Places Visited in My Early Days

Having used it for more than 10 years, I have recollections of how the internet was like in the olden days: from the dulcet tones dial-up modems to the cluttered look of dot-com era webpages. It’s no understatement to say that the web is better now than before in the browsing, in the design, in every imaginable way, but that does not mean that I didn’t like to surf the net back then, as there were many sites that I frequented even before Web 2.0 became the standard. There may be many recent sites in my bookmark and my RSS feeds now, but they don’t quite arouse feelings that match my nostalgia to the sites I frequented early in my life in the internet.

This post is where I take the journey to the past. Join me, and see what gems I found before the days of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and blogs, presented in the form that I found them (courtesy of archive.org’s brilliant “Way Back Machine”).

NBA

url: www.nba.com

Many of my interests came and went, but persisting few from since my childhood include videogames, anime, comics, and basketball. Back in the 90’s I would always tune to ESPN and watch the half-hour NBA Action show, seeing the week’s highlights and the brief tribute to any players. It’s where I first heard of NBA.com, which consequently became the first web page I ever visited.

Ccurrent status: active

IGN

url: www.ign.com

Although it’s still a famous news outlet for videogames (and other geek stuffs), I’ve always preferred IGN in its earlier state. The reviews were short and straight to the point and didn’t go longer than a page. It has too much babes and cars talk now, and the flash movies make the navigation very unwieldy.

Current status: active

GameCritics

url: www.gamecritics.com

I hate going into this new age talk about destiny, but nothing else could explain how I found this website. On one quiet night when I had nothing better to do, I typed in random stuff on the address bar of my browser. I tried videocritics.com, but that didn’t have anything that kept me diverted for long. When I typed in GameCritics.com, I read their reviews on Legend of Dragoon, and immediately I was hooked. Prior to coming here, I’ve never read any videogame reviews that goes beyond the technical details of the games. Modeled after Roger Ebert’s movie criticism, GameCritics discusses videogames in a more serious way than the average site, by going lengths to describe even the emotional response the game calls forth. The forums, which I was active in years ago, are full of intelligent members that often make the most thoughtful posts. They’re the only videogame site whose writers I befriended and correspond with since. Unlike the others in this list, GC has become even better through the years, now that it has blogs and podcasts.

Current status: active. Additionally, some of its writers started their blog, like Brad for drinkingcoffeecola.blogspot.com, and Mike Bracken for thehorrorgeek.com. Both of them are entertaining, and very informative if you’re into videogames, horror books, and horror movies.

Games Hermeneutics

url: www.lotusreaver.com

It’s strange, but I always found myself able to relate with Kevin Sung (the author). Maybe it’s because back then, there weren’t too many internet writers who were also Asian-Americans (I think he’s Chinese.) I always thought of Game Hermeneutics as an underappreciated site; it’s just not mentioned enough despite all the great articles about videogames, illustrations of videogames, and Asian movies.

Current status: gone, and the author now resides in kevinsung.org, with blog posts which are quite good if not as detailed as his works from lotusreaver.

Lord Carnage’s Cursed Fanboys!

url: http://sarcasm-hime.net/fanboys/

It’s almost bizarre that during site’s most active times, I was also at the height of my anime fandom, and as the new contents dwindled, so too did my love for anime. And while people can give me links to anime review sites that discusses thing more “analytically”, I’d take the bubbly fanboyish-fervor from sarcasm-hime any day.

Current status: inactive. Last update is on year 2006.

Animetric

url: http://www.animetric.com

I dug Animetric’s former author, Rowena Lim Lei, and I may be even more biased for her than most other anime critics simply because she’s a Filipina. Animetric’s reviews on anime (even the red-light district ones, if you catch my drift) are often well-written, as it rarely falls into pointless fanboy-gushing (which may sound hypocritical given the glowing endorsement I just gave in the another fanboyish site, but the thing is, Sarcasm-hime’s gushing was anything but pointless; brash and loud, maybe, but not pointless).

Current status: active, but Rowena Lim Lei no longer writes for it and handed it to Aaron Murphy, who also writes well, if not anywhere as memorable at it (then again, that may just be my nationality-bias speaking).

Anime Academy

url: http://www.animeacademy.com

Anime Academy exemplifies anime criticism at its most readable. Every review is presented with a short list of pros and cons, plus a longer (but always concise) comment about the anime’s plots, characters, and even music.

Current status: active, but languishing in obscurity. The new reviews take too long to get published and have, for years, been mostly about the latest Lupin III movies.

Archnacho and Tortilla Godzilla’s Quality Roms

url: http://home.no.net/qualrom/

This site had a decent selection of roms and emulators for NES, Genesis and SNES. Games were described in a rather original way – by having the two site owners bicker about hilariously random irrelevant nonsense.

current status: dead

GameFAQS

url: http://www.gamefaqs.com

Who needs official strategy guides when GameFAQS offers free walkthroughs for even the most obscure games?

current status: active

RPGamer

url: http://www.rpgamer.com

Like anime, RPG was one of my biggest obsessions when I was in high school. At that time, I would buy and play any videogame RPG that gets released, and I’d regularly visit RPGamer for news of the upcoming titles. The reason I don’t come back here often these days is that my passion for RPG’s have diminished over the years (and you can also blame RPG’s continual fall to blandness for that). I also think that RPGamer’s recent spate of reviews waste too much time using RPG-jargons, making them nigh unreadable.

current status: active