The EZBoards are back on the Wayback Machine!

[Q-Nova]

Guys, guess what I discovered just this night!?

THE EZBOARDS ARE NOW VIEWABLE IN THE WAYBACK MACHINE AGAIN!

For those who don't know, MFGG's first iteration of its forums used the EZBoard system. It had been archived in the Wayback Machine, but for a long time it was excluded from public view. Thankfully, however, it seems that they recently let it out of that safe! Take a look!

https://web.archive.org/web/200111022241...gonsboards
https://web.archive.org/web/200302021105...gonsboards

Now we can once again see how oldbies like Thunder Dragon do the Mario!

https://web.archive.org/web/200201270629...D=13.topic

This is so exciting! Since I'm not sure if the Wayback Machine is going to keep the door to EZBoard open for a while, I suggest that someone should archive as much as they can get and host it on a MFGG domain. (How about ezboard.mfgg.net?) I have archived some stuff on archive.ph, but not a whole lot. Though, I'm not sure how much of those forums have actually been archived, since I already ran into at least one or two dozens of links that were never archived, including the last two pages of the "Do the Mario!" thread. But hey, history is now available to the public at last!

I'll ping some of the MFGGers whom I believe will be pretty ecstatic to hear about this:

@VinnyVideo @Vitiman @King Piranha Plant @Thunder Dragon @DJ Yoshiman @"Nite Shadow" @fireball3k @Neo Hyper Yoshi

[GeneralGuy]

Wow, this is really awesome! I didn't join until 2006, but it's nice to be able to see MFGG's earliest history is now easily accessible. I wonder why Wayback Machine didn't make this public 20 years ago?

[Q-Nova]

It WAS public at one point; I remember looking at the MFGG EZBoards several years ago, most likely before I joined here. (That's why I said the EZBoards are BACK on the Wayback Machine. ) At some point, all the EZBoard URLS (not just the MFGG EZBoard) were excluded. I don't know how that happened (request from whoever owns EZBoard?), but at the end, I'm glad they're letting us look at those ancient forums once again.

Quillax Ship - Where you can download all of my cool, keen mods and super-marvelous fangames!

[VinnyVideo]

Oh wow - this is quite a pleasant surprise! Thanks for sharing this.

And yes, this archive used to be publicly visible, but it was made inaccessible a few years ago. I'm not quite sure what happened, but site owners can request their sites to not be archived by the Wayback Machine. This is understandable. However, if someone buys a domain name and requests their site to be excluded from the Wayback Machine, this request will be retroactively applied to other sites that have shared that domain in the past - even if they have nothing to do with the new owner's operations. Yes, that's dumb, and Archive.org was extremely unhelpful when I e-mailed them a few years ago about this.

I agree that it would be wise to download our own version of this archive, just in case this disappears again. I'm not sure whether there's an easy, automated way to scrape these archives. Keep me posted!

Course clear! You got a card.

[fireball3k]

holy cow. never thought this'd happen.
thanks for the ping about it. I'm all for having another backup of this.


seems like it was just yesterday I was making posts on EZBread and churning out TGF libraries of poorly ripped sprites. Just hearing about this brings a lot of memories back.

[Q-Nova]

I agree that it would be wise to download our own version of this archive, just in case this disappears again. I'm not sure whether there's an easy, automated way to scrape these archives. Keep me posted!

Looking back at some past MFGG posts (in this forum), I found an article @Mario linked to that has info and tools for backing up stuff that's on the Wayback Machine: https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Restoring

He especially recommended this tool, which is linked in that article: https://github.com/hartator/wayback-machine-downloader

I think the question is how should the backup be presented. There are many threads left unarchived; do we still list those (perhaps labelled in some form as missing)? Which skin do we use? I like the iconic, classic red skin, but the blue skin is newer. Should we present as if it were an old forum set to read-only mode (e.g. archive.mfgg.net) or as a list of all the discussions that were preserved? (If it was the latter, then I'd use the red skin for older topics and the blue skin for newer topics.)

Quillax Ship - Where you can download all of my cool, keen mods and super-marvelous fangames!

[DJ Yoshiman]

Aww, hell yeah. It was an immense bummer that we lost access to it - I had the impression they wouldn't be viewable ever again. There's not really a lot to "learn" from these archives, but it's fun to look back at the memories, and remember simpler times. Sometimes seeing some of these posts from others and my own posts reminds me of what was happening in my life, events that I thought were lost in my mind.

And then sometimes I look and cringe as my younger self surprises me with the most lunatic or ridiculous posts I didn't think were possible.

[King Piranha Plant]

Woah. I remember opening the EZBoards and looking at them as a child and having no idea what a forum was. I didn't end up joining until a bt later (like 2003 when the vBullet board came along) but it's crazy to see the community in its earliest form.

It takes me wayyy back to when you'd just browse the site as a kid on a crappy Windows 98 computer and play all the fangames... when there were like 30 of them total. And that felt like a lot, lol.

[VinnyVideo]

@Q-Nova Oh yeah, that tool sounds very handy. I'd hate to have to download topics and images individually from the Wayback Machine - it would be far easier to use an automated tool like the one you mentioned.

Beyond that, we're kind of at the mercy of how the download tool works, and how the Wayback Machine archived the content in the first place. It would be awesome if we could get the original CSS files (or something similar enough) so that users could actually choose between the skin they're using.

As for broken links in the archive, we could make our own 404 page explaining what's up.

But that's getting ahead of ourselves. At this point, we should focus on getting our own copy of the content in case this disappears at some point. I still have Plesk/FTP access, so if we get a reasonably clean download, I'd be happy to put this on a dedicated subdomain - ez.mfgg.net maybe?

@DJ Yoshiman Looking at old forum topics is always a fun trip down Memory Lane! I wasn't on MFGG in the early days, but I miss the more carefree vibe of that era - especially compared to the modern monstrosity of 2022 social media!

Course clear! You got a card.

[Q-Nova]

I was looking into the images (like the banner) and noticed a lot of them came from a particular Geocities site. After going to the site itself, I might've found what could be the earliest existing form of MFGG:

https://web.archive.org/web/200401021651...koopa2000/

The capture linked is from 2004, but note that the copyright date is 2001! And the downloads pages have very little to download, as if the site was just starting out! Even MarioQuest 2 isn't listed on the games page! (Strangely, though, Wario's Revenge also isn't listed, despite being TD's first game.)

@VinnyVideo Does Wayback Machine even have a way for exporting its contents? I tried using the "Save Page As" browser function on the main page (just to at least get a few of the important stuff), and I still get that Wayback Machine UI on top. There's a way to view the page on Wayback Machine without the interface (the Archiveteam article I linked explains that at the bottom), but then the images are gone.

I have downloaded the Wayback Machine Downloader tool (you won't believe how long it took for me to figure out how to download stuff from Github). However, I'll have to get Ruby first before I can use it.

Although even if I download all of what's left of the forum, it looks like a lot of work will still have to be done before a user-friendly, accessible archive could be created. For one, the General Chat in Feb. 2002 is in a different folder (fthunderdragonsboardsfrm4) than it is in Feb. 2003 (fthunderdragonsboardsfrm8). Also, note how the General Chat in both said time periods have 20 pages each, but according to the main page (Feb. 2002, Feb. 2003), it had double the amount of posts in 2003. (I read somewhere that ezboard has a thread limit per board and will automatically purge older threads if necessary to make room for newer ones, which might be the case since the oldest threads in the GC of Feb. 2003 seem to be dated quite newer than Feb. 2002.)

I could go on and on about this, but I hope you get the point. (By the way, I like the idea of having the option to switch between the two skins.)

@DJ Yoshiman Well, if there's anything I learned, it's that Yoshi's Island was MFGG's favorite Mario game according to a poll made back in late 2001. It even far surpassed Super Mario 64, the newest mainline Mario game at the time! I guess you guys either really liked Yoshi or really liked 2D platformers (or both)! I suppose 2D games would be much more appealing to MFGG since 2D sprites are much more usable in The Games Factory than 3D models.

But like you and Vinny said, it's pretty fun looking at ancient forums! From what I've seen of them, it seems like things were more carefree back then. The fangames made back then can get pretty wild; you can tell a lot of those fangamers had a lot of fun making them! I'd love to see the modern fangame scene adapt some of the creativity, wackiness, and personal feel of the old fangames, while still maintaining some of the polish and aim for quality. I think TD's newest games (like Toad Strikes Back) are an excellent example of taking the best from old and new fangames! Heck, even back then, there were some pretty well-made fangames, like Super Mario XP and (sadly unfinished) Mario: Pipe Network!

Quillax Ship - Where you can download all of my cool, keen mods and super-marvelous fangames!

[VinnyVideo]

That's another interesting find! I wonder if that's the original version of the Bowser Technologies site. (TD would be able to confirm for sure.)

I'm sure you could manually remove the Archive.org header from the HTML files, but that would be quite a tedious undertaking.

Yeah, there's a bit of a learning curve to downloading source code from Github and compiling it. I also agree that even after we download an archive, there's going to be a significant amount of manual work needed to provide a user-friendly experience.

I'm still a big Yoshi's Island fan - it's definitely one of my favorite platformers. For a lot of MFGGers around that time, the original Super NES version of YI came out when they were in elementary school, so a lot of them played it when it was new, and it likely made a big impression on them. At the time, it was Nintendo's last high-profile Mario platformer. This choice of favorite Mario game is a bit ironic considering that MFGG has always had a shortage of YI fangames and ROM hacks, though!

Course clear! You got a card.

[DJ Yoshiman]

Yoshi's Island being rated the top game is a simpler explanation - it just is. There's a reason it was ripped from for sprites and backgrounds, but never attempted to recreate it or make a sequel - you can't touch perfection. I remember, at one point of time, making a topic and asking if every one was down for a Yoshi's Island level editor, and I started something thinking it would be easy. Silly me. ​​​​​

I can confirm that EZBoards had a 20 page limit, and would purge topics older than that when new ones were created.

I can also confidently say that the URL you have is the same as the old Bowser Technologies URL, which was the site before it turned into MFGG. I don't have the answer as to how it came to be that the website migrated over to the EmulationZone.org hosting. However, the EZBoards URL didn't change (hence why the URLs are named as they are). The EZBoards were used after the guestbook era of forums (free forum software) for Bowser Tech, and when the website switched to MFGG, so too did the forum skin, name and intent.

[King Piranha Plant]

MFGG liked Yoshi's Island so much that when I play Yoshi's Island, I get nostalgia for all the fangames. Its backdrop sprites were used sooo often and there was such a culture here for the comfy vibe of the game. (Remember Klobber's huge set of handdrawn Yoshi's Island avatars we all used for years?)

[Q-Nova]

@GeneralGuy @DJ Yoshiman @fireball3k @King Piranha Plant

I know I'm pretty late for this, but guess what? A few months ago, I figured out how the Wayback Machine Downloader works, and I've downloaded an entire backup of the MFGG ezboard! That includes the main page, forums, and the threads. I didn't bother with post forms (i.e. when you click Reply or something), however, although there's some sitting in my backup as I was trying to figure out the tool. I downloaded every captured version (at least before the forum went down in mid-2003). There doesn't seem to be any CSS files included nor are there images (though, I've also downloaded the images hosted on the MFGG Emulation Zone and TD's Geocities domain), but the forum's styling looks as it should and all the text is intact.

So, are we going to try to organize the backup into something resembling a read-only forum like http://archive.mfgg.net? Or should we just list all the topics that have been saved from oldest to newest, divided by forum, like, for example, in PCKF Archive? I think the latter would be simpler, even if it would stick out from the IPB and phpBB archives. Either way, a lot of work needs to get done if you want to the discussions to be user-friendly. For one, the links would have to be changed to point to either a Wayback Machine archive or in our hypothetical ezboard archive. I would also upload the images to our server and accordingly redirect the image links. We might have to remove the scripts/connections that seem to do nothing but greatly increase load times. It would also be nice if we could make it so that some of the discussions won't horizontally stretch out (supertoad2k has an awfully long user title).

Someday, I'd like to send my backups to @VinnyVideo, since I'm sure he'd like to have it. However, it's probably going to be through e-mail, unless I can find a good file host, even if it's temporary (I can't access my own FTP server). If we can agree on the direction of our ezboard archive, I might be willing to do some of the work needed to make it nice.

I'm still a big Yoshi's Island fan - it's definitely one of my favorite platformers. For a lot of MFGGers around that time, the original Super NES version of YI came out when they were in elementary school, so a lot of them played it when it was new, and it likely made a big impression on them. At the time, it was Nintendo's last high-profile Mario platformer. This choice of favorite Mario game is a bit ironic considering that MFGG has always had a shortage of YI fangames and ROM hacks, though!

Very good points! Yoshi's Island is also one of my favorite platformers, even if I haven't played it in a while. About that last point, though, I always thought MFGG had a lot of Yoshi fangames in its earlier years, many of which incorporated Yoshi's Island mechanics. I mean, by the end of 2003, we've had:

• Yoshi Gone MFGG
  
• Yoshi RPG: Secret Legends
  
• Crazee Dazee Shoot-Out Stand
  
• Yoshi's Island PC
  
• Yoshi vs. Windows
  
• Yoshi's Island X
  
• Yoshi's Island X2
  
• Yoshi Invasion
  
• Yoshi's Ghost Run
  
• Yoshi, Dead and Loving it!
  
• Klown Tag
  
• Yoshi vs Windows Platinum
  
• Mario and Yoshi
  
• Yoshi Deluxe
  
• Poochie
  
• Yoshi's Quest Gold
  
• Bidget Ball
  

And 8 of those have tongue-licking! Sure, none of them may have felt close to Yoshi's Island, but to be fair, not many fangames by that time period played like Super Mario Bros either. The list above doesn't even mention all those fangames that star Mario but heavily use Yoshi's Island graphics, such as the fantastic Mario's Mansion trilogy!

I'll close off this post with a pretty good image I found in the Geocities domain:

Quillax Ship - Where you can download all of my cool, keen mods and super-marvelous fangames!

[Vitiman]

I strongly advocate for a way to archive the original EZBoards here. In our tiny little quadrant of internet history, they're very historically significant.

As for how to present such an archive, I think both methods have their share of appeal. A read-only forum might not be the most historically accurate, but it provides a fun and pretty harmless way to present a message board archive that's not in a totally complete state. The more boring database from oldest to newest is super practical, gets the job done, and - as you point out - would be pretty trivial to set up... but it's not quite as inviting. I suppose it all comes down to what goals would we have in presenting a public archive of the EZBoards.

Either way, I want to say that what you've done here is invaluable and your continued appreciation for MFGG's past does not go unnoticed.

[Q-Nova]

VITIMAN!!! WELCOME BACK TO MFGG! I'm so very happy to see you come back and make a great post! Thank you for your compliments; MFGG's past always seemed like an intriguing part of the Internet!

You made good points on presenting the archive. I'd like to see what VinnyVideo thinks about this. A read-only forum would be a bit more fun to explore and we can put up the topics that were never captured but still listed on the forums (perhaps they should be italicized to indicate that they're missing?). An oldest-to-newest list would, as I said earlier, be easier (and the missing topics can be listed on their own list), but not as authentic. I'm still not exactly sure on how we're going to approach the skin. If we had to choose one, I'd like to use the red skin for older topics and blue skin for newer topics. I don't know about the main page, but I'm leaning towards the red skin. Vinny suggested an option to switch between skins; as there's no CSS files, we might have to make our own and fiddle around with the HTML code to adapt the CSS files.

Quillax Ship - Where you can download all of my cool, keen mods and super-marvelous fangames!

[GeneralGuy]

Awesome work, Q-Nova! Definitely give that backup to several of MFGG's Admins. Do you think you could create a backup of the Invision forums? Of course, they're still up and viewable.

[VinnyVideo]

First of all, this is awesome indeed! I am super-grateful that someone has taken the time to make a full backup of this archive. It's quite an interesting little piece of MFGG history, and I'm glad that you're helping to preserve it.

The second option (the list of topics) sounds a lot simpler to implement. But if you're willing to put in more time to polish it up and make it more user-friendly and accessible, that would be extra-awesome!

I think the easiest way to host this would be to create a new subdomain - "ez.mfgg.net" or something. If you have experience using FileZilla or other FTP software, I could give you FTP access so you can upload the files directly to our server. I assume your backup isn't zillions of gigabytes in size.

Also, that is a good point - it seems like there was a greater proportion of Yoshi fangames in MFGG's early years.

Course clear! You got a card.

[DJ Yoshiman]

@GeneralGuy @DJ Yoshiman @fireball3k @King Piranha Plant

I know I'm pretty late for this, but guess what? A few months ago, I figured out how the Wayback Machine Downloader works, and I've downloaded an entire backup of the MFGG ezboard! That includes the main page, forums, and the threads. I didn't bother with post forms (i.e. when you click Reply or something), however, although there's some sitting in my backup as I was trying to figure out the tool. I downloaded every captured version (at least before the forum went down in mid-2003). There doesn't seem to be any CSS files included nor are there images (though, I've also downloaded the images hosted on the MFGG Emulation Zone and TD's Geocities domain), but the forum's styling looks as it should and all the text is intact.

So, are we going to try to organize the backup into something resembling a read-only forum like http://archive.mfgg.net? Or should we just list all the topics that have been saved from oldest to newest, divided by forum, like, for example, in PCKF Archive? I think the latter would be simpler, even if it would stick out from the IPB and phpBB archives. Either way, a lot of work needs to get done if you want to the discussions to be user-friendly. For one, the links would have to be changed to point to either a Wayback Machine archive or in our hypothetical ezboard archive. I would also upload the images to our server and accordingly redirect the image links. We might have to remove the scripts/connections that seem to do nothing but greatly increase load times. It would also be nice if we could make it so that some of the discussions won't horizontally stretch out (supertoad2k has an awfully long user title).

Someday, I'd like to send my backups to @VinnyVideo, since I'm sure he'd like to have it. However, it's probably going to be through e-mail, unless I can find a good file host, even if it's temporary (I can't access my own FTP server). If we can agree on the direction of our ezboard archive, I might be willing to do some of the work needed to make it nice.

I'm still a big Yoshi's Island fan - it's definitely one of my favorite platformers. For a lot of MFGGers around that time, the original Super NES version of YI came out when they were in elementary school, so a lot of them played it when it was new, and it likely made a big impression on them. At the time, it was Nintendo's last high-profile Mario platformer. This choice of favorite Mario game is a bit ironic considering that MFGG has always had a shortage of YI fangames and ROM hacks, though!

Very good points! Yoshi's Island is also one of my favorite platformers, even if I haven't played it in a while. About that last point, though, I always thought MFGG had a lot of Yoshi fangames in its earlier years, many of which incorporated Yoshi's Island mechanics. I mean, by the end of 2003, we've had:

• Yoshi Gone MFGG
  
• Yoshi RPG: Secret Legends
  
• Crazee Dazee Shoot-Out Stand
  
• Yoshi's Island PC
  
• Yoshi vs. Windows
  
• Yoshi's Island X
  
• Yoshi's Island X2
  
• Yoshi Invasion
  
• Yoshi's Ghost Run
  
• Yoshi, Dead and Loving it!
  
• Klown Tag
  
• Yoshi vs Windows Platinum
  
• Mario and Yoshi
  
• Yoshi Deluxe
  
• Poochie
  
• Yoshi's Quest Gold
  
• Bidget Ball
  

And 8 of those have tongue-licking! Sure, none of them may have felt close to Yoshi's Island, but to be fair, not many fangames by that time period played like Super Mario Bros either. The list above doesn't even mention all those fangames that star Mario but heavily use Yoshi's Island graphics, such as the fantastic Mario's Mansion trilogy!

I'll close off this post with a pretty good image I found in the Geocities domain:

Sorry for the delay. Good to hear! I mean, EZBoard MFGG was cringy as all hell, but preservation is preservation, and I'm all here for it! Let us know how that goes, I'd like to see how much was actually archived. When I used to check the EZBoard URLs back when it was available on the Internet Archive, it showed up with only a sprinkling of pages of forums and a handful of topics that could actually be viewed. Let's see how it goes.

[Neo Hyper Yoshi]

Yoshi's Island being rated the top game is a simpler explanation - it just is. There's a reason it was ripped from for sprites and backgrounds, but never attempted to recreate it or make a sequel - you can't touch perfection. I remember, at one point of time, making a topic and asking if every one was down for a Yoshi's Island level editor, and I started something thinking it would be easy. Silly me. ​​​​​

I can confirm that EZBoards had a 20 page limit, and would purge topics older than that when new ones were created.

I can also confidently say that the URL you have is the same as the old Bowser Technologies URL, which was the site before it turned into MFGG. I don't have the answer as to how it came to be that the website migrated over to the EmulationZone.org hosting. However, the EZBoards URL didn't change (hence why the URLs are named as they are). The EZBoards were used after the guestbook era of forums (free forum software) for Bowser Tech, and when the website switched to MFGG, so too did the forum skin, name and intent.

Sorry about the ridiculous bump here of an old topic but I actually know why the old Ezboard MFGG fourms have the Bowser Technologies url because I was there;

When MFGG first launched, it actually had it's own unique ezboard forum, separate to Bowser Technologies. However a few months after the launch of the site, Ezboard botched a site wide update that basically resulted in the MFGG fourms getting completely wiped. A temporary forum on another site was set up but someone suggested using the old Bowser Technologies fourm and convert it over to MFGG which is what happened in this case.

And that kids, is why the Ezboard MFGG fourms had the Bowser Technologies url.