Holy Crap! Digital Press is Poppin!

[Baloo]

I thought it was that someone gave just a sole copy of Mortal Kombat II for Genesis to someone? I seem to remember that as well as a gift.

Coming here makes me nostalgic, especially the site design. Love the black on red. (No, seriously.) All DP needs now is an 88x31 button that you can use to link people to here.

Maybe one day Web 1.0 will make a resurgence. I can't stand Social media.

[Jorpho]

I can remember it was September of 2010 when the big technical hiccups hit the board. My life was going through some big changes at the time and the loss of something so familiar might have affected me. It's undoubtedly impressive that it managed to pull through and endure – my contributions to the old Classicgaming.com forums have long been obliterated, and likewise the-underdogs.org, and I don't think the xkcd forums are coming back.

But I feel a little weary of Internet commentary in general these days. Maybe I'm getting old and don't have the patience that I used to, or maybe people out there are just a lot nastier now. Certainly, I haven't done any physical game trading in years.

I came by here today because I was looking for an old post I might have made somewhere about some old Windows 3.x Internet software I used to use whose name presently escapes me. (Was it SmarTerm? ETA: It was Softerm Plus! Thanks, eVolt.)

[Aussie2B]

But I feel a little weary of Internet commentary in general these days. Maybe I'm getting old and don't have the patience that I used to, or maybe people out there are just a lot nastier now.

I totally feel you on that one, both in the weariness and the wondering of how much is a matter of my own perspective versus objective reality. I definitely have a lower tolerance level for childish behavior (from myself included) than I did back in my 20s, but on the other hand, I do think online discourse has genuinely gotten nastier, more divisive, and more negative on the whole. When I think about, say, trolling, what I saw a 15-20 years ago was mostly playful ball-busting. These days, it's often straight up bullying and harassment, stuff with real-life consequences even. Thankfully, this forum is still mostly spared of the ills of modern social media, but even here I feel the atmosphere is less positive than it used to be.

[YoshiM]

We had some nasties years back but typically the denizens of DP blasted them out in some form or another (the "Gary Shandling" manuever seemed especially powerful, each troll post followed by a response of "Gary Shandling", which drove the troll nuts).

[Bighab]

I've been here since 2002. I rarely post although I'm more active on Gametz or Video Game sage forums. it's fun looking back at past for sale threads and seeing how cheap(compared to now) I was selling games for. I like that Gametz has a record of all my trades too. I've been fortunate to have picked up pretty much everything retro I'll ever want. I enjoy lurking and reading new threads.

[Jorpho]

How is GameTZ these days? My days of physical trading largely came to an end after I encountered a colossal jerk there a few years ago. I would name him, except he has my physical address and I would half-expect him to swat me or something.

[Melf]

I don't post anywhere near as often as I used to, but I do pop in every so often to read the most recently updated threads. I do miss the old days of forums. Social media is total garbage.

[Bighab]

How is GameTZ these days? My days of physical trading largely came to an end after I encountered a colossal jerk there a few years ago. I would name him, except he has my physical address and I would half-expect him to swat me or something.

It's slowed down quite a bit like most forums have. You've got me curious as to who the jerk was lol. I remember trading with you in person like 15 years ago

[Bighab]

I don't post anywhere near as often as I used to, but I do pop in every so often to read the most recently updated threads. I do miss the old days of forums. Social media is total garbage.

I too miss the old days of active forums. I'm not big on social media at all myself

[Gameguy]

Yeah, 12 Days of DP Christmas sounds right to me. I couldn't remember if the avatar contest was part of the 12 day's contest, but it probably was. I actually won the grand prize when I was a new member and it's one of the reasons I stuck around. I sorta felt obligated, haha.

I'm pretty sure my first post here was to reply to one day of the Christmas contest, and I won that day's contest. I would have registered sooner but I'm always nervous of registering accounts online. The avatar contest was part of the 12 day contest, it was always holiday themed.

Besides the annual Christmas contest there was also a monthly contest here where 1 second of video game music played and you had to identify which game it was and possibly which console too. It doesn't seem like anybody remembers this contest even though it ran for years back when the forum was really popular.

[InsaneDavid]

Been on here since i was 13! I got an email last night from the forum wishing me Happy Birthday and i decided to login for old times sake, i'm still alive don't worry!

OMG! Digital Press' favorite son!! He has returned once again... the end times ARE upon us!

(Seriously though, it's pretty awesome to see so many people returning to say hi in this thread)


I remember I won the 12 Days of DP X-Mas avatar contest with an animated GIF of Santa from the title screen of Santa Claus no Takarabako for the Famicom Disk System. I don't remember exactly what the physical prize for the day was but there was also a prize of like 350,000 Meseta - kept me in the top five until it was discontinued.

[calthaer]

I feel like there's a point where people notice there's just not a whole lot left to say. A decade is forever in Internet time and you just kind of run out of things to talk about on top of the overall drop in popularity of forums as a venue for online communication in general.

Kind of feels like this for me. Back in the 2000s, modern gaming was a lot more like classic gaming. The GBA was still a viable system, and even the Nintendo DS was pretty "classic". I have no interest in whatever Nintendo's new system is - I can't even remember the name, honestly. Switch, that's it, right? Most of my gaming right now is on PC, downloadable - Steam. I still have some old-school games to get to on my consoles, but it's few and far between.

There are just too many amazing games coming out these days to spend too much time on my retro systems, and I think my gaming tastes have changed. I'm more a fan of turn-based games, RPGs with good stories, and somewhat less interested in "twitch" gaming (platformers and whatnot). Part of that is the fact that the formula seems a little tired ("been there, done that"), and if I'm going to play any platformer, why would I play Cave Meatsplat Knight IV (costs only $5 on Steam) as opposed to running through Contra again...or trying to beat Contra IV for the DS, which I still haven't finished?

The other part of it is that the platformer formula has changed. I am not sure exactly how, but I have the impression that it's geared these days far more towards the "hardcore" twitch gamers. Ever since Cave Story, everyone seems to have these idiotic areas where there is a U-shaped tunnel of spikes and you have to use a series of mid-air dashes and controlled falls / jumps to get through it. Feels stressful; no thanks.

I'll stick with Civ VI, Skyrim, and some of the other games I've been playing over the last few months. But then - no one really talks too much about Civilization VI here, so...

I did re-play System Shock 2, and that reminded me of the time Ed Oscuro and...I can't remember who else? We went through it multiplayer together, sometime back in the mid-2000s. Now that was good times.

EDIT: I guess the other thing is that my personal avatar is gone. I miss it. I'm not sure it does or does not affect the frequency of my visits? But every time I do come back I do wish it were here. It lives on in Steam and Discord and other platforms, though.

[Aussie2B]

I feel like middle ground gaming has somewhat disappeared, especially in the indie scene, where it never really existed to begin with. Everything is either for the "git gud" crowd who want games to play like Kaizo Mario World or designed for younger gamers who complain about games being "Nintendo hard" even when they barely put up any challenge.

[YoshiM]

@calthaer: didn't you have that image of a bard from an old computer RPG (Bard's Tale I wanna say but I could be very wrong)? You could always add it back in.

There's always things to touch on in regards to retro, depending how expansive you want to get. Atari Age is still jumpin', so you can't say everything retro has been said. I'm wondering if people who used to frequent here drifted over there for their primary "retro" fix and don't want to do double post duty?

Personally I don't do The Facebook or dem dere Tweeter or the Insta-pot-gram or whatever. These ol' forums are specific with an audience that's into the medium that the forum is about. The stuff we post about, to a certain degree, stay here and can be found with a search. Can't say that with the modern social media stuff.

[jb143]

Personally I don't do The Facebook or dem dere Tweeter or the Insta-pot-gram or whatever. These ol' forums are specific with an audience that's into the medium that the forum is about. The stuff we post about, to a certain degree, stay here and can be found with a search. Can't say that with the modern social media stuff.

I poke around Twitter a bit and one thing I've noticed is that there's a whole generation of people just now getting into retrogaming that havn't heard all the stories, and frankly, could use the education.

The other part of it is that the platformer formula has changed. I am not sure exactly how, but I have the impression that it's geared these days far more towards the "hardcore" twitch gamers. Ever since Cave Story, everyone seems to have these idiotic areas where there is a U-shaped tunnel of spikes and you have to use a series of mid-air dashes and controlled falls / jumps to get through it. Feels stressful; no thanks.

I don't remember Cave Story being that bad, but I just finished Celeste and its basically an entire game of absolutely nothing but that. The one plus is that games these days tend to have infinite continues, otherwise I would have given up after the first few tries.

[calthaer]

@calthaer: didn't you have that image of a bard from an old computer RPG (Bard's Tale I wanna say but I could be very wrong)? You could always add it back in.

Yes...I did - that's exactly it. How do I do that? I've been trying to figure that out. Every time I go to select an avatar, it makes me pick from a gallery of pre-selected images. Maybe I'll give it a second look.

[Aussie2B]

If you go to Settings and then Edit Avatar you can select to use a custom avatar, either by entering a URL or uploading it.

[Robocop2]

Its been ages for me but life kinda got in the way and I like to pop in here now and again for nostalgia sake honestly

[calthaer]

If you go to Settings and then Edit Avatar you can select to use a custom avatar, either by entering a URL or uploading it.

I must just be missing it, then - maybe it's right in front of me somewhere and I can't see it. That exact place in settings only gives me an option to select from a set list of avatars ("Joe's Camera", "Cauterize", a couple of others) or to say "Do Not Use an Avatar". No place / option for a URL.

[Baloo]

Reading the posts even from 10 years ago, which was not DP's heyday has me nostalgic for an internet before social media. The forums really were popping then and there were a lot of fun times on here. I interviewed Joe for a college assignment years back. Even though we are all just faceless aliases, I must say I did make some friends on here that I got to meet in real life and have some good times with. Hope that many of you have the same fond memories as well.