The Pre-Youtube Era of the Internet.

[TMNT_Guy]

Remember Webrings? AOL Keywords? Sprite comics? MIDI files? Geocities? Angelfire? Trogdor? Remember having to get off the internet because your parents were expecting a phone call?

Very little gets me more nostalgic then the pre-Youtube era of the internet. The internet felt so big back then, scouring the internet for audio clips of my favorite shows/games to create custom desktop themes, getting super excited when my email got answered on a fan site mailbag, etc. What about you? Do you have any fond or funny memories of this time period? Remember any sites you used to visit or maybe some you created yourself?

[Slade]

I used to get on AOL chat rooms. FUN times. Saw a lot of girls...yeah you get the picture. We used to use Angelfire and Geocities to get pictures of Dragonball Z characters and draw them all day in school.


Funny thing. We used to constantly use the AOL free trials to keep our internet on:lol: Kinda poor growing up, we didn't even have a phone turned on. Till one day it rang. We found out somehow it was connected to someone down the streets internet. It took them three years to figure it out.

[Netkeeper]

For me, man, it was forums and AOL chat rooms and fanfiction. And busting Sonic game myths.

[CyberCubed]

I remember back in 1998 it took like 1 hour to load a 5 minute video. Good god, I'm glad those days are over.

I seriously remember sitting there trying to download a 20 minute episode of a show and it taking like 4 hours to download and then I had to watch it in realplayer. That was some real nonsense.

[Powder]

I'm ridiculously nostalgic for old-school internet, though I can't say it had many benefits. But it boomed around the time that Pokemon did, so most of my browsing was related to that. Rumors, getting a peek at international goodies, checking out fakemon & fan-art, that sort of thing. & of course I was on the old TMNT site every single day.

[pingclang]

I used to haunt a place called chathouse that had all these different pages for different types of chat, ie: sports, comics, tv shows, etc. etc. They had a whole section for roleplaying. Each room had a different theme and when you typed your actions you would refresh the page to see what people had posted in response. Loved hanging out in the Castle where it was all fantasy characters and played Wu Fei in the Gundam Wing room called L2 Colony and even roleplayed Raphael in the comic book room, When Worlds Collide. Good times. It was cool seeing everyone staying in character as they chatted and sometimes broke out into fights. A lot of fun but people just lost interest eventually so it had to shut down. I can remember when there were literally hundreds of people on at time and after a few years there like 3. Kinda sad.

[Prowler]

I've been using the internet on a daily basis since 2000. Had dial-up for a couple of months or so but it was awful, so my family switched to broadband and it felt like heaven :lol:. Also, I swear that the dial-up sound still traumatizes me to this day.

I was a kid back then so I mostly checked the old Ninja Turtles website and made crappy webpages on Geocities so I could have the illusion that I had my own website :P

Oh, and who does not remember searching for Pokémon cheats back in the late 90s/early 00s? And Super Smash Bros. Melee ones as well.? Especially all those people debunking the Sonic myth :lol:

Are Angelfire and Tripod still around even? Geocities only folded in 2009, I think. Surprised it lasted that long due to it being outdated years before then.

Ha, sprite comics. Tried making a few ones but they've turned out badly.

Also, Napster was great. Best music-sharing service ever.

I literally don't remember ever searching for videos before youtube. Man, wikipedia and youtube sure made navigation a lot easier.

Honestly, I don't miss the old internet at all. It's improved a lot over the years.

[TMNT_Guy]

Here’s an oldie, Danny’s Super Mario Site (https://web.archive.org/web/20030805105610/http://www.frazled.com/~danny/). Looking through it again it doesn’t really have much, it has a some cool scans of some old Super Mario Birthday cards that can’t be found anywhere else on the internet and it has this awesome animated .gif that use to to be used all over the internet.

https://web.archive.org/web/20020609110947im_/http://www.frazled.com/~danny/gif/dancing_mario.gif

It's where I first learned what emulators were, but the real draw to the site was that it had full episode downloads of all three Super Mario cartoons and various commercials, like the Kraft Super Mario Macaroni and Cheese one. Back in the day this was the only way to watch the old shows, my old computer didn’t have enough memory to actually download them so I had to wait for them to “buffer” with Windows Media Player. Danny and his site disappeared from the internet in 2003, but his videos continue to exist on Youtube uploaded by various people. It’s kind of bittersweet in a way; his work continues to be viewed by many, yet no one knows or remembers who was responsible for bringing these videos to the internet. Even with the new DVD releases his Super Mario cartoon uploads are still worth watching because the original airing of the Super Mario Bros Super Show contained vocal songs that were latter edited out for syndication and the DVD releases. I still sing “Rawhide” during the boulder chase scene in Butch Mario & the Luigi Kid because that’s what was played during the original airdate, and subsequently, in Danny’s upload of it.

Thanks for being a part of my childhood, Danny. You may have been forgotten, but your work continues to live on.

[Wingnut]

#TMNT-Files.

The only reason I found this forum. Everyone can blame Nicko for that.

[Mayhem]

Probably showing my age now, but I've been on the internet for over 20 years... the wonders of starting university, and being able to try out things you've heard of, such as email, web browsers and IRC heh.

So in terms of probably earlier memories than most in this thread...

- when GOPHER was still a viable way to search the web in addition to Yahoo.
- when getting 4k/s modem speed was pretty good...
- ...although the 1MB/s we got at university (in 1994!) put it to shame.
- getting Dave Spicer's Sparcade emulator (the first popular program, pre MAME) and playing 80s arcade machines again.
- and then trying to find places that hosted valid ROMs for it, and other emulators that sprung up (Sega16 etc).
- when it was Mosiac vs Netscape in the browser battles.
- when Geocities handed out free websites like confetti, and most of them had an animated GIF on them indicating "work in progress".
- when you had to link all your photos, not embed, to "enhance" everyone's browsing experience to load the pages fully.
- when IRC allowed me to reach out and chat with people of various other countries on a regular basis, and discover most of you are actually alright... there'll always be a percent of idiots though heh.
- using IRC to hook up with someone who lived a few miles from me!

[Shiro Kame]

I was too young to go on the internet during that era, but I do remember it being impossible to watch any TMNT videos on 4kids.

[XERO]

AOL is how I even became a member here in 2003. Back then, I was all into the chatrooms trying to find out when friggin' Super Mario 64 II would ever come out. -__-

Anyone remember stickdeath.com?

[pennydreadful]

I remember stickdeath! :D

Dude, I'm way too spoiled with my high-speed, high-download connection. I don't know how I survived before - I could never go back!

[XERO]

Such is the gift/curse of evolution. People back then said the same thing about VCRs and pinball machines. 50 years from now, Xbox One will be in flea markets (if those even still exist by then.)

I just try to be thankful with what I do have, and what I'll get eventually.

[Netkeeper]

Oh, and who does not remember searching for Pokémon cheats back in the late 90s/early 00s? And Super Smash Bros. Melee ones as well.? Especially all those people debunking the Sonic myth :lol:

Are Angelfire and Tripod still around even? Geocities only folded in 2009, I think. Surprised it lasted that long due to it being outdated years before then.

Ha, sprite comics. Tried making a few ones but they've turned out badly.
Found out about the Mew trick through old websites, yep. And I was one of those people debunking the Sonic/Tails in Smash myth -- I would try every single method people would throw at me.

I think both Angelfire and Tripod are still around, or at least the websites they hosted still are. I never used either of those so I can't say for sure -- I used Geocities, Freewebs, Bravenet, and Awardspace. ...I had a lot of websites and I loved experimenting with web design and managing content. I only recently stopped doing it, back in 2009 I shut the door on my last website for good. If I ever make another one, it'll just be a place to host my comic. No plans for that at the moment though because I prefer yearly hosting and I can't afford it right now.

And speaking of comics, I used to make sprite comics too. They all featured either canon video game characters [usually Megaman actually] OR the hilarious Sonic fan characters. Oh god I used to frequent a forum FILLED with people who made those; they'd make a thread, tell everyone the premise of their comic, then you could reply to it and post a sprite sheet of your fan character and they'd use that character in their comic.

[BubblyShell22]

I'm so glad I have broadband now. I remember going online and looking at the official WCW site all of the time and sites for some of my fave music groups. Problem was if you were online you couldn't get phone calls, so we always had to limit our use because of that. Mom used it to chat with my grandma and aunt before she got her laptop, and I chatted with my BF for a time using AIM and then YIM for a short time. Other than that, I mostly just used it for my e-mail. I remember my dad always complaining and saying, "Hey are you tying up the phone line again?" to which we'd respond, "Yeah. Are you expecting someone important to call?" He'd never answer which usually meant he didn't and would just do that to complain. That's why I'm so glad I have broadband and don't have to deal with any of that.

[TMNT_Guy]

Speaking of sprite comics, anyone else remember the first one? Neglected Mario Characters (http://www.smbhq.com/nc/index2.html)?

Who could forget such memorable characters such as Fred the Spanyard, Bill the Extra Guy, and Dr. Donez? Not only did series creator Jay Resop create the first sprite comic series, he also created the “Deathmatch” format of having video game characters fight it out to prove who is the strongest. The Deathmatch formula is still popular to this day, with ScrewAttack’s Death Battle series being the most modern example.

[MrPliggins]

I remember when AOL charged by the hour ($3.95 I think it was?). When they changed to a flat rate, it was always busy signals. I would set it to connect, hear busy signal after busy signal. Finally, the long awaited connection sound. Minutes later "goodbye!" Disconnected!

Back in those days I would get on the #tmnt channel on mIRC to chat. I also downloaded my first mp3s from mIRC. Then I moved to Napster. It was about a half hour to download 1 song.

[Davetello]

Despite being in my early thirties, I came to the internet relatively late. I first started using it at a library and at my cousin's home back in 2003 - that was also the year I created my first email account. For the following two years I used the internet at said library mainly, until another family member (who I saw more than my cousin) got the internet at home. From summer 2005 I started using it more regularly, and then in early 2006 I finally had the internet installed in my own home.

The net was definitely a lot more fiddly back then than it is now. Everything seems smooth and easier now, must more fluid. Back then it was awkward - even the 'simple' matter of logging on - so I can only imagine what it was like in the late 90s.

Edit: I'm pretty sure I used the net on the odd occasion at school in the 90s. But it was so rare that it doesn't really count as I can't remember any of it.