Old forums/sites you used to frequent.

[Sidewinder91]

There was this old browser game called Archspace, it was basically Master of Orion with the serial numbers filed off, combat wasn't interactive and there wasn't a whole lot of lore for it, but, dammit, it was fun while it lasted. I was too young to really be any good at it, but it was fun scheming in the council forums, and the general forums were pretty vibrant, just as long as you didn't set foot in Politics and Religion.

There was also GamingWorld. I never really posted much there, but in the early 2000's it was the place to be if you were interested in RPGmaker. It had a revival recently, and I've contributed a bit to some of the community games, but it's not really the same as its golden age. That might be for the best, honestly. Looking back, a lot of early internet culture was soaked in adolescence, and a man's got to grow up sooner or later.

Still, I've got a lot of fond memories spending my summer vacations playing stuff like Legion Saga and The Way.

 

[Some_porcupine]

Got any more detailed stories?

something like Wattpad, but crazier

to say, i miss Acapella.tv
it was text-to-speech funny "postcards"

 

[Deleted member 9999]

I used to love the "Cyber Manoir" when I was a kid.

Le Manoir de la Peur

Strangely enough, the site is still up but it's kind of broken since web browser and HTML code evolved a lot since then.
The midi music won't play but you should be able to download then.

It's an old French website with a "game book" style point & click adventure game.

You can play as Dr. Greene from the ER TV show or a Vampire from a French humorists band and explore an old manor full of mysteries. You get different events based on your character.

It looks scary but it's not. It's actually extremely goofy (and in French) with a scenario full of twists.

It might not be impressive to today's standards but I have fond memories of browsing this website and I even managed to finish the game.

Maybe give it a try.

 

[Soloninja]

I think it might be still around qura, girls ask guys. Lot of those questions and answers forums

 

[Crumpet8406]

Back when flash was a thing I used to frequent bunch of sites related to flash animations and games to kill time online.

Dagobah flash gallery (Still up) - Gallery of many old school flash animations, mostly sfw and of some quality.

z0r.de (Still up) - Anyone a bit older and online knows about this one, has its own forum too that is now dead. Rotator of iconic swf flash animations and loops, might contain some unsavory stuff.

Miniclip (Dead) - Now home to 8ball pool, agar.io and subway surfers(?), miniclip used to a hub for most flash games with many now indie studios releasing HQ flash games back in day on it.

Not much else coming to mind atm besides flash stuff thanks to Lis's comment, but I'm sure I'll think of more later.

This one is a dud, links to a parked domain. As MySpace Tom said, flash content can be viewed mostly successfully with ruffle and most sites that still use flash have it integrated. Extensions for all mainstream browsers are also available. With the extension it's almost like flash was never killed off, if you ignore the now very dead culture it once had.

Oh and if you wanna play old flash games locally and have it work 100% Flashpoint Archive is the best choice out there, with a modified flash projector and a massive library you can play pretty much everything from back in the day.

This reminds me of Star Wars Spoofs, old flash animations from before the prequels were done.

 

[rusalka]

I just logged into gaia online after almost a decade, and while it is a lot quieter than it was back in the day, certain forums are still weirdly active? The roleplay forum is still going strong, which is nice to see. I feel bad for the kids these days who RP over discord, that sounds like it would be a cesspool of grooming and other fucked up shit.

 

[wykyk]

also another one for gaiaonline forums

weirdly enough, fall out boy out of all bands had a pretty active forum. They weren't even a band I was obsessed with (although From Under the Cork Tree will always hold a special place in my heart) but I think I got sucked into the little ecosystem there. I organically dropped off and of course, all of these sites have been completely wiped over time.

the post secret community was also somewhere I frequented and I still even keep up with some people. Sadly, that too got shut down, although that was somewhat recent.

 

[MySpace Tom]

the post secret community was also somewhere I frequented and I still even keep up with some people. Sadly, that too got shut down, although that was somewhat recent.

There was a community around that? I thought it was just a blog dedicated to anonymous validation-seekers

 

[wykyk]

There was a community around that? I thought it was just a blog dedicated to anonymous validation-seekers

On the Sunday Secrets page, there was a link to the forum but I can see how it was easy to scroll by. I think it just went out of commission this past year due to cost or something.

 

[The Chibi One]

The old forum experience will never be replicated on social media, even >reddit which aped the style of some forums at the time but ruined it with their updoots.

I used to frequent a lot of music forums back in the day (c. 2009) but all of them imploded because they allowed political discussions which at the time, in the wake of the financial crisis, was asking for a flame war. Most users left acrimoniously, even people that had tens of thousands of posts, and the forums quickly shut down afterwards.

The mythology of forum personas is a thing of the past, and I for one fear the world we have become where all we have left are YTP tiktoks.

 

[☉Kud]

Back when flash was a thing I used to frequent bunch of sites related to flash animations and games to kill time online.

Dagobah flash gallery (Still up) - Gallery of many old school flash animations, mostly sfw and of some quality.

Yooo Dagobah was the shit. I was a huge Touhou fan in the early-mid 2010s and I would go there to watch the IOSYS music videos and play fan-made flash games there.

Around the same time, I frequented a Touhou forum site called the Eientei Forums. I remembered competing in scoring competitions for the games and possibly just being the youngest on the website overall. (I was in my tweens at the time.)

 

[rusalka]

The old forum experience will never be replicated on social media, even >reddit which aped the style of some forums at the time but ruined it with their updoots.

I used to frequent a lot of music forums back in the day (c. 2009) but all of them imploded because they allowed political discussions which at the time, in the wake of the financial crisis, was asking for a flame war. Most users left acrimoniously, even people that had tens of thousands of posts, and the forums quickly shut down afterwards.

The mythology of forum personas is a thing of the past, and I for one fear the world we have become where all we have left are YTP tiktoks.

I do agree that the politicization of internet spaces became a problem. When I use a forum, I'm there for the specific, niche interest of the forum, I don't want to hear another person's political screeds. If I wanted to, I could find that somewhere else (there are whole forums, or at least quarantine threads dedicated to this). I get on the internet to discuss my hobbies and interests and look at other people's interesting conversations and experiences with the same hobbies and interests. But nowadays it seems like being apolitical, or not wanting to debate politics with internet strangers, is some kind of sin. I just want to look at cool art...

 

[The Chibi One]

I do agree that the politicization of internet spaces became a problem. When I use a forum, I'm there for the specific, niche interest of the forum, I don't want to hear another person's political screeds. If I wanted to, I could find that somewhere else (there are whole forums, or at least quarantine threads dedicated to this). I get on the internet to discuss my hobbies and interests and look at other people's interesting conversations and experiences with the same hobbies and interests. But nowadays it seems like being apolitical, or not wanting to debate politics with internet strangers, is some kind of sin. I just want to look at cool art...

I noticed it first during that time, forums before the crisis were cooler, I would say it started becoming an issue in the years 2009-2012, and then 2016 destroyed all shades of grey and it was all politics all the time.

I would argue old-style forums like the one we are on right now are the only places to have civil discussion about our autistic niche hobbies or theories, precisely because they are not tied to our real-life personhoods. Join a FB group on whichever niche hobby or medium you prefer, and within a week you will see posts shitting on the mods' political biases or calling for the ban of xyz members because they followed JD Vance on Twatter.

I specifically saw this in a vaporwave-adjacent group that had morphed into a dungeon synth-styled group by 2020, but there are many such cases.

 

[SparkyWilson]

I use to be on spacebattles.com and animesuki.com forums back in the day, I rejoined spacebattles a few years ago but don't post much there. Also newgrounds.com was an awesome site too(Still around as well)
i'm glad to see that sites are vampirerave are still around

 

[CabinHearted]

Miniclip, Kongregate, the old 1001OnlineFlashGames site was also great.

I still vividly remember an anime roleplaying forum I used to frequent in high school, probably about 2012-2016 or so. It had a very generic game like "AnimeRoleplayOnline". It wasn't huge, and while I can't remember the exact name, it had a green and yellow theme with a cactus in a pot as a mascot, it might have been a proforum since I was also into those. It's a bit later timeline wise than what I think most people consider 'old internet' but the community was fun, and I made loads of friends on-site for those few years.

I'm honestly not sure whatever happened to the place, it was pretty small when I joined and almost partly dead already but I still miss it sometimes. As silly as it sounds it just felt so much more authentic than most places I go to online now, and I think that authenticity is what we feel is lacking in todays internet. Between the pressure to mutilate yourself on the alter of politics, or be your own publicity manager, the internet feels more like a second -or third- job than a place to go and relax. I just want to talk about my silly little hobbies dag nab it.

 

[goinghard]

While I could list off every forum I've ever used and spend the next week neurotically worried that someone is compiling a document about me, I'll instead just post a forum I think would be interesting to you guys.

https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=viewforum

It's an old ass forum that's been around since the 2000s at least and is somewhat still active, in the sense that people are still using it to learn to hack Super Mario World and uploading their hacks.

It offers pretty cool CSS based customization, although it's a lot more common these days for people to just use it to upload and download mods to be honest.

I will point out... If you're wanting to check this place out and get into SMW hacking (or playing the hacks), you have to completely turn off the deep Internet shit or you will just get banned. There's two types of people that use this site: autistic hackers that have been modding the same game for years, and admins who have made it their personal mission to be as sensitive as they can possibly be.

It's a cool place; just fair warning.

 

[Aevisia]

What I liked about the internet of the past, was that, every site/community felt like it's own village. Every message board had it's own veterans, villains, content, vibe, lore, etc... there were multiple sites for each interest too. If you were into Fire Emblem for example, and you went to Fire Emblem Universe and thought it was whack, you could just pop over to Fire Emblem Shrine. Set up shop there. Feels like we don't really have that anymore. Most communities are centered around >reddit, or tumblr, or twitter. Massive blobs of faceless people. Weirdly, even though people have gotten more comfortable sharing their face and personal details on the web, things still feel very anonymous. Perhaps it's the performative nature of social media that's doing that.

Anyway, I'm curious, what were the old sites that you used to frequent back before Facebook and >reddit and Twitter streamlined everything? Are they still up?

I was a big fan of www.feshrine.net and koei warriors. Fire Emblem Shrine is still around, but Koei Warriors kinda ended up chopped up. I don't think the original site is viewable anywhere besides the archive. Sad to see that.

Also dabbled in MyFavoriteGames, and Naruto2 back in the day.

Oh god there were so many! I used to love Kiddonet back in the day xD. Also, Horseland was an old virtual pet game I used to play and loved. I also used to frequent The Doll Palace often. Myspace was a lot of fun too for awhile. We could have music on our pages if I remember correctly and customize our profiles with backgrounds and whatnot. I still don't understand why everybody moved over to Facebook and thought it was somehow better. I remember thinking how much Facebook sucked in comparison. My thoughts on that haven't changed lol.

OH! Can't forget Home Star Runner. Haven't visited it in a long time but it still exists!

 

[Aevisia]

A TON of ProBoards message boards. Their support server is still up and running and my account there is just about 20 years old!

View attachment 101696

Oh my god YES! Proboards hahahaha I loved making forums with it for fun back in the day! I always loved how customizable it was and seeing the beautiful message boards people made for roleplaying.

 

[fiveXdollars]

My first real experience with forums is via >reddit which is probably the downfall of old school forums. I've interacted with some in the past when I googled questions but never truly participated in any. Besides Agora and >reddit the only other forum I constantly interact with is AVCANADA which I only use to stay informed about the Canadian aviation industry as well as gossip.

 

[MonkeyStream]

The old bethesda forums in the Morrowind days. They armed me with fish sticks and kicked me down the road that eventually lead here. Shoutwire, the >reddit before >reddit, haunted by skeletor's ghost. The Mata Nui Adventure Game. Part of my soul is stuck there, fixated on bamboo wind chimes.