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Planet Namek Review By Webmaster(Grand Master Dragon) 5/2/01 Ah yes, Planet Namek. The unofficial "king" of Dragonball fansites, and all-around DB pages. Maintained by a staff of three(Kaio, Mr.E and Skullmac), been around since 1998, and has undergone major changes since then. Updated pretty much daily. Content At one time(not even that long ago, actually), PN indeed had some great content. The most obvious was their incredibly-large Manga section, where scans of the DB Manga, grouped by chapters, could be downloaded, along with a .txt guide to the chapter and a cover scan. But sadly, as the economy became pooped on, it drained up the bandwidth(causing more moolah to be handed out by their lead webmaster, Mr.E), and the section was turned into a simple Manga Guide. Original, yes, but not exactly magnificant. Another highlight that once was around was their enormous Image Archive, which was also recently removed. I've never had the slightest interest in browsing through their Fan Fiction and/or Fanart sections, as I really tend not to dig through an archive that big of fan-work... but it's still there, and I've heard good things about it. Skullmac's Video Game section is average at most. It's very comprehensive, but he's way too harsh on many DB games I found amazingly addictive and fun... The amount of images for each game are small, which was and has always been dissapointing. It'd be nice if Game Sprites for each(not necessarily animated) were available... I've never touched the Sounds section either(although I've explored it), due to all the sound clips being in MP3 format... isn't that was .wav's are for? As for all of their info, it's pretty massive. Not only do they cover the basic aspects of the series, but also various detailed things you've probably never thought of. Ever wonder how long it took Krillin & Dende to fly to Guru's(and back)? How many wishes were granted, total, throughout the entire series? Just some simple examples. The only general downside of all of this that many agree on is the lack of the Japanese terms & names at times, which would be nice for a first-time fan of the series looking up info. Layout It's improved ALOT over the past few years. There was a time when the random image in the masthead was actually embeded into the logo, and changed every so often accordingly. Now it's simply it's own image, residing next to the actual banner and changed every now and then... The layout itself is pretty basic: your standard three-table layout; one table for links, one for everything in the center(in their case, updates), and one simple third table for various content. The "Links" table, in PN's case, also is used for various release announcements and whatnot. The third table is used as they see fit, promoting DVD releases, begging for money and such. Essentially, over time they've turned the basic three-table layout around and actually made good use of it. Not that it's wrong or anything, but it CAN look bad and overdone. I'm impressed with what they've done with it. Originality Half-and-half. The overall theme has been eaten alive by thousands of so-called webmasters: an all-DBZ page, with Info & Multimedia covering the whole series. It's been done, but I guess you could say PN beat alot of those thousands to the punch. Alot of the sections are pretty unique(as I said earlier), which is never a bad thing. Alot of their classic, most-impressive sections are now dead though... not cool. All in all, I'd have to say I don't love Planet Namek, but I don't hate it either... although I rarely actually visit to browse through the actual site(the Message Board is pretty much my only daily stop there), it's not bad. Rating: 8/10.