Geocities, Tripod, Angelfire, Xoom, SimpleNet, Fortunecity, AOL Hometown. Before the rise of social media, these were the domains that ran the World Wide Web. Any individual registering an account on these hosts could get anywhere from three to an astounding one hundred megabytes of data to do with as they pleased. A corner of the Internet in which you could tell the world you existed, and share what the heck you liked!
It felt like nothing was impossible. All you needed was a hint of html knowledge, a few animated gifs, and the tenacity to write enough words to form a sentence. The Internet expanded, and a million tiny webpages sprung up overnight. Some of them were a splash page promising the world, touched once and forgotten. Others became a lifelong pursuit, eventually moving from their original hosts to a more permanent address. All of them possesed a certain charm.
It’s hard to say how many Sonic the Hedgehog fan sites existed on these free services. Certainly more than the number of characters across the entire Sonic franchise! A thousand websites on a hundred Webrings bringing together a generation of fans. They, along with sites such as Sonic HQ, The Sonic Foundation, Team Artail, and the Sonic Stuff Research Group, became the building blocks of the fandom.
When a site went live, it was assumed they would exist forever, only disappearing if the owner went out of their way to delete it. But sadly, one by one, each of those free services shut down, taking along with them the multitude of personal homepages they hosted. What had once been mandatory viewing was now a distant memory.
Their time may have ended, but what was accomplished still resonates. The work of The Wayback Machine can never be understated, so many sites from Web 1.0 preserved in one form or another. The spirit lives on in places like Neocities, a new generation rediscovering what community was in the days before social media. This page? Just another tribute, another archive, something to keep that flame alive. After all, why not?
Sonic HQ — The Lost Headlines
In the late 90’s and early 2000’s, there was no Sonic fan site bigger than Sonic HQ. Beginning life as “Zifei’s Sonic Page”, this unassuming website would quickly outgrow its host, the 3 MB of disk space provided by GeoCities not nearly enough for what Zifei Wu and his team wanted to do. Multiple accounts across GeoCities and Tripod were made to contain the growing database, and it was not long before Andy Wolan (of EmulationZone fame) offered to host the site. With the move to a dedicated server, the golden age of Sonic HQ began.
It wasn’t just a site about the games, or one focused on the Freedom Fighters. No, Sonic HQ was a one stop shop for all things Sonic the Hedgehog. Comic reviews, episode guides, a Sonic encyclopedia. Fanworks were also integral, including Sonic fanfiction. Hey, if you had a Sonic site on the 90’s without fanfics? There was something wrong. The site was also home to “The Mobius Forum,” the largest Sonic community on EZboard.
One of the SHQ’s biggest draws was the news feed. Nearly anyone could submit a story, be it the latest comic solicitations, rumors from Usenet about the next game, or alerts on the newest screenshots released by Sonic Team. The feed also covered the fandom, where anyone could advertise their upcoming fan comics, fan games, and petitions to bring back the Saturday morning Sonic cartoon. Rare was the day when some piece of news wouldn’t be posted.
Unlike so many websites from the era, Sonic HQ continues to exist, preserving its history along with it. Without realizing it, the original staff working on the site were also creating the ultimate time capsule of this moment in the fandom. Nearly every aspect of the site can be found, including a robust news archive dating back to November 1999. However, the earliest stories that existed on the Tripod incarnation of the site, and the first few months of its existence on EmulationZone, are currently missing from those archives. They were written before any php system was adopted, news stories instead relying on someone going in and modifying the HTML by hand. Instead, they are preserved in their original format down below, available for those who may be doing research or are simply feeling a twinge of nostalgia for an era long since past.
It Came From Tripod!
In an era when the Internet was still trying to figure out what the heck it was, a couple college kids launched a company with their professor. Tripod was targeted at their peers, wanting to offer resources for Gen-X as they became adults in an increasingly wild and technological time. As an afterthought, a small sliver of webhosting was offered to those who registered on the site.
Fast forward to February 3rd, 1998. Tripod had become such a presence on the web that it caught the attention of Lycos (the search engine with a dog as its mascot). $58 million later, Tripod became part of the Lycos network, directly competing with Yahoo! and Excite. A few months later, Lycos did it again, buying the search directory “WhoWhere” for $133 million, which included Tripod competitor Angelfire. Instead of folding the two webhosts into one, Tripod and Angelfire were allowed to be their own communities. Lycos seemed unstoppable. For a time, maybe they were. But alas...
On April 24th, 2026, Tripod shut down. This wasn’t all that shocking. Lycos announced it without fanfare in early March, along with the closure of Angelfire. Earlier in the year, all of Angelfire’s hosted sites refused to load, and presumably no one at Lycos could be bothered to restore them before killing the site. Tripod, at least, was allowed to bow out gracefully — even if 503 server errors peppered it until the final moments.
Like many free hosting services, Sonic the Hedgehog fansites were plentiful. Before the closure of this last remaining bastion of Web 1.0, a handful were backed up by the proprietor of the website you’re currently on. Here, they remain on the live web, able to be stumbled upon by a web surfer struck with a nostalgic pang, looking for a time when anyone could carve a small piece of the Internet out for themselves — as long as it could fit on a couple floppy discs.
LinksLooking for other places celebrating the early days of Sonic fandom? Of course you are!
Old Sonic Web
Last Minute Continue
Sonic the Hedgehog fandom
The Mobian Sprite Comic