2006 Wrap Ups: Now Loading's 300th Post Retrospective |
 What was that you ask? What I used to do, was when I got excited about or liked a game I used to make a website about the game so I could cover all aspects of the game that I wanted. But as alpha99’s Journal came in to its own, I found it a much better alternative to spending hours working on a website. Why do that when all I wanted to do was write about games and gaming? So let’s take a look back at the entire history of this blog and you’ll get a better understanding of just how far it has come. This blog was not always the way it is now, with readership (thanks guys) and huge articles like Tony Hawk Week, the Final Fantasy VIII 2006 Playthrough Log and even this very 2006 Wrap Ups feature. Nope. Check out the first post of the blog entitled: Burnout 3: Takedown. Or how about this one? One line written in Dear, Burnout 3? Not what you’re used to, eh? November 2004 saw the release of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. Why was that significant? It is so, because within that game there was an area called Torvus Bog. As I played I kept calling the area Torvus Borg for what ever reason and the name stuck, not only within the game, but it became the name of the journal itself. Torvus Borg: alpha99’s Journal was born, later on of course I dropped the alpha99’s Journal part, but through all of 2005 the blog was called Torvus Borg. This new blog became much more serious, even to the point of organizing my posts into categories instead of randomly assigning titles, 2005 saw Impressions and Finished first make the scene. The first official “Finished:” article hit the blog when I finished The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap. The first official “Impressions:” article belonged to Gran Turismo 4. These two article types have become a staple of my game coverage on the blog, with Impressions, covering my first hours with a game and Finished, covering my final thoughts on a game. The first major feature of Torvus Borg was The Final Fantasy: Tom’s RPG Completion Quest 2005 which started on March 11, 2005 and ended unsuccessfully, March 28, 2006. The first predecessor to Now Loading Update was called What’s Up! (1st Edition) and debuted on April 25, 2006. This article would run for 5 editions until June 29, 2006 when Torvus Borg Update (06.29.2005) was introduced. Now called Now Loading Update and also featuring a weekly edition called NLU Weekly. These Update articles were my way of keeping the blog free of the one line, one paragraph posts about a single thing off the blog or just quickly updating you on things I had been doing in videogames. The blog also developed a signature ending starting with February 13th’s post called: “A Bunch of Stuff…” This ending was: “Laters From Torvus Borg!” On the bad side of things: unfortunately from July 25 to August 14 the blog saw its longest time without a post of 21 days, it was probably the blog’s “darkest” day. Late in 2005 saw four major things happen, first after GameSpot had a little issue with purged posts I created the Torvus Borg Archive Website, which houses a useful archive of all the posts made on this blog. Second, after saying nearly all the time after March 28th’s post for Final Fantasy X in the RPG completion quest that I was going to finish FFX. I sucked it up and finally over the course of 5 days completed Final Fantasy X. It became quite a big thing on Torvus Borg, it was like my ultimate goal to just finish FFX and get its Finished article on to the blog. I finally did that on November 6 and it was a day that was 8 months in the making on the blog. Third, November also saw me present my personal Top 50 Games in its 2006 edition. Finally, I ended 2005 with the original 2005 Wrap Ups special which consisted of 6 posts including my first attempt to do a Best and Worst awards. 2006 would bring huge changes to Torvus Borg… So big that the name of the blog after lasting over a whole year was changed to the name that you now know: alpha99’s Now Loading. This name was more videogame centric and had a better ring to it than Torvus Borg ever did. Of course when I changed the name, the signature endings of the blog had to also change. “Loading Complete!” became the new way to signoff in each post. By late 2005 the blog was almost totally free of randomly titled entries, gone where the days of titles like “A Bunch of Stuff”, “Getting’ There…” and “Hey! Now That's More Like It!” Replaced with Torvus Borg Update, Impressions and Finished as well as Special Features the blog was now well organized. Along with new graphical headers for the exsiting article types, several new article types hit the blog in 2006 making the blog even more “professional.” Top Progress, Gamer’s Rant, Retro Review, Video Feature, Month-In-Review and NLU Weekly added to the amount of features packed in to my increasing coverage of gaming. The first Retro Review hit the blog January 20, 2006 and covered in great detail: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The first Gamer’s Rant featured me ranting about how annoying getting 100% in Final Fantasy X-2 is on January 27, 2006. The first big feature under the new Now Loading name was the Final Fantasy VIII Playthrough Log 2006, which had me covering a playthrough of FFVIII in a walkthrough styled events log. It ran from March 13 to March 26. During this feature I started another blog ending tradition, which is to place a quote or funny anecdote usually in reference to a game or whatever the post was about. One of my worst projects/ideas was to collect all 120 shines again in Super Mario Sunshine called Project SMS 120, this episode of frustration featured graphical cards keeping track of my progress through the worst Mario game ever made. Success was made on April 24th, 2006 and I made a vow never to play SMS again. When GameSpot released it’s user video beta in late April 2006 was when this blog really started to get looked at by people other than me. I was tracking people who made great user videos and made a few myself which got my profile attention that it never had before. I’d say that one of the keys to having anyone at all read this blog is thanks to the User Video Beta and my User Videos. April 2006 was the first month to ever receive a Month a review, which is something that I probably should have done before, but for some reason never thought of. It is now a permanent feature to review all the posts for each month. May 4, 2006 was the date I released my first Video Retro Review about a SNES game from 1991 called Actraiser and it went over well, it was even featured on the front page of GameSpot for a week or so. July 27, 2006 was the first ever edition of NLU Weekly, my weekly blog update, created mostly so the debacle of not updating the blog for 21 days in the slow game months of August and September. They also allow me to give fun names to my posts again as each has a unique title. Top Progress a feature that I created right at the beginning of 2006 did not see the light of day until I decided to use it as a way to cover Dead Rising for a second time on August 21. That was the last of the new features to appear in 2006 and really, that covers the progress of the blog pretty well, if you have been reading the blog for awhile you will be able to review the year of 2006 on December 31 in the Year-In-Review post on that day. I hope that this helped give you an idea of how far the blog has come cover some it’s bigger features, changes and bloopers. If you’d like to read all the posts from the beginning and fully review the blog’s history of post, please, check out the Now Loading Archive Website, click Archives, choose the 2004 archives and scroll to the bottom of the page. I’d like to give out a special thanks to all the people have read the blog and posted comments over the last 8 months or so. Thanks everyone! I hope to keep bringing you interesting stuff to read and detailed articles and huge features covering the world of gaming. I’m really proud of this blog and its 300 posts that started out as a little place to write a couple of random thoughts and I can’t wait to see what kind of action the next 300 posts will bring. Come to think of it I have made 150 posts since December 23, 2006 which is just amazing. Posted below are links to the posting milestones of: first, 50, 100, 150, 200 and 250 posts on the blog. The 2006 Wrap Ups feature continues tomorrow with the Nominees for Now Loading’s 2006 Best and Worst Awards. Loading Complete and Laters From Torvus Borg! Torvus Borg/Now Loading Posting Milestones: 1st Post: 09/02/2004: Burnout 3: Takedown Post 50: 12/22/2004: Gradius V Impressions Post 100: 05/31/2005: LoD Log 2K5: Disc 2 Start Post 150: 12/23/2005: 2005 Wrap Ups: Torvus Borg reaches 150 posts! Post 200: 04/15/2006: Finished: Kirby Canvas Curse and 200th Post Post 250: 08/28/2006: Now Loading Update (August 28, 2006) Post 300: 12/29/2006: Now Loading’s 300th Retrospective (this post) |
POSTED ON DECEMBER 29, 2006 |
