Happy Birthday to us!

Just a touch over 4 years ago I walked up to my wife and told her I had a crazy idea to do a website. Like my past ideas with websites it would probably take a lot of time and didn't have a high likelihood for paying very well, if at all. Being the wonderful woman she has always been she told me she was absolutely behind it. On November 23, 2002, I registered the domain of Game Tunnel (www.gametunnel.com). I had drafted up a lot of sketches of how I thought the website might look beforehand, considering different possibilities and features. Though thankfully we've moved past those first initial stages of website ugliness I still like to look back at the screenshots of yesteryear to remember how things *used* to look (a gallery is below for perusing).

One thing has stayed the same throughout the years. A constant desire to find games that you may not have heard of, but are worthy of hearing about. As Nintendo has taken up the cry of innovation, Independent Games seem to be losing a little bit of their steam. Independents have often survived on simply 'being different,' but with the release of the Wii, different seems to be the norm for the day.

The good news is that a really original idea will always raise a few eyebrows and there certainly is no shortage of original ideas in indie games. Whereas the Wii will still need games tailored for the mass market, Indie developers can focus on making games for the missed market. Those of us who like to play something a bit different than yet another FPS will always be waiting and ready for innovative and even niche games that fill our own personal likes.

To that end, Game Tunnel stands up for variety in games, for unique and niche, for retro and modern. From games that you can immediately classify into a category to those that you aren't sure you can classify as a game, Game Tunnel will continue to cover and praise the games everyone should know about. Thanks for four great years!

Russell Carroll
Editor-in-Chief
Game Tunnel

Above: The official launch in 2002! One review and the 'dark' theme. The idea was dirt, dust, and a tunnel to the gaming underground.		Above: The 'space' theme was the bizarre progression in late 2003. It introduced blue-grey as the color for the site.
Above: 2004 brought yet another theme. This one took blue-grey to steel blue and provided more navigation possibilities than any site should.		Above: 2005 was the complete re-work of the website. Free from the PHP Nuke base, the now custom-coded gametunnel went to a cheery blue with green highlights.