History

The History Of Club Penguin

Before Club Penguin, there was something called Penguin Chat 3. You used to be able to play it on rocketsnail.com (Yes, that’s what rsnail stands for), but as of now, they have closed down the site so everyone visits Clubpenguin.com instead. Penguin Chat 3 was very fun, to tell you the truth.
Back then, the whole thing was free and there were things on it that the Club Penguin Team never put back onto Club Penguin. I had a few accounts on it.
It was actually very similar to Club Penguin, except there was only one place you could go to, the Town. There wasn’t a Cove, Snow Forts, Dojo, or your own home or anything else, but the Town (which included the Gift Shop, Night Club and Coffee Shop). In fact, the Town looked very similar to how it looks now, but there was more chairs and tables outside the Coffee Shop, and a few other small details. It also snowed in the Town!
And there were no coins or way of earning coins. And if you tried to walk to the left of the town, you’d go to an area of nothing but snow (and a few construction decorations), if you went to the left of that, you’d up in another bigger area of snow with a pretty, blue sky. In this specific area, you might see a bunch of penguins in snowcats (look it up in dictionary) driving around. Then if you went left again, there would be a bunch of penguins just walking around with hard hats on that are probably drilling the ground (with construction decorations and railings all over the place and a crane in the distance), and then if you went left again, you’d be back at the Town (so it was kinda a circle). And you could also end up in the Town again if you started off going right from the Town (and kept going).
There were also signs in some of the snowy rooms in Penguin Chat but I can’t remember what they said. I believe they were room names. There was also no map.
Now, the toolbar is a little hard to remember. In the toolbar, there was the chatbox, the snowball button, the actions button/dance button, a report button, the emotes button, a ‘Tell a Joke’ button, and the enter button. There was an arrow button that collapsed the chatbox to make the toolbar smaller. To change color, you would click a Color change button on the chatbar, and select a different color. And there was a Chat History and Report button on the upper left of the screen. Judging from the pics I’ve found, there’s also a Heart button and a Musical note button. These are actually two emotes that are still on CP so I believe they were just 2 other emotes you can do. And there seems to be a couple Help buttons on the right of the toolbar as well (probably for technical assistance, etc.)
The Night Club was incredibly similar. The major differences were that the Band played on the stage, rather than the DJ thing with the speakers (but there were Speakers there). And there was no green puffle dancing on the speakers, and there were no stairs leading to the upper floor (there wasn’t an upper floor). And you could get to the secret Boiler room by walking onto the wire of the lower righthand Speaker. The point of the game was just to throw snowballs, dance, and chat.
Talking about snowballs, in Penguin Chat, snowballs were a little bit different. No, they looked the exact same, but when you threw them at people, sometimes you would miss horribly sometimes. The radar that shows up when you push the Snowball button in Club Penguin was different in Club Penguin.
The Coffee shop was somewhat boring, there was no upper level, and you couldn’t play Bean Counter there. Back then, everyone used to pretend they were Coffee shop waiters. And there was a lot of kid-dating stuff going on there and in the town.
Now, have you ever heard someone ask ‘how do you become a ninja?’ Well, this is where the myth started from (By the way, you CAN’T become a ninja in Club Penguin yet, they were going to make them, but they made Secret Agents instead). When you opened up the Color select window, if you click the 2nd ‘n’ in ‘Select your new penguin’, a new Ninja “color” would pop out. (No lie, it also took me a long time to figure this out when I first started playing, no one would tell me, so I had to search it up in the comments of the site). Once you select the Ninja outfit as a color you’d have this cool black color, with a headband, belt, and sword on your back. Being a ninja was pretty cool, if you tried dancing as a ninja, you wouldn’t dance but you’d become transparent/almost see-through.
You could also be a Hard Hat worker. You had to click on the Hook of the Crane in the sky (the Crane was behind a fence in the back) in the snowfields that were right of the Town to get the Hard hat (you didn’t have a player card back then so you didn’t really get a Hard hat, you just wore one). And if you danced, you would be drilling the ground. And if you went into the middle snow fields, you’d be driving a snowcat.
As for the Gift shop, if you tried walking into it, you’d be transported to a page in Rocketsnail.com where you could buy merchandise like real life keychains and T-shirts (using real life money though).
And that’s just about all there was to Penguin Chat 3 (that used to be playable at rocketsnail.com) that I can remember.
Now here’s the sad part. One day during the middle/start of Summer in 2005, the Rocket Snail team announced they were creating something called Club Penguin, which was basically a much better version of Penguin Chat. When I went to the site clubpenguin.com, all that was on its site was the logo and it said it was Under Construction. Then they closed Penguin Chat a few days later, so I had nothing to do but play the other minigames on : Mancala, Ballistic Biscuit (which is Hydrohopper but with a human rather than a penguin, and different obstacles like frogs), and a few other games on rsnail.com (I believe you can still play some of them. Check the comments for links)

After waiting the over 2 months for Club Penguin to come out, I finally stopped checking the site everyday. And I eventually forgot about it for a little while. When I looked again in October/November, I had missed the grand opening, The Beta Tester Party (which the mods were there and they gave out Beta hats), and everything else by a Very little bit of time. I still registered and played the game with a few accounts (which were probably deleted by now). The one I can remember had the name: Super Buu. And then I found out there was very little a nonmember could do.
Now let’s explain a little more about Club Penguin Beta testing. You could basically try out the new Club Penguin beforehand. Beta testers got one month of free Club Penguin membership, they got to keep their party hat from the very first Club Penguin party ever, and a certain amount of coins (I think 2,000).
Just a few more things before I let you go, no ninja myths are true (yet)! There’s one myth out there that says if you don’t move in the dojo for 30 minutes but stay logged on by talking and chatting, you’ll be a ninja. Don’t listen to those lies! Its just to waste your time! I knew it was a lie from the moment I heard it, and now I’ve tested it out just to prove it to you and nothing happened! (You can check it out yourself if you want to waste a half hour…)
And, last, you can check the Club Penguin Official Blog Archives for all old blog posts from Club Penguin ever since April 2005 here. This includes all the talk about the Beta Tests, the Party, etc: http://community.clubpenguin.com/blog/archives.php To see The oldest Times in Club Penguin! And that’s all for Now.. Waddle on!