I know when I joined here a couple of years ago the forum was really active, but for the last 6 months - 1 year it has been really really quiet. I do check in every so often but not much seems to change.  :( Do you reckon we were going through a little 'phase' where retro collecting was 'cool' for a lot of people but they got bored? It makes me sad to see things slow.

We somehow lost most, if not all of the users last fall... some completely dissapeared and others went to nintendoage and never returned here.

It pretty much happened over night...

I'm sure the NW forum will become a lot more active in the future though... if I only knew what changes to make to make people return to the forum.

Strange that they all disappeared so quickly! What happened to Stan? He was admin here for a long time and had a ridiculously high post count. I know him from over at the sega8bit boards, but never found out why he left here... I really should drop him a PM and ask what he's up to in terms of the NES scene.

He's over at NintendoAge too... but not a regular...

Martin wrote on 09. Aug 2008 at 20:45:

We somehow lost most, if not all of the users last fall... some completely dissapeared and others went to nintendoage and never returned here. It pretty much happened over night... I'm sure the NW forum will become a lot more active in the future though... if I only knew what changes to make to make people return to the forum.

:'( :'( :'(

I Saw this change and i must say that you handeld the situation quit well martin.   You didn't loose your cool and updated the site very well.

It was very strange.
Nesworld was the first nes forum i joined and it was very active here.
But then NA came and it died here.

I admit i also joined NA .... BUT   (and i talked about this on dutch nes site palrocks.nl)

There is something that makes me dislike NA... i can't say what it is...
its a feeling... its too big now and some members are too much in the picture(spotlight)
NA is putting small nes sites (and there are a lot of them)in a big shadow and i dont like that >:(

But about nesworld.com ;)
I don't now what the problem is.. :-?
The only difference with NA is the hugh database thats it.. the chat of NA is gone i think :-?

about changes......... ::)

maybe nesworld has to focus more on the european nes collectors/gamers    PAL
because most NA members are usa/ntsc

another thing i thought of is the nesworld chat....
there are 0 chatters that has to change :P

so my suggestion... set a time for chat
exsample...1 november 14.00 chat time at nesworld .
at that time you can chat with Martin or another member.

Somebody talked about that ninja nes game that he's playing contact him Martin for a spotlight,team up people.

Im a lot more active here the last couple of weeks and im here to stay now ;)

The idea for the chat is alright, though I'd much rather move the chat to IRC if possible, and I'm there quite a bit (even now... efnet #nesworld).

But to make a successful chat I think I (we) need to get the forum activity back...

I've got the same story as above. Joined this forum first and saw it fade overnight, because of NA. I'll admit that FW -- my site -- may have had a bit to do with it as well because there was no need to come here for answers about Famicom stuff. But, the Famicom boards weren't all that active here, iirc.

I think the reason NA has attracted so much attention is the database. It's great for collecting, because you've got all the answers right at your fingertips. It's much easier to use than the data here. I don't post there very often, but I sell there since that's where all the collectors are.

I'm afraid of what NA might do to FW in the coming months as they launch their collecting tool, which includes a Famicom database of some sort. The only way for a site/forum to survive is to be unique, so that's how we'll compete with NA: keep a more comprehensive game list and have interesting tidbits and reviews, something NA doesn't do.

I think NA will remain an NES haven, though. Either that or get to big to be useful, like DP.

I may be getting in trouble for saying this, but to me it seems like most users at NintendoAge only cares about getting a complete set of games but knows absolutely nothing about the history of Nintendo and so on... to me that's just sad.

Martin wrote on 11. Aug 2008 at 10:30:

I may be getting in trouble for saying this, but to me it seems like most users at NintendoAge only cares about getting a complete set of games but knows absolutely nothing about the history of Nintendo and so on... to me that's just sad.

I know exactly what you mean about those sort of people, though I can't comment about any of the members at NintendoAge as I'm not a member there so don't know what they're like. Those same people tend to be 'fly-by-night' collectors who just like the thrill of the chase in getting a set, but with no knowledge or emotional ties (such as having had or played the system as a child), they get bored after getting everything, eventually leave the scene altogether and usually sell everything they took so long to get!  ::)

I've seen plenty of them over the years!

It doesn't matter since alot lurke around still....i guess ppl are getting older and have less time for chit chat. Even i had some crazy busy times.

This type of thread was what I was hoping to not see.  We never wanted to compete with or steal members from other sites, we wanted everyone to co-exist peacefully and go about doing what they have been doing for years.  

NA has grown fast, maybe to fast but only time will tell on that.  But saying that only "fly by night" collectors are there is a bit silly IMO.  Most of the established people there are people who have jumped ship from here, DP, AtariAge and a few others.  Now some of the newer people may be just that, but the foundation of the site is full of older members with appreciate the NES and have a vast knowledge of it.  I understand what you mean about saying it is said that people just want it all and don't care about the history, but that is society in general, you can't just pin that on NA.  Soceity as a whole seems to care less and just get what they want.  The history of it is what is so important to me, as well as the friendships I have forged over the years.

I visit here at NESworld everyday, usually several times a day in fact.  But as Hakan said life has caught up to me and I have more important stuff going on that NES at this point in my life with romance, work, and just life in general.  

I don't think you can totally blame NA for NESworld being so quiet though. Sure NA has hurt the user logins here, but until recently Martin hadn't really made many updates at all. So in a since NA has almost forced Martin to get back on the ball, which is good for the NES community as a whole.  It just gets more info and data out there for everyone, so we all win in the end when more work gets done.
~~NGD

::) I hope none of that is referring to me since I was very careful to separate what I was saying about the (true) nature of some collectors and anything to do with any members at NA. I was simply specifying that that type of collector is out there and that I've encountered a lot of them before. I certainly didn't make any link whatsoever with that type of collector and NA, though I can see how somebody only scan reading what I wrote might think that if they didn't read it properly. It's just that your post, NGD, reads as though it is at least partly directed at me...

I also think that there comes a point on almost any gaming forum where you've talked about or know just about everything there is to know about the system(s). At that point, the forum dries up. It turns into the "experts" answering noob questions and little more.

I'm seeing that a bit at FW's forum. We've had it up for three years. Most of the best members, who were there at the start and loved to delve into Famicom info, are gone. We've got a lot of new and active members who just don't care about the Famicom as something to discover, learn about, explore, research. I've tried to bring it back to that, but my efforts haven't worked.

So, I know where kungfukid is coming from when he says what he said. It becomes collecting for the sake of having, not for the sake of discovering. The random discoveries of early on made it worth it -- perhaps there's not much left to discover. I tend to think there is a lot left to discover about the Famicom (largely because of the language barrier); the mentality of current members doesn't support continuing such an enterprise. Things like "collecting tools" and checklists suppress the spirit of discovery, as gamers become more concerned with finding what they know exists instead of searching out things they've never seen or heard about. Both may be equally exciting, but the latter is personally renewing, maintaining your long-term interest. Almost makes me want to shut down Famicom World altogether.

Now FW's forum is mostly the "experts" answering noob questions, mostly about how to get the Famicom working properly in the US. There seems to be little left to discover...at least for some. The early collaborative exercises -- the general gathering of info -- which seemed to be the most exciting part early on, is mostly ignored, though not nearly finished.

I sense at the core of NA is something a bit more than collecting for the sake of having. There are examples of it in some of NA's members and in some of the site's products, like their newsletter. I do, however, fear the coming checklists.

probably just bound to happen.
i signed up here on the old msg board i think, im not sure been comming here and collecting since 1999. back then all the other collectors i knew online were teenagers, so maybe thats it, like me they have grown up and have less time to spend online and less money to spend on games.
i know i haven't bought a nes game in a while.
that whole "emo" scene thing probs didnt help...wasnt it a cool thing for those trend followers to be in to old games?

id guess its just a low, traffic will return

You can't blame new sites for what happens to old sites, it's just the ppl who have other interests when time passes, also exploring new sites and signing up at different forums. Nothing bad there, i myself visit quite some other forums also, NESWorld will not die.

Well, a thread like this, and a discussion like this, was bound to occur eventually.

I'm as guilty as anyone else of not visiting or posting here often enough.  Times change and life changes.

The point was made that many people joined up with this when they were teenagers and a little older, but now, 10+ years down the road, a lot of the originals have just simply "aged out" in terms of having time in life to focus so consistenly on something like this.  I'm not an orignal, but my life has certainly changed a lot since I joined up with this forum.

Are the discussions at Nintendo Age really any different?  Or anywhere else for that matter?  Or is it just another generation "re-discovering" all this information about the NES?  Is it a "referesh" without really changing anything?

I don't think NA or anywhere else is really "stealing" that many members from NESWorld.  It's just a generational thing, IMHO.

I don't know what that means for NESWorld.  Personally, I would like to see it keep going.  Martin has done a hell of a job all these years and it would be a shame to close it all just because the board is slowing down.  It's an incredible resource and a great starting point for collectors, techies, and general knowledge.

I think that NESWorld is a noble enterprise dedicated to the historical preservation of one of the most influential gaming machines of all time.

This includes collecting cartridges. However, I agree with those who say collecting just to "have" something is shameful.  If you're going to spend 500 bucks to buy a proto, do a writeup about it or something that advances the community a little bit.  Don't just buy to have.

It's about learning.  That's what it has always been about and what's made NESWorld so great for so many years.  

Turn a research effort that is NES discussion into baseball card collecting and you'll watch it fail before your eyes.  If you think I might be implying something, yes ALL sites should reconsider encouraging game hoarding.

I think JC said it best when he said that we're somehow losing the spirit of discovery.  The field has been cheapened a little bit, somehow.

Don't know how to get it back or if it can be gotten back.  But I'll visit this site as long as it exists.  

Spirit of Discovery, forever.

It wasn't really a complaint from my side, if people want to go elsewhere I can't/won't stop them... I was juts surprised to see it happen almost over night...

NES WORLD will not die as long as I'm still having fun making new stuff for the site, and with the current rewrite going on there's plenty of stuff to to...

I still stop in here from time to time.  The main reason my posting has gone down is I've been focusing my collecting and so forth on the SMS.  I like both systems, but the history of the SMS doesn't get as much attention as the NES, so I've been doing a bunch of interviews as well as learning how to program for it (writing a tutorial, by the way), which takes forever because, strangely, the system has very little support in this regard.  I've also found the community there is a lot cooler.  I like NA and all, but I feel certain aspects of it have somewhat ruined what the community used to be.  I mainly post there to annoy people, get stuff I need (like maps, etc.) and to promote my comic.  They let me do it for the magazine so that's cool.  There are good people there, but yeah, there is something about it that's hard to explain unless you've been around awhile.

The obvious thing though, is that, like it or not, NA took most of the members from here.  Martin makes the point when he says it 'happened over night.'  Yeah, let's figure that one out.  If forum usage slows down, it doesn't happen that fast.  Any of us who frequent forums or spend time helping as moderators/administrators know that.  I've had a lot to do, granted, but I prefer here now because it seems most of the bullshit has gone over there.  I will say, for some strange reason, buying items from other users over there seems better.  I noticed a surge of more items over there and took advantage of that, but then again I'm still just playing for fun, not collecting really though I do like that.

One complaint that I do have with this site is that there isn't enough updating.  Martin writes awesome articles, and sadly they're overlooked a lot, but the site itself could use some work.  I, in fact, suggested to him in PM a user review of games section but he never responded.  I even offered to help with the code writing.  I see it looks like a section was added, unless I missed it before, but there's nothing there yet.  I think the main problem is that Martin is doing all the work, but he doesn't seem to ask or want anyone else to help.  Just a thought.  I know one of the reasons SMStributes gets so much activity is we have like 4-5 people who can access the admin section and update the site with whatever they want and fix things whenever they can.  If we left Andy to do it little would get done because he's been REALLY busy recently.

Well NES WORLD has one major flaw, which is that it's not being run by using a database for storin content.

This means that the site has no "admin area" you can log into, other than the password to the FTP site.

What is the coding done in, PHP?  I can navigate around that easy if you need any help.  I've been doing it for awhile now.  And with assembly slowly kicking in, my brain has become computerized...