• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.

Share an "early Internet" piece that's nostalgic for you

Kyrios

Kyrios

Member
Oct 27, 2017
14,583
Quinton said:
ffonline-com.jpg


I learned how to roleplay on the forums there.

...that ability has somehow transformed into countless opportunities to travel, several living situations, and numerous ex-girlfriends. Go figure.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Man, I remember this site taking like 10 minutes to load on dial up lol
 
The Artisan

The Artisan

"Angels are singing in monasteries..."
Moderator
Oct 27, 2017
8,080
When I was a kid, like 10 or 11 I went to xmen.com and it was porn...
 
batfax

batfax

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,387
wideface said:
Not that early but still.

Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


I miss MSN. Skype replacing it has been awful and somehow, years later, they still haven't incorporated the same functionality MSN had. Nowadays Discord seems to be the defacto standard, but that has a bunch of issues on its own.

Most of my early memories are of MUSHes and MUDs. Fortunately a lot of them are still up and have all their 90's-ass brand of humor and world building intact.
 
Noema

Noema

Member
Jan 17, 2018
4,904
Mexico CIty
Strangelove77 said:
Gaudy as fuck gifs everywhere. Shit took forever to load too.

fYB5aro.gif


tBzdL0K.gif
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Don't forget the 'Under Construction' gifs at the bottom of the page along with the visitor counter.

A8GB.gif


animated-counter-image-0003.gif


And who could forget Timecube.

The Old Wild West of the Internet. Decentrilized, (mostly) unmonetized, back when every kid or wacko with an idea and some free time could create a Geocities page with a couple photos of Alicia Silverstone and call it a fanpage.
 
Last edited:
Duane

Duane

Unshakable Resolve
The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
6,423
I used to wait SO long for this to load up (as a .swf) and show people. The classic:

 
Rad Bandolar

Rad Bandolar

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,036
SoCal
The ImagiNation Network by Sierra Online
p5AVWim.jpg


This was the first place I ever visited online back in 1994, mostly because it was installed on my girlfriend's 486SX PC. Prior to that, there were a couple of local BBS's that I visited on my old Apple IIe/c clone, but those were local (I wasn't going to pay long distance charges) and I knew most of the people there in real life. INN was the first place I visited that truly felt new and interesting, since I was able to play and communicate with people from all over the country (but most most seemed to be in California).

It was a breath of fresh air for me, since I was mostly surrounded by poor white trash and could never talk about stuff I was actually interested in, or hear perspectives from people from different walks of life. That goofy picture above turned out to be my doorway to a larger world, since it gave me a taste of possibilities available online. Within weeks, I had a CompuServe account, found out how to access newsgroups & IRC, and eventually connected to people & orgs that changed my life.
 
Last edited:
Dekuman

Dekuman

Member
Oct 27, 2017
19,026
I tried looking for some very early internet stuff like 95-97 stuff and it's mostly on wayback machines. It's amazing how little of it is left now.

But the under construction gifs always get me waxing nostalgic.

In my search, I found some guy who compiled a whole lot of them

http://textfiles.com/underconstruction/

Some samples

Nova8160constructor.gif


Dunes8119construction.gif

auaugusta4148construction1.gif
 
MegaRockEXE

MegaRockEXE

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 29, 2017
3,942
I recently found my backups of really old images I collected from long-defunct internet forums from when I first got online. It was a huge nostalgia trip.

You can check out all the junk here. It's mostly stuff from old Mega Man forums I used to lurk. Back then, an animated gif in your avatar or signature was all you needed to be cool.
 
Quinton

Quinton

Specialist at TheGamer / Reviewer at RPG Site
Member
Oct 25, 2017
17,244
Midgar, With Love
MrNewVegas said:
Tom Ripley?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Nowhere near as successful as the famed antihero, I'm afraid. I'm a small-time con who has struck solid roommate-related financial arrangements, enjoyed a few romances until I craved the grave, and — and this one's great — I've received free cheeseburgers once or twice.

...unless, like, you're asking me if my forum handle was Tom Ripley, in which case, no, it was something utterly lame and early-teen like Jeff Nomura or Hiroshi Nomura or god only knows what else...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.