Nostalgia for websites/forums from one's first internet experience

For me... Neopets was a big one, along with Newgrounds :D So many fun animations and flash games

My first internet experience probably can be attributed to Reddit. And it still has a retro look! You can find merchandise from popular shows, classic video games, your first mobile, and maybe even photos of old school chairs. As always, Reddit is a great place for freewheeling discussions. And apparently, nostalgia is a strong puller.

I remember play flash games as a kid on various sites like Newgrounds. I also recall of very first encounter of the notorious r34 on that site too (scarred me for weeks after witnessing Bowser's junk).

edited 19th Oct '17 1:14:46 PM by Albino_Axolotl

Just found out that ScienceBlogs is shutting down in a few weeks. So many articles lost. . .

edited 20th Oct '17 4:50:12 AM by carbon-mantis

Flash Games/Web Games on Newgrounds, Eyezmaze and various other sites, including more obscure ones.

Edited by LucasdaKool on Oct 25th 2023 at 6:22:10 AM

Coolmath Games. Shame that my school ended up blocking it at some point...

The PBS Kids website had some really awesome games, too.

I loved going on Nick.com a lot.

The Jargon File.

It still exists, though hilariously the website has never updated to https and reads as potentially insecure to modern browsers, which would be an ignominious end to a pillar of hacker culture.

Also just read the OP and YESSS TRSROCKIN I REMEMBER THAT

I have fond memories of various Pokemon fansites in general but that site is one that really sticks out to me. It was also the site that taught me about cosplay and I wouldn't be surprised if it also sparked young Zan's interest in weird bootleg games way back then lmao (I even remembed someone wrote in to them about the game that would later be known as Pokémon Vietnamese Crystal, years before it became a meme! They said stuff like your mom would tell you to "go to (place) and plug in the holy figure" and that Professor Oak was called the Elf Monster and things like that and yeah, sounds like vietcrystal alright)

I miss filefront

As a kid, I was on Neopets pretty much exclusively and I still love it to this day even though I haven't visited it for a few months. No kids seem to be on there anymore though, just a bunch of bored, nostalgic, and passionate adults who have a love hate relationship with the website

I also have a lot of nostalgia for the old Nick.com games, Cartoon Network, Hotwheels.com, and some of the games on Disney.com. I played a bit of Toontown and Club Penguin though I only had free trials so I couldn't ever do much lol

When I got older I discovered the Warrior Cats Official Forums and it became my new favorite site because I got really into Warrior Cats RP for a while.

Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 26th 2023 at 3:35:21 PM

DragonFable was really popular while I was in high school. The people in my classes and I would finish our computer work as fast as we could so we could play it. We’d also sneak into the computer labs during lunch.

Edited by ChicoTheParakeet on Oct 26th 2023 at 10:41:12 AM

In the mid-2000s, there was this entire community of websites I was obsessed with for a period of my young-ish childhood, and I've yet to find anyone else who remembers them. They all had the same format: a static pixel art landscape-size background in the center, and an area to scroll through containing dozens of sprite assets (humans, animals, objects, etc.) you could drag and drop onto the center image. The exact style of pixel art these assets had varied a lot, even within the same website (they were probably all stolen from various places), but a lot of them looked something like this◊ or this◊. These websites all had names like "DECOR MAKER" or "FOREST SCENE CREATOR", and the names would be surrounded by a bunch of funky Unicode symbols like sparkles or diamonds (which I can't post because this site doesn't show them correctly).

I loved going on the official C Beebies website and playing some of the early games they had there when I was five through six. I have some memories from each one (linking to YT vids of the games):

• "Me First": I thought the "You're being greedy; you must share" line was funny for some reason.
• "Robot Story": I didn't like clicking on the sad face because I found it too much of a Tear Jerker. I also thought the "bobbles" were cute and didn't understand them wanting to go home. Nor did I understand why they needed a separate part to make the rocket go home.
• "Happy Pet": I didn't understand why the dog didn't want to go for a ride in the wagon.
• "Do Eggs Grow on Trees?": I thought the question "Does it grow on a hen?" was hilarious.
• "Tap Along Splat Down": I loved the game, but I was more focused on splatting the fruit than making a beat.
• "Nina's Lab": I never understood why she wanted to make a bad-smelling liquid, so I decided to make a good-smelling one instead once (usually, I did make a bad smell, but one time I decided to make a good smell). I was surprised when she still wanted a bad smell. Looking back, I wonder what would happen if the player put both good and bad smells in.
• "Higgledy House": I referred to the room that appears at 2:14 as the "Christmas Room" and it was my favourite room.
• "Build a City": Loved the game, and would joke about the boy on the slide at night.
• "Christmas Tree Game": I liked making Santa fly past the window.

Funimation used to have a forum. People had a good time discussing there and doing art commissions. We created a chat room but the owner treated other people HORRIBLY.