From “The #1 site for gamers”
to “Join for free”

The oldest IGN homepage we found is all headlines and game art. Most headlines end with their platform: Top Guns for Dreamcast - DC, Mr. Domino - PSX, Pikachu Genki Dechu - N64. Lower down, a holiday shopping guide adds Top 10 Games to Buy for Someone You Hate.

The Zelda help box was timely. IGN's review of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is dated about a week before this capture. The same address opens it in all five of our captures of that page, the last from January 2026. Early in the review, the writer describes the day the finished game reached the IGN64 offices: we stopped working, locked ourselves into a room with a big-screen TV and a surround system and played 17 hours straight.

Its author, Peer Schneider, got to IGN by phone. IGN's own 2008 history says he ran a small Nintendo fan site called Nintendojo and cold-called editor Doug Perry looking for a job. He had also interviewed at ZDNet's VideoGames.com, later renamed GameSpot. But the site wasn't ready to pay him full-time, so in the summer of 1997 he joined N64.com instead.^[1]

Here is that review on five visits, from 2015 to 2026:

By April 28, 1999 the yellow frame has an eighth tab, The Den, and a yellow column of the same name with entertainment news. Its first item promises five more hot nude scenes from the movies. The next one is The Phantom Menace Checklist. On the games side, the day's big review is Super Smash Bros. - N64.

The console tabs are the oldest layer of the page. IGN's 2008 history describes the start as a collection of three console-specific websites in 1996: N64.com, PSX Power and Saturnworld. The network officially became IGN in 1998.^[1] It belonged to Imagine Media, the magazine publisher still named in the left menu of the 1998 page, until it was spun off as its own company in February 1999.^[2]

In June 2000 the black frame is gone. IGN.com is a white portal with a blue masthead that says Voted best entertainment site by Wired magazine's readers' raves. One of the four headline boxes is called super babe special. It lists Babes of Videogames, Babes of Summer Movies and seven more like them, down to Babes of ABC.

The channels menu on the left shows how wide the site had become. Games are in there, along with all of this:

The small print at the bottom names the owner: © 2000 Snowball.com, Inc. All rights reserved.

A year later, in our June 15, 2001 capture (the page is dated June 14), the blue directory is still there. It now has GameCube in the Videogames list, plus Trade Games, Send eCards and Voice Chat, and at the very bottom the page asks: Shrek. Seen it? Will buy the game?

On May 28, 2002, just after E3, IGN.com wears a blue-and-silver masthead. The show wrap-up box says Come get caught up on the games, the babes, the parties, the screens, and the movies. Under it, a Gamestore banner: Insiders: save 10% on all used games!

Insider was the paid tier, and in the headlines it is on sale. Get Insider for $20. The console prices have dropped, and so has the price of IGN Insider! Now's a great time to sign up and save $5.

The same WIRED story has the rename. Snowball.com, the name in the 2000 footer, was becoming IGN Entertainment, and chief executive Mark Jung said We have recently decided to focus 100 percent on gaming (reported).^[3] It adds that IGN.com offers online game swaps and auctions, which explains the used-games banner. The footer now reads Copyright 2002, IGN Entertainment, Inc. ForMen is still in the menu, though, and in October 2003 it sits under Entertainment with Cars, DVD, Gear, Movies, Music, Sports and SciFi.

From 2004 the browser tab reads IGN.com: Games, Cheats, Movies and More, and the page fits the title. It is a grey three-column portal: platform channels down the left, illustrated lead stories in the middle, a news rail on the right. The menu across the top runs from IGN Insider and PlayStation 2 through FilePlanet, Cheats, Movies, DVD, Music, Gear, Sports and Cars to For Men and Buy Games.

Watch the end of that menu. In June 2005 it closes on Sports | Cars | Babes, and it already lists PS3 and Xbox 360 next to PS2 and Xbox. Wii joins in 2006. The footer moves its start date too: Copyright 2004, IGN Entertainment, Inc. in 2004, Copyright 1996-2005 a year later.

In 2005 News Corp bought IGN's video game and men's lifestyle sites, IGN.com and AskMen.com among them, for $650 million, TheWrap later reported.^[4] And from 2006, in the page code of every capture through 2013, the footer carries a line about databases: IGN's enterprise databases running Oracle, SQL and MySQL are professionally monitored and managed by Pythian Remote DBA.

The June 2008 masthead says Celebrating 10 years, with a silver IGN.com badge in the middle. IGN's history, published on January 11, 2008, explains the count: the console sites began in 1996, but the network officially became IGN in 1998, so the anniversary fell on January 12, 2008.^[1]

A black network bar now runs above the logo: IGN.com, AskMen.com, Rotten Tomatoes, GameSpy, FilePlanet, TeamXbox, CheatsCodesGuides, GameStats and Direct2Drive. The top menu has changed at the end. Where 2005 to 2007 finished on Cars | Babes, 2008 finishes on Sports | Cars, and a new link, Stars, sits between DVD and Comics.

Two months before this capture, IGN played an April Fools' joke with what it called an exclusive Legend of Zelda movie trailer, Joystiq reported on April 1, 2008.^[5] Our June capture doesn't show it.

In June 2009 the grey portal is gone. A red page surround frames a big Guitar Hero feature and three columns of news. The tab now says IGN.com: Video Games, Cheats, Movies and More, with Video added in front of Games, and the network bar has gained Green Pixels.

We skip 2010, whose replay shows a blank lead feature. By October 2011 the red has shrunk to a band across the top of a white page, and a Dark Souls review leads. The tab has turned into a list of everything on offer: Video Games, Cheats, Walkthroughs, Game Trailers, Reviews, News, Previews & Videos at IGN. Movies has dropped out of it. The network bar lists IGN, 1Up, GameSpy, FilePlanet, GameStats, Battlefield Heroes, UGO, AskMen and IGN Pro League.

From 2012 to 2017 the homepage is a carousel: one big feature with its own row of links, then smaller story cards. The leads tell the summers apart. Borderlands 2 in 2012, E3 coverage and The Last of Us review in 2013, No Man's Sky at E3 2014. In 2012 the tab gains a word: Video Games, Wikis, Cheats, Walkthroughs, Reviews, News & Videos - IGN.

In February 2013 News Corp sold IGN Entertainment to Ziff Davis, part of j2 Global, TheWrap reported.^[4] The footer of our 2015 capture, below the screenshot, has caught up: it lists PCMag and ExtremeTech next to IGN and AskMen, and the copyright line now names Ziff Davis:

In October 2016 a banner announces an All New VR Hub, and the footer, below our screenshot, says Get the IGN Games Newsletter - Over 2 Million Served! Our October 2, 2017 capture leads with Pennywise from Stephen King's IT, drawn in anime style.

Eleven days later, on October 13, 2017, IGN announced it had bought Humble Bundle, which Gamasutra described as best known for selling packs of indie games at pay-what-you-want prices.^[6] The site that reviewed games now owned a shop that sold them.

In June 2018 four tall illustrated cards replace the carousel, and under them: E3 2018 Is Over, but Not Our Coverage! The tab gets short and specific, Video Game News, Reviews, and Walkthroughs - IGN.com. Without the .com, that is still the title in 2026.

On January 2, 2020, IGN changed how it scores. There'll be no more 7.1s or 8.9s, the announcement said. New reviews get whole numbers from 1 to 10, and old reviews keep the scores they had.^[7] Ocarina of Time needed no rounding. In the HTML of the 2015, 2020 and 2023 captures, below what our screenshots show, the review page says the same thing: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is a 10 out of 10.

The homepages of these summers belong to E3 and Summer of Gaming. In 2019 and 2020 the lead is a live video player that no longer plays in the archive. The code of the 2021 menu offers IGN Themes, Classic or Dark Mode, and in June 2022 it lists IGN 25: The Game.

In June 2023 the logo shrinks to a compact red IGN at the top of a navigation rail down the left edge: Home, Search, Reviews, News, Guides, Discover, Store, Rewards, Videos. The lead is a Starfield interview, Todd Howard Answers All of Our Questions.

We skip 2024, because both captures we tried replayed IGN Deutschland. That May, IGN Entertainment bought Gamer Network, the UK group behind Eurogamer and GamesIndustry.biz, Game Developer reported.^[8] In June 2025 the top of the rail sells IGN Plus, and the footer, below what our screenshot shows, links to Eurogamer • Rock Paper Shotgun • VG247 next to IGN TikTok and Map Genie.

On October 17, 2026, the live homepage has dropped the rail for a short menu across the top: Shorts, Daily Games, Entertainment, Reviews, Guides. Not one console is named in it. The button in the corner says Join for free, and the logo has a 30 next to it.

The first of the four big cards is a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 campaign review. The second is about a game from 1998: There's So Much More to Ocarina of Time Than Nostalgia. In December 1998 the same homepage asked Stuck in Zelda?