SITE INFO. - Site History :: NGEB is not only a website, it's a... well, okay, it's just a website. If you wanna' know more about our history, or if you're just bored out of your mind, read this... NGEB is Born: 2000 NGEB started as an EarthBound fansite called Starmand's EarthBound Realm in December 1999. After a few months of fun, by July, it became obvious that EarthBound sites had already been done, so we closed down. At SpaceWorld 2000, the GameCube made its stunning debut, and inspired us to create another website. In September that year, Alex and I created the first version of NGEB, a site geared toward Nintendo's new GameCube, Game Boy Advance, and classic gaming reviews, as well as the glory of the EarthBound series. Within the next week, the site was up and running, and debuted on September 10th, 2000 (bad timing, huh). Video Games Advance: 2001 and 2002 Our excitement for Nintendo's two newest consoles only heightened throughout the year, especially when, in August, we got a chance to play GameCubes for the first time at the Toy Test in Seattle. With this our website grew tenfold over the course of just 12 months, and so we purchased our own 500-meg domain at BlueDomino.com in September. Wildly anticipating Nintendo's big releases, such as Smash Bros. Melee, Mario Sunshine, and Metroid Prime, NGEB took advantage of our new server size and bandwidth by providing a complete collection of the highest-quality screenshots and videos. Our focus all but pin-pointed on GameCube reviews and news in the system's infancy. Throughout 2001, we changed our layout design several times, and it wasn't until we reached a fifth incarnation in October of that year that we were finally satisfied with our look. "NGEB 5.0" wasn't altered for nearly a year after, and that alteration has remained our layout since. Unfortunately, BlueDomino didn't turn out to be the worry-free server it promised. We experienced a back-breaking amount of unpredictable server shut-downs and errors, all on the company's part. In October 2002, even after submitting billing information that was requested by the company, BlueDomino went ahead and shut down our server, deleting all the work we'd done over the past 2 years. Act 2, Scene 1: 2003 The show had to go on. NGEB was forced to start up again on a new server, re-creating what had previously taken 26 months to build. Given this chance to try again, we redesigned and recreated the site basically from scratch. We decided to reorganize everything in a way that would make NGEB something new and fresh for Nintendo gamers - a free site with interesting reviews and a "short, sweet, and to the point" approach toward everything we do. Our webcomic, Fanboys, also went up in the first few weeks of 2003. In-the-works since August the year before, Fanboys became an instant hit with our friends, family, and schoolmates, so we got it going as best as we could, all at some expense to NGEB. This turn is probably what was most responsible for us dropping the idea of trying to be a news site on par with Planet GameCube and just doing what we do best. "Touched" by an Angel: 2004 and 2005 NGEB pretty much remained a ghost site in 2004 - the innards of its former self dead within a different shell. Around September, I started to remember how much I loved writing reviews in the past, and so then, the review section got a bit of a jumpstart again. Aside from information on the Nintendo DS, very little else was updated on the site over the year. The DS exploded in early 2005 and we became some of its biggest fans. New reviews and updated information became more common. In August, we experienced another sudden server death, but, unlike that in 2002, were able to correct the issue and had the files necessary to start up again. The Future... In the future, we hope to keep NGEB around as one of the most straight-forward sites for free Nintendo information, history, reviews, and perhaps some fun on the side. What's in-store for us, no one knows. So stick around as history gets written on its own! Thank you for visiting, and goodnight!