A peek behind the scenes of 20 years of GBAtemp

To celebrate our 20 years I thought it would be fun to dig through my archive files and share with you all some "behind the scenes" peeks at GBAtemp.

A lot goes on behind the scenes - more than we could possibly share but here's a handful of relics from years past.

Let me know if you find these interesting!



Here's a screenshot of GBAtemp in 2003. This is the second iteration of the site and the first forum based one. Before this was the simple blog-style/guestbook type site that unfortunately we have no screenshots of.





A screenshot of GBAtemp in 2005.





In 2006 we sported a brand new design which was very different from anything before. It took the aesthetics from the new Nintendo DS Lite as inspiration and was designed by GBAtemp member AshuraZero.



Here's some mockups of a work in progress redesign for GBAtemp v3 circa 2005/2006. This was to be the first "major" redesign of GBAtemp moving on from the styles shown in the years above. I worked with @JeX- to design these. Check out the insane design - "it was the style at the time!". This style would come to be used later on in 2007 for GBAtemp v3.





Here's a mockup for a major site redesign that never happened. It would later become inspiration for GBAtemp v6 years down the road.





Unfortunately it's no longer around, but here's a look at FileTrip through the years.

Screen #1 - a mockup of FileTrip
Screen #2 - The first revision of FileTrip
Screen #3 - The second and final revision of FileTrip





Did you know for a few years we ran a sister/partner shop affiliated with GBAtemp - ShopTemp? Although we did pretty well with the site, for obvious reasons we were forced to stop selling flash carts and after this the site became a price comparison website before closing doors permanently a few years after that.

Here are some early mockups for what would be become ShopTemp:



And here's a screenshot of the store in its glory days.





In 2010 we partnered with the Supercard team to produce a limited edition GBAtemp themed Supercard DSTWO. Here are some promotional shots of the DSTWO:



Here's a high-res copy of the sleeve for production. Notice any GBAtemp references?





In 2017 we launched GBAtemp v6 with a brand new style focused on mobile browsing which prior versions of the sites neglected.

Here's a mockup of GBAtemp v6.





Sometimes we had a placeholder image before screenshots were available for ROMs when posting the release news. We often had fun placeholders to use. Here's one below that I found made by me. There was a non-Metroid themed one but I can't find it anymore.



I've always been into animation. Here are some of my animated avatars and signatures from the past (yes we did allow animated ones once upon a time!).





Here's some very rough and quick looking mockups for a potential portal redesign, from around 2005 and meant as a guide for GBAtemp v2.



In 2018 we sent all GBAtemp staff some gifts for Christmas. Here's a look at a couple of them including a poster and a mug!



Here's a pic of me and Costello during our American road trip circa 2008



We met a ton of other tempers including SpikeyNDS, Mikki, mthrnite, Urza and others!

Well that was fun! Let me know if you enjoyed reading this.