🌟 Internet Famous HardcoreGaming101 - Kurt Kalata and friends. Yet another gaming website gone internet crusaders.

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Achtung Bitter

Achtung Bitter

I did not have sex with that hairdresser.
kiwifarms.net
Joined
Dec 2, 2024
About:
Hardcore Gaming 101 is a website that covers (mostly) retro video games, that is pre 2000, founded about 20 years ago by an independent nerd, it started off as a an informational resource of questionable quality and gradually went through advertisements, donations through Paypal and Patreon. In 2017 hg101 underwent a redesign, of course it wasn't just a whim:
Incidentally, the site development, hosting, and article conversion has added some extra expenses to the site monthly budget, so please consider heading over to the HG101 Patreon if you’d like to help us out.
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Gaming journalism in general is a necessary evil, but hg101 is retrospective. Hence not many opportunities for clickbait, not much to attract a community with either. Unable to contend against any of the numerous medium sized gaming sites, hg101 tried to find themselves a niche and they did find one. A niche marketing strategy of attracting vintage nerds did succeed in a limited way. But that wasn't nearly enough to make much off (often uneducated) babbling about prehistoric technologies. So they found an easy solution, keeping up with the times. Being white knights in shining armor when it comes to internet crusade against sexism, transphobia etc. Standing up against slavery and racism in XXI century and so on.

When looked upon as a bunch of paraphrased and copy-pasted data or horseshit reviews of old ass games though, it's probably more informative than many.

HG101 really kept on going downhill for more than a decade anyway, and now reached its logical climax.

History:
Interview from 2011: http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/index.php/site/interviews/658/
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So basically it was created by a sad dweeb because he had nothing better to do with his time. In an attempt to become a 'game historian', much like myriads of other basement 'journalists' and 'content creators'.

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Right now though, what that two-faced asshat is doing, is making an income off socially deprived nerds donating him money for some fine-tuned entertainment.
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Sad cunts become famous:
At this point, hg101 has a long history of being sad cunts. One of the best known examples is them hounding Goemon translator.

Dude got attacked for accurately translating an old ass japanese videogame, apparently the hg101 clowns were determined to rewrite history. There's some remarkable stupidity in trying to censor a quote from 25 years ago, come to think of it, it's probably a warning sign of dangerous behaviour, a dark trait.

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The translator, being a nice guy and genuinenly interested in his work, responded to 'criticism'


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That wasn't enough for the high standards of the hg101 community however:

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So naturally, the translator got sick of all the horseshit bickering and drama and decided to quit

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It's quite obvious that Kalata has realized how to attract patreon supporters without any actual content creation..

To add even more to the hypocrisy, hg101 denied everything:

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* taken from
and
Authors:
Being leftist is almost a prerequisite for joining hg101, all have Trump derangement syndrome, they all prefer 'inclusive' video games just for the sake of it. Every single 'journalist' of hg101 (and 90 percent of their community) abandoned Twitter and 'moved on' to Bluesky.

- Kurt Kalata is a top tier 'historian' and 'game writer and creative. He/Him Australia'

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https://bsky.app/profile/kaly.bsky.social

- x-pert74/'Kate'

https://bsky.app/profile/x-pert74.bsky.social

This one is a deep thinker
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- Shadow Hog, 'he/him'


One of his golden retweets:
Being on bluesky and being able to say stuff like “commission” and “T-shirt” without summoning bots has the same vibes as being a kid in an empty house without your parents and getting to say curse words out loud
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Says a lot about the author.

- Bobinator, 'Robert E.Naytor' (a sad nazi nerd)

- Xerxes (yet another sad dweeb)

- TaxOwlbear, 'Lennart Bachman'

Has extensive experience with reddit:

- Feynman (top tier degenerate, passionate about 'character development' in jrpgs for 13-year-olds)

etc

The 'reviews' are more often than not utter shit, misinformed one at that. Usually, they are written by 30 years old 'freelancers'.

'The payment rate (unless otherwise specified) is $20 USD per 500 words'.

They have a podcast, which is basically like going to an autistic meeting.

They have a discord, it's a (quote) 'Discussions on vintage and modern gaming and geek culture in a safe moderated community!'
(Dumbass ramblings on obscure old ass shit and socially isolated lifestyle in a nazi moderated server)

It's a great example of how a gaming website turned into a bastion of nutcases.

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I used to interact with Kurt Kalata a bit during his Castlevania Dungeon days over 20 years ago (jfc that long). He can act like a moral busy body all he wants now a days but he'd be throwing around "fag," "nigger" and "tranny" like the rest of us.

Didn't realize he was Australian though. The day Trump got elected the first time, he had a meltdown and released all of HCG101's articles lined up for the month at once so he can go be depressed over it. Knowing he's an aussie makes that funnier, like, who the fuck cares it isn't your country lmao

Discussing HCG101 in other threads, I went back to do some digging on Kurt and the site awhile ago and realized he's scrubbed the internet of some of his hot takes. He once had this long screed about how much he hates Dragon Quest on the front page of HCG101 but much like other hipsters like Jeremy Perish he's now acts as some sort of DQ old guard because it's trendy. Only evidence is a old forum post calling him out on and it Kurt is like "I was just pretending to be retarded!"

The reversal only really came because HCG101 started hosting some (in retrospect god awful post modern deep in student debt and need to justify my english degree) essays on Final Fantasy from Socks Make People Sexy and it was taking attention away from Kurt's stuff so he started doing some gay ass deep dive on DQ in the same vein.

As you said most of the "reviews" are full of shit and flaws. When it was just random shit I didn't know about I'd be oblivious to this but when they'd started doing articles on games I'm familiar with it all became clear it was less about informing anyone properly but trying to flex some sort of surface level alpha nerd "look at this rare thing!" type shit you see on YouTube now a days.
 
I actually used to use this site as a resource for quite a few games. I feel the moment it jumped the shark was the moment it abandoned its Web 1.0 "black background" look and tried to modernize the site. Had no idea that "modernization" also extended to the writing, but it's not surprising.
 
I don't know much about Kurt Koala, but i do know that one of the sites (former?) writers, John Szczepaniak, travelled to Japan to do some interviews with people and ended up getting sued by his guide for treating them like shit then slandering them on Kickstarter.

We have recently endured a campaign of threats and defamation led by Mr. John Szczepaniak (a.k.a. Jan Szczepaniak) of Saint-Laurs, France. This is our first public statement on the matter.

In 2013, John successfully pitched a Kickstarter project involving a series of interviews in Japan. At John's request, Agness Kaku helped to plan and promote the project. She also put John in contact with her sister, Hanako Abe, whose network of professional interpreters seemed a good match for his needs. John persuaded Hanako to act as his interpreter-coordinator, and came to depend on her heavily as a de facto project manager.

Shortly after John's arrival, it became clear that he was unprepared and under-qualified for the work ahead. Over the next several weeks, he repeatedly abused professional interfaces and strained working relationships. John's sense of entitlement, along with his health problems, eventually led to a personal and professional meltdown in Japan. When Agness intervened to save the project, John responded with hostility. When Hanako decided to resign, John responded with panic and false accusations.

Since returning to France, John has used public and private Kickstarter postings to spread lies about Agness and Hanako and about the people they brought to his project. We believe these lies were meant to displace blame for John's failures to meet project goals, to provide a false account of the project's funds, and to punish Agness, for whom John seems to have developed inappropriate feelings. When we privately informed John that we would not tolerate his abuse, he threatened to destroy the careers of both Agness and Hanako. He has since expanded this threat to include their respective spouses, Peter Duimstra and Nobuhiro Abe.

Because John Szczepaniak has refused to retract his public statements about us, we are now prosecuting him for criminal libel in French court. An initial hearing has been scheduled for June 12, 2014.
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Basically, the guy was unprepared and unqualified to do the interview but blamed all the problems on his guides and a translator rather than take responsibility.

Some highlights of the FAQ:

Is John well?

We are not psychotherapists or doctors, but we refer you to this, this, and this.
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What is this site and why should we care?
The versusJS blog provides coverage of our lawsuit against John Szczepaniak, who for the past 18 months has conducted a campaign of defamation and endangerment against Agness Kaku, Hanako Abe, and their families. The case is interesting for a number of reasons, but unless you're involved personally, as a backer of John's Kickstarter project or as a victim of John's past behaviour, you have little reason to care.
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If this is between John and Hanako, why is John attacking Agness?

The short answer is that John really, really hates Agness.
Prior to John's attacks, the history of interaction between John and Agness consisted entirely of John asking for favours, and Agness granting them. The last favour Agness granted was giving him Hanako's personal contact info, so that he could consult her directly. Six months later, John throws Hanako and her colleagues under the bus, and includes Agness purely out of spite.
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So, you did nothing wrong?

We did absolutely nothing wrong, but the real kicker is that Hanako bent over backwards to help John, and for very little pay. She even gave half of her proceeds to another Kickstarter project as a sign of good faith to John's backers. (John promptly removed all mention of this fact from project comments, and has since refund-banned any backer who challenges his version of events.)
Do we have regrets? Yes. Hanako regrets that she continued to ask John for things when she should have demanded them. Agness regrets granting John's request to interview her in 2011.
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The Libel case ultimately went nowhere, but still worth mentioning.
 
NoonmanR said:
John Szczepaniak, travelled to Japan to do some interviews with people and ended up getting sued by his guide for treating them like shit then slandering them on Kickstarter.
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To be fair, Agness Kaku is a fucking basket case.

They had her interview on HCG101 for her translation work for MGS2 (since removed because of the drama) and she herself is insufferable to listen to.

She bitches and moans about working on MGS2 and other Konami properties publicly on her own site which lead to Konami I believe ordering her cease and desist.

(If you ever want proof of what great talent Jeremy Blaustein has, compare his localization of MGS1 to Agness' work on 2. So stiff.)

Same interview, I recall her claiming she had great ideas for those Katamari games and would pitch them to the creator only to be gently told no. Her bold new take for Katamari? Make a game take place after hurricane Katrina.

She is a prototype to the "i know better than the creators!" psycho SJW shit that would emerge in the following few years.
 
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Shame what this site has become, back around a decade ago when I first developed a real interest in more obscure stuff, they weren't a bad place to find some info on something you may be interested in.

Took me a while to start really seeing how retarded and current year they got, I think their article on Shadow Warrior was what really tipped me off.

Like you stupid niggers, it's a fucking parody of the west's views on eastern culture and Lo Wang is fucking funny, deal with it.

I still occasionally peak out the site if a game has like fifty ports and I want some general info on all of them.

That's about it though.
 
I_Am_Not_Bruce_Willis said:
I feel the moment it jumped the shark was the moment it abandoned its Web 1.0 "black background" look and tried to modernize the site.
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You can say that about a lot of places that are still around that were born in the Web 1.0 era

Back then there was this air of sincerity, charm, and actual effort for people to put out information, create things, and build strong communities. Now it's all just lackluster garbage with the real talent and hard working people either leaving forever or being a diamond in the rough.

People always say how Web 1.0 is "dated" but fuck them. I'd gladly go back to that than live in the hellscape we do now.
 
A Hot Potato said:
Like you stupid niggers, it's a fucking parody of the west's views on eastern culture and Lo Wang is fucking funny, deal with it.
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Thanks for reminding me of their article for Shadow Warrior. That was the point where, after reading their game articles there for many years, I said "WTF? Why's the author so pissy about a funny tribute to Asian action movies?"

I don't remember people getting all pissed about the game since it was all fun and games before SJW weirdos like Kurt have to ruin everyone's fun.
 
Tips
1. Thumbnail all the images
2. Archive every link, on that note if you got a screen of a tweet, archive back to original tweet or post
3. Start off with a run down of what the site is, and bit of it's history. You can't expect everyone to know or have heard of HardcoreGaming101
4. Breakdown of all the key players, format it with name, photo if you have it, then just a overview of who they are and any key facts.
5. Format the OP, breaking it into sections with headers, makes it way easier to read and find key information.
6. Reading it you say it is a goldmine of lolcows, but is a bit weak in showing it in the thread. So that needs a dramatic beefing up.
 
I edited it, thanks.

This isn't about personal insults or some generic flame wars, I don't want to make a dedicated section about the authors, anyway in this case I 'm not interested in providing any info beyond public tweets etc. I want it to be about gaming websites losing a grip on reality, and internet in general becoming more and more hysterical.

I 'm interested in posts about incompetency, such as the one about a Japanese trip above. that's what I meant by lolcows.
 
TATE MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODE!! said:
To be fair, Agness Kaku is a fucking basket case.

They had her interview on HCG101 for her translation work for MGS2 (since removed because of the drama) and she herself is insufferable to listen to.

She bitches and moans about working on MGS2 and other Konami properties publicly on her own site which lead to Konami I believe ordering her cease and desist.

(If you ever want proof of what great talent Jeremy Blaustein has, compare his localization of MGS1 to Agness' work on 2. So stiff.)

Same interview, I recall her claiming she had great ideas for those Katamari games and would pitch them to the creator only to be gently told no. Her bold new take for Katamari? Make a game take place after hurricane Katrina.

She is a prototype to the "i know better than the creators!" psycho SJW shit that would emerge in the following few years.
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I also remember her bitching that Kojima can't write for shit and she did her best to "fix" the script. And then Razorfist citing that in an attempt to dunk on Kojima.
 
Is there any compiled lists of information on how much inaccurate shit HG101 spews? That'd be interesting to maybe add to OP to show their incompetence. Unless the writers went back and fixed things in the years since I last really looked at the site, there's some pages that come to mind I can look up later.

Maniacal Foreigner said:
I also remember her bitching that Kojima can't write for shit and she did her best to "fix" the script. And then Razorfist citing that in an attempt to dunk on Kojima.
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I've only seen one video of that guy ever, his spastic hot take on that Wukong monkey game on some podcast (side scrollers?), and the sheer retardation he exuded was beyond painful. You'd think he was a HG101 writer.
 
The day Trump got elected the first time, he had a meltdown and released all of HCG101's articles lined up for the month at once so he can go be depressed over it. Knowing he's an aussie makes that funnier, like, who the fuck cares it isn't your country lmao
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that's actually real. smh.
 
Haha. A very long time ago, I'm talking well over a decade at the least, I was an on-and-off columnist for this website. I figured if I could hammer out some decent posts about video games I liked I could use the money to pay for college textbooks.

I remember talking to some of the other people who worked on the website a few times, mostly the authors who are specifically named on the website as the main contributors. I want to say Bobinator led a double life as a furry but for the life of me I cannot remember who he actually is.
 
Barry Williams said:
Haha. A very long time ago, I'm talking well over a decade at the least, I was an on-and-off columnist for this website. I figured if I could hammer out some decent posts about video games I liked I could use the money to pay for college textbooks.

I remember talking to some of the other people who worked on the website a few times, mostly the authors who are specifically named on the website as the main contributors. I want to say Bobinator led a double life as a furry but for the life of me I cannot remember who he actually is.
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Without power leveling do you have any hot goss? Also what's the editorial process like since there doesn't seem to be much in the way of enforcing accurate standards.
 
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