<\/p>\n
Yesterday, I was casually browsing Bluesky and came across this delightful thread:<\/p>\n
Man, I love late-\u201990s\/early-\u201900s websites, don\u2019t you? The simplicity. The goofy fonts. The visitor counters. The personality! That whole thread is gold, truly, not just for the retro vibes but also for the sheer hilarity that is seeing websites that are massive, corporate-owned mazes today in their primaeval forms as personal blogging spaces about marriage, growing older, religion, travel, and other humdrum human activities.<\/p>\n
The thread above canvases earlier incarnations of sites including doordash.com, hulu.com, slack.com, x.com (not nearly the worst place on the web!!!!), and more. But it made me curious: what about video game websites? Were any of the popular game websites we know today originally something else? Perhaps something more personal, or silly?<\/p>\n
Using the good ol\u2019 Internet Archive, I started with some big AAA gaming companies. Unfortunately, most of the ones I looked up were only ever websites for those companies, as opposed to once being someone\u2019s blog. Still, it\u2019s not all bad. Let\u2019s stroll together through a brief tour of what major gaming websites looked like 20-30 years ago.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s EA, circa 1997. The little squares around \u201cwelcome to ea online\u201d flip-flop back and forth between different images. Deliciously retro. I had to look up what \u201cJane\u2019s\u201d was (Jane\u2019s Combat Simulations<\/em>). The Bullfrog website is pretty funny too, especially the \u201cYour Browser Window Should Be Set To This Width\u201d line, whose recommended dimensions only take up about a third of my monitor space.<\/p>\n \u00a9Electronic Arts <\/p>\n Now let\u2019s go see what Ubisoft is up to around the same ti-wow! \u201cthe pod GAME SERVICE IS HERE!! Download it Now!!\u201d is perfection. Oh, and look, Ubi Soft products will be on display at E3! I bet that\u2019ll be good!<\/p>\n \u00a9Ubisoft. Or, I guess, UbiSoft? <\/p>\n Here\u2019s what GameFAQs looked like at the end of 1996. Remember when websites were updated by just like, one person, who could go on vacation whenever?<\/p>\n \u00a9GameFAQs <\/p>\n Here\u2019s Nintendo from 1997, when it was still focused around the Nintendo Power<\/em> magazine.<\/p>\n \u00a9Nintendo <\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to forget that Blizzard\u2019s Battle.net has been around since the Stone Age or so. The oldest versions of that site aren\u2019t much to look at, but Blizzard dot com in 1996 is pleasantly retro. And look, there are employment opportunities available!<\/p>\n \u00a9Blizzard Entertainment <\/p>\n But not all game-related websites have been around that long. Let\u2019s take a look at some that were\u00a0really<\/em> different once.<\/p>\n Most games media websites either have nothing archived from that long ago, or already existed, but I did find the old Polygon dot com website and, you know what, you\u2019re right, I\u2019m not sure I have the right Polygon!<\/p>\n \u00a9Polygon??? <\/p>\n EpicGames dot com in 1996 certainly does seem to be a purveyor of video games, though I\u2019m not sure you can find Fortnite<\/em> here. However, these games ARE on the Games Sampler 2 for Windows 95!<\/p>\n \u00a9 <\/p>\n This next one is what really convinced me to do this post, and I think only works because \u201cDiscord\u201d is such a common word but the product is relatively recent. Back in \u201996, Discord dot com belonged to someone who was really into MUDs, the poetry of Alfred Lord Tennyson, Sondheim musicals, and The Dragonriders of Pern<\/em> by Anne McCaffrey. Good taste!<\/p>\n \u00a9\u2026someone? <\/p>\n Along the same lines, my search for other gaming-related websites that haven\u2019t been around that long but have pretty basic names led me to search for \u201celgato.com\u201d, which is now the website of the streaming accessories maker. Around 1996, I was expecting something cat-related. I was not expecting a cigar shop:<\/p>\n \u00a9El Gato Cigars <\/p>\n And finally, I couldn\u2019t not go look at Kotaku dot com. Its earliest archives are just an expired domain, unfortunately, but here it is in October 2004, in all of its glory:<\/p>\n \u00a9Kotaku <\/p>\n Huh! Okay!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday, I was casually browsing Bluesky and came across this delightful thread: Man, I love late-\u201990s\/early-\u201900s websites, don\u2019t you? The simplicity. The goofy fonts. The visitor counters. The personality! 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