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Post by Maciej Miszczyk on Feb 2, 2016 1:14:03 GMT -5
Gaming Intelligence Agency. it got revived but it was done in an incredibly half-assed way so the only worthwile thing about the new GIA is the old GIA archives
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Post by magic89 on Feb 2, 2016 6:50:47 GMT -5
Adamantowa wieza in english Adamantine Tower (The Elder Srolls PL Fan Page) Ah yes i rymenber taking my first steps playing TES III Morrowind in 2008, There was website called Adamantine Tower and got huge database almost every aspect of The Elder Srolls series.
Jest few years after TES V Skyrim Adamantine Tower stop to exist for unknown reason to me website are not dead, they just hibernation, too bad after Planet Elder Scrolls another site with mods bites to dust.
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Post by paperchema on Feb 2, 2016 7:51:47 GMT -5
I can't think of a totally defunct site, but I miss old Destructoid, from about 2007 to 2010. Back when the community was tighter, the articles and reviews better and the overall atmosphere way more fun. I begann reading Destructoid the days before Project Natal was renamed Kinect (can't remember which year). I loved that site during these days, especially because of Jim Sterling, who was slowly becoming the writer he is today and whose Jimquisition series was being launched. Awesome times IMO. For me, the end of Destructoid begins with the firing of that writer who dared to expose a fraudulent crowdfunding and Sterling's departure. The only thing I still like about the site are Chris Carter's reviews.
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Post by elektrolurch on Feb 2, 2016 8:12:02 GMT -5
Does Home of the Underdogs count? I mean ok technically is it kinda still there (there aigan) but not in its original functionality as an abandonware heaven (yet?). Before I discovered HG 101, all my discoveries of old obscure gems came from there!
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Post by Exhuminator on Feb 2, 2016 8:54:23 GMT -5
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Post by myloch on Feb 2, 2016 9:49:47 GMT -5
Does Home of the Underdogs count? Underground-gamer anyone? yeah it had quite an elitist private tracker but you could really find everything there, even when Hotu failed.
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Post by Bobinator on Feb 2, 2016 11:39:26 GMT -5
Anybody remember Sydlexia? I think they were less about gaming and more just general 80's/90's stuff in general, but I remember enjoying their stuff, at least. I'd say their highlight was a review of every finisher from MK 1-3, probably.
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Post by Ryzuki on Feb 2, 2016 15:35:32 GMT -5
The ATLUS site once had a forum with some pretty neat folks on it, I used to go there slightly more often than I did here, until they decided Facebook would require less effort and possibly gain more followers...(FOOLS!)
That mostly covers it, as most gaming sites I tried getting into were full of dicks, or simply boring.
Although when I was a kid, there was camphyrule, which I believe branched off of Club Nintendo. You could enter chat rooms, play games and win prizes, sotra like a massive online Animal Crossing...sadly it only lasted a couple years. I suppose you could add VMK to that list as well now that I think about it.
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Post by Discoalucard on Feb 2, 2016 16:14:21 GMT -5
Agreed, the Dungeon was a great source for all things Castlevania. Sadly, a lot of what made it great has since been superseded or made outdated, and well, HG101 is a thing now and has held the attention of the original webmaster now. =P Several years ago I started rewriting a lot of the reviews, along with other tweaks. That was the basis of the HG101 Castlevania book. One of these days I'll go back and update the site with those revisions and any of the new stuff (i.e. Lords of Shadow reviews and screenshots) but it's pretty low priority compared to all of the other projects I have lying around.
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Post by The Great Klaid on Feb 2, 2016 16:55:35 GMT -5
I always used Mr. P's castlevania site. But I mean what Castlevania site isn't dead? The series is done.
And my answer used to be the VGMuseum. But, that's back now... There was this old Sonic fan site, that used to like write all this back story for everything. Back when like Adventure 2 wasn't even a thing. And it was all rather cool. It wasn't all fan fictiony and self insert like Sonic stuff is now. It would be more like what you'd read in the game manuals if they were the size of an old PC manual. When I went over and saw the "We're down now" page, I-i grew up a little...
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Post by Resident Tsundere on Feb 2, 2016 17:51:02 GMT -5
Anybody remember Sydlexia? I think they were less about gaming and more just general 80's/90's stuff in general, but I remember enjoying their stuff, at least. I'd say their highlight was a review of every finisher from MK 1-3, probably. I forgot about Sydlexia!
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Post by Garamoth on Feb 2, 2016 18:24:34 GMT -5
From the blog: I feel for what the guy is saying. It's already one thing to work hard at something and not have as many hits as Let's Players that scream at the screen and clickbait articles, but complete silence hurts even more, it's worse than mean critics. The world of fan sites is a harsh, lonely place.
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Post by mrnash on Feb 2, 2016 21:53:28 GMT -5
From the blog: I feel for what the guy is saying. It's already one thing to work hard at something and not have as many hits as Let's Players that scream at the screen and clickbait articles, but complete silence hurts even more, it's worse than mean critics. The world of fan sites is a harsh, lonely place. It seems even harsher these days with so many outright eschewing from traditional fan sites and hopping on the now utterly saturated Youtube bandwagon. I'm glad I actually enjoy writing for the sake of writing otherwise I'd have given up on this stuff years ago. =S
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Post by steven on Feb 2, 2016 22:25:53 GMT -5
Anybody remember Sydlexia? I think they were less about gaming and more just general 80's/90's stuff in general, but I remember enjoying their stuff, at least. I'd say their highlight was a review of every finisher from MK 1-3, probably. I do!I enjoyed reading them from time to time, especially browsing their various Top 100 lists. I didn't know it went down. Shame. I also remember All Game fondly too... used to browse them a lot in the early-mid 2000s when I was doing my Saturn thing. A similar website is defunctgames.com but thankfully they're still up. Wouldn't it be ironic if they were defunct too? For me, on a very personal note, my favorite "defunct" video game website has to be RVGFanatic.com. Of course, that was my baby, and it ran for nearly 9 years before meeting an untimely demise September 2015 due to issues outside of my control. On the bright side, I recently launched RVGFanatic.com/wordpress and it's basically RVG reborn and revitalized. I miss Rob's OPCFG site. Also, FlyingOmelette stopped receiving updates a good while ago and the webmaster even left a note saying something to the effect of "let's face it, fansites are dead in this day and age. And so now is this site. Just too busy with life. etc." I always enjoyed reading her reviews.
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Post by jorpho on Feb 2, 2016 23:16:26 GMT -5
My first love, way back in 1999-2000, had to be TotalRPG.net. Niels 't Hooft (who had a big Zelda fansite at the time) had a big part in it, but otherwise I'm not sure where it went in the end. In its earliest incarnation it had some of the most impressive web design I'd seen at the time. I remember at one point they were looking for new writers and I wrote them the most idiotic fawning fan letter. web.archive.org/web/20000815213615/http://www.totalrpg.net/And my second love was probably the old Classicgaming.com. Back in the day you could count on an entertaining weekly mailbag and weekly game review, some of which I even got the chance to write! I spent a lot of time on the forums there. But they went through a couple of editors, and Gamespy itself fell on hard times, and eventually it just decayed. Gamespy itself was pretty great in its heydey, full of neato columns and halfway-decent, understated humor pieces supplied by reasonably talented writers. I guess its niche is mostly filled by The Escapist now as far as I'm concerned. On that note, it's kind of sad so much of Gamespot's old content is now nigh-irretrievably buried. "Knee Deep in a Dream" was such a comprehensive tale of the failure of Daikatana that Romero himself recommended reading it rather than bothering to write his own recollections. web.archive.org/web/20020803052931/http://gamespot.com/gamespot/filters/features/0,10851,6013054,00.html Four Fat Chicks never actually went anywhere; it just morphed into Tap Repeatedly, and the old review archive is still there. It first came to my attention since GameTZ used to link to their reviews regularly. It's quite possibly the closest thing I've ever seen in tone to HG101. I remember when GamesDomain.co.uk got bought out by Yahoo and all their old review content vanished forever. They used to have one of the biggest, most comprehensive directories of PC game reviews that I'd seen at the time. web.archive.org/web/19990429132154/http://gamesdomain.co.uk/gdreview/index.htmlUnderground-gamer anyone? yeah it had quite an elitist private tracker but you could really find everything there, even when Hotu failed. Wait, is it no longer around? It was hella impressive, that's for sure. I guess some things just aren't meant to last. Does Home of the Underdogs count? I mean ok technically is it kinda still there (there aigan) but not in its original functionality as an abandonware heaven (yet?). Before I discovered HG 101, all my discoveries of old obscure gems came from there! That was another one that was really something at the beginning, but I think I hung around too long watching it slowly decay. Even at its best it was plagued by slowness and then people leaching off the site's bandwidth and then poorly-functioning hacks meant to circumvent the leaching, all for incomplete, cracked rips that sometimes required a good deal of coaxing just to get running even on the hardware where they were originally intended to run. It was an adventure, but in the end, GOG has filled much of its role better than it ever could have.
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