NES Player. The very name brings forth strong emotions and painful memories for those involved. To some, it was a breach on the integrity of the NES community. To others, it was a monolithic entity trying to consume the competition, using ruthless, and sometimes highly questionable methods.

I thought it was great. But then again, I've worked on the site, so I might seem a little biased. Like one of those pundits you see on cable news putting a positive spin on everything someone in their party does. I guess if you wanted to put it as a metaphor, you could say I'm one of NES Player's bitches, defending it after being caught doing cocaine and shooting an 80 year-old man in the face.

But don't take my word for it, just listen to what Chris Matthews had to say:

"NES Player is the greatest institution in American society to glorify the NES era."

...and in case Chris Matthews is reading this, he didn't actually say that. Although I'm sure he's thinking it.

But what do hosts of political debate shows dealing with one's hardened balls have to do with the NES? In a word: NOTHING. I don't know, I'm probably just rambling. In any case, I'm going to be discussing some more things that have nothing to do with NES Player or the NES scene, so you might want to just skip ahead to the next paragraph. Really. Nothing related to the NES. At all. Yeah, I even made a hardball joke. Of course referring to testicles. I can't be the first one to do that. Of course not. But I put it in there anyway. Why? I don't know, to be honest, but it just dragged this whole article down in class. Forget it, let's move on.

Hello again. I hope you didn't bother to finish that last paragraph. Would've just been a waste of time. But anyway, you came here to learn about NES Player. Not Chris Matthews. If you did but ended up here by mistake, try www.chrismatthews.com, it should have something.

As for NES Player, the first thing I'd give my life for, after Chris Matthews, it was a promising site at the start, already uploading with an archive of content, enough to satisfy the most pathetic of fanboys. It was honored by those in the NES scene, and that very same year, it won an Emmy for being the best up-and-coming NES site. The site which had already received so much praise in such a short time was founded by a man named Mike. I don't know his last name. It's probably listed somewhere on the site, but I don't really care to check. I don't do research.

Needless to say, NES Player was a hit, gaining numerous fans. Over time, many joined Mike's quest, turning the once lone yet determined webmaster into a team consisting of one determined webmaster and a bunch of half-assed degenerates who only worked on the site as part of their community service. Though an assortment of killers, serial rapists, and Jack Abramoff associates, the NES Player staff proved that they could more than assist Mike in his maintaining of NES Player.

NES Player, as many of course know, has a reputed (well, I repute it) message board of its own with a variety of loyal, almost to the point of brain-washed, fans. But this was not always the case. When NES Player was getting started, the members frequented Royal Ranger's NES board more than any other, which was a 'Nestopia', if you will, of long-time NES gamers. In those troubled times, where NES support had so greatly waned, simply because 95% of the world was playing games that were made within the last decade (or two), it was inspiring to see such an active NES community.

But all was not well. Or not all was well, I should say. What I mean to say, is that it seemed well, but there was some of it that wasn't well, so not the entirety of it was well. There was another community that existed in the NES scene. It was a realm of instability, chaos, and (allegedly) sodomy. It had gone by many names throughout history, but the one it had been given by human tongue was Nesecity. Though it seemed these two societies lived worlds apart, it wouldn't be long before a shattering conclusion was to occur.

August 4th, 1998. I don't actually know the date, I'm just picking one randomly. But on that day, whatever the actual date was, it happened. What had once seemed like a platonic relationship, one side seemingly ignoring the other (aside from childish fanboy flaming), turned into a massacre. Royal Ranger's NES board, had been destroyed. Countless debates on which Mario Brothers title was the greatest, lost. Limitless flames about who was gayer, gone. A sea of profanities, taken away from us. Forever.

It had been Nesecity's declaration of war, sending out it's deadliest weapon to do it's dirty work. Nesecity's most technically-knowledged members, who had used time that could have been spent having sex with a woman instead working on their hacking skills in order to gain free access to websites depicting pictures of nude women. Using their unholy, and admittedly pathetic, skills in computer technology, they destroyed Royal Ranger's NES board, leaving nothing behind but a charred mess and numerous posts by the saboteurs accusing people of homosexuality in an effort to affirm their own sexual orientation.

Indeed, a black day for society. But what was the cause of it? Historians still debate the subject to this day. There are many theories, one of the most popular being that a feud had broken out between both sides over Nesecity members' right to link directly to child pornography from their forum. Another belief with a strong following is that the Nesecity member Capn had developed a deeply passionate love for one of the other board's (male) members, but was rejected. This is highly questioned by the followers of the former theory, though most scholars agree that Capn was certainly gay.

NES Player's fate seemed to be doomed, between this horrid event and startling revelations that many of it's staff members, particularly those that were involved in creating comics, had been repeatedly failing drug tests. In the hands of any other man, the site would have surely been doomed. However, this was not to be. Due to undetermined circumstances, and an alleged Woody Allen prototype, Mike was able to return to the NES scene with renewed vigor, though if you ask him he'll deny the use of any sexual performance enhancing drugs.

Time has moved on since that fateful day, and so has NES Player. Though the beloved forum where all it's fans had once met was gone, NES Player established a board of it's own. Since that time, NES Player has seen some of the most fascinating individuals in human history, from Slayer988, the keeper of the seven keys, to Yoshi55, who would blow up liberals with his third Death Star.

As for NES Player, it still updates to this day, and it's said that if you wait for him out in the fields in the middle of the night, you can still hear Mike, perhaps quoting lines from The Wizard. Though it's probably just a raccoon.