Lost Content From The Old “Made By Bacteria” Forums

Hard to believe it’s been nearly 5 years since the site closed and in all honesty, I’m still a bit bent because of it. For those who don’t know, the MBB forums was a console modding message board that was around during the peak of home console modding scene and was similar to the Forums of Ben Heck and Mod Retro, which both at the time were very popular as well. But the hobby began to stagnate by late 2013 and 2014 and by the time he closed the doors, traffic was minimal.

And while I understand that to him personally there wasn’t much left to justify keeping the site running, up and closing the site with not but a few hours notice didn’t even give people a chance to try and save their content, worklogs or even reference material they had posted to the site. Not all that content was his and years of data, hard work and references were gone.

However, one quick thinker over at DesperateNerdLife got wind before the site was taken down and made a backup of the entire site.

Of course, most of the sites functionality was gone and logging in is no longer an option so seeing profiles or getting access to the Mod’s only section has been a challenge, but a majority of the work logs and completed projects are all still in tact.

Even better though, is that with this full 1-Gig download, the original directory is still functional and all the internal links work, so opening the index in Windows Explorer gave a full replica of what the site actually looked like when it closed, not just bare content.

So I was able to find a capture program that will scroll with the page to make a single image of the screen, essentially giving the original look and content of the posts visible. The links won’t work, but at least the content won’t be lost forever.

So this page is going to be the start of a rebuild for (at least right now) some of my worklogs from back in the day. Yes, it’s dated, yes it probably wasn’t going to be much longer before it was forgotten completely, but if for nothing else, it’s a good throwback to how things used to be and a good measure of how far we’ve come with this hobby when it was on the brink of going out for good.

That said, if you have any interest on seeing if I can revive any of your old posts let me know, but it will unfortunately be subject to the time I’ve got free to do so. But have a look into the past and enjoy!

Downing’s Completed Projects and Work Logs