pre-social media internet memories

[Xyvol]

For me it all started back in my high school days, when all we had were dial up modems. My brother and I paid for our own phone line to use for calling around to local BBSes. My brother ran his own board. I believe we always had the kind of modem that you plug the phone cord directly into. I still remember the comments of other users about how someone would knock the phone handset off the modem cradle, and you’d have to sit there listening to the noise because replacing it could cause you to disconnect. Something like that. We would occasionally have events called MUPTs, Modem User Pizza Thingy, where people could gather and talk face to face. Bulletin Boards operated mostly like forums do, posting comments and quoting others in a thread. Games were turn based, you’d have a certain number of turns per day to use. Some of the better games had amazing ANSI art! This was the mid 90’s.

The internet was something you only used if you subscribed to AOL or CompuServe. By the time college came around, internet access was being made more readily available. Somehow we got signed up with an ISP and used Netscape to browse internet pages. I believe the package came with access to Tripod for making your own web pages.

Geocities/Angelfire/Maxpages "Shrines" to various video game characters. Maybe a few random anime ones thrown in. Oh looks here's a listing of a bunch of animation cells or gifs from SNES roms.

Not only do I remember the “shrines” you speak of, I made a few of my own! They were just a basic description of the anime or game franchise, what I liked or thought about it, and some pics and sound files taken from other sites. I used to browse those sites for hours downloading anime pictures and sound clips.

Chat rooms were a popular thing back then, and I remember I was infatuated with a girl from Sweden in whatever chat room I’d ended up in. I’d get up at 6am to catch her using the library computer and we’d chat for a while. This was before the concept that she might not even be female was prevalent.

Eventually instant messaging became a big popular thing. I don’t remember all the ones available in the early days, but ICQ was the one I used. I met two girls through that program, one I am still good friends with, and another that I dated for about 4 years.

At some point I got my own domain name and moved my stupid little shrine pages off of Tripod (I think I had them on Geocities as well). This was around the time I found ZC, I had a download page for the only quest I made that I actually finished and a link to the ZC site. BTW, if anyone knows where I could find a copy of xyvol.qst that would be awesome. The only files I can find seem to be empty or corrupt. Eventually the site was neglected and the domain name lost when I got tired of paying for it.

Mobile phone technology is the real driving force behind social media. Cellys brought ease-of-access and eschewed the need to be savvy enough to use a computer.

Now people just type (badly) on their cellphones and post pictures of their dinner. I put up with it though because there are many people that I would not be in contact with if I hadn’t found them again through Myspace or Facebook.

[King Aquamentus]

I used to talk a lot of smack on Elfwood, since it was pretty much the only place I could leave a mark on the internet before I got an email account.

Once I got one of those, I immediately hit up two forums. One was ZHQ2 which became The Hylia, and the other...





...was right here!

[Liliith]

---

[King Aquamentus]

LadyJuliet?? I know her.

North Castle isn't terribly active these days, but it is still around and functional. That's actually where I met my girlfriend of six years now, Firehawk

ZHQ2 went fairly well and it was an excellent gateway forum for me... AGN... not so much. But, 2005.

No thanks to Breaker I ended up making my ZC home at PureZC instead. I largely ignored AGN after all this, including the slew of hacks it suffered. 2006 was kind of a great year for me and the many friends I made on IRC, including Rose, who was unfortunately lost in early 2007 to medical complications. But, I figured things couldn't get terribly worse, and for the rest of the year I'd say it was pretty much alright.

2008 started off innocently enough, but all hell broke loose during my spring break when an unprovoked cyberattack by Captain Cornflake caused me to lose most of my accounts. Thankfully I don't think he knew *anything* about AGN, and I was surprised to later discover that the account I tossed in a ditch was untouched. Actually so was the PureZC account, but I think his efforts there were reduced to a mere joke. My brief stint as a moderator at The Hylia ended after I had to disappear for awhile. I do still go there from time to time, but the place has slowed to a crawl. The only thing active there is a single message board game. 2008 had good parts too though. See: Firehawk.

2009 and 2010 were about the same deal. As these years rolled by, I hopped into AGN a little more, seeing what it had become. War Lord took over, and asked me to moderate a new feature he added to the site: retro videogame reviews. So, I did, and became active here again. AGN got hacked again, the feature was lost, the place became dead, and I largely forgot about it. again.

It was in more recent years (maybe two years ago) when CAD first started trying to resuscitate the place and fight off the adbots. I joined in the fight, and I've been here since :)

[firebug]

Hypertext, MUDs, 56K, Usenet, IRC, Napster, AGN lol.

[rock_nog]

I remember the first time I tried to connect to the Internet - I was around 12, my family had a 486 DX computer (man I miss playing Doom on that thing), and we had finally signed up for an AOL trial. The computer had a built-in modem, which we thought was fine, but the modem itself was like 1200 baud or something along those lines - when we tried to connect to the Internet, the damn thing literally melted. Actually, that's when I learned what ozone smells like. We eventually got a real modem, and I remember downloading game demos, making my own web page on Fortunecity (eventually migrated to geocities)... Oh God, my website... MIDI background music, frames (I opposed frames for a long time, but became convinced they were the web layout of the future, and that my web page would look outdated if it didn't have frames), promises of updates that never happened... Eh, it was fun while it lasted though. On the plus side of things, I used the Internet to learn how to program in BASIC, make Doom levels, and download Doom mods. I shied away from any form of online social interaction for a LONG time, though I eventually joined the forums here and at Doomworld. Oh gosh, and before I forget, of course there was the introduction of Flash... God, it's like 2002 was the perfect year to start college - broadband in dorms had become standard, and Flash cartoons were at their peak. Thus, there was tons of "Homestar Runner," "Mario Twins," "Badger Badger Badger," in my formative Internet years. Actually, now that I think about it, I remember being exposed to a Flash music video for the song "Everyone else has had more sex than me," and I still love that song and that video.

[Matteo]

Yahoo chat rooms, gamefaqs, napster, Netscape, Juno, aim. Man those were the days.

[mitsymckenzie777]

I wasn't hands on with it but I remember playing Final Fantasy 6 on SNES which I knew as 3 at the time. Well reason I'm posting this here is he would go online and find crazy rumors some true most untrue. Like fighting an impossible amount of Braceosaurs or what ever they were in that version that were in a forest and a Gold Dragon a appears you get a potion for resurrecting General Leo which was untrue. Plus one half true

Spoiler: show

Feed Cid the fast fish only and he won't die which was true but then bring Locke back and he joins which was untrue. But at least with the true point you don't have to feel as bad for Celes if your a fan of her. But to bad Cid can't join your party.

But yea with the new found internet it kept console games interesting but now a days it's too easy to find out if a game rumor is true or not.