GRcade

November 1998 - Future Publishing, the Bath-based publisher responsible for games magazines such as Edge, GamesMaster and N64 Magazine, launches the Future Gamer newsgroup.

October 2000 - Future Gamer renamed Daily Radar UK.

May 2001 - Daily Radar UK newsgroup gives way to the Daily Radar UK forum.

August 2001 - Daily Radar UK forum renamed the GamesRadar UK forum.

July 2002 - the forum is migrated to PhpBB and subtitled "Games and Stuff".

14 August 2008 - Future announces the planned closure of the UK GamesRadar forums, with the intention that the US forums serve as the sole online community option for all GamesRadar users.

Late 2008 - UK forumites launch GRcade.

14 October 2014 - the final issue of the Official Nintendo Magazine UK comes out. The ONM forums remain online but prevent users from logging in; Super ONM goes online soon after.

11 February 2015 - GRcade and SONM officially affiliate with one another (announcement thread here).

2 February 2018 - announcement that SONM will merge with GRcade (thread here).

11 February 2018 - SONM becomes a read-only archive with a landing page directing people to GRcade.

19 June 2018 - GNamer (of NGamer heritage) becomes a GRcade affiliate (announcement thread here).

2 March 2020 - the read-only SONM archive goes offline, leaving just the landing page.

site23 wrote:1998, November 12th -- the Future Gamer newsgroup launches
2000, October -- the newsgroup is renamed Daily Radar UK
2001, May -- the Daily Radar UK bulletin board opens
2001, August -- the bulletin board is renamed to GamesRadar UK
2002, July -- the GamesRadar UK ("Games and Stuff") PhpBB forum opens
2008, August 14th -- Future announces the UK forum is to close and redirect to the US forum
2008, August 17th -- GRcade opens
2013, January 16th -- After the NGamer website closes, GNamer opens (the NGamer subforum on the CVG forum closes a few months later, in May)
2014, October 20th -- After ONM publishes its final issue and its forum closes, SONM opens
2015, February 11th -- GRcade and SONM become affiliates
2018, February 2nd -- GRcade and SONM merge
2018, June 19th -- GRcade and GNamer become affiliates

Some other relevant links:

GamesRadar on Wikipedia

GRcade Logo Archive

User Namechanges History / "Missing in Action" thread

Launch moderators & "Bluehats"

Placeholder third post

The recent threads reminiscing about our Photoshop war with our US counterparts and asking whatever happened to various formerly prolific posters made me wonder why we don't have any form of recorded history for our community.

Our online community must be one of the oldest on the web still active - Future Gamer (which became Daily Radar) dates back to 1998, making us six years older than Facebook! - so I thought it might be nice to catalogue some of the major events in a chronology thread, that also takes into account all the other relevant subsets of our community (I'm thinking SONM, Poopgang, Random Fury, Press Start, etc)

Reminisce away (with dates, please!) and I'll update the OP with all the details.

Tomous wrote:Placeholder third post

Thanks Tom

Get some of the N64 magazine writers to say hello in here. That would be epic indeed.

June 2006 - LewisD joined GamesRadar forums

The server goes online on August 14th, 2008. Future Publishing are removed from forum administration. Moggy begins to post at a geometric rate. He becomes self-aware at 2:14 AM, Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.

OrangeMKN wrote:The server goes online on August 14th, 2008. Future Publishing are removed from forum administration. Moggy begins to post at a geometric rate. He becomes self-aware at 2:14 AM, Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.

Nice try, but I'll never be self-aware.

Zerudaaaaa! wrote:Get some of the N64 magazine writers to say hello in here. That would be epic indeed.

How many were members? I recall Matthew Castle from NGamer posting at one point.

Moggy wrote:

OrangeMKN wrote:The server goes online on August 14th, 2008. Future Publishing are removed from forum administration. Moggy begins to post at a geometric rate. He becomes self-aware at 2:14 AM, Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.

Nice try, but I'll never be self-aware.

Actual contribution on how (S)ONM ties in to GRcade's history:

The final issue of the Official Nintendo Magazine UK came out on the 14 October 2014. Super ONM went online soon after (I can find out the exact date) as the ONM forums faced a protracted death (they remained online but without anyone able to log in which lead to a strange competition in seeing who would remain logged in the longest as session cookies slowly expired!).

GRcade and SONM officially affiliated on the evening of Wednesday February 11th 2015 (GRcade announcement thread here).

On the evening of Friday February 2nd 2018 it was announced that SONM was merging with GRcade (GRcade announcement thread here).

On the evening of Sunday February 11th 2018 SONM became a read-only archive with a landing page directing people to GRcade.

On Monday March 2nd 2020 the read-only SONM archive went offline, leaving just the landing page.

There is also GNamer (of NGamer heritage) which became a SONM affiliate some time after GRcade and then became a GRcade affiliate on Tuesday June 19th 2018 (GRcade announcement thread here).

Cheers OR - that's exactly the kind of contribution I was hoping for. I've updated the OP

Jan 27, 2020 - Jenuall's car breaks down in Exeter

Jul 10, 2016 - No1 FF nearly drowns in aggressive capsizing incident during raft race

Both inarguably key moments tbf

Also, Cuttooth buried someone else's cat at some point, that was pretty key

Anyone ever read a thread and knew exactly what the next post was going to be?

Nov 10, 2021 - Cuttooth opened a thread and knew immediately he would be reminded of the time he buried somebody else's cat

One of my earliest Gamesradar/Daily Radar memories (was the forum up while it was still called Daily Radar?) was finding a thread about... I can't remember if it was about pubic hair specifically or just hair generally... but there must have at least been talk of pubic hair. I just remember finding it hilarious finding people talking/writing about the topic.

October 2011 - https://grcade.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=27405&hilit=Schofield

We missed the 10th anniversary of that great thread