My fourth copypasta. Same recipie as last time though.

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The History of Newgrounds
FAQ Biography History

* NG Home
* About Newgrounds
* History

It's been a wild ride and we are still alive to tell the tale. Below is a brief history of how Newgrounds came to be, and where it is going in the future.
1991 - It Begins

Fanzine Newgrounds was not originally intended for the web, but rather was a Neo Geo fanzine by the name of "New Ground", "Neo" being a synonym for "New", and "Geo" being a synonym for "Ground". I published New Ground from my parents' basement in Perkasie, PA, sending sporadic issues to somewhere around 100 subscribers. I was 13 at the time, which explains why I have so much faith in today's thirteen year olds.

In addition to Neo Geo game reviews and tips, New Ground was packed with funny comics that were made by editing scanned comics from video game manuals.
1995: Tangled in the Web

When I first obtained space to create my own web page, I immediately took on the New Ground name. The only problem was I wanted something more, to imply it was the next step. "Shin New Ground" was under consideration, but the final decision was "New Ground Remix". The page also went by the acronym NGR, which sounded to some like a racial slur. I was kinda pissed when I realized that.

I used up my "tfulp" webspace at fast.net, so I branched my content into my brother Wade's "wadef" space as well. I had various tidbits of goofy content, as well as a page for "OGRE Programming", which was the group my friends and I formed for programming local dial-up BBS games. Wade operated a dial-up BBS known as "Chaotic Order" and I produced exclusive games for it, such as Ambition and Nippon X!

OGRE Hompage

New Ground Remix

New Ground Remix had some mildly interesting content, but was pointless until the last few weeks of the summer of 1996 when my friends had all left for college. It was in this time that I created Club a Seal and Assassin, the games that finally brought meaning to the name New Ground. A small NG cult followed.
1996-March 1998: The Drought and the Flood

As a student of Drexel University, I had a network connection in the dorms and not a modem. Because of this, I no longer had dial-up access to my home service provider, and could no longer access the New Ground Remix FTP server (they don't allow outside IPs to enter). In other words, I could no longer update New Ground Remix. During freshman year I didn't accomplish much, but I did start to work on a new layout for Assassin (this new layout would last until the summer of 1999).

During the winter of sophomore year, I got back on the ball and created Club a Seal II and "Assassin II" (no longer called that). I decided I needed a new place to house these great attractions, so New Ground Atomix was born on my Drexel webspace. There were now two separate and chaotic entities - NGR and NGA, with 2 versions of Club a Seal and Assassin to boot. Still on a roll, I produced Cat Dynamics and Beep Me Jesus. New Ground Atomix had taken on a solid form, kinda like how digested food becomes a turd.
Spring/Summer 1998: The Fifth Element - Telebubbies

I moved into an apartment in the spring and once again had direct dial-up access to my home service provider. It was at this point that I finally took the time to combine Assassin I and II into a single site. I still didn't bother to redirect users who were still going to Assassin I, so a bulk of traffic continued to ignore New Ground Atomix and stay in Remix instead. I wasn't very motivated, so my activity crawled to a stop and stayed that way until a few months later when I began experimenting with Macromedia Flash. A Flash front page was introduced to New Ground Atomix, and the now infamous Telebubby Fun Land was born.
Fall 1998: Acceleration

On approximately September 20th, I received a call from Inside Edition. They wanted to do a piece on Assassin! I got very excited and quickly got back on the ball. I decided it was time for NGA to get its own domain name, so that when it appeared on the TV screen it was easy for viewers to remember the URL. The preferred name, "newground.com", was taken, so "newgrounds.com" was bought out of necessity. Club a Seal I and II were combined and users were redirected from the old sites to the new ones at newgrounds.com. I paid $33 per month out of pocket to host the site.

Inside Edition apparently lost interest in doing the story. This did not stop me, however, as I was ecstatic to have my own domain name. I continued to update the current features and traffic boomed. I had to change hosts to accommodate the traffic, and started producing t-shirts in an attempt to pay off hosting fees.
1999: Pushing Forward

Things really skyrocketed when newgrounds.com was established in the fall of 1998. Throughout the next year, I had to change servers several times due to traffic. I began placing banner ads on the site in order to pay off the high server fees. Eventually, however, I was unable to make ends meet. My hosting company wanted over one thousand dollars per month, and I was dropped by my only good ad company due to NG having controversial content (yet now you see the same crap on MTV). Running out of options, I partnered with Troma, who were able to host the site in exchange for a cut of the ad revenue.

This year introduced some legal disagreements, most notably my little tiff with the BBC. The site had received global attention, having been featured in Yahoo Internet Life magazine, Stuff Magazine, Internet Tonight (ZDTV), wired.com (front page) and many other media outlets. Some backlash was inevitable.

This year also saw the introduction of Pico's School, hailed by many as the pinnacle of Flash 3 "programming". I say that in quotes because Flash 3 didn't offer much in terms of programming - it didn't even support variables. I came up with a very complex work-around for tracking events and data, making Pico the most advanced Flash 3 game I am aware of. It wasn't until Flash 4 that variables were introduced, and Pico would have been much easier to make. :)

By the end of the year, I had also made UFA and Samurai Asshole. I actually programmed a good portion of them while working at Qwest, but I was a consultant, so I didn't bill them for the hours.
2000: It Keeps Growing... and Growing...

The new year brought with it a tightened Newgrounds community. A general navbar was finally added to the top of each page, making it much easier to explore the site. I also added a chat room and message board, which further brought users to the forefront. Users became more addicted, and began to send me their own Flash creations. "The Portal" was created, where I manually selected and showcased quality Flash submissions. Users started sending in so many submissions that I didn't have time to view them all!

My friend Ross became an essential part of NG when he built the Grounds Gold system, which allowed users to gain points for visiting the site. Ross and I would have frequent Newgrounds discussions at the gym, the main topic being a system to automatically accept and showcase user submissions. The internet economy was booming, so I hired Ross and we got to work developing the automated Portal.

During this time, I left my job at Qwest and Ross and I both eventually stopped signing up for classes at Drexel - which I suppose made us drop-outs. Newgrounds became a full-time focus. The automated Portal was our dream. Its launch would forever change the face of Newgrounds, which, at that point, was still predominantly my personal showcase. The automated Portal opened the floor to much better artists, who submitted quali

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