The Scribble King blog has posted a large interview with Spook Central webmaster, Paul Rudhoff Rudoff. It’s a great talk with one of the longest running Ghostbuster webmasters around – it’s doubly interesting to myself, as I started PC at roughly the same time, so my view of GB online was similar, but slightly different. And of course neither of us was familiar with the other for the first while.
I only recall there being four Ghostbusters fan sites when I ventured out into the vast unknown of this thing called The Internet. There was a general fan site created by Bill Emkow, a Real Ghostbusters artwork site by Adrian “Burning Knight Raven” Adams, a Real Ghostbusters fan fiction site by Sheila Paulson, and a site that started to do an image-enhanced version of the Ghostbusters film script.
For me, I only recall Bill’s, Shiela’s, and Mr. Stay-puft’s World O Sounds. Important history lesson for you kids out there – search engines sucked back then and messageboards were rare at the time. Finding other sites was hit and miss or word of mouth. You kids have it easy! And get off my lawn!
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Damn, Chris, you’re fast
You posted news of my interview before I could on my site!
Don’t take it personally that I didn’t know of your site back then, because even Bill Emkow didn’t. Here is his webpage last updated January 14, 1997. You’ll notice no link to your site. Here’s a copy from a year later (Last Updated: February 6, 1998), which has a link to your site. So obviously both Bill and myself didn’t find your site until some time in 1997.
The earliest reference to Proton Charging that I could find right now is a link to it on an April 15, 1997 copy of Mr. Stay-Puft’s World O’Sounds (another oldie that’s still around – though I seems to recall it being created shortly after my site).
Unfortunately, the Internet Archive doesn’t go back as far as I’d like, and I don’t think ANY of us ever saved a complete list of the urls we all used for our sites, so it’s extremely hard (if not impossible) to compile an accurate or complete history of the Ghostbusters online community.
Like you said, a lot us didn’t know about each other way back when. It’s not like the internet has ever been properly catalogued. There’s isn’t one site that simply lists every single Ghostbusters (or any other topic) site currently online – because no site CAN (pages come and go too frequently).
This is an additional comment to the long one that I submitted a few hours ago, which I hope will be posted soon.
The links that are made throughout the interview were done by me, so you can see that I gave PC its props when talking about the recent GB3 news.
The MTGB franchise site followed suit soon after you guys had all that great information out there– and we still check in!! May you have many more years of news, info and fun!
-Keep Bustin’
Andrew
I wasn’t taking it personally, Paul, don’t worry. I mostly was waxing on about how miserable the search engines were back then – I was operating in my own little bubble for awhile until, as you pointed out on the WayBack links, Bill put me up on his site. I wasn’t familiar with Raven’s site until later as well, but I found Mr. Stay-puft’s early on.
It’s come a long way since then.
Am I the only one who misses the old Infoseek Ultra? It was lightyears ahead of its (pre-Google) peers. As I recall, it fell victim to major changes at Disney’s Go.com portal.
Yeah heh heh, I was an early adapter to the internet. I usually went to Bill Emkow’s site, though I rarely posted anything. Then I was in and out over the next few years, then I disappeared for maybe about 2 years, then came back in and out again in 2004 when I got a new computer.
Well Paul just like you I’m so happy that Ghostbusters 3 will be in CGI because with your Information that you have you said it yourself and It’s true Ghostbusters 3 in CGI is a GO and Thanks to Bill for agreeing to voice his role to do a GB3 in CGI. You know Paul just like me that the videogame is a remake of the FIRST GB MOVIE People still think that GB3 is the videogame and it isn’t it’s a Remake of the first GB movie in videogame format so thanks Paul Rudoff for having Proof Information about Ghostbusters 3 being made in CGI because in many reports I’ve read it’s a GO!