[game_preservation] iPhone Game Preservation

Andrew Armstrong andrew at aarmstrong.org
Wed Jul 29 04:29:20 EDT 2009


Rachel "Sheepy" Donahue wrote:

>> The community is a good saviour, I just wish some of their sites were

>> easier to use (or less political, such as Wikipedia).

>

> Got any examples off-hand? When I think major community resources, I

> think of MobyGames, HoTU, C64Preservation, Digital Press, Zophar's

> Domain etc.. all of which are pretty user-friendly, if sometimes

> lacking in aesthetics (especially Moby).

MobyGames is pretty accessible (just sometimes I wish game name searches
bring up the game matching the title first :) ). However most sites make
finding information tough on the searcher - the search capabilities are
always, I find, pretty poor (out of those sites only MobyGames and
HotU's have proper search capabilities - Google search is *not* an
adequate replacement sadly, and Zophar's sadly doesn't do search very
well - context is key when searching for terms). I should create a page
of search links sometime, to save me some time when searching for info,
so it can automatically search certain sites. :)

I'm not saying they're terrible, far from it, excellent resources, just
like I said I wish some were easier to use! :) Search is hard to do, I'd
admit that much though. ATM It's basically google site:XXX search for
most of them.

Professional DB's are just as bad if not worse mind you.
Gamespot/IGN/etc. all have databases, for what it's worth, and are very
difficult to search through for relevant information. GiantBomb looks a
bit more promising though.

Oh, as for controllers/authenticity goes - I meant that the original
controllers sometimes are just not made any more, so is using a
replacement better? a 3rd party cheap knockoff? Not many archievs, if
any, will have the funding to get custom-made replicas - certainly with
the right electronic kit - to match such things. The emulation of
systems is a more difficult problem, there is tactile things there.

Andrew


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