Crazy SEGA Nerds: Fan resurrects Rez website in all its 2001 glory

Good news everyone, a Dreamcast fan has resurrected the website for Rez! Brian Hargrove revealed on Twitter a few days ago that he had managed to acquire the original United Game Artists domain and brought the website back as it was in 2001 with pretty much all the content intact.

If you don’t know about Rez, it was one of the more unique and stylish Dreamcast games released. Developed by United Game Artists and published by SEGA, it was essentially an on-rails shooter, but with wireframe visuals, crazy colours and a truly bitchin’ soundtrack.

As the Dreamcast was on its way out, SEGA also announced the game for the PlayStation 2 at the same time. In 2008 the Xbox 360 received a slightly updated version of the game with Rez HD. A spiritual successor was later released on PS3 and Xbox 360 called Child of Eden. And more recently an expanded version of the original game, Rez Infinite, was released for VR devices on PC and PS4.

Curiously, according to Brian, the site had been owned by a skincare product company for a number of years, until they finally let their ownership lapse in November 2020.

After many years, United Game Artists domain was finally released by it’s skincare products owner. I was able to pick it up and I restored the original Rez website back to it’s 2001 glory. ?

Enjoy.https://t.co/NdzUCaVxJn pic.twitter.com/FF615nURDh

— Brian Hargrove (@turfmasta) February 8, 2021

Speaking to the Dreamcast Junkyard, Brian explained more about the project:

“I don’t think the domain was held captive or anything, just never really used since 2003. After UGA was transferred to Sonic Team in late 2003, the site went down…

“The owner finally let it expire and I knew it would probably be my only chance save it. I won the auction and collected all the site backups from Archive.org.

“With a Linux utility, I was able to bulk download multiple years of the backup directly from Archive. The majority of the files were recoverable, with only a few images missing. I was able to restore it to what it was right before the site went down.“

Great work Brian. Folks like you are truly keeping the Dream Alive! You can find the full quote and a bit more information on Brian’s work over at The Dreamcast Junkyard.