NetMonster: A trip through early 2000s internet and the monsters hidden inside websites!

Hi - I'm Rocky. In this talk: We'll be covering NetMonster, a game that no longer exists. I'll show you some netmonster fansites from the early 2000s internet. And... this talk is a very visual talk.

I've embedded websites directly into these slides, and I won't necessarily read the content outloud. But this video is pretty high res so hopefully you can read all the funny bits... and you can always get the slides later. Let's jump right into it! (JUMP INTO SLIDES)

(118 words) This is classic Pre-web 2.0 internet. So for anyone out of the loop...

This is a "professionally" built site for the cult classic film, Space Jam. This site is real, it still exists. It has valid web code. (Click on Junior Jam)

Again, very classic internet.
It had excellent design tastes.
It has animation.
It has blue text on green background...
Not to mention the table layout, and the banner?

And I want to emphasize... this was done by professionals.

(157 words) Sites that were built by novices... weren't exactly... different. This is also a real website, found in the wayback machine, roughly the year 2000.

There's still table layouts. There's still some interesting color choices.
There are banners and badges.
There's a guest book and a web counter! (which the service is down so I made a green bar here)
And what you don't hear... 2 minute Chrono Trigger audio midi file looping in the background.
And there's even a Under Construction text! Because back then, you needed to be on the internet now. No staging sites for us!

This is a fan site dedicated to the game NetMonster. We'll come back to this site.

I wanted to give you the glimpse of early 2000s internet, because this can be a culture shock if you're not familiar with yellow text on noisy backgrounds. We want to get that out of our system.

(83 words)

NetMonsters was free downloadable game from the late 90s, where you collect monsters from URLs.

For Netmonster, it was very Pokemon-esque with collecting. How it worked was:

The player would grab a URL with a NetMonster badge.
The player would enter it in the game.
Based on the code snippet, the game client would generate a monster.
1 monster. 1 URL.

You need strong monsters to defeat the bad guys.

The game stopped at version 1.4, because a hard drive crash erased the source code. And there was never a NetMonster V2.

(120 words) And this is where we hit that sad point. Because that is a lie -- the internet isn't forever. This was a obscure game in 2000. These fan sites are dead. You can't google NetMonsters and find anything about the game. I went to page 50 in the Search results...it's not there. These fansites... are gone from the modern web. Heck Geocities doesn't even exist anymore.

(next image) So I dug into the backups of data hoarders, through geocities torrents, and through the wayback machine.... in order to find these fansites that no longer exist in the modern internet.

Which brings me back to Kragok's NetMonster Reality fan site.

METADATA: "This site is a decent site that has help for begginers and such who r to stoopid to go to da original source. It has lots of custom net monsters too, it is a netmonster rift. "

(100 words)

We've gotten the early 2000s design out of our system, right? Let's focus on the content.
So Kragok -- what is it about your site?
I also included the Metadata because I thought it was hilarious.
(highlight the left side) It's hard to see... Kragok provides a FAQ page. He provides links to catch monsters.
(scroll down) And I love this fan art. I used to be an art teacher. I love artwork from kids. And you can kind of guestimate Kragok's age. I love that text.
And over here, you see the NetMonster Web Ring list, to find more sites with NetMonster badges.

Kamek's Kastle

Darcie's NetMonster site

(112 words)

Let's keep trucking along.

This is Darcie's NetMonsters. Let's ignore the H1 for a bit and scroll to the goods. It's really cute. Dogs - woof, take us home! Awww... Darcy. Darcy was a helpful member of the NetMonster community.

Darcie even organized the monsters into these categories for us. Thanks Darcie.

Let's scroll back up to the H1. NetMonsters works on the freemium model. You can play for free. But to unlock everything, you had to spend $25. OR -- refer a bunch of people to bought it.

Darcy is saying... refer me, help me get a premium license, and I will give you the secrets. So Darcie didn't make this site out of the goodness of their heart... they were entrepreneurial.

PowerpuffCa's NetMonster site

Dux's Site - Choose your own Adventure

Dux's Site - Quiz

Chris' site (early 2000): http://webdemon.vr9.com/

Chris' site (late 2000): http://webdemon.vr9.com/

Chris' site (early 2001): http://webdemon.vr9.com/

Chris' site (early 2005): http://webdemon.vr9.com/

Chris' New Site: http://netmonster.dyndns.org/

Thank you to the following people:

Robert Carlson - https://compendeum.tripod.com/nml/contact.html
Davzz -- https://twitter.com/DavZZGndm

Sites and images used:

http://webdemon.vr9.com
http://netmonster.dyndns.org
http://www.geocities.com:80/TimesSquare/Bridge/3458/Dux/CYOA3/index.html
http://www.netmonsterstuff.tk
http://www.angelfire.com/games2/NMjxl/
http://www.angelfire.com/games2/NMjxl/
http://knetmon.cjb.net/
http://www.geocities.ws/linn_storvik/britney_spears.htm
http://geocities.com:80/EnchantedForest/Dell/5828/netmon/index.html
http://www.geocities.ws/ryokazamaccc2/belldandy.htm
http://www.geocities.ws/ryokazamaccc2/belldandy.html
https://sidebar.io/blog/lets-bring-webrings-back