cdgames-nn.narod.ru ("CD Games Nizhny Novgorod") was a Nizhny Novgorod site selling compact discs, hosted on the free service narod.ru, known from Web Archive snapshots since 2002. The first archived snapshot of the address is dated 21 November 2002[1], the last is from October 2022[3]. The city tie was stated on the page itself: the footer of the home page ended with the line "Nizhny Novgorod 2002"[2], the contact address given was cdgames@mail.nnov.ru in the Nizhny Novgorod mail domain[1], and the listing in the nn.ru directory promised to sell discs "at the lowest prices in Nizhny Novgorod"[4].

Showcase: discs by publisher and ordering by email

The home page of the later version was organized as a catalog broken down by game publisher: "Buka Company", "1C Company", "Russobit-M Company"[2]. Each of the three publishers repeated the same set of four items: "Games — list of this company's games", "Price — this company's price list", "Order — order a disc (you will need an email client to order a disc)" and "Vip order — order a disc not on the list (accordingly, a bit more expensive)"[2]. An order, then, was not placed on the page itself but by an email sent from the visitor's own mail client — this was stated directly in the menu.

Besides games, the "Discs in stock" list included "Music discs in mp3 format", "Movies in mpeg4 format", "Various self-teaching guides", "Translators" and the catch-all "And many others"[2]. A separate line at the bottom carried a "Movies on CD-R" section[2]. The top line of the page carried a banner: "We recommend cheap hosting"[2].

The site's listing in the nn.ru directory was written in a sales tone: selling compact discs "at the lowest prices in Nizhny Novgorod", "From 50 rubles", games by "Buka, 1C, Russobit-M", "many tutoring programs, teach-yourself guides, translators"[4]. This is the site owner's own self-description, not our assessment, and there is nothing to check it against: the collected material preserves only the home page, with no price lists or game lists among it.

The early 2002 version

The earliest surviving snapshot shows a different look for the project: the page title read "CDGames Nyzhny Novgorod ::: :::", and the bottom carried the copyright line "©2002.CDGames Nyzhny Novgorod.All rights reserved." and the date "-09.10.2002.-"[1]. The Cyrillic text was not preserved in the 2002 archive copy — it survives only as Latin letters, digits and punctuation — so the content of the early sections cannot be judged: only the title, the copyright, the date, a mention of *.zip files and the mail address cdgames@mail.nnov.ru can be read[1]. What exactly the date 9 October 2002 marked — an update or something else — cannot be established from this fragment. The site's title later changed to the short "CD Games"[2].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site entered the Nizhny Novgorod Internet via the nn.ru directory's category listing: it was filed under "Entertainment and leisure: Games", and in the May 2003 snapshot its listing carried the note "Rating: 11"[4]. It has no other measurable trace of visibility: the site "CD Games" does not appear in the results of the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote[5], nor does it appear in the surviving samples of the regional Counter.nn.ru counter, on which the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating is based. A small sales page on free hosting, known from a directory but not from counters or contests, was an ordinary position for the lower tier of the local network in the early 2000s.

Fate of the address

The site's fate is unusual in that the page went unchanged for long stretches. The home-page snapshots from 15 November 2018[2] and 4 October 2022[3] match word for word, down to the spaces and line breaks, and the footer of both still reads "Nizhny Novgorod 2002"[3]: in 2022 the visitor was still offered the same option to order a disc from Buka by email. Exactly how many years the page lay untouched cannot be said from the collected snapshots — it differs from the 2002 version in both title and content, so the site was reworked at least once between 2002 and 2018.

The last archived snapshot of the address is dated October 2022[3]; no move to another address or a successor site has been recorded. As of a check in August 2026, the site at this address was still responding.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 21 November 2002 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 15 November 2018 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 4 October 2022 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, «Entertainment and leisure: Games» category, May 2003 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day voting results, 2004 (archive)