Comment on Video Game Websites in the early 00s
tuckerm@feddit.online 1 week ago
Oh man, I even recognize a few of those! I miss that era of web design.
I found some old websites myself a few months ago and put some links on my blog. These aren’t archive links, they’re still up in their original form.
Pasting a summary below:
Sonic Team, https://www.sonicteam.com
A bunch of websites for Sonic Team’s games are still up, dating back to the Sega Saturn. Here’s a few highlights:
- Sonic Adventure, for the Dreamcast, released in 1998.
- A blog from the music team about their trip to a recording studio in New York. Check this one out with Google Translate, it’s amazing.
- Photos from the trip
- Space Channel 5, also for the Dreamcast, released in 1999.
- Sonic R, for the Saturn, released in 1997.
- Nights into Dreams, also Saturn, relased in 1996. The footer mentions Netscape 3.0.
- a page about the story with a very 90s era background
The King of Fighters. This fighting game series still has some of the original marketing sites up for its earlier
titles.
- KOF 98 "Unlimited Match". I’m not sure when this was made. This is for the 2008 re-release of KOF 98. The copyright date says 2007 and there’s a Wordpress logo for the favicon. However, everything else about the website screams <marquee>"1998."</marquee> It’s using tables for the layout and font tags for text colors. I’m wondering if there was an existing site for KOF 98, and they gave it an update for 2008 without changing the way it was written.
- KOF 2000. A great example of how a site would sometimes have completely different layouts for each page.
- KOF 2002
- A general information site about SNK’s games, last updated in 2009, but looks like it was designed before then.
Honorable Mention: Team Fortress 2, https://www.teamfortress.com
This one is newer, of course, but still has some hallmarks of mid-2000s web design. I point out some things about it in the blog post.