[HN Gopher] Video Game Websites in the early 00s
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Video Game Websites in the early 00s
Author : klaussilveira
Score : 102 points
Date : 2026-01-06 18:39 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.webdesignmuseum.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.webdesignmuseum.org)
| jdmoreira wrote:
| Peak civilization
| tsumnia wrote:
| I think <map> should make a comeback [1]. Then we could go back
| to having sick looking art pages
|
| [1] https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_map.asp
| codepoet80 wrote:
| I mean, its still in the spec. Go for it!
| Klonoar wrote:
| Map wasn't really the thing that enabled all of those designs,
| even though it was certainly often used to build them.
|
| We just didn't have a million and one layouts and device sizes
| to handle back then and so you could get really creative with
| available space. Even CSS Zen Garden later on had designs that
| worked much better on the limited screen sizes of that era -
| which don't work well today.
|
| Flat design trends killed off the rest of it I think.
| jihadjihad wrote:
| I remember having to do an image map as part of a web design
| project in school, circa 2005. True to 2005, the image was one
| simple rectangular banner at the top of the page, with text for
| different pages like About and Portfolio etc. placed along it.
| It felt like a (cool) hack that you could define regions for
| the text to route to different pages on click.
|
| Of course we have modern solutions [0] nowadays but that sure
| seemed cool 20 years ago!
|
| 0:
| https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonito...
| languagehacker wrote:
| I miss Newgrounds so much
| jszymborski wrote:
| It's still around!
| jszymborski wrote:
| I loved MiniClip. HeliAttack 3 rocked.
| yunnpp wrote:
| It does put into perspective how phones fucked it all up. That
| Nintendo 2k1 is looking really good, with high information
| density without being overwhelming, and an overall nice design to
| just look at.
| jakejohnson wrote:
| Nintendo 2k1 website [1] was god tier slicing with the curved
| layout, inset menus, and sprites for the corners, edges,
| buttons without transparency. The pixel backgrounds, fonts,
| buttons, shadows looked great on a CRT. Tried to replicate it
| myself back in the day with HTML tables.
|
| [1] https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/nintendo-2001
| amatecha wrote:
| Nice! As someone who built hundreds of sites using the whole
| "slice a PSD into a table-based layout with 1 or more
| arbitrary content regions" technique in the early 2000's, I
| totally agree this is a really nice design indeed! Though I
| notice it appears to be pretty inflexible .. I imagine the
| content areas don't expand or anything. Not that that
| matters, it's still a super cool design!
| barbs wrote:
| That's probably what I miss the most in web-pages and software
| generally - information density.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| PlanetQuake and PlanetHalflife were my gateway drug into level
| design and modding back in the early 00s. Good time.
| eterm wrote:
| I'm gutted PlanetHalfLife isn't listed/shown here, I used to
| visit that site religiously around then.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Yeah HL introduced me to modding :) I used to visit it
| everyday waiting for the next chapter of They Hunger to get
| released.
| eterm wrote:
| I'd completely forgotten about that! They Hunger was a
| masterpiece. Not one I'd ever want to re-visit though,
| because nostalgia is best left not closely examined.
|
| But a golden age, of txt file walkthroughs downloaded from
| gamefaqs with news mods and patches off PCGamer discs to
| explore because there's no way I was ever downloading those
| on a 56k modem.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I think the older games and mods are still pretty
| playable if you can get over with the slightly janky
| control. I recall TH has nasty jump traps which almost
| turned me away back then.
|
| I wish I could relive the golden age.
| amatecha wrote:
| Heck yeah. Remember when new games came out and you were
| actually genuinely surprised/impressed, over and over?
| For years in a row? Those were great times indeed. Sure,
| there were a lot of crappy games, but overall there were
| so many crazy awesome moments. Newer stuff is very
| iterative by comparison, IMO.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| Fond memories of SC Legacy, the old IGN and various message
| boards
| Lammy wrote:
| Needs moar Happy Puppy
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20000827164040/http://www.happyp...
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/19961023005340/http://www.happyp...
| axus wrote:
| I was looking for Blues News, but its heyday was really
| pre-2000
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| Ah yes Flash. I had just started learning how to build static
| HTML sites and was going down the road of learning flash instead
| just as I saw Steve Jobs came out in opposition of it.
|
| I decided to turn back to regular HTML/CSS and then PHP.
|
| Turned out to be the right move but I still kinda to miss those
| old flash sites.
| bsimpson wrote:
| Standards wonks love dancing on Flash's grave, but overlook the
| massive dent in culture that we lost.
|
| Maybe vibe coding will unlock a similar indie ethos for a
| future generation, but the frameworkification of the web and
| centralization of the App Stores has been bad for the last 20y
| of creativity.
| grugdev42 wrote:
| The variety in design is so inspiring. No constraints... just do
| what looks cool.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| And make it look good in IE5!!
|
| :'(
| sublinear wrote:
| I don't think so. Most of these are based on the box art.
|
| I'm not saying web design is the same thing or easy, but I am
| saying the major elements of the design were decided on already
| and there's little chance it was done without those same people
| involved.
| Klonoar wrote:
| Video game sites back then were cool, yes. Now do video game
| _fan_ sites.
|
| These have in so many ways been replaced over the years by
| generic ad-ridden wikis but back in the day games often had crazy
| interesting fan sites for specific video games.
|
| So many unique designs and layouts were done for those niche
| communities and so many of those designers and developers went on
| to do really cool things in the future. What an era.
| tsumnia wrote:
| Here's one from my old AOL days. We originally just used email,
| AOL message boards, and a scheduled weekly chatroom, but once
| the Web took over it merged into Starmen.net [2]
|
| Since we're on a "reminsence about legacy Internet" trend right
| now, here's the opening to [1]:
|
| "What most people forget to remember is that it's not just
| about the game. It's about the people, it's about the
| newsletters, it's about the discussions, the trivia, the polls,
| the websites, and the meetings. Everything that was a part of
| the club was a part of the community, and there was so much
| involved that it was almost too much to handle. Who had the
| time to be a member of some 15 Online clubs? I can distinctly
| remember sending out invitations to join Moonside and receiving
| replies along the lines of "Sorry, I'm already in like 5 of
| these things." Now, I wish there were more clubs and to any of
| you who have one: I will readily join. The only last great,
| recently active club I can think of now is the EarthBound Gang,
| arguably the greatest Online EarthBound Club ever. In early
| 1999, a lot of the clubs started dying out. I know that mine
| began to slow down, only to be restarted in the fall of 99',
| and again in the summer of 00'. But as a whole, the EB clubs
| were never restarted, which is a shame, because some of them
| were downright fun."
|
| [1] https://www.angelfire.com/ga3/ebhistory/intro.html
|
| [2] https://starmen.net/
| psunavy03 wrote:
| The problem is "fandoms" as a whole have now become such
| toxic hellscapes I'd rather just enjoy the game/movie/TV
| series myself and completely ignore what anyone else's
| opinion of it is.
|
| I don't need things that bring me joy to be ruined by the
| most obsessive weirdos in the world.
| crims0n wrote:
| Sites back then had benevolent dictators that curated an
| experience for fans. I think in many ways it worked better
| than the democratized communities we have today.
| roywiggins wrote:
| All fun and games until the one person running the site
| crashes out and rage quits, taking the site down with it.
| bombcar wrote:
| The thing was you had so many sites that losing one or
| two was sad, but not hugely destructive.
| Klonoar wrote:
| It wasn't so much "benevolent dictator" as it was "you're
| in my house, so quit being a dick". Toxic fans certainly
| existed but this approach usually led to them splintering
| off to create their own thing that'd inevitably wither
| away.
|
| (You can perhaps substitute "wasn't so much" for some
| form of "in addition to")
| ronsor wrote:
| > generic ad-ridden wikis
|
| This is the fault of Wikia (now "Fandom") which jam-packs every
| wiki full of ads and auto-playing videos they'll helpfully
| reopen for you if you accidentally close them.
| bombcar wrote:
| You can fight back against Fandom by being willing to use
| https://miraheze.org
| Tanoc wrote:
| Along with Breezewiki, which was specifically designed to
| combat Fandom/Wikia. An another note it's always struck me
| as extremely presumptuous that the company thinks it can
| just call itself "Fandom" like the word hasn't existed in
| generic form for nearly a century and a half before they
| ever did. The lack of willingness to fend off what should
| be unenforceable trademarks and copyrights is creating a
| snowball that's going to get too big to stop in the next
| decade.
| amatecha wrote:
| Right, there have been some really good ones, for example
| http://myth.bungie.org/ or https://halo.bungie.org/ , two that
| I frequented a lot back in the day!
| darknavi wrote:
| I love that HBO still carries on even if Halo is a limping
| franchise.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| The Metroid database has always been my favourite!
|
| https://metroiddatabase.com/old_site/m1/
|
| It's still running now with a new design, but they went through
| several different styles over the years, each of them clearly
| made with love and care.
| debugnik wrote:
| These remind me of the sites that Japanese studios are still
| publishing for new visual novels and small games. Also of some
| artist portfolio sites (in layout, not art quality).
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I don't know if it's pure nostalgia talking here, but games sites
| back then were made to look fun like they were part of the game.
| Verses now when they're a dull and corporate.
| bsimpson wrote:
| So many websites look like someone spent 10 minutes in
| Squarespace
| asukachikaru wrote:
| The manuals as well. Loved the WarCraft III and Diablo II ones.
| They were legitimately part of the game experiences as lore was
| told there. Now the publishers don't even bother to include a
| single sheet.
| amatecha wrote:
| Heck yeah, when WC2 had just come out (and I didn't have it
| yet because I had a Mac, and the Mac vers came out like 8mo
| later), I remember poring over the manual and getting all up
| to speed on the game while anticipating the eventual Mac
| port. I was enough of a geek to scan some of the awesome
| artwork from the manual (we had a 300dpi scanner!) and print
| it out and then color it with felt pens. I still have my
| colored Death Knight kicking around somewhere (this artwork:
| https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Death_Knight_(Warcraft_II)?.
| .. )
| danaris wrote:
| And these days it's worlds easier than it was back then to make
| sites with complex designs and game-like effects and
| animations.
| password54321 wrote:
| When I first started learning about web design, I came across
| this popular book:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Make_Me_Think
|
| And essentially you are taught to go against a lot of things
| you see in these examples and design things in the way modern
| websites are designed e.g. big call to action button, search
| bar on top and center, little clutter. Modern websites are
| meant to be more "simple" and "easy" as the web is now meant to
| be "accessible" to everyone rather than just for nerds.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Web design has become so boring
| arkaic wrote:
| My favorite one was a fansite for the original NES Ninja Gaiden
| trilogy. Wonder if it's still up
| asukachikaru wrote:
| http://classic.battle.net/war3/ still works. Every time I need to
| check some OG WC3 data for nostalgia or any other reason I use
| this instead of fandom.
| jedberg wrote:
| Ah, the good old days when everyone was on a computer using a
| screen between 640 and 1024 pixels wide. :)
|
| I think a lot of the reason web design is more boring now is
| because you have to make it work on all sorts of different screen
| sizes with responsive design. There are a lot of tools to make
| this easy, but you still need start with a simple base so it
| looks ok on the smallest mobile screen.
| water_badger wrote:
| I think we underestimate the creative downside of forcing
| responsive design on everything
| miguel_martin wrote:
| It's sad that RuneScape is not on this list, yet it is on their
| site - https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/?s=runescape
| massifist wrote:
| I have fond memories of Planet Quake and also Blues News (for the
| latest scoop). I remember it spawned a whole bunch of other
| planet sites. I think some of them became part of GameSpy (or its
| parent company). I probably moved on by then.
| LetsGetTechnicl wrote:
| I miss the official Nintendo forums every day. I was a dumb kid
| back then but I really got my online sea legs on those message
| boards, and other ones related to Pokemon fan sites.
| aquova wrote:
| It's not quite as stylish as these, but my personal favorite
| video game site was the Super Smash Bros. Brawl blog site, which
| had its heyday around 2007 or so.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20071001132450/http://www.smashb...
|
| It was the first time I had ever seen pre-release information
| about a game, and I checked the site religiously. The game
| director himself wrote all the posts, and it felt like a
| revolutionary way to get me excited about the game.
| milchek wrote:
| Looking at many of these now they definitely appear dated. At the
| time, of course, these would have been "cutting edge"
|
| I think one clear thing we can see is a trend toward more
| homogenized UI on web in the last 20years.
|
| I worked as a web dev in ad agencies in the early 2000s and built
| a lot of Flash sites, banners ads, and games that - like a lot of
| the sites showcased here - were quite unique in their design and
| aesthetic.
|
| Slowly over time these started to disappear as people embraced
| web design trends and techniques that meant everything started to
| look the same.
|
| I think a large part of this at the time was due to Flash being
| killed off, trends like "flat design", frameworks, jQuery, and
| Wordpress becoming popular.
|
| Marketers and designers became more savvy to what "works" online
| and everyone copied each other in a race for attention.
| hoten wrote:
| XGen Studios belongs on this page. Spent a lot of time mucking
| around on their interactive homepage, and even more time playing
| their flash games or on their forums.
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(page generated 2026-01-06 23:02 UTC)