Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 04:26, 24 October 2004

Newgrounds is a Macromedia Flash animation website, created and owned by Tom Fulp, that allows its members to submit their Flash work for display on the site instantly.

Anyone can sign up and submit their Flash work (made with a Flash editor) for free, or vote on others' flash, and even blam it if it does not have an acceptable score within 200 votes.

It has thousands of members, with hundreds of Flash pieces and games being submitted every week, over half of which are blammed.

History

• 1991 - First New Ground fanzine published in Tom Fulp's basement.
• 1995 - "New Ground Remix" website launched.
• Fall 1995 to January 1996 - "Nigger Unit NewGround" established. Crated by Tom Fulp, James Kang, Dave Lee, and a nigger going only by the name 'White Cat,' Nigger New Ground is now banned widely by many parental monitoring sites, and is crrently out of commission. A collaboration by Tom Fulp and White Cat, as well as Carl Binns, pokes humor at racial problems in America. Tom Fulp droped out of the project by December 1995, although White Cat kept it going. After a lawsuit which stripped White Cat down to a car and his clothes, Carl BInns took the helm and drove the site slowly down, exporting its humor elsewhere until financial problems caused the site to shut down in January 1996.
• 1996 through March 1998 - Tom Goes to Drexel University. He can no longer access the New Ground Remix ftp space from there, and can no longer update it. "New Ground Atomix" is launched on Tom's Drexel webspace. He creates: Cat Dynamics, and Beep Me Jesus.
• Spring/Summer 1998 - Tom moves into an apartment, and gets access to the New Grounds Remix ftp again. He starts to experiment with Macromedia Flash, and creates a flash front page for New Ground Atomix, and the now infamous "Telebubby Fun Land" is born.
• Fall 1998 - Tom gets a call from Inside Edition, who was to do a story on Assassin. To make it easier for viewers to remember his site's URL, he decides to register a domain name. Since the domain 'newground.com' was taken, he registers 'newgrounds.com'. Tom paid thirty-three dollars a month to host the site. Inside Edition lost interest in the story, but this did not stop Tom. The site's traffic was up so much that he had to move Newgrounds to a new host, and start selling T-shirts to pay off the cost.
• 1999 - Tom has to change servers and hosts multiple times to meet the bandwidth needs of Newgrounds. He places banner ads on the site to help pay for the high costs, which were now over one thousand dollars a month. He finally decides to partner with Troma who were able to host Newgrounds for part of the ad revenue. Newgrounds starts to run into legal issues, mainly with the BBC. Newgrounds had been featured in Stuff Magazine, Wired Magazine and many other magazines and online news venues. Tom also releases Pico, which was acclaimed as the pinnacle of Flash 3 programing. By the end of the year, he had also made UFA and Samurai Asshole.
• 2000 - Tom adds a chat room and message board (a.k.a. BBS). He creates 'The Portal', however Tom had to manually select and post submissions. The portal receives so many flash works, that Tom can't view them all. He and his friend Ross then start work on an automated portal system. He quit his job, and he and Ross drop out of Drexel. When the automated portal is launched, it becomes the highlight of Newgrounds. Tom makes two games, Wasted Sky and the Police Simulator. He meets Shok, who is a Newgrounds member, at a Philly nightclub. They become good friends and team up to create funny FDA music. Ross creates a new BBS, and Tom hires his brother Wade to help keep the site running. By the end of 2000, Newgrounds was one of the biggest and most active user communities on the Internet.
• 2001 - This was the year of the 'Internet bubble burst'. Tom saw many other Internet entertainment sites go out of business. Ad revenue at Newgrounds dried up, and it was struggling to survive. Ross took on a second job. The site is kept updated, however, and Tom releases features such as Crazy Shuttle and Captain Low-Rez.
• 2002 - The Newgrounds servers were not updated like expected. Ross' job had taken over his life, and he had to move on and leave Newgrounds. The site still needed a lot of maintenance. Newgrounds also wasn't growing as fast as it had been the past two years. Tom and Ross decide to go back to Drexel, and Tom finally graduates, receiving a BS in Information Systems. Even though school ate up a lot of his time, he still had time to create Alien Hominid, which is still one of his most advanced flash games. James, and old online buddy of Tom's, offers to look over and redo the PHP of Newgrounds, and Tom gives him full access to the Servers. James optimized all of the PHP on the site, and the site began to perform faster and better. Newgrounds also receives the server upgrade that it needed. Tom releases three games: Domo-Kun's Angry Smashfest, Chainsaw the Children and Sack Smash 2003.
• 2003 - Troma releases Newgrounds from their contract, and Tom gets full control over the New York City servers. He moves the servers to Philadelphia, and gets 100% control over the servers, and cheaper costs. The hosting fees were now up to five figures a month. Tom launches the 'Audio Portal' which allows users to submit their music and sounds to Newgrounds. The site also gets a facelift with an all new layout. Tom also starts work on a console version of Alien Hominid. He is so overtaken with the programing from this project that he doesn't release any Flash games on Newgrounds, but there were plenty of submissions from other users on the site.
• 2004 - Tom and artist Dan Paladin (Synj) create console version of flash game hit Alien Hominid

Groups, Crews and Rivalry

Many groups have formed from Newgrounds, including the ClockCrew, the Lock Legion, etc. Groups have formed rivalries and have made enemies. However, most all top group members submit high quality flash material.

Newgrounds Originals

Tom Fulp has created many of his own flash works on display on the Newgrounds site. These are referred to as "Newgrounds Originals." Most of these are games.

Some Newgrounds Originals include:

• Pico's School by Tom Fulp
• Alien Hominid by Tom Fulp and Dan Paladin
• Club a Seal by Tom Fulp

Good Flash Movies and Games

This is a list of some good flash games and movies that users can update to:

RadioActive Water Cycle by AttackingHobo

The Hammer Game 1.5 by AttackingHobo