Ancient Web: Jeep Barnett Rescued His 1997 GoldenEye GOLD Fansite

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

In 1997, the logical response to spending far too much time playing GoldenEye 007 was apparently to build a website explaining every secret you had discovered.

Visit Jeep Barnett's preserved early projects

Jeep Barnett identifies his old fan site as GoldenEye GOLD, a Nintendo 64 reference that he created while learning to build websites. In the preservation note, he describes the original design as cluttered, but remembers that the project gathered secrets, custom material, weapon statistics, and its own little community.

He says he brought the original site back so people working on the GoldenEye: Source mod could consult the unusually detailed weapon information. That is a specific, documented preservation motive: game fans recovering a fan-made reference because its practical data might still be useful to a newer game project.

The surrounding shelf is just as old

The same old-stuff page also archives Bally Zoom, a home-built Windows game dated 1999. Barnett explains that he started experimenting around 1996 with Klik & Play, a Windows 3.1-era visual game creator. The surviving description outlines approximately forty arcade-puzzle levels, a charging move called 'zoom,' moving obstacles, colored wedges, and passwords.

There is even a warning that it ran on Windows XP with a few new bugs. That note reminds readers that preservation does not necessarily mean flawless compatibility with today's machines.

Barnett's 2001 electronic album POoR NOtation forms another branch. He recalls assembling early sounds in Windows Sound Recorder before moving to better music tools, then collecting experiments under a deliberately unserious band name. The page includes an attributed contemporary music review and a story about mailing audio experiments to the hosts of Loveline.

This mix of fan-site research, shareware-like games, and bedroom electronic music is an unusually clear picture of what home computing made possible at the turn of the millennium. Before a creator had a brand or a portfolio strategy, one personal site could be a home for several quite different enthusiasms.

Barnett's claims about his GoldenEye site's relative popularity are personal recollections rather than independently measured readership figures. The surviving project index and its stated dates are the stronger evidence.

Visit the old-project archive and follow its GoldenEye GOLD link to the preserved fan material.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.