I just came across a video about how today, October 20th 2025, the Sega Master System turned 40 years old, it was a great video about how it hit 40 years and is still in production and sale (even as it's a emulator, it's official) here in Brazil.

It immediatly reminded me of a thread I made here nearly 10 years ago, about my top 10 favorite Master System games (with a promise to add 10 more game eventually, which I never did lol), and a bit of the story of the then 30 years+ run time it had until that time (2016).

I actually remember this thread here and there, did so too some weeks ago when talking about the subject in another thread, but this time I went looking for it and spent some time reading the replies, sadly my older posts were wipped out in one of the two big hacks this site went through some years ago, and many posts do not exist anymore, some of the posts I do remember from that thread are not there anymore, and even the OP only still exists thanks to an old friend that to reply to me quoted the whole OP, so it lives on his reply.

And now I'm freaking nostalgic, I was ridiculously active on this forums between mid 2014 and mid 2017, I remember I had the third highest post per day ratio in the entire website during that time, only behind spurgeonryan and evetually fell third to Ka-pi96. I loved this forums during that time. The vast majority of what I posted here was during this ~ 3 years timeframe, the last 8 years don't come close. Pretty sure 90%+ of my posts are from that era alone.

Reading that thread reminded me of so many people that do not come here anymore and the good times we had. Even when I started lurking here in 2013 and eventually made my account in 2014, this forums had already gone for 7 years or so, had many old friendships and fights. 2014 was the very end of the big console threads era, many of the site most notorious people were leaving or already left by then, and a second (or third even) era was starting with many new users like me, but the forums were definitely already clearly in decline from what I used to read by then.

Since late 2017 I was mostly absent from here, reading a bit here and there, not really posting that much, like many other users older than me here still do too.

But what about you? Are you one of the OGs? Do you remember 2009/2010 and the 3 consoles doing great and people butting heads on this forums? Are you from my era and loved the mid 2010s here? Are you somewhat newer and is used to the forums being a bit slower and like it like that? Or are you still fresh to this forums and excited to post a thread about something you want to talk about even and know more the other nww people around?

I have been on here for 24m (and only active really since early last year) IDK what you want me to say lol. I’m slightly perturbed by the present “era” with all the negativity… but there’s always negativity, I suppose.

I usually take a loong time before creating an account on any website. It was the same for VGChartz. I don't remember exactly when I started reading comments and following sales data, but years later, I created my account in 2021. I don't know how to answer this question because, to me, the website hasn't gone through much changes, aside from the time when data was available weekly. I'm enjoying it the way it is now and I've been more talkative now than ever before, so I'm gonna say my favorite era is the current one

I discovered this site in 2009, back in the Wii, PS3, 360, PSP and DS days. It was a lot of fun reading the news and threads. I remember one of the first posts I read was about Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box.

But I probably started being an active member after 2016. I was way too insecure about my english skills back in the days. I still am. But people here are always friendly with me, so I feel myself at home now.

I don't want to start a war or something, it's just my opinion... But I feel like almost all of the negativity at current days is towards Xbox.

I think the positive and negative comments at the forums usually comes from how the market is reacting to current systems. I remember when the PS4 was crushing the Wii U, the negativity was mostly towards Nintendo. Now the tables have shifted.

But like I said, that's how I see things.

It’s on all sides. People complaining about the PS5 generation’s first-party output (which, to be frank, isn’t too far off from PS4), Nintendo’s prices (despite still being the most pro-consumer if the big three when it comes to hardware and even software: you don’t have any $90USD “Digital Deluxe” releases from Nintendo), the latest Pokémon, really anything Xbox (though it’s kinda just a bad situation with Xbox… directionless and in free-fall), etc.

I just don’t see why people fixate so heavily on the bad things. The industry truly is in an extremely good state! I mean, simply look at all the games released these past three years alone… it’s unlike anytime ever for the medium, and yet some people are too worked up about the smallest things.

I think this kind of situation is what makes some users want to quit the forums.

I gave Xbox as an example because, literally, almost no one posts good things about Xbox, mostly due to the situation of the console, and the fact that sales is the main topic around here. I'm not an Xbox user, but if I were, I bet this kind of situation would make me want to leave this community.

Not sure if this applies to all other gaming forums.

2009-2012 was great cos you had the neck-and-neck race between PS3 and 360 that made for an entertaining battle, and there was tons of traffic and active users.

I liked the PS360 era, when I was just lurking without an account. There was a lot going on and there were some pretty heated discussions because of the fierce competition. Nowadays stuff got kinda boring when it comes to sales. Nintendo dominates everything, Sony kinda gets by and Microsoft just gave up. Nothing to talk about really.

More recently I very much enjoyed the constant updates from Ryuu96 in the threads about Ukraine and US Politics. There were times when that was my main source of information about those topics, lol. But it seems he disappeared. =/

Going to have to agree with the console wars era. I was lurking then, but I read every post.

NPD, Media Create, COMG! and random EU charts all had much more information and lead to some great debates.