FFF Archive
FinalFantasyFanatic.com archive — recovered forums, members, polls, stats, and editorials from 2001-2002.
From the desktop window
Website Nov 2002 archive.html
Hobbes Lionheart — Editorials
Forum MetaData Deep Dive.txt
Online Shop (AnimeNation)
FinalFantasyFanatic.com — Restored November 2002 Website
The restored FinalFantasyFanatic.com website presents the final downloaded copy from before the November 2002 shutdown. Published as an archival edition on September 5, 2026, it preserves the site's game pages, music and movie listings, shopping pages, fan projects, and Hobbes' editorials, separately from the forum snapshots and the living forum. It also opens in the FFF Archive window on the Doors 98 desktop.
The original HTML4-era structure and table layouts are retained, with text encoding and image repairs and historical browser rendering modes preserved. Yellow banners and cloud notes distinguish the original material from modern restoration work. Missing images are marked "Image lost." Original downloads are not redistributed: listings link to surviving MKStats traffic evidence where available; assets from the separate .net domain have no corresponding preserved stats here and may be lost.
Hobbes' editorials apply the same location redactions as the standalone editions, with adjacent privacy explanations. The historical and restoration notes make annotations, transcripts, and sources readable without tooltip interaction, with a matching plain-text edition.
FinalFantasyFanatics on EZBoard: April–July 2001
The FinalFantasyFanatics EZBoard community survives in a board-index capture dated April 13, 2001, a forum-index capture dated April 17, and a welcome-thread capture dated April 18. The board index is titled Final Fantasy Fanatics and links one forum, Final Fantasy Fanatic, at pub55.ezboard.com/ffinalfantasyfanatics68174frm3. These are capture dates, not the community's founding date.
The welcome thread displays SpooTeR McGaViN with the role label ezOP and an original post date of April 6, 2001 at 5:21:33 pm; the page does not specify a timezone. The subject is Welcome to Final Fantasy Fanatic. The post welcomes participation and sets one rule: "The only rule is do not bash other members." Its profile link points to the EZBoard username uspootermcgavin; the profile page itself has not been recovered.
FieRcE YeD identifies Spooter McGavin, styled SpooTeR McGaViN in the archived post, as his earlier pseudonym. This is his first-person identification. The archived page independently establishes the displayed handle, role label and post, but does not independently link that account to his later FieRcE YeD handles. No exact alias-change date is established.
FieRcE YeD recalls that "Spooter McGavin" was a deliberately silly pseudonym inspired by Shooter McGavin from Happy Gilmore, combined with juvenile wordplay he prefers to leave unexplained.
The July 2, 2001 forum-index capture lists a topic titled "This is the reall FFF" by pulse wave, with zero replies and a last-comment date of June 14, 2001 at 10:50:01 am. That is the exact indexed title, including reall; its message body has not been recovered. The same index lists one reply to the welcome thread, with the last comment attributed to nconfer on April 20, 2001 at 12:53:49 pm. That reply's body has not been recovered either, and the index specifies no timezone.
The later reconstructed Ikonboard profile for FieRcE_YeD displays a registration date of November 9, 2001. Together these sources document an earlier EZBoard layer and a later Ikonboard account. They do not establish the exact migration date, an archived account-to-account alias transition, or that similarly named participants on different boards are the same people.
Archived sources:
Later reconstructed FieRcE_YeD Ikonboard profile.
FinalFantasyFanatic.com — Fan Forum Archive (November 2002) and IB 2.1.9 Snapshot (Feb–Apr 2002)
The forums archived here are real. These are authentic posts written by real people in 2002 — recovered from a direct database backup and Wayback Machine captures, not recreated, simulated, or written for this project. The only non-period content in either archive is a single pinned admin note (described below). Everything else is original.
FinalFantasyFanatic.com was a full Final Fantasy fan site — news, commentary, editorials, images, MIDI files, and more. The forums were one part of it. These snapshots contain the forums; the restored website is a separate archival edition. The forums went through several iterations: originally hosted on EZBoards, then migrated to Ikonboard 2.1.9, and eventually upgraded to Ikonboard 3. Both versions are preserved here and accessible from the FFF Archive folder on the desktop.
The November 2002 version is recovered from a direct Ikonboard 3 database backup — 49 members, 239 topics, 4,167 posts across 11 forums covering Final Fantasy discussion, role-playing, general gaming, community games, and an inner circle section called FFOC. The archive is fully browsable: forum index, topic lists, individual threads with posts, member profiles, avatars, signatures, ranks, and polls. BBCode formatting, emoticons, and the original Ikonboard skin are preserved.
The IB 2.1.9 Snapshot covers February through April 2002 — an earlier, rawer version of the community on Ikonboard 2.1.9. This version was not backed up locally; around June–July 2002 the server crashed and all data was lost. It was reconstructed entirely from available Wayback Machine captures. The source software — Ikonboard 2.1.9 — appears to be the only publicly available copy of that version, uploaded to the Internet Archive. Navigation between pages may be inconsistent, as different threads were captured at different times.
Neither archive is complete — some posts were redacted to protect personalng sly identifiable information of members who never consented to their data being republished, including threads where members shared full names, locations, and birthdates. Email addresses are redacted across both archives. AOL and ICQ screen names are preserved, as both services no longer exist.
Both archives include a single pinned "From the Admin" post by FieRcE YeD, the original site admin — written in 2026, explaining the recovery process. Each is rendered in the exact forum format of its respective version (avatar, rank, post count, timestamp) so it is visually consistent with the surrounding archive. This admin note is the only non-period content in either archive. Every other post is authentic — real text written by real members between early 2002 and late 2002.
Contemporary Wayback pages preserve the pre-Ikonboard FinalFantasyFanatics EZBoard community, including an April 6, 2001 welcome post by SpooTeR McGaViN. FieRcE YeD identifies that pseudonym as his own; the person-level connection is owner testimony, not an independently archived alias transition.
The FinalFantasyFanatics EZBoard community survives in a board-index capture dated April 13, 2001, a forum-index capture dated April 17, and a welcome-thread capture dated April 18. The board index is titled Final Fantasy Fanatics and links one forum, Final Fantasy Fanatic, at pub55.ezboard.com/ffinalfantasyfanatics68174frm3. These are capture dates, not the community's founding date.
The welcome thread displays SpooTeR McGaViN with the role label ezOP and an original post date of April 6, 2001 at 5:21:33 pm; the page does not specify a timezone. The subject is Welcome to Final Fantasy Fanatic. The post welcomes participation and sets one rule: "The only rule is do not bash other members." Its profile link points to the EZBoard username uspootermcgavin; the profile page itself has not been recovered.
FieRcE YeD identifies Spooter McGavin, styled SpooTeR McGaViN in the archived post, as his earlier pseudonym. This is his first-person identification. The archived page independently establishes the displayed handle, role label and post, but does not independently link that account to his later FieRcE YeD handles. No exact alias-change date is established.
FieRcE YeD recalls that "Spooter McGavin" was a deliberately silly pseudonym inspired by Shooter McGavin from Happy Gilmore, combined with juvenile wordplay he prefers to leave unexplained.
The July 2, 2001 forum-index capture lists a topic titled "This is the reall FFF" by pulse wave, with zero replies and a last-comment date of June 14, 2001 at 10:50:01 am. That is the exact indexed title, including reall; its message body has not been recovered. The same index lists one reply to the welcome thread, with the last comment attributed to nconfer on April 20, 2001 at 12:53:49 pm. That reply's body has not been recovered either, and the index specifies no timezone.
The later reconstructed Ikonboard profile for FieRcE_YeD displays a registration date of November 9, 2001. Together these sources document an earlier EZBoard layer and a later Ikonboard account. They do not establish the exact migration date, an archived account-to-account alias transition, or that similarly named participants on different boards are the same people.
In this section
