Some of SL's oldest photos by Hikaru Yamamoto

[Hikaru Yamamoto]

Hey guys, I've kept a lot of old photos from a long time ago, and nobody really has seen them so I thought I might post them and explain some things and share SL's history. Most of these photos will be from around 2003 - 2005. I will be posting these photos individually and allow time for discussion over them. =)

So here is the 1st photo, none of these are in any particular order. This was taken by Tcoz Bach in beta of 2003. This was the small zoo I had just started, the one in blue is me in my old avatar and the other is Tcoz. I created the hippos and aligator in the shot and those hippos were made after Darwin started the whole hippo thing in SL. So those are the original 1st hippos created. I handed them out for free and they quickly were spread throughout SL.

[Charolotte Caxton]

What an awesome shot of the beginning, thanks for sharing.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

2003 was a couple years before my time but oh how I remember the simpler SL.  No flexible prims, no windlight, no water reflections, no mesh.........and we all were so amazed at what people could do with those basic prim building blocks.  Thanks for memories..........I look forward to new postings.  Thank you so much.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Also a couple years before my time too, but things looked pretty much the same when i joined, although there probably were more buildings around. 

I had to laugh at the hippos.  I remember in those early years that sometimes my friend's list was borked and when i looked at it , it had the same number of entries it usually did but everyone was named Hippo.  That always cracked me up.

[Tamara Artis]

Great idea, thank you for sharing:) That is 7 years before I joined SL and I'm  looking forward to see more photos!

[Hikaru Yamamoto]

This photo was taken in 2003 in the Jessie sim during the great Jessie war. For those not familiar with the war, basically there used to be 4 sims with damage enabled. These were the only sims we could shoot people in. Then the World War 2 Onliners came along... they were a pretty large group and rivaled SL's largest group at the time, the Noisetanks. I used to be a part of the Noisetanks, my best friend was the leader. His name was Rygar Grimm. When the WWIIOLers arrived the 4 battle sims were changed to regular sims and Jessie was opened as the new war sim... but it was given compltely to the WWIIOLers... which outraged a lot of people. Rygar declared war on the WWIIOLers and decided to try and drive them out of SL. Since their home land was in Jessie, the Noisetanks decided to not just shoot WIIOLers but to also repeatedly crash their sim and drive them nuts with laggy objects. Eventually this did work... and most left.

In the photo is a car one of the WWIIOLers made and you can see one of their signs in the background and part of a Linden made tower.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

Oh I remember the Jessie wars....they were still going on when I came to SL in 2005.  I stayed away.......I was chicken and didn't learn to use a weapon until pretty late (like about 2007 or so).  But the forum posts were great fun to read back then

[Hikaru Yamamoto]

Yeah the wars were off and on quite a bit in Jessie. Rygar left for some time and the WWIIOLers started to come back and when Rygar got back we went to war again.

[Hikaru Yamamoto]

This next photo is of one of the earliest cities in 2003. Back then, this was an amazing build. It was called Venice =)

I also once spotted Philip Linden hanging around it alone and jumping into one of the boats. ^^ It was so cute.

 

[Hikaru Yamamoto]

*bump*

[JeanneAnne]

thanks Hikaru   iv only been in sl for a year .. i appreciate seeing how it looked back in the old days

Jeanne

[Hikaru Yamamoto]

No problem =) thanks for having a look at them. It would be a shame if nobody ever saw them. I took tons of photos back then and they have just been sitting around doing nothing. Keep watching this thread, I have tons of photos to post =D

[Hikaru Yamamoto]

Some of these photos look squished so I'll just fix them by hand.

This was taken inside Daze Zeeman's matrix box. Dave was our known matrix guy, he always had on a Neo avatar and would do various maxtrix things. This was one of his and it was scripted to turn completely white as well. And yes the texture ran up and down the walls, it was pretty cool. This took place in early beta 2003.

 

[Hikaru Yamamoto]

heh maybe I need to stop posting these at like 3am

[Luca Coeur]

Please don't stop showing your pictures, I'm enjoying then very much. Thank you for sharing the memories :-)

[Hikaru Yamamoto]

I'm glad you are enjoying them =) I won't stop I have many more to share but...  I was thinking of moving the thread to the general one since it seems its not getting many views here.

[Hikaru Yamamoto]

This is a photo of Rygar Grimm from back in 2003 taken at Neo City. Rygar is the founder of the Noisetanks group which was the largest group in SL at the time. Neo City was the Noisetanks HQ. It was full of bright neon lights and often were called the lag towers by annoyed neighbors. For those of you that recognize the hat from freebies... yes he is the creator.

 

 

[Hikaru Yamamoto]

This photo is a very important one in SL history. I forgot who is in the shot but this took place June 23rd 2003. We celebrated SL going live and still celebrate that day as SL's birthday. We had a sort of new years type party with a ball that drops and fireworks that go off. Nearly every resident and Linden attended this party and Philip gave a speech.