Resources

The toolbox. Make your own dreamcore has the technique; here's the material: programs, fonts, palettes and image quarries. All free or libre, because dreamcore with a budget stops working.

Image editors

• Photopea — Photoshop in the browser, free, no account. The genre's default tool.
• GIMP — the free desktop classic. Its "HSV noise" filter is the perfect grain machine.
• Windows XP Paint (or jspaint.app, its web replica) — for authentic pixelated text, nothing beats it.

3D and cheap render

• Blender — free. Remember the house rule: use it BADLY (few samples, 640×480, no antialiasing).
• Crocotile 3D — PS1-style tile modelling. Paid but cheap; the low-poly comes for free.
• RPG Maker 2003 — if you want to just make your own Yume Nikki.

Photo quarries (free licence)

• Wikimedia Commons — the main mine. Search "empty mall interior", "school hallway", "dead mall"… Five photos in the gallery came from here, with author and licence in wallpapers.
• Internet Archive — dead websites, old-software screenshots, scanned magazines.
• Flickr (Creative Commons filter) — the great family album of the 2004-2012 era, which is exactly the texture you're after.
• Your own camera roll. Seriously: your family's 2008 phone album is worth more than any stock library.

Fonts

• The usual system ones: Times New Roman, Courier New, Comic Sans MS. You already have them; that's the point.
• The Ultimate Oldschool PC Font Pack — BIOS and MS-DOS fonts, lovingly digitized. To caption like a modem.

House palettes

The visual swatches are in the look; here in raw, to copy:

For your desktop

• The customization room — the archive's icon pack (Windows/Mac/Linux) and the 6-step liminal-desktop guide: wallpaper, icons, cursor, fonts, sounds and terminal.

Old web / Neocities

• Neocities — free neighbourhood hosting. This archive will live here.
• GifCities — the Internet Archive's GeoCities GIF search engine. Pure archaeology.
• 88×31 button maker — to make your button and link up with ours.