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Revisiting the first video game websites from the dark ages
A look at the weird glory days of early video game websites.
Yes, there were fan sites packed with cheats and the same gifs - but what I wanted was a pure unadulterated hit from the official webpage, its message boards filled with poetry and oddly civil flame wars and passive-aggressive posts titled "SUGGESTIONS for Blizzard to Read." I can visit the fossilised remains of these sites on the Web Design Museum, which links to the Wayback Machine, and showcases dozens of bygone video game websites including id Software's mid-90s catalogue, Westwood Studios, Sierra On-Line, shareware pioneers Apogee/3D Realms, and of course, the original Battle.net. 1999 was also when Jay Tholen (Hypnospace Outlaw, Dropsy the Clown) finally got the internet, two years after he persuaded his parents to get a computer; he'd spent the time fantasising about the oft-romanticised "information superhighway" and created an offline pseudo-web for himself via thrifted CD-ROMs.
Or read this on Eurogamer