Don't know about defunct websites, but I walked into Hudson News in Penn Station today, and there was EGM sitting on the shelves. This issue was comparing Lightning Returns with The Witcher 3. Yup! That's pretty much EGM for ya!
Am I mistaken? I thought EGM was killed off a few years ago... It took me completely by surprise when I saw it there!
GameSpot.
Just deleted my bookmark for GS, once and for all. I took one last, disgusted look, asked myself: "Why am I wasting my time?" and said "Fuck it. Delete!"
Saturnworld.com was one of my first and favorite internet sites. all about the awesome Sega Saturn. 
Gamespot was my go to site for years. I've been a member for over a decade and have never felt such much disgust for it as I do now. It's shameful how much it's gone down.
Leo, EGM started back up a couple years back, but I haven't checked it out. I used to love EGM back in the day when Hsu was in charge.
Foolz said:GameSpot.
This. It actually was my first gaming website. There were fun times to be had over there.
Let's just put it this way: GameSpot started around 1996. I was going to the site and forums BEFORE it changed names, when it was videogames.com for years before... it's probably no exaggeration to say that I've been going there for over 20 years. I remember when Saturn was the next big thing in the forums... For me to call it quits... yeah... means A LOT!
Foolz said:GameSpot.
Dammit. You beat me to it. 
So lets pick a day for TLOU game night.
^ So random.
Ravenprose said:^ So random.
Dammit this isnt the news page!
videogames.com... and you guys know the rest.
Dvader said:Dammit this isnt the news page!
I'd laugh, but I do that shit all the time.
I'd say Gamesradar, but that place is still up... Stopped going there after they butchered the site though.
Cubzone.nl, later nzone.nl. They just disappeared at one point. Their url still states the 'temporarily offline' page that's been there for years now. I don't know how they did it, but they'd get a scoop every now and then, way before any of the bigger sites caught on. If I recall right, they reported on Sonic being in SSB:M way before anyone else did.
And yeah... Gamespot.
I think my first game site was Eurogamer.net. I still go there on a daily basis, although I never have partaken much in their community. It was basically Eurogamer for their content, and GS for their boards. And now I'm here.
phantom_leo said:Just deleted my bookmark for GS, once and for all. I took one last, disgusted look, asked myself: "Why am I wasting my time?" and said "Fuck it. Delete!"
Seriously, now you guys have me here, the last reason to dwell at what remains of GS has evaporated. You all know it's true!
Andriasang.
it was one of the very few english lan sites reporting on japan developmen
gamingeek said:Andriasang.
it was one of the very few english lan sites reporting on japan developmen
I remember that site.
I don't go to Gamespot anymore but I still have it bookmarked just because I was a member of Gamespot since May of 2005 and it feels weird that I don't go there anymore. I would probably still be there if the site didn't change so much.
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phantom_leo said:Don't know about defunct websites, but I walked into Hudson News in Penn Station today, and there was EGM sitting on the shelves. This issue was comparing Lightning Returns with The Witcher 3. Yup! That's pretty much EGM for ya!
Am I mistaken? I thought EGM was killed off a few years ago... It took me completely by surprise when I saw it there!
Steve Harris one of the original publishers of EGM bought the magazine rights when that company bought 1UP and affiliated properteries from Ziff Davis.
It was very soon after the demise of the old EGM that the new one came back in electronic form predominantly, and a hefty retail price.
It's lacked credibilty for the most part since the first issue. They have nice layouts and long form articles from time to time. Shidoshi from GamePro rights for them, and Kat Bailey too. They troll with low scores.
I saw this question mentioned somewhere else a while back, but I thought it was a great one and worth stealing.
The very first website I ever went to was this site called Illusia. I can't remember the address, because if I recall it had a university hosting it as opposed to its own URL. But in 1995 if you typed "Final Fantasy" on Infoseek, that was one of the first pages that showed up. It had a bunch of characters from the FF games in icon format and they were scattered around a map, clicking each of them brought you to a different page. It seemed very impressive for the time.
Then there was The Mana Treehouse. It was a Secret of Mana dedicated site, but it had a small message board that I spent a lot of time on. If I recall it was the first site I regularly got into arguements on, mainly because there was a douchebag 13 year old who was wrong in regards to everything he ever said. That irked me after a while.
The biggest site for me though was the Unofficial Squaresoft Homepage (now RPGamer.com). It was a pretty impressive website that had news, reviews, and a huge image gallery, all run by a teenager named Andrew Vestal, who I would argue did more to further the interests of jRPGs in this country than any other single person for the time. That was the site that pretty much, introduced me to all the non-translated games that Squaresoft never released. And once again, lots of message board arguements regarding Final Fantasy VII.