Taiwan's online gathering places for gaming players have changed homes three times over thirty years. The "Cellar" of the late 1990s was a black treasure trove filled with cheat codes; Gamebase in 2000 was the first Chinese-language gaming portal; Bahamut, which grew out of National Central University's BBS in 1996, saw its membership exceed 6 million by 2025, becoming one of the top five websites in Taiwan by traffic. These three names mark the migration route of Taiwan's gaming community from the dial-up era to the mobile era, and record one thing: the life and death of a community depends on who is willing to stay, not on who arrives first.
The Black Treasure Trove Behind the 56K Modem
Late 1990s. Your home's 56K modem squeaks for thirty seconds, and a black-background, white-text webpage slowly emerges. At the top of the page is a row of Chinese numerals in a counter, and below are dense links to game names.
This is the "Cellar" (cellar.com.tw).1
No one remembers exactly who made the Cellar or when it went live. It had no "About Us" page, no company registration, no founder interviews. It was just there, like a library without a street number, containing every walkthrough you needed.
The Cellar's content came almost entirely from user uploads. Complete flowcharts for The Legend of Sword and Fairy, password books for Age of Empires (how do you turn this on, the Cobra sports car), character stat builds for Diablo, and alchemy pot synthesis tables for Sword of the Legend. One player recalled: "The rich walkthroughs and cheat codes inside covered almost every game I had played or was playing at the time."2 According to PTT users, the Cellar contained walkthroughs for 90% of the games on the Taiwan PC market.3
A slogan circulated among players: "No sleep without entering the Cellar; once out of the Cellar, shock the ten thousand sects."
For many, the Cellar was the first website they ever visited—earlier than Yahoo, earlier than蕃薯藤 (Sweet Potato Vine)—a black cave filled with game cheats.4
📝 Curator's Note
The Cellar's mode of existence was unique: it had no community features, no forums, no membership system. It was purely a "warehouse"; players threw walkthroughs in, and other players came to take them. Before Web 2.0, this was the primitive form of online collaboration: anonymous goodwill, knowledge sharing without expectation of return.
Around 2005, the Cellar suddenly became inaccessible. There were no announcements, no farewells; it disappeared quietly, just as it had appeared. Players beat their chests in frustration, but online games had taken over, and the demand for single-player walkthroughs was shrinking. The Cellar briefly revived in late 2008, causing a stir among old players, but the times had already changed.5
The Cellar died for a simple reason: the world it served had disappeared. As players migrated from single-player games to online games, the production method of walkthroughs shifted from "one person writing a complete guide" to "real-time discussion in forums," and static walkthrough warehouses lost their meaning.
Gamebase: The Five-Year Throne
On November 16, 2000, "Gamebase" (Gamebase) went live. Behind it was Computer Player Cultural Enterprise, the parent company of Computer Player magazine.6
Completely different from the grassroots style of the Cellar, Gamebase operated commercially from day one. Launching during the hype surrounding Softstar's Heroes: Dark Earth Online, it skyrocketed in traffic thanks to its game discussion boards. In 2002, it was rated the "Number One Gaming Website in Chinese," and its membership grew from 30,000 at launch to over 14 million.7
Gamebase got one thing right: it moved the professional content of "gaming magazines" online while adding forum functionality. In an era where broadband was just becoming popular and online games were just taking off, players needed a place to check new game info, find guilds, and complain about operators. Gamebase provided this venue.
But its throne lasted only about five years.
Around 2004, Gamebase underwent a redesign. The new interface had poor usability, bugs were frequent, and the all-black design was criticized by players. More fatally, Gamebase was hacked, user data was leaked, and its foundation of trust was shaken.8 In 2007, Gamebase was acquired by its parent company, City Media, and gradually transformed from a "player community" into a "game news relay station," with forum activity continuing to decline.
Where did the players go? They went to a place that grew out of National Central University's BBS.
Chien-Hung Chen's Birthday Gift
On October 28, 1996, National Central University graduate student Chien-Hung Chen got something done: a BBS site dedicated to discussing video games, with all preparatory work completed. He decided to wait until November 10 (his birthday) to officially announce it.9
The site was named "Bahamut," taken from the dragon-like legendary creature in the Final Fantasy series. Chien-Hung Chen's nickname was sega.
On the first day of launch, 247 people logged in.10
Chien-Hung Chen's reason for setting up this site was simple: he was a hardcore video game player who found that game discussion boards were scattered across various university BBS sites, and finding a walkthrough for a game required flipping through several sites. He wanted a place to centralize all video game discussions. So he personally wrote letters inviting game moderators from other sites to jump ship.11
In March 1997, Chien-Hung Chen was invited to appear on the TV show Video Game Panorama, hosted by Pu Hsueh-liang. On the day the episode aired, Bahamut's login numbers surged to over 3,000. For a university dormitory BBS, this was an earthquake-level traffic spike.12
But Chien-Hung Chen still had to study. During his master's program, he even blocked his own account to force himself to focus on his thesis. After graduation, he went to work at Yahoo, working as an office worker by day and continuing to manage Bahamut by night. He later described those days as "practicing skills by day, combat by night."13
From BBS to Company: The Earthquake of Ten Million
In March 2000, Chien-Hung Chen brought in his cousin and two moderators, and the four of them officially formed a company. The capital was 10 million NTD, coming from an air freight business owner, a former vice president of Delta Electronics, and family elders.14
He deliberately delayed the announcement of the company's formation until September 21. He knew the community's reaction would be huge: "It will definitely cause an earthquake."15 A free BBS turning into a company was equivalent to telling all the volunteer moderators who helped manage the boards that "someone is making money here now." Indeed, once the announcement was made, waves of protest came crashing down.
Worse still was the timing. When the company was established, the US Nasdaq had just crashed, and the internet bubble had burst. The initial 5 million in capital burned through quickly, and expenses only broke even by the end of the second year.16
Bahamut's turning point came from a competitor's mistake.
In November 2003, Bahamut launched the native web forum "Halala Zone," removing the permission thresholds for creating boards and posting, allowing anyone to participate directly. The style was set as "relaxed but not unrestrained."17 The following year, Gamebase's redesign disaster and the hacker incident caused a mass exodus of players. In 2004, Bahamut's traffic surpassed Gamebase for the first time, with membership reaching 750,000. From that moment on, Bahamut never gave up the number one spot again.18
✦ The Cellar died due to changing times, Gamebase died due to its own mistakes, and Bahamut survived all crises. The difference in these three endings boils down to one thing: who raised the community like their own child, rather than managing it as a business.
The Dragon Thirty Years Later
In March 2025, Bahamut's membership exceeded 6 million.19
According to SimilarWeb data from December 2024, Bahamut is the 5th largest website in Taiwan by traffic and ranked 1st in the gaming category. Daily Active Users (DAU) are approximately 1.5 million, with daily page views of 25 million. Revenue in 2022 was approximately 300 million NTD.20
Bahamut's GNN has accumulated a vast amount of game news, with player submissions making up a considerable proportion.21 This structure illustrates Bahamut's core logic: the main content is produced by the community, while the company is only responsible for maintaining the infrastructure.
The Halala boards (discussion forums) remain Bahamut's heart. Almost every game with players in Taiwan has its own Halala board. Moderators are elected autonomously by players, and Bahamut's management team tries not to interfere in board affairs. Chien-Hung Chen's insistence on "credibility" is simple: he always refuses game publishers' requests to delete posts and bans paid rankings.22
Bahamut later grew to include Animefgo (anime streaming), Bahamut Store, and the ACG Database. It transformed from a video game BBS into Taiwan's largest ACG (Animation, Comic, Game) comprehensive platform. But at its core, it is still an extension of that server in a National Central University dormitory in 1996: a place for players to find each other.
💡 Did You Know
Chien-Hung Chen started his business eight years earlier than Facebook's Zuckerberg. Bahamut was established in 1996, while Facebook only launched in 2004. A video game BBS made by a Taiwan graduate student understood the concept of "letting users produce their own content" earlier than the world's largest social platform.
Three Tombstones and a Dragon
The Cellar, Gamebase, Bahamut. Three names occupy different positions in the memories of Taiwan's gaming players.
The Cellar is childhood. That black-background webpage, that row of Chinese numerals in the counter, those walkthrough posts formatted in Word and pasted up. It belongs to a simpler era: no accounts, no comments, no community, just "I know the answer, I put it here, take it."
Gamebase is adolescence. The first time arguing with strangers on a forum, the first time joining a guild, the first time being warned by a moderator. It was once the largest, but being the largest does not mean living the longest.
Bahamut is adulthood. It is imperfect; its interface design is still criticized as old-fashioned, and there are occasional moderator controversies and paid-ad skepticism. But it achieved something that no other Chinese-language gaming website has done in thirty years: it is still here.
In a 2013 interview, Chien-Hung Chen was asked how he viewed the impact of Facebook on communities. His answer was frank: "Our reaction was really slow." (From an INSIDE interview)23 But slow does not mean losing. Bahamut's strategy is not to chase trends, but to guard its core users. When game groups on Facebook came and went, and Discord channels were built and scattered, the Halala boards remained the same Halala boards.
On a late night in 2026, a player is stuck on a certain level of a game. He opens Bahamut, searches the Halala board for a walkthrough from three years ago, and finds seven people below who have supplemented different solutions. He chooses the third one and clears the level.
Thirty years ago, he would have opened a black-background, white-text website, found an unsigned walkthrough, and then closed the squeaking modem.
The method has changed. The spirit of "someone put the answer here for you" has not.
Further Reading
- History of Taiwan's Online Community Migration — The moving history of Taiwan's social platforms from BBS to Threads
- Taiwan's Open Source Spirit — Another group of "Taiwanese powered by love"
- PTT Ptt — Taiwan's longest-lasting BBS, a contemporary product of Bahamut
- Softstar's Twin Swords — The emotional enlightenment source of Taiwan's single-player games from the same era
- Crazy Moments of Taiwan Players — The collective frenzy of the Cellar/Gamebase/Bahamut generation of players
References
- Cellar Official Website — cellar.com.tw, an early Taiwan game walkthrough distribution station↩
- Bahamut Creation: No Sleep Without Entering the Cellar, Once Out of the Cellar, Shock the Ten Thousand Sects — Player recalls the functions and content of the Cellar website↩
- PTT C_Chat Board: How Popular Was the Walkthrough Website "Cellar" Back Then — Netizens estimate it contained walkthroughs for 90% of Taiwan PC games↩
- Bahamut Creation: No Sleep Without Entering the Cellar — "The Cellar was the first website I encountered"↩
- Bahamut Creation: The Cellar Has Reopened! — The Cellar's revival in December 2008 and player reactions↩
- Wikipedia: Gamebase — Launched November 16, 2000; founded by Computer Player Cultural Enterprise↩
- Wikipedia: Gamebase — Rated the number one gaming website in Chinese in 2002; membership grew from tens of thousands to the tens of millions↩
- PTT C_Chat Board: How Did Gamebase Decline? — Failed redesign, hacker attacks, user exodus↩
- Wikipedia: Bahamut Game Information Station — Set up October 28, 1996; officially announced November 10↩
- Wikipedia: Bahamut Game Information Station — 247 users logged in on the first day of launch↩
- INSIDE: 16 Years of Hardcore Gaming Community, Interview with Bahamut's Segal — Chien-Hung Chen personally wrote letters inviting moderators to jump ship↩
- Wikipedia: Bahamut Game Information Station — 1997 Video Game Panorama interview, 3,000 users logged in that day↩
- INSIDE: Interview with Bahamut's Segal — Worked at Yahoo by day, managed Bahamut by night↩
- INSIDE: Interview with Bahamut's Segal — Company established March 2000, 10 million capital, investor identities↩
- INSIDE: Interview with Bahamut's Segal — Chien-Hung Chen's quote "It will definitely cause an earthquake"↩
- INSIDE: Interview with Bahamut's Segal — Nasdaq crash, 5 million burned, broke even in the second year↩
- INSIDE: Interview with Bahamut's Segal — Launched Halala Zone in 2003, "relaxed but not unrestrained"↩
- INSIDE: Interview with Bahamut's Segal — 2004 "death cross," 750,000 members, surpassed Gamebase↩
- BNext: Older Than Facebook! Bahamut is 27 Years Old, Why Are Users Increasing? — Membership exceeded 6 million in March 2025↩
- BNext: Bahamut CEO Discusses from Gamebase's Traffic War — SimilarWeb ranked 5th in Taiwan, 1.5 million DAU, 25 million daily page views↩
- Wikipedia: Bahamut Game Information Station — GNN reached 300,000 articles by February 2026, 48,000 player submissions↩
- INSIDE: Interview with Bahamut's Segal — Refused all publisher requests to delete posts, banned paid rankings↩
- INSIDE: Interview with Bahamut's Segal — Chien-Hung Chen's quote "Our reaction was really slow"↩