HonestGamers: the best retro gaming site you might not know exists

If you've found your way to this blog, you may or may not know that I run HonestGamers. I've been fairly quiet about that site lately, but it's a big and exciting part of my life. I'd like to take a moment and tell you why. I'd also like to tell you why you might want to get involved with the site, but one thing at a time, right?

I started the site that is today HonestGamers way back in 1998, when I began attending a local community college. I nothing about web design at the time, and had very little experience with the Internet as a whole (believe it or not, I'd never even logged onto the Internet until that year). So I built a site on Geocities, and it grew from there and blah, blah, blah. That's boring stuff to someone reading about it now. My point here is that I've been working on the site for a long time, and I plan to work on it for a long time to come. It has been an integral part of my life for just shy of 14 years now.

So, why should it be a part of your life? The answer, if I'm entirely honest, is "Maybe it shouldn't." But there are a lot of people who will like the site if they just dig a bit, so now I'd like to tell you why you should take that moment and do some digging.

In a bullet point format, here are some of the most exciting things the site has to offer:

• Quality reviews. There are a bunch of them on the site, presently more than 8000. Not all of them are fantastic, but the ratio of quality to crap definitely favors the former. Whether you're reading staff, freelance or user reviews, you can usually expect a great read.
  
• Retro coverage. The site tends to attract more mature gamers, so a lot of the content we cover is older stuff. We've posted a substantial number of reviews for games appearing on platforms such as the NES, SNES, Genesis, Turbografx-16, Sega Master System, and so forth.
  
• Review workshopping. When you post reviews on the site, there's a good chance someone will read it and comment, even though our community isn't as large as most. We also post a weekly topic ranking top reviews contributed during the preceding 7 days, and those reviews are featured on the site so they get more recognition (and perhaps additional feedback). Throughout the years, many great writers have found this process helpful, and we have received numerous comments from people who started contributing and found that their writing improved over the following months. Some of those writers have gone on to contribute to a number of leading game sites on the Internet.

So, that's why I'm excited about HonestGamers. It's why I continue to work on a niche site that not nearly enough people have heard about. It's also why I plan to keep working on the site... and I'm going to be working hard to promote it. This post is part of that process, but it's not the end of it. I'll be advertising on social media, posting about great content on my Twitter account, linking to news and reviews from the HonestGamers Facebook page and much more.

If you'd like to check out the site, please do. Take some time to browse for retro reviews by system (you can click "All" on the bar near the top of the site to see a list of every system featured on the site), or browse our exclusive reviews. If you're a good writer who has been looking for a community that will value your contributions, I hope you'll also get involved.

In the coming months, HonestGamers will hopefully be posting a lot of great new retro content. Retro content is one of the things the site has always done best, and my hope is that you'll come to regard HonestGamers as the finest retro resource on the Internet (while also enjoying our coverage for the best games of today and tomorrow).

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to seeing some of you on the site!

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