's old telnet BBS archives still hosted GIF images dated 1991 of girls with really big hair

flashing my 28.8K modem to 33.6K

the REAL alt.hackintosh (before being co-opted by fake Mac builders)

Slashdot

Hotline

CU-SeeMe

BearShare

some late '90s mainstream radio stations that aren't around anymore but every time you hear those songs you can remember what else you were doing on your computer while listening to them being streamed

You mean I can buy all those Japanese games I saw in EGM and Die Hard Game Fan myself on this eBay thing?

Fireman Comics, Jeff K, Photoshop Fridays being new

8-Bit Theater being interesting and unique (sprites, nice)

Homestar Runner feeling all new and awesome

Animutations

YTMND

mid-2000s 4chan

every website looking like absolute shit on phones because they're optimized for desktop

personal websites dying because of Myspace, then Facebook

bye Geocities

hello iPhone

every website looking like absolute shit on desktop because they're optimized for phones

cell networks learning how to rip people off by studying how home broadband became so cheap

"like/share/tag/checking in" culture

hey everybody save all your shit in our cloud

no use our cloud

please don't ask what a cloud is, we want you not to know, but here have some free gigabytes

to use this device or service you waive all rights to privacy

living in a society that gladly waives those rights without question

>>2739921

>>2740086
I miss the times when each website looked unique, hell, I even miss the times when each profile on social networks looked unique and had stuff like different mouse pointers and shit. Now it seems like everything has to look the same.

Sure, geocities had a lot of shitty looking websites, but at least each one was unique in their little own way, and wasn't limited to some standards like "Photos have to go here, your interests go here, your banner goes here and that's the only thing unique about your profile"

>>2737126

>>2738168
is he that guy from stand by me?

>>2739921
this is me every single day.

i only got online in the late 2000s because i'm a poorfag and there's nothing i regret more in my life, except perhaps being born

>>2740065
Oh yeah, I definitely agree with you. But unfortunately it's the closest thing I can find to the geocities community

>>2740219
It really does seem like we will never have another age like the Geocities age unfortunately. Even if people just "Make another geocities", it just won't be the same because all the other people are using facebook. The cool thing about those old geocities pages was that they felt authentic and human, unlike sites made that way today where they were obviously made because "Remember geocities?", you no longer have people saying "Hey, I'm not that great at web design, but here is my home! Please take a minute to look around and sign the guest book!".

Tumblr does come close to this, but the community is shit and it's more like a "haha, this thing on the internet made me laugh! Let me repost it" blog than a "Hello, welcome, check out this cool stuff on my webpage" home.

Yeah, I know that I'm basically saying the same thing over and over again with these posts, but that was the beauty of retro internet, the sites were human.

>>2740323
Yeah, everything was much cozier way back when.

I really want those days back, maybe you're right by saying that we never will see an era like that again :(((

>>2740086
>to use this device or service you waive all rights to privacy
>living in a society that gladly waives those rights without question
see the pic on >>2740065

People just gave that shit away anyway back in the day.

>>2740323
>>2739259
>>2738572
you all summed up exactly how i feel

this site is in the old geocities style and there's a lot of cool shit. http://www.legowelt.com

Was anyone here on the pre-tcp/ip internet?

>>2740764
At least it was their choice instead of the policy of the service they signed up for

Then again, post Yahoo Geocities had that bullshit in their ToS where anything uploaded belonged to Yahoo

>>2740065
oh wow, coolspot

>>2740323
I think that's the great tragedy (and hilarity) of the modern age. Everything is misleadingly labeled.

We want to tell ourselves we're social individuals, so we use Facebook. Facebook's interface simplifies our unique attributes down to a photograph and a friend count. The nature of the site, intended to be social, is often perversely anti social - when it isn't encouraging lazy behavior like hunting for likes to get another hit of dopamine. The customization options are essentially limited to raw data - you can 'like' a movie, but you can't really organize all your thoughts about that movie like you could on a fan-page covered in flaming skulls.

Outside (but interlinked) with that is the obsession with being a unique individual as a whole - it often, tragically and hilariously, leads to the unique quirks of actual individuals being overlooked in favor of 'unique' dress sense or other aspects of appearance that, when distilled to a simpler form, make people pretty much identical. Everyone is a unique individual, just like everyone else.

I sound very pretentious here, so I should obviously clarify that I'm not in any way 'above' these things. I do things just to keep up appearances, most 4chan users are familiar with posting bait just for the dopamine hit of people biting. It's a very human thing to do, but the internet is capable of so much more than that. The internet should have been, could have been, so much more empowering. A year zero of sorts. It's a place where very few of your physical attributes need to matter - even location is trivial - yet we see it used for the same sort of thing you'd see in a small town 60 years ago: Individuals competing for social status against those living 3 doors away.

Oh well, the guy who invented TNT only wanted it used for mining, I guess everyone has to come to terms with the fact mankind doesn't always use things in an ideal way.

I used to visit Dan's Sonic Fan Games Page (vanished in 2000 or 2001) and Sonic Fan Games HQ plus all the other websites from people who made the Games (Aytac aksu/magicgrafx, gregorsoft/Sonic ultra, the very first SAGEs...). I also remember downloading anime on dialup and with the aid of download managers from forums vía lots of pictures (uploaded to mail servers most of the time) that had bits of the vídeo encoded in that had to be joined and decoded with a especial program.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmtzQCSh6xk
This was probably the first viral video in the tubes ever.

>>2740941
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPPj6viIBmU
what about this?

>>2738572
>we're more obsessed with individualism than ever while doing more than ever to suppress it

I think you nailed it.

>>2738572
>>2739259
The people who put stuff on the internet by then cared about stuff like getting the contento and assembling it. It was not only myspace and facebook but also the digitalisation of everything. I remember in 2005 going in the train and finding funny how many more people than say 5 years ago were wearing headphones and texting. Flash forward to 2011 and everyone (not just some people) are carrying at least two digital devices and most of them lost inside their use (either music, browsing, chatting, eBook reading...). Facebook gave people a boring template and people started to fill it because they could and everyone was doing it, making it become the community of the whole internet.

I really like the comparison you made with a city and I really don't like the uniformism of today's web.

>>2734843
Don't worry, there's still a Gex fansite you can visit!

http://itstailtime.proboards.com/

Remember Gex?

>learn basic html
>build fansite about anime , games whatsoever
>found BBS
>MSN Group chat , irc all night
>meet up with BBS members

It's a magic kind of feel in a hot summer .

>>2734843
>tfw blamethepixel.com is dead

Comfiest Worms fansite, dead. Few year back it was still fully up and running.

>>2740941

Eh, not really. But it was probably one of the first massive internet breakout to real life videos out there.

I think it was the turning point were the media stopped being like 'The internet is nothing but hackers wearing sunglasses and sex offenders' and more 'The internet has funny videos, lets see what else we can dig up for ratings.'

>>2741610
I remember the whole war between Viacom and Youtube, but it was pretty clear Viacom won in the end, as a bunch of the most popular youtubers went on to star in Nick shows

Then again, they were shitty youtubers.

>>2736804
King Yugi ;_;

https://web.archive.org/web/20021128053943/http://www.blackborder.com

i used to post on this shitty magic the gathering forums when i was a kid. it's dead and looks like shit now

>>2738498
the IRC chat I use has a constant 30 plus people in it who are always usually talkative. I have been on irc since about 98.

>>2740941
>>2740948
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3G5IXn0K7A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omLgv9lJ9jE

>>2734843
social networking happened.

Fansites moved to facebook, reddit or 4chan

>>2741925
The one time where it is ok to actually blame the normies.

>>2736804
I remember joining a forum dedicated to anime series I didn't even watch during my weeb period. Ended up being a part of it for several years until the community fell apart.

It was really fascinating to see a relatively small independent community grow and develop. Drama happening and becoming ingrained in the annals of forum history. Local lore, culture and unique, contained memes/in-jokes developing. Even admins and mods being as personal as the next guy.

All of this is gone with the advent of web 2.0. Social networks and megaforums including imageboards did away with the need for independent discussion platforms. There are no longer small, self-contained forum cultures, only the global internet culture of reddit and 4chan.

When we were talking shit about non-anonymous forums here 7-8 years ago we just didn't know what we were about to lose

>>2738168
I like how the guy is simultaneously old enough to manage his own business and young enough to have a NO PARENTS ALLOWED sign.

>>2739914
you don't have the credentials to just delete it now?

I lucked out in that I put my name on a ton of embarrassing shit (message boards, flash cartoons) yet by the time I grew up I was either able to get them deleted or they just happened to fall off the face of the net, all without the wayback machine capturing any of it.

>>2737059
Yeah I agree. I never went by my first name nor did anyone in any community I was part of with a few exceptions.
Hell, most people still call me by my old username now.

>>2739914
>>2741985
>Was a cringeworthy little shit on forums years ago.
>Stupid political posts, edgy crap, etc.
>Fortunately, got an admin to delete all my posts in 2010
>Feel great, but then get a little paranoid and read around a bit
>Some screenshots of my 'ebin' posts still exist, with my username (real name) still on them
>Can't get the image host to delete them
>The site will stay up for the foreseeable future
>The admin is ruthless in keeping backups and certainly has one from before deleting all my posts.
>If he ever sees me get notable (or someone is posting screenshots and I'm lying to deny it) he could put them back online somewhere and ruin me.
[Paranoia intensifies]

>>2741994
If you don't have a photo of yourself alongside them, you could say it was a different person entirely. I wouldn't fret.

>>2738119

It still amazes me how humor associated with 4chan has become fairly mainstream. Had you told decade-ago me that I would have called you crazy. And, to be fair, I'd argue that internet humor hasn't evolved all that much (granted, I was born in '88 so my experience with older e-jokes are a bit limited). MLG videos/YTP, image macros, viral images, and so on seem like mutations or continuations of things that have been around for awhile (animutations, demotivators, and, well, viral images).

I imagine that, until the end of humanity, people will continue to find randomness, vulgarity, nonsense, pointless repetition, funny faces, catchy phrases, fat people, and the mentally handicapped to be humorous

>>2742006
When people stop finding that shit funny it will be the end of humanity

>>2742021
not funny :(

>>2742021
>When people stop finding that shit funny it will be the end of humanity
Because we'd have evolved into higher beings.

There was an old NES forum with people like Clawwarriorx, Qix and I think someone named flowingmindspin. Anyone still around from those days?

>>2734843
wikis.

>>2741985
I put my name on exactly three things online in the '90s, all of which I'm somehow not ashamed today. One's still up in a sense as a marketing testimonial for a product no longer available for purchase, and the other two went unarchived before dying (as with you).

>>2742094
>higher beings
hopefully not joyless beings

(and speaking of hope, hopefully not hopeless beings either)

>>2742094
Not to go all /pol/ /soc/ but it's scary how many fucktards actually believe this shit. You will have devolved into a degenerate hive that caters to the lowest common denominator. Watch 2081 for a glimpse of your etopian future faggot.

>>2742274
>degenerate

You went all /pol/

>>2742191
It's a good thing that people finally found out the stupidity of Wikia and have gone to hosting their own wiki sites instead, fuck Wikia man

>>2742274
>etopian
Heh.

Not necessarily /vr/ related, but for those that are a little younger, did anyone else here randomly guess on URLs before knowing about search engines? When I was 6 years old (1996) I remember having an obsession over license plates and I'd guess random things until I found a valid link for license plates. I'd also write down URLs on paper, not knowing about bookmarks. My dad taught me those and Dogpile a bit later, and then I relied on webrings for gaming and anime stuff.

>>2740919
Blowing up brown people is the ideal use for TNT though

>Thou shalt honor the Artiste's hard work and generosity by displaying a logo which links back to Web Jewels *on the same page* thou usest her graphics on. If the art is good enough to go on thy page, then a logo/link back should be there too. Under no circumstances is credit on a "links" page a way of giving back to the creatives of the web: its an afterthought that limps pathetically around the back corners of your site, while our work brings the main pages to life.

>Thou shalt write to the Artiste and tell her where her images are, so that she may visit them and admire the wonderful worlds thou hast wrought with them, as well as consider thee for the *very* rare "Best Dressed Site on the Web" Award.

>Thou shalt not spindle, fold, distort, filter or resize any of the Jewels. Thy humble creatrix hath made them perfect and free - just for thee.Kindly respect her vision by leaving the images *intact*. These are not cyber "notions", and thou shouldst honor the artiste's inspiring muse by refraining from chopping them up, re-compositing them or creating your own art using any portion of the Jewels, unless thou hast Moyra's expressed permission, and such is rarely, if ever, granted . However, thou mayest and shouldst add thy own text to the title and subtitle graphics!

>Wherever thou seest the "IRON CLAD RULE", knoweth that those are NOT free linkware graphics but the exclusive and most copyrighted property of the Visual Mine Operator and her Fabulous Clients. Prithee, keepeth thy cotton picking right clicking mousey mitts off those images!

I used to cringe when I'd write online similar to this, but looking back, people were just so much more unabashed back then. I remember on forums there would always be a "Ye Tavern O' Musings" or "Sp4c3W4lk3r's Cyber Bar" thread in the off topic section, and everyone try their hardest to fit the theme as they rambled on about things in their lives. I won't say I miss it, but...

>>2742356
Man we had so much nerdy fun back in the day. It was nice being a geeky teenager before the western world decided to adopt the culture and piss on it.

I mean beyond the bullying and beatings.

>search for free game downloads
>find some shady looking website
>download "games" from the site
>game.exe, 12kb
>click on the .exe
>command line just flashes on the screen for a fraction of a second, too fast to read what it actually said
>oh well, I guess it didn't work
>download 10 more, same thing happens every time
>get tired, turn computer off
>next morning turn computer on again
>slow as fuck and full of viruses

If I ever get kids I'm going to teach them about web safety and not to click on stupid shit. My little sister still keeps clicking on everything. Few weeks ago I had to delete a virus named "free_spotify.exe".

>tfw you will never be hacker in the 90s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql1uLyuWra8

Goddamn I can't find the Masterminds (1997) scene where the main character hacks to some secret website, and the hacking process looks like a shitty Sega CD game.

Rinkworks.com was one of my favorite little nerdy websites and the administrator still maintains it, all of his little games are still available to play and he still runs a couple of monthly games with a handful of people still playing them. He made a long and thoughtful post about upcoming movies on his own message board despite the latest post being in May and only saying "Anybody nows about vampires something!"

I still visit it just because it's like a relic of old internet nerd culture. A couple of the adventure games probably still stand up okay as well.

>>2742838
HACK DA PLANUUTT
HACK DAAAA PLAAANNNAT

>>2742838
>pic
that movie
that friggin movie with those friggin freaks

barneyandotis.20m.com/

Check out the ballin website a friend and I made for our HL Modpack that never actually got beyond ideas.

>>2742835
You better hope there isn't some successor to limewire when you get kids.

>>2742869
I'm gonna have some fun with this.

http://www.rinkworks.com/dialect/dialectp.cgi?dialect=redneck&url=http%3A%2F%2Fboards.4chan.org%2Fvr%2Fthread%2F2734761

Still up after all these god damn years

>>2744038
Amazing

>>2735501
What's with the coding shit?

>>2744303
that's irc....

>>2734761
I fucking remember these dancing Pikachu gifs.

The shittiest and incest-ness of this page creeps me out so much.

Heather needs better friends.

>>2739949

Can someone edit the last scene to say "trade it for cocaine."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-xxE43SHw0

>>2744483
Some one needs to rip those 2D avatar graphics and put them in a Doom wad so we can have Deathmatch.

>>2740834
>heterosexual transvestite

Ah, the 90s..

yo for real though

the fucking avatar palace

aka The Palace

dat communities.com beautiful shithole

large portions of my youth spent wrapping myself in a blanket, playing tribes 2, listening to weezer's green album and secondhand rollins band discs and falling in love with goth/raver broads (to include my first online gf who i actually talked on the landline phone to lol) on the fucking avatar palace.

yo i can't believe this shit still actually exists

http://www.thepalace.com/

>>2737721
man what's the song called looping in the background?

Rotten.com was one of the earliest websites I remember visiting. It's satisfying to see it's still up and still looks the same as it did back then.

>>2736804
>first site I really posted on was gamespot and bloody disgusting
>I remember sitting up all weekend posting on them

So, so comfy

I prefer it here though

>>2744524
yfw sjw game devs have yet to reach that level of design

>>2744601
Well according to Wu women don't like fancy graphics and can't use complex controls.

Isn't she a bastion for women's rights.

>watch few episodes of the First Wave (1998)
>episodes about computer users refer internet users as webheads

"He's a total webhead" and "I know a webhead when I see one!". It's weird how technology related shows in the late 90s made the internet sound such a magical place.

>>2740834
>Amateur Radio

I'm still into this shit. I rock my Baofengs constantly.

>>2744617
Information Super Highway

>>2736965
>>2734992
I really wish I went where you guys did, one of my first experiences with midis was playing S3&K PC. Jesus.

>>2744617
it was magical anon
right up until xp was released

>90s movie
>hacker nerds use apple computers

>>2734992
Internet content just hasn't been the same since it moved on from lovingly crafted fansites to big centralized websites like Wikipedia or dedicated wikis.

There's barely any room for personal agency anymore and it makes me real sad.

>>2744843
Yeah it lost a lot of "soul" in favor of bland and boring information.

>>2744779
That movie had bigger problems than using macs.

>>2744864
Of course our human made virus will be compatible with alien tech, Anon. It just works!

>>2744867
>Of course our human made virus will be compatible with alien tech, Anon. It just works!

I would find it conceivable that a human made computer virus could work its way against alien computers.

I just don't find it possible that Jeff Goldblum can whip one up in a minute, with zero research done before hand on how the alien ships computers work.

>>2744550
It was actually originally created for the site.
http://www.cameronsworld.net/music/

>>2744779
>implying they weren't running A/UX or mklinux

>>2740086

>>2744879
If it were anyone but Jeff Goldblum you'd have a point.

>>2740086
>Hotline
Hotline was fucking great. Filesharing while forced to chat with random sysops, the BBS experience distilled

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot_Comedy
Has any more of this besides this short segment leaked yet?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94FdMmCIfSY

Hey /vr/, want to watch Good Will Hunting?

I miss this. Nothing else like it since.

>>2745250
I wanna watch Faggot_Crying.mov

>>2735501
I miss the "old internet" days. They were just so much more "magical".

>>2744038
That was still getting updated up until about three years ago.

>>2745250
>FreeMovies.exe

Tim and Eric show is everything I loved and hated about the old internet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5BZkaWZAAA

>>2745342
I heard the guy behind it moved on to another website which has a forum that looks just like the Lemmy's land forum. I forgot what it was called though, but it's sort of an end of an era, since I used to make polls on lemmy's land

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBvDVPinlWo

>>2744867
>>2744879

In a deleted scene he talks about understanding it or some shit.

I think it launched in 99, but I took Gamespy and Planethalflife/planetquake/planetcounterstrike/etc were awesome. Shame how I took it all for granted since I thought they would last forever.

Never did like their game/server client system though

>>2745256
I can't separate Comic Chat from Jerkcity. I'm pretty sure those guys were the only ones who used it, anyways

>>2736785
>zone.com

I-I'm probably not the other one who was thinking about the other Zone, right guys? Right?

>tfw Zone's been doing porn since 1998

>>2745724
I discovered 4chan because of zone

>>2744867
>>2744879

Nevermind the program compatibility, how was it possible for alien technology to use the same interface as human technology, in this case a floppy disk? I would accept an asspull like

>their ships are based on military prototypes that went missing a few decades back

And thus knew about their own technology.

yahooligans

>>2745743
I thought they just modded the captured fighter to interface with with laptop and uploaded the virus from there.

>>2735501

>Anime Web Turnpike

Fuck.

NEWGROUNDS WAS FUNNY WHEN WE WERE ALL 12 LIVING IN THE SUBURBS LISTENING TO LINKIN PARK WATCHING DRAGONBALL Z DRINKING PEPSI WHILE PLAYING HALO CO-OP ON THE EASIEST SETTING DURING WHICH WE CONSUMED DORITOS AND LOOKED AT PAINTBALL GUNS ON EBAY IN INTERNET EXPLORER CONNECTED THROUGH AOL ON A 56K MODEM BEFORE HOPPING INTO OUR BALDING FATHERS’ LATEST MIDLIFE-CRISIS-IMPULSE-SPONSORED JAPANESE-BUILT SUV TO HEAD TO THE MALL AND GET MORE SKATEBOARDING SHOES AND THIRD-RATE IRREGULAR LEVIS AND MOUNTAIN BIKE PARTS BEFORE HEADING HOME, VOTING DEMOCRAT AND MASTURBATING TO THE LATEST SEARS CATALOG WHILE HUFFING PAINT IN YOUR GARAGE BEFORE TALKING TO PEDOPHILES ON AIM PRETENDING TO BE WHATEVER CAMWHORE THEY’RE RANTING ABOUT ON MYSPACE WITH A MATRIX QUOTE/ANIME CHARACTER NAME/TRIPLE SIX-ASTERISK-PARENTHESES-SURROUNDED SCREENNAME BEFORE HEADING TO YOUR SUPPOSED “GOOD SCHOOL” IN THE MORNING TO BUY MORE POT TO SMOKE DURING YOUR COUNTER-STRIKE LAN PARTY WITH JIMMY AND THE REST OF HIS FRIENDS TAKING RITALIN AND ADDERALL AND PROZAC EIGHT TIMES A DAY BEFORE TAKING A CASUAL PASS AT LOCAL, STATE OR NATIONAL GOVERNMENTIAL FIGURES, LEGISLATURE, OR STRUCTURE TO APPEAR EDGY AND INTELLIGENT IN FRONT OF YOUR BUDWEISER-SNEAKING, LIMP-WRISTED, NEAR-TO-COLUMBINE SOCIOPATHIC “DEEP” FRIENDS WHO PLAY THE VICTIM WHEN THEY START LOSING ARGUEMENTS SIX DAYS BEFORE THEIR BOTCHED SUICIDE ATTEMPT SIMPLY BECAUSE SCHOOL TRAMP NUMBER TWELVE WOULDN’T GO UNDER THE BLEACHERS WITH THEM TO LET THEM GET TO SECOND BASE BEFORE THEIR THIRTEENTH BIRTHDAY

>>2745859
>he didn't have DSL immediately upon availability

>>2745250
>1000s_OF_PORN_MOVIES.exe
Jackpot.

>>2745372
I love T&EASGJ

>>2745736
thanks for the url, strategy guide

>>2745250
>weezer.mov

Who are these homeys dissin' mah girl?

>>2738490
The infosec team I'm in still uses irc. It's a fun place.

Anyone remember C:DOS Ababdonware?

>1995
>inbox (1)
>oh shit, I got email!!!
>2015
>inbox (216)
>oh shit... email...

>older brother teaches me how to download games and music from online
>within week I had infected the family computer with every single imaginable worm and virus

>he doesn't hang out with data cowboys
>he hasn't read Neuromancer
>he hasn't experienced new-wave, nextwave, or the dreamwave
>he doesn't know cyberpunk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLlj_GeKniA

It's a world where you're judged by what you say and think, not by what you look like.

>>2746358
>The 'cyberspace information superhighway' used to be something so magical and mysterious...beyond the comprehension of most mortals. Now we use the internet to watch cat videos and videochat with grandma.

Fuck, that comment is true

>tfw all the chatrooms are dead
>no more MSN Chat; no more YahooChat; no more AOL Chat

Sucks that Facebook has replaced chatrooms.

50,000 people used to live here. Now its a ghost town.

The internet I thought I knew is dead.

It's not technically dead yet, there's still a little brain activity in there, but it's impossible - without divine intervention - to save it.

I realized that today as I read official advice on 'branding' yourself online, so you could advertise what a great individual you are.

The place where you could use a username to hide your weirdest hobbies and obsessions, speak behind a mask safely and explore new ideas has become the place where individuals are no better than corporations. Everyone is out to lie, to improve the social standing of their real name instead of exploring the ideas they actually think.

I want to cry. I feel like a kid being told Santa isn't real.

>>2747091
Why do you think I hide out on places like 4chan these days? Everything else is about names and social standing online.

>>2747091
>>2747094

Please pardon the term, but that is what will happen to pretty much anything once normies arrive. Instead of learning the ins and outs of something and adapting themselves to fit in, they instead force it to become what they think it is/want it to be. There wind up being so many differently bland forces pulling on the thing that it eventually becomes a blander, generally worse version of itself.

>>2747110
When people starting making Myspace accounts I kind of figured a lot of it was over. I honestly had no interest in plastering myself online and adding my friends to my online activities. I was happy sitting in my NES IRC chat and fucking around with my online buddies.

>>2747110
It's not an ideal term, but you have to build on it somehow.

I think it's that there's a certain group of lazy people or something who contribute nothing - geocities cites from the most normal of normies can be fascinating insights into the lives of individuals. In that sense, those people are fine.

Maybe it's because they deferred to superior knowledge, or maybe it's something else. I know they killed usenet, so maybe it's just that only those who made the minimal effort to learn HTML posted, filtering out the laziest of lazy people.

>>2747114
>>2747120
>Maybe it's because they deferred to superior knowledge

That was the idea behind lurking moar. Someone is new somewhere, they don't know the rules, they don't know what is accepted and not accepted on the site(s), so they observe, learn, and decide if the community is one to which they wish to contribute. Others fly in thinking they know what the site is about and go to town. If enough of these new voices enter at once, each trying to yell the loudest to make it what they want it to be, they drown out the original userbase and what's left is something different, an averaging of the new voices.

Yeah this is totally off the subject of games and borderline word salad, but I guess the best summary I can think of is when you start mixing too many colors together you wind up with brown.

>>2747148
That's actually a really good analogy.

Sometimes I think this place is one of the last bastions of old Internet. Newfags or no newfags.

>>2747252
Man, I never hopped on the FB bandwagon back in the day and it was a pretty smart move beyond people thinking I am some kind of recluse. Last time I posted on a forum was something on Atari Age and that was over 10 years ago.

A living fossil of anti-Microsoft from the late 90s. Still updated infrequently.

http://toastytech.com/

>>2738572

Goddamn anon, good job in summarizing the situation.

>>2738490

It's also a good tool to download stuff, that helps.

>>2745929
IRC seems to the last place most "normal" people have not really invested any time in. I really wonder why that is. It is not super hard to use.

>>2747402

Commonly people don't want to install multiple stuff to please their needs on a PC.

>>2745670
Gamespy was literally spyware and I'm glad that shit shut down for good.

>>2747423
Wait. Do people really hate having programs on to install on their PCs these days?

>>2747435

The less the better for the general user, especially for communications.

>>2745859
>playing Gaylo
>drinking Gaysi
>listening to Linkin Gayrk
>liking Gayball
>using Gayternet Explorer
>going to gay parties with Jimmy
>wearing Gayboarding shoes

>>2747439
Well that goes a long way in explaining the amount of bloatware that comes with the average laptop.

>>2747110
Don't you have some people to slaughter frogposter?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfMrVKnGzwg

Remember to talk with your friends on chat lines! And transmit your email at no cost!

>>2746358
Who hired the aliens?

At least Anime Theme exists

And Salamando's Stove is still up despite not having been updated since 2003 or 04.

>>2748390
Forgot the salamando appropriate picture.

Zophar's Domain still exists.

How is this possible?

>>2746478

This. This SO FUCKING HARD.

well, now people are using snapchat and kik and shit so, take that shitbook.

>>2748402

where else will people get their emulators anon?

>>2747402
I mainly use IRC for downloading anime. There's a lot of older anime that you can't really find torrents of, and have to dig through IRC file servers.

IRC is probably the last remaining bastion of pure geekery on the internet. The main people who use IRC are pirates, programmers, and oldschool gamers (like Quake, etc.)

>>2748467

Fuck, i forgot penn was in hackers.

>>2748465

Is the /vr/ group still active ?
It was fun playing bomberman.

>>2748465
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2rGTXHvPCQ

I think this scared a lot of people off too.

>>2748489
That movie really was something else.

>>2748503
/r/ing the scene where they play the Wipeout arcade

>>2748467
>read his resume
>he's a "hacker"
>put in in le trash

>>2748503
>white boy having sex with girl
>suddenly bunch of black guys burst in the room and take her away

Something something cuck something

>>2748531
cheers bruv

>>2748531
ANGELINA JOLIE WTFF

>>2748541
it was pre-rendered fyi

>>2748457
>>2748467
>>2748489
>>2748493
>>2748498
>>2748501
>>2748503
>>2748528
>>2748531
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k07cflKCl-Y

I miss the marquee html tag

>>2737304
> 10.2 fps
kek those were the days

>>2746478

I liked The Zone chatrooms. Microsoft still has a Zone, but it's nothing like I remember.

I don't wanna give misinformation, but I'm pretty sure there's no longer a main chatroom like there used to be... currently visiting the current version. Ctrl+F "chat" pulls up nothing on the homepage. You would think the web would have become more fully featured over time, not less.

I started browsing the index of free games and the site tells me the list's unavailable. Bravo, Gates!

I also remember that AIM had a way to search users based on interests. If you had configured your interests, then you may occasionally receive messages from randoms, which was neat.

>>2748826
Chat rooms and the like seem to have died off in popularity. The main stream folks wanna talk to friends they know in real life. Not random people on the internet they have never met.

>>2747091
>The place where you could use a username to hide your weirdest hobbies and obsessions, speak behind a mask safely and explore new ideas has become the place where individuals are no better than corporations. Everyone is out to lie, to improve the social standing of their real name instead of exploring the ideas they actually think.

It's strange that anonymity is suppressed these days in favor of adding a profile on Facebook with one's **actual biographical details**. At least on MySpace / LiveJournal / Xanga / etc., I would reckon that a large proportion of the profiles did not offer actual names. There was usually a sweet spot where you'd have actual pictures and a few biographical details so your friends could figure out it was you, but not enough such that parties such as potential employers could locate you.

>>2748827

a/s/l?

>>2748831
Goddammit. Even that annoying line makes me nostalgic.

>>2748830
Now I'd imagine that if you don't have a "real you" trail on the internet, employers probably think you're trying to hide something. I closed my FB long ago. Waste of time. If someone is truly a friend, I see them in real life, call them, email or text them. I don't need to e-stalk them nor do I need dipshits tracking me down and scrutinizing my photos or favorite movies.

>>2748827
Omegle briefly had a great resurgence of the random chat culture but it's become just preteens spamming "kik". I remember an anon saying that meeting people online was kind of like being a kid on a playground for the first time, everybody was exploring this new thing and had a common ground just in that they were a part of it.

>>2749183
Omegle was a lot of fun before webcams played into it.

>>2749183
Webcam omegle is 99% cocks.
Chat omegle is 99% KIK, Guys who wont chat to anything without tits, or Kids.

>>2749463
Why do they want to use kik?

>>2736785
I LOVE YOU ANON

I've been looking for that Ants game for literally years, but never knew what the name was! I finally found it!!!
Memories man...

>>2742838
h4x t3h GIBSON

>>2749827
So they can send you pictures of their dick, in return for tits. Same as Chatrooms ever were just not over e-mail or CAM PLZ.

>>2750291
Once, long ago, I did get tits from a girl over a chat room. Thing is, I wasn't being one of those peeves. It was weird. Anyway, this was before most people had digital cameras, so she actually leaned over her goddamn scanner and sent me pics. It was awesome and also had this weird "artistic" feeling to them, if that makes sense.

>>2750358
Now thats dedication.

>>2736804
>that one vidya forum you went to back in the late 99s/early 00s is long gone

We've gone through a few iterations over the years, but the core group of people that I left the Gamesages forums with back around 1998 still have a community forum that we all go to. We're also on each other's facebooks and whatnot now, but most of the discussion still happens on the forum.

It's pretty awesome to me that these people I met when we were all pimple faced teenagers are now grown with families and shit, but we're fundamentally the same. Even the guy who pretended he was a girl for half a decade before coming out.

I also have had the same account on Gamefaqs since 2000, but I virtually never go there anymore.

>>2744843
>There's barely any room for personal agency anymore and it makes me real sad.

There's actually plenty of room for it. Websites are cheap these days, you can make anything at all you want. The problem is convincing people to come to it.

>>2746436

>>2736785

I tried so hard to download the Indy Car racing game demo there but sadly failed.

Also, man. It's later than what you guys lurked on but I recall spending hours upon hours on (x) Planet (namely KOF, Blood, Doom and whatnot), Cyberfanatix/KOF Online/Orochinagi and MMCafe. As well as old Gamefaqs.

And old lewd fan fiction archives. Made me being a huge fan for KOF better, but ultimately soured my like for Gundam Wing. Good fucking times.

>>2736804

I got scolded over not following signature sizes, but not animated ones.

Communities were rather tightly knit back then too. It's no wonder that drama would shit things up so bad it spills over in real life. Was nice to still be in touch with most of them but at this age it's not the same for the current generation I guess.

>>2737719

I wanna go fucking listen to some Group X now for some reason.

>yfw first time seeing hentai

>>2750901

>>2747110
ex. 4chan

>>2750901
Hold the fuckin phone. This is a thing? Tell me this is real, but don't lie to me.

>>2744779
They still hack with macs on SyFy channel.

>>2747091
>>2747110
You people are babies. The internet still exists, and 4chan is part of it. Just because social media exists and people use the internet for more than just arguing about anime and watching porn, doesn't mean those are the only things it can do.

You're like old men just sitting and bitching that the world has gone to hell because it's not exactly the same as it was when they were 20.

The world is constantly and ever changing. You can accept that, roll with the changes and find a way to enjoy life in the new paradigms. Or you can close yourself off, convinced that it's all going to hell in a hand basket and kids are terrible for ruining everything you loved.

It's your choice of course, but one will lead to a happy and fulfilled life and the other will make you a bitter asshole who hates everything.

Choose wisely.

And yes, I'm old enough to remember the old internet and the world before the internet at all. Shit changes yo.

>>2750901
I always read that in Kramer's voice

>>2750901

Now this make me feel old as fuck because the first time I saw hentai was from a physical comic book that my friend showed me (it belonged to his older brother). This was like in 1996 or so.

http://tombraiders.net/index.html#

>tfw playing Tomb Raider as a kid and visiting Stella's Site to get past some of the hard levels
>Been using the site since 1999
>Stella still maintains the site, used it to help with some collectibles in TRReboot

It's like visiting an old friend

>>2751017
shame this behavior is now written of as edgy nowadays

>>2751000
Not original anon who posted, but I'll tell you:

It's a flash game that was on Newgrounds. I actually knew the girl who did the female voices in it at the time. Crazy stories, but a bit too personal for 4chan, though.

>>2751008
Considering the medium very much has changed, and not for the better, I will retain my pessimism, because even now the amount of places I visit on the web is dwindling instead of staying the same or growing.

Your argument reminds me a lot of a friend who told me the same sort of argument of "finding a way to live with changes to the world you don't actively enjoy", but in the same breath makes it sound like he doesn't give a shit about why said changes happened or actively cares how much it screws him over.

>>2751071
>too personal for an anonymous basket weaving homepage

>>2751098
Maybe your friend was crushed by them in the same way you are, but isn't able to admit it. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I didn't like the old internet or have some nostalgia for it. But not everything about it was great and not everything about what exists now is bad. I still like the internet. A lot. I feel the same way about games. They've sure changed a lot and not entirely in ways I liked, but overall they're still pretty great.

If you want to stay a bitter pessimist angry that things didn't stay the same forever then it's your choice, I just think it's a sad one.

>>2751071
>Crazy stories, but a bit too personal for 4chan, though.

Yeah sure anon and I got a Nintendo 3 but my dad won't let anyone come over to play it.

>>2751127
Considering there's even less things I find I enjoy about anything on the web now, you can keep your assumptions of how bitter I am to yourself, because it has nothing to do with frame of mind when I find things that I don't enjoy end up sucking.

>>2751136
You said yourself you're going to "retain your pessimism" you're clear that there's less and less online that you enjoy and your tone about everything is extremely bitter. It's not like I pulled that out of thin air.

They took Tomb Raider, one of my favorite series of all time and turned it into a clone of Uncharted which I think is one of the worst games of all time. Did that suck? Sure. But I'm not going to mope about it and let it get me down. I'd rather focus on things that I do like.

Disappointment in life is inevitable, but bitterness and pessimism is a choice. Again, live your life any way you want but I think people like you are sad.

>>2751008
Yes goym just give google your first and last name, phone number, and address w- I'm sure nothing will ever go wrong. :^)

>>2751157
>Disappointment in life is inevitable, but bitterness and pessimism is a choice
This nigga gets it

Appreciate what you've still got, I'm just glad that this website still exists and is full of like minded people who play old video games and romanticize the shitty early internet

>>2751162
We just want to talor ads. Swear to G-d!
>pic related

>>2751008
People are as free to criticize change as they are to accept and adapt. And there's no dichotomy in doing all of those things. You're not exactly doling out rare wisdom so quit trying to sound like anyone's dad with your condescending advice.

>>2751008
I am fine with change. I just get annoyed when people shame me for not having a Facebook or not getting Snap Chat. I just don't care enough to look at updates of all aspects of my friends life. Come talk to me about it instead of posting boring pictures of your breakfast on internet sites.

>>2739914
>>2741994

You were just kids, no one will blame you for that. Just let it go. It's not like you've been put on a government watchlist.

>>2751127

>If you want to stay a bitter pessimist angry that things didn't stay the same forever then it's your choice, I just think it's a sad one.

I believe it's not about being bitter because "things didn't stay the same forever", but that things didn't turn out as goos as they could have, it's a disappointment.

>>2741994
>>2739914
Hey at least no one found your posts on an erotic fiction board you made when you were 14 talking about how you're a filthy cock slut.

>>2751375
Speaking from personal experience?

>>2751390
No I'm actually speaking about someone /tv/ dug up a ton of info on awhile back.

>>2751419
That sounds interesting.

>>2751420
He's the perfect example of why you should never EVER share the same username and emails of your porn related stuff with everything else.

>>2751427
Talking about me? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm?

I love the old internet "aesthetic". It's just so sterile and clear, but also looks hi-tech in that child like wonder kind of way, if that makes any sense. All the news websites back then were named like "Newspaper-online!" or "Newspaper - the website" or "NewspaperNET", just to highlight that they were indeed websites, in CYBERSPACE! Ooooh!

>>2739914
Google my name, I get murderers and politicians. I'm not sure what to make of my future.

>>2751442
I get an outlaw from the 1800s and some dude busted for child porn.

>>2751442
Bundy never wins, but a Bundy never quits!

>>2745736

Man Fuck the FF9 guide.

>>2751446
>some dude busted for child porn.

Was it you?

>>2751458

>>2751451
That thing is hilarious in hindsight.

>>2751461
>>2751461
I don't get how they thought it was a good idea. A lot of people still had dial up when it came out. It was a pain the ass.

>>2751463
The best part of it was the website was an entire walkthrough in its own right. It was basically a big book that amounts to a physical pop up ad.

>that kid who had a fansite for Predator where he listed all kinds and types of Predators from AVP universe, most of them were just made up
>lengthy descriptions and drawings about these different types of Predators, their culture, habits etc.

I was that kid

>>2751479
>mid 90s
>excited about computer class, imagine all the crazy shit we get to do
>finally get my hands on computer
>it's BeOS

REEEEEEEE!!

>>2751484
I do not miss Real Player.

>>2751484
>REEEEEEEE!!
That has a specific use and I don't think it applies here.

I would have been ecstatic.

>>2748831

28 m cali

Miniclip.com

Stick Figure Death Theatre.com

The only two websites I ever visited back in 2000 when I first used the internet at age 11

>>2751492
me neither but aesthetic

>>2751512
Stickdeath was the shit, I love how in hindsight it was blatantly racist and owned by a white trash republican but I was just too innocent to tell.

>stay up late with dumbass friend watching stickdeath cartoons
>burn through free trials of flash to make edgy cartoons that would get blammed immediately just to troll newgrounds
>obsess over shitty metal guitarists on the music portal as if they were legitimate musicians

God tier childhood tbh

>>2751531
>I love how in hindsight it was blatantly racist and owned by a white trash republican but I was just too innocent to tell.

It's pretty crazy how obvious it was once you really started thinking about it.

>>2751008
Not all change is positive change. Only by fighting negative change and pushing positive change can we have a desirable outcome.

Accepting negative changes is the worst thing one can do.

>>2751163
>Appreciate what you've still got, I'm just glad that this website still exists and is full of like minded people who play old video games and romanticize the shitty early internet

Don't worry, it too will go away soon enough. You'll run and you'll run but eventually you too will be swallowed by the sinkhole that replaced the glorious GeoCities of old.

>>2751790
Nothing is beautiful because it lasts.

>>2751479
>>2751484

Not gonna front, I'd love to have had that in my life back then.

>>2751538

I agree, but there are institutional forces that shape the world which are greater than individuals or collectives. the rise of social networking and conglomeration of the internet are tidal forces that were almost inevitable once computers/internet became more widely available and connections became faster.

don't get me wrong, we can make a difference. but we can't turn the internet back to the pre myspace era.

>>2751853

I guess the best we can hope for is to find a corner to hide ourselves in and work with what we can.

Neo-Geocities when? The webring of Web 1.0 must come to fruition!

>>2751484
>Lula
I see he likes the computer boobs

Anyone here still have a personal site they update?

>>2751484
BeOS is amazing

Let me guess you wanted the latest Windows

>>2736624
>Gorilla Biscuits
>Not punk

>>2752079

I have a fan site devoted to a niche musician, but last update I made was in 2011. It was cool though, got to interview him for my site and all 2 or 3 fans were really happy with the result.

>>2752087
http://www.oocities.org/sunsetstrip/towers/5540/ here's the full list

>>2736670
>telnet gopher.su 1234
Why doesn't it let me hit Enter key after typing in username? The other keys work, but it just times out eventually because the line doesn't get submitted.
I'm just using plain old telnet inside an Xterm, nothing fancy.

>>2752160
Works for me even through xterm (which I clearly don't use that often). Maybe try it through a separate TTY, that's where I normally get text-based work done anyway, this was the first time I started X today.

>>2752195
Same thing from text console. I even setup a new local user, so everything is default. No special keyboard mappings, no locale (so just "C" default), shell is /bin/ksh, and TERM=vt220. OS is OpenBSD 5.7 (amd64), which is probably about as POSIX-compliant as you can get.

>>2752231
Huh. My pic is slackware, but I just tried it on my NetBSD box and it worked there too. Works with ksh and zsh.

Can you telnet into other places?

I need more viruses
fill me with viruses!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WEe-TNw8Z0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D-Ygt-uSzM

>>2752250
Yeah, other telnet stuff works. I only noticed this with the gopher.su BBS.

/vr/ BBS when?

>>2752256
whatever happened to viruses? I don't remember hearing anything about them these days

>>2752706
Ahh sprite ripping.

RIP the dbz fan sites with tons of SNES sprites ripped to gifs

>>2752672
Automated stuff got better, security holes got closed. Really, cyber security issues are pretty much limited to people falling for REALLY stupid tricks or just being lazy nowadays.

>>2752672
It's no longer romanticized about, also with better security on systems all around it also makes it so stuff like "Fun" viruses that try to provoke some sort of creative death scene just don't happen anymore.

Remember the virus that forced you to play poker with it's program and if you lost it crashed your system?

>>2752717
I remember having an animated Zero sprite from Megaman X4 as my avatar on many forums... sadly the site was hosted on AOL hometowns, and it wasn't long until that site got closed down.

It just sucks that everything has to die

>>2752672
It's all about ransomware these days. Install this "flash player" and get a bunch of text saying your PC is blocked and you need to pay to get a code to get access to your files. The most interesting thing you can get is the fake FBI message which states that the cyber police caught you downloading CP. The old viruses that would do interesting things are pretty much dead. It's all about the money.

>>2751538
And who judges what is positive change and what is negative change? Especially considering how relative good and bad are, positive change for one might be bad for someone else.

Presumably you are fighting hard for the changes that in your perspective are the right ones. Because that's what we all do. I am not talking about simply accepting things and not doing anything about it. I am talking about accepting the understanding that despite your trying you probably won't achieve all of what you want because there are many other people out there just like you who disagree.

People around 4chan especially love to hate on Facebook and social media, like it's this disease that took over "their" internet. But I just see that as selfish and juvenile. It's popular for a reason and an increasingly important part of modern culture.

You don't have to love it, but raging against it also won't help you and if you keep up the attitude through your life you will end up a bitter angry old man who hates everything. The other option is to look for the good in things and work with what is happening. Don't be such a selfish prick and realize that the other people who have now come to the internet deserve to use it and change it as well.

>>2751484
It was 1997 or so we got new computers at my school's drafting department. They were so fast we could be playing Doom, see the teacher stand up and be able to reboot and be in AutoCad by the time he was on our side of the room.

That's pretty well all we did that whole year. Also the first time I saw computer porn.

>>2752825
Facebook and social media looks like a plague because, facebook especially, saw the end of personal websites and consolidated the want of many people, businesses included, to stop giving a shit about ever upkeeping a personal site that you had full control over instead of some slice in the zuckerburg mainframe that is always plastered with some really ugly and needless bullshit on either side of the page.

That and social media put together have fueled this fucking obsession over what other people are doing at any given time and people not giving a damn about parsing info properly. The fact I've seen news channels field "Twitter" or "Blog-o-sphere" crap is embarrassing, and then shit I see on TV where people get on because of dumb shit that would never have seen the light of day otherwise, like some musician who is only on to talk about being "Genderfluid" or some enormous piece of shit crying into another's bosom because of "Fat shaming". It just feels like when these people were allowed to connect and share ideas at such a fast pace nobody is willing to critically think anymore and just accepts bullshit as truth, and it leads to all this goddamn degeneracy. At least message boards you were only TECHNICALLY fielding info to the entire world, not that anyone would actively hunt it down and read it, whereas the current tumblr culture is hungry for any shit it can get.

>>2752280
I like the software but that BBS is pretty dead compared to the native bboard for SDF.

I used to post in the blink182-online forums back in the day. Met a few people there. Ricky, who introduced me to this super hot chick he used to date for like a day. Talked to her for a little. Didn't get any nudes but come to think of it, I wish I did! Met another chick from Ohio there that did send me some nudes. She was older than me too. Very awesome. We stayed in contact up until maybe 2-3 years ago. Last time we talked she was going to a blink concert and wanted to pick me up. I didn't go. Was dumb at the time. Fml. She was so fucking cool!

I had an awesome post typed up but then some asshole started punting me before I could turn my IMs off. Sigh.

>>2752842
It's all a giant brain coming online. The next phase of evolution, which is scary but also fascinating. The same way that you are a collection of some 70 trillion individuals all attempting to live in tandem and think as one, so is the global society of humans becoming. Everyone is connected and communicating in a way that has never happened before. This is only the tip of the iceberg of something we can barely understand.

>>2752842
>facebook especially, saw the end of personal website

But you're acting like Facebook was this huge boogeyman that came along and hoodwinked everyone into giving up the personal freedom to make their own website. The reality is that they just started using it because it worked better than everyone having their own personal little websites.

You might miss them, but they went out of fashion for a reason. And to be clear, no one is stopping you from making your own. It's super easy to get a .com all your own and build just about any personal site you want.

The problem you will run into of course is the realization that once you've made your own little cozy internet hole with whatever blog entries and rants about shitty movies, you will realize no one is coming. Because no one really cares about you or wants to read your ramblings.

>>2752869
>Because no one really cares about you or wants to read your ramblings.

you think that stops me?

>>2752869
No one cares about ramblings on social media either, they're just forced to digest it as part of their ritual. The more people you have added on Facebook the lesser the fuck they collectively give about you.

You got what? Parents, siblings, a significant other and a few mates, who the fuck needs to have a thousand people they hardly know read everything they write? How presumptuous do you have to be to think they really give a fuck?

>>2752940
Thank you. I don't get why more people don't give up on things like FB or Twitter when all most of it is trash. Why do people force themselves to just scroll through mindless updates and "like" horrible shit? And people think I am the odd one out for not even using the services.

>>2752940
>>2752950
I barely use Facebook and just have people added from whom I live far away from. Even when I do use it, it's just a few minutes of whipping past updates until something looks important or I get bored.

I use Twitter to keep myself entertained when I'm either on the can or stuck standing on the train to work.

Tumblr is actually the only social networking service I really use, as I found that ignoring sponsored suggestions and just exploring tags or entertaining responses to people I already follow feels the closest to exploring the web ring links of old. I've actually also picked up a couple a mutuals with whom I feel a sense of camaraderie in regards to our humor and interests. That feels great.

I also still visit one other message board, but mostly because I'm one of the old-ass members who remembers the olden days and still have some wisdom to impart on the younguns or pal around with some of the other "Old Ones" on the board.