Like it says, post away on your feelings regarding other online gaming forum sites.
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Like it says, post away on your feelings regarding other online gaming forum sites.
What other video game forums?
Why would you even make something up like that?!
The good: AtariAge
The bad: Neo-Geo.com
The Ugly: NintendoAge
Is that the correct answer? :p
What I am looking for is realistic ratings based on actual experiences. Comprende?
Nintendo Age and Sega Age aren't that bad. I wish SA was more active though. Also digipress and neoseeker are decent.
I spend a lot of time over at the Digital Press forums, and while I'm not active Atari Age is cool too.
Nintendo Age sucks, and they full-out hate Sega-16. Elitist bastards.
I participate on the following gaming forums (some more than others) and here is what I think of them based on my usage (some of these places I have not been around for long so I may not have an entirely accurate view of the community):
Sega-16 - Obviously great site with a great forum and this is probably the most populate forum I visit, a ton of active members here. Many members are crazy smart and fun to read. But this forum is also the most annoying because it requires the most babysitting of the members.
Magic Box - The Magic Box is a fairly tight-knit community with a lot of cool (and some odd) folks. Most discussion revolves around current-generation happenings as it is a news site. But the folks here are cool and generally well behaved. Probably the most behaved forum I visit even though some outright strange shit is posted from time to time.
PC Engine FX - This place revolves around the TurboGrafx-16/Turbo Duo and shit like that. This is a very small forum with about 10 total members (or at least it feels like). Lots of good stuff here, especially for the PC Engine aficionado. Not much out of the ordinary happens here but when drama comes around, you'd better watch out. This place LOVES drama. This has decreased significantly since some members have left, but the administrator of the site only pops in for about 3 minutes once every 2 years or so.
Screw Attack - I started posting blogs on the site to help promote Game Sack. I thought I'd poke around in the forums for a bit. Pretty vapid, nothing special. Not a whole lot of active members. I was told that these people clamor for anything to do with games, but I don't really find that to be the case. The main portion of the site outside of the forums is run like shit (the way their web site is built sucks... they keep promising upgrades but it never happens). They spend all of their money on AVGN episodes and none on the site itself.
Digital Press - I haven't visited this place since Sega-16's forums came back up. I don't really have anything bad to say about anyone over there, but there are very few members there and conversations are hard to start or get involved in. I did not return due to "lack of interest".
Racket Boy - This forum is neat because of the focus on retro stuff mainly. Not very many interesting topics to discuss, but more than Digital Press. I'll hang around for a bit longer and see if the place grows a personality.
Neo-Geo.com - This place is just vile and full of hatred. I haven't been the recipient of it, but damn, this place really needs to get laid.
I like how you linked the Sega 16 forums there Joe.
I think Nintendo Age is fine, I think on this forum and on NA you get a lot of people who are still fan boys so they run their mouths, but the truth is both of these forums are pretty good with lots of good info and helpful people. Of course we have aholes on both sides so it really just depends. Sega Age is pretty low key as is isn't very old, so the activity level is lacking, but where it shines is its info on Sega CD, thanks to members I know are Sega Age as well as Sega-16. http://www.satakore.com/forum/index.php is a new forum, or an old forum now in english I am not really sure dedicated to Saturn for the most part, it's new and needs member so if you love Saturn join up. Digitpress has great forums, but it is a little to unfocused for me. Hope this helps.
Fine, I'll put up some legitimate opinions...
Sega-16 - In the soon to be 2 years I've spent here, this is by far the best forum I've ever been on. The large majority of the members are intelligent, nice and probably trustworthy too. There's tons of useful information scattered among the forums, some of which has found it's way into surrounding communities (like good and bad Genesis systems). The mod squad may be small, but at least they aren't egotistical assholes. Even the trolls are some of the tamest I've come across. Just as an example, 17Days was a pretty nice guy, but had a serious anger problem. The site is well maintained and updated and the Melf takes pride in seeing that continue.
AtariAge - Probably the second nicest forum I've been too. I don't often hang around that much, but I've bought some things off here and gotten to know the community. Perhaps the best part of AtariAge is how well it managed to encompass all of gaming, both vintage and modern, without all the chaos, idiots and hatred that normally comes along with that kind of environment. Like with Sega-16, most of the users are very nice and aren't morons. They know how to keep a community friendly and inviting, even though the average age is probably 40 years old (though that may explain why). The AtariAge Store is very nice as well. It's clearly given more attention than the main AtariAge site. It's a great place to get some NEW stuff for your Atari. In fact, I wish more sites would adopt this kind of system when it comes to homebrews (though RetroUSB comes pretty close, but not really affiliated with NintendoAge).
NintendoAge - Now this place is quite something else. It's not necessarily a good or bad community, it's just... Weird. Not to be mean, but the forum attracts a pretty exotic crowd. Not in an international sort of way as it is with Sega-16, but just in how the members are. To put my view in a nutshell, they have a Campout held every year, hosted by one of the members (no other forum I know of does this). They are pro-VGA (game grading company, perhaps the only community I know of that supports VGA), in general they have a hard-on for sealed collecting (again, I don't see this often elsewhere), also largely have a hard-on for prototypes and their homebrew scene is surprisingly active (at least they have NES programming tutorials!). Overall it's just a clearly "dare to be different" kind of forum. It's pretty inviting of new members, but at the same time, their way of doing things can turn new people off.
SegaAge - Pretty much identical to NintendoAge, except it's Sega themed and nowhere near as active.
Digital Press - Not that bad of a forum at all, but I haven't spent enough time there to really form an opinion.
Neo-Geo.com - This like an evil version of NintendoAge. To put it simply, this place seethes of pure hatred and loathing. It's almost if the hatred between England and France were personified in a game forum. They hate new users, hate themselves, STILL hate Neo-Geo Freak after a solid 10 years after the name ever meant something, hate other forums with this elitist mentality and they all hate each other. These people don't even talk about Neo-Geo most of the time, except when it's NGF bashing time like old farts. The only people not full of hate are a small band of hardened Neo fans who still keep the machine alive. In fact, despite the horrible reputation of the forum itself, Neo fans have done wonderful projects, like the NeoSaveMasta (new production memory card), the NeoBiosMasta (an easy way to UniBIOS mod soldered BIOS Neo MVS systems), fixes for the Pranslation and Phantom-1 to play more MVS games and I've also seen progress on a new production MVS coin LED thing. I can't remember the name, but it's still fantastic.
NG.com also has one other merit to it's otherwise sullied name. They have an iron-fisted, no tolerance "policy" on scammers. If someone is scammed (or if a lot of people are scammed), the NG.com horde will hunt down the scammer and rip his balls off, literally.
Haven't really been anywhere else on the net, Sega-16 is really all I visit these days...
The official Sega Forums are pretty funny to look into every now and then. Especially the Phantasy Star Sections. God has there been some hilarious drama there.
PSO-World is pretty similar in that sense too.
I don't frequent any other forums (gaming or otherwise) :)
The Good: I keep hearing great things about AtariAge, even though I've only lurked a few times. It does seem like a neat crowd. I also dig racketboy, despite their total lack of proof-reading; but I got pissed-off at them after the third spyware attack through their site. I haven't been around for over a month. I don't know if I'm the only one in that situation, but I sure know I'm not lying about it. They really need to increase their security.
The Bad: Any gaming forum that can't carry a thread conversation past two posts. You know which ones I'm talking about. It's lifeless, I tell 'ya!
The Ugly: CheapAssGamer. It's like it wanted to cater to so many at the same time, it lost track of it's niche (not that it had one, 'just an expression :?). I haven't been there for a long time now, but when I used to frequent it, the place felt like a saturday afternoon at the mall (and I don't mean that in a good way). I think the average (active) user age is 12 years old. And if not, then it sure feels like it.
Atari Age is great except for the troll infested Jaguar forum and the moderators who are complete tools and ban people for seemingly no reason other than they don't like them. I have seen many really good members banned from there over the years and the forum is a much worse place for it these days sadly. If you want a really good Atari discussion forum then there is Atari Proppa, only found this place recently and its a quite private forum where every member has to be approved by the admin and it has a fairly small user base but the people there are really knowledgable and there is some superb exclusive stuff. I also like the banter there, you can have a really good laugh, as well as the built in chatroom. It seems to have taken over from Jaguar Sector 2 in many repects which seems to have died a horrible death, shame as I used to love that place.
Retro Gamer Magazine forum is rather good, the actual forum its self looks like crap and gets rather cluttered because of too many things being discussed in the few seperate and badly defined rooms but there is some fantastic discussion there all the same. Especially good if you are from the UK and its the only UKcentric forum really.
I got to sestren.org every now and then. I'm shocked nobody has mentioned IGN though. I was on that site back when they were still called Secrets of Sega Sages. But IGN banned me to many times for foul language so I had to leave them behind.
Good? Sega 16. The Bad? Gamefaqs - full of morons. The Ugly? SegaAge; horrible logo and the place is aimed at trading more than discussion; not my cup of tea, that's for sure.
Agreed. I was a member at Atari Age for the past 2+ years and was recently banned. I said nothing out of the way, in fact helping many members over there with tips, technical know-how, along with a free service repairing Atari 5200 controllers for the people. I even did a giveaway where I held a drawing and awarded new Atari games to foreign site members who could not get the games any other way. Al (the owner) has a strict "no politics, no religion" rule and plainly did not like me because of my avatar. I was talked to in bad ways by trolls (even some moderators) and I always got the warnings for simply sticking up for myself. What I saw was that Al and the site mods had a click going and they could talk to you any way they wanted and ban you for absolutely nothing. Two prominent members over there were former Atari programmers who were treated like gods. Suffice it to say that they could talk down to you like you were trash and nothing was said. Good riddance to the place.
The only other ones I frequent are Sega-16 and Nintendo Age. Sega-16 is my favorite, and Nintendo Age seems to have more than a few immature types, if you get my meaning.
I think I remember bits and pieces of that. They sure didn't take a liking to you, TZ. :|
Well, there's nothing to worry about here. We may not be able to compete with AtariAge's traffic, but at least we hold a much fairer ruling. Heck, if I had a 5200, I'd see how good you are at fixing them. :)
This is a great place to share modifications and repairs though. I wish people would show off their stuff more often, like I have the past couple of times.
Hey I remember you from AA man and always thought you were a fantastic member, sad to hear you were banned too :(
I just don't get Albert at all he is probably the biggest hypocrite on the internet and his mods are probably the biggest trolls on the forum. The only one is ok is Punisher (at a push), it was A LOT better when Chickybaby was there. Just showed how fucked up that place is when they ban their own moderator (chicky) when she was recovering from cancer simply because she didn't agree with a bunch of trolls in the Jag forum being left to run riot. Outright disgusting in fact especially as they covered it all up by making up some quite frankly disgusting stories about her sleeping with forum members when she had cervical cancer. In fact I see one of the people who created those stories has now been made a mod, guess he fits in perfectly with Sauron and the rest.
Wow, that is seriously messed up. That's all true, Crack Down? Yikes, I guess I was never in touch with AtariAge's darker side. Kinda makes me feel like I was only seeing the happy part of the Sunnyside daycare, while underneath Lotso (in this case Albert) ran a pyramid and arranged his toadies to torment the good toys of the establishment... Sorry, Toy Story 3 was a really good movie. :D
In all seriousness though, these claims make me sick. Out of principle I should no longer visit there. The crap surrounding Chickybaby is the worst though. It always felt like something stunk about the whole situation, but I never imagined it'd be that bad.
now I'm at 778, what does that mean? :)
I freakin hate IGN, they perminately banned me cause I apparently was advertising in one of there threads saying that I had a youtube channel that would upload game music by request. better if you Banned me for a week and warn me but don't just perm banned someone for doing something they didn't know was wrong.
Sega 16 = I dont know I have not been here long enough. So far its a fun place to be.
Neo Geo forums = never been there. Considering how much neo I've been playing maybe I should try there next?
Gamefaqs = Great forums, very disiplined but you are allowed to fully voice your opinion
other - I also go to an art forum that is for my "real life" hobby apart from leisure videogaming
Sega-16 is the only gaming forum I visit regularly. Discussions are intelligent, everyone is nice, and there's a lot of helpful info. I've never been to Nintendo Age, is it full of Nintendo elitist retards? I've been wanting to check it out, but I'm afraid I'll get pissed off quickly.
I still stand by what I said about the official Sega Forums being full of hilarious Drama.
Some fun examples from the Phantasy Star section:
Admin/GM Clumsyorchid goes into the unofficial PSOBB IRC channel and gets banned for accusing a channel OP of hacking. Then bans some of the IRC OPs from the Forums. Needless to say the Forum went into a huge war for about a month.
A more recent one was when the lack of updates for the US version of PSU had reached an all time low, the GM Edward announced a lame rehashed event from 2-3 years ago which pissed everyone off and caused lots of complaints. By the end of it the admins banned helpful people of the community for simply asking the question of "How much of a delay will this put on the next major update?" as well as the GMs saying "If you don't like it you can quit the game."
For everything you need to know about my ban at Atari Age, go over and look at some posts within the past two weeks that have my name on them. I used the same name over there, tz101. Notice how my avatar has been removed. Even Chicky Baby's avatar is still on her old threads, but mine has been removed. Hmmmm....
That site is beyond ugly.
NeoGAF is a good place for snapping up news and info before the general gaming press writes about it.
Racketboy, Digital Press, Screw Attack. Those are the only three that I can stomach. None of them get nearly as much of my time as this place does though.
www.playstationcollecting.com is good for PSX stuff. I just wish there were more activity on the forums.
Kind of dead over there.
I also like the sega-saturn.co.uk forums, though I haven't been over there in a while. Admin Mick_AKA used to be pretty active here on Sega-16.
Oh and I forgot about a site called PC EngineFX, dedicated to the TurboGrafx. It is a very secluded community and it seems you need to pass some kind of background and wait weeks before you can post.
We also require that you pass a drug test to get in. You pay for it. Also, credit, criminal and sexual predator checks are necessary.
Damn, I don't think I'd ever pass the PCEngineFX registration if one needs to be a sexual predator on top of everything else... And I've never gotten very high scores on the drug test either... :(
:p