ASSEMbler Games Forum to Close

The current administrator of ASSEMbler Games, a forum principally dedicated to advancing video game research through discovery and sale of rare, unreleased, and prototype materials, announced earlier on Wednesday the site, active for the past 23 years, will close at the end of next month.

“Current account status -$2880 ($120 x 24 months),” read the administrator’s message. “It cannot continue at such a loss.”

Several members of the site have offered to buy it from the current administrator. Others have lamented that the shutdown was a long time coming, the result of mismanagement and neglect. ASSEMbler in its current incarnation has accumulated more than 26,000 members, though a fraction of them remain active currently.

The forum gained attention of the Sonic community when a former member of Sega of America put a prototype of Sonic X-Treme, a canceled Sega Saturn title intended to be Sonic’s first game in true 3D, up for auction in 2005 for a four-figure sum. It was later revealed that the auction was intentionally rigged so members of the Sonic research community could not obtain it. The prototype would be dumped for research two years later.