I started accessing the internet back in the late 2000s (way too young, but thankfully nothing happened), so I do have some memories of a what it was like back then. I loved looking at different forms of web design back then, and I still do! So much so I've wasted countless hours of my life trudging through the depths of the Wayback Machine, simply in search of neatly designed virtual fossils. This is a sample of my collection: (visually) interesting old websites of all kinds, with additional commentary provided by me.
Massive thanks to the Web Design Museum for inspiring my love of old websites.
Ah, Digerati, my beloved.
Website for a defunct Brazilian publisher that specialised in tech and gaming content. And by that, I mean put a bunch of free Flash games on discs for you to buy in Brazilian newsstands in the 2000s.
I have made some of this stuff available for download, if you haven't seen it already.
This is Garden Party, a mostly-forgotten British kids' MMO. Even though my mind was mostly occupied with Club Penguin and Littlest Pet Shop Online back then I still found myself coming back to this one from time to time.
Like most other kids' MMOs from the time, the game is now lost media, and it's so obscure that I think there is literally no one else interested in recovering it.
The graphic design for London 2012 was a hideous, garish mess. I miss it and these games dearly even if the logo looks like something I'd rather not describe.
London 2012 was the first Olympiad I got to actually see (I have vague memories of watching Beijing 2008, but I wasn't conscious enough at 6 years old to have understood much of anything), so I have fond memories of them. I recall going on the website to play Flash games... actually, I should try finding that. Note to self: do that later.
Wow, the designers went crazy hard on this 9/11 memorial page.
...yep. That sure is a sentence. Can't say I'm too sure about the ethics of making a 9/11-related website with a trendy stylish photo edit of the Twin Towers burning less than two months after the event, but whatever.
I love this specific type of design/photo editing, with the ultra-graphic collages and abstract shapes and everything. There's no name for it, but it's easy to find on DeviantArt.
This is the website for Azumanga Daioh. It looks exactly like what I'd expect a website for Azumanga Daioh to look like. I don't know what else to say, so here's some commentary from my best friend (who's a huge Azumanga Daioh autist):
"The top left square surrounding the site welcome page is the opening scene of the first episode, and if you go clockwise from there, you basically get a free summary of the episode. Really cool design, I like it a lot.
Osaka might be the single greatest autism rep in recent fiction, and while I doubt she was written for that exact purpose, and maybe I'm projecting my own experiences, the intent was absolutely there. Every character has a poster of them, and only them, that says 'you belong' on it. Usually, people like Osaka are only kept around in a friend group because everyone thinks she's too dumb to see she's getting laughed at. Or they want her to say stupid things and be their jester. But her friends invite her over to do cool shit and enjoy her company. She's an example of a world where people like her can fit in. We can belong.
Yomi is honestly just as much of an asshole as Tomo. She's just quieter about it. Snarky little four eyes. You suck, Yomi."
When confronted about the length of his write-up, he had this to say.
"b-b-but Kori, this is a le corporate website! corporate websites are soulless and evil!" Shut up and look at how damn cool this is. Back in the day even soulless corpo shit could have sauce.
Early 2000s futurism (Vectorheart, etc.) is cooler than cool. I don't know why this hasn't had a revival? This stuff has seen some resurgence but not nearly as much as Frutiger Aero, which reached cult status with the kids today. Actually... yeah, no, keep it the way it is, mainstream status does nothing but drive everything to the ground.
It's so damn weird to see something I grew up with being worshipped by kids today (who weren't around back then). I'd say something about those kids being evil posers, but actually, I just feel old. I can feel the sands of time burying me.
Did you know Tamagotchi has two feature-length movies? This is the website for Eiga de Tōjō! Tamagotchi Dokidoki! Uchū no Maigotchi!?, released only in Japan in 2007. Flash-based, delightfully animated and interactive. God, I miss when websites could be whimsical.
When I was little I really wanted to learn Japanese just so I could watch these Tamagotchi cartoons. I can definitely say this dream will go unfulfilled because I'm now an adult with a weeaboo-tier grasp of the language. All this time and I didn't do shit...
The first ever official Tamagotchi website, all the way back in the vintage era! Very rudimentary layout, typical of the era, but filled with adorable illustrations.
For the entirety of the 2010s Bandai seemed to market the Tamagotchi franchise exclusively to girls and women. (a fact supported by the fact that Digimon, another Bandai creation, was created as a "male counterpart" to Tamagotchi) Which is fine, but... why does it have to be gendered? The vintage era was when Tamagotchi was a fever, and it managed to be that by being gender neutral. Thankfully Bandai has reverted back to gender neutral marketing in the 2020s.
This is it, everyone. The peak of Flash-based web design. WALL-E is one of my absolute favourite movies ever, so seeing this website so well-preserved makes me quite happy.
By the way, this website seems to give Ruffle a hard time, but loading it in a proper Flash browser makes it work fine. I swear, it works.
Wonderfully designed designer portfolio website, I love looking at it.
Back in the earliest days of the web (and of HTML and CSS), a lot of website layouts were nothing but a bunch of images. This is one of them. The technical limitations of back then created works of art like this one, but it also makes me wonder how horrible accessing the web must've been back then. Remember, that was the era of dial-up internet! How long did it take for websites like this one to load?
It's easy to be blinded by nostalgia, but it's just as easy to appreciate modern technology.
This is from around when With Teeth came out, and this design very much reflects that. This design looks and acts like a fully static website, but somehow this is Flash-based. Not very efficient, but what the hell, sure.
The old internet was kinda stupid like that sometimes. Often. Very often. I appreciate the visual diversity, but I'm grateful for modern technology.
Yes, this absolute fossil (dating back to 2000, last updated in 2010) of a website is still up for some glorious reason. This appears to belong to a designer named Yuji Oshimoto.
I don't know for how much longer though (unfortunately that is the case with relics like these), which is why I'm linking to an archived version below.
This appears to have been a dating site... that also had pixel avatar dressup stuff built in. Or in other words, Gaia Online but the end goal is fucking. Lovely. Or... LoveLé, I might say.
I was too young to have seen this while it was online. That's a good thing because look at these horses' horrible, soulless unblinking eyes. Looking at this shit almost makes you be glad Flash is gone.
Please note that I said "almost".
Actually, looking at this again... these animated pony assets have absolutely been reused elsewhere. I recall playing a Flash game with these exact same animations. Cool.
Perhaps even less well known than Littlest Pet Shop Online (if that's even possible), back around 2007 Hasbro launched Littlest Pet Shop VIPs. It was similar in concept to what LPSO would end up being, a Flash-based game accessed via a code that comes with a plush (Webkinz rip-off), except it was way less complex and not multiplayer. These two games frequently get mixed up and are even thought to be the same game sometimes, but they are definitely not.
I was given myself two plushies (that I still have to this day!) and I spent a fair amount of time playing this, though obviously not as much as LPSO. God, I miss these silly little children's MMOs so much. Really fucks me up that they're just not a thing anymore, the game is now lost media and I'll probably never get to see it again.
I had to do some hardcore machine translation to find out what this was... apparently this was a service where you could get ringtones voiced by famous voice actors, such as Saki Fujita, Hatsune Miku's voice provider. (The connection to Miku is furthered by the illustrations, which look remarkably similar to KEI's, Hatsune Miku's original illustrator)
It was discontinued in 2013. Man, the mere idea of selling ringtones in the year 2013 is powerful. Never change, Japan.
CHILDHOOD ALERT! CHILDHOOD ALERT!
If you couldn't tell already, I was obsessed with Littlest Pet Shop as a kid. Yes, I was one of those girls who recorded videos of herself playing with plastic animal toys, and I'm not a bit ashamed of that. This brings back so many memories! I spent so much time browsing this website back in the day (and learning English while doing that, haha).
The Flash slideshow in the middle has unfortunately been lost to time, but most of the page is still preserved. I don't like how often the Wayback Machine ends up losing these elements, but... it is what it is.
