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Thread: 10th Anniversary of the Forums

  1. #1
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    Post 10th Anniversary of the Forums

    Hello Everyone! Recently, the forum passed its 10th anniversary mark, and I just wanted to make a post about it celebrating the milestone. 10 years! Even if it isn't active anymore, it's interesting to reflect on how it impacted everyone. We had a pretty big community that bonded over the games of our childhood. I wanted to use this space to reflect on how things have changed from my point of view for myself as a person as well as in how we communicate as a whole.

    I first heard about SuperSkarmory when I was messing around with Game Maker at the age of 14. I thought I was so cool, using sprite sheets and making a semi-functional few minutes of gameplay. I had previously been a member of the Nintendo Nsider Forums, the official forums Nintendo ran, until they closed, and it was there that I learned how to use MS Paint and make sprite comics. When I started messing with Game Maker, I decided to replicate one of my favorite games at the time: Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. I even decided to copy the script in my bad game as well, but unfortunately there was no text document of the script that I could find. Little ol' dedicated me eventually found a guy who did a walkthrough of the game, and decided to type up the dialogue from his video. I had never watched a video walkthrough before (to this day, I still don't usually like them - I don't even watch twitch streams), so this was a new experience for me. Seeing this guy play games I really enjoyed was cool, so I decided to follow him. As it turns out, at the time he was holding a giveaway for his Pokémon from his 3rd gen playthrough in exchange for Pokémon he could use competitively. I used connections I had from the old Nsider Forums, and quickly gathered his requested Pokémon. I don't remember what it was at this point - Yanmega maybe? Either way, after a back and forth through YouTube messages, I did the trade and obtained his Heracross, which is now on my copy of X.

    After the trade, we began to talk and hang out, talking about games and other things. We shared a lot of interests, but we also introduced each other to new series (like Castlevania for me). There were also a few old PC games we each had played, which was pretty wild. Throughout July and August, I became pretty good friends with Eyan, and started to get more active in the SS community. He had a Spruz website at that point, but there wasn't much interaction available there. I decided to make a forum for him, and in early October I went to work on a Forummotion site. If memory serves, I actually surprised him with the nearly completed site, then after some discussion we decided to make it the official site. Eyan moved operations from Spruz to the new site after I gave him the admin account, and I became an Admin as well. The third Admin, XCRunner2008, came as well, although I didn't know him too well at the time.

    The original Forummotion was pretty simple for those that wern't around to see it. We used the Midnight Blue theme, and I had basic categories for all of the games Eyan had done walkthroughs on, as well as a Video Games General section, General Discussion, and a few other sections. Forum games were popular on the Nsider forums, so I brought them back under the pointless forum games section. I also stole the idea of ranks from the Nsider forums - ranking up was a huge deal for me on that site, and I wanted to incorporate it into the SS Forums. I basically borrowed the structure as well - Goomba was the first rank on both sites, and it was fairly close throughout as well. Eyan did some tweaking, but it remained relatively the same for the Forummotion tenure. I also decided early on not to incorporate a chatbox, because it would discourage posting in threads, and with such a wide variety of timezones, I didn't want anyone to feel left out (I also wanted to see the activity in a clear and simple way so I could feel a sense of pride, honestly), although we did end up adding it before long. All in all, it wasn't terribly much, but it was good enough for the fellow fans, and people joined one after another.

    Our staff saw changes throughout the first year, but I'm friends with many of the original staff members to this day. XCRUnner2008 fell out of favor due to saying something bad about Eyan (I don't remember what it was anymore - if someone remembers, let me know). I never really saw him again, although I do feel like I got an email from him, but he stopped replying to that as well. I feel bad for him, although at the time I didn't really care because I had become the sole vice commander. For the record, the XCRunner appearances on the chatbox were mostly me or other imposters - yes, I was fairly mischievous, I'll get more into that later. Sophie was the next one, beginning the trend of Eyan's SOs becoming admin. Sophie was cool, and I still talk with her! Kyoushiroblitz came as well, and she was nice, tho0ugh it took more time to get closer to her for me. I was pretty closed in the staff circle, so I didn't really make /too/ many close friends outside of them for a while, although Zach's appearance brought me into a wider circle. We did a lot of group stuff, and I got closer to a few others, starting with tainers14, and eventually Will and Marissa after the Pokestation merger.

    There were many stories from the 08-09 period especially that stick out to me, and looking back on it I feel kinda bad because most of them were the direct result of me being whimsical and/or corrupt. A few examples:

    -The Forum Courts, while not my idea alone, were something I really enjoyed at the time. Looking back, it's a huge section of dark history for me since I was such a lackey/fanboy about it, but it's also fun to laugh about now. Basically, Anyone who broke the rules seriously enough (or at least seriously enough for us to consider wanting to publicly ridicule) was brought before the court. A number of mods as were present, with Eyan as the judge. I usually acted as the prosecutor, although sometimes Eyan did that as well. The end result was usually publicly announcing the "wrongdoings" of the user, then banning them immediately.[/LIST]
    -The first Junior Mod elections. I'll come clean 9 years later - I did in fact rig the elections. I liked Zachgoose at the time because he reached out to me and my basic high school crush drama, so I wanted to pick him as mod. Shiningbolt was more serious about it on the outside, but my mind was made up. It was fairly close for a while, or so it seemed - in reality, it was tied AFTER I rigged the vote. I used various alt accounts, between seasonal characters (Bowser, Mario/Ozzy, etc) and even inactive accounts (I changed their passwords and logged in only to vote). Even after all of that, which probably amounted to ~10 votes, it was an even tie at the time. So this is my public apology for that - Zach is still a very close friend to me, but that was definitely not cool of me to do at the time.
    -The admins had a secret forum where we would post routine things for mods to see, or just various jokes. The most infamous thread, however, was a list of people we didn't like. Most of them were comical - either celebrities, politicians, or other YouTubers, but a few of them were ACTUALLY other users. No, I won't reveal names because I frankly don't remember. However, we made a SNAFU and it was visible for only a minute or so. Unfortunately, Xplicitable stumbled into the thread and saw it. We could see who had viewed a thread, so we panicked and just flat out banned him for it. I felt awful about it, but I figured I could just forget about it. The irony, of course, was after the merge with Pokéstation, Xpl was a mod on that site, so he remained a mod on the SS Forums after the merge. It's a small world, after all! I have since apologized many times, but I'll apologize again - that was a pretty awful move on my part Scott, and I'm sorry!
    -Melchior. In one of my whimsical moments, I looked at the newest user, and decided to change his username and Avatar to Melchior from Chrono Trigger. Eyan and I were both huge fans obviously, so I got a kick out of it. Eyan was shocked, but eventually went along with it. To our surprise, he didn't change his username back. Instead, he kept it! AQnd became the most active user on the forum! What a twist! Melchior confused me, and to this day I still wonder. Was he just a huge fan? Did he feel because we changed his info that he was a chosen user? Was he doing it out of spite? I never really found out. I was glad for his participation though, even if his responses were on the short side. We even had to add new ranks due to Melchior revealing them all. How crazy is that?!
    -Actually not directly my fault was the feud with the SOS forums. SpiritOfSteel seemed like a huge ripoff to us diehard SS fans, and they seemed generally older than most of our fanbase as well. Calling themselves the SOS Brigade (which I didn't actually understand for a few more years until 2012), they would make accounts on the SS Forums and spread hate, basically picking fights. They had their own site, and some of us went on there as well. My memory is hazy on how we finally dealt with it, but I know I spearheaded the flame against SOS. Crazy stuff.
    -I can't remember if I'm thinking of the SOS Brigade here or another mini forum, but I also remember going underground into another forum, somehow gaining their trust into becoming admin, and messing with the site. That happened! I do think it was the SOS Brigade's site, and I think that's how I dealt with that, but I'm not certain enough, so I'll leave it here.
    -This was near the end of the Forummotion cycle, but the "hacking" incident by a former artist (I forget his username, it's been that long). Eyan had been known to use artists and not properly repay them for their time, and his first one became pretty disgruntled. Eyan cut him lose and we tried to avoid him, but it became a huge mess. Zach felt bad for him and secretly gave him admin powers (Zach's whimsical nature even exceeded mine at times), but then the artist messed with the site and broke it. Luckily we rolled back to an earlier version, but the damage was done, and it was the last major event of the original Forummotion. We made a temporary new site to redirect users, and then moved on.

    After that, I fell off the map for a bit. While I initially supported the merge, I quickly realized it wasn't what I wanted. I was no longer in control, and I was just a mod rather than an admin. There were a bunch of new users I didn't know, and my forums were gone. Was it very selfish? Sure, but I was also a teenager, so angst was to be expected. I drifted out of the community, and I was nearly demodded a couple of times - only Eyan vouching for me kept me on staff. Years after the original Forummotion closed, however, we moved to a new site - this site! While it was originally Superskarmory dot net, I was able to retain my admin powers. I was excited, and tried to bring the forums back. We had moderate success, but they never reached quite the same level of activity we had in the past. There are a few obvious reasons for this. Firstly, Eyan's upload schedule was getting really spotty at this point, and with the namesake's brand faltering, of course we wern't going to be drawing new members in. Equally as important, however, was Skype's rise, and eventually Discord's appearance on the scene. Because we had moved so many times, people were networking through Skype more than ever, and you can make group chats there as well. Forums were basically obsolete, and with Twitter and Tumblr, people had much bigger platforms to share similar ideas and feelings. Over time activity decreased, and we eventually became Pokécheats, finally separating from the SS name. Eventually after that, we realized that the inevitable was happening, and made peace with the slow decay of these forums.

    Overall, the forums are a place of good memories for me. I'm glad I was able to make the forum for everyone to have fun on as well. I grew as a person in a lot of ways - I'm more open minded, my interests have expanded (I hated anime in 2008, and look at me now), and I've made many new friends. Thank you all for joining the forums!
    Last edited by Majorasfan; 10-25-2018 at 04:36 PM.

  2. #2
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    The real question is, do you still have the gmk for the Mystery Dungeon fan game?

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    hey question for people reading does ANYBODY know who melchior was
    RIP sig. I'll add something when I'm not up at 6:30 am.

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    Ten years... I still can't believe it.

  5. #5
    Tournament VictorTournament ProctorMarsh UserSoul UserRainbow UserThunder UserCascade UserBoulder UserSS Veteran
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    10 years for the OGs. 6 years for me. I find even that insane. This is where me interacting with people online started and a bunch of my first online friends came from this site. What's crazy is I still have some way of contacting most of them today. What a wild ride.

  6. #6
    All of my favorite characters die AdministratorModeratorCascade UserBoulder UserSS Veteran
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dragonite View Post
    The real question is, do you still have the gmk for the Mystery Dungeon fan game?
    If only - that was three computers ago unfortunately. It would be embarrassing to see though, so it's probably best that I don't!
    Quote Originally Posted by Dabottle View Post
    hey question for people reading does ANYBODY know who melchior was
    Yeah I completely forget what the original username was, so I don't have a clue. I'm curious what the original was.

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    If this helps: https://twitter.com/ssforumotiontxt/...08474482270209

    It was from one of the courts.
    RIP sig. I'll add something when I'm not up at 6:30 am.

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  8. #8
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    Man I remember joining back in 2012. How times have changed. Since them I have gotten myself an amazing Boyfriend, joined Hypixel the biggest Minecraft network in the world (it have 4 world records. no joke), interact with many of the communities I am apart of.

    Sometimes I remember where I came from. These forums really kick started my internet life and where I am today as it has taught me many things.

    6 and a half years I have known you guys. That's a pretty long time. I am lucky we have the discord where all of us talk so it's not like I don't talk to you guys.

    I just miss these forums sometimes. There are some parts I don't miss then there is other parts I miss. I hope you're all doing well in your lives.

    And Majorasfan. I am not sure if you dislike me or not. Heck if you do it's fine, I have moved on from the forums. But to let you know when I was younger I looked up to you. I saw you as this really cool person that I wanted to know better.

    That's all really. I am on Twitter with the same old @BreeZaps at, if any of you wanna drop me a message.

    you guys.
    Had 1527 rep before rep system died.

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