Retro View
Year: 2000-2002
Date of Archival: October 2, 2021
Run by: Jay
Originally hosted at: www.mameworld.net/retroview/
Status: Incomplete
Archive Link: Click here
I never intended on archiving this website. Heck, I never knew it existed until a few weeks ago, but sometimes there are things that just get their claws in you.
When I was going through David Wonn's links page, I found a link to something called Retro View. Upon exploring the Wayback Machine, I found this little gem - a strange collection of Atari reviews, Intellivision reviews, game maps, and more. This one is more of a curiosity to me than an active attempt at preservation, but it's not often you see games (which were considered retro then, and practically ancient now) given a fair shake through a cultural lens. It's interesting to see so many obscure titles given the spotlight, as well, and as is the style of websites at the time there are plenty of other articles to keep you interested.
I may not have any fun personal stories for this one, but I do plan on doing a deep dive into it sooner rather than later. I don't plan on giving it a full restoration, nor do I think I can, but I did fix a potentially dangerous redirect with their old discussion forums and I'll be slowly crawling through to see what I can rescue and what I can find.
I don't know, I just find it charming for some reason. Perhaps it's just my bias towards old home computers like the Commodore 64 talking, but it's so interesting to see people look at the games that shaped gaming with fresher eyes than they have now. It's also cool to see how people used to keep track of records and high scores. Check it out.