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Why does Retro Studios have such an awful website?
- Thread starter SteeloDMZ
- Start date
Resident4t.
Member
Holy crap, that looks exactly like a webpage I had to make in my 6th grade computer class. They're just missing the animated fire monster, that's definitely some C- work right there.
LOL, and that's from 1990.
You can use the WaybackMachine to see what it actually did look like in 2000.
http://web.archive.org/web/20000715000000*/http://www.retrostudios.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/20000715000000*/http://www.retrostudios.com/
Anticitizen One
Banned
Same reason RaRE does. They would rather focus on the games
That's bull.
1) it doesn't take much to get a decent looking website up. Just buy a $20 template from http://themeforest.net/ and get some poorly paid (or unpaid) intern to set it up.
2) Their existing page is done in traditional asp, which means someone did spend time at some point getting it developed.
3) Website are sort of important for businesses these days ("these days" meaning "this century")
4) They are a tech company full of designers and artists, a crappy site makes it look like you have crappy designers and artist.
SporeCrawler
Member
Because they are a 100% subsidiary of nintendo?
That's a developers website. You don't need flashy web design when you are a developer.
Although, I remember the layout of the site being kind of a mess....
BTW, wonder what they are working on...
Recently someone posted a link to Nintendo's online game store, it was gloriously early 2000s too. Their anti-piracy site is a tiny, minuscule bit better 
OneEightZero
aka ThreeOneFour
RETRO Studios.
But they're a fully-owned studio dedicated fully on developing games without even having to worry about business so what's even the point.
As I said before, usually a lot more involved then just that. Making it look pretty isn't cheap.
Yeah it is. Prettier than that anyway.
For any fellow web developers among you, ignore the design, look at this and DESPAIR:
I would like to direct your attention to a few things:
* NO DOCTYPE AT ALL.
* Aside from a div (align=center!) the WHOLE BODY is INSIDE A SPAN.
* Oh, cool, let's close unopened spans in the middle of a <p>, that's good practice.
* Tables for styling. I kind of expected this.
* Images have border=0
* <body> is filled with crap.
* Liberal use of <br> for styling.
* You don't want to look at the single script tag inside head.
* The loaded css file is pretty much pointless.
This is NINTENDO'S DEVELOPER PORTAL.
This screws with my mind.
I don't know if I have the nerve to peek behind Retro's website.
EDIT: Retro's website:
Eh, XHTML 1.1, that's not so bad, righ- OK. It's the first time I see image maps for main navigation. Does Google even index these?
I would like to direct your attention to a few things:
* NO DOCTYPE AT ALL.
* Aside from a div (align=center!) the WHOLE BODY is INSIDE A SPAN.
* Oh, cool, let's close unopened spans in the middle of a <p>, that's good practice.
* Tables for styling. I kind of expected this.
* Images have border=0
* <body> is filled with crap.
* Liberal use of <br> for styling.
* You don't want to look at the single script tag inside head.
* The loaded css file is pretty much pointless.
This is NINTENDO'S DEVELOPER PORTAL.
This screws with my mind.
I don't know if I have the nerve to peek behind Retro's website.
EDIT: Retro's website:
Eh, XHTML 1.1, that's not so bad, righ- OK. It's the first time I see image maps for main navigation. Does Google even index these?
Yes is it. Pre-made themes are cheap. Their site consists of FOUR simple, static pages (not counting the animated intro).
Seriously, could redo the entire thing in a day.
^^^
heh. Reminds me of my youth where I once thought that tags and other things were case sensitive. Like doing "onClick". Also I never knew you had to close tags. So always had unclosed tables/trs/tds etc lol. Of course this was back when I was in late middle-school/early high school back in the early 2000s.
Pre-made themes are cheap, but graphics aren't. But pre-made themes also suck and look generic IMO.
But cheap or not, that's still time that could be spent on other important stuff.
heh. Reminds me of my youth where I once thought that tags and other things were case sensitive. Like doing "onClick". Also I never knew you had to close tags. So always had unclosed tables/trs/tds etc lol. Of course this was back when I was in late middle-school/early high school back in the early 2000s.
Pre-made themes are cheap, but graphics aren't. But pre-made themes also suck and look generic IMO.
But cheap or not, that's still time that could be spent on other important stuff.
A free Wordpress blog is better looking than that. Man, I could make a prettier blog in 15 minutes if they ask politely
For any fellow web developers among you, ignore the design, look at this and DESPAIR:
I would like to direct your attention to a few things:
* NO DOCTYPE AT ALL.
* Aside from a div (align=center!) the WHOLE BODY is INSIDE A SPAN.
* Oh, cool, let's close unopened spans in the middle of a <p>, that's good practice.
* Tables for styling. I kind of expected this.
* Images have border=0
* <body> is filled with crap.
* Liberal use of <br> for styling.
* You don't want to look at the single script tag inside head.
* The loaded css file is pretty much pointless.
This is NINTENDO'S DEVELOPER PORTAL.
This screws with my mind.
I don't know if I have the nerve to peek behind Retro's website.
But, but, this span was here to make the fonts color white!
Obviously made in one hour by someone who don't do web dev but other dev.
Also, you will love this: look at how the css file is named. sdsg is something you came up with when you hit your keyboard with your left fingers without typing, just mashing.
The sad thing I imagine here with WarioWorld, is that Nintendo developers probably have no online support, no online documentation behind this mess.
It's not like it's barely a $100k/ one year project to make a great website filled with documentation content for indies/3rd parties/even internal devs.
If true (maybe they have other ressources we don't know about, other than warioworld) I believe that's another concrete example of Nintendo's problems with other developers.
One underpaid intern with half an idea of what he's doing could throw a Wordpress site with a basic template and some minimal custom styling in a week or two and it would look loads better than what they have right now. Easier to maintain and more SEO friendly, too.
Heck, just let Wordpress themselves host it.
A free Wordpress blog is better looking than that. Man, I could make a prettier blog in 15 minutes if they ask politely
Seriously too, web dev GAF should officially offer Retro a new website in exchange to StarTropics U ^^"
Pre-made Themes at Theme Forest are nice. Their site now doesn't even have a theme. Literally all white pages. Nice one for $15 here.
And are you trying to tell me that graphics like the ones they are using now aren't cheap?
These horrible header images are just about the only graphics on the site.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
It's 2013. Developers don't need company websites. They can use free blogging services to blog, they have their publishers for help releasing media, and they have social networking services for everything else. And that's if you're a developer who works for a publisher who actually lets your speak, which Nintendo doesn't. I don't even know why they renew the domain name.
At this point they should just kill the hosting and redirect to NoA's twitter page or something.
WarioWorld is a bigger problem.
For any fellow web developers among you, ignore the design, look at this and DESPAIR:
you could say i'm pretty mad right now
Domain name => brand protection. And even that, Nintendo isn't really good at it.
We don't deny a game developer don't need a website, but still, that soooo cheap it's shamefull. It's 2013, they can have something clean in two hours that have basic contact and, important thing, jobs information.
You can't just be absent, or a junk on the internet when you work in some technology field.
I just assumed they didn't have to bother
Nintendo has their own site
And pretty sure every major Retro game gets its own site eventually.
http://donkeykong.nintendo.com/
Nintendo has their own site
And pretty sure every major Retro game gets its own site eventually.
http://donkeykong.nintendo.com/