SpawnPoint - Where Game Begins

Popular Gaming Sites - How they used to look

Popular Gaming Sites - How they used to look

Everybody cringes at the sight of baby pictures of themselves, well I most certainly do, it often makes you remember the good times, and you admire at how much you’ve changed, well the same can be done with sites, and thanks to the waybackmachine, we can finally look at the top gaming sites out there that have evolved over the years to what they are today.

Gamespot.com - December 1996

Currently one of the leading games review sites, the site has had a massive make over since then, and the ‘interactive movie’ category of game has been removed just like the awful font seen here!
 

Gamefaqs.com - February 16th 1997

Around the same time, Final Fantasy VII got its own walkthrough, the site boasted a whopping 1103 files, and currently it now stands at just over 1 million files! One of Gamespots sister sites
 

QI fact – 91% of gamefaqs.com users are male, whose average age is 23 years, and boasts 44,200 FAQ’s and guides

Fileplanet.com - July 2000
Started out as a more simple site, and the Quake series was the most popular of categories, and it boasted over 25,000, although it now stands at

 

 
QI fact – Fileplanet.com is a sister company of IGN, which has a reach of over 4 million users, which is enough to fill Wembley stadium 44 times


Ign.com – November 30th 1998
When the dreamcast still had a place as one of the top ranking console, and there was only 4 major league gaming systems to choose from, including the PC
 

QI Fact – IGN ‘began as a collection of three console-specific websites in 1996 and officially became IGN in 1998’ The gaming site was created after a British oxford graduate founded Imagine Media™ in the 1990’s which thus the website spawned.
Source - http://uk.retro.ign.com/articles/845/845097p1.html

PC Gamer – 21st October 1996
PC Gamer is a magazine that I’m sure many are aware of, they also launched a website, the main title and style hasn’t changed much, but when this snap was taken back in 1996 it was a simpler time, when Bullfrog had just released Syndicate wars… And I was a mere 5 years old!

 

 
QI Fact – The trial issue of PC Gamer magazine was free with their CD, which included 600mb of games, back then that was 38 games, so on average, each game took up only 15mb of space, which included the likes of Doom, system shock and The Dig.

Gamershell.com – 18th October 2000
When this first started up it looked more like a Decoratershell.com but this has blossomed into a much nicer looking site over the years, the background of what can only be seen as a red man in a church has been banished, along with its spray paint style title!

 

 
QI fact – In the ‘What’s hot?’ column there is a very very small font, and with the power of zooming it, I can reveal it states ‘Hitman: Codename 47 (c) Eidos
Actually better than Mdk2!’

Gamezone.com – 7th December 1997
Perhaps one of the most radical evolution of sites I’ve ever encountered, the design looked more like a typical educational based school website than a gaming one, and again this has changed significantly into a ‘purple-free zone’

 

QI fact – The site featured a link to the winners of the 1997 Stanley cup, which were the Detroit Red Wings.

Gamespy.com – March 2000
Due to lack of info, the images aren’t appearing, but you can get the general feel of what the site used to be like, Gamespy.com hasn’t changed much over the years, a makeover and a flash rota has been added over the years, last seen here just over a decade ago.

 

 

Edge-online.com – June 2000
A very bland site when it first launched in 2000, when compared to the site now it seems to have an inverted colour scheme, and packed with a lot more information!
 

QI fact – Edge launched the same year as the PS2, a year before SEGA announced the retirement of manufacturing consoles, at this point the Dreamcast dominated and in that year had a 156.6% increase in sales, until Sony announced the release of the PS2

Spawnpoint.com – Throughout 2006
Imaged here is screenshots from the updates through the years, some of you may remember some earlier versions of Spawnpoint, but for those who can’t, here is the evolution chart. The Spawnpoint logo has changed ever so slightly over the years, but as you can tell there have been some additions, such as the flash rota, as well as packing the home page with tonnes of information!

The site continues to be updated; if you listen quietly you may be able to hear the cogs working behind the scenes, and a sip of coffee now and again, who knows where Spawnpoint may lead!