This upcoming FPS has a website that’s a sick throwback to ’90s game ads
Fortune’s Run (opens in new tab) is shaping up to be something special: a retro FPS blending immersive sim depth with pure boomer shooter speed, some of the best swordplay I’ve seen in a game, and a gloriously grungy ’90s sci-fi setting. But those aren’t the only lost arts Team Fortune is reviving: the two-person team just unveiled an absolutely sick new website (opens in new tab).
I know what you’re thinking: “Website? How cool could it be? Besides grandpa, everyone advertises their games in portrait mode on TikTok dueted with ASMR footage of someone slicing up a bar of soap (opens in new tab).” It may not represent today’s best marketing practices, but I love the way this page harkens back to an era of absurdly wordy magazine ads, like this original Half-Life spread (opens in new tab) that appeared in PC Gamer in the ’90s.
Fortune’s Run’s site presents an interactable 3D magazine with a backdrop of the game’s demo level, Club V’heni. You can click or use a phone’s touchscreen to flip the pages, with your perspective of the mag adjusting with mouse movement or—and this is particularly dope—your phone’s gyroscope. Inside are classic gaming mag-style bullet point descriptions of Fortune’s Run, a wall of gameplay .gifs arranged like a print panel of screenshots, and on the back you’ll find a riff on the infamous John Romero Daikatana ad. No sir, I believe I will not “suck it down.”
Remember when websites were fun, and all looked different from one another? When the internet was a vast, exciting place with all sorts of nooks and crannies to get lost in? Fortune’s Run’s new site also brings back memories of the Halo 3 “Believe (opens in new tab)” ad campaign, a series of shorts and promos centering on a fictional museum of the Human-Covenant War, decades after the events of the games.
I remember begging my dad to install a special version of Microsoft’s Silverlight media player so we could click through the Believe website’s explorable diorama (opens in new tab) of a human-Covenant battle. Now that was an ad campaign, dopey schlock and all.
I’m excited about Fortune’s Run—you should check out its demo and wishlist on Steam (opens in new tab) if you haven’t—and this site really gels with that experience. Like the game itself, the site’s a throwback, but a creative, surprising one, reshaping your memories and nostalgia into something that feels entirely new. You can also check out my write-up of Fortune’s Run’s free demo level (opens in new tab), Trouble at Club V’heni, from last year’s Realms Deep digital event.
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