Wow 10 years! As Billy said that is quiet an acomplishment.I wonder if we will see any forum members from that time...

YEAH! PARTY TIME! Billy, you still owe me dinner.

Wow, 10 years. That practically makes the site a senior citizen in Internet terms. I started browsing the site around 2002 and have been a loyal visitor ever since (it's even my homepage).

Glad to see you back Billy, even if it's just for this anniversary. I know I wasn't the only one a little sad when you left the site (even though we were proud of you for getting a job with Game Informer).

Someone needs to post a Birthday cake with PGC and NWR logos as well as all types of Nintendo characters around the cake.

10 years...  I've been pondering this for the last 10 minutes and it's still hard comprehend.  I first visited the site around 2000 in search of Dolfin news (took me about 3 years to join the forums).  Probably the only reason I still visit is because the site's stayed fan-based/fan-oriented while the others followed the dollars.  I've always appreciated that.

I gotta say, I can't think of many things I did 10 years ago that I do today.  Congratulations on 10 years of passionate reporting, right from Billy to everyone else who's been involved.

Just curious, how many contributors have there been since the start?

In internet news, that makes you a cool hundred.

I'm thinking that I first started going to the site in 1999 or 2000, but I don't really remember.  Feels like ages ago.

Aww, I remember N2000.
I'm glad the site here has stuck around this long. All of you guys have done a great job over the years and I appreciate all the work you've put into it and will continue to put into it. Happy b-day!

What's that, sonny? I can't hear ya!

Seriously, though, it's been a lot of fun strolling down memory lane. I hope you guys will enjoy this special!

I'm very excited for this weeks podcast. Are you going to have any special guests from the past? Maybe some pirates?
I loved the 100th podcast edition so that just heightens my excitement for this one.

Always good to hear from Billy.

Can Louie the Cat make an appearance? I loved him. Wasn't he based on a real cat?

Louie is real.  In fact, he's still alive!  Billy recently moved out to L.A. and had to drug poor Louie to get him on the plane.

I'll be digging through some old photos and putting them up, and I know for a fact that we have some old shots of Louie.

As for the podcast, who knows?  Anything can happen.  ;)

As for former staff members, our database is over 100 deep.  There's a ton of people in there that I don't even know.

Wow, 100 different people have worked on this site. That is very impressive.

At first i thought the headline was "happy bday Nintendo Power", and I thought that didn't make sense.

It turns out it didn't make sense.

I started visiting this site when it was Planet Gamecube and I enjoyed reading the content by fans for fans. Happy tenth anniversary and here's to the twentieth!

COME BACK, BILLEH!

Wow, ten years! It's been great to have a quality Nintendo fan site stick around for so long. Here's hoping it continues on for a good long time. Happy b-day, NWR!

Holy shit, I forgot that photo even existed. A bit surprised to see myself and no less a me that really needs a haircut.

I think I remember running into PGC when they had some sort of exclusive story that one of the big money sites link from. I came here for the news, stayed for the intelligence. Over the years it's strength varied, but with the latest change in directorship, it is the strongest I have ever seen it. It's face, staff, address my have changed, but it's core is still relatively untouched.

It's is THE best place to discuss all things Nintendo on the net.

10 more years !! 10 more years !!!

Not bad Vega.
We need more cakes!

MOAR CAKE

http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k302/shyguy70/mario_kart_wedding_cake.jpg

Ten years, it is teh craziness!
This thread is awesome too because we're finding out how long everyone has been around.

I myself discovered this site around the time the GameCube launched in Japan, although for one reason or another I didn't actively start visiting the forums until a few months ago. The site is still bookmarked as Planet GameCube because I'm too lazy to change it.

Time to celebrate! Kisses for everyone!

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j82/Mop_it_up/Internet%20Cache/Mauj.gif

...Er, I mean beer. Beers for everyone. Guinness.

Woo!  Let's all get wasted!

That doesn't say Happy Birthday to NWR..Fail

Nice Cake ShyGuy.
So let me tell you guys how I found the site.Before each Gen I look for Nintendo sites.So I was searching on Google back when the GameCube got its name.Planet GameCube was one of the first sites I found in the listings.So I came here.Looked around the site found everything to be nice.So I delved into the forums to lurk.I created an account.After a while I stopped posting.Went back to playing games.
Wii comes out.I get one December 1st 2006.While looking at some faqs on Gamefaqs I found out what VC games were coming out on Monday but I learned them on Friday.On January 11th 2008 I started posting.I posted on Fridays what VC games were coming out.I did that till Wiiware came out.When the info coming out was pluged.So I started posting news since news was pretty slow at the time.Nice job hiring Flames of Chaos. That helps alot.

A few memories of mine on this forum.My first Mafia game,SSBB not working and getting advice,The Wi-Fi nights,Celebrating the New Year in AC:CF,Celebrating Smash Brother's Birthday with Pap64 and Golden Phoenix,Bill leaving and Mario getting banned.Just getting to know you guys.

I want to know some of the staff's stories.

I found the site by serendipity. Gamespy used to have dedicated sites for various PC games (planetQuake, planetHitman, etc) I typed in planetgamecube.com and was shocked and dismayed that it wasn't a Gamespy site. Years later, I'm still ticked off about it.

I was super excited about the GameCube when I first fount this site. I haven't ever posted that much, but I'm a long time follower and reader.

And I miss the SHINE GET fun stuff I used to read about 'round here.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Has it really been 10 years? Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuussssssssssssssss tttiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttttttttttttttyyyyyyyyyyyyy fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuccccccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkinnnnnnnnngggggg


It's been a great run so far, let's see if you can make it another ten!

;D Cheers! ;D

I got on the staff back in 2001 by making these size comparison pictures:  http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/newsArt.cfm?artid=5154

At the time, Microsoft had not released the official dimensions of the Xbox so it was hard to tell exactly how big it would be.  I used the size of the dvd tray as a way to pin point the size of the xbox and scaled the pictures accordingly.  The rough estimate of size turned out to be pretty close.  The PS2 was a little too big however.

Max Lake wanted to post the shots, and a little afterwards Jonathan Metts suggested that I might want to join the staff.  So I asked Billy, he said yes and the rest is history.

At least it went something like that.  My memory is getting a little fuzzy on the details for something that occured so long ago.

I actually started by doing release dates way back in the day on Justin Nation's old site The 64 Source.  That was probably 1998.  Then Max Lake took over The 64 Source, then he shut that down, and I think after that I moved over to Nintendojo for a short while.  Then I took a break for a year or so, then Max started writing for PGC and got me hired there IIRC, then I quit PGC for a while (maybe a year or two?).  Then I came back to PGC about 2003/2004-ish, and here I am.

Just another rags-to-riches story.  LOL

Hmmm, well with me I joined in 2003 I believe. I popped in every once in awhile and defended things like Nintendo DS, but my posts were few and far between. I became more prevalent the day the Wii name was announced (Which I defended along with Mario and Hostile Creation), that brought me into the fold and from then on I've been annoying people since. ;)

What did you do over @ Nintendojo and what name/avatar did you work under? I followed them on an off over the years so I am curious if I remember seeing you as a review author or something.

How long till stevey comes in and bashes the site once more? :p

I've been lurking the site when the GC was still "The Dolphin". I remember the site had some exclusive info on Factor 5's Thornado, complete with an MP3 of one of the songs.

I never properly joined the site till sometime in 2006, when the Wii hype was its strongest. Despite its rough spots, arguments with members and some sour moments its been a blast and I've made a lot of friends here.

If you guys want cake...

http://www.planetgamecube.com/media/0/1/12.jpg

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/media/0/1/9.jpg

:D

Well, if we're doing stories... how about going OLD SCHOOL!

- I was always a Nintendo junkie and saw this really cool site while I was early on in college called N64HQ run by Scott McCall. One day he had a posting up looking for staff so I wrote some stuff and got on.

- Wrote some reviews and extremely long-winded editorials for the HQ for a while and then Scott decided to close to doors. OH NOES!

- At the very end of the HQ I decided I'd try to start up my own site and within a month or two from it closing The 64 Source was born. I'd managed to cobble together some great former N64HQ staff as well as nuts like Max Lake and Rob Stevens as well. Also picked up people like Jonathan Lindemann and some others who've come and gone.

- At its peak with 64 Source I think I was managing a staff of over 20 people. We had specific people dedicated to pretty much all major areas including news, codes, previews, release dates, etc. On top of that we had female staff, people from Europe, someone in Japan, and I think even a person in Australia. It was nutty.

- When news of Nintendo thinking about a new system was starting to form I decided to move into the business of thinking about that system... I was bored of 64 Source by then anyway. So right around the same time Billy was starting up Planet N2000 I was starting up OperatioN2000. I had more of a skeleton crew on OpN2k since it was all speculative but had much more fun trying to sift through the news and rumors as well as post things like "Dream Games" where we'd think like designers. Much more fun.

- My wife and I knew we were having a baby in a few months so I decided I couldn't be running sites anymore so we shuttered up OpN2k. Since Billy was running his own site and I wanted our content to live on (well, and to still have a platform for my blather when I felt like it) I decided to help him fold our old content into Planet N2000.

- At some point after my first daughter was born I took a graduate class on Cold Fusion and decided I wanted to kick around a project to help me learn both Cold Fusion and SQL server better. This mini-project ended up being the original Planet GameCube core that we launched around a year after I began coding. It was ugly, horrible code but it worked well enough to provide for a back-end and to spare the staff from having to hand-code HTML.

- When Billy noted that people have lost jobs over the site he wasn't kidding. Over the time I'd taught myself Cold Fusion and SQL I'd been working a real full-time job as well where I was bored to tears. When I showed them the scale of the project I'd undertaken to help them understand I could do more than they were giving me it was instead a major part of their rationale in firing me for a conflict of interest.

- For another story of how the site can do funny things to change your life (hopefully most of the time for the better) take a look at me. About 3 months later I got a new job working as a Junior level Cold Fusion programmer for a small company. I'd leveraged my experience with the site into a new opportunity to replace my old job that I really didn't like... that hiring happened 8 years ago this month. Now I'm the Directory of Strategic Projects at the same company. So I'd say that even though my ride hasn't been on the path of most with writing or being involved in some capacity with the industry I'm not complaining. :)

- Of course now with that change and my family I haven't really contributed since... though now I'm back to shake things up when possible since the Wii has made a 'family opinion' something more of value. Hope to have a new blog up sometime in the next week or two on the casual market.

Final sad fact: For all of the connections I'd managed to make over the years and people I'd managed to piss off I have never really been able to put together a chance to capitalize on it. The first E3 I could have attended was during my Honeymoon, and on subsequent years any number of problems have kept it from being realistic for me, the family guy, on the east coast.

Anyway, for myself I wanted to thank all of the people who have kept this independent site legacy alive. Thanks to all of the staff over the years of all of these sites, hell or even other ones on the scene out there for your time, care, and commitment. Thank you as well to the readers. My god there are too many outlets for information out there anymore... thank you for making this one of them. Truly, in this age that is as high a compliment as one can pay. Hope you all enjoyed this bit of chronology and factoids many people may not have known. :)

This is precisely how I found the site too.

You are all noobs compared to the mighty power of Scott McCall and I. :)

N64HQ FTW.

But seriously, I'm so very proud of the many people we've met that started there and the legacy that was to follow them. Billy, Justin, and others.

We weep happy tears. Or I do. Heck knows what Scott thinks. I assume something good.

holy shit Hrusecky lives!  Dude, last I heard, you disappeared from the face of the earth.  Something to do with AOL.  So you know what was a long time ago.

I think a ton of people found PGC through the Gamespy thing.  And as you'll hear on the next episode of Radio Free Nintendo, that wasn't exactly "serendipity"... Billy got the name for Planet N2000 from his love of Planet Quake, and then Ed Shih sniped the Planet GameCube domain within seconds of the console's announcement at Spaceworld 2000.

That was pretty smooth to grab the domain. Good for him.

Hey Jonny, I remember all too well the chaos of that time period. A perfect storm of E3, EA, AOL, family, and other issues collapsing onto my corpse, capped off by a sudden layoff. They had to freeze me for the last 6 years until they found the cure for spontaneous cerebral cortex combustion. What would I do without the fine folks at Prescott Pharmaceuticals?

In 1996, we didn't have the content management systems you whippersnappers use today. We did our HTML by hand, literally, not even with an HTML editor, and we liked it!

SO many memories since the early web years of 1996. The HQ, PN2K, PGC, now NWR... fun times! Ten more years!

In ten years our kids could be joining the forums. Now that would be frightening.

In another ten years it wouldn't surprise me if I will be dead.

I remember that picture, it is simply incredible. I stared at it for an hour studying its attention to detail. I love the Smash tournament taking place on the telly, where the Virtual Boy is using Pichu... and has already been eliminated. That's probably why the Virtual Boy person is slumped over on the table clutching a beer.

For the record I did not make this, Smash_Brother did. And yes the attention to detail is astounding.

The VB is slumping on the table for many reasons...
1. Its the worst selling Nintendo product ever
2. Its also one of the most maligned ever
3. He's playing as Pichu because Pichu is a gimped character (he hurts himself as he does his attacks), and the VB was very gimped.

Also notice how the NES is playing as Link while wearing a Link shirt, and the DS has a face painted on with Pictochat.

Two astounding things in this thread:

1) That birthday picture
2) HRUSECKY

I don't even know Mike, but as far as I knew he wasn't real.  He was like Sasquatch, or the Boogeyman, you know, something you tell your kids about at night to scare them.

Been visiting since OPN2000. Time flies.

i almost became the graphic artist at 16, when i was talking to Billy online my mom was giving me a bunch of crap about giving out my name and address. Its a good thing i didn't because there has obviously been more competent graphic designers here.

Man...10 years... I been visiting since right before the name change to Planet GameCube. And thanks to this forum, it has helped to get me where I am at another site, also working free of charge.

For those that think Pro started the "Media Blitz" threads...think again you youngsters. I started those threads back back in 2003 when Nintendo was all of a sudden throwing out all kinda of tv commercials and I was able to capture them on my computer through my tv tuner. My school had given each student their own web space which I used to host a few videos at a time. They would get rotated out when I got new videos.

Well someone found the link and send it in to what was then called GameCube Advanced. They gave the credit to that person. I contacted them and had it corrected so that I was given credit for it. I posted more on here, and they asked for more there. So thats when they brought me on there to run a page with all the Nintendo related commercials I could find. From there I evolved into the goto guy for video work from filming, editing, and posting online.

Thanks to the site with the forums, I got noticed by another site, where I've been ever since as a friendly competitor to NWR. I've had the fortune to meetup with a few of the staff from here over the years while at E3, GDC, and other events. I've met: Billy, Deg, Steven Rodriguez, TYP, Rick, Jonny, Bloodworth, and prob a few more that I don't remember. I should be going to E3 again this year finally so hope to see you guys there again. Here's to another 10 years!

speaking of commercials, i remember i sent Berto through the mail a stack of cds. A few had commercials, however the amount of content would be minimal now with Youtube and all. Back in the early days I saved about every trailer, every screenshot, and every rare commercial i could get a hold of, now they're available everywhere. I think I sent him something else to fill the rest of the box, but neither of us remember what that is.

edit: i sent him Game Over with the CDs...they had them ridiculously cheap at EB games, so i got him and a few other friends one.

Oh shit thats right! I still have those cds and the book! Man, I should go dig those out and see whats on em again.

Brave man, I could have sworn I heard the potential side effects of that drug were: Spontaneous Dom DeLuise Transformations, Crayon Worship, and Lollipop Guild Syndrome?

Really... that would explain a lot then.

Vaxicontin: Guaranteed to change your life, and possibly your genetic code.

I came to PGC probably like 2001 or so simply because it loaded way the fuck faster than IGN. ;)

Doesn't everything load faster than IGN? I think GameSpot loads faster than IGN. But I do like the minimalist approach thee site has going. I hope the redesign keeps the minimalist features to a degree.

I have to agree on the minimalist approach as to one reason why this site here is awesome sauce. One of the reasons I stopped visiting GameSpot is because the site strangles my computer with a single-minded fury rarely seen amongst websites.

Both IGN and GameSpot are like two mutated Japanese monsters that ravage your computer city's bandwidth in their never ending battle for market (and advertising) dominance.

10 years? Has it been that long?  :o

Its been so long, that there's no longer the little icon for a beer and wine glass... :'(

One thing that stuck out with me was the Aussie(and token New Zealander, you know who you are...) population in the forums when I joined. I didn't know they even had Nintendo down there... :P

They still hold the record for the most replied to thread at 4020 posts. The second highest would be the Wii Sales Data thread at 3714 so it is a pretty large lead.

Happy Birthday PGC/NWR!

Well, if everyone else and their mother is going to tell their secret origin, I might as well throw in mine as well...

Back in October of 2004, I was working at this Nintendo fansite called N-Insanity.com (it's no longer active). With the promise of free (!!!) games the tiniest bit of clout in the industry (in that I had an email address that wasn't Yahoo! or Hotmail), I really couldn't have been more psyched. And everybody else was pretty much just as inexperienced as I was, so it was fun learning how to write news, reviews, etc along with people I still call friends today.

Anywho, one of my fellow staffers at NI, as we called it, alerted me to PGC putting out an open request for writers back in November of '04. I sent in my application, in which I kissed a bunch of ass, and referred to a debug as a "decoder" (oy!). I think I threw in an editorial where I was pretty critical of then-new Nintendo marketing dude, Reggie Fils-Aime.

So like two months went by, and even though Jonny had sent me an email some time after my application went in answering a few questions, things were pretty much silent on that end. And in the mean time, I'd become the Editor-in-Chief of N-Insanity (we were actually starting to do pretty well - we had a Resident Evil feature that got some press on a bunch of RE fansites). But then came that cold, Miami night. January 19th, 2005. I got an email from Jonny saying something to the effect of, "So... you still want the job?" I was so ****ing excited, I actually called a bunch of my friends to tell them the news. I was (and still am, really) such a nerd.

The funny thing about it all is that, like two days before this all happened, I totally aped one of Lindy's previews to put together my own for NI. Hah.

So I joined the site, becoming the youngest person ever to do so (I was hired eight days before my 16th birthday), and the rest is documented for your reading pleasure. My first article was the 2004 Louie Awards (where I commented on a ton of games I hadn't played, and summed up a year for the site I hadn't been a part of), and I think my first review was Fight Night Round 2 (7.5/10, mostly because the GameCube's octagonal base for the C-Stick made pulling of haymakers a pain in the ass).

There are a couple memories that stick out vividly. Every once in a while, there'd be a game to show up at Jonny's then-place in Alabama (he was the guy who shipped games at the time - later on Mike Gamin did it, and I'm not sure if he still is now) that nobody wanted. And being such a busy dude himself (running the site, being the PR guy, holding a separate job of his own), Jonny had to bribe one of us into taking it via a "secret prize."

Little known fact: I always was, and still would be, a sucker for those damn secret prizes.

So in one such case, Jonny had to offload Ghost Recon 2 for GameCube, and seriously, NOBODY wanted this one. At the time, I was still new and eager to prove my worth, so when Jonny threw in a "secret prize," I signed up ASAP. The prize turned out to be a Limited Zelda Edition Gold GBA SP, along with a copy of Minish Cap. Ghost Recon ended up being pretty terrible (I think it might've been the worst game I reviewed in all three years of my working here), but hot damn did I dig that prize.

Another would be my first Monday in Tallahassee, FL, which was the first time I recorded Radio Free Nintendo actually being in the same room as Mike Sklens. We'd always made do with Skype, but man, actually being able to play off of each other in the same apartment was awesome. I later got the chance to do the same thing with Lindy while visiting Atlanta.

Tons of other things stick out (recording Nintendo Pirate Radio with Stan, arguing with Burchfield, the ridiculous days of media wrangling on the E3 Home Crew), but this is starting to get really long. So to wrap it all up, Happy Birthday NintendoWorldReport.com, PlanetGameCube.com, PlanetN2000.com, and N2000HQ.com. Thank you to Billy Berghammer, Jonny Metts, Steven Rodriguez, Jon Lindemann, and every other hard-working staffer who put their sweat, blood, and tears into making this a website that didn't just read with integrity, but soul as well.

Wow, did these things ever actually get released in the US?  I remember waiting to get one of these, but I never saw them for sale outside of Europe. 
And then I won the DS from PGC and my desire to ever acquire an SP vanished.
Incidentally, the only reason I ended up with an original GBA was to have something to do on the train ride to E3 2003 (which was a few years before I joined this site).

I KNEW IT!!  YOU SON OF A BITCH!!

Yeah, they never released it here in the States. I borrowed (and then, through apathy or silent anger, eventually owned) a charger from one of my friends, since it showed up with a UK power cable.

Muahaha! It was actually your Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow preview. I wish I could find my preview, but the Wayback Machine's being testy.

It's funny, but I remember neither the Zelda GBA SP nor that Ghost Recon 2 was ever released on GameCube.  For a while there, I had so much crazy shit coming to my apartment that I was going to the post office four or five times a week just to ship it all for reviews.

So many stories are coming to mind now. Killing Louie the Cat (not the real one, I swear!), the mini-fiasco with the first non-Louie rumor article (thanks Capcom PR!), the Dream Game Revolution contest (somewhere on an old hard drive there is a 400 KB Microsoft Word file that I read ALL of), etc etc. Great times.

As always, god damn late to the party, but even if late, congrats PGC/NWR! I can't remember why I stumbled upon the site, but I know I'll never leave, even though I'm not exactly a notewrothy forum participant.

You're noteworthy to me, Mantidor.

Aw thanks! the thing is, I just don't post as often as I used to, but well that comes with aging.

You have no idea how terrible it was during those lean years to be a Nintendo fan - it was just one long-running joke about Nintendo's Australian branch, which we were convinced was just an empty building that made them look like they cared.

BLOODY NAL!

As for the Aussie reputation on the forum, I don't think it was a "large group" rather than a small-but-loud-and-troublesome group that made us stand out from the others back in those busy days. A fair few gravitated towards that initial thread, but there were probably less than 10 that lasted any significant amount of time on the site (speaking of missing people, whatever happened to Uncle Rich AiAi?). Its here for anyone who can't operate the search functionality.

There was a follow-up attempt here which didn't even make 1000 posts, and then there was the super-secret Aussie board which had a lot of cool stuff (but has probably disappeared like Rick's secret wrestling forum). And then the special treatment kind of disappeared - they were probably sick of treating us like a protected species ("We ride kangaroos to school. What, you don't?") when we were probably more troublesome than anything.

But its been fun - the bannings and skirmishes with authorities, the arguments that somehow degenerated into photoshopping insults, T8's official PGC report at the Pokemon event, someone demonstrating how borked the old forums were, the Mafia games (I still owe RAB a backstab for killing his teammate with the worst Day 1 bandwagon I've ever seen - who'd have thought people cared about Pittboi), and so on and so forth.

Games? I think we did talk about games once or twice. Really! Its been a blast anyway!