10 Year Anniversary / History of New Element - 2002

10 Days, 10 Years

- 2002 -

by posix

Quote from iris on the "About New Element" page on NE1, summer 2002:
 

New Element was planned from the very beginning to hopefully one day become the premier source for RCT parks. So, in October of 2001 I made a "casting call" at Danimation.com, and recieved a tremendous response, from people who wanted to be a part of NE. I cut down the applicants to a cast of people whom I believe are the best ever at RCT, and could provide the most enjoyable experience at New Element. As I grew friends with more and more parkmakers, more and more people gained respect for New Element. After mishaps with web designers, addition of administrators, and NE looking like it would never get off the ground, NE launched in April, 2002. Thanks to everyone who supports the site, we really couldn't have this with out you. Thanks

Well actually, NE launched not in April but in mid March of 2002, on the 18th to be precise. Yet it took a few days before the first release and first ever NE spotlight "Universal's Islands Xtreme" by Nevis. Once posted people had an actual reason to visit the site- and an enormous one at that. The park demonstrated a new standard in ride design and was the first ever to truly use coaster track as custom supports not just occasionally but exclusively. It also introduced custom rides such as a freestyle snowboarding slope or a working bungee jump, all things people had never seen before but from then on aspired to have in their own parks.
 

New Element Opens to Public

Universal's Islands Extreme by Nevis

But back to the story of NE's birth. NE grew out of the initiative of one man: iris. The centre of RCT performance before NE was a site called Danimation.com. It still exists today but has removed all of its coaster and RCT content. Danimation was maybe the first site with an organised competitive parkmaking culture. It came to the fore when the Admin Dan began releasing weekly recreations of rides which were a notch above what other sites offered. Soon, it had members submit their parks of which the best were awarded with accolades, most prominently the "Danimation Spotlight", a practice that was taken over to NE pretty much identically and lives on to this day.

After iris joined the Danimation community in mid 2000, he soon became known as an excellent park tester. He enjoyed to write elaborate reviews of the parks he was sent and was asked for by more and more players. This allowed him to become friends with the then best players in the scene, which was an important factor why the majority of them supported NE when it launched. As iris had become the community's grand "RCT Park Connoisseur", he decided to put all the parks he knew into a ranking. An idea which would later become NE's "The List" feature. It lead more and more players wanting to be placed high on his list, slowly establishing him as a key player in the community during those days.

Danimation rebranded itself into DNET to move away from its original animation origins and focus more on RCT. However eventually DNET fell apart over animosities between the admin team and the site's members, which at some point were banned one after the other in what must have been a pretty ugly forum rage. Of course, iris, who later described himself as quite cocky and cheeky, was one of those banned.

NE Launched before DNET fizzled out. DNET even tried one last rebranding exercise as RCTBITCH but eventually the site disappeared off the RCT Players' radar. However although DNet's RCT community went under, RCT was a game that now is in the books as one of the biggest sleeper hits in the history of video games. It sold over 4 million copies in North America alone. Thus the community was growing bigger and bigger each week, and new talented players were everywhere, just searching for a platform to exchange, and arena to compete against each other.

Many found a new site set up by iris and a group of friends called New Element. NE was his very own RCT site and had arrived with almost perfect timing before the collapse of DNET. A lot of credit is due to Adix, who became NE's first developer and took care of all the technical needs of the site. He also had friends at digital-coaster.com who created a sub-section on their site to host NE from, as neither iris nor Adix had their own webspace or domain at the time. What happened from then on until the end of 2002 will be reviewed in the following. You can read iris' full story written by himself which he posted here.


The initial feature list of NE had hardly anything original, as Spotlights, Parkmaker Pages, Designs or Hidden Parks had all been established at other sites previously, of course most prominently Danimation. But NE did not need to create many new features itself as thanks to iris it had a major following of some of the most remembered parkmakers of RCT1, namely Nevis, Fatha', Natelox and x-sector, whose works kickstarted the site. After Nevis' shocking UIX, Natelox' "Disney's Beautiful World" was released as the site's second spotlight, again causing majorly positive response in the community and inspiring waves of new members to put their very best into their parks. It was Natelox' first NE Spotlight and pretty much paved his way to becoming the king of Disney style parkmaking he is now known for. With Foozycoaster's "Visions Amusement Park" the next major release followed soon after. Similar to UIX, it celebrated the use of coaster track and other rides to create big architectural structures, a skill that had become very popular and was seen somewhat like a must-have in cutting-edge parkmaking. The park's giant ferris wheel thus was the major object of attention and became iconic for the park.

 

The giant ferris wheel in Foozycoaster's Visions Amusement Park

iris continued to push the community and announced the site's first ever contest: Head-2-Head. This was an original contest concept in which participants were drafted into teams and battled each other in 2vs2 duo park match-ups where public polls decided the winner. The contest introduced strict deadlines by which a park had to be sent in, and for the first time evoked a certain pressure to finish a park which anyone who has participated in an H2H season is probably familiar with. The contest's first round of matches took place in April 2002, featuring a release by Nevis who worked on "Tales of Camelot" together with mp3mystro (today "Panther"). The park again demonstrated Nevis affinity for custom ride design, featuring a large 4D coaster and custom ride. Although Nevis criticised mp3mystro as "impossible to work with", the park is considered as one of the best of H2H1, and ranked #2 in the "Best H2H park of the year" rankings. Coming in first was Fatha's and Andy Hodgson "Streets of New York", a story-based fantasy adventure ride through the city. At the time this was a novel concept few people, if any, had used before. Adventure rides were later also a trademark of Fatha's later releases. The contest took a two months break in June 2002 and wasn't to continue until August two months later.
 

Tales of Camelot, by Nevis and mp3mystro

Streets of New York, by Fatha' and Andy Hodgson

Meanwhile, more spotlights kept rolling in. The detail level of parks was considerably low in comparison to today's standards, and thus full size solos were much easier to finish. Following Natelox' Disney Park spotlight, x-sector released "California Disney Sea" winning his first NE Spotlight. The park had an impact as such that it marks the beginnings of what was later called "NE Style", a tendency for bright and vivid colours, 2x2-ismic building structures and a dominant use of Virginia Reels as awnings and overhangs. Nevis' "Atlantis: The Lost Empire" was the follow up Spotlight to x-sector's park, causing the whole community to turn heads due to its unconventional park layout, further advances in ride design and ever more increasing usage of what was soon called "trackitecture". iris was so taken by the park that he labelled Nevis "the new RCT GOD". The next spotlight was again a Disney park, this time vTd's "Florida Disney Sea". The park gave NE the reputation of being home to the "Disney Mafia", and indeed the site has a prominent line-up of Disney park spotlights as we shall see. vTd was considered as one of the classical style parkmakers rooting from Danimation and was not much attributable to the up and coming "NE Style" movement. Still, the park struck a strong chord with the majority of the community. As iris had made list making of favourites park popular, many people had adapated this habit and placed Florida Disney Sea as their new #1 park.
 

Nevis' second spotlight: Atlantis: The Lost Empire

Florida Disney Sea by vTd

What came next was Fatha' breakthrough spotlight "Tropico Cove". This park is the first of two in the Tropico Series and had a significant influence on the community. Fatha was praised for his depths of theming and exceptional coaster layouts. The park's wooden coaster "Loco Toro" was widely acknowledged as one of the best of its kind at the time, and the usage of 1/4 trees was completely new and grew extremly popular from then on. While many people copied it in their parks, nobody could quite do it the same way as Fatha'.

The following major park release gave rise to a bit of a forum riot at NE. During iris' absence, Adix was put in charge and selected a spotlight by himself, mp3mystro's "Elsinore Falls Theme Park". The park was generally not very well received as people accused mp3mystro of having produced nothing but a fine rip-off of Schuessler's legendary "Moonlight Magic", a famous park from pre-NE days. Upon his return, iris got into a hefty argument with mp3mystro who then left the site on a sour note. Similar quarrels had already been known between iris and Elrocko, who was then the first to openly criticise iris as a "dictator". Considering that iris himself wore the label "The Godfather" under his name, being widely respected for his RCT knowledge and as the creator of NE, this was a tone previously unheard of, and didn't quite resonate well with iris. In the end, Elrocko also left the site on bad terms like mp3mystro.

It took only a couple of weeks before the Disney Spotlight Mafia was reinforced at the site when PyroPenguin's "Disney Dreams" was released. The park left no doubt that Pyro was one of the hot players of the site as this was a gigantic triple mapper park feeding perfectly into the en vogue NE Style building fashions. It was only Pyro's second park.
 

Fatha's Tropico Cove

During the summer, iris decided to run a solo contest while H2H1 was on halt. The "Legends Challenge" was a contest in which people had to build a steel coaster design. It had a very good response of 30 entries, leading to a climax of the then top guns at the site: Natelox and Nevis. Natelox came out on top by winning the contest with yet another Disney release called "Disney's Ruiz Island Railroad". Unexpectedly, Nevis entry "Resident Evil" fell as low as fourth place due to RRP's "Katcun" and surprise performance by Alec (then A K) with his entry "The Unknown". All of these entries display each player's specialities which made the contest an exciting event. It also offered a nice change from the NE Style/Disney building styles the spotlights were dominated by, namely Alec's and RRP's performances. The sudden showing of brilliance by players who were otherwise unable to finish a full size solo park was something that should repeat itself over and over during most of NE's solo contests.
 

Disney's Ruiz Island Railroad by Natelox

Nevis' Resident Evil

Soon after H2H1 resumed. The two finalist teams had their first play-offs match, which due to an H2H activity drought also turned into the finals of the contest. Nevis and Elrocko's "Cherokee Valley" was beaten in a close match against x-sector's and Fatha's "Ganymede". This was Nevis last performance before he retired. The match-up was posted on a notorious date in NE history: 16 Sept 2002, the launch of NE2. With all the amazing parks flying in each month, the admin team behind the storefront had been busy at work trying to secure their own webspace and domain, which in 2002 was by no means as easy as it is today. iris' mother had to register the domain "nedesigns.com" under her name as iris was still too young for North American law to do it himself. With the launch of the site "Islands of Adventure Hollywood" by Schuessler was also released as the latest spotlight park. The park received a mixed response because it broke entirely with the hip NE Style and Disney-ish parkmaking. Instead, it can today be considered as the furthest development of "Classical LL style Parkmaking" rooting back to Danimation days, during which time Schuessler grew popular as a parkmaker winning two spotlights there. For aficionados of this style, the park still ranks as the best ever created. It demonstrated an incredible depth in aesthetic appeal using detail only where necessary. This lead people to criticise the park as being too bare as they were more used to parks cluttered with objects from previous spotlights such as Tropico Cove. Yet, the park left a considerable mark on the community and was frequently cited as a great source of inspiration for the generations of RCT1 players to follow. It was also Schuessler's final performance as he retired just before going to college.
 

H2H1's final match: Cherokee Valley versus Ganymede. Nevis and Elrocko versus x-sector and Fatha'

Schuessler's Islands of Adventure Hollywood

Although H2H1 had ended without fulfilling what was expected of the finals, iris decided to start yet another duo-park contest immediately after. From mid September to the end of October, NE ran the "Park Wars" contest, which was an idea by Nitrous Oxide. Similar to H2H, two parkmakers were teamed to create a new park of a real life existing park chain company. Pairs of players could sign-up for the usual suspects like Six Flags, Disney, Universal, etc. To simulate the real life scenario, teams were put under a budget and each ride costed a certain number of points. The contest was intended to go through several seasons with parks growing bit by bit each time. Points were earned at the end of rounds by criteria such as "Tallest Coaster", and further public polls on different types of performances such as "Best Steel Coaster". They could then be spent for new rides for the next season. The contest went on for two seasons until it died. Along the way it did bring forth some quite noteworthy releases. RRP and Blitz teamed up to produce "Tussauds 2003" featuring a massive wooden looper by RRP that received much praise. He also created the first ever working RCT skycoaster in the park. Other interesting parks were iris' and Natelox' "Warner Brothers" park, "NE's Palmetto Cove" by x-sector and PyroPenguin and "Tyline Park" by Harakiri (now bokti) and Ty (now Tyler).

NE's next major happening was the last RCT1 park of Mala, a highly recognised fantasy style parkmaker respected for his unique and artistic style, and his ability to create the most spectacular coasters that somehow still receive good ratings. Adix posted a prank announcement on NE's frontpage that the site had to close down, only to contain the link to "Mount Sinister" in his last line.
 

Mala's Mount Sinister

At a bit of a strange timing, NE had it's first ever NE Awards ceremony in November 2002, where Natelox won Best Parkmaker and UIX the Best Park award. At the end of the awards ceremony "Troy's Ancient Resort" was released, a park that until then had received considerable hype as it was supposedly created by iris himself and had received advertising on a dedicated HTML page since NE1 with lengthy write-ups. It turned out to be a collabo park that joined all top players of the site, and consequently making for a strong but yet not quite amazing performance. Four days later, iris posted what he called "the real Spotlight": Natelox' "Disney's Discovery Island". A tremendous double-mapper continuing NE's history of Disney Spotlights, and in the eyes of many taking back the Disney crown from PyroPenguin who had had it since his "Disney Dreams" release.

As if 2002 had not seen enough spotlights by November, it ended with some of the finest of LL parks ever created. First, something extremly rare and precious happened at NE when RRP released his only ever park that was almost fully done by himself: "Busch Gardens Lichfield". Needless to say, it easily won Spotlight. It came during a time when RCT2 had recently been released and was slowly finding its way into NE. Some members even demanded that from then on only RCT2 parks should be accepted for the accolade, but iris denied this and turned Busch Gardens Lichfield into a spotlight.

When looking at the next major parks, it can be said that the end of 2002 was pretty much the pinnacle of RCTLL parkmaking at NE before RCT2 started to convert players. Pyro Penguin had heavily advertised his follow up park to "Disney Dreams" as "Project Moose", which upon release was called "Aurora's Bay" and won him his second spotlight. The park was highly recognised for its usage of glass station architecture in the Terras Labs area. This was a rare skill back then that Pyro had already shown in Disney Dreams but perfected out in Aurora's Bay. It was Pyro Penguin's last park as he could never quite get into RCT2 with the similar passion he had had for RCTLL. This was also the case for his fellow RCTLL maestros Fatha' and Natelox.
 

Natelox' Disney's Discovery Island

Aurora's Bay, PyroPenguin's second and last spotlight

In mid December 2002, the first ever RCT2 park was released at NE. It was Mike Robbin's "Magnolia Gardens", a co-release with RCT Station, which received Runner-Up status (now "Silver"). iris was initially not a fan of RCT2, and all that was seen of RCT2 was considered noobish and not at all up to par with the level of NE's RCTLL accolade winners. A new RCT2 player generation that changed this was already growing however, and this should become very evident in 2003. Mike Robbin's park, like most of the RCT2 stuff available then, did not receive much attention at NE.

Before the end of the year, iris announced the "Blockbuster Challenge" contest. Similar to the Legends Challenge, it was a solo contest with the objective to theme a ride after a famous movie. The contest received mixed response and was on the verge of canellation at some point. In the end x-sector came out on top with his "Evolution entry". Lastly, as NE's christmas release, one of the most remembered LL parks of all times was released with Fatha's "Tropico Horizons", the second and last of his Tropico parks. Similar to Tropico Cove, the park was received extremly well and iris immediately updated his "List" where Tropico Horizons was the new #1 park. The park featured Fatha's extremly popular "clutter style" that had matured and become more flowing overall.

This brought 2002 to a close. Overall, it was NE's strongest year for LL and defined the standards that from then on were never really pushed significantly further until Coaster Ed's H2H3 releases. Many of 2002's parks, most notably Fatha's, were copied from there on, and all non RCT2 players would try to emulate the still famous "NE Style" in their parks for a good while. Overall, 2002 saw four contests, two solo and two team, and an astonishing number of twenty Spotlights, meaning a new Spotlight Release almost every three weeks. The following year 2003 meant a big change for NE from RCTLL to RCT2, which took place very slowly as RCTLL was so firmly rooted into the site. The review on 2003 will tell you more on this.

 

Must-See Releases of 2002

Universal's Islands Extreme by Nevis Disney's Beautiful World by Natelox Visions Amusement Park by Foozycoaster California DisneySea by x-sector Florida Disney Sea by vTd Tales of Camelot by Nevis & mp3mystro Streets of New York by Fatha' & Andy Hodgson Atlantis: The Lost Empire by Nevis Tropico Cove by Fatha' Elsinore Falls Theme Park by mp3mystro Disney's Ruiz Island Railroad by Natelox Resident Evil by Nevis Cherokee Valley by Nevis & Elrocko Ganymede by Fatha' and x-sector Islands of Adventure Hollywood by Schuessler Mount Sinister by Mala Tussauds (from Park Wars) by RRP & Blitz Tyline California by bokti & Ty NE's Palmetto Cove by x-sector & PyroPenguin Warner Brothers' Portico Cove by Natelox & iris Disney Dreams by PyroPenguin Land of the Villain by Natelox & Mala Disney's Discovery Island by Natelox Lloyd Harbor by Elrocko egypTopia by Coaster Ed Busch Gardens Lichfield by RRP Aurora's Bay by PyroPenguin Tropico Horizons by Fatha'

Absolutely beautiful. Well-written, interesting to read, and inspiring. I'm really looking forward to the next 2 weeks.

So many amazing parks in 2002 <3

So many amazing parks in 2002 <3

Yeah. My favourites are DDI, Lichfield, UIX and IoA Hollywood. I took the screens for this topic and I wasn't famaliar with all of the parks. Tales of Camelot and Streets of New York were new for me and I loved them! Tales of Camelot doesn't look like it was made in 2002, so dense. It's looking great. Streets of New York had less content, but wow, the street race was great. Loved the near-collision with train which is in the screen.

Thanks for the good read posix. I recommend reading this to everyone, it's really interesting to hear about how NE started. The community was so different back then!

So many good parks this year, it's amazing how much history this site has!

If anyone hasn't yet seen Resident Evil or Tales of Camelot, they must check them out. Two of the greatest releases ever to hit this site, but often overlooked.

I didn't know Resident Evil either so it was a pleasant surprise. I wouldn't call it one of the greatest releases to hit the site, but it's definately worth a look.

This is great! I love history. I think this timeline of NE needs to go to a national archive. I mean, this is the most succesfull site of a million copies selling game.

I remember most of the parks from when I was a noobie here. I browsed this site for hours then.

fantastic read, very nostalgic to remember this!

Great read. Looking forward to the next edition.
Thank you so much for all the effort you are putting into this. History is was makes this place really special.

Wow, so great!

Such an incredible amount of time has been put into this. I'm more than impressed guys.

Great read, posix. Did you write this yourself? Once I saw IOAH coming up I got a sense of some fanboy-isms.

I forgot about vTd. His work was the shit. And natelox's Discovery Kingdom? Forget about it, so so good.


I can't wait to see the reads for 2003-2004!

This was extremely interesting to read. It's fascinating to disocver that this site was ruled by one teenage boy and that there were so many huge releases back then. As a history student, I can only applaud this archiving project! If I only knew about NE in 2002...

Thanks guys. It's great so many still care.

Steve, I tried to hide it but you know me too well.

I'm glad people appreciated those H2H1 parks. If you haven't yet the Park Wars parks listed at the bottom of the post are definitely worth a download: Tussauds, Tyline California, Palmetto Cove and Portico Cove.


When I came up with the text I was in contact with Adix, who contributed his own memories that I am permitted to add here. Fantastic read in my opinion.

It's kind of funny, trying to think of when New Element "started"... I
think it was ultimately a spark of inspiration shared between a few
people at the right place at the right time, and truly driven by iris.
I ask that you forgive my memory... I was active on Danimation around
the time I was 13 or 14, and I was 15 when New Element launched... a
lot of things have happened in the time since.

I'd also like to point out that a lot of the chronology detailed in
the post before this is very NE-centric... but it's important to
remember that without Danimation, we never would have existed. The
first moment I really remember being tied to NE was when Danimation
was seeking new moderators for the forums... iris and I both went for
it, amongst others. I was selected; he was not. This small decision
really was the turning point: iris started a furor in the community, a
lot of people supported him, and the idea of starting a BRAND NEW site
transformed from something being passed around casually to a serious
idea.

At the same time, there was a lot of concern that Dan and Alex were
too strict in their handling of the forums, and a lot of people were
growing unhappy with the community. My last straw was when a
gentleman by the name of "BrandonR" made a post that didn't belong...
it was either inappropriate or the wrong forum, I don't remember. I
woke up the next morning and I was de-modded and BrandonR had received
a formal apology from Dan... some sort of inter-site politics I never
understood.

To my teenaged self, this was the ultimate in debauchery. I made a
long post trying to lead an insurrection against our oppressors. Alex
sent it to my mom. I reregistered as "Buckster" and lurked at
Danimation until I switched entirely to NE.


As all this Danimation forum drama was occuring, there was a secret
chat with myself, iris, and buster and a few others. Iris wanted to
start the site. People shared their ideas and talents. I said that
well, I can code.... and the rest is history. SBoarder did our
original web design and Nessy at Digital Coaster gave us webspace and
a forum as we got on our feet. Iris and I spent hours (most of them
late at night) planning, building and figuring things out. New
Element was built with love, skill, passion, and a lot of angst at the
community we were leaving behind.

We launched with UIX as our centerpiece, the best RCT creation to date
-- only available from us. Looking back, it could be said that we
ripped off the Danimation model from top to bottom.... because really,
we did. However, we didn't see it that way. We saw the community as
ours to have, and we were taking it with us.

To be honest, the success of New Element is a bit of a surprise... I
mean, we didn't even have our own domain at the time. We decided that
dammit, we're going to make a new site, and we did. To see it take on
it's own life, given to it by the next generation of people who
care... is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

Honored to be a part of these memories,

Andrew "Adix" Bates

*BUMP (Sorry for messaging you posix, I had forgotten all about this)

Whoa! That was quite a trip down the memory lane, thanks for the read posix.

I kinda miss those days and it's hard to believe 10 years has passed... good to see NE still going strong though.

Good to see you drop by. We'll all cherish those memories.

Looking good sir! I don't venture around these parts very often anymore but it's fun to come back and see who is still active in the community.

The years of Danimation were pretty cool. I was a really immature kid back then so unfortunately I didn't get the best reputation around these parts.

Nonetheless, I remember getting involved with the NE graphics team which was pretty cool when it started. I can't quite remember everyone who was on it at the time but I remember it was a great way to become better at graphic design, without really risking a whole lot if something didn't quite work out. I was not even someone who was good at designing parks or RCT in general but the community was something that I was drawn to (along with a lot of others who didn't design but hung around anyway). The yearly "best of 20xx" contests early on were a really cool thing NE did that I enjoyed a lot.

At some point I remember Danimation used to have these graphic battles where an image would be posted and the goal would be to come up with a cool photoshop or image mod to it. That's when I started chatting with a couple dudes named rebeltorumble and chrisreyn64. These guys didn't seem to give a fuck and I thought that was cool. I remember they used to frequent a board called Tribalwar... Eventually I stopped posting on NE/DENT and went to TW. And then I left TW, started lurking reddit and stopped posting on the internet in general to spend more time on hobbies outside of the internet.

Anyway, posix, I do remember a situation where I designed a signature for you and then asked for you to take it down for some reason. Whoops. I don't know why I was such a dick at times. It's funny to look back on old posts and realize how ridiculous I was when I was younger. Good times!

Put a smile on my face when I saw you had replied to this topic.