Mario Fan Games Galaxy Forums

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Revision as of 04:09, 15 January 2016 by William Gooch (talk | contribs) (Made some general changes. Additionally, lot of the content seemed very subjective if not downright provocative, and I've seen a lot of what's said here disputed fairly frequently (most notably the tightness of the community).)
The logo of the MFGG forums during the EZBoard era. Thunder Dragon, Nite Shadow, Fireball3k, Supertoad2k and Yoshiman can be seen in the background as they were the current moderators of the time. Also present is the Confused ShyGuy - one of MFGG's "mascots".

The Mario Fan Games Galaxy Forums (MFGG forums, or just forums) comprise the hub of MFGG's communication and public opinion, particularly on matters dealing with fangames and current events.

History

The MFGG forums started out as a simple guestbook on Thunder Dragon's Bowser Technologies website. This feature was eventually replaced with an EZBoard, marking the first incarnation of the MFGG forums. When Bowser Technologies was replaced with MFGG on July 16, 2001, so were the equivalent forums.

February 2003 marked the opening of the VBulletin forums, completely replacing the EZBoard for a number of reasons. This version of the forums was hosted by Spitfire, who, in October of the same year, decided to stop hosting the forums due to them being hosted on an illegal copy of the VBulletin software. The forums were then moved to Retriever II's Penguinia and upgraded to Invision.

MFGG was eventually moved to Retriever II's new server, Taloncrossing, due to the amount of bandwidth needed to run the forums, but all data was ported over.

The forums have also received a number of modifications over the years, such as a Custom Word Filter and Badges.

Community

Another logo of the MFGG forums, probably from 2001 or 2002.

Historically the MFGG forums are much more liberal than most other forums. As with many other forums advanced in age, the community has developed a number of inside jokes. Some of these jokes, fads, and memes include the arrival of Blaine the Train, Delccordion, and the once-controversial SoVeryHappy.

As time went on, many felt the quality of the community was gradually deteriorating. Several of the staff members favored stricter moderation or an increased emphasis on developing fangames, but these efforts did little to reverse MFGG's decline in activity, and the tendency toward a more autocratic structure seemed to only inspire drama and hostility.

After the failure of the original phpBB boards, the MFGG forums ended up splitting in two at the end of 2010, with most of the "community" things, like discussion about commercial games and non-game art, going to a new board called Minus World, while the new MFGG forums (often referred to as "New MFGG," "Real MFGG," or MFGG 5.5) kept the vast majority of discussion directly related to making fangames and indie games, from game topics themselves to sprites and music useful for making games. Minus World, while hosted on the same server as MFGG and comprised of almost exclusively members from the old MFGG forums, has generally tried to develop its own identity separate from MFGG, with varying success. The new MFGG forums are much more fangame-oriented than previous iterations (with the possible exception of the very early years), and while most of the old problems have faded away, the new forums aren't nearly as active as they once were.

Fads

Main article: Fad

New PHPBB ("MFGG 5.5" Structure)

Current logo of the MFGG forums.

MFGG

The Dungeon

Old PHPBB3 Structure

Staff Section*

MFGG

General

  • General Chat, for general discussion, as long as it has value.
  • Arts Board, for graphical, musical, or literal arts, or the discussion of art in general.
    • Doodles, for showing one's own artwork and sketches made just for laughs.
  • The Gaming Corner, for video game discussion.
  • Help Forum, for help on almost anything.

The Dungeon

IPB Structure

The IPB forum structure of MFGG is as follows:

Staff Section*

MFGG

General

  • General Chat, for general discussion, as long as it has value.
  • Arts Board, for graphical, musical, or literal arts, or the discussion of art in general.
  • Wifi and Online Gaming, for discussion of video games that can be played online.
  • Help Forum, for help on almost anything.

The Dungeon

Old IPB Structure

This was essentially the way MFGG was structured before the June 21, 2007 and since the Invision forum was installed.

Staff Section*

General

Fun Stuff

Submissions

Archives

Obselete or deleted sections


*The forums in Staff-Only are not entirely known

In previous versions of MFGG, such as the EZBoard and vBulletin, the order of forums was different, but this has changed over time. Many of the forums have suffered name changes, such as during an April Fool's Prank, or because of an administrator's boredom. This generally affected the PPP more than the others.

See Also