Yup!
If I'm not mistaken, I joined specifically to make a Gold and Silver remake that I had dubbed SunGold/MoonSilver. And I think that was before ShinyGold came out, totally blew me out of the water, and I began to consider more original hacks.
I remember zel and TreeckoLv.100 being people I looked up to. Nowadays, it seems like GBA ROM hacking had barely scratched the surface back then. Now we can do all sorts of amazing things conveniently that I don't think many people could do back when I joined.
The community has come a long way, that's for sure.