Celebrating a million views on the blog!

Hello friends, I hope that you are all doing well. Work, and life have been busy, however I am trying to make some time to blog, and share my interests with you. Did you know that I celebrated a milestone this summer? I had been sharing my love of games online for decades now. In the mid ‘90s I would post to game message boards. Specifically whenever I saw some cool news in Weekly Famitsu magazine I would post something on the Gouki’s Page of Whatever message boards (ask your grandparents). Remember that through the ‘90s that magazines were still the fastest way to get game news. Since I was able to get to the Japanese bookstores in downtown LA on weekends it meant I was always ahead of the US curve.

I didn’t get online until the late ‘90s and that was only through college. My family didn’t get home internet until the early 2000’s. While at school I would post everywhere I could. On game message boards and this lead to me writing for Planet Tony Hawk.com, and then I started blogging on 1UP in 2005. I tried to write every weekday, and hit 1000 blogs in about four years. Not long after that I got a million views on the site. I am still friends with many of the 1UP community members. We keep track of each other on Facebook, and Instagram some 20 years later! When Capcom launched their own community site Capcom-Unity I took a lot of my old posts from 1UP and added them there as well. Near the end of the 2000’s I learned that 1UP was going to be closing down. I figured that Capcom would also do the same. That’s when I started copying over posts to this site on April 29, 2014.

It has been more than 10 years, and more than 800 blogs on the Street Writer Blog. I am happy to announce that I hit over 1,00,000 views! I know that the really big gaming sites get those numbers every day before noon. I don’t think that I really hit a million unique views as bots are constantly scouring my pages for stuff to steal. I’ll still take the increase in views over the decade as a sign that people are interested in my run-on sentences. Did you have a favorite blog, or series that I wrote? Tell me about it in the comments section. As always if you enjoyed this blog, and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

The end of an era. A salute to Capcom-Unity...

Hello friends. The closure of Capcom-Unity, at least the old version, has been on my mind for a while. News of its imminent closure had been circulating for a few weeks. Things got very "real" for fans when people that had an account on the site received the email below. That's when we were advised to archive our content, if we wanted it saved. Thankfully about 90% of the material I posted on Capcom-Unity is on this blog in one way or another. Still, I miss the community atmosphere that Capcom had created.

 

Capcom-Unity was the perfect example of a positive web presence that a publisher could develop, maintain, and grow. There were forums where people could reminisce or debate. The mods seemed to be on top of things, helping put out fires before they got out of control. Then there were almost daily news drops. Whether it was a patch to a game, or some juicy reveals. Capcom made sure there was a story for all of their biggest titles. Plus they supported podcasts, and videos from their own team as well as the community. Exclusives on the merch store were tailor-made for the fans of the studio. They were constantly listening to fans, polling them, soliciting feedback. The fighting game community would not have been the same without Capcom-Unity. Their appearances at trade shows, including the E3, WonderCon, San Diego Comic Con, and Tokyo Game Show were for fans, as much as they were for vendors. Their super-secret "Fight Club" debut of Street Fighter IV, V, and Street Fighter X Tekken allowed celebs and fans to mingle over the shared love of fighting games. I am eternally grateful for the site hosting my ramblings for years, and years. I am eternally grateful for all the events the team put on. You really made us, the fans, feel like part of the family. I wish I could thank each and every member of the team personally. Someday I hope to. In the meantime here are a bunch of memories that I will always cherish.

If you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!