Your first forum

We're all here on this forum now, and I know quite a few of us were around on the old NGamer and ONM forums. But what was everybody's first forum?

I'm fairly sure my first dabbling with the format was over on serebii, as Pokemon was my first big foray into gaming, my first all-encompassing obsession and the first thing I remember searching online for. I have very distinct memories of my early days on the internet, looking up obscure blogs to learn about glitches like Missingno and Glitch City, along with utterly false rumours like Pikablu and the Pokegods.

I even literally remember going onto Serebii itself and discussing, as well as Pokemon, cryptids like bigfoot, the loch ness monster, mokele-mbembe and living Megatheriums. I went and logged back into the forum, but the earliest post it has recorded by me was from May 21st, 2007. I was 16 years old and announcing my return to the forum.

I can only guess that I changed my name (I think I went by "Toad" before Buskalilly), or the site had a refresh, and my earlier posts are lost
In the post itself, you can see that by that point I was already discussing TFArchive, a Transformers forum and the only online community besides GNamer that I've made any real investment into and real-life friends from.

Anyway, where did the rest of you cut your online teeth? Were any of you secretly posting offensive jokes on 4chan before you came here? Did you all only jump into the forum world because of magazines? Hit me up and I may even be tempted to share the pokemon forum I started myself

I don't actually recall, I think it may have been a forum for a book series, but my first "proper" forum was ONM.

I cut my online teeth on the ScrewAttack forums in early 2008. I created a bit of controversy by not having the same Americanised viewpoints as everybody else, as I was quite happy to say out loud that Mega Man, Contra and Dr. Mario were actually very, very pish. I also went in a bit of a huff when the moderators changed the layout of the forum, completely did away with the sports bit and deleted a lot of my retro threads so they could fit in thier DevientArt. I went radge, called them all the bastards, and got banhammered before the end of that year!

I was already on the NGamer Forums by that time though, and that and this are more or less the only gaming forums I've used in the last decade. IIRC, I joined NGamer on 3rd July 2008 - are youse all clubbing together to get me a tenth anniversary present...?

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

IIRC, I joined NGamer on 3rd July 2008 - are youse all clubbing together to get me a tenth anniversary present...?

I've got a couple of shite XBox 360 games I can't shift, I'll wrap them up and post them over to you, call it a present.

Oh man, it would have been the Runescape forums. I used to discuss that game like there was no tomorrow along with writing fan-fiction which has been mercifully purged from their archives. I did find a post from me on an unofficial Runescape guide site called tip.it - I would have been 13 at the time of posting it. It gave me a good picture of the clearly kind, mature soul I was at the time. Please come to me for support if you are being bullied.

From there, it was NGamer in late 2007, but I definitely remember frequenting other forums. I found this on IGN:

From the IGN forum, proving I've been on brand for 10 years now wrote:

The music in Lost Odyssey was also possibly the best videogame score I've heard ever, perhaps save for The World Ends With You. Nobuo Uematsu provided a soundtrack that is not only fantastic, but provides links and feelings to the characters unlike any game before. Oh, and that end boss theme? Wow.

However, if Yahoo Answers counts then I could unearth some beauties from there as that's definitely the oldest posts I've got on the Internet as I would have been 12 at the time.

Here's me answering "What have Fatal Frame, Dark chronicle, and Dead Rising have in common?":

12 year old Jay wrote:

They all have different names in different countries. Fatal Frame is known as Project Zero in Europe and Zero in Japan. Dark Chronicle is known as Dark Cloud 2 in the USA. Dead Rising is known as some weird Japanese name that I can't really type seeing as I can't type Japanese. It's known this in Japan. (NO DUH?!!!)

Coincidentally, I was looking for my old Yahoo Answers account recently! I have this habit of purposefully Googling weird searches in front of my Girlfriend, like "is it ok to date smart women" so that we can mock the terrible things that come up. I was trying to source whatever pearls of ineffable wisdom I had at 13 but couldn't find any

I think the first forum I did was a Toronto Raptors basketball forum, but I only posted about 50 times and lost interest over time. Then I joined this one just so I could do a single random post that would make Drunka go "WTF" in real life, which I think he did when he realised I'd posted somewhere. Then I just didn't leave.

Some of those early posts are glorious. Kudos to young Drunka for correctly apostrophising his thread title! And lookit adorable tiny Jay trying to be edgy. ^_^

Unhappily(?) I can't find my very first forum: called The Geek Room, it was an online offshoot of a group of us who met at breaktimes in my school and played Magic (not me), D&D (again not me), MKDS (me), and Meteos (very definitely me). At the age of 15 I think, I got hopelessly hopelessly addicted. It was my first real involvement with serious non-face-to-face communication. As a shy kid, it was perfect for me, and I posted far too much. In the end, the founder got fed up with all the people who weren't his mates, and his attitude put me off.

I can't remember if it was before or after that that I saw an ad for the NGamer Forum in the magazine (like O_R, my first 'proper' forum, as TGR was more like a glorified chatroom). I left something like 25 posts in my first evening, probably mostly correcting people's grammar. Somebody called me 'a real wordsmith' (Uranium Grenade if anyone remembers him). I was hooked.

Plus ça change and all that...

A little known forum called NGamer lol

GameFAQs with this being my oldest post I can find from 2008 but I signed up in 2005

hi Eternal Sonata is currently on offer in game at £20. i'm in two minds to get it or not. i'm not a fan of jrpg or turnbased games but i have seen videos on game trailers and the combats looks intresting. the only jrpg style game i have relly played in grandstream saga on ps1 which has a real time close combat system which might a bit simaler. but i won't something differnt that isn't my normal, i normal play fps.
sorry about spelling

Now I do like a good JRPG and I don't play many FPSs as I find them a tad boring now after playing so many for so many years.

@Cappa I reckon you'd like Top Hat Gaming man as he thinks the same as you on some of those things, he can come across as a bit of dick though but I do think that's part of his persona being a wrestler as well.

...are you trying to suggest that I come across as a bit of a dick?

I think Top Hat Gaming Man is a great idea for a YouTube persona/pro wrestling gimmick, but the guy behind performs it poorly. His scripts need to be tighter, and he doesn't commit to the bourgeoisie style of the character as much as he should. Plus, he's a content thief and his video titles and thumbnails are clickbaity.

I'd completely forgotten about Balladeer being a grammar nazi! Glad you've knocked that on the head.

Went till he sees that old post of mine.

Yeah the whole clickbait stuff is why I said about being a dick, didn't know about the content thing which is a bit ironic seeing he was one of the main ones behind the whole WatchMojo is copying others.

Have been on a few over the years, but probably the first was ukhhf.co.uk - a forum for UK Hip Hop that was basically a small community of amateur bedroom rappers (looks like it shutdown in 2014). We used to do battles where we would post online tracks dissing our opponent - I remember fondly beating a guy called Dan Bull (who is quite popular on YouTube these days). That was in 2004-2006 (songs I did from those days are still online here - largely cringeworthy stuff).

mas wrote:

Went till he sees that old post of mine.

Yes, I'm wenting with baited breath.

----

I think my first proper forum was NGamer though my first experience of talking to folk online was through the Dreamcast online chat rooms where I believe I used the name "Brodieman" since I was obsessed with the film Mallrats at the time. Actually met some nice people on there so I was racking up a stupid phone bill by being on there most nights. (Sorry mum)

(resists urge to create alternate account for 'Ma Jaster')

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

I'd completely forgotten about Balladeer being a grammar nazi! Glad you've knocked that on the head.

I keep it hidden more these days. Figured that being hated by all and sundry proooooobably wasn't worth it. That said good ol' SuperPaperLink did credit my (shall we say) zero-tolerance attitude to netspeak with improving his typing, so it helped one person!

lol wtf bllz man, y u no lik txt spk? ur a nerd lol

Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?

Saswatch: the man, the myth, the legend.

NGamer was my first real foray onto the internet, as was likely obvious given the abominable grammar in my earliest posts. Ah the good old days when I didn't even know how to do simple mundane things like set up an avatar and I wasn't cynical all the time.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?

I'd totally forgotten about this song - and this band, to be fair.

I didn't realise it was originally a song! That makes Saswatch's great post that much less great.

Balladeer wrote:

I didn't realise it was originally a song!  That makes Saswatch's great post that much less great.

Same here! That's actually very disappointing. I thought he'd been unintentionally hilarious, turns out he was just being a wee unfunny fanny.

It depends when he posted it, to be fair. That song wasn't out till 2008/2009, I think.

Quote :

Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?

Erm.....pretty sure it was me that said that to Saswatch because he was going off on being corrected all the time wasn't it? (or am I going mad?) & yeah I did it take from that song.

JayMoyles wrote:

I'd totally forgotten about this song - and this band, to be fair.

Same, but I actually enjoyed giving that a relisten. There alright, those boys. Their alright.

I was sure it was Saswatch! The difference between you and him is that you're not a complete dobber. ✌️