Topic: What does this community mean to you?

@Dogorilla Well for one, moderation needs to be consistent. Locking my topics for being a duplicate or discussing modding and then letting others get away with it seemd like favoritism. Locking my topics andnredirecting me to another one or deleting a post of mine because I mentioning modding while others are free to do it just makes a person feel unwelcome and really makes a person not want to post if they are going to get a post locked and possibly banned from the site for going against the community rules. But then on the other hand Joe Blow is getting away with it all the time their posts arent deleted? I dont just doesnt seem right.

@Tasuki I get you, it's fair enough to be frustrated with that. Personally I don't think that's indicative of the site as a whole going downhill though.

@Dogorilla Thats just part of it. Just the overall quality has gone downhill. Alot of articles just seem like they are just posted just because. I get it the writers have to writer articles but it just seems that more are quickly rushed now or are passed of as news when it really isnt. I mean come one do we need to know what Masahiro Sakurai had for breakfast or some other meaningless article? As I said I get it the writers have to put out articles to keep the uppers happy and when there's no news related to gaming the gotta write something.

Also.you can see in the forum activity for proof that its gone downhill. Back in 2012 to 2015 you couldnt keep up with the forum activity, posts being posted every 5 minutes at any point of the day. Now I see hours go by in between forum posts. Just the other day I posted on a post and seven hours later that posts was still on the recent posts sidebar on the main page. Every morning 10, 15 years ago it would take me hours to catch up on the forum posts that went on while I was at work or asleep, now it takes me maybe 5 minutes.

And then like the articles the forum posts have gone down in quality people dont want to have conversations most of them are just people posting their options like facts and then arguing when you go against them. You try to bring up a conversation about retro games like an NES or Super Nes game and some one pops in well I just bought GTA IV on PS3 that's retro. Or hey I got Super Mario Land 3D on 3Ds thats retro and then the conversation just goes downhill into a PS3, 3DS, GameCube discussion when it started about retro games like NES and Super NES. Now I am not against discussing PS3, 3DS Gamecude etc but crying out loud create a PS3 discussion thread or find one instead of hijacking a current one. I mean if I see a thread about Classic cars I am not going to pop in and saw oh hey I just bought a 2016 Toyota Tacoma and then have some one else go oh hey I loved the 2012 Tacoma and another one go oh I have a 2009 one and before you know it the thread becomes a totally different thread. Again its that sort of stuff that makes people not want to post here or start a new thread.

Just all those things just add up and you can see how this site has gone down.

@Tasuki I honestly don't mind the odd short/silly article to break up the longer or more serious ones. I think the quality of the reviews and features on the site is still very high.

I would say the forum activity is more a reflection on the way people use the internet in general these days. I'm sure there are some more active forums out there but this one is probably more active than the average forum in 2026. We're lucky to still have a community like this in the age of social media.

As for the retro thing, it's quite a vague term. If you consider retro to just mean pre-3D games (for example) that makes total sense as one possible definition, but since video games are a medium that's divided into console generations and gaming discussion is generally dominated by current consoles, I think it's just as reasonable if people choose to define retro as 'any console that's not currently manufactured/supported'. I get what you're saying about people should start a PS3 thread if they want to talk PS3, but surely that goes both ways? If you want to talk about a specific era of games, you can always start a thread specifically about NES and SNES, or pre-2000 games, or however you want to delineate it. If a thread is about retro games as a whole then people are entitled to interpret that how they like.

The community back in the late 2000's(When NL Was VC-Reviews) up until 2013(2010-2013 were my favourite years on this site when the Wii + VC, DSLite & the first 2 years of 3DS were all the rage) ment a lot, but 99% of them are long gone. Tasuki and Skywake are the only two that I recongnize from long ago. Something about being in your early to mid/late-ish 20's(24-28 for me personally) and still having all of that wonderment, excitability and youth is unmatched compared to being in your early 40's, with most people that it is in general. There was a high level of excitement and enthusiasm shared between all 3 of those platforms i mentioned above, which were an exclusive trio of innovation that boasted features that are no longer currently available with either NS1 or NS2.

Tasuki aside, Ryno & WarioWoods were two of my other favourite users, but they haven't been on here in ages and I can gaurantee will not be coming back. They probably just moved on, and realized that the community was starting to flood with younger members that were overcrowing the older ones. Got married, had kids, moved on from the hobbie possibly or couldn't be bothered chatting it up with internet rando's anymore, and then there's YT which covers everything and everything. Call it a cesspool, but this forum is a total nichy ghost town in comparison, which also has far less forum activity than how it used to be 15 years ago. The Retro Forum in general is pretty much dead now.

And really, that's just it. The people here will eventually move on and leave, and the remaining that stay will be stuck with younger members which will create an even greater disconnect in terms of what's relatable, and the urge to engage in conversations factoring in the gap in most cases will be gonzo' rinse repeat. Unless you're specifically talking about what's in the now. Also, I'm getting the impression that more than half the people on here post comments from their smart phones, which leads to shorter comments and lack of engagement. I hate Smart phones. They feel so dated, uncomfortable and annoying to use, compared to like a 27"(Heck, a 16" laptop screen)PC Monitor, keyboard + Mouse. I use my Phone for calls and that's pretty much it.

Am I really so unmemorable? Why has senpai ignored me? : (

But don't worry, you'll never get rid of me. I hate social media as a rule, and the one social media site that even remotely worked like internet forums (Reddit) seemingly banned my IP for no reason so I'm stuck here forever, wheeeeee.

Don’t worry people forget I’ve been here a really long time too.

But I do know. I’ll always know.

My good sir, plenty of people (who are using smartphones!) still make quite long comments! They may not be mini novels, but I really don't think that even the fault of using a phone. I'm typing this from my laptop (16" screen, since that matters apparently), but I don't have anything else to say here, so I'll be closing out this particular comment in a single paragraph (not including the quotation).

@NeonPizza Well, I remember you, WaveBoy.

People come and go but I still see some people from 15 years ago.

I still know what you did last summer.

@Late
Were you always using the user name Late? Do you remember Waltz Elf? lol
The smart guy that would always swoop in to "proove them silly Nintendo fan boys wrong"

@NeonPizza LOL good old Waltz. If I remember he got banned from here back when you could get banned. I remember seeing him on another site I cant even remember what it was and was chatting with him there.

But you're right so many of us are gone for whatever reason heck I haven't even seen OGO for awhile now. Or even The Sphydar. At times I just miss hanging out and chatting. Now if I do I end upsetting someone or getting called a troll or some other kind of nonsense that I dont have time for. Meanwhile you have people actually trolling and arguing and nothing happens to them. But I digress. I should stop now before I go off the rails.

Plenty of people still get banned; someone came in and advertised and quickly got deleted/banned just a few days ago.

@FishyS I am not talking about spammers or bots. I am talking about users who constantly break the community rules. Trolling purposely to start an argument, arguing with people, discussing things that arent allowed that sort of thing. As said in a previous post Waltz would get the fanboys all worked up and then BAM no more Waltz. Nowadays I see far worst and those users are still around. Heck I got several warnings from mods not to discuss modding, and emulation even threatened with bans yet I know of one user that constantly does it and they are still around.

As I said before I know its due to numbers for the corporate top dogs. Can't be lowering the user count even if they should be banned.

Emulation and modding is an interesting one because the rules specifically say you can talk about it... as long as you don't go too far and within specific restrictions. There have been at least one thread and various conversations on the topic deleted in the last few months, but the moderators clearly have a line where they decide if it is too far or not.

From the rules:

'It is permitted to constructively discuss the use of flash carts, emulators and homebrew software only when in the context of previous generation(s) hardware. We ask that you do not link to any resources for illegal copyrighted content such as where to download ROMs, and we reserve the right to lock, edit or delete any threads or comments we feel stray too far into an illegal or a legal grey area, especially related to current-gen products.'

I'm not sure they banned the couple of people who were borderline enby-phobic about me over the years. But they got humiliated by people for doing so, so that was at least really funny. And regardless I still found them infinitely more tolerable than the culture warrior types that show up on occasion. :V

Imagine being so annoying I choose being the target of a bigot over you.

@NeonPizza Yes, I've always been Late. I've changed my avatar every now and then though. I used my old drawing of Pokémon HeartGold's box art for the longest time. I'm on the forums pretty much daily but don't post that often. Nowadays even less so as conversations quickly devolve into pointless arguments that go on for pages on end. There have been times when I've finished writing a message and then decided not to post it because I know someone will intentionally take it the wrong way. It's just not worth it.

I know everyone else you and Tasuki have mentioned here but I don't remember Waltz Elf. For whatever reason, when I think of people who haven't been around for a while, the first two I think of are LordJumpMad and SheldonRandoms. I rarely, if ever, had conversations with them but they made themselves seen.

@Late I know Waltz used a few different users names which I cant remember now. I do remember LordJumpMad and SheldonRamdoms too. LordJump was always good for a laugh.

@Tasuki
After Waltz repeatedly started to trash people on NL for their takes on video games, specifically for Nintendo. Ryno swept in and owned Waltz with the following >

"Hey smart guy, don't you have a board meeting to attend, instead of coming on here and proving them silly fanboys wrong?"

Waltz got banned because he started getting a bit personal, and trashed NL's quality of their articles(etc), he was calling users 'twits' and yadah yadah . If anything, he just came off bitter, angry, resentful and jealous because his career wasn't exactly taking off, including his website DigitallyDownloaded(Or whatever it's called). Never liked that guy and his snide self rightous low blow remarks and superiority complex. He sabotaged himself with his tirade of hate all because he was unhappy and wasn't content with where he was in life, at least that's how it came across to me. He sparked arguements and drama, but some would say it made coming here a little more entertaining and interesting haha.

@Tasuki
I always thought LordJump was 'Jump' who still occasionally pops in to troll.