Let's Remember What Video Game Websites Looked Like In The 90s

Key Points:

• The author explores the nostalgic charm of late-1990s and early-2000s websites, highlighting their simplicity, quirky fonts, visitor counters, and personal touches compared to today's corporate-owned sites.
• Using the Internet Archive, the author reviews early versions of major gaming company websites like EA (1997), Ubisoft, Bullfrog, Nintendo (1997), and Blizzard (1996), noting their retro designs and unique features such as employment listings and product announcements.
• Many popular gaming media websites either have limited archival history or were already established in their current form, but some, like Polygon and EpicGames in the mid-1990s, show surprising early content unrelated to their modern identities.
• The domain histories of newer gaming-related sites like Discord.com and Elgato.com reveal unexpected past content, such as a MUD enthusiast's personal page and a cigar shop, respectively, illustrating how domain names can have very different origins.
• Kotaku.com’s earliest archived presence from October 2004 shows the site in its early days, although prior to that it was just an expired domain, reflecting the evolution of gaming media websites over time.