Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Reference library/Online website archive

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Many websites that once published reliable information on video games are now offline, and their contents can only be seen in archives such as those from Archive.org. The following is a list of such websites and their associated archives. This might be a good place to also list transitions of ownership or site design where a website (not necessarily a defunct one) is reorganized, affecting URLs and requiring additional steps to find old content. Please also list the steps needed to retrieve the old content! Check with WP:VG/S if the listed sites are considered reliable sources. Lastly, this page may benefit by switching to a table format in the future.

Defunct websites

1UP.com (2003–2013)

Launched in 2003, 1UP.com provided its own original features, news stories, game reviews, and video interviews, and also featured comprehensive PC-focused content (an extension of the previously published Games for Windows: The Official Magazine).

• Main site: Does not exist at archive.org due to robots.txt exclusion. Check Archive.is for any links.

Captured (1998–2003)

Captured.com was a GameSpy property that focused on Capture-the-Flag (CTF) games and game modes.

• Home Page: Dec. 1998 – GameSpy takeover in Nov. 1999 – Mar. 2003 (all snapshots)

ComputerAndVideoGames.com (1999–2015)

Computer and Video Games (CVG, C&VG or C+VG) was a UK-based video game magazine, published in its original form between 1981 and 2004. Its offshoot website computerandvideogames.com was launched in 1999 and was closed in February 2015. Up until its closure in 2015, CVG was the longest running video game media brand in the world. The domain now redirects to GamesRadar.

• Main site: Nov. 1999 - Jan. 2015

ConsoleWire (until 2002)

ConsoleWire.com (later GameMarketWatch.com) used to publish news about game consoles and game developers.

• News: Nov. 2000 – Oct. 2002

Daily Radar (until 2001)

Daily Radar was a website and member of UGO Networks that used to host a variety of articles on video games include interviews, features, reviews, previews, screenshots, columns, and hints. It was later re-branded to GamesRadar. The UK version was located at DailyRadar.co.uk.

• /Daily Radar has a listing of some of the archived articles
• Main site: Apr. 2001 - The site has links on the sidebar to access different sections including PC, Nintendo, Sony, Sega, Xbox, and others. Each section then has features, reviews, previews, and other articles.

Electric Playground (1995-2003)

Website companion of the television show Electric Playground. Contained game reviews and news. Much of the content was written by Victor Lucas. The site featured written reviews not featured on the show. Later versions of the site seem to have removed the older reviews from 1995. The site is now defunct, and redirects to [1].

• 1997 main page
• 1999 main page
• 2003 2003 main page

Game Helper Magazine (until 2007)

Not sure what happened to gamehelper.com. URLs linking to the site just load a blank page with no 404 message or redirect. Old reviews are still available via archive.org. The site may have simply been short-lived.

• Main site: Sep. 2007

GameCenter (1996–2001)

GameCenter.com was a CNET property, but was eventually turned into a redirect to GameSpot.com. Here is their shutdown notice, and here is them recommending you use GameSpot instead.

• Home Page: Dec. 1996 – Feb. 2001 (all snapshots)

GamePro.com (1996–2011)

The site went defunct in December 2011. It now redirects to PCWorld.com.

• Main site: Nov. 1996 - Dec. 2011

GameSpy (1996–2013)

GameSpy went defunct in February 2013 and was merged into IGN to some degree. Some content is still available online, albeit in a broken state. For instance, the GameSpy Hall of Fame page is blank, and you have to access the archive.org version to get to it (though it seems to have been blank for a while before the site's closure).

GameTrailers (2002-2016)

GameTrailers went defunct in February 2016. IGN bought the rights to their video archives and redirected the website to their YouTube channel. YouTube channel

Joystiq (2004–2015)

Joystiq articles can still be found at Engadget, but they are no longer branded using the former blog's name and logo. Old links should automatically redirect as of 2016-01.

• Main site: Jun. 2004 - Feb. 2015

j-pop.com (1995-2000

Despite the title, it barely covered Japanese pop music. Rather it was an online publication by Viz Media reviewing video games, anime, manga, and music.

• Games section

Nintendo Players (2005-2009)

Nintendo Players was a gaming website, which mostly focused on Nintendo related news. The website was launched in 2005, was abandoned in 2009 and was later put up for sale in 2012. The website is still up for sale to this day.

• Review Archive 2005—2008
• News Archive 2005—2009
• Feature Archive 2005—2009
• Game Index

PlanetXbox (until 2003)

PlanetXbox.com was owned by IGN. IGN has since moved some of the articles to their other properties, but many articles are only available in the archives.

• Home Page: Aug. 2000 - Feb. 2003 (all snapshots)

RPGDot (2000-2008)

RPGDot.com was a good source of RPG information before it went dead in ~2008. It was even better before all the staff left to form RPG Watch, but I'll not go into that here. Before May 2000 the site was located at blinkingdot.com.

Here are instructions on how to browse Archive.org's archive of the site to access the old articles:

1. Go and find a list of archived versions of the site's "Features" articles. A more recent version of this particular page might be even better, as it would list newer feature articles, but I could not find any that worked for reasons described below, and the site's old content is generally better than the new stuff anyway.
2. Click on one of the article links on the page. Be careful, as some of the later archived versions have malware or something. Wait for Archive.org's slow servers to load the page. Again, the newer versions are buggy and may not load anything at all for whatever reason.
3. Mouse over some of the links and note the articles' URLs. For instance:

   http://web.archive.org/web/20041209220036/http://www.rpgdot.com/index.php?hsaction=10053&ID=1049&sid=3c313e8cc20ae050b17c5bf580244cdb

4. Copy the part after the "web.archive.org" text and before the "&sid=..." stuff. That leaves you with:

   http://www.rpgdot.com/index.php?hsaction=10053&ID=1049

5. Now, copy the above URL into Archive.org's search bar and you should see a list of times when this particular feature was archived by the site. Pick the version you want to read (again, older is better due to the bugs and stuff), then click on the link to take you to the article stored in the archive.

The Penny Arcade Report (2012-2013)

The Penny Arcade Report was owned by Penny Arcade, Inc. Older links redirect to a 404.

• Main page: Feb. 2012 - Dec. 2013 (all snapshots)

RPG Vault (1996–2009)

The main page of this defunct RPG site is still available at rpgvaultarchive.ign.com, but the links no longer lead to working pages due to a site design change at IGN. To fix this, change URLs like: http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/987/987077p1.html to http://rpgvaultarchive.ign.com/articles/987/987077p1.html. This trick may work with other Vault Network sites as well.

Strategy Informer (2000–2014)

This site about PC strategy games was started in December 2000 and seems to have gone defunct in October 2014. The first archived version dates from 2001.

• Main site: Nov. 2001 - Oct. 2014

Voodoo Extreme (until 2003)

Voodoo Extreme or ve3d.com (formerly voodooextreme.com) was a somewhat offbeat website that published content including interviews, reviews, previews, and opinion pieces. It was later merged into IGN.

• Reviews: 1999–2001 (alt)
• Features: 2001–2002
• Home Page: Dec. 1997, Aug. 2000, Apr. 2003

Well Rounded Entertainment (until 2008)

Well-Rounded.com posted content including features, news, previews, and reviews. With an impressive span from 2000 to 2008, the site seems to have eventually succumbed. Fact Sheet, About Us

• Games Section: Aug. 2000 – Oct. 2008 (all snapshots)

Site reorganizations

CNET

Some older reviews from CNET have also disappeared. For instance, this review from 2004 can no longer be found on the site.

Edge (magazine)

The website for this print magazine has moved around a bit. From July 2009 to January 2012 it was hosted at http://www.next-gen.biz/. Now it seems to be located at http://www.gamesradar.com/edge/. Not sure if the old articles survived the transfer.

• Main site: Jul. 2009 - Jan. 2012

GameSpot

Articles from videogamespot.com and videogames.com, former ZDNet properties and precursors of GameSpot, are no longer available except through archive.org. An example is this feature by Andrew Vestal which was available at GameSpot up until some time in 2011 but is no longer so.

• Main site: Dec. 1996, May 2000
• Feature: The Greatest Games of All Time

PCGamer

PCGamer.com isn't dead, but a lot of their site is only available now in archives.

• Review index c. 2001
• Archive of the main site which has changed from 1996 to 2011.