Topic: When/Why did you start visiting Nintendo Life?

I still have the animal crossing calculator and clock on my 3DS.

Good times.

@skywake Old people UNITE!

Does anyone remember TotalGames.Net Forums? At least I think that is what it was called. :
It was attached to the UK magazine CUBE. Made a lot of good friends there, and even crossed over to a new forum/site that we made ourselves when that got shut down. Sadly not in touch with any of them now, but was known as Duran on there (encase anyone from those days is here!).

I started visiting Nintendo Life when it fused with VC-Reviews and Wiiware World back in, what, 2010? Give or take? And I visited there because it was the best place to get reviews for VC games at the time. Mostly stuck around because I liked the community.

I've been here for a few years. I love the site so I check here often.

Maybe too often, I tend to get first comment a lot and that bothers people.... When I left for a while though I had someone wondering where I went so I came back.

I first visited Nintendo Life because i bought a Switch and it popped up after a Google search of Best Nintendo Sites among a couple other sites. I stuck around because the layout of the site and the community are the best (IMO) of all the Nintendo sites i've visited. I now check out the site regularly a couple times a day to keep up on my Nintendo news. I proud to be a Nintendo Life member because like i said IMO the site is the best with the most helpful Staff & Members with little to no trolls.

I believe I started visiting the site halfway through 2011. I was a newly minted Zelda fan and was itching for some news on Skyward Sword. My occasional visits became more frequent after I got a 3DS in early 2012 since this was pretty much the only site I could find that did DSiWare reviews. NL is now my primary source for most Nintendo news barring Pokemon (Serebii still rules that roost). I finally decided to join midway through 2015 as I wanted to join in on the comment sections in the articles. Who knew that I'd eventually grow to prefer the forums? XD

I started visiting the site in '06 as an alternative to Game FAQS for reviews. The site is a lot more click-batey now, but I like the community. I've been a huge Nintendo nerd since the '80s, but I rarely get a chance to share my interest with others. Nintendo Life kind of fills that void.

@nintykid I got into it when I was searching for Switch information before we even knew the real name of the Switch. At that time the community on NintendoLife was much smaller and MUCH more friendly and it felt like a breath of fresh air among the toxic, nasty nearly intolerable atmosphere I find on traditional social media. I really enjoyed the site for a long time but in the weeks leading up to Pokemon Sword and Shield it felt like all the toxicity I had fled came flooding into NintendoLife and the people running the site just let it happen for the clicks.

Seems things have calmed down now - which is why I am back - but I still am treating the Pokemon thread like it's radioactive.

@Heavyarms55 yeah, those were definitely not the best days for the site. What did you feel went wrong though? Was it the actual opinions themselves or the way the whole thing was managed?

@nintykid It often seemed like the site was capitalizing on the arguments for clicks and views and wording articles in such a way as to encourage people to get into those fights. Aside from still dealing with extreme language or full blown violations of their community rules, NL did little to quell the endless arguing and complaint fiestas in every comment section. NL could very easily have put out an article asking for people to calm down and for people who don't like the games to simply focus on the games they do like instead, as well as asking those who do like the games to tolerate those who don't but from what I saw, very little effort was made to calm the community - which I take as NL just allowing the nastiness because it kept people coming back to the site to continue their arguments.

The lead up to the release of Sword and Shield was, without question, the most toxic I've seen the Pokemon community and NintendoLife especially - as Pokemon has always had toxic elements in the fanbase whereas what drew me into NintendoLife after finding while looking for Switch info, was how pleasant the community was. It was such a nice experience to be able to talk about Nintendo games and stuff in such a happy and positive light - then Sw/Sh came and a million haters and counter haters along with them.

The video game journalism network that I used before shut down, so I had to find a new one. This one seemed pretty good, it has a lot of information about 3rd party games and stuff. That was during the 3DS/Wii U era

@Heavyarms55 It's refreshing to learn that I wasn't the only one who embargoed much of the internet for awhile there due to the toxicity.

I'd say the forums here are still safe for the most part, but some of the comment sections on the main site these days...oy.

@Tyranexx It does appear that things have calmed down now. That's why I'm back. Although I'm not even willing to click on the Pokemon thread still.

@Heavyarms55 I'm not willing to go into it either, although that's equally to avoid he complaining as well as to miss out on spoilers. As usual, I'm a bit behind on my Pokemon games. :swest_smile: Heck, I just played through Ultra Sun this past summer.