- Pronouns
- He/Him
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:
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):
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.
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!
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:
How Nintendo of America Severed Direct Two-Way Communication With Its Fans - Editorial
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.