January 6, 2026
Pop-ups, pixels, and peak vibes
Video Game Websites in the early 00s
Nostalgia meltdown: ‘Peak civilization’ as Newgrounds vs Miniclip fans throw down
TLDR: A museum showcase of early 2000s game websites sent fans into nostalgia overdrive. Comments split between love for dense, artsy pages and the hot claim that smartphones ruined web design, with calls to revive old tricks like image maps and shout-outs to Newgrounds, Miniclip, and HeliAttack 3.
An online museum just dropped a throwback gallery of early-2000s video game sites — think The Sims, Diablo II, Newgrounds, and Nintendo 2001 — and the comments lit up like a CRT screen. The mood? Nostalgia with a side of chaos. One fan declared “Peak civilization”, and honestly, the crowd said “same.”
The spiciest take: yunnpp insists smartphones “fucked it all up,” praising the dense, poster-like design of old Nintendo pages. Cue debate. Was the wild web better before phone-friendly layouts? Team Nostalgia says yes, with big art, tiny text, and mystery buttons. Team Practical says we also had pop-ups, broken Flash, and eternal “Loading…” bars.
The nerdy call-to-arms: tsumnia wants the old-school HTML “image map” back — the trick that lets you click different parts of a picture — so designers can build sick art-first pages again. Meanwhile, the fandom battle rages: languagehacker misses Newgrounds; jszymborski swears Miniclip’s HeliAttack 3 “rocked.”
Memes flew fast: “digital cereal boxes,” “eyestrain chic,” and “bring back chunky buttons.” Whether you love chaos or clean lines, the crowd agrees on one thing: those sites had personality — and today’s web could use a little of that glitter. And yes, someone yelled: more animated cursors.
Key Points
- •The page is a curated index from the Web Design Museum focusing on early 2000s video game and developer websites.
- •It provides links to exhibition pages for websites dated 2000 and 2001.
- •The 2000 list includes major titles and companies such as Epic Games, PlayStation, Newgrounds, 3D Realms, and more.
- •The 2001 list features Microsoft Games, Nintendo, Ubisoft, Miniclip, and numerous game-specific sites.
- •Each entry links to a dedicated exhibition page for the corresponding website and year.