Believe it or not, this little adventure we call WiiCafé began over a year ago. And now, on the sixth month anniversary of our official launch, July 20, 2002, I am offering you the uncensored, no-holds-barred history of the Café. Now, what you read may shock or amaze you, but be assured, every word is true. I was there; I saw it happen.

It all started in the summer of 2001. Matt Haven answered a post on the forums of another website looking for staffers for a new website called GCRevolution. It was a small site, didn’t even have a real URL yet, just a Tripod location. Soon after Matt answered the call, Bryan Kingsbury did so as well. When the original creator of the site resigned for personal reasons, Matt and Bryan banded together and vowed that they would not let GCRev die. They started from scratch, hiring an all-new staff. They first approached Marcus Bonilla, who quickly took the job. He then went to his friends Matt Silver and myself, and offered us both positions at the site. Silver snatched it very quickly. I, on the other hand, was apprehensive. A small Tripod site? What future could be in that? But after some coaxing from my friends and eventual new bosses, I, though slightly reluctantly, took the job as forum administrator. Shortly thereafter, were joined by Danny Robin, Joe Rodemeyer, Tom Schneider, and Geoff W. Things were rolling.

But there was trouble in paradise. Even as the site flourished, as much as a Tripod site could, there was constant unrest among the staff. Bickering about problems, both small and large, soon erupted into full-scale shouting wars (well, bolding in the chatroom and using caps lock wars). We needed a stabilizer. Marcus and I finally convinced our good friend Kevin McGinnis to join the site, after weeks of asking him to. We thought that his presence could possibly make the site a little steadier. We were wrong. Matt and Bryan would each quit at times, and only came back after hours of our begging to not leave. The site would not survive with only one of them. They decided to hire Marcus as the vice president, who would be the tie-breaking vote in any deadlock between Matt and Bryan. All the while, there is rebellion brewing. Silver, Marcus, Joe, Tom, Kevin, and myself formed what we called the Alliance. We knew the site was going downhill and would soon die. We swore to each other that if any of us quit or was fired, we would all walk together. And it was set. Meanwhile, the five of us were also scheming other things: The takedown of Matt and Bryan. We resolved to take this little POS Tripod site and make it a masterpiece. We had every detail planned out meticulously; nothing could happen to stop us now. The plans would be carried out in a few weeks…

But again, we were faced with another problem. Matt quit. Just up and left, no warning or anything, and there would be no bringing him back this time. Now what to do? We frantically tried to come up with a new plan. And Bryan supplied us with it. He decided, after of course much disagreement and arguments, to take on a new partner, and the site would be run as it used to be. Excellent. This is when Joe came up with the idea that got us where we are today. We convinced Bryan to let us vote on his next partner and VP. We decided that we would elect one of the members of the Alliance the new partner and to keep Marcus as VP. And that person, who would eventually be chosen as lucky old me, would then propose that he be the sole president. Bryan, of course, would oppose this and the deadlock would be achieved. Here’s where Marcus came in…he broke the tie. Bryan was ousted from his position. And here I was, the head of the Alliance and president of GCRevolution. But it wasn’t to last, I knew that, this was merely a ploy. A day or so before, Matt had invited us all to join him on the new site he was creating with his friend Andrew, called CubeFreaks. We all collectively agreed that GCRev was dead. As my only presidential decision, I moved everybody on staff that would come with me to CubeFreaks. The only people that stayed behind were Bryan, who retook his old position, Danny, and Adam, Bryan’s brother. What happened to them is another story that won’t be told here, though.

So here we were, back again in the same situation, only worse in some ways. Bryan, Danny, Adam, and Geoff (who simply decided he wanted out) were gone. Matt and Andrew were the bosses. Shortly after the Alliance joined CF, a merger happened. A small Geocities site called GameCube Central joined the Freaks, in the persons of Joe Whitman, Vesna Savic, and Dannielle Pence. All seemed well and good, we had a great looking design, plenty of dedicated staff, and the desire to succeed. All we had to do now was wait for Andrew to buy the domain and hosting so we could go live. So we waited. And waited. And waited. For two months. Needless to say, we weren’t happy. We couldn’t even stand it when we were on Tripod, let alone non-existent. Our evil little minds were brewing again. The Alliance was getting upset, as were our new staffers. Even Matt was getting fed up with Andrew’s constant “It’ll be up soon” remarks. We gave him an ultimatum: Be up by June 1, or we walk. He agreed, and swore to us that we would be live by the first of June, 2002. But he was already getting on our nerves and we knew we’d never be able to work with him. Kevin knew this. So did Joe W. And Matt. They called a secret meeting for the three of them, to which I would be invited later. When I joined, they already had the basic plan: We would walk on Andrew, and form what we dubbed WiiCafé. I had one problem though: I had made my word to Andrew to stick with him until the first, and my personal ethics and morals forbid me from breaking my own rule. I had to find a loophole or something. Soon we let the rest of the staff in on the plan. We knew there was never any way Andrew could get the site up in the few weeks until the deadline. So we decided to wait. Or so we thought.

After a week or so of sitting on this idea, Kevin decided enough was enough. He went directly to Andrew and quit outright. The rest of the staff followed, except me, still refusing to break my word. It seemed I was stuck. Then he came to me and told me that, because of the loss of staff, he would have to delay the launch. Only being bound to him through the promise of a June 1 launch, I was free. I quit. And CubeFreaks was officially dead to us. WiiCafé was about to be born…

Ok, so here we are again, about to start over. Except this time we don’t have a boss or an owner. Shit. This is a problem we’ve never been faced with before. So before things got too out of hand, we decided to have another meeting. We had to decide how we wanted the site to be run. The choices we agreed on were this: A single owner and boss, which would be Joe W., and a board of five members to make decisions, or a dual ownership to create a system of checks between the owners to make sure nobody got the upper hand and too much power, which would be led by myself and Silver.

We held a vote, every staffer emailing in his or her choice. The exact number of votes for each candidate will not be revealed here, and has even been kept secret from most staff. Needless to say, though, Silver and I won. So now we had the foundation: myself and Silver as owners, we chose Matt has the Editor in Chief, and Kevin, Joe R. and Marcus as senior editors, and the rest became our bitc…err, staff writers. So Silver and I made the same promise to our staff that Matt, Bryan, and Andrew had made us before: We will have a real website soon. In the meantime, we needed a web designer. Enter Marko, Ves’ brother. She suggested him as the web designer, as he knew HTML and had design experience. He showed us some of his work and we hired him. He quickly went to work on a basic design.

Meanwhile, we had the wheels spinning on preparing for launch. We had people writing articles and even did some more hiring. Chris Stevenson had been a regular in the chat for a while, and one day brought up that he’d like to work for us. Having spent time with him on IRC, we felt he’d be a good asset, so, needing a few new writers anyway, we had him write a preview on Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, which at the time was still very unknown. He did a stellar job and we hired him. Unfortunately Chris recently had some problems and it was impossible for him to stay on staff. We wish him the best of luck in his future and still consider him a great friend.

After a few weeks of preparations, Silver and I decided it was time to buy the hosting for wiicafe.com. He, Marlow, and I sat in my room late one night and said, “It’s time” (Marlow wasn’t part of the staff yet, and was basically laughing at us as we did it). So we bought the domain and the hosting. And the next few days were devoted to transferring Marko’s design to HTML and getting it onto the site.

It took a while, and a lot of hard work, but eventually, it was up. A bright blue background, Mario spraying Peach with the FLUDD, and a big yellow Shine in the corner, it was ready. Now we went to work on getting the content up. Reviews, previews, editorials, news, anything we could find we got up before the launch, so we wouldn’t be completely empty. We set the launch for July 2002. And on the 20th of that month, it happened.

We held a christening of the site with our regular chatters by having a trivia game. After the game ended, we officially went live, at 10:45 pm Eastern Standard Time. And we all let out a sigh of relief. I remember turning to Silver and saying, “Dude, we did it.” For more on our launch thoughts, see the original Site Explanation.

All seemed well and good. Except we needed news. Every fansite needs news, right? Even the Café, which we proclaim as not news-based, but content based, still needs something. So we came up with the ideas for summaries, to weed out everything you don’t want to see and give it to you in a short and sweet little blurb. But we still didn’t have anybody to solely do news. So we put out an ad.

Matt Schraeder, who knew HTML, web design, Photoshop, and a lot of other geeky things, not to mention being a complete games whore, answered this almost immediately. So now we have three freaking Matts working for us. Ok, things are a getting little confusing for the names, but whatever, we have our news guy. Schraeder, who came to be known by all of us as his IRC name “Frozen-Solid” to avoid name issues, showed a lot of work ethic and we could tell right away that hiring this guy was not a mistake.

That feeling was quickly proven true, as Marko decided to quit due to personality conflicts with some of the staff. By default, as he knew the most HTML and computer crap, Frozen became the new Webmaster. He still handles the raw code updating for just about every article, and has created many brilliant things for us since then, from the SFA, Biohazard 0, and Metroid Prime, and Capcom 5 site layouts to the trivia banners to the overwhelmingly popular desktop themes, not to mention articles.

Then came our first big blow. Matt Haven, our Editor in Chief, decided he wanted out. He up and left. The guy that got us all started and had been a mainstay with us since the beginning was gone. Some of us got some GCRev flashbacks, a few scared that this might open the floodgates as it had before. But Silver, Frozen, some others, and I vowed not to let that happen. We buckled down and went to work at rebuilding the morale. Kevin was promoted to Editor in Chief, and Dannielle was promoted to senior editor. After a rocky few days, things got back to normal. It was scary and tense, but we got through it.

And so it goes. The site for the next few months flourished and grew. The staff has been evolving since day one, with new people coming and going all the time. Some last longer than others, and some just won’t go away no matter how hard we try. Many of those that have left for various reasons we still keep in touch with and consider friends. We’ve hired our resident hick Matt Marlow as the codes guy, and for a time had four Matts before Haven left, which created the line “Welcome to WiiCafé, if your name is Matt, you probably work for us.” Also, we’ve added Bryan Rose as our release dates/games manager, and Kevin’s friend Mike Twomey as our previews editor, who have both proven to be wonderful assets both technically and personally.

So now here we are, over a year since GCRevolution began. There are still five of us here from those days, all from the Alliance. And now with this staff, both old and new, we continue to be more than we ever dreamed of when we started out. The site’s layout may change, the staff may evolve, but WiiCafé is constant, it is a part of us that we all hold dear and will forever be a part of our souls. Here we are, a bunch of goofy Nintendo freaks, doing what we love to do for you, the fans. That is now and always will be the reason we exist and will continue to exist: You. You make us what we are, you allow us to survive, because, if it weren’t for you, there’d be no point to any of this craziness. So, from the bottoms of our collective hearts, we thank you.

So what’s to come of us in the future? Who knows, but I can promise you that we’ll be around for a long time to come. And, to my staff, I thank you, also. I love you all, God bless, happy anniversary. Now get back to work you lazy bums, or you’re all fired.

Carl DeNovio

Staff Thoughts

The rest of our beloved staff also wrote small articles about their experiences here at the Café. Click the links below to hear their tale.

Kevin McGinnis

Dannielle Pence

Matt Schraeder

Tom Schneider

Matt Marlow

Bryan Rose

Mike Twomey