alt Hacker NewsVideo 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.
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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...
Yep, I remember https://www.esreality.com/ from the Quake 3 era. It's really cool to see it's still up and looks about the same.
Other Quake related sites that I remember:
Still looks how I remember it: https://web.archive.org/web/20010125112300/http://www.quake3...,
Such memories haha: https://web.archive.org/web/20050131033734/http://www.shackn...
The archive page has broken and misplaced images from the site's old design mixed into the new one, the real site looked much better when it existed: https://web.archive.org/web/20030212044233/http://rocketaren...
The generic, ad-ridden wikis are everywhere, unfortunately, because the terrible service they provide is free. However, there are also lots of passionate people who pay to host their own MediaWiki servers, and then communities that populate it with accurate information! I think they deserve special applause for providing a really cool service that we mostly take for granted.
Some examples: https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Main_Page (Pokemon) https://minecraft.wiki/ (Minecraft) https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/ (Old School Runescape)
..only after I started putting together the list, did I realize that a lot of them are hosted by the same individual or community (https://meta.runescape.wiki/w/Weird_Gloop). Interesting!
> 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.
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.
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!
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
Making a video game fan site was my gateway into tech. I’m sure I’m not alone in that
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/