Sometime in late 1995 or early 1996, the internet came to life in my house. On his old 386 computer, my father clicked on the Netscape Navigator icon from its Program Manager group in Windows 3.1. After about five to ten minutes of dial tone and loading, the internet was finally up and running. For the first year or two, the internet was used for general purposes - the news, the weather, and of course, downloading MIDIs of my favorite games.

In 1998, my dad bought a new computer equipped with a Pentium II processor, and Windows 98. With a faster processor, I was able to explore more possiblilities on the internet. I even signed up for my own personal email account (hotmail). Sooner or later I found out that it was possible to make your own webpages. I soon found Homestead's page editor and got to work.

The Offspring Paradise

My first site was dedicated to an alternative band called The Offspring. Although my musical tastes have changed drastically since then (for the better), they were one of my favorite bands at the time. The site was pretty much crap, filled with about three pictures of the band that I rippd off of other people's sites, a few song lyrics, and, as a bonus, the names of the band members! I also used about every Homestead feature there was - a guestbook, a chat room, animated images, etc. The Offspring Paradise lasted about two weeks before I decided that it was a load of crap. It was time to move on to my next site...

Dan's World of Everything

In a way, this site was almost a precursor to the Realm of Gigs. This time around, I tried using Geocities. This website had a bunch of different sections with I called "worlds." There was a world for video games, music, television, and movies (sound familar?). Only one section was done, and that was, of course, the video games section. It consisted a few tips and tricks, and "games that everyone should own." In case you were wondering, the tips and tricks were the following: the Konami code, and how to change a character's name in Chrono Trigger. Sooner of later, it was time to pull the plug on Dan's World of Everything.

For the next year, I took a much needed break from website building. I discovered a few new things, including AOL Instant Messenger, and Yahoo! Groups. However, my next big excursion was right around the corner.

Video Game Heaven

Upon enter high school, I met a lot of new friends. One person (who shall remain nameless seeing as though I have spoke to him since graduation) shared my love for video games. We started talking, and we both decided to make a website about video games. Thus, the generic title of Video Game Heaven was born. Angelfire was the sad victim this time around. My buddy handled most of the formatting (which didn't look half bad, actually), and we both wrote some of the worst reviews ever written. Video Game Heaven (or VGH as we liked to call it) actually lasted for a long time. We didn't keep up with it, mind you, but it was online for quite some time. Towards the end of the school year, a representive from a website called "Video Game Heat" wrote a message in our guestbook claiming that we essentially stole our name from them. We both regarded the message as a load of crap, and went on with our daily lives. It was around that time that we started forgotting all about the site. I'm not sure exactly what happened to it, but I assume Angelfire took it down.

Dan's Quick Movie Reviews

Ah, who can forget Quick Movie Reviews? The answer: me. This site was so bad that even I, the creator, forgot all about it! Basically, it was a website which featured several movie reviews, most 3-4 sentences each. All the reviews were on one page - a text file. I'm pretty sure I still have the file saved somewhere, so if I find it I'll post it on here. Feeling defeated yet again, I removed the site a few weeks after I started it.

UPDATE: After searching through some of my old floppy disks, I managed to locate the legendary "Quick Movie Reviews" text file. Be warned - these reviews are awful. They're so bad that I feel embarassed to even show them to you. So, if you thought my current reviews are terrible, you haven't see anything yet: Dan's Quick Movie Reviews Text File

NES Collision!

In my sophmore ear of high school, I began a fascination with the Nintendo Entertainment System. As a result, I started hanging around the NES message boards at GameFAQs. Out of complete and utter boredom, I started making hybrid pictures of NES games. In other words, I took screenshots from two NES games and mixed elements from both pictures. I made abput six of these. Then, I slapped them a webpage (on Homestead) and made a heading: "NES - When Worlds Collide." Proud of my work, I made a post on GameFAQs promoting my site. It was a hit. Day after day, I began making more and more "collision" pictures. For some unknown reason, people couldn't get enough of them. Eventually, I moved everything to Angelfire and changed the name of the site to "NES Collision!"

NESFAQs (and the NES scene)

With NES Collision in full force, I decided it was time to take my love for the NES to the next level. So, I posted another message on the GameFAQs forums asking people if they'd be willing to help me create an NES site. Several people agreed, and within no time, NESFAQs was born. The name of the site was clearly a rip-off from GameFAQs, but we didn't care - we were just a bunch of NES fans wanting to give people their fair share of 8-bit greatness. Little did I know that this would be my greatest internet project ever.

Around this time, I began posted at RoyalRanger's NES Boards. It was (at the time), the biggest NES community on the net. I met a lot of great people there, and soon became part of the great NES Scene (R.I.P.). Of course, that's a story within itself, but much of NESFAQs success had to do with the scene.

As it turned out, I ended up doing most of the work on the site. So, I fired my team, but most of them didn't seem to care. I also moved the NES Collision to NESFAQs. For nearly two years, many people from the NES Scene praised my site. It even won an award! However, as high school started coming to an end, the updates began happening less frequently. I couldn't keep up with the fans' submissions. Thus, on March 6, 2003, I decided it was time to shut down the site for good.

NESFAQs is still up and running. If you want to check it out, be my guest. However, it has remained unchanged since the day I shut it down, so I have no idea what's working and what's not working.

Today

The Realm of Gigs was created shortly after the demise of NESFAQs. I've been running it ever since. Although nothing will ever be as popular as NESFAQs was, I still like updating this site as much as I can. Last year I was asked to write reviews for a website put together by one of the former NES sceners. I accepted, of course, but that project ended sooner than it began.

Since then I've been posting on former NES sceners' forums. The scene is pretty much dead (like I said, it's a long story), but many of the people I met there are still online through some medium.

And so, that's my overlong, pathetic story of my internet life. Sadly, my real life story is not much more interesting.

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