GameFAQs
A vast library of fan-written, plain-text walkthroughs in monospaced ASCII — hand-drawn text maps, boss strategies, and the one password you needed. Players printed fifty-page guides on the family printer or scrolled giant text files over dial-up. GameFAQs was how you beat the unbeatable.
GameFAQs started on November 5, 1995, as the Video Game FAQ Archive, founded by Jeff Veasey, known online as CJayC. He moved it to gamefaqs.com and took the GameFAQs name in 1996. The site was unadorned by design: just clean text and organization. The ritual it enabled was tactile for its time — printing a guide from the family printer before a boss fight, or sitting at the computer with Ctrl+F and a text file, hunting for the one strategy that mattered.
It became a cultural hub, too. The site has run a daily opinion poll and contests since November 30, 1999, and its annual Character Battle brackets — video game characters pitted against each other in fan votes — became internet events in their own right. CNET acquired the site in May 2003, in a deal covering GameFAQs and two unrelated properties for $2.2 million total. Veasey announced his departure in July 2007, handing the site to longtime staffer Allen Tyner. Ownership changed again in October 2022 when Fandom took over, but the site never went away: GameFAQs is one of the few pillars of the 90s game internet still standing at its original address, still hosting fan-written guides.
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