STARMEN.NET - Stonehenge - Starmen.Net History

Stonehenge Info:

Starmen.Net has been around since 1998, when it started out as EarthBound.Net (more on that below). Since then, the site has grown in leaps and bounds, pulling off stunts and achieving goals that most people would never expect a group of kids to be able to do, especially a bunch of kids whose only connection is the internet and a weird video game.

We never had the foresight to keep a detailed history of these happenings as they occurred, so this page (Stonehenge) is our attempt to make a record of the cool things we've done in the past.

Note that most of this only covers up to 2006/2007, a lot has happened since then that we haven't gotten around to formally archiving.

Literary Moments in Starmen.Net History:

(1999) The email that started it all - an email from Tomato to reidman about his vision for EarthBound.Net
(1999) EarthBound.Net Sieges NOA - possibly the most awesome/stupid fanfic of all time
(1999) A Site is Born - Written by Tomato in 2003
(2000) A protracted history of how EarthBound.Net became Starmen.Net - by Anthadd
(2002) Stafftastic Letterage I - Part 1 - by reidman
(2002) Stafftastic Letterage I - Part 2 - by Tomato
(2003) Stafftastic Letterage II - wherein reidman is giddy about the success of the Mother 3 Petition and the future of the site
(2003) Letter to the Staff - wherein reidman sounds like a washed-up motivational speaker
(2005) Starmen.Net v Sourceperson - Blue Disk Saga The story of the EarthBound 64 DD Disks

There is also the Site Timeline, which is still very much under (re)construction.

Petitions:

Starmen.Net has organized three different petitions in the past. Each time, our staff has created, programmed, collected, checked, filtered, printed, bound, and shipped thousands of signatures right to Nintendo's doorsteps. The Mother 3 petition actually had about 1,200 handwritten signatures, if that gives you any idea of how serious EarthBound fans are about this stuff.

You can follow the links below to read more about each individual petition:

Mother on Game Boy Color Petition - 1,850 signatures - May 1999
EarthBound 64 Petition - 10,013 signatures - Sept, 2000
Mother 3 Petition - 31,338 signatures - April, 2003

Each petition was a huge undertaking - as you can see by the growth of the numbers and quality of each petition, the site and the EarthBound fanbase was constantly growing and becoming more powerful.

The petitions made a measurable impact, but unfortunately Nintendo still refuses to translate Mother or Mother 3 to English. Regardless, we had lot of fun putting them together and getting mentioned by some of the biggest names in gaming. Here are some of our favorite mentions/references/plugs:

Penny Arcade - "EarthBound Petition" - March 29, 2002
Slashdot - "EarthBound Petition Making a Difference?" - Sept 14, 2003
Edge Magazine Mother 3 Article (a European gaming mag) - June 2006 issue 166

Our favorite, however, came from Shigeru Miyamoto, a man popularly considered to be the father of modern video gaming:

"You might not know this, but there was a petition in the US, a 'Please make Mother 3' petition and it got about 30,000 signatures! After that, we thought 'Wow... Earthbound fans are really solid.'" Shigeru Miyamoto (from an interview with Nintendo Europe, via Nintendojo)

NP Siege / PK Call 'N:

Jonk (as well as ShadowX and reidman) spent a lot of time organizing two specific kinds of events in attempts to make EarthBound fans' voices heard: NP Sieges were letter writing campaigns, and PK Call 'Ns were phone campaigns, both aimed at Nintendo of America / Nintendo Power's public addresses/hotlines where fans are encouraged to write/call.

NP Sieges

NP Siege (2000)
NP Siege II (2001)
NP Siege III (2002)
NP Ransom Siege (2003)

PK Call 'Ns

Old Website Layouts::

Starmen.Net has had literally dozens of different website designs, dating back as far as EarthBound.Net's original Saturn Valley map in 1998. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the site's old designs are lost to the sands of time, but luckily we've managed to save a few snapshots of site history:

Classic Starmen.Net (this was our design for several years, from around 2001-2005)
Starmen.Net (The design used from Aug. 2000 to Feb. 2001. Was used right before the "Classic" design)
EarthBound.Net (From mid-1999 to Dec. 1999)
You are now Earthbound (reidman's original website that pretty much started it all. It was active from 1997-1999)

Archived Community Forums:

In addition to Starmen.Net's many websites/designs, the community has switched forums nearly a half dozen times over the course of 15 years. Some of those forums are lost to the ages, but several of them have been helpfully preserved for the twin purposes of nostalgia and embarrassment!

Rare Staff / Donor Gifts:

Jonk and many other site artists have put, literally, hundreds upon hundreds of hours of work into the Starmen.Net Store. In addition to the items there, however, there are several sets of very rare items that have appeared throughout the site's history:

PSI Rockin', Rock Candy 1, 2, and 3 (Thank-you gifts for staff and donors painstakingly handcrafted by Jonk, sent out between 2002 and 2004)
Staff Gifts - Resin Starmen / Mr. Saturn Sculptures by Meeellla (Thank-you gifts for the staff, sent out in 2003 - roughly 20 of each in existence)
Staff Gifts - 1st Edition mugz0rz by reidman (Thank-you gifts for the staff, sent out in 1999 - 50 total in existence)