As I noted in my post about my new Kosmopolska website, its visual appearance is inspired by the old, official website for the game. This site is no longer up, but most of it used to be available via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. When I recently went to look at it, I was surprised to only get a “The Wayback Machine has not archived that URL” message where I had previously found the site. I honestly don’t know why this has happened, why the site has been removed. Apparently, people can request to have pages taken out of the Wayback Machine, but I don’t understand who would have wanted to remove this obscure site for an obscure game, or for what reason.
Over the years I have become aware that you can never expect anything to be permanent on the internet, but I had been under the impression that things on the Internet Archive would be at least a little more persistent than other things on the web. It’s particularly unfortunate in the case of the Kosmopolska website, since it contained a number of unique images and other media (perhaps most notably the “Friheten” short story, and walkthroughs for some of the more complicated puzzles in the game) related to the game that I haven’t found anywhere else.
Fortunately, however, I had enough foresight to actually download several of the site’s pages to my computer before they disappeared. I have already shared some of the unique parts here and there, including my English translation of Friheten, and I hope to add most of them to my own Kosmopolska site in the future. I might even try to put up the saved pages from the original site, and if I get really ambitious, I might try translating them into English as well. Whatever I’ll end up doing, I’ll also keep holding out hope that the original site might be restored to the Wayback Machine sometime in the future.
Update: The original (Swedish) Kosmopolska site is, as of this writing, back on the Internet Archive!