I've made the posts from the old forum system available again for viewing.  The old system was completely antiquated so it took a bit of doing.

Some of the spam from those pre-registration days is still around.  As there's no admin function deleting posts is a bit of a chore, but if there's anything that's particularly obnoxious or obtrusive let me know and I'll take care of it.

Once I've confirmed the archives are running smoothly I'll add a link to the main forum navigation.

Also I've tried out a slightly different layout for the archives topics list.  It's a bit cleaner than the current one IMO; if you guys agree I'll use something similar for the main forums here (albeit with the "last poster" info also included).

Dec 2014 Edit: After the last major site redesign I unfortunately had to take the forum archives down, so none of the links in this thread will work currently.  It would take some effort to get them back accessible online again, but if there's any interest post in this thread and I'll consider it.

thank god,, now i can look up some of my old jokes that i've forgotten

Wow, I was all about posting new soundtrack announcements and game rips, haha.  Found about a dozen of threads I started.  These are hilarious to read.

Adam, any chance of getting the other forums archived as well?  Very interested in the Marketplace in particular, would love to see records of what I bought and sold in the past.

Oh God. I so don't want to see how I was back then.

I'm definitely in your camp.

Neat. I skimmed a few looking for old posts of mine, and I'm somewhat relieved that I didn't find myself saying anything especially embarassing in retrospect. It's also neat to remember back when you had these sprawling, cascading trees to subject line posts and replies. It puts something like nearly 600 posts under a single header into perspective.

I do so love perusing a good time capsule.  I've only sifted through the 2004 Open Topic Forum Archives, and so decided to pick a handful of my personal favorites -- not all of them were necessarily started or discussed by myself:

-Hands-on: PSP vs. NDS
-MS3 (And gaming 'bits' naming conventions)
-Speaking of Mega Man..... (GBA style!)
-Well, my PS2 is dead...
-Conventional oil versus synthetic?
-Donkey Kong Country 2 GBA mini-review
-Love it when neat things happen.  (Street Fighter Eternal Challenge!)
-First review of ROTK EE
-Neo C; the verdict
-Nintendo vs Sony
-The last big 3rd party Cube exclusive is no more
-Speaking of cleaning things....

Ah, memories.  I'd forgotten that the DS IS DOOMED VS. PSP thing actually made it into our little forum here.  Can't believe we're where we are nowadays compared to how it seemed things were going back then.  Also, I miss being in Japan. 

That said, I realize I kind of miss that game generation too.  Not that I dislike the current one or anything, but still...

Or, more precisely, your semaphoronts. "Semaphoront" is a word I find to be very interesting. I learned about it through my studies of phylogenetic systematics. I would imagine that all graduate students in biology are familiar with that word, and it is probably rarely used outside of that specialty.

The philosophical implications are never ending, since I can't come to a decisive way of thinking about it. It is clearly defined within biology, but in plain English, it refers to an individual that exhibits life processes during a period of time (not a 'point in time'). The period of time itself is not defined. This is most useful for creatures that have different forms, such as insects. It is easy to see their semaphoronts, since the structural changes are distinct.

It's more complicated with humans, since we retain the same basic shape throughout our lives. This is why I tend to think of it in terms of psychology. But I have no concern for whatever psychologists have invented, such as 'adolescent' or 'adult', since people of vastly differing ages can act roughly the same or completely dissimilar. The laws we have invented are even less satisfying, since they claim we are adults at age 18. I don't like any of it, so I have to make up my own classifications. I believe the semaphoront is a good start for reclassifying the stages of people since it focuses on individuals and not large groups of people. Each person changes at a different pace and it is wrong to use pre-defined ages to determine what a person is.

The bottom line is that you don't want to "see" your younger self anymore than a fly wants to see itself as a maggot.

Ah, I was wondering when you'd dig that one up.   I think my track record has been pretty good over the years, but that was one that I got COMPLETELY wrong (except for the part about Metroid Prime Hunters' terrible controls), and I fully admit it.  In my defense, the DS that Nintendo presented at E3 2004 was an unfinished piece of garbage (the picture in this article shows what the unit I played at that show looked like: http://gameboy.ign.com/articles/513/513188p1.html), and if more people saw the promo video they put together to sell people on it, you'd understand where I was coming from.

More personal faves from the crypt.  Quite a handful from just January to March 2005 of the Open Topic alone:

-Well, now that it's 2005...
-My thoughts on ROTK EE
-the most deadly poison is used in cosmetics!
-Join the fight!
-Japanese Teacher Chronicles
-died 15 times in the village in RE4...
-PSP is priced for the US.
-Gyakuten Saiban Coming to America
-'Feel The Magic' any good?
-Well, this was a pleasant surprise.
-Are Squeenix male charectors gettin gay!
-Awaken, Dante!
-Random thoughts of the moment.

I've been looking through some of these too. Considering how disinterested I have been in gaming over the past couple years, this was effectively the start of my own personal dark ages for video games and the only thing that has really changed has been moving from frustration to general indifference. A lot of these were during the time period where (IMO!) the Gamecube had failed to deliver on its' potential and I felt betrayed by Nintendo. I remember I had bought mine in my cash-strapped college days and after I didn't care for Mario Sunshine and Wind Waker, the followup of a bunch of GBA Connectivity BS really hit a sour note.

In hindsight, the recent mini-renaissance of 2D gaming is a sharp contrast to these days, where anything on a 2D plane was looked down upon as being old and outdated (and Capcom Fighting Jam, with its pixelated sprites did nothing to deter that). I can only imagine them trying (and failing) to develop Marvel vs Capcom 3 or Street Fighter 4 in 3D back in these days, regardless of gameplay quality. And even though I was lukewarm on it, that they even made New Super Mario Brothers Wii is a miracle.

I see myself taking digs at Nintendo about the stylus on the DS and I think I'm still completely right about that. The best DS games I've played are ones that use standard controls and it succeeded in spite of it's main design feature. Likewise, Sony's arrogant nature lead to a nonchalant and overpriced launch of the PSP and it got zapped by the DS before it knew what hit it. Now it's more or less an overpowered sleeper handheld that's been an afterthought on the market for several years.

I also see my old enthusiasm for Oath in Felghana's soundtrack. Ouch...that fizzled.

That's exceedingly accurate. I don't even want anything to do with my disgusting larval form.

Adam, if you haven't done so already, would you be able to integrate the archives with the related topics sidebar?  I think it'd be fun to be able to compare a current discussion with a related discussion from the mid-aughts.

This is something I've been planning on doing.  It's on my lengthy to-do list for the site.

The plan is to have all the forum topics, archives, and albums linked and easily searchable.

Just a quick note that the forum archives can now be sorted to show threads with the most posts first.  For those of you who would like to see what some of the hot topics were from back in the day without searching through pages of threads the change makes it much easier to do so.

Wow, pretty cool Adam.  So what about the archives from before 2004? I didn't start posting until early 2004, but I'd love to have a look on how things were back then. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one:)

Yeah I would love to see the older posts myself but unfortunately I don't think I was forward-thinking enough at the time to archive them.  If I ever do come across a backup on some old CD-R I'll of course put them up but it's not likely to happen.