High Voltage Online is a site devoted to one-on-one fighting games, written by and for the filthy slavering nerds who play them. But behind this deceptively charming summary lies the largest dedicated archive of fighting game reviews the internet will ever see, covering everything from tournament favourites and high-profile chart-toppers to obscure ports and retro oddities across every possible platform; penned by fiercely devoted fans of the genre of all skill levels and biases. If it was released between 1991 and the present day and involves miffed folk punching face, we’ll have something to say about it.

Proud to represent the lighter more humorous side of fighting game fandom, a collective that is otherwise comprised entirely of uninteresting and distinctly lumpen fellows, with our zany 1950’s sitcom-style staff, comedy articles, reviews that contain the word ‘fuck’ and the churning pool of ravenous e-pirahnas we like to call New Eleet Speek (nominated for the ‘Federal Express worst forum in the world’ award three years running); we at HVO feel proud to be keeping such an obvious gap in the market firmly plugged.

But despite our swish 21st century makeover this site and its forebears have a rich and long-running history, one that we’re quite taken with calling:

Nine Years of Idiocy: The High Voltage Story

It began as things always do, in a sleepy hillside town in mid-west America. In 1997 the internet was no longer sole preserve of universities, the military and the extraordinarily smug, now anyone could set out to make their online fortune. Fan sites for popular media were springing up like wildfire, reaching out, connecting with one another and creating new life like the Genesis Device from Star Trek 2.

One of the many thousands of networks of videogame sites (a medium itself in the middle of a turbulent period of innovation) that sprang up at the time was the “Fighters Online” webring; consisting of the following inter-related sites.

Three of them, Clan Heavy Artillery (a Quake multiplayer clan), WILD/racing (an absolute mystery!) and HOTN64Weekly(weekly Nintendo64 newsletter) disappeared from the ring in February 1998, to be replaced with the self-explanatory Videogame Link Station and Lost Universe (a Hardcore-designed RPG site)

The three of most interest to HV historians are:

Kingdom MK - Mortal Kombat fansite run by [n00b], #mkdomain superstar and (very briefly) HV staffer

The Killer Instinct Web - the result of EvilNeil’s second ever internet search (the first being of course ‘Kerri Hoskins’); Hardcore’s splendid KI fan page.

and of course

High Voltage Online.

HVO combined fighting game news, previews and reviews spliced expertly with the very finest IRC chatlog dick jokes, wanking references and sexist stream-of-consciousness claptrap. It could be informed when it wanted to, it could be funny when it wanted to and it could offend when it wanted to, a splendid mixture of staff all with a real desire to inform and entertain made it a joy to read at all times, even when they were being as lazy as hell. In an occasionally barren proto-internet it was an oasis of entertainment.

Taken from Hardcore’s HV 2nd Anniversary Special

Brief History of High Voltage

I have mentioned this a couple of times, but who knows of any of you got it. Trevor, and I, started this web site on February 24, 1997 with a few reviews and a lot of hopes. Although Trevor was really not involved much on the web site, he provided vital feedback and ideas to take the web site up the “fan site” ladder. The actual idea for the web site came up around the day of February 10 while we were talking on IRC’s #mkdomain. I wanted to work on a web site but was sick of all the Nintendo and Sony sites — I wanted something a little more original. And thus the idea flowed from there. Shortly thereafter, we acquired help from Valium, at that time known as Daedalus and [n00b].

A few months later people started to take notice for the web site and more staff members were included: Dark Schneider, was one of those people. Since the very beginning Dark Schneider has been a great addition to the team. Always providing the latest reviews and previews of the latest import games, as well as domestic.

High Voltage went through various phase changes including a grand total of 4 big design changes in a 2 year period. Some those designs were more attractive than others, but generally, it made the web site easier to maintain.

In 1998, High Voltage was on schedule to be at the Electronics Exposition show, better known as E3, but due to some problems, was unable to attend. In 1999, High Voltage might be absent as well (thanks for moving it so damn far!). In the year 2000 however, High Voltage plans to be present with a full crew of people with cameras and some wild updates.

I think that’s all I can write for now.

The earliest versions of this most hallowed of sites are lost in the mists of time (archive.org doesn’t go back that far) - the first version accessible to us is the February 1998 relaunch. Another redesign followed in January 1999 - but whichever version you visit, the sheer quality of the writing, the humour and the genuine, not store-bought passion for what these guys were doing just leaps off the fucking screen. It really does!

Elsewhere on the internet at roughly the same time, on a small Capcom fansite called Street Fighter Alpha 3 Online (run by the internet design legend known as ‘Tavish’) the gears of fate were busy grinding together. SFA3O was a strategy guide-cum-discussion site for all things A3 and Capcom-related. What began as a small, polite and fairly focused community began, over time to get very, very silly indeed, as a cast of varied, colourful characters soon became the dominant posting force there. An Australian called Redranger, recently appointed to the High Voltage staff, the sensitive, tortured ponce WilliamEVA (both of whom already knew eachother from the Gouki’s Page of Whatever forums) a new-to-the-web, wet-behind-the-ears English fellow called Neil (who had just left school and started work and thus by proxy, discovered the time-wasting joys of dicking around on the internet) the plucky if slightly garbled Strat and the distinctly hat-wearing and XX-chromosomed* Rinoa.

SFA3O’s logical follow-up site, unveiled a year or so later was called ‘Negative Edge’ and had a wider game focus, which included the newly-released SF3:3rd Strike…

Negative Edge. Look familiar?

Fighters Online died at the end of December 2000. Hosts Simplenet were bought by Broadcast.com, Broadcast.com were bought by Yahoo and the cumulative increase in hosting fees meant none of the remaining component sites were willing to continue.

Kingdom MK had long-since fallen silent, its last news item the retrospectively tragic announcement of Mortal Kombat Special Forces back in July 1998.

Hardcore vowed to host the KI WEB on his own server, the recently-purchased Highervoltage.com, an endeavour that never actually came to pass.

As for HVO, it was busy transforming itself into a new lifeform altogther. Bigger, stronger, funnier, HIGHER. (Heehee I am such a queer!)

A-hem.

Fun fact! Due to a communication SNAFU both highervoltage.net and highervoltage.com domain names were puchased. Dot Net was chosen to be the official Higher Voltage base, Dot Com became Hugo Seijas’ personal website and lasted for several years as such.

During the time period between HVO’s closure for redesign and relaunch the ‘classic’ staff, barring HardCore and Redranger decided to call it a day. Some of them had been working on the thing for three years and were fed up with it, others decided to pursue more lucrative avenues while others still just couldn’t be bothered. So when the call for new staffers went out, where better to harvest them from than nearby Negative Edge? With Neil and Rinoa already onboard since the dying days of HVO, Redranger and Hardcore still in charge and the addition of Strat, WilliamEVA (today known as Do You Like Erotic?) and DYLE’s bestest internet friend DANfan - there was once again a full completement of crew that were ready, willing and vaguely able.

Higher Voltage was, unfortunately at this point, inevitable.

The launch of the revamped site in January 2000 marked a critical turning point in the history of the ’something voltage’ legacy, the introduction of the new staff and management causing a radical change in site attitude. With an Australian, an Englishman, a Canadian and a Philipino on board, the site’s previous and distincly American voice and humour were scaled back in favour of a more arch, sarcastic brand of Euro-faggotry that would become its 21st century trademark.

The fighting game scene in general was changing too. With the introduction of bigger and more varied rival sites, including the fighting game supersite known as shoryuken.com, that quickly replaced alt.games.sf2 as the internet’s premiere collection of knowledge and experience and more importantly provided an extreme viewpoint for the fledgling HerV to rail against, it soon became clear that fighting game fandom was becoming crass, agressive and intolerant, with fansites for specific titles, including the recently-released Guilty Gear X providing both variety and antagonism; and inter-site clashes with Gamecombos.com, Neo-Geo.com, Fighters.net and Rivalschools.net amongst others becoming commonplace, each encounter making the need for an opposite to them all stronger, each conflict supplying all the nourishment the site’s official message board needed to finally become a fully-fledged, bonded community. See while HVO had a message board briefly towards the very end of its life (”Post stuff or Brutus, our starving cat from hell, will eat your tender butt”) - it never saw more than about two-hundred posts, furious conflict clearly being the catalyst for any successful internet community.

In all, Higher Voltage ran for four years and five months, during that time it produced countless reviews, several articles, the Fagmort of the Millenium character battle, plenty of forum in-fighting, in-jokes, colourful characters, pornography, detailed site dictionaries, got through about ten staffers, one DOAX special, a DC++ hub, an IRC channel, several site crashes, hosted Blaine’s Nightmare Symbiosis fanfic, the netplay fighter site ProjectK, Veggie’s Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure scanlations and Zazzarius’ GGX sprite rip site, and overall annoyed, inspired and entertained several people, possibly in a row. It was, as they say, good.

Higher Voltage version 1 (1st quarter 2000-September 29th 2000)

Designed and coded by Hardcore, full of features and gimmicks and clickables and funny little things that worked once and then broke. Ludicrously overcrowded but robust and great fun to read all the same, and still extremely American in tone, something that would change in the years to come. Also note the ‘Eleet Speek’ forum banner, which featured an alt text message literally begging people to ‘visit the Eleet Speek forums PLEASE!’

Version 2 (30th September 2000 - 28th May 2001)

Redranger’s site design debut and let’s be perfectly honest the weakest of the lot. Blue, a little menu on the left, unreadable text and er that’s it really. The great honking broken image at the top was once a facial (steady!) portrait of KOF’s K’ wearing sunglasses, now lost forever. Still, Red more than redeemed himself with

Version 3 (29th May 2001 - 18th July 2002)

Savagely orange and Tina Armstrong-featuring, coining the classic if somewhat smug E.E.E. catchphrase. This is modern HerV make no mistake, featuring Tiffany’s debut as wise site sage. It even has crap GGX gags! An online poll revealed that 76% of site readers licked their screen at least once whilst viewing it.

Version 4 (19th July 2002 - 24th May 2004)

Saw a return to the comforting blue tones of olde. Continuing the three-column theme this was by far the slickest designed, most functional (in front of and behind the scenes) and technically best incarnation of the site possible. Until now, that is.

HerV4 Promo Image

However on the 25th May 2004, something dreadful happened. So traumatic was this event that few can remember exactly what happened and as it happens none of them are writing this. Whatever it was, it meant the death of Higher Voltage.

But this had happened before, in fact it had become an unerring regularity. ‘Backups are for girls’ went the half-joking, half-serious response. All bar one of the site redesigns had been motivated by server failures and loss of data. Work on Higher Voltage 5 began almost immediatedly, Red, still the lone coder on the staff roster began work, took suggestions and even produced a test version of the site (complete with a huge Mai Shiranui image in the background.)

And then he disappeared completely.

The last contact with him was on the 3rd December 2004 at 07:12 AM GMT, in the form of this chilling message:

Originally posted by Redranger

[hub…]Should be working now. Let me know if there’s any probs. Meanwhile, HerV5 is still ways away. World of Warcraft is taking up too much of my time :(

As weeks turned into months the horrid truth began to lewdly reveal itself - he was never coming back. We’d been stiffed. Now nobody knows what actually happened to him - he could have been killed by a furious Korean, he could have become a hermit. Perhaps something so stereotypically Australian happened to him that he vowed never to show his face on the internet ever again. Who knows, perhaps he just didn’t give a shit any more. But that was that.

Rare! Exciting never-before-seen early HerV5 test screenshot!

The Wilderness Years

So how, some of you may be asking could it have possibly taken two and a half years to get a bunch of text files stuck on a database and some tits drawn for a logo?

Well you see it’s like this. HVO was founded by a bunch of lazy guys arsing around (Americans, look it up) Throughout the sites’ many incarnations, it has been the core principles (laziness, arsing) that have stood the test of time. Sure we could all run around screaming and holding emergency IRC meetings at 3am, but who wants a hobby like that?

Besides Redranger was the sole code wizard on the staff, everyone else was employed for their literary skills, disposable income and collection of raucous adult literature. Without him we just blundered around half-hoping he would return, flash us a toothy grin and dive right back into the PHP maelstrom. So we spent our first half-year basically denying anything was wrong that couldn’t be fixed by swearing at people on the message board.

This went on, and on, a kind of Groundhog Day with ten-strings. Something had to be done. But it wasn’t. And wasn’t. And wasn’t.

Every so often a vague attempt was made, but enormous bouts of apathy pinned us like butterflies to an expensive collector’s display case.

Imagine this, for 18 months or so and you’ll have some sort of idea of how it went. For a briefer summary, read on (names and identities have been changed to protect the less than innocent)

Guy who doesn’t give a fuck #1: hey let’s resurrect the site now

[a week passes]

Good-natured-but-naturally lazy guy: OK!

[six weeks pass]

Good-natured-but-naturally lazy guy: OK!

Appalling unreliable guy: alright I’ll check what sort of server access I have *noticably and most definitely doesn’t*

[a month passes]

Guy who used to give a fuck, but now doesn’t: Any news on the server access?

Guy who is strongly considering not giving a fuck: We need to contact our hosts

[two weeks page]

Guy who gave a fuck roughly around the time of the Roman Empire: OK I’ll do it after I get back from vacation

[three weeks pass]

…ad infinitum. You can see how the days, weeks, months and eventually years were eaten up. We’re not especially proud of how we behaved, but rest assured, we’d definitely do it again.

The Return of the ‘O’

But, amazingly, this is not the end of the story. Pulling ourselves together just enough for a few minutes’ coherent thought, some splendid new behind-the-scenes folks were drafted in - Bonertown, ROFLTRAVOLTA and CKA, folks who could code and format and install, who could make html strings do rude things by thought alone. Three magical individuals, who, in a strange eldritch synergy of by-turns laziness, oppurtunism and superb procrastination worked together (entirely by accident) enough to get the wheels turning again. Now with a (sexy) design and some functional background systems, things started to gather pace. A whole lot of pure soul-crushing database entry later, things were really racing. Some new content, some tweaking and what we eventually came up with is what you’re reading now.

HVO isn’t really a relaunch - we’ve been gone far too long and have alienated far too many readers in the meantime to ever dare claim we’re ‘back’ - this is a new site based, inspired by some old dead ones, the classic rebranding intended to pay some much-deserved tribute to the site’s forefathers. We do have some loyal board readers who have stuck around since those days hoping for the main site to return, and to them we’re deeply honoured and briefly grateful, but we’re still intent on earning our reputation as annoying, funny pricks all over again. And we’d like you to join us on this magical journey.

Here’s to another nine years.

- EvilNeil
11th November 2006.

Complete HV Staffer List

There have been many over the years. Some rocked the site to its core, changed how we did things, how we talked and thought. Some did absolutely fuck-all and then vanished. Some of these exist now as names only, with little to no clues to their identities, barring alternate review #67 of Bushido Blade.

• Andy - webmaster of Street Fighter Legends, his brief stint as a staffer saw a further injection of English irrelevance and student humour into an already bloated, swollen carcass
• Bahn - founder of The Next Level, left under amicable terms, stating the pressure to be ‘funny’ in every article was too much for him. _____ < - space for your own punchline
• Benjamin - aka B3njamin X. Uh. First l33t 5p34k user on the site?
• Burghy - the term ’special staffer’ was coined just for him. Staff membership time to contribution ratio so skewed as to be an offensive weapon in some countries. Still nobody knows who he actually was.
• CKA - a wandering internet nomad rumoured to have once ruled a mighty empire, CKA employs his considerable talents down in the engine room, ensuring that site and forum things work (most) of the time. Also hates us.
• Critical Breakdown - HVO reviewer, possibly left after suffering his namesake?
• D. Schneider - upper torso of Scrub Voltron, agsf2 contributor, game importer extraordinaire. One of the main reasons to read the original site.
• DANfan - MUGEN special, anyone?
• DYLE? - hurricane of black comedy rage
• EvilNeil - just can’t get enough of writing in 3rd-person
• Fansta - reader reviewer-turned member of the team, notable for being an Aussie staffer well before Redranger
• Gavok - (intentionally) funniest member of staff ever
• HardCore - Hugo Seijas, father of HV, poet, thinker, fighter, 10 inch penis. Every single person reading this site, posting on our boards, stealing our porn - owes it all to this man. Even if he did think Killer Instinct Gold was a good game.
• Holy Man - The wonderfully-named Munly Leong, staff writer.
• Isamu Dyson - Some guy, named after poofy Macross Character.
• n00b - owner of the late lamented Kingdom MK, HVO co-founder, reviewer
• ObiJay- the world’s only and therefore best Chang Koehan cosplayer.
• Old Don - aka Chris Mullins; reviewer, FAQ writer, seller of arcade boards and alleged fraudster (HVO lawyers standing by)
• Punchinello - Our wonderful Canadian-Brazilian man-muffin. We still weep over the fact of his departure to this day.
• Redranger - doomed by his innate PHP skills to one day lead the HV rabble, also wrote two lovely reviews before fucking off into the vortex of internet anonymity. It’s all Blizzard’s fault.
• Reno - Fighters.net cast-off. Stole the Versuscity domain from CKA, for which we salute him eternally.
• Rinoa - internet girl.
• ROFLTRAVOLTA - ALMOST single-handedly remade this site, but then completely and utterly didn’t.
• Shlomo - Represents the moment when Redranger’s inviting his internet friends to write for the site got silly
• Stormhawk - HVO staff writer, comedy legend, champion self-abuser
• Strat - member of the original elite SFA3O alumni, writer of articles and stealer of news, back when there was some
• S-U-P-E-R - classic HV staffer, web journalist, DDR champeen
• Valium - site co-founder, staff writer
• WELCOME TO BONERTOWN - aka thedigitalsin, web-designer and artist extraordinaire, without whom HVO would still be a collection of vaguely inept suggestions and list threads.

If you ever were ever a staffer on this creaky old vessel and have been heartlessly (and quite likely deliberately) ignored, or if you have further information on any of the topics mentioned here that could prove useful, please do let us know and we will be only too happy to add you and your information to this Overlook Hotel-esque hall of fame.

*I do hope I haven’t called her a hermaphrodite, there.

Comments are off for this post