N-Sider

N-Sider is a website that provides news, reviews, history, and opinion articles relating to Nintendo Co., Ltd. The site was founded in 2000. It is currently an independent media organization funded and managed by Cory Faller with several. Despite occasional confusion, N-Sider is unrelated to the now defunct official NSider forums operated by Nintendo of America.
History
In 1999, Fran Mirabella III worked for GameFusion's Dolphin Cove website, covering Nintendo's next generation console then codenamed "Dolphin". In the Spring of 1999, Fran began recruitment for "Project Snow," a codename for a Nintendo-centric website which was to be launched as NFormer.com. This was the original incarnation of what is now N-Sider.com. Before NFormer launched in August of 2000, Fran's former co-workers at GameFusion decided to retain the rights to the NFormer.com domain. As a result, Fran made the decision to independently register the domain name N-Sider.com and establish a new website.
Mirabella left N-Sider immediately after it launched and was hired by IGN Entertainment. N-Sider.com officially launched on 2000-08-21, on the eve of Nintendo's GameCube unveiling at the SpaceWorld exhibition in Tokyo, Japan. Several staff members were hired and helped to round out the coverage.
In April 2001, N-Sider artist Kevin Freitas left the site and was hired at Sandbox Studios in London, Ontario. (In December 2002, he was hired at Rockstar Games Canada, in Missisauga, Ontario, Canada.)
IGN began its "Developer Profiles" section in January 2001, created by the staff of N-Sider.com. The developer profiles were analytical write-ups on Japanese, European and U.S. development houses working on GameCube software -- these profiles included: Intelligent Systems, Rare, and EAD. The group was once again approached by IGN in early 2005, however this time with the offer to merge the entire N-Sider database with the site. The offer was turned down and instead N-Sider and IGN agreed to a deal where N-Sider would contribute a series of articles to be featured on the IGN GameCube section. Several items were shared during this partnership, but it eventually dissolved for various reasons.
Columns
* - A "letters" section that features letters to N-Sider staffer Brandon Daiker submitted by readers, usually pertaining to that week's "topic." The letters are usually irreverent and have little pertinence to the selected topic of the week, and Brandon's "responses" are noted for being equally belligerent and inane. Frequent appearances of poorly Photoshopped or doctored images. Started in 2003.
* - The more serious reader interaction column since the founding of the site in 2000. In editions through early 2003, the questions were fielded by a group of N-Sider staffers. Recently (since 2005), staffer Jeffrey Van Camp has taken the helm with contributions from Travis Woodside and other writers.
* - Founded in late 2002, N-Banter is quite literally an HTMLized column featuring conversations between two or more N-Sider staffers about a specific topic. Previous installments have dealt with the handheld wars, E3, and Wii speculation.
* - Now Playing was a communal effort from several N-Sider staffers who would chime in on a semi-regular basis with impressions of the games they were playing at the time. Unlike most of the site's normal content, Now Playing included information on many non-Nintendo titles and staff favorites, like Chrono Cross, Katamari Damacy, and Nights into Dreams.... Much of the Now Playing concept will be integrated, in some form, into the next version of the site.
* - The Rumor Mill popped up in 2003 with late staffer Kenneth Kyle Wade at the helm. The purpose of the column was to address current Nintendo rumors and attempt to discern their validity. Several topics were discussed, like GameCube price drops, Sonic the Hedgehog as a character in Mario Kart: Double Dash, and early details on the launch of the successor to the Game Boy Advance in 2004, which was later determined to be the Nintendo DS. An effort was made to revive the column in mid-2005 by Glen Bayer and Dean Bergmann, but as of 2006 the column is not being produced.
Community
Although there has been some confusion over the N-Sider name and Nintendo.com's NSider "online community," which closed on September 17, 2007, the two are separate entities. N-Sider.com currently hosts a database of Nintendo games, hardware, and employees.

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