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Retro Nintendo NSider Forums Nostalgia

Dopply

Dopply

Developer
Pronouns
He/Him
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It's come up a few times already, so I figured I'd make a thread about it.

The NSider Forums were Nintendo of America's official discussion community, with moderation done by members of NOA's Treehouse. It was initially two boards combined into one, linked to your My Nintendo account (linked to my Nintendo Power subscription...I registered every single Nintendo game I owned...), opened in 2003. You can read more about the general history of the forum here.

It was fairly strict, rules-wise, but it had to be; children primarily posted there. I was one of them. NSider was my first formative community, I joined in 2005. It was awesome to not only be able to talk with tons of other Nintendo fans, but the promise of becoming a Sage - a well-regarded community figure who received direct swag from Nintendo - and talking directly to people who worked at Nintendo was pretty great. It made putting up with the fairly draconian moderation worth it.

Because I'm a digital pack rat, I have a set of images from this time in my life. Hopefully they stir up some memories in yourself.

Here's some of my signatures from this time:

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I kept up with all the drama, of course. What's a forum without it?

The off-topic board, Power On, was almost always overwhelmed with spam or content that needed to be moderated. The poor NOA employees and volunteer mods could not hope to keep up with thousands of rowdy children. In response, they made plans to close the board, which they did. Here are some things I made from that period (I obviously did NOT want the board to close):

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Added to my sig. RPing (roleplaying) was huge on NSider, and we had plans to continue it outside of Power On...somehow. Don't know how that ended up.

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NOA_Andy was the head mod/admin of the site, and unfortunately for him, also the target of thousands of kids and teens' ire for doing his job as a moderator. Kids are so mean, there was no reason to go after the poor man's hair! Andy, if you ever read this, I really am sorry. Thanks for the memories!

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I can't remember what this campaign was for. I was highly active in the Mario RPs and other Mario lore.

I had such a blast. I was banned eventually, as most stupid teenagers were there. I can't remember the reason but it was probably justified, haha. However, by the time I was, the forum was on its way out; it closed in 2007, because NIntendo figured out that moderating an enormous site to its standards was an impossible task. I had moved on to other communities at that point.

Here are a few write-ups about NSider that I think also make for good reading:

Museum of the Lost Web | Kyle Morell

This is Kirby's Starterkit.
allegrarosenberg.com

How Nintendo of America Severed Direct Two-Way Communication With Its Fans - Editorial

www.nintendoworldreport.com www.nintendoworldreport.com

NSider was very formative for me, and influenced the way I view a lot of communities. The gamification elements, the fun, buttoned-down nature of the site...I took all of that away. As I said in a previous post, I do wish for this site to become its true spiritual successor; NSider2, Nintendo Pipeline (no relation to the Discord of the same name), and Ninfora are all basically dead, and (in my opinion) didn't manage to capture the spirit of that original discussion board. I have a good feeling this time will be different.

Do you have any memories of NSider? Were they as fond as mine? Did you ever interact with me back then? As you could tell from my sigs, I've had the same username all the way since then; I'd love to reconnect with some old faces! I look forward to going down memory lane with you all.
 
NSider was where the enby, the myth, the legend GamerJM (or should I say, GAMERJM) began. I joined in Summer 2006 and only posted until the forum closed down, so only a little over a year. I also never remained friends with anyone there. I never RPed much, I never figured out how to make a good sig, no one knew who I was. But that short period of time generated more online memories for me than a lot of forums I was on for much longer. It's synonymous with that early period of the seventh generation of consoles for me; the leadup to the Wii's launch, and its first year or so post-launch. Also the early era of the DS, where Ace Attorney and Elite Beat Agents were basically memed into becoming the legendary cult classics they are today.

There are three really big moments that stick out for me. E3 2006, the Wii's launch, and the start of the Super Smash Bros. Brawl dojo. All three of those things had a sense of hype and optimism behind them that I've rarely seen since. We've all become so jaded, so cynical, but at the time it felt like so many people were optimistic for the future of gaming in a way only bright eyed 15 year olds can be.

The Summers of 2006 and 2007 were also just super synonymous with NSider for me. I remember hanging out at the public pool and then coming home to read shitposts on Power On.

NSider formed so much of my tastes in gaming too. I started importing games because of people talking about stuff like Ouendan and Jump Ultimate Stars on NSider. I got into anime because of 1L's Power On posts. I basically ended up getting a 360 because of people talking about 360 games. The aforementioned EBA and Ace Attorney.

It couldn't exist today, and I don't think I'd want it to. While I'd love to see all of the old posts, in a way I'm glad it was purged, I got to sort of start my internet forum life over again as someone who was no longer 12 and could figure out how to use spellcheck, and I made friends with people elsewhere. I felt like the spirit of the Power On board continued pretty well to NSider 2, but that only lasted maybe two or three years and I was never very active there as I decided to set up home on GameFAQs instead. But what a forum and a way to begin internet communication that never felt replicated afterwards.
 
I lurked the hell out of it, was never a member though. It was part of my initial experiences with surfing the web. I discovered it while looking for the then-upcoming Twilight Princess news, and stumbled upon the Zelda board there. Funny enough, pretty sure it was a few months before I realized that board was part of a much larger forum with other boards for Mario and other stuff. I remember being amazed when I discovered that lol.
 
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Yeah I have some fond memories of that place. I believe it was the first time I started using 9-Volt name, but since someone else claimed it before me it was 9VOLT instead. We used to rank each other's Fire Red Leaf Green teams! There were no screen grab back then, so I had to take photos of my GBA SP with my Nokia 6600 phone, copy from MMC card (lol forgot about these) and post them there.

One thing I hated about it was the amount of fanboys there. Sega or PS bashing threads were common and I did not liked it at all.

GamerJM said:
NSider formed so much of my tastes in gaming too. I started importing games because of people talking about stuff like Ouendan and Jump Ultimate Stars on NSider. I got into anime because of 1L's Power On posts. I basically ended up getting a 360 because of people talking about 360 games. The aforementioned EBA and Ace Attorney.
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Yeah same for me too, imported couple of DS games from Liksang thanks to the hype NSider forums generated. Like, when DS was launched everyone imported "Daigasso Band Brothers" game there and I did the same. It ended up one of my favorite games of all, only to be surpassed by the localized sequel with online capabilities!
 
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A lot of great memories of the place. I went by Za23 at that time. I either joined in 2003 or 2004. I recall my first month there just spamming in RP threads and the general chats in order to reach Koopa rank. I need those 1200 posts so I could have a signature. I wish I still had access to my old signatures, but I believe they were attached to an old Photobucket account that most likely has been deleted.

When I wasn't spamming, I always spent my time on the GBA, DS, or Power On sections. One of my memories of it was when I had a GBA collection thread and having people call me stupid for owning 30+ GBA games at the time. Also, still have some weird memories from the Metroid board. I want to say people loved to post a weird fan theory on how Metroid Zero Mission wasn't a remake and it was really a prequel to the 1st game.

I also ended up with several bans from my time there. I got permabanned for making a spam thread with pictures of Teletubbies. However, like a year after that, I was able to get NOA_Bob to unban my account. Thinking back on it, I did a lot of stupid things on that board.
 
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My biggest memory is being a 2005 Summer Camp Hyrule winner and wearing my “Stumpy” shirt to the first day of my high school tennis practice. I bet you can all guess my nickname on the team.
 
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I was Sonicandtails1 back on the original Nsider forums. I mostly posted in the virtual console board and we had a tight community. We aren't as close anymore as a lot were/are Republicans and despite our shared love of retro gaming it shattered into two groups eventually as the Republicans just couldn't help themselves from being assholes to the others. I'm still friends with most on the Switch friends list but I don't game with them anymore. I don't really have good internet anymore and I kinda got lost in the shuffle with the shattering of our group.
 
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The NSider forums were probably the first real online community I was a part of too, under the same Cbajd5 name I've used pretty much everywhere since if I'm remembering correctly, although I also remember Hyrule Town Square but I don't remember if I was a member of that too. In terms of memories of my times on the forum I don't remember a lot but I do remember never being able to become a Sage, figuring out how to crash all the live chats during Camp Hyrule one year so that everyone would get kicked out and I could try to get into the hidden chat, and getting lucky enough to get sent an advance copy of Nintendogs as part of the Nintendo Kennel Club stuff they did. (Which also helped me find out the microphone on my launch DS was broken...) I still have the box they sent that stuff in, although I'm not sure where any of the stuff they sent in it is right now since I just use the box to hold SNES games now, but it still has the sticker on it:

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Nintendo did eventually make another forum, although it was strictly for customer support so I didn't look at it too often, which apparently shut down earlier this year.
 
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I can remember someone on the NSider forums drawing up nice little schematics for every Smash Bros. newcomer suggestion posters would suggest. This was before Brawl and there must have been hundreds of them.

That was soooo long ago. I think I went by like Wart or some variation.
 
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Yep! I had fun on the forums there and missed it. My other favorite forum back then were the GamePro forums which no one seems to recall or talk about much.
 
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One of the best websites. Smash bros speculation was wild there, there were like three or four people insisting that no chance characters like The Legendary Starfy, Hector from Fire Emblem, and the cowboy from Mother 3 were very likely for Brawl and people took them seriously because their posting level was so high.
 
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I for sure get why they got rid of this, but there's now like third parties who will moderate your own Discord, website, or whatever. I am very surprised they didn't do this back then or considered finding a third party company to moderate. Nintendo also used a forum software called..

Lithium? I was always curious how modding and being an admin worked using that forum software. It is not a forum software you can buy flat out from what I read.
 
Rika said:
I for sure get why they got rid of this, but there's now like third parties who will moderate your own Discord, website, or whatever. I am very surprised they didn't do this back then or considered finding a third party company to moderate. Nintendo also used a forum software called..

Lithium? I was always curious how modding and being an admin worked using that forum software. It is not a forum software you can buy flat out from what I read.
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Nintendo has very high standards of moderation, most of which are probably not matched by third parties. See also Miiverse.

It was against the rules to exchange friend codes, which people apparently did en masse in PMs anyways. Stuff like that can't be moderated.
 
I noticed there have forums made to try to replace the NSider forums ever since they shut down. The only kind of successful one I recall used Zetaboards or something similar. I took a look at this same forum, and it seems to be a bit dead. Not surprised at all. It was called NSider2, and I think I had been a user there ages ago. I have heard that same forum has moved to another place called Ninfora which is also taking some inspiration from the NSider forums.

GamerJM said:
Nintendo has very high standards of moderation, most of which are probably not matched by third parties. See also Miiverse.

It was against the rules to exchange friend codes, which people apparently did en masse in PMs anyways. Stuff like that can't be moderated.
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I do seem to recall the not exchanging friend codes thing. A lot of people just sent PMs with their friend codes as you said.
 
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I know I definitely did. I still have all my old Metroid Prime Hunters friend codes saved, never to play again. 😥
 
I...I was on the NSider boards. I was...oh god...I was involved in quite a few Sonic RP threads. I can't bear to look back on them, the cringe will send me to the grave.
 
I found on the wikia/Fandom article it did mention certain employees of the forums software did help with the site but not moderation. NOA employees were moderators, as were volunteers dubbed Knights of Hyrule. I still wished to become a Sage or Knight of Hyrule so bad as a kid, haha.
 
Rika said:
I found on the wikia/Fandom article it did mention certain employees of the forums software did help with the site but not moderation. NOA employees were moderators, as were volunteers dubbed Knights of Hyrule. I still wished to become a Sage or Knight of Hyrule so bad as a kid, haha.
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Ah, I was struggling to remember what they called the moderators, thank you, haha. I wanted to be a Sage pretty bad too but it was obvious that I could not post enough or make quality enough posts at the time to qualify as one.
 
Dopply said:
Ah, I was struggling to remember what they called the moderators, thank you, haha. I wanted to be a Sage pretty bad too but it was obvious that I could not post enough or make quality enough posts at the time to qualify as one.
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I don't recall if NOA employees/staff chose volunteer mods or not. I'd assume so, yes.
 
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I was exploring the Wayback as a result of this thread and holy crap, I found the old RP thread I was very active in. The Wayback saved it! My heart skipped a beat when I read my own name, haha.

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Antirocketcloudy, if you're out there, I definitely want to catch up sometime. (I think they went by Ludwig/PrinceOfKoops after a while).
 
Dopply said:
I was exploring the Wayback as a result of this thread and holy crap, I found the old RP thread I was very active in. The Wayback saved it! My heart skipped a beat when I read my own name, haha.
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I got curious and wow forgot how the forum looked.

Edit: Got good news for you. I found Antirocketcloudy. Assuming it isn't someone trolling, found his Reddit account. Here's the post by someone claiming to be him.
 
Rika said:
I got curious and wow forgot how the forum looked.

Edit: Got good news for you. I found Antirocketcloudy. Assuming it isn't someone trolling, found his Reddit account. Here's the post by someone claiming to be him.
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He seems to be...quite interesting. I think he's uh, still role playing. That's what I call a commitment.
 
Rika said:
I found on the wikia/Fandom article it did mention certain employees of the forums software did help with the site but not moderation. NOA employees were moderators, as were volunteers dubbed Knights of Hyrule. I still wished to become a Sage or Knight of Hyrule so bad as a kid, haha.
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I remember reading the Sage board and everyone there seemed so knowledgeable about games and expressed themselves so much more eloquently than everyone on the standard boards. There was this guy on there named MPG-something that preached the quality of the Ys series years before it became a sleeper hit in the west once games like Ys Seven and Oath hit the PSP and Steam. He even imported the old boxed PC versions of some of those games. I'll always associate Boshi from SMRPG with that guy since that was his avatar, lol.
 
Rika said:
I found on the wikia/Fandom article it did mention certain employees of the forums software did help with the site but not moderation. NOA employees were moderators, as were volunteers dubbed Knights of Hyrule. I still wished to become a Sage or Knight of Hyrule so bad as a kid, haha.
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Yeah at one point I decided that I was gonna try to step up the quality of my posts so that I could become a Sage. I was like 11 at the time so I wasn't very successful lol.
 
Pascal said:
Yeah at one point I decided that I was gonna try to step up the quality of my posts so that I could become a Sage. I was like 11 at the time so I wasn't very successful lol.
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Same here, I had to be that age maybe a bit older. No chance in hell was I gonna become a Sage or Knight of Hyrule.
 
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Looks like I'm a Goomba again. Guess I gotta climb up the ladder again lol. I have to earn the right to wear a cool signature.
 
Even as a kid, NSider was too rambunctious for me, so I rarely visited it. I definitely feel nostalgia for that "wild west" era of the internet in general, though. Having signatures here certainly helps to bring back some of those old feelings!
 
Still remember very long debates on Nintendo Official Forums about how the Wii remote could provide haptic feedback using jets.

The days!
 
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