Have some of the usual members left Racketboy forums ?

[CFFJR]

There was another guy who got banned...AJ something.

He had a River City Ransom avatar.

I remember him picking a hell of a lot of fights.

Oh, and bobbynewmarkwii. He got banned right after posting a dick picture.

[TSTR]

8==>

never forget

[brunoafh]

inazuma
dreamcast4evar
elmagico chrisg
busom jack
I think that's it in the last 4 years (other than spambots of course)

Inazuma was justified because all the guy did was come on here and go out of his way to offend people and derail threads. He never contributed anything and just ruined discussion after discussion, and after so many years of doing that it's hard to excuse any longer. dreamcast4ever83 seemed justified because from what I understand he legit scammed at least one person. But he also seemed like he was actually retarded or something, I dunno, it was weird.

Busomjack was fucking hilarious though. I don't recall him doing anything so bad that he should be exiled from the island. elmagicochrisg was vocal and passionately opinionated but he only got worked up when people started on him first (which was common and deliberate). I feel like with these two it's a case of what Luke is getting at. Members can chose to hide posters if they are so grievously offended by their comments. Unless the person is just 24/7 intentionally destroying threads and attacking people (Inazuma) I don't see any reasonable circumstance that they should be outright permabanned from the site simply because not everyone likes what they have to say. elmagicochrisg was actually pretty knowledgeable and helpful about PAL and DC stuff, always posting in those threads and pointing people in the right direction. Unless these guys were scamming people or sending death threats I wasn't aware of, I can't imagine what they posted that was so bad they can't be allowed to use the forum anymore.

I'm pretty sure I've said more offensive things than either of them on here and never got banned so there's obviously favoritism going on as well. dsh and Luke also regularly tear people to shreds and no one cares (including me obviously given the nature of this post), but it seems to me that certain people are targeted and others are granted immunity for one reason or another. Even beyond banning I've pretty regularly seen people being ostracized to the point where they may as well have been banned.

[KalessinDB]

/me looks around

/me notices no mod named Rot

Yeah... yeah this place is not the world of turrible mods. But maybe I'm part of the circlejerk, who knows? I did show up not too long ago in internet time and relatively quickly made pretty good friends with at least one of the mods here.

But on topic, yes, the decline of users is both sad and kinda expected. I live on a forum that's down to about 25 active posters, tops. We've all been there for well over a decade, and there's little to nothing new left to talk about... and no one joins because there's no reason to. With luck? Racket will never get there.

[the7k]

Luke, there's still plenty of heated arguments to be found in this forum, as I can first hand attest to.

Granted, they tend to be focused on more modern things as you mentioned, but I always felt that retro had less to do with time period and more to do with design philosophy.

And that whole "Time vs Design" thing has itself been a source of argument here.

[MrPopo]

Don't forget about our other stellar members like dirtyballs69.

[Key-Glyph]

Regarding the unreplenished userbase, clearly we need Keith Apicary to namedrop the forum in another song.

Seriously. That's how I found out about you guys.

[BogusMeatFactory]

Regarding the unreplenished userbase, clearly we need Keith Apicary to namedrop the forum in another song.

Seriously. That's how I found out about you guys.

Nah, we just need one superstar videogame music Podcaster to named drop the site wink wink wink.

[Anapan]

I miss henrygrik.

I guess Satoshi_Matrix is gone. I really enjoyed his conversation here and his blog was awesome, but he totally scammed me out of a lot of $ back in 2012-13. I let it slide, but really he just like spaced out, and never even sent me the half-finished 3D models. This was all through PM's based on a BST post. I'm still totally fine with him, but I hear he did this kinda stuff to other members too.

I like that we're a small community. I'm really gonna miss Luke's hijinks. I'd like to call his bluff, but he's not the kinda guy to do that.

Before I became a member, I knew the forum well, it's emu and tech help was usually the best answer to my problems.

That's why I think the forum is the most important. This is why I try hard to answer questions on the tech and emu sections. This was my go-to before I was a member, and I know that there are so many google searches being pointed to our forums for the consolidated knowledge here. There are tons of shy lurkers that get the answer to their problems, and the well-researched best-of answers here. I know because google often refers me to a years-old post by one of us or even recently myself. facepalm when I totally answered my own question here back in 2011.

It only just clicked to me that the articles are where our new members come from. I should've known, it's what brought me here back in 2009 - something about the indie game "Iji". I'd already found a ton of answers in forum posts, but never cared where they were or who wrote them. I got the best answer google pointed me at and left.

I think I'll endeavor to try and write some articles. I'll appoint my friend as an editor and collaborator; I'll send him unfinished articles - he's had many sites that relied on member articles - and he's more eloquent. Remember Zany Video Game Quotes or Ecchi-Attack?

Is it possible to make a new category in the articles section about indies and clones (multi-console preferred)? A section that focuses on games that recreate the old-school feel of the best games from our favorites from the vast retro library?

We pick a game the community replays over-and-over and from our collective knowledge, we post which games play and feel the most like it. Also which games innovated the genre - starting on the 2600/C64 library and ending with console exclusives and indie clones, and mention the successors which first made it to 3D, or changed the game by taking the key elements of the game and turned it into another genre completely.

What about our old castleroid/metroidvania topic? It's got a lot of old games that started the genre - all the way back to the Japanese x68000 and the FSD games not many people played, and included the indies that cloned the genre back in the day. All we need to do is flesh out the the pros and cons of each game, and include the new games that embraced the best parts and ran with it. I'm completely infatuated with Axiom Verge, and played a bunch of Mystik Belle recently.

This is the type of thing I am always interested in - an article I would study and try to find better games for.

I also like VG overanalyzation - As cliche as they are now, there's youtube channels dedicated to them that get lots of hits. I don't know if we could compete, but it's worth a try...

I'm concerned with the dwindling forum presence too, but only after this topic. Yeah, things have slowed down. We need new blood.

[Exhuminator]

Luke, there's still plenty of heated arguments to be found in this forum, as I can first hand attest to.

Vita ain't dead yo.

-

I will miss future photos of Luke scaring his wife with balloons.