Now onto the first page.
The Homepage:
Ah, the Homepage. To some, known as "index", to others like this site known as "main", and to yet others known as... nothing, because they're better at HTML than I am. This is arguable the most important pages of any website, the place where you make your first impressions to the casual visitor of your domain, and the jumping-off point to your various other pages of content. I gotta say, this website's page (at least for the time) is actually pretty solid. There's a nice coherent theme that isn't distracting but also not bland and there's a cohesive color scheme. Granted it hasn't been properly updated in 20 years so the page is lopsided and there's a couple of banners that are broken but that's all stuff that broke over time so I don't count it. Apparently JJ Doughboy runs (or at least ran) a web design business that (from the looks of their Pinterest page) made some nice websites about a decade or so ago. It's nothing that would blow your socks off now but clearly he is/was competent in it.
Now as for the content on the page, it's got a website news section that is (or was at one point) front-and-center, as well as a heading banner that actually animates when a sidebar link is hovered-over, and the tried-and-true right-side-oriented sidebar with all the links that the site contains. Under the links there's also some banners to other fan sites, and under those is a legal disclaimer because the Nintendo Legal Department was still the Nintendo Legal Department. Anyway, the sidebar is split-up into 4 categories; Common, Knowledge, InterActive (spelled with a capital A), and Multimedia with various links under the headers. So, let's finally take a gander at them!
Common:
This is where all the more general pages are linked, consisting of "News" (which sends you back to main), the seemingly unfinished "Game Pages", "Game Reviews", "Game Codes", "Links", the excitedly-named "SMRC Shop!", and finally "SMRC Staff". I'll quickly go through each one-by-one.
News consists mainly of mundane website updates (presumably from the time of the website launch or shortly afterwards), requests to get emails, and posts about the discontinuation of site updates and JJ's Twitch channel. That Twitch channel seems to be fairly active, mainly streaming games for Nintendo consoles (old habits die hard I suppose) and the guy has 2.6 thousand followers with a fairly decent clips section, so hopefully streaming is going well for him. As for the posts, they seem to start petering-off around early March of 2002 before becoming a trickle by 2004. Updates stopped seemingly around 2004 while they were officially stopped in 2010. The only news post since 2010 is the aforementioned link to JJ's Twitch in 2022.
(Pictured above.)
Game Pages seems to have been intended to be an index of games which the site had content on which would link you to various other pages related to that game. Like an archaic search method. Seems like JJ and co. never got very far with it though, the only console is "N64" and the only 2 games in that category are "Goldeneye" and "Ocarina of Time". The game pages that do exist in here offer a short bio about the game and protagonist, an image of the box art, a very old Amazon link to buy the game if recommended, a link to the review and codes for said game on-site, and finally a link to the game's midi page. Overall, it's nicely formatted (even if a bit basic) and would've been a good way to index pages outside of the sidebar to make them easier to access considering how old websites tended to sprawl out of control despite attempts to manage them through index pages (usually unsuccessfully). Granted it's not as good as website search bars but JJ worked with what he had.
Game Reviews is pretty self-explanatory; it consists of review of games. These reviews are, like the last page, divided by console. The reviews themselves are fairly standard themselves, with games scored out of 100 and the reviews consisting of the game's box art next to the game's title, then rank (score out-of 100), and recommendation, followed naturally by the meat of the review itself. At the bottom there is a link to buy the game (presumably only if recommended) which again uses ancient Amazon links. Nothing crazy, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Game Codes contains cheat codes for various games, again divided by console, with many being reviewed on the website. What's interesting to note is that at the top of the page, there's a small bio noting that this page was created by PLittle, JJ's apparent partner-in-web-design. Also, there's cheat codes for... Virtual Boy games? I didn't expect to see that thing come up on this page, but I guess it shows their dedication to Nintendo. The console pages show each game and the number of codes listed for that game with the amounts typically being around 3 but sometimes more, while the game pages themselves show you how to perform each cheat code and what each code does. There's also PLittle's email at the bottom so people can submit codes which weren't listed. Again nothing too special, but it doesn't need to be.
Links is very simple, as it's just a page of links to other Nintendo (and some non-Nintendo) fan sites; some still around and some defunct. Under the title there's a list of "Classes" used to denote what type of content a specific website has, and is listed next to each site's link. Honestly, classes which denote what you'll find where are another nice little feature. Finally, under all of the links is the personal email of JJ so visitors could send other websites to be linked. I can't imagine the bullshit that's in that inbox...
SMRC Shop is also fairly simple, it's just a list of links to a couple of peripherals and games that the Siteowners particularly recommend with yet more dated Amazon links. These don't seem to be affiliate links (and honestly why would they be) so these are just things that JJ and PLittle sincerely recommended or were particularly excited about.
And finally, we come to SMRC Staff, the last link in the "Common" section. Again, another simple page consisting of bios for the "Staff Members". Those listed include the familiar JJ ("Chief Idiot") and PLittle ("Janitor"), as well as a new name for one Simland who is listed as helping "with odd jobs" and was the CEO (at the time this page was last updated) of JRCorps and also ran something called "Port Alpha". JRCorps is/was the web design business that JJ looks to have most recently run.
Knowledge:
The Knowledge category consists of "Character Bio's", "Nintionary", "Game List", "System Specs." (period included), and "Developers". These pages consist of the following:
The Character Bio(')s page consists of links leading to descriptions of the listed videogame characters. Each page has some text detailing backstories, the series they're from, a picture or gif of them, and what they do. Other than that, not much to see.
The Nintionary was planned to be a dictionary of videogame terminology. I say "planned" because it was clearly never worked-on enough to be posted, if it was ever worked on at all. It's a shame honestly, slang goes in-and-out of use quite often and it would be cool to see what gaming slang was used and what it meant during the period this website was actively maintained.
Game Lists are, well, a list of every game released for the listed consoles up to about 2002-2003. Although they're very comprehensive lists, this is yet another unfinished aspect of the website as each game was supposed to have pages of information attached to them, but none are listed nor linked. This one is very understandable considering how there's well over 1,000 games listed across all sections.
System Specs (random period not included) naturally lists the various technical details of each console listed, such as processor, RAM, colors, and such. Each page also lists the year of release in the US and Japan as well as alternate names for the console in different regions (also mainly Japan). Quite honestly I didn't know that the NES supported 52 colors but could only show 16 of them. The more you know.
Finally, we have the Developers page, which is... entirely blank. It literally only consists of the page title and a singular line break under said title. I won't even post a screenshot, that's how little there is. It seems to be yet another unfinished (or not even started) portion of the website. At least I don't have to write as much.
Oh boy, that is easily the longest blog post I've written for this blog. I started writing just after 5:30 PM today and now it's nearing 10 PM. Minus the rough hour I took-off of writing to go eat, that's about 3 hours of writing this thing. I decided that, since there's so much to go-over for this website, I'll leave-off here and sometime this weekend post a second part with the other 2 sidebar categories (fingers crossed). Like I said, for now I'll leave off here and go do something else. I just hope I won't need to write as much for the next post, though it should at least have more fun stuff in it.
No comments:
Post a Comment