Awards are prizes you get for contributing to the site in one way or another.
Some times, a staff member might give awards away for no real reason at all.
Other awards are acquired through posting in sprees, getting enough votes on the Mosts, or by having a certain amount of posts.

We are a pretty laid back community, there's really not anything that will get you instabanned, but there are still a few rules you should try to follow.

General stuff
- Use common sense. This alone will keep you out of trouble most of the time.
- No illegal stuff. ROMs and individual songs are ok though.
- Give us a heads-up when you link to adult oriented stuff. A "NSFW" prefix is fine, just make sure we get the point.
- Don't link to viruses or malware.
- Don't spam. ASCII art is ok in some situations, bigtext usually is not.
- There should be only one of you. Don't register a second account or log into IRC 3 times at once. One of you is enough for the community. IRC bots are usually okay unless you're using them to spam or something else annoying.
- No images of, links to images of, or discussion of topics of an extremely graphic nature.

Drama
- What happens in Community X, stays in Community X. Do not take/bring drama to/from other communities.
- Don't involve others in your personal conflicts.
- No flaming or trolling. Jokes are cool, but make sure your target knows it's a joke.

Language
- Keep it sorta PG-13. Curses are fine, but don't overdo it.
- Racial/nationality slurs and insults are frowned upon. You won't get banned for them, but you will lose a bit of respect.
- Speak in English. Do not use leet or internet slang. The common acronyms like BRB and AFK are ok, but don't overdo it.

Staff
- Do not ask for power.
- If you have power, and you ban someone, make sure they know exactly why they got banned.
- If you ban someone, and it's not a joke, make sure to leave a note either in the staff channel, or the staff forum.
- The staff can get away with breaking the rules more than normal users, but if you abuse this, expect to lose it.
- As staff, you represent this community. Don't do anything that might give us a bad name.

Rules
- For heavens sake, these rules are not law, they are a guideline. It's fine to break some rules if it is in good humor.
- Trying to use loopholes in the rules to get away with stuff will only make the ban happen faster.
- These rules may be changed at any time without notice.

Yes! ...Well, for the most part.
Potentially insecure html tags are generally filtered out, but <b>text</b> or <span style="color: #13579A;">more text</span> is fine.

Just use common sense and don't purposely try to break anything. Most standard BBCode (bold/italic/etc) exists, as well as [url="http://example.com"]Link[/url] and [img]http://example.com/image.png[/img].

We also have a [youtube] tag and a [gvideo] (Google Video) tag, which accepts optional width and height parameters.

All of the BBCode tags appear on the post toolbar, so you should not have any problems finding them.

If you need help understanding any of this, just ask in this forum, or if you notice a bug or want to suggest additional BBCode for us to implement.

In your "Edit profile" page, there is a "Post Layout" section. In this section you can create a header, a signature, and you can choose a signature separator.

A header is a block of HTML code that is put before all your posts. Your signature is another block of HTML code, this time put after your post. The signature separator is what will separate your post from the signature.

For example, if your header is "<div>" and your signature is "</div>", your posts will be: "<div>Post text</div>".

If you know how to use HTML, you can use this to your advantage and put your posts inside a div tag and style it up to make them look fancy.

An example layout would be:

Header

<div style="background: #000033; padding: 20px; font-family: 'trebuchet ms'; color: #ffffff;"><div style="background: #2222ee; border: #000099 1px solid; padding: 4px; min-height: 200px;">

Signature

</div></<div>

It would end up looking like this:



If you don't know HTML, Google can help you out. Please try to make sure that your post layout is viewable on different web browsers.

If you want to customize your post table completely, including the table cells with your name and your data, read this post.

Note: Do not put plaintext in your header unless you do it properly. Do it wrong and get your layout nuked.

These are the messages under a person's username in posts.
The requirements to have a custom title are:

• Being staff
• Having over 750 posts
• Having over 400 posts and having been registered for more than 1 year

Once one of these requirements is met, a "Title" field will appear on your Edit profile page, under the "Appearance" tab.

Syndromes are cool stuff you get for posting a determined amount of posts in 24 hours or less.
Below is a table that indicates how to get each of them:

Posts	Syndrome
25	Affected by 'Posting Syndrome'
50	Affected by 'Posting Syndrome'+
75	Affected by 'Geno Syndrome'
100	Affected by 'Geno Syndrome'+
150	Affected by 'Geno Syndrome'++!
200	Affected by 'piguy3.14 Syndrome'!
250	Affected by 'piguy3.14 Syndrome'+!
300	Affected by 'pieguy1372 Syndrome'++!!
350	Affected by 'cornholio Syndrome'!!
400	Affected by 'cornhole Syndrome'+!!
450	Affected by 'Wooster Syndrome'+++!!!
500	Affected by 'Wooster Syndrome'++++!!!
600	Affected by 'Anya Syndrome'!!!!
800	Affected by 'Xkeeper Syndrome'!!!!!
1000	Affected by 'Wtf?! Syndrome'!~

The board names may be a little tricky for a casual forum-goer, so here's some clarification to all of that:

The Tides are Turning!
Announcements - Mods and admins post any important news here pertaining to the site.
The Shore - If you have any questions about the site, any feedback of the site, any feature suggestions, complaints, or bug reports, this is where to go.

Shoreline
NN 5* Hotel - This is a general chat forum. Anything that doesn't go into any of the boards below will fit here.
Newsroom - This is for discussion of news stories. You can post articles from websites, things you saw on the news, etc.
Gaming - This is where you discuss any video game produced by the mainstream or indie gaming scene, free/shareware or not, that excludes your own creations, and also to discuss affairs involving gaming, such as what genres you prefer or how gaming changed you.
Sushi Bar (寿司バー) - This is for discussion about japanese animation (anime). You can also put Japan-related topics in this forum.
Multimedia - This is where you discuss music, television, movies, books, or news, primarily. It does not have to be about a specific program, etc. - it can be, for instance, a discussion on the current state of these industries.
Neritic Tech Lab - This is for tech-related topics such as computers, hardware, software, iPhones, programming, etc.

The Gulf of Neritic
Smart Games - This is where "forum games" requiring thought are played. Games such as "the vending machine game" or "rate the user above you" are not welcome.
Yellow Submarine - The rules for posting are somewhat more relaxed there (you can create silly threads and whatnot, within reason). Blatant spamming is still not allowed, so don't do it. The feeling and atmosphere for the forum will be created by you, not us.
Serious Business - This is for any discussion you, as a user, deem too heavy for a general chat forum, and want some no-bull input on.
Your Stuff - This is for any project you maintain that does not relate to video games. You can post poetry, novels (excerpt or whole), essays, drawings, paintings, photography, pixel art, blogs, Wikis, and more.
A Byte of Brilliance - This is where you showcase any game-related project you are working on. It can be a ROM edit or any other game using a pre-existing engine, or it can be built from the ground up from scratch.

The Terrible Trench
Undertow - This is where threads that are no longer needed or are outright horrible go.

Atlantis
Trophy Case - The good old threads which have served their purpose go in here.

Do not pester the admins by constantly asking to be unbanned, that will just lose you any hope you ever had of being unbanned. Unless you did something really bad, you'll probably be unbanned after a short time. A PM or custom title change will probably let you know what is going on. If not, politely ask an admin for an explanation. Also, under no circumstances should you re-register to try and get around the ban, that will most likely result in a permanent IP-ban for you.

We are honored that you wish to link back to us!

Click on the "Link to us!" link on the menu or just click here.