ASSEMbler Games forum about to close

[MockyLock]

Well, it seems that this time, it'll really happen.
This museum of videogame technical knowledge is about to close in 30 days. Such a loss.
Hoping someone will find a solution to let all its content available for history.

 

[DinohScene]

RIP ASSEMblergames, Obscure gamers is trying to preserve the site as far as I could see quickly.

 

[Alexander1970]

Current account status -$2880 ($120 x 24 months)

It cannot continue at such a loss.

Thank you for being companions for 23 years journey.

-ASSEMbler

...and again all because of the money.......
Hopefully they have maybe options of preserving their considerable amount of "knowledge" for the future....
I hope so.....

Thank you for all of their contributions.

 

[tech3475]

...and again all because of the money.......
Hopefully they have maybe options of preserving their considerable amount of "knowledge" for the future....
I hope so.....

Thank you for all of their contributions.

Hopefully it's at least on the waybackmachine.

 

[Superbronx]

Hopefully it's at least on the waybackmachine.

I hope the wayback machine gets it all. I've noticed on other old sites contained in the wayback machine, it will have the home page but if you click to open another page from the homepage it gives an error.

 

[Foxi4]

It hasn't closed down *yet*, I normally advise caution and observing the situation from a safe distance before panicking. The site has been successfully dumped, the entire forum (as of December 2018) is downloadable, so damage is minimal if it does go down eventually. There are some alternative sites popping up already, so the users will likely migrate. It's sad to see such an iconic website in trouble, but I hear that the writing was on the wall for quite some time now.

 

[WiiHomebrew+Snes]

I wonder why this fell but places like GC-forever are still around. Kinda like how kmart is closed but there's still that one little food truck by the Walmart I've never seen anyone go to.

 

[TheMCNerd2017]

Wow, had no idea they were shutting down like that, and I visited it like two days ago! I Hope that all of the info there is backed up and publicly archived, as there is a lot of things on there that don't seem to be available on other sites currently.

Would be even better if the owner were to sell the site to someone capable of hosting it.

 

[Sheimi]

What a shame, he should make someone else take control of the site. I don't want to see it go.

 

[Dontuuch17]

I've visited this site for a couple nuggets of info on the DC scene in the past. It seemed like a solid place for knowledgeable people.

I understand the writing was on the wall, but that's still gotta be the most prompt and to the point forum closure message I've seen.

 

[Kwyjor]

Well, the news post seems dire enough. Makes me think of the last days of Home of the Underdogs, when the site administrator was long gone, the only people left were just trying to keep the lights on, and the forums started getting weird.

There's a whole lot of important history there – but I can't say I've visited recently, and apparently everything is being preserved, so, sic transit gloria.

I didn't even realize the original owner had stepped down. It's understandable, but doesn't he have an enormous quantity of prototype hardware and software that hasn't even been publicly cataloged? Is it just going to get tossed in a landfill if he unexpectedly dies?

 

[Deleted User]

How come I never knew about this place? It's exactly what I was looking for when I joined GBAtemp.

 

[Silent_Gunner]

Well, the news post seems dire enough. Makes me think of the last days of Home of the Underdogs, when the site administrator was long gone, the only people left were just trying to keep the lights on, and the forums started getting weird.

There's a whole lot of important history there – but I can't say I've visited recently, and apparently everything is being preserved, so, sic transit gloria.

I didn't even realize the original owner had stepped down. It's understandable, but doesn't he have an enormous quantity of prototype hardware and software that hasn't even been publicly cataloged? Is it just going to get tossed in a landfill if he unexpectedly dies?

IKR? This is like the 80% build situation of Resident Evil 1.5: it'd be nice if the Internet got its hands on the treasure, but because of the actions of a certain traitor on Team IGAS, it scared away the sources of information that they were in contact with, and in the end, after a lot of drama on The Horror is Alive (and some other Resident Evil forums as well, but it did include AssemblerGames if I remember right), it became a case of This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things not unlike the situation with Reicast, the author/main contributor and another person working on the standalone emulator/RA build of the emulator, RetroArch, and the aarch64 build right now that makes lakka and Ubuntu the only sure way to play those games on a Switch now. (yes, a lot of those games got ported to other consoles, but everything didn't come to GC (not that the Switch can even run everything GC)), I would be pleasantly surprised if PCSX2 somehow made it onto the Switch, and I have no idea how demanding hardware-wise Xbox emulation is gonna look like when it's where PCSX2/Dolphin's (preferably Dolphin, but PCSX2 is at least functional even if it tends to stumble all over itself with certain games and how easy it is to get everything to look right and run at full speed) at, so projecting what emulation of that system would look like isn't practical yet especially when there's two different emulation solutions atm that have produced anything resembling normal use.

Still, sidetracking aside, it's a sad day when the original contributers to discoveries of old, unused, and "laying-in-the-closet-collecting-dust" hardware/software ends up going unarchived for those who are curious and for which I can't imagine anyone at these companies honestly caring about unless if their name is Nintendo and maybe Capcom in the case of RE0 for N64.

 

[Ericthegreat]

$120 a month, how many monthly users did they have, seems like they could've got that down to probably $20 or so >.>; (unless they were a major site I just never heard of)

 

[xxNathanxx]

For fuck's sake, now I'll never be able to ask that one guy on the entire internet who was in the same situation as me for more info on how he solved his problem.

 

[Deleted User]

Now this are bad news indeed! I love that site.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

$120 a month, how many monthly users did they have, seems like they could've got that down to probably $20 or so >.>; (unless they were a major site I just never heard of)

AssemblerGames is olllllld, like used to be just a BBS in the 90s old. It used to be quite popular, one of the best sites to go to for info on beta games and such.

But based on what I've seen and heard around AssemblerGames, the site is only dying because the admin is being a jackass. He's been offered plenty of ways to keep the site going, from donations to buyouts from dedicated users, but just refuses because he has an inflated ego. Pretty much everyone on the site hates him these days. It's a shame he's being an ass about it.

 

[Ryccardo]

doesn't [random person] have an enormous quantity of prototype hardware and software that hasn't even been publicly cataloged? Is it just going to get tossed in a landfill if he unexpectedly dies?

That's one possible option... as are the new owner enjoying them themselves, or selling out (in good faith or as a scalper)

I didn't even realize the original owner had stepped down.

He indeed nominally did, after mentioning in a different post (I wasn't able to find in the ~2 hours I took to write the article) that his psychological condition made him unable to continue participating - but more than one person called bluff, with the new and not-better-identified admin also "not doing anything for most of the year then doing unpopular things for the week he's there", posting in a very dry tone, and ignoring even constructive criticism...

I actually tried to register 3-4 months ago, because a large load of current PS2 developments (Popstarter, FMCB/wLaunchELF, HDLGameInstaller, the DVD Player hacks, very comprehensive discussions on HDDOSD/PSBBN/the hard drive format itself) is there!

Makes me think of the last days of Home of the Underdogs, when the site administrator was long gone, the only people left were just trying to keep the lights on, and the forums started getting weird.

I guess it mirrors what happened to animalcrossingitalia.com (at the time one of the 2 leading Italian forums for the series) - founded by the rather active Luca Poni (bastard666 with some punctuation I don't remember), in 2013 or so he just disappeared and didn't reply to site-related questions on social networks, the (phpbb 2) forums started breaking down and becoming unusable (at least we still had some moderators, I guess) and the domain was about to expire, so I started a replacement forum on free hosting (mainly used as a stopgap hosting for guides and other original content, which were mostly manually transferred by other volunteers - right between the imageshack and photobucket apocalypses, just to add entertainment value), most of the activity stayed on the existing and separately-staffed Fecesbook group, and we got a Telegram group too;

of course we're nowhere as big as the old website was in its heyday*, though we probably are bigger than its last months/years when it had flagrant issues even more evident than Assembler's lack of staff and new accounts

* and we'll never know how much of that is due to rampant attempted centralization of the internet into commercial social networks, how much due to people moving to competing websites because their former favorite became broken, how many simply got bored with the series (especially with New Leaf having very unstable online multiplayer), ...

---

$120 a month, how many monthly users did they have, seems like they could've got that down to probably $20 or so >.>; (unless they were a major site I just never heard of)

As recently as 2012, Amazon's hosting wasn't cheap (https://blog.codinghorror.com/building-servers-for-fun-and-prof-ok-maybe-just-for-fun/) - granted, that's not exactly a bottom barrel and/or no name solution (and it's certainly not the one involved in this case), but it wouldn't surprise me too much if it was simply a very old plan designed around very old costs, still ongoing...

...and/or as someone pocketing the money (there's no evidence reasonably supporting this idea, but let's say administration, calls for donations included, haven't exactly been transparent for a long time)

 

[Dominator211]

Damn 23 years that was long before i was around

 

[sj33]

$120 a month, how many monthly users did they have, seems like they could've got that down to probably $20 or so >.>; (unless they were a major site I just never heard of)

Loads of the unreleased games which eventually appeared on the internet are only there thanks to ASSEMbler Games. This is a big loss.