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.
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.
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.
I can think of at least one. gamefaqs.gamespot.com
gamespot itself is definitely different than it used to be but the gamefaqs subdomain has remained nearly identical to how it was in the late 90s early 2000s
The wiki format has indeed become ubiquitous for fan sites, but many fan wikis are fairly elaborate and ad-free (-ish, at least). Often the case for popular gacha games at least, e.g. https://bluearchive.wiki/.
The problem is that Fand*m makes finding results from the decent wikis unreasonably hard, I end up having to use extensions like https://getindie.wiki/.
Also, Discord all but killed the concept of a video game fan site...
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Blues News is still very much alive https://www.bluesnews.com/ I only recently rediscovered it and it was such a nice surprise to see that it still looks pretty much as I remember back in '96.
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 Pokémon fan sites.
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.
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.
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.
I think at least we have gradients and less muted colors coming back.
We also have way better typography than 20 years ago, and I think that's what truly makes older designs "look old". They were restricted to web-safe fonts and had to put stylized text and wordmarks into low resolution images. We have better browser support for SVGs too.
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.
So many of these have… designs. Take the buttons, they have texture, they fit into a larger design element. They’re not a rectangle with rounded corners and maybe a gradient.
42 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 33.8 ms ] thread[1] https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_map.asp
https://web.archive.org/web/20000827164040/http://www.happyp...
https://web.archive.org/web/19961023005340/http://www.happyp...
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.
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.
gamespot itself is definitely different than it used to be but the gamefaqs subdomain has remained nearly identical to how it was in the late 90s early 2000s
The problem is that Fand*m makes finding results from the decent wikis unreasonably hard, I end up having to use extensions like https://getindie.wiki/.
Also, Discord all but killed the concept of a video game fan site...
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.
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.
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.
We also have way better typography than 20 years ago, and I think that's what truly makes older designs "look old". They were restricted to web-safe fonts and had to put stylized text and wordmarks into low resolution images. We have better browser support for SVGs too.