Overview
I have always been an avid gamer. So much so that I decided to start a small gaming website so I could play my favourite old games from anywhere without having to carry a PC or laptop with me. Many of the games I added were emulated from SNES, NES, Master system, and similar older generation consoles. As retro games are very simple compared to the games these days, it was fairly easy to get them all working straight from the browser.
The Build
The Nowares Arcade website was built on a very heavily modified version of the AV Arcade script, with a custom template I created to target a younger audience. I wrote several plugins to get the script to a workable state and improve its security, SEO friendliness and much more. Designing the template led to some interesting discoveries and helped me develop the skills needed to build scripts on an ad-hoc basis.
Results
Traffic to the website grew steadily and targeted keywords quickly overtook high-end competitors such as Sega and Nintendo. At the peak, the majority of keywords like "Alex Kidd" and "play Sonic" ranked above their original source.
Freelance Work
I've also spent a large amount of time creating modifications and templates for other AV Arcade webmasters on a freelance basis.