Current Events > Remember when going online was a rare treat?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Like "holy shit, I actually go a connection! ooooh wonders of cyberspace, what epic journey shall we go on today?"

Now it's all "oh look, some random idiot said random idiot thing. guess it's the end of the world"

No honestly, back when I had dial-up it was never fun, and then when I got cable internet it became normal pretty fast.

It was exciting enough just to watch while my older brothers browsed the web on their Dreamcast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GoMoeV3Y4A

nah my dad was a computer guy, i grew up with regular internet rotting my brain since 8 or 9 in the late 90s

ahh the before times

HANGtheDJ_86 posted...

It was exciting enough just to watch while my older brothers browsed the web on their Dreamcast

You could use the internet on Dreamcast????

Kanaya413 posted...

You could use the internet on Dreamcast????

Hell yeah! It had a nifty little modem attachment for it, offering dial up and broadband versions.

Dreamcast and original xbox online gaming was awesome. (My family's original PC wasn't too stronk so I didn't get to play me some diablo 2 until I got my own PC in 2005 I think it was).

Making people rage-quit on capcom vs snk 2 eo xbox back in 2003 using todo's super counter.

It was exciting going to the public library and getting to use the internet. Just browsing random websites was fun.

Remember... WEB RINGS?

Honestly would be nice if it was back to that. Just getting whatever game news there is from some RPG web ring or people talking about a game on another game's board on gameFAQs.

I mean, the modern internet has its perks, but its also just a series of echo chambers and anger spheres these days. Somehow even the Nintendo vs Sega arguments are meaner spirited these days.

Early 2000s flash games like on Cartoon Network were pretty fun for what they were.

and visiting my public library while using their old school IBM computers felt futuristic to me, so Ill never forget that experience even if you were limited to those computers for about 1 hour it still felt special in my eyes

its also how I discovered RuneScape back in those days, by simply watching other kids at the time playing the game and being impressed with the gameplay

My college alumni email account is so old that it's just my first name @alumni.school.edu

My first internet access was in '93 or '94. AOL. Tripod. Geocities. Angelfire. Subspace and Netstorm were my favorite online multiplayer games in the mid to late 90s. Netscape Navigator. When we ran out of free AOL, we discovered NetZero which was ad-supported free internet. I used to spend many hours online just hogging up the phone line.

Good times.

Just talking to people online was a miraculous adventure.

I kind of already do the same stuff now as I did then. I just went to individual news sites and forums.

As for people saying stupid things, I remember arguing with people who complained about some of the design choices for Ocarina of Time leading up to its release, among other things. So many people have a lot of rose-colored glasses as far as that goes.

This topic is reminding me of how the internet is so routine and boring now.

Pikachuchupika posted...

This topic is reminding me of how the internet is so routine and boring now.

Yeah. I played Phantasy Star Online back in the day and just coming here was always so new and exciting. Now it's just as boring and awful as everything else in life.

Hayame_Zero posted...

I kind of already do the same stuff now as I did then. I just went to individual news sites and forums.

As for people saying stupid things, I remember arguing with people who complained about some of the design choices for Ocarina of Time leading up to its release, among other things. So many people have a lot of rose-colored glasses as far as that goes.

90s online video game discussions sounded wild since I can't even imagine complaining about what we ended up with for ocarina of time.

My family's first computer w/ good old prodigy internet wasn't until the spring of 2000, so I at least was around to see the zelda wind waker meltdowns about it being kiddie in real-time. Most online communities I took part in around that time was more often than not pretty good. There might be some slight bias here but I have never experienced a better community than phantasy star online's when it very first started up. (We did eventually started getting a player killer problem once the douches of the community started hopping on the gameshark/codebreaker bandwagon, but up until that point?......awesome). Quake 3 arena's, return to castle wolfenstein's, city of heroes and villains.....definitely miss that time period.

Halo 2's community was overall pretty crap though, lmao. To me this game's launch and the massive player numbers it pulled for it's time was the real start of the "video games really going mainstream and is no longer just populated by mainly enthusiasts" era.

Mad-Dogg posted...

90s online video game discussions sounded wild since I can't even imagine complaining about what we ended up with for ocarina of time.

So, a few weeks before OoT came out, it was revealed in Famitsu (IIRC) that you jumped automatically at the edge instead of manually jumping. The Nintendo.com forums had a meltdown with users boycotting the game, and saying stuff like it destroys the immersion of exploration, and makes it inferior to Link's Awakening because that game had a mappable jump button.

After release, some people also disliked the targeting system, and preferred that the game should just... let you wildly flail at multiple enemies instead of focusing on one.

There was also the reveal of Link's earring, which is a whole other can of worms that shows that toxicity on the old internet was very much present.

Yes, I used to have lots of Prepaid Cards to access dial up internet in the 2000's.

Hayame_Zero posted...

So, a few weeks before OoT came out, it was revealed in Famitsu (IIRC) that you jumped automatically at the edge instead of manually jumping. The Nintendo.com forums had a meltdown with users boycotting the game, and saying stuff like it destroys the immersion of exploration, and makes it inferior to Link's Awakening because that game had a mappable jump button.

After release, some people also disliked the targeting system, and preferred that the game should just... let you wildly flail at multiple enemies instead of focusing on one.

There was also the reveal of Link's earring, which is a whole other can of worms that shows that toxicity on the old internet was very much present.

lmao, that sounds wild. I'm guessing link's earring gave the impression that link wasn't masculine or other stupid assumptions similar to that?

Definitely sounds believable and no different than modern video game discussion though, the getting upset about the whole auto-jumping thing. It'd imagine there was zelda fans who was thinking that ocarina of time would be similar to something like mario 64 with constant jumping around and verticality/something like that.

Social Media really mutated the Internet, Twitter most of all.

Nope. I do still vividly remember the day the DSL got put in. God that was amazing

FolkenRawr posted...

Nope. I do still vividly remember the day the DSL got put in. God that was amazing

Going from 56K phantasy star online+version 2 on the dreamcast (and dealing with all the phone calling related disconnects that this entailed) to getting AT&T DSL and playing phantasy star online episode 1 and 2 online with the gamecube's broadband adapter (no more phone line disconnects and now nothing whatsoever can stop the no-lifing) really was a life-changing experience.

Mad-Dogg posted...

Going from 56K phantasy star online+version 2 on the dreamcast (and dealing with all the phone calling related disconnects that this entailed) to getting AT&T DSL and playing phantasy star online episode 1 and 2 online with the gamecube's broadband adapter (no more phone line disconnects and now nothing whatsoever can stop the no-lifing) really was a life-changing experience.

Going from 56k to DSL on SCBrood War was pure chef's kiss

mom get off the phone I'm trying to play runescape

I had to beg my parents for years to get a 2nd line for dial up

...
No.

I distinctly remember trying to watch a 7 min AMV over 4+ Hours while doing chores

Not really. For as long as I can remember, I was able to get on any time I wanted (though in the earliest memories, I had to watch how long I stayed on for). Not necessarily at very good speeds, though. Had dialup until like, 2004 or so? My family got around the issue of it taking up the phone line by having two phone lines. Despite that just switching to DSL would've actually been cheaper, which I had repeatedly pointed out to them. On the other hand, they were more than happy to make the switch when a borderline-scammy PC technician told them they could use the internet and the phone at the same time without two phone lines "if they switched to [obscure ISP that was not cheaper than just having the two phone lines]". Within a couple of months they were blaming me for the high costs (no, it's because you signed up with an ISP with a base rate higher than most ISPs all-inclusive charge, that on top of that charged per megabyte, instead of just upgrading to DSL with the ISP you were already with, where the charge would never change and if you reached the data cap your connection would just slow down a bit for the rest of the month - and still be slightly faster than dialup even at that point). >_>

No, we had broadband, i only ever used dialup on other people's computers.

I do remember this. Loading certain webpages was like an accomplishment I think the ones with flash player embeds.

Most standout one was the Midnight Club II website for me, with the buildup to the game itself. I remember double checking that I clicked everything. It was immersive back then because that kind of game....all you could do was maybe revisit Midnight Club I, but for me the LA and Tokyo aesthetic had so much anticipation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilE8CmMX6Po

2002 internet was really special to me because I think that was the first time I ever used broadband internet (ever). Got it at home through the cable. It felt like things moved too fast because before I knew it there was the damn iPhone and I was just happy still accessing the core internet from home.

I didn't even want a smart phone until my dual slider phone was basically obsolete.

Kamil posted...

I didn't even want a smart phone until my dual slider phone was basically obsolete.

I was quite a late adopter on those too. Got a cheapie in 2012 and my first good one in 2013.

The internet was definitely a lot more fun before megacorps and the engagement algorithm ruined it.

Trumble posted...

I was quite a late adopter on those too. Got a cheapie in 2012 and my first good one in 2013.

My first smartphone was a ZTE probably around 2015. It seemed good till I got too much adware and other problems. I generally still am cheap on smartphones. The one I have now is 5g but still less than 300 msrp and I didn't even pay that ofc.

I had a galaxy player before that, that I really liked but it was wifi only.

I remember doing baal runs on Diablo on dial up and always getting the worst loot because nothing was instanced back then

Having your song that you're downloading stop because someone tried to make a phone call on the same line

Lmao

Back in the "Get off the computer, I need to use the phone" days

Despised posted...

I remember doing baal runs on Diablo on dial up and always getting the worst loot because nothing was instanced back then

Having your song that you're downloading stop because someone tried to make a phone call on the same line

Lmao

I played Diablo 1 on dial-up it was hilarious. Switching floors playing online took nearly 5 minutes. Walking from town square to the witch and back took a couple minutes too.

I think certain things some ppl were just more patient. I am going to side track this but constant loading sucks occasional longer loads were ok for me. Heh. Playstation loads blew at times, but if the gameplay was stretched out during some lengthy loads I thought it was fine.

StormSignal posted...

nah my dad was a computer guy, i grew up with regular internet rotting my brain since 8 or 9 in the late 90s

this but mom, she worked from home too which was /wild/ at the time. tech admin for a hospital chain

Kamil posted...

My first smartphone was a ZTE probably around 2015. It seemed good till I got too much adware and other problems. I generally still am cheap on smartphones. The one I have now is 5g but still less than 300 msrp and I didn't even pay that ofc.

I had a galaxy player before that, that I really liked but it was wifi only.

My first was some sub-$100 (and that's NZD, so like, sub-$70 USD at most) Huawei piece of shit. Wasn't sure if I'd like them so didn't want to fork out for an expensive one. Bought myself a Galaxy S3 a few months later, which was pretty new at the time. Had that for a few years, got given a Meizu M3 Note as a gift which was quite a bit cheaper but (due to being newer) better. Charger port started to fuck out after a few years so replaced it with a Xiaomi Redmi Note 7; when that was starting to show its age, I went for the Oppo A94 5G which was a bit higher-tier than the last two. That in turn has now been replaced with an iPhone 12, on account of the Oppo now being out of support for security updates (I wouldn't buy an iPhone, but I won it a few months prior to this and figured may as well use it rather than going out and buying another new one. I'll be back to Android when it's time to upgrade again though).

Oh right, also had the Blackview P10000 Pro for like a month. Had a fucking incredible battery, but was absolute shit in every other way. I went back to the Meizu.

Trumble posted...

Huawei

are you in Canada? I believe they were a carrier there heh. I think ZTE is Chinese too lol but I watched a lot of Canadian hockey and feel like they used to advertise there in the past.

I remember having WebTV back in the mid to late 90s. The day we upgraded it from just using the remote to getting the keyboard was huge. My brother and I would fight over who got to use it quite a bit. The day we got the internet on an actual PC though was a life changer.

NetZero gang rise up!

RIPVyseCity posted...

NetZero gang rise up!

Blue Light Special! They partnered with Kmart for a brief moment. I had some local internets and used AOL at a friends. AOL is it's whole other thing!!!! But I certainly remember chatting with someone on ICQ and my dad picks up the phone and it was just a chatter session, but it sucked when ya playing Diablo 1.

Kamil posted...

are you in Canada? I believe they were a carrier there heh. I think ZTE is Chinese too lol but I watched a lot of Canadian hockey and feel like they used to advertise there in the past.

Nah, New Zealand.

I actually haven't seen Huawei phones available here for a long time now, I don't think we've banned them like some countries have (could be wrong) but I guess there's just zero demand for yet another mobile OS here now that Huawei don't use Android anymore.

huawei still uses android, it's just that they dont have any access to google services.

In anycase, I don't think I'll ever miss buying cards for like 30mb of service that dies when someone picks up a phone.