Website Front Page 2008 (How far we've come!)

I was browsing through some old photos and found this one; thought it might be a little blast from the past. It's also Windows XP, and I had found another photo with my dog standing infront of the old CRT Compaq monitor I was using at the time. Windows Live Messenger was also a thing. Perhaps this old stuff is archived somewhere, but regardless - enjoy! :)

Sweet.

Here's the oldest version of Giant Bomb dot com available in the wayback machine. It's actually the blog version before the official site launch. Here's the earliest version of the actual site, a few months after launch. I was hoping launch day (July 20, 2008) would have a snapshot, but unfortunately this is first one post launch, early September in '08.

@ll_exile_ll: Very cool :) It's weird to see my original profile captured in that wayback screenshot of the site.

Here's the archive link for the site a few days after my screenshot was taken.

Here's a good 'why can't we do that now?': a link to play the latest Bombcast on the homepage.

I really miss the overarching themes and skins GB used to do for E3 and GOTY stuff. It was a time for producers to pull off all of their artistic chops and make those events visually memorable. The B-tier Monster Movie theme for E3, and parodying CBS shows for GOTY were my favorites.

At the same time, there's been a huge increase of new video features and live streams, so it's a good trade.

It's kind of interesting to see the wiki being front and center on the site like that. The current site is less cluttered and easier to process, but there's something kind of interesting about how it used to look. Or maybe I just want Dragon Ball Vinny and rainbow colors all over the homepage?

Listening to some old podcasts made me miss the quest system and the trivia system. I really enjoyed those days after work of trying to complete quests. As the site has improved in a lot of ways, the scrappy early days were awesome.

I think because Giant Bomb started out as a pretty wiki-focused site. It kind of mirror's the homepage of Wikipedia and other wiki sites.

After videos started to become more popular, and Jeff's growing dissatisfaction in the current state of the wiki, GB started putting their video content in the center stage. At least until that long talked-about wiki redesign happens.

In the early days; the moderators had a giant queue of wiki entries the users were creating. Entries had to be approved and we had to ensure that it wasn't plagiarized from other sites. Not sure if that is how it works now, but it was quite an overwhelming process at the time. GB is a huge database of games now; I can't even begin to imagine the best ways of organizing it but they are doing a great job.

@ltcoljaxson said:

@tuxedocruise said:

@clagnaught said:

It's kind of interesting to see the wiki being front and center on the site like that. The current site is less cluttered and easier to process, but there's something kind of interesting about how it used to look. Or maybe I just want Dragon Ball Vinny and rainbow colors all over the homepage?

I think because Giant Bomb started out as a pretty wiki-focused site. It kind of mirror's the homepage of Wikipedia and other wiki sites.

After videos started to become more popular, and Jeff's growing dissatisfaction in the current state of the wiki, GB started putting their video content in the center stage. At least until that long talked-about wiki redesign happens.

In the early days; the moderators had a giant queue of wiki entries the users were creating. Entries had to be approved and we had to ensure that it wasn't plagiarized from other sites. Not sure if that is how it works now, but it was quite an overwhelming process at the time. GB is a huge database of games now; I can't even begin to imagine the best ways of organizing it but they are doing a great job.

I remember those days. There was rush from users to get as much original wiki content on GB as possible. I think gamifying some of the entries and submissions in terms of wiki points fueled the endless barrage of submissions. And adding leaderboards and quests afterwards made it even more overwhelming for the moderators and staff. Not to mention since most users didn't have enough wiki points for their edits to go through automatically, moderators had to manually approve a lot of small changes, on top of combining and deleting multiple new page entries that were flooding in.

I kind of missed those days. There was a passion for editing fucking wiki pages on a video game website.

Going back and seeing the forums from years of ol' is crazy.

A little politics, a little culture, and a dash of edgy threads asking if others hate certain game companies.

The SEO is real

Yes, the homepage does need more Vinny.

It's too bad that Super Saiyan Vinny doesn't have those golden locks anymore. But to be fair neither does Super Saiyan me.

Balding 30-somethings unite!

@forteexe21: Always more Vinny

Its a website..about video games?

I can't wait for the Nintendo Labo Extravaganza. Also this would have been good to save when they actually do a website redesign later this year!

Feels like yesterday.

Oh my...yes! Windows XP is a nice touch as well. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

Wow, old Giant Bomb looks like Newgrounds.

Dragonball Z & Firefox. It's like nothing has changed :)

Shoutout to MSN. i threw a lot of semi-deep songlyrics in there :D

And let's not forget deciding whether (k) and xoxo are okay to send back or if that sends a wrong message :D

I seem to remember a whole bunch of websites from that era having similar layouts.

This is Giantbomb from around the time that I started visiting the site. Kinda the tail end of the... I guess you'd call it the "classic era" of Giantbomb? The era where getting another member of Whiskey Media - usually Tested - to pop in was as easy as yelling across the room. They had that office that was just one long room.

Ah 2008, the good old days of the "vector ink-splatter" design trend.

I've only joined the site when they were already using the current layout, this is my first time seeing how the site used to look like and now the Giant Bomb logo makes much more sense.

Ah, this takes me back to sneaking onto this weird new website at work, hoping I don't get fired for browsing a site called Giant Bomb.

Y'all need to get on that Wayback Machine.

I took some screenshots of the various GB front pages over the years quite some time ago, so here they are.

I totally forgot about poker smash. What a gem. Hope that comes to B/C soon.

Poker Smash! (I only remember the review, I never played it)

Nostalgia for that old page hitting me hard.

TEN YEARS?! Man, how time goes by, right? Now, if only they could go back to Japan again, that'd be amazing.

That reminded me "The Raid." Where the GB crew was planning to go to Japan - not for any press event, but to purely buy Japanese video games, airsoft guns, and other weird stuff that's only found in Japan. That plan eventually got canned, but I forgot why.

There was also the Giant Bomb World Tour, where if they got enough subscribers, they would fly to different parts of the world and film it. This did happen in much smaller capacity with the Giant Bomb travel logs to Iceland, South Korea, and Liverpool. But those were to cover games or events, and not just to purely do their own thing like in the original pitch.

With the amount of people wanting to give Giant Bomb more money on top of their subscriptions and merch, it would be cool to see them re-open community funding for the World Tour thing.

That nostalgia :). Thanks for sharing

Thank you all for reminding me that life is terrible now. Also, remember written articles?