Your First Dragon Ball Message Board

[ricecake]

Yea, I alt.fan.dragonball was my first online experience with other people about the franchise. I was a total jerk back then, a real ass. Is there some kind of an archive for that? I would love to check out my old post... I went by the name Burndit and then Burndit 2.

Google groups:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgr ... dragonball

Though I think I'm the physically oldest person in this thread so far, this is my first DB forum. I got into watching the series a little bit in high school, but really started getting into it on Toonami when I was in college.

[DragonBalllKaiHD]

Oh looky! It's Julian! https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgr ... 8tWw6A84JU

Edit: It's VegettoEX's post from 2003: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgr ... TKngU65WPQ

[VegettoEX]

2003? That was the re-launch of Daizenshuu EX. Hardly my first contributions to the newsgroup. I was posting back in 1998.

And every single thing I say gets worse the further back you go.

[Insertclevername]

EX iZ Gay0rZ Y3tI thAt LikEz ChilDreN n Iz FaT WitH N0 LiF3~~~!!!!!!!1

I see times have changed.

I wonder why nobody l33t speaks anymore? I mean, sure it was kind of obnoxious, but hey, so is the internet in general.

[Vice]

Unrivaled.

[penguintruth]

Actually, come to think of it, the first real DB forum I was a part of was Meri's Temple O' Trunks forum on the original Otaku Revolution board.

[DBZ Mick]

I lurked here a lot since 2006, lol...

I then for some strange and silly reason joined Atari in 2007 while waiting for Sparking Meteor's release and finishing my final year of school. But only for maybe over a month. That place was terrible.

I joined a site called DragonballZGT which we hoped developers of Dragonball games would look at for ideas but that site died a year or so ago. Then finally decided to join here.

[Hellspawn28]

The Atari forums were always a bad place. I posted there once or twice until I choose not post there again. That Timothy Harris guy seem like a total dick too when he was a mod. He is one of the reasons why I never bother posting on that forum.

[bjh13]

Probably alt.fan.dragonball or some sort of rec.arts.anime fansub group. I really don't remember, it was 1996 or so and I had just discovered there was more in Japan than what I was seeing Saturday mornings. Realistically, not sure if it counts, it was probably the forums on retrogames or something back then where we were all so excited to play Super Butoden 2 on Snes9x (with sound!). It led me to discover Dragon Power was based on Dragon Ball (for which I had a blue VHS tape) so I went down to the local video game store and bought a copy for $5. I still have it to this day, and I still can't beat the second boss as of two weeks ago.

Any other message boards I may have been part of are lost to the sands of time, the vast majority of the internet from back then is now gone (or lost somewhere on archive.org), and even thinking about it makes me feel really old. Time for some ovaltine while I sit in my rocking chair and reminisce about paying $40 for a 4th generation VHS fansub tape from a shady guy at the local comic shop where if you squinted and adjusted the vsync you could just make out Goku going super saiyin for the first time.

[Insertclevername]

Man, I wish I was born in the early 80's, having to buy fan subs and go on Aol chatrooms to talk about Dragon Ball. It sounded cool to discover the series that way.

[bjh13]

Man, I wish I was born in the early 80's, having to buy fan subs and go on Aol chatrooms to talk about Dragon Ball. It sounded cool to discover the series that way.

Eh, it had some big downsides.

First, AOL chatrooms were terrible. For every person having an actual discussion you would have three people popping in asking "a/s/l?" to everyone in the room. Plus, most of the discussion back then was the same as the discussion everywhere now: who is the strongest and how quickly could Brolli take out SSJ3 Goku.

Second, I think most of us who saw fansubs still discovered the series through the syndicated version airing in the late 90s. We would then go on Lycos or Yahoo and search "Dragonball Z" and discover the series was already over in Japan. This would lead to reading manga summaries and the like to figure out what happened, along with mass confusion regarding all the animated gifs floating around.

It wasn't like today where you could easily find fansubs of stuff. Those fansubs could be really really expensive if you didn't have good connections. Plus, they didn't have that many episodes and the video quality was usually pretty poor since they were often copies of copies of copies. These days $40 can get you two season of the show, legally, 80 or so episodes on dvd with pretty good quality. Back then you were lucky if $40 would get you one of the movies and maybe two episodes to go with it. The translations were also all over the place, no consistency with names and Vegeta would say some pretty crazy stuff. People on here who weren't broke teenagers at the time could probably give you more information, and I think there was an episode of the podcast a couple of years ago that dealt with it, but that was just my memories.

Be thankful we have the official releases to enjoy the show with today, for all their flaws the modern DVD releases are significantly better than any fansub I ever watched.

[Hellspawn28]

I thought the Internet kinda sucked in the 90's. I remember the days of the Internet around 1996 and you didn't have that much to do on it. The Internet got much better around the mid 2000's when it was easier to find subs for shows and movies.

[DBZ Mick]

There was stuff to be found if you looked. I was big on Animorphs and the website for that back in like 1997 was pretty cool, showing upcoming stories and cover art. Back then I only went on the Internet once a year, haha.

[Gyt Kaliba]

Yeah, I honestly can't say I'm too sad that I missed the really, really early days of the fandom. Sure, there's some romance to the idea I suppose, but...I don't think I could have survived the kind of stuff bjh13 mentioned. I'm surprised I was able to deal with the insanity of single VHS tapes as it was.

I'd proudly look back on it if I did have time from that period to remember though, since I do look fondly back on what I do have.

There was stuff to be found if you looked. I was big on Animorphs and the website for that back in like 1997 was pretty cool, showing upcoming stories and cover art. Back then I only went on the Internet once a year, haha.

I'm surprised anyone besides me even remembers Animorphs anymore haha. I love that series.

[Hellspawn28]

I remember Animorphs. I watch the show all of the time and I even had the books. I remember my Parents would buy AOL floopy discs to use AOL like these



Growing up in the 90's, but the 2000's had better Internet. I join web forums when they started to become popular. I think some DBZ online chat rooms was still around in the early 2000's. I remember one chat room that I join around 2003 which had people talking about AF and that it was coming out in 2004 for the 20th anniversary of Dragon Ball . They said that it was going to blow GT out of the water and bring back the series to it's roots.

[Insertclevername]

Yeah, I honestly can't say I'm too sad that I missed the really, really early days of the fandom. Sure, there's some romance to the idea I suppose, but...I don't think I could have survived the kind of stuff bjh13 mentioned. I'm surprised I was able to deal with the insanity of single VHS tapes as it was.

I'd proudly look back on it if I did have time from that period to remember though, since I do look fondly back on what I do have.

There was stuff to be found if you looked. I was big on Animorphs and the website for that back in like 1997 was pretty cool, showing upcoming stories and cover art. Back then I only went on the Internet once a year, haha.

I'm surprised anyone besides me even remembers Animorphs anymore haha. I love that series.

I wonder if we'll look back on these days with nostalgia? Like in 2025 we reminice about the pre BOG days.

[DBZ Mick]

I remember hearing lots of GT back then, but it was more hype stuff like Super Saiyan 4, Evil Dragons!

I only heard negative stuff after FUNi released it and I loved it-when I went online. I got sick of all the not canon crap and so on.

I still like it but I don't see it as canon.

[Hellspawn28]

I remember reading a lot of online rumors of GT a few years before it came out. I was so hype for it since the Super 17 saga was the saga that I looked forward to the most. I got my hands on a bootleg copy of the first few episodes and I was surprise that the first episode of GT was so different when they aired it on Toonami.

[TheGreatness25]

I joined Neoseeker in 2003.

It was fun back then because there was still plenty of life left in the series. Now-a-days, the majority of conversation revolves around the releases, or new releases. Back then, there were still plenty of topics to talk about in terms of versus threads, different information, etc. Now all the information is basically out, so there is no need to create a Thread for it. I miss the old days. But Daizenshuu/Kanzenshuu is an awesome place to go if you're a fan and surprisingly it seems like the conversations never end. Plus, they're a lot more sophisticated here than Neoseeker. If there was any Forum I hated, it was IGN. Everyone thought they knew everything, but really would type up some pretty silly things.

[Hellspawn28]

I was a member of the IGN forums in 2003. That's how I discover Dragon Ball AF and this site as well. Someone posted pictures of Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans and I found the page of the front site about the OVA.