"Man, I love late-'90s/early-'00s websites, don't 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."
"Using the good ol' 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's blog. Still, it's not all bad. Let's stroll together through a brief tour of what major gaming websites looked like 20-30 years ago."
"Here's EA, circa 1997. The little squares around 'welcome to ea online' flip-flop back and forth between different images. Deliciously retro. I had to look up what 'Jane's' was (Jane's Combat Simulations). The Bullfrog website is pretty funny too, especially the 'Your Browser Window Should Be Set To This Width' line, whose recommended dimensions only take up about a third of my monitor space."
The nostalgia for late-'90s and early-'00s websites highlights their simplicity, quirky designs, and personal touches. A thread on Bluesky reminisces about these sites, including early versions of major gaming websites. The Internet Archive reveals that many AAA gaming company sites were always corporate, lacking the personal blogging origins seen in other domains. Examples include EA's retro design and Ubisoft's promotional content from the past. The charm of these early websites lies in their individuality and the human element behind them.
Read at Kotaku
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