Thunderbolt is an independent videogames

VideoGames

VideoGames may refer to:*VideoGames, a mid-1990s magazine about video games.*Video games in general....

 website

Website

A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...

 that was launched on November 20, 2000 by Philip Morton . Thunderbolt publishes reviews, previews and features covering the major gaming platforms, particularly consoles. The site is run by volunteers who reside in the UK, North America and New Zealand , who have written over 2,400 news stories and over 2,000 reviews .

History

Thunderbolt was originally a personal web design experiment and first launched on November 20, 2000 . The first two versions of the website included sections which were subsequently dropped, such as humorous pictures, cheats and hints. The third and first serious incarnation of Thunderbolt was launched in 2001, sporting a green design. Two writers joined the site on the same day, which gave the website's creator the confidence to further improve it.

On October 1, 2002, the orange and white themed fourth version of Thunderbolt was launched. New staff members joined and the site's creator became more and more committed towards it. The site was still built on static pages though and in the spring of 2003, the fifth database-driven version was launched. However, the design was not visually strong and a professional graphics design firm was hired to work on the sixth version, which launched on July 29, 2004. It featured a new retro section, the addition of support for new consoles and a new managements system for staff.

From October 2005 to August 2006, the site's owner was away and so the site did not see any further development during that time. However, on his return, work began on the seventh and current version of Thunderbolt, which launched on April 6, 2007. A new version was recently launched, in which the site was tidied up and a simpler variation of the logo was used.

Scoring and aggregation

Thunderbolt rates games with an integer out of ten, which is spelt out at the bottom of each review in a fashion similar to how Edge Magazine used to. As of January 19, 2008, the average score given to games is 70.9%, which is 3.7% lower than the industry average for the games reviewed . Issues surrounding the scoring of games were addressed by Philip Morton in an article entitled Videogames by numbers , in which he explains Thunderbolt's choice of scoring system and the reasons why 7 is the site average.

Thunderbolt's review scores are aggregated at Metacritic

Metacritic

Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...

 , Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...

 , GameTab

GameTab.com

GameTab, much like Game Rankings, is a website which kept track of video game reviews from other web sites. GameTab was founded in 2002 and was acquired by Ziff Davis in 2006. Aside from including the scores from various publications and averaging them, GameTab included quotes from some of the...

 , MobyGames

MobyGames

-Platforms not yet included:- Further reading :* Rusel DeMaria, Johnny L. Wilson, High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games, McGraw-Hill/Osborne Media; 2 edition , ISBN 0-07-223172-6...

  and Game Rankings

Game Rankings

GameRankings is a website that collects review scores from both offline and online sources to give an average rating. It indexes over 315,000 articles relating to more than 14,500 games.GameRankings is owned by CBS Interactive...

 , where it is amongst the sites that are used to calculate average scores . The site is also referenced by game publishers such as Atari

Atari

Atari is a corporate and brand name owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by Atari Interactive, a wholly owned subsidiary of the French publisher Atari, SA . The original Atari, Inc. was founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. It was a pioneer in...

  and 2K Games

2K Games

2K is a global developer, marketer, distributor and publisher of interactive entertainment software games. 2K Games is a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive, which also owns Rockstar Games notable for the Grand Theft Auto series...

.