SuperPhillip Central's 13th Anniversary Celebration: A Banner Kind of Day - A History of SuperPhillip Central Through Banners

As of this past Saturday, SuperPhillip Central as a site is 13 years old. That's a lot of posts, reviews (which, as an aside, the 1,000th review will be published this month), articles, and history. The latter piece is especially important, and it just so also happens to be the focus of this particular article. I wanted to take a quick look back--and not to sniff SPC's own farts here--at the history of SPC through a visual component: our site's banners over the years. Starting back in 2008, SuperPhillip Central was an incredibly simple blog with but a lot of quantity not so much quality when it came to posts. It's my hope that the opposite is more true nowadays, and that I've established a better balance with my writing and posts.

Nevertheless, on June 5, 2008, SuperPhillip Central was born. We had a relatively basic banner, but it gave the blog a cozy, personal approach. Pardon all the poorly designed "snow" that I plastered all over and ruined this banner for, but this is the only version of the original banner that I have left. It featured the SuperPhillip sprite (an edit off Mega Man 7's Mega Man sprite, of course) against a cool-looking futuristic city. I don't recall who originally made the banner, but without their generous help, perhaps SuperPhillip Central wouldn't have reached the same level of success as we have today. (Oh, lord, that totally sounds like I'm blowing smoke up my own butt here, so I apologize for that!) That said, I thank the original creator of this banner: whoever and wherever you are!

A year later, SuperPhillip Central's banner started to resemble what you see nowadays, at least with its color scheming. There is the standard red and blue, but the logo of course is much different. I originally was going to use the logo (aside from the "Central" part) for a goofy test project I was making in one of the RPG Maker PC games. But, fortunately, I was able to recycle the logo for the banner of the blog! Here's what it looked like in December 2009, complete with the actual blog. What a trip this was, finding it! It even has SuperPhillip in a poorly-made-by-me Santa hat! (There's a trend here that if this was an early banner, and something looked terribly off about it, you can bet I had my hand in making it!)

SuperPhillip Central would eventually go into what I like to joke as its "goth phase", with a dark background with a cyber feel to it. This is where this next banner popped up, and it should be immensely familiar to those of you out there reading the blog today!

Not only did SuperPhillip Central have a new banner and new logo, but around 2015-2016, our blog featured an alternating banner. It was luck of the draw which one you'd get, and those three banners above are just a sampling of what was available to viewers. It wouldn't be until around 2017 that SuperPhillip Central would adjust to what you see nowadays on the blog's banner: a new themed banner, generally of the big games releasing and/or being reviewed that particular month. 

Like so! This one from November 2017, featured two platforming juggernauts: Mario and Sonic, though their games couldn't be more different on a quality basis. Yes, even as someone who liked Sonic Forces, this much was obvious! 

This would lead to specialty banners for SuperPhillip Central, such as this one for the site's 10-year anniversary three years ago:

And finally, let's not forget the special SuperPhillip Central Best of [insert year here] Awards series of banners, such as this one:

I was particularly proud of this one, as other than the original logo/banner, everything else was edited by me in Inkscape. That's a far cry from my crappy looking snow in our December 2008 banner! I mean, sure, it's still nothing special, but I made it my own two hands!

...ANYWAY... I hope this relatively quick journey through some of the history of SuperPhillip Central through its banners has been an enjoyable one, AND I hope it wasn't too self-congratulatory either. I tried to walk a fine line between talking about the history without patting the site's back too much. I probably failed, so I apologize. 

But, this is where you come in. Without your views, without your comments, without simply your engagement with this site, SuperPhillip Central would serve very little purpose. Sure, it's fun to write, but it's even more fun to engage with you, the reader and the audience that this site has fostered. You are truly special to me, whether you're a regular reader, a frequent commenter, or you just passed by once or twice and then said, "nope, this site isn't for me." Thank YOU for everything, and for making writing for SuperPhillip Central these past 13 years (and hopefully more as we move forward together) very much worth it!

- Phil

(As an aside, I think I used this somewhat dopey drawing as part of SPC's banner in 2012. It was so short-lived that I don't even have a copy of it anymore in my files! As you can imagine, the feedback from the less-than-excellent attempt at digital artwork was less-than-well...super!)