Well, relative to the things I sometimes see in the public queue it's pretty decent. :)

I like it, makes me feel all warm and fuzzy knowing I'm part of this amazing community

@jalonso Pft, noob. 

I can reveal some insider scandals about jal's racist quips aimed at Canadians if it'll help increase the readership. 

"only decent entries now see the eyes of most visitors" ...

And Part 2 is now live!

Hope it does this place justice. 

Sweet! I'd love to hear any stories you could share about those times.

I knew only about Gas13 when I started with pixel art in 2005. I was a game reviewer for a computer magazine, and I wrote an article about pixel art (and contributed a cover to the magazine). I remember putting Gas's work in the article as I appreciated his ZX Spectrum pieces. I also knew of Pixelfreak and had a huge crush on eBoy. After that I studied computer science so I didn't do any art until I graduated in 2011. So my history of pixel art has a gapping hole in those years.

From my research it seemed there were a few communities back then, but it seems only PixelJoint and Pixelation remain until today. And whoever stayed around on deviantART.

We had a DA-like community in my home country (Slovenia), but it shared that 2nd outcome, it died when servers/domains went defunct. A facebook group tried to replace it, but it's nothing like it. Although another, a local game dev community, now lives stronger than ever as a FB group. I guess a lot of community has also just moved to things like Twitter (Pixel_Dailies) and Tumblr (that's where I come from).

Anyway, I'm rambling when I should be finishing part 2. I opened the page to do some research and then got lost in the comments. :]

Nice to see some of the great images in this big article format :D

There are many members here from the very beginning of the site.
The 2 eldest members who are active since day one are Gas13 and Blueberry Pie.
I came in activey about a year into the site.

8 Bit Dreams: Yes, site's current offering will be focus of part 2. Hopefully tonight.

Eishiya: I wish there was more info about the site's beginnings too. I wasn't there for the early days and I don't have nearly enough resources to do interviews and back and forth, talking to early members. I mainly based everything on a couple hours of research (=heavy use of archive.org).

But in general, yeah, Retronator Magazine is heavily geared towards images with just a sprinkle of flavor text.

However, if anyone can write more about the history/beginnings, you can post it as a response to the article and it will appear at the bottom as an addendum. That'd be pretty cool to be honest, to get some memoirs from memebers active in 2000s.

This. I don't think it will get into the site's history more though. The article says part 2 will be about more recent artwork, and the two articles are intended as showcases of artwork rather than articles about PJ itself.

I quite enjoyed looking through this.

Well done, can't wait for part 2.

It started as a nice tale... I loved it.

Please tell me more about that "golden era" :D

I wish there was more written about the site itself... Hopefully the next installments get into the history.