Ancient Web: LameNES Made an NES Fan Site Out of Skits and Cartridge Warnings

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

Before video-game fandom became a never-ending stream of clips and reactions, somebody could devote a homepage to a fake superhero team made from Nintendo characters. LameNES did exactly that, and then found room for cartridge warning labels.

Visit My Page O' LameNES.

The welcome banner announces "A Winner Is LameNES!!" in the proudly awkward voice of an early fan page. Its update log begins on January 1, 2001, when the creator says work started on the page. The last dated update shown is February 6, 2002, adding random drawings.

There is no claim here to a definitive Nintendo encyclopedia. This is a small, stubbornly personal place to amuse fellow players.

Superheroes, conversations, and caution tape

One section introduces the NES Power Team: Thrilla, Karnov, Abobo, Joe, and the Narcissist, assembled as an absurd rescue squad. Its listed adventures include Video Game Disaster, The Coffeehouse Blues, and Pizza Hut Problem. Another section, Character Conversations, presents imagined encounters between characters from different games as if spies had recorded their dialogue.

Then the site suddenly becomes an archivist.

The NES Cart Caution Labels page transcribes warnings printed on cartridges, including both Italian and American labels for Mega Man 3 and another for Clash at Demonhead. Readers were invited to contribute more. The same homemade site that writes jokes about game characters also cares about the tiny print most owners never read.

That combination explains an enormous amount about the early hobby Web. A page could be silly and meticulous without explaining why those interests belonged together.

The dated notes preserve smaller habits too: asking readers to exchange links, talking about articles for the PaNESian Press, and joking that the cost of linking to the site is the bargain price of absolutely nothing. It is an era when being linked by somebody else's homepage was itself a kind of community.

LameNES survives as a very specific record of what one fan wanted to make, not what an algorithm would have preferred.

Explore the surviving NES sections.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.