History of the (Ark)
The Mystery of Arcadium
Charles Rector
Back in the mid 1990’s, when the Web was still young and an exciting new frontier, there was an excellent free Internet fandom & gaming website at arcadium.com called, appropriately enough, Arcadium. It featured chatrooms, email lists, discussion forums and also free webspace for members complete with a pretty good online editor. However, after only a year of operation, Arcadium went out of business never to return despite having 400,000 members which was an incredible number to sign up in such a short time despite the website running hardly any advertising. That alone both shows just how good Arcadium was and how little competition it had.
Through the miracle of the Internet Wayback Machine, we can still see a remnant of the once glorious Arcadium, the website that gave many their first real taste of just how good Internet gaming could be. Herewith is the Arcadium front page of
October 23, 1996:
Arcadium: The Gaming Element
Arcadium is not your ordinary games site. It’s the place where gamers and industry insiders hang out, swap info, and shape the best in next-generation games. Members have personalized access to:
topical threaded discussions
secret messaging
killer chats
auditoriums with gaming gods
We’ve got everything you need to really tweak your gaming experience. So if you’re a games freak and want to know more people with the same affliction, join our community (for free). And make things happen!
KAOS
Visit the KAOTIK side of Arcadium Thursday, Oct 24 at 4:00 pm PT. Aussie Arcadium Operative KAOS discusses down under video games and cheats.
Enter and Win
Got a hot tip or trick? Feeling lucky?? Check Arcadium’s new Enter and Win area! By entering the contest or sweepstakes you are eligible to win cool prizes. This is not to be missed…
Nintendo
The N64 has finally arrived. You may have already managed to work your way through Mario and Pilotwings. So, what do you think?
(This site optimized for Netscape Navigator.)
© 1996 IDG Interactive Services Group, Inc. - All Rights Reserved. We welcome your feedback. Arcadium and associated logos are trademarks of ISG.
However, despite the fact that Arcadium was a well run and maintained website for both gaming and gamers, the decision was made to shut the place down as shown by this October 21, 1997 scan. Note the vague wording of just why the website was being shut down:
After a great deal of deliberation, we have decided to cease production of the Arcadium community.
This decision was based on the fact that our long-term Web community development efforts are shifting. Therefore, we feel it was in the best interest of Arcadium community to cease production.
The entire Arcadium team wants you to know what a pleasure it has been to provide a forum for you and our other 400,000+ members. Your passion, energy and devotion has been a validation of what we believe is the strength of the Web - people meeting and interacting with others like themselves.
As a final service to our members, here is a list of other cool gaming sites where you can continue to make new friends.
The Production Team
Arcadium - An Nvolve Community
© 1997 Nvolve, Inc. - All Rights Reserved.
And so it was that Arcadium came, prospered and then disappeared into the mists of cyberspace. There are still a few websites that contain memories of Arcadium, although those are generally places that have not been updated in quite a long time.
To add to this story by Charles Rector. I’m currently making this website as a lasting tribute to the once great gamer community.
I was a frontier member of Arcadium (The Ark).
Also know as Bruno.
My site icon was a ginger bread man. 
I then switched to the bluish purple alien icon. ( which the ark did not offer) the icon was brought in by hackers. I to be truthful, was part of a hack community in Arcadium. Only we didn’t try to hurt people. We tried to stop the ones who were doing the hurt. What few people know about Arcadium is that it fell to security and power issues. Gamers within the community started little groups. Really to be truthful they were the very first gangs online. Hackers moved into the gamming community. They tore little by little at the fabric of the cyber gamming site. Until it was just too much. Secure websites were just coming out and Arcadium wasn't one of them. Secure websites start with HTTPS:// and Arcadium was just www.arcadium.com or later it was www.arcadium:88.com. Basically what this meant was. People were able to get your internal protocol address. (IP address). It’s the basic key to enter your pc the internet mainline. Nvolve the company who helped start the Ark (Arcadium) wanted out. So that was that. *tear* But there was a time when friends got together and just walked away from the troubles in the life. They entered a gamer realm a bit of paradise. That’s what Arcadium brought to the Internet. A great freedom and infinite knowledge base into any and all things games or anything. This was Arcadium. Signing off or as I would click to leave
Arcadium.
Manual Log Out.
Brent 2good
a.k.a. BRUNO
