Blast From The Past!
QB Express Issue #1
Written by Pete
Every issue, we take you back in time to the early days of QB on the Internet and show you a lost relic of the QB Community. This is your Blast From The Past!
Sneukeule's QBasic / QuickBasic RPG Page
Back in 1998, right in the middle of the QB RPG craze, a guy named Sneukeule started the first ever site dedicated to QB RPGs. Sneukeule's QBasic/QuickBasic RPGs Page had an absolute bounty of information and downloads for aspiring QB RPG programmers. There were dozens of tutorials, theory articles, downloads of all types of utilities, game engines and example programs to help you create a QB RPG, and an active "QBoard" where you could get programming help or discuss the latest happenings in the QB world.
Most importantly, Sneukeule's QB RPG page hosted the largest collection of QB RPGs and RPG demos ever put together at that point. Remember that this was at the height of the QB RPG craze, so everyone and their mother had their own RPG demo out -- and Sneukeule collected and archived them all. They were classified by type, and each came with a screenshot, much like the current reigning QB RPG champ, QB RPGs (http://www.qbrpgs.com/).
But even in that early period of 1998-1999, Sneukeule's QB RPG Page had MORE QuickBasic RPGs listed than QB RPGs has today. I did a quick count, and found 177 RPGs listed on the site; 37 were listed as "Upcoming", but all the rest were available for download. To put that into perspective, QB RPGs currently has only 131 RPGs in all...and it has had an extra five years to accumulate the latest releases.
Most of these games are walking demos with very little gameplay, but there were quite a few gems in the bunch that have since disappeared completely from the Internet. It's quite unfortunate that Sneukeule's amazing RPG collection was lost due to Geocities and Fortune City server purges, because this site was one of the greatest resources the QB community has ever known.
Still available through the Archive.org backup of Sneukeule's site is a collection of thirty-two brief interviews, conducted mostly in fall of 1999, with many prominent members of the QB community. The interviews ask people like Tek, Tsugumo, Nekrophidius, LordQBASIC, MagnaUnum, Michael Hoopman, Jay Cook, 19day and Danny Gump about the RPGs they were developing. These are quite an interesting read, and will really give you some insight into the QB RPG obsession of the late '90s.
Sneukeule quit updating his site in February of 1999, and it remained online until 2001 -- though many of its download links and images had broken by then. Still today, there are remnants of the site at his old Fortune City account (http://rivendell.fortunecity.com/shadows/497/games.htm), though not much is left.
Since Sneukeule's site shut down, other sites devoted to QB RPGs, such as the QB RPG Top 50, QB RPGs, RPG-Dev.net, the late QB-RPG Scene, have risen. But still, to this day, none have been able to match Sneukeule's incredible quantity of RPGs, tutorials and interviews.
Of the hundreds of dead QB sites on the Internet, Sneukeule's QB RPG Page is among the the few that I most would like to see restored. Even with most of its content missing, it is more interesting than the majority of QB sites around today. QB history buffs: this is an absolute treasure trove of QB history, and is not to be missed!
You can find an archived copy of Sneukeule's QBasic/QuickBasic RPG Page at http://web.archive.org/web/20010414042714/http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Hills/7221/Qbasic.htm
