I beat you all: I'm the oldest GBAtemp member here... ;-)

Hanafuda

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Nov 21, 2005
Messages
4,452
Trophies
2
XP
6,872
Country
United States
I was using gbatemp for its intended purpose back in those days, just checking everyday for new games. I didn't register an account for a while but now looking at 10 years in a few more months. GBA is still my favorite handheld by far.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Julie_Pilgrim

FAST6191

Techromancer
Editorial Team
Joined
Nov 21, 2005
Messages
36,798
Trophies
3
XP
28,284
Country
United Kingdom
Wait, the GBA was released in 2001, How GBA emulators could've had existed at that point?, let alone roms and some flashcards designed for it (I know that the 3DS had roms since the beginning, but we didn't have any kind of hacking until Gateway appeared), damn, the scene was really fast during that point, It would be nice if they were that fast with the PSVita.

I believe not too long before the official launch the official SDK/hardware docs leaked, and this was still at a time when the hardware docs/SDK for a console had good info.

Edit. GameBoy.Advance.AGB.Devellopment.Environment.v2.0.Win9xNT4-SPH on 2000-Nov-06 should be it. There was also 2001-Apr-30 Gameboy.Advance.AGB.Developer.Toolkit.v2.0.ISO-Ulysse

Edit. On being adults have some videos


 
  • Like
Reactions: Margen67

Issac

Iᔕᔕᗩᑕ
Supervisor
Joined
Apr 10, 2004
Messages
7,023
Trophies
2
Location
Sweden
XP
7,304
Country
Sweden
I remember the old times... well, not the earliest. I maybe downloaded a game or two from here (before this account's creation), but mostly when the IRC was the bees knees. I was a member on the IRC way before the account here (downloading Mega Man Battle Network 2 on release), playing on an emulator before I got my very first flashcart: a transparent red EZF Advance 256 Mbit. I got it based on a review here actually, and by then I had become a member :)

Loved this place ever since, the best community on the interweebz :wub:
 

Omero

Former Admin
OP
Former Staff
Joined
Oct 23, 2002
Messages
907
Trophies
2
Age
45
Location
Milan, Italy
Website
www.net
XP
448
Country
Italy
You said you created this site as a repository for gba roms, but tell me, weren't GBA roms common on the Internet? (Besides, i have to ask about the emulators, i mean, i don't think that in 2002 VBA Next or some thing like that existed, i bet that GBA emulators were much, much slower than nowadays emulators)

It was another time you have to remember. 2002 was not 2015. We didn't have 100+ share.whatever.com websites for uploading multi-megabytes files easily and share them, we didn't even p2p networks with huge availability of content.

Finding a rom basically meant to lurk IRC channels and/or community website to find some post/message sharing a link to a ROM uploaded illegally on some free web hosting space or FTPs.

Actually if I remember correctly, the easiest and most common way to find new ROMs was to lurk IRC channels and ask some admin/moderators of modding scene IRC channels to send you the ROM files, and there were even automated IRC bots with text command to get the list of available files, and select and download the rom/file you wanted!

But of course it was not as easy and as 'reliable' as it is today.

Me, alexander, KiVan were struggling every day to download the latest GBA roms and play them: sometimes it took up even weeks to find a working link the ROM we were looking for, especially immediatly after the ROM was released.

So we stepped in to fill a gap: provide a very simple single web page, with always working links to the 10 latest release GBA roms.

The ROM links and the webpage itself was so temporary due to hosting providers always bringing down our illegal material, that me, KiVan and alexander was basically checking every hour day and night if the links were down, and uploading the ROMs to a new webpage/hosting space every time, to ensure the links and the webpage were (almost) always available.

This is also how the "GBAtemp" name came to be :P

I remember KiVan having a 'stash' of 50+ free hosting account available, created with fake names and informations, to upload ROMS to and/or to 'swap' the GBAtemp dynamic DNS to, in case anything went down. I still remember me and Alex making fun of all the stupid fake names and information/addresses that KiVan came up with to register every day new free hosting spaces... those were funny (and reckless) times! :-)

Then we began also to post some news about the GBA and nintendo community, in addition to the ROMs. Then we decided to open a guestbook at the beginning (remember those in the 90s? ahahah). I still remember very well the wonderful feeling of reading the guest book comments of all the people that were using the GBAtemp webpage.

We knew from the quite high 'hit counter' always present on the page (remember those from the 90s too? ahhaah), that the website was popular, but to actually read the 'thanks' from the people was something... heartwarming, literally. We felt we created something real, we felt there were actual people using that we did and finding it useful.

The guest book then morphed into a a forum to meet online and discuss topics. This was the real birth of the GBAtemp 'community'.

Shortly after that the real community was born: with a news portal, forum and all, to avoid legal issues we outlawed the roms themselves, but kept the community. Also, when we did, the ROMs started to become so widespread on IRCs and sharing networks, that it was easy to find them anyways, so the need for 'GBAtemp' as it was born, was not there anymore.

But the community was born, and it's still alive nowadays! :-)

Wait, the GBA was released in 2001, How GBA emulators could've had existed at that point?, let alone roms and some flashcards designed for it (I know that the 3DS had roms since the beginning, but we didn't have any kind of hacking until Gateway appeared), damn, the scene was really fast during that point, It would be nice if they were that fast with the PSVita.

Basically, the world was very different from today.

I remember less than a year after the GBA came out to have flash cards with 100% compatibility already sold and all the ROMs dumped and available for play. Emulators as well!

Things got more complicated later on, with DS and so on, but with GBA, it was the modder's dream :-)

@Omero i have one question, why did you and your other friends leaved the website to other people? what happened for you to decide to abandon the staff?

We didn't leave it to 'other people'.

GBAtemp started as a silly exercise to share illegal ROM links with close friends done by a few IT italian university students in the early 20s.

Then morphed to be a "nintendo" community with a news portal, a forum, a community. All things that were wonderful but took a lot of time and commitment.

For a while (more than a while, a few years let's say) we kept up with it, but when real life, exams, work, girlfriends, wifes, families and kids started to request more and more of our time, we had to pass the ownership of the community to someone that:

1) We trusted deeply

2) Was available to invest the time, commitment and energies needed to keep the community going.

These persons were and still are Costello and Shaunj66.

Without them GBAtemp would have been a nice exercise that would have died out after a few years for lack of care in keeping the website, forum, portal, news and community alive.

And even them would have not been able to actually achieve anything without the always present contribution of the flood of moderators, editors, contributors, etc... that came and went over the years.

They did all this together and still do, and they deserve so much more gratitude than me, Kivan or alexander, which just set the wheel in motion at the beginning :-)
 
Last edited by Omero,

BORTZ

DO NOT SCREENSHOT
Supervisor
Joined
Dec 2, 2007
Messages
13,243
Trophies
3
Age
34
Location
Pittsburgh
XP
15,972
Country
United States
I regret joining late into the endtimes of DS homebrew. I wish I would have known about DS flashcarts earlier, but I only caught them in the middle of their lifespan. I would have loved to be part of early GBAtemp history.
 

Maximilious

Whistles a familiar tune
Member
Joined
Nov 21, 2014
Messages
2,571
Trophies
1
XP
1,855
Country
United States
It was another time you have to remember. 2002 was not 2015. We didn't have 100+ share.whatever.com websites for uploading multi-megabytes files easily and share them, we didn't even p2p networks with huge availability of content.

The days of Napster, AudioGalaxy, Kazaa, Morpheus and countless other P2P programs all downloading at mere 56k speeds over NetZero connections. Those were the days... NOT (also a 90's reference :lol:)
 

The Catboy

GBAtemp Official Catboy™: Boywife
Member
Joined
Sep 13, 2009
Messages
27,801
Trophies
4
Location
Making a non-binary fuss
XP
38,778
Country
Antarctica
I may not be that old, but I am still pretty sure I have my place somewhere in the Temp's history.
I've seen your name floating around a bit, mostly when I was lurking without an account many eons ago. Its good to see you back, I was really hoping one day meet the creators of the Temp.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Julie_Pilgrim

diowolf

Well-Known Member
Newcomer
Joined
Aug 25, 2015
Messages
87
Trophies
0
Age
30
XP
172
Country
United States
This forum should change its policies and go back to hosting roms.

Just saiyan'

latest
 

TecXero

Technovert
Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2014
Messages
2,810
Trophies
0
Location
Mainframe
XP
1,040
Country
United States
I remember you back from when I used to just lurk. I got into modding, homebrew, and tinkering in general (beyond just burning discs for a Dreamcast many years ago) because this site made that information easily accessible. I have a job now because I developed a bit of a knack for fixing consoles, handhelds, PCs, and just electronics in general. In a way, I have you and many others from the site to thank for where I am today. Thank you.
 

Cyan

GBATemp's lurking knight
Former Staff
Joined
Oct 27, 2002
Messages
23,749
Trophies
4
Age
45
Location
Engine room, learning
XP
15,646
Country
France
Talking about GBA emulator, you would be surprised that the emulator was released BEFORE the console release date ;) (or was it for NDS?)
and of course, it was functional on both demos and retail games on first game dump.

But Flashcart was more widespreaded than emulators, it was expensive (100 times the price of your cheap R4 or 4 times a gateway), it was VERY SLOW to transfer ONE ROM (no multi-rom menu, etc.) with LPT ports (no USB at that time) and a dedicated GBA cart writer (no MicroSD card).
But that was the thing, and we all had one :)
Later, it became possible to install more ROMs with some patchers (gba daddy! Little Writter).

now it's so easy to pirate, if users don't have multi ROM, FAT32 support, drag and drop without patching, cheap or free solution, it's end of the world ahaha
 

tHciNc

Total Random
Member
Joined
Jan 14, 2006
Messages
861
Trophies
1
XP
1,678
Country
New Zealand
I remember downloading gba roms and other stuff from xoom geocities tripod angelfire etc and public ftps, 15megs free web hosting lol. Pubs where awesome back then as you could fxp stuff around even on dialup... haha
 
  • Like
Reactions: Margen67

PSxed

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Aug 28, 2014
Messages
113
Trophies
0
Age
36
XP
457
Country
Netherlands
Good old days of buying a flash linker from sites like lik-sang and downloading roms from #gbatemp (was it on rizon back then?).
 
  • Like
Reactions: Stealphie

duwen

Old Man Toad
Member
Joined
Sep 6, 2013
Messages
3,176
Trophies
2
Location
Bullet Hell
Website
www.exophase.com
XP
4,257
Country
United Kingdom
Oldest linker/back-up device I have is a Doctor SF7 for my Snes... that uses floppy disks! It's a painful process of converting roms to a special format for the device, and for anything over the maximum 1.44mb disk size they need to be spanned across multiple disks - needless to say, I don't use it too often anymore!
I do still use my 256mb EFA linker and 2gb EFA II linker on my GBA's though.
 

Site & Scene News

Popular threads in this forum

Hi

General chit-chat
Help Users
  • No one is chatting at the moment.
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    Batman joined the Trans Justice League
    +2
  • Sicklyboy @ Sicklyboy:
    based af
    +2
  • Sonic Angel Knight @ Sonic Angel Knight:
    Forget the base, get on the roof.
  • K3Nv2 @ K3Nv2:
    Is that a bat in your buckle or are you just happy to have me
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    Wonder "Woman" lol you wonder if they are a woman?
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    The Riddler has questions...
  • K3Nv2 @ K3Nv2:
    Played a little of snow day glad I didn't spend $30
  • K3Nv2 @ K3Nv2:
    It's asthetic is okay maybe a good $10 grab
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    Lol is it a game about doing cocaine?
  • K3Nv2 @ K3Nv2:
    Probably in pvp
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    I tried Balders Gate II on the PS2 a few minutes ago, not bad lol
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    My back catalog of games is like that scene at the end of Indiana Jones where the arc of the covenant is being stored in a giant ass warehouse
  • K3Nv2 @ K3Nv2:
    At least I can will my game catalog to family members
    +1
  • K3Nv2 @ K3Nv2:
    It's your problem now bitches
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    Put it in your will that in order to receive any money they have to beat certain games, hard games and super shitty games...
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    Say 20 bucks per Ninja Gaiden on the NES lol 60 bucks for all 3
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    People you like "Beat level 1 of Ms Pacman" lol
  • K3Nv2 @ K3Nv2:
    Hello kitty ds is required
    +1
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    Beat Celebrity Death Match on the PS1 omg tried it earlier today .... Absolutely trash
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    Like -37 out of 10
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    One of the worst games I have ever played
  • K3Nv2 @ K3Nv2:
    Make them rank up every cod game out
  • K3Nv2 @ K3Nv2:
    "Now I know why he took his own life"
    K3Nv2 @ K3Nv2: "Now I know why he took his own life"