Salutations, to all you folk. Say, did you know we recently turned a year old? No, no - not ourselves. Although having a bunch a young, thumb-socking misfits writing an Indian Gaming blog would suffice for more of a relevant plot device than anything the Super Babies movies were ever about. And god, you have no idea how long I’ve been wanting to take a crack at the Super Babies. Imagine if your feces sprouted it’s own civilizations and… wait, where am I going with this?

Anyway, theANGRYpixel blog is now one year old (and then some). How did we get this far?

It all started at the SKOAR! forums, just a few weeks behind one year ago. There was quite a bit of backlash with the community and the staff, as it became increasingly noted that the magazine was illegally carrying full-versions of classic PC titles within the package DVDs (you can read all about it here and here). Since a lot of us originally contributed for the magazine regularly (albeit, as freelancers), and there was little-to-no explanation as to why this was evening happening in the first place, a sense of animosity grew amongst forum regulars. No doubt, the biggest thing that set anyone’s gaskets ablaze was the supposed hacking of the forums (not the first time, for those keeping track), where a significant number of topics and posts were deleted and yours truly being accused for the crime. Despite that, I’ve yet to see any evidence to support these accusations from SKOAR’s end, but that’s besides the point. One thing became radically apparent, was that a number of us didn’t want to be associated with Badjag and his customer support group anymore.

A few weeks after the incident, we started work on the look of our forums and blog. Yes, it’s true, there’s a forum! And I admit, we haven’t exactly given it the utmost attention as of late. Well, more like months, but this wasn’t always the case. Even when we were struggling to get the blog more recognition, I encouraged as much forum activity as possible. But as soon as things picked up, more and more focus went to the site. If there’s one thing LucasArts adventure games taught me, it’s that you can’t be everywhere at once. That, and time is a never-ending boss fight with no extra continues.

When did things pick up, anyway? I’ll go ahead and say that it was Krishnan’s post on DirectX 10 Gaming for Non-Vista equipped machines. Sure, there was that time Joystiq picked up our article about some nut selling his game collection because his fiance told him to, and uh… Tifa porn (Can someone please tell me why Google says this shit still gets views even today?) - but this was different. Here was something randomly found by someone else, a time before we even knew about sites like N4G existed. Someone out there in this universe/dimension/after-life thought this article was worth checking out, and apparently so did a lot of others. And this was just our first month. How about that!

As time passed, one thing became increasingly vital to our work: the very country that ties us together. India, as it now, isn’t exactly acknowledged by the majority of the public (both who live in India and otherwise) as a place where you’ll want to bust out your Gameboy in a public bathroom and get your Tetris on (They still do that in France, right?). Regardless, the potential is certainly there, especially if we’re just talking about Mobile Gaming and Tourneys (Console is a whole different mess). For that reason, we share our enthusiasm in what we do and how we do it, whenever possible. Our coverage for the World Cyber Games had showed that, along with the multitude of events held by Microsoft India we attended. As more and more time passed, the Indian Gaming community, as well as companies, became aware of what we were flailing our arms about. How about that!

But I think the biggest accomplishment that we were able to pull off was the Game of the Year Awards. A royal pain the buttocks, to be sure. It still puzzles me till this day how were able to convince these big-name companies and their game distributors to hand over a bunch of free stuff to whoever felt like participating in our poll, without having so much to sign a dotted line from anyone’s end. Madness!

So I’d liked to thank everyone who has contributed to our cause. I’d liked to name everyone of you delicious pastries and scuff you down like the high-calorie, sugary by-products that you are:

To Krishnan, who coded to hell and back what needed coded. To Reggie, for coming up with an awesome name for this place and driving me all around Delhi in order to get to those events we covered. To Reggie’s mother, Mrs. Miranda, for letting an overgrown buffoon stay with her son under the shortest of notices. To Bobby, for being able to pick up a digital pencil and making shit somehow look swank. To Jay, for always putting in a good word for us and helping with the prize distributions. To Cody, for being able to handle things at the blog despite my rude disappearances. To Singh, for his unfortunately long but fortunately interesting articles he’s submitted to us time and time again. To Dev, Rishi, Ravi and Aiman - for doing much of the same good as Singh, but without me having to edit so many paragraphs (I jest, I jest!). Also, to Ravi again, for editing articles I couldn’t be bothered with editing at the time (read: bed). To Abhinav Rao, Parag, Roshan, and Yadu - for posting at the forums whenever they could. For Roshan’s sister, for taking pictures during Sony’s big Playstation Experience event last year.

To all the overwhelmingly supportive people at GamingIndians - Sameer, Vikram, Vinit, and… some other people (I’m sorry I don’t remember all your names at this moment, so please don’t eat me)! Oh, and Vinit - just because CGW ain’t in India anymore, doesn’t mean it’s ever left me.

To Tech2’s Avinash Bali, LazySAGamer, all the folks over at Microsoft, Milestone Interactive, Electronic Arts, Sony, World Wide CDROMs, e-Xpress Interactive, The IT Wares, and Genesis-BM - as if I really need to point out again what you’ve all done for us… Okay, just one more link.

To my late Mother - I’m sorry I was always such a whiny dick, especially during the most crucial times. But you were cool with me playing video games no matter the circumstances, and I’ll always cherish you for the rest of my life. Even Dad’s become more tolerable about my gaming habits!

And finally, to all you readers. You rocked our mic. No, really! God, this is getting disgustingly long-winded. Let’s just have one nice group hug, and leave it at that. I hope you sorry people actually got to bathe this time.

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By N2H

• Arachnid Says:
  April 6th, 2008 at 11:15 am

  We’re a year old? Already?!

• Snake Says:
  April 6th, 2008 at 11:56 am

  WWWOOOOHOOOOO!!!!!!,One Year Old…chalo partee time!!!

• bobby sandhu Says:
  April 8th, 2008 at 1:37 pm

  well.. one year…. one year whores we are… i wish we can have the original design…. wish

• Ravi Says:
  April 11th, 2008 at 5:08 am

  WTF??
  One year already?You should have left it at “Let’s just have one nice group hug, and leave it at that. “I was on my 50 sheep by the time i came to the last page!

  Congratulations Guys!Here’s to the next one