Louisload

Many years ago the Internet was still made up of HTML pages created in FrontPage, a Microsoft program that promised you could make web pages easily without touching any code. That was an exciting time for a child like me who loved computers and dreamed of one day having my own Internet connection.

At that time, to “go to the Internet” I had to be go to my aunt’s house, and to be able to have fun at my house it was common to look for downloadable games that I could take with me to my PC at home. USB pens were also a concept of the future, what we used at the time were CD-Roms. I had drawers full of CD-Roms with nothing but JPEG images and low quality videos that came by email chains, so I could review them in the comfort of my home.

At that time I had no gaming consoles. My only entertainment was the computer and the television. So all games I’ve played were for Windows only. And in one of my online searches at superdownloads.com.br (a website which still exists with the same logo) I looked for Sonic and found a free game called Neo Sonic Universe that was perfect. Perfect because I liked Sonic and I was never able to play at home, and it was also free!

I played it from end to end, looking for a supposed secret Espio character that I never figured out how to unlock. I remember that nobody figured out how to unlock it, even though there was a screenshot of this character on the site. On some levels there were secret zones with a mysterious poster that also appeared to do nothing but contributed to the mystery. Maybe it was a great troll from the game’s creator (I remember his nickname was @lex).

When the game opened, a small advertisement for your site appeared on the screen. If my memory serves me, it was something like “GamingBrasil: Game creation is here!”

When I entered this site I noticed a small community of happy people creating fan-games. Tutorials, sprites, MIDI songs, some pirated software 😝, and that’s how my journey started. I created my first (of many) Super Mario clones. I made 700 Sonic clones too. And then, of course, I wanted to put my games on the Internet.

At that time I needed a name for my beautiful website built on FrontPage… Since my real name is Luís and my games always started with a screen saying “Loading” the first thing that came to mind was Luísloading. My internet aunt suggested to me that this was a good nickname and that I should keep it forever. Eventually it evolved into Louisload and remained so, even today.

p.s.: if someone from GamingBrasil reads this, please tell me if Espio was real

p.p.s.: I could have done some fact checking on some stuff that I spoke about because I’m sure that the game still works on Windows 10, but it would bring that powerful nostalgic feeling and my heart would blow up