Archaic Ruins is an extensive site that covers emulation of console and computer systems and all related material.

In April of 1996, Chris Hickman decided that he'd like to try his hand at making a web page. Chris had recently heard about emulation by finding Marat Fayzullin's Virtual Gameboy and soon after discovered Anthrox's review of Super Pasofami. Other pages like Asure's, Lepper's, Damaged Cybernetics, and Anthrox were the inspiration that Chris found for making his own page.

After trying HotDog Pro! and realizing that making a web page is only a matter of text editing, Chris whipped out MS-DOS editor and began constructing a simple page. Graphics were all ripped, many having cropping and simple color altering, and emulators were gathered into the 7 page site. An introduction page, followed by a main menu with graphic links to an SNES page with Super PasoFami and translation patches, an NES page, a Gameboy page, and an Arcade page. Slowly, Archaic Ruins grew. The page moved to Chris's newly purchased Internet account with 10MB of space and a few Super Nintendo ROMs were added. An anonymous threat was sent from a company to Applink, the ISP that Archaic Ruins was at, and Archaic Ruins was soon offline.

On the 4th of July, the new Archaic Ruins spanning over 20 pages and sporting the layout of Damaged Cybernetics was launched. Damaged Cybernetics and Archaic Ruins worked hand in hand to create the most popular underground console and emulation oriented web site in 1996. Archaic Ruins grew steadily, new emulators arrived, and Archaic Ruins gained fame. Unfortunately, Chris fell into some challenging problems with life and became unable to maintain his page. Dave Culley was placed in charge of maintainance for a short time, followed by Aquis. Neither maintainer truly maintained Archaic Ruins, and other sites such as Dave's Video Game Classics took over the emulation scene.

In mid-1997, Damaged Cybernetics shut down. Archaic Ruins split away from Damaged Cybernetics, and after a rehaul, Archaic Ruins started to regain steam. A staff was added with Will Vosti and a few other members. Over time Chris pissed off many of them (grin), but now Archaic Ruins has a great staff and is doing quite well. After many facelifts, new graphics sets, and thousands of emulator releases later, Archaic Ruins is still here.

• http://www.applink.com/~antioch/
  Applink (20MB)
• http://www.iag.net/~alfred/
  Internet Access Groups (10MB)
• http://www.futureone.com/~damaged/ar/
  Futureone (Unlimited MB)
• http://archaic-ruins.parodius.com
  Parodius (90 MB)
• http://kayos.reshall.ksu.edu/ar/
  Kansas State University Resident's Hall (Unlimited MB)
• http://spot.bae.ksu.edu/ar/
  Kansas State University (Unlimited MB)
• http://www.peon.net/ar/
  Peon.net (Unlimited MB)
• http://bassin.feut.utoronto.ca/
  University of Toronto (Unlimited MB)

The staff at Archaic Ruins hope to achieve the following:

• Provide users with a very complete resource of emulation software.
• Provide users lots of content for reading enjoyment.
• Preserve discontinued emulators
• Be a stable source of information (See section 1.2 for hypocrisy)

Archaic Ruins has had a staff since 1997. As the creator and designer of Archaic Ruins, Chris realized that the site that he intended Archaic Ruins to be is in no way possible if run by a solitary maintainer. Emulation isn't about status and for the good of the site and the emulation community, Chris decided to get a staff. Although anally retentive (and yes, I'm writing this in 3rd person) originally, Chris has since become more liberal about his staff :).

Staff members have a lot of freedom on Archaic Ruins, but at the same time have to follow the Archaic Ruins format. Luckily, the Archaic Ruins format has expanded more and more to be more laid back and easy to work with. Staff members have access to the FTP at BPWL.COM and make updates to the news page and all other pages they want to update. Luke is the manager at Archaic Ruins and makes sure that updates are done properly. Often, maintainers will be hired and fired. Luke Sneeringer and Will Vosti were the best maintainers that Archaic Ruins has had since their updates have always been well done. Michael Lieu joined Archaic Ruins's staff in late June 1998 and is proving his weight in gold.

• Dale Maxfield
  Past Co-Maintainer
• Cory F.
  Past Co-Maintainer
• Dave Culley
  Temporary Maintainer
• Adam Rippon
  Does much better with XLate/XChar =)
• XScrawlX
  Does much better with ROM groups =)
• Will Vosti
  Disappeared...
• Bjorn Astrom
  Didn't do too well at AR, and is now doing GREAT at Zophar's Domain... hrmm...
• Victor Rehorst
  Fired by Luke from Trial

Archaic Ruins isn't created by geniouses (did I spell that right?). While we like to think of ourselves as being talented in HTML and other such things, all of us are still amazed by emulation authors and the intricacy of such things. Maintaining a web page is time consuming and requires a lot of dedication. We learn about emulators as we put them up on Archaic Ruins. Many of the emulators we have not even tried, but are familiar with specifications and can make recommendations based on knowledge we pick up. Just remember, we didn't make the emulators. We are just basically reporters.

While it may not seem like it at times, the Archaic Ruins staff does have a sense of humour :). These strange blue graphics give Archaic Ruins a strange but intriguing atmosphere, but past that, we are all fun-loving human beings. We have lives, we do things in the real world, etc.

Incase you might want to prove that you are better than the staff of Archaic Ruins, I'd like to say that ripping our site is a really low and dishonest practice. Such sites as 'Patent Pending' have done this, and haven't suceeded in being very popular. If you love Archaic Ruins so much that you feel an insane impulse to copy it and call it 'Bob's Emulation Shack', you could always join our staff, write articles for us, or do things to help out. The emulation community would benefit from contributions to it's best sites such as Archaic Ruins and Zophar's Domain.

While the future is always unknown, Archaic Ruins hopes to achieve the following:

• Faster news
• More screenshots and enhancements for each emulator.
• Reviews of more games and emulators
• More special interest sections
• CGI based message boards, search engines, and other things
• Try any suggestions you might have

Archaic Ruins is almost 600 pages, and might have already gone over that amount by the time that you read this. We aren't trying to make the largest site, we are trying to make the most comprehensive, and if that's what it takes, that's what we'll do.