For starters, it was one of the first message boards where I regularly hung out. I joined around 2002, not long after the forums were established (though the Digital Press fanzine dates all the way back to 1991). The forums attracted a mix of older and younger fans, veterans who remembered the Atari days mingling with folks younger than the Sega Genesis. It was my introduction to the staples of a busy forum: the in-jokes and feuds and gimmicks and contests and meltdowns and drama and moderator squabbles and the occasional threats of real-life physical assault over differing opinions on Springer or Darius Twin.
I miss it in some ways. Today’s social media lets us connect with others quickly and conveniently, but that immediacy is its own cost. I liked the way the Retrogaming Roundtable was never too big. I could log in once or twice a day without the risk of missing out on anything, and I could take time to compose a post without fretting over wordcount limits. It was a place where, to borrow that myth of small-town Americana, everyone knew everyone. And sometimes hated them.
Beyond any personal connection, the Digital Press Retrogaming Roundtable had a lot of useful information. Industry veterans would occasionally pop in with stories, and technical questions invariably attracted people who knew what they were talking about. It was a place for diving into the obscure, whether it was uncovering Micronics’ covertly programmed titles or finding out if certain Sega CD and 32X games ever saw official releases. And those subjects aren’t as obscure these days, now that retro-game collecting has wider scope and higher prices.
Like most forums, Digital Press declined as the 2010s arrived and everyone migrated to Twitter, Facebook, and other venues. The forums chugged on, kept afloat under new management, but I only stopped by on occasion. Sometimes I wasn’t in the best of moods, as I was disdainful of game collecting and other nerd passions for what I now realize were silly reasons. At the time I honestly didn't care if I got banned, but now I'm glad I didn't.
It seems that the forums are backed up, though a searchable database might not emerge. I’ll miss those occasions where I went looking for some ancient scrap of video-game history and found it on an old Digital Press thread where I’d actually posted many years ago. There’s a lot of valuable information there, so I’m glad it’s preserved somehow.
I did little to help that, I’m afraid. For all of the unique material contained on those forums, the only posts I saved were a few that amused me. Perhaps I can wring some meaning from them.
A lot of Digital Press chatter started off with someone needing help in getting past a boss or a puzzle. Forum user “grape,” however, perhaps had other motivations.
Well, sure, but why are the boots so important?
Uh…
You don’t say.
Threads like this made me realize something: for just about every character in video games (and perhaps all fiction) there’s at least one obsessed fan. Sometimes those fans are just fascinated by a humble enemy’s design or a shopkeeper’s mannerisms. Sometimes they’re innocently sympathetic to a memorable character with a small role. And sometimes they’re just unabashed pervs.
I met plenty of cool people through the forums, and one of them was the artist known as Bratwurst. He’s made all sorts of great comics, illustrations, and technical wonders (and my site’s banner), and his forum antics always amused me. This one still makes me burst out laughing.
Perhaps Kaine was naïve to assume that any old video games would remain on store shelves for long, but this was an era when such things were in lower demand. Thrift shops and flea market vendors might have bins full of old NES or Sega games for a few bucks each, with future high-ticket rarities like Wild Guns and M.U.S.H.A. just sitting there unwanted.
In recent years the Retrogaming Roundtable’s traffic was low enough that some members realized they could post incoherent rants without many people mocking or challenging them. Some of these diatribes were about video games, but other posts had a lot bubbling below the surface.
Nostalgia drove a lot of the discussion on Digital Press. If nostalgia is superficial at its base level, it’s often a springboard to more interesting matters: historical studies, debunking an idealized past, humorous anecdotes, and even personal growth. Yet it’s easy to sink thoughtlessly into that pool, and the above nostalgia-poisoned ramble shows just what happens when you never shake the myth that everything was better simply because you were young and never required to think too much about anything. I believe the person who posted that thing was banned for it, and I hope he gets help.
If there’s any real lesson here, it’s that you might want to save interesting things you find on message boards. The Internet’s a fragile thing, after all, and there’s no guarantee that something you like will stick around. It’s not exactly fair, but hey. Them’s the breaks.
