… that’ll make your eyes bleed.

Welcome to Skypirate.org, the historically preserved chronicles of a group of twelve-year-olds first learning to post and create their personal websites in the heady early days of the Intern–

What? You say this is a CURRENT site? Last updated… Last month!?

When I first came across the site, between its eye-piercing yellow background, animated American flag, cheesy MS-Paint logo, and embedded .wav files on every page, I thought for sure I was on a website that was created back in the earliest days of the internet — the type of site you’d regularly find hosted on Angelfire or Geocities (rest in peace). But now, I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry. I honestly can’t tell the difference between it and the intertubes equivalent of a Poe — someone intentionally recreating the type of earnest and innocent site you’d find at the dawn of the internet age, where the new pilgrims were first breaking ground and every website had a “best viewed in Netscape Navigator 2.1” logo. (Or — perish the thought — Internet Explorer 3.)

There’s a very large part of me that wants to think this is the case. But some small nagging voice in the back of my head keeps saying, “nope, this is legit, and its authors are probably either twelve and have an uncanny love of late-80s and early-90s computer technology, or are actually functionally retarded”. That nagging voice keeps getting reaffirmed with each click, where their quotes page features heavily one-liners from, I’m assuming, the kids’ middle school.

Sadly, the coolest part of the page is a retrospective on Wolfenstein 3D, complete with downloadable demo and some mission packs. Given that I played it when it was new and still shareware, downloaded via BBS on my 9600 baud modem to my screaming-new 386 computer, and I was hard pressed to choose between it or Epic Pinball as being the pinnacle of the gaming experience that was to be had, ever, of all time, it’s understandable why this would gain some of my sympathy. It’s pretty obvious, in fact, that these kids love a lot of stuff about the 80s and 90s computer world, between their HTML and DOS “primers” and Wolf3D page.

Sympathy that was quickly lost on reading some of their poetry.

My fathers, fathers, father found a great white rune.
And when u put it in the fire it played an enchanting tune.
And than one day he dropped it and it in broke on the ground.
Inside it was a sphere that was perfectly round.
And when he picked it up there was a tiny fire.
In the middle it burned like a tempting dire.

I bet you’re riveted to your seat to find out what happens next!

While you’re there, check out the kids’ side ventures, like Tango United Software, which purports to be an early computer game revival “company”, having hacked Wolfenstein to be harder. I’m sorely tempted to go find a full copy of Wolf3D and fire it, and the hack, up in DosBox and see just exactly what their idea of “harder” is. I imagine somehow you’ll have to fight ten super-sped-up Mecha Hitlers with only your pistol.

So very much fail. If it weren’t for the fact that I’m convinced as to the naïveté of the kids responsible for this website, I’d laugh heartily at their efforts.

What the heck, maybe I will anyway. Heh heh.