The following is The g50’s account of the events which, directly or indirectly, led to the creations of the Chrono Trigger social board at gamefaqs.com.
It all began years ago when a young lad by the name of Pupitre decided to have a little fun with the people on the Chrono Trigger message board. For those who aren’t aware of the rules of the GameFAQs forums, the rules that are most relevant to this tale are: You cannot make any off-topic posts on a non-social board (in other words, you can only talk about things directly related to the game which the board refers to), and you cannot impersonate another individual in any way. The fun Pupitre decided to have bordered on the edge of off-topic, so it wasn’t too uncommon for him to get his messages moderated (deleted), and he even was placed on probation (which means you can only post five times an hour and can’t view certain boards) at least once. He found it funny to see the reactions of the “hardcore” gamers on the board when he pointed out just how stupid sounding and boring all of the topics on the board were. Truthfully, there were very few interesting people on the message board at this time (or ever), so his observation was not unfounded.
One character in particular, called AnotherGamer, was particularly irritated by Pupitre’s disregard for the rules of the forum. After a good deal of harassment, AnotherGamer decided to just up and leave the message board, huffing about immaturities and such. The board became increasingly boring for Pupitre as such people left, so he decided to enlist the aid of his good buddy in order to liven things up. This friend was none other than The g50.
The first appearance of The g50 was in his most infamous post, “How do you unlock Lucca?”. Lucca is a character that joins your party very early on in Chrono Trigger, and requires no unlocking whatsoever. So why did The g50 decide to make such a topic? It’s simple: Pupitre and The g50 figured that they could stage a little faux question and answer session and get a rise out of the board’s population (which was made up of a great deal of people missing a great deal of common sense). In this topic, The g50 asked the board members for the method in which you unlock this elusive Lucca, and Pupitre was the first to respond. His response was not the actual answer, of course, but was instead a series of buttons which he claimed, if pressed in said order, would unlock Lucca. The g50 quickly responded thanking Pupitre for his help, and said he was off to go try it out.
As soon as the other members of the forum saw this, they assumed that The g50 was just some poor stupid fool trying to get some help, and Pupitre was just and evil person trying to confuse the “newbies”. There were more than a few messages saying “No no! That’s not how you do it! Don’t listen to him he’s lying!”. The g50 and Pupitre did, indeed, get the rise out of the people that hey were looking for, but it didn’t stop there. They continued with their little facade for a while, doing a wonderful job of driving the other board members crazy, but eventually they evolved. The g50, in particular, went from being a faux helpless newbie to being a sarcastic, cocky asshole who always referred to himself in the third person. The g50’s habit of talking in the third person alone was enough to drive most of the board members up the wall.
Sooner than later mostly the entire board hated The g50 and Pupitre for the way they disrespected the rules of the forum and made them all look like fools. Many, many people would mark the posts and topics of The g50 and Pupitre for moderation, and some of the other topics, such as “Pupitre’s Fan Club”, were actually deleted for being off topic. Despite all the marks for moderation that “How do you unlock Lucca?” got, it was never deleted since it was based on a question about the game and was actually on topic.
Despite that everyone claimed to hate The g50 and Pupitre, it was painfully obvious that hey were the driving force behind the board. Everyone who came to the board was more or less instantly drawn to the two, and everyone wanted to take a little of the popularity for themselves. There were tons of topics created to try and get the same amount of interest, such as “How do you unlock <insert another Chrono Trigger character’s name>?”. But they all failed miserably. They were ignored by all the other board members, while everyone flocked to the topics The g50 and Pupitre were currently residing in to see what they were going to do next. As well as topic copying, there was also a whole lot of impersonation going on, specifically with The g50. There were many new accounts created such as g5O, gfifty, j40, etc., but they were all banned by the moderators. At one point, if you viewed the banned user list on the website, you would have seen a good percentage of the names being g50 impersonators. The charisma that The g50 and Pupitre possessed can be best compared to the charisma that a professional wrestling “heel”, or bad guy, possessed. Everyone wants to yell at them and express their distaste, but no one can deny that people are drawn to them.
There were several characters that stepped forward to challenge the power of The g50 and Pupitre, but they never were able to stand up to them. Eventually the swell of interest that they created became so great that many people began to demand a separate board for “off topic” posting (aka a social board). The fun began to dwindle for The g50 and Pupitre, and playing around with the fools and their “flame wars” began to lose its appeal. As The g50 and Pupitre began to leave the message boards, something quite amazing happened. The higher powers of GameFAQs decided that the demand was great enough, and they actually created a Chrono Trigger social board. Unfortunately for the board, The g50 and Pupitre were already pretty much gone, only leaving a few posts here and there. Since then Pupitre has spent some time poking around on the boards, plugging GameCola here and there, but The g50 is pretty much gone from the boards for forever (unless an unlikely revival takes place). Although the team of The g50 and Pupitre is no longer raping and pillaging message boards, it has left an unforgettable legacy by impregnating GameFAQs and leading to the birth of a new forum.
