Samurai Nintendo : Information page

Technique and Tools
You are currently viewing the 5th version of Samurai Nintendo.

Samurai Nintendo is written in HTML, CSS and PHP/MySQL for its "action modules", and entirely typed with Notepad (or Wordpad when the poor thing runs out of memory).
The early design was made with Photoshop 4 and later improved with Photoshop 7.

• HTML 4.1 Transitional (though the site is not validated by the W3C *)
• JavaScript
• CSS 2
• PHP 4.3.1
* mostly because I didn't bother to put some alt="" at every damn image

Tested with Firefox 1.0, 0.8, Internet Explorer 6.0 and Opera 7 (a few display bugs) on PC.

Timeline
An overview of the site's history.

2001
Samurai Nintendo opens on May 16, at the same time the E3 begins. At first, its purpose is mostly to display pictures and basic information of GameCube and Game Boy Advance games. It's hosted by Lycos-Tripod, that will prove itself a very unreliable and tormenting host. Some promotional flyers are handed out in Helsinki in June and during the GameWorld show in November. Despite a slow start, Samurai N scores big by being the first site in the world to decode the secret picture posted by Sega's Sonic Team on their site and to find out Sonic Adventure 2 is coming to GameCube. A few months later, it's also one of the very first sites to show its own pictures of some secret levels and characters from Super Smash Bros. Melee the next day after the game was released in Japan.

2002
A new version of Samurai N comes in May to celebrate our first anniversary. Tripod has its own kind of present for us when it decides to cut its free space from 50 Mo to 20. In November, another version is made to comply with Tripod's new limitations.

2003
In February, it's the climax of our hosting problems with Tripod when they erase and expel Samurai Nintendo's account under false accusations of "storing files/remote loading". When asked for proofs and details, Tripod refuses to answer. In order to apply to the terrific free hosting provided by Neopages, Samurai Nintendo moves to Tripod France and then to Cool Japan, releasing in March a brand new look site that will be its longest lasting version to date. On March 31, Samurai Nintendo wins the hosting at Neopages and the future finally looks brighter.

2004
From the end of 2003 to the first half of 2004, the popularity of Samurai Nintendo increases: it now appears in every search engines and has a comfortable position in directories, while the number of visitors keeps rising. Affiliations and promotions with various sites (Buzztone, X-Gaming, Amazon, Play-Asia...) are started and a little profit is generated. But something much bigger is around the corner... a fifth version of Samurai Nintendo, a completely new build with massive changes and additions in every aspect, is making its way to the limelight and bringing the site to a whole new level. An unexpected event, however, came to jeopardized everything: the end of Neopages' free hosting service.

2005
After being offline for several weeks and hesitating between several options, Samurai Nintendo moves to an unbelievable opportunity offered by the Finnish site NWPS. The new version, which took several months of making, much more than any of the past versions including the original, is finally released on March 11.

2006
Following a steady increase in the past months, traffic in January expands to 24.000 unique visitors. During February, Samurai Nintendo moves smoothly to a new server and another record is set with more than 2000 visits per day.