#160177 - SimonB - Fri Jul 11, 2008 1:09 am
Everything seems to happen at once here at gbadev.org! You might not have noticed but last month we received our 5 millionth visitor on the main page! 2 weeks before that the 10 thousandth member registered on our forum....
...and today we celebrate our 8th birthday!
8 years ago today this site was started....and what a great time we've had!
Let's reminisce...
Back in 2000, a few months before the GBA was even released, the first GBA Emulator was released and our visitors/day record might still be from that day...
I dont remember much from 2001 (I need to go dig out the old backups so I can see what we posted about back then), but I do remember receiving my GBA in march 2001, the same day it was released in Asia.
We started to host development competitions back in 2002 (I think) and thanks to luna_s we got the forum set up in the last few days of that year.
We had our big site re-design done in 2003, and I think we havent changed it much since (correct me if Im wrong!). It was also back in 2003 that the whole Nintendo vs. Lik-Sang battle took place. I don't think we'll forget about that anytime soon :)
We also hosted a successful coding competition (24 games, 5 demos downloaded 3000+ times in the first 2 days after the compo ended) with $1200+ in cash and a lot of flash cartridges etc as prizes.
I remember our trip to E3 in 2004 where we had front-row seats at the Nintendo press conferance where Satoru Iwata unveiled the DS.
In 2005 we spent a lot of time working on the 2004Mbit compo game (I STILL quite often get e-mails from people asking questions about the game), one of the high-lights being our meeting with Shigeru Miyamoto at that years E3 where he signed a copy of the game (Nintendo president Satoru Iwata standing next to us looking on).
2006 and onwards have been slower news-wise. I have had a lot to do IRL and many homebrewers have moved on to do DS development so there isn't always a whole lot to update this site with, but if you have anything GBA development related, do send us an e-mail (and if we dont post, PM us on the forum as your mail was probably lost in all the spam we get).
Anyways...I hope you have enjoyed this as much as we have and if you want, feel free to leave a comment in this forum thread :)
/Simon & krom
Last edited by SimonB on Fri Jul 11, 2008 1:34 am; edited 1 time in total
#160179 - Lick - Fri Jul 11, 2008 1:18 am
Congratulations to the admins and all the users of gbadev.org!
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Last edited by Lick on Fri Jul 11, 2008 1:55 am; edited 1 time in total
#160181 - SimonB - Fri Jul 11, 2008 1:48 am
:)
Q to everyone: What do you remember the most from the past 8 years of the GBA/DS development scene? What have been the high-lights for you?
Simon
#160190 - silent_code - Fri Jul 11, 2008 10:18 am
Happy anniversary everyone!
I clearly remember the announcement of the GBA and then, as I got one myself (I had to save the money for quite some time back then!) along with DooM (which I bought in the beautiful city of Amsterdam! ;^D ) I was stunned! What I've seen in videos and photos didn't compare to the real thing - it was pure awesomeness!
Then playing GoldenSun ... epic.
If the little thing had an rechargable battery pack (I had one, but it broke) and was backlit like the SP, I would still play it - I like the controls layout the best of all handhelds.
After some time playing the thing, I got intersted in developing for it. Back then I only had the possibility to run my programs in VBA.
Never the less, I learned a lot, thanks to you guys! :^)
In 2004 / 2005 as the NDS craze started, I got very excited, again.
It was a pitty, that I couldn't afford the hardware, but some dear frinds in Australia and the US helped me out with it and I could finally get started in NDS development. Again, you guys helped me a lot!
Now I am invloved with some serious stuff, but I still like to work on my homebrew and help people on the forum whenever I can. :^)
I owe this forum and its users so much and I hope, I can give some of it back. :^)
Well, just keep up the good work, guys and: Party on! :^D
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#160191 - Kojote - Fri Jul 11, 2008 10:20 am
ayeh! CONGRATS!
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#160196 - ritz - Fri Jul 11, 2008 2:27 pm
I'm all wet behind the ears and whatnot, but I wanted to say that this is a fantastic community you guys have formed here. Thanks for the site, forum and personal help from members!
Happy birthday :)
#160203 - Maturion - Fri Jul 11, 2008 7:21 pm
Congratulations!
#160206 - sgeos - Fri Jul 11, 2008 8:25 pm
Congrats. Those are no small numbers.
I remember joining this forum... evidently a few days after it had been set up. That was a long time ago. The forum was exciting because before that, dinking around was far less interactive. Way back in the dark ages, before the forum, I spent a lot of time going over the few tutorials that existed. (People should do this as they are getting started.)
-Brendan
#160208 - ScottLininger - Fri Jul 11, 2008 8:34 pm
I think my fondest memory was the first time I drew a bit of pixel art to the GBA and saw it running on hardware. Wow, that was cool. I didn't even think it was possible to program for proprietary systems like that... and now it's been a hobby of mine for years.
The 2004MBit contest was definitely a high point for me. Even though I didn't "win", the game that I submitted was an incredible amount of fun to develop, and I still look back on all of that work with pride.
My skills as a GBA developer led to a freelance project back in 2005 that helped me make the decision to "jump ship" from the corporate world I'd been working in. Wow, that's just crazy to think about... My life would be totally different today without this forum.
The people here have taught me loads about programming, especially low level stuff that I'd never been exposed to before. My experiences on the GBA gave me a bunch of knowledge that helped me with the big, hairy series of interviews that I had to go through to get my current job. It's funny how hobbies can do that.
Anyway, it's been fun knowing all of the folks here. I hope that it has another 8 years ahead of it!
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Some of my GBA projects
#160213 - DekuTree64 - Fri Jul 11, 2008 10:39 pm
Ah, fond memories. I was a bit late to the party, but stumbled across gbadev in mid-2002 and started plotting pixels and messing with BGs, and pretty soon I was hooked (thanks to Dovoto's awesome PERN tutorials!).
I didn't even get an actual GBA until Christmas that year :p But I'm glad I did, because it made a fine companion during the 2 weeks without power in a crazy ice storm a month later.
One of the high points for me was the 2003 compo, since the demo I made for it was my first real completed production.
And without this forum, there wouldn't have been the wonderful coincidence of events that led to my employment :)
Basically someone posted an idea for a 24-bit to 4-bitx16 palettes image quantizer, I implemented it just for the heck of it, and by random chance, Miked0801 was working on a commercial game that needed more cart space and had a lot of 8-bit character portraits. It still feels a bit odd that it wasn't even my own idea, but that's life for you.
This is certainly one of the most helpful and friendly forums on the net, and I'm glad to have been here since it opened. But I wonder, when the DS finally fizzles out, will the community here move on to the next thing, or will we see a return to GBA?
Personally I'm pretty excited about Pandora, but that's just because I'm making a first-person shooter at the moment. For good old fashioned platformers and RPGs, the GBA is tough to beat.
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#160219 - rememberthe8bit - Sat Jul 12, 2008 3:13 am
| DekuTree64 wrote: |
| But I wonder, when the DS finally fizzles out, will the community here move on to the next thing, or will we see a return to GBA? |
That would be nice.
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#160220 - sgeos - Sat Jul 12, 2008 3:35 am
| DekuTree64 wrote: |
| But I wonder, when the DS finally fizzles out, will the community here move on to the next thing, or will we see a return to GBA? |
Depends on what the next thing is. I'm sure some will stick with the DS. It is a lot like the GBA only "better" as it were.
-Brendan
#160235 - jenswa - Sat Jul 12, 2008 3:32 pm
Congrats guys!
I had a lot of fun with my gba thanks to all the help and tutorials from this forum.
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It seems this wasn't lost after all.
#160406 - gladius - Tue Jul 15, 2008 8:44 am
Okay, I'm a bit late to the party, but this is pretty cool :).
Hooray for gbadev, which basically got me my first job game programming. 64mbit flash carts the size of my wallet, with writers like bricks, those were the days!
Hard to believe it's been 8 years since then. Congrats Simon, and thanks for the site.
#160424 - 0xtob - Tue Jul 15, 2008 3:48 pm
With all the people here who've been coding for the GBA from the first day I feel like a total noob, but anyways: I found this place after the DS came out and I was googling for "DS development" to see what you could do with that thing. That was about three years ago and I've been visiting the gbadev forum nearly every day since then. I'm really surprised it's so old in fact!
Without this place I probably wouldn't have gotten into DS homebrew and I would surely have missed out on a lot of fun - not to mention the great and helpful people here and on IRC. Homebrewing isn't only a hobby, it's a social activity! And this place is the central hub in the otherwise quite scattered Nintendo homebrew community.
The one thing I like best about this forum (especially after having seen the wiibrew forum) is that it has a clean design and doesn't allow images at all. Also I haven't ever seen any spam here. I don't know how you keep this forum so clean, but anyway:
Great job guys! Here's to another eight years of gbadev forum!
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#160593 - keldon - Fri Jul 18, 2008 6:58 am
Wow; 8 years! Time goes quick ... I was just learning about the GB back in '01. Although I never released anything GBA related I did do my own personal projects that contributed heavily to me getting employment with all the excellent advice etc.
#160604 - sgeos - Fri Jul 18, 2008 10:04 am
| keldon wrote: |
| Time goes quick ... I was just learning about the GB back in '01. |
Please don't put it like that. =P It has been a long time.
I entered the Visoly compo and never got my T-shirt. I did not want to wear it, but I was hoping to get one.
-Brendan