Let's take another look at new some developments within the video game database landscape.
(The content in this update is a bit outdated, as this will be the last GameDB News Roundup for the time being, because I want to concentrate more on subject matter work to finally bring Oregami online, and couldn't beat myself to publishing this earlier. If you want to continue writing these contents, please get in touch at our forums.)
IGDB.com released version 2 of their API this summer. And while I cannot tell the differences to version 1, version 2 is claimed to be faster, more stable and ready for heavy-weight usage. The interesting thing here is the pricing, which reveals that free use of the API is limited to 7,000 requests per day. Not that , which is rather not much. Also, IGDB's advanced search feature has been rewritten, and is now an even more powerful tool that is among the leaders of the pack. A feature that usually perfectly showcases the weaknesses embedded into the current models of genre definition, is an automated similar games search. The IGDB developers introduced this nonetheless, but also added the possibility for the users to add their own recommendations. Take a look at the recommendations page for the 1990's game Apprentice for an example.
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The Video Game Museum has two interesting new feature features about warning screens and messages for consoles. One feature is called "TurboGrafx CD / TurboGrafx-16 / Sega CD WARNING messages", the second one documents Gameboy Color / Neo Geo Pocket Color / WonderSwan Color games shoved inside their monochromatic predecessors. Once there, one should also checkout the Super Game Boy borders section which is also content that is likely to be found nowhere else.
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- A first look at the five databases that the Australian company DBolical is offering to the gaming world reveals some beautiful gaming data to explore:
- GameFront is the newestaddition addition to DBolical's portfolio. This site is a massive database and download site for game files. The content spans from full versions, patches, demos over to tools, trailers, music, maps, and whatnot. If it's a file and if it's gaming-related, it can probably be found there now or in the future.
- Indie DB is a portal for independent game developers to present their work and get in touch with players. By supporting the indie community, the database has acquired information about close to 30K games by now. The latest additions to the site are download widgets to embed into other sites, the possibility for developers to host game giveaways, and a price comparison feature.
Mod DB, which is the original site that started the DBolical story, describes itself as the "largest website dedicated to supporting independent development of games (user generated game content), including mods, addons and DLC." At the time of this writing, the site contains information about many thousands of game modifications, addons, total conversions, and also about over 650 game creation engines.
- The other two sites in the DBolical portfolio are Slide DB and VRDB. Both sites are similar in scope to Indie DB, where Slides DB aims at mobile developers, and VRDB tries to make an impact into the world of virtual reality games.
- The PlayStation DataCenter has the goal of documenting every PS game there is. Currently, there are three dedicated sites there for the PS1, PS2, and the PSP. The site features detailed information about thousands of releases with regular updates, and its own Youtube channel with many game play videos.
- The GameTDBdescribes describes itself as a wiki-style "Titles DataBase: a collaborative database of games for anyone to contribute and anyone to use in any game-related project.", and is obviously aimed to be a basis for emulator frontends, native game browsers, or collection trackers. The whole database can be downloaded and used without registration, for use on a website permission is required, though. Currently, there is coverage of Wii, Wii U, gameCube, 3DS, and the PS3.
- An interesting project is the hobbyDB, whose users are "building a giant database of every collectible ever made – from diecast cars to action figures to comic books to corkscrews." Of course, video games are collectibles, too, so they can be entered there with a rather detailed set of data attached to it. Furthermore, the first big bunch of data objects for video games was obviously imported from HUGADA, which is another project monitored here, as over 27K of the 28K database entries come from there and HUGADA founder Klaus Brandhorst is the video game expert at hobbyDB's Advisory Board.
- While Eli's Software Encyclopedia seems to have been abandoned quite some time ago, it still holds much valuable information about classic video game releases. For instance, check out the hundreds of releases listed for Apple Macintosh or Commodore 64. Or did you know the 1994 multi-platform edutainment release Tchaikovsky's 1812?
- TheGamesDB.net seems like a promising, eye-pleasing project with some 40K database entries, a first version of an API available (that even seems to be in use by some software projects), and a clear development plan. However, the admin posted a note at Christmas that the site will be migrated to some faster servers over the year change, but this doesn't seem to be finished, as I was unable to delve deeper into the data due to time-outs and database errors. Let's see next time if something improved!
- RF Generation is another rather big game database and community online since 2004. The primary feature of this project seems to be collection tracking, where users can select from over 113K database entries to add to their collection, where a database entry seems to be a game release or piece of hardware, thus the huge number. There's even collection checklists, a feature I did not see elsewhere until now. The interested reader can get a glimpse of the site's data model complexity reading through their game submission guidelines. Users can also use the site's infrastructure to maintain their own blog, and participate in a lively message board.
- Another site that wants to become the IMDB for video games is SPOnG. The database of this rather commercial project already features over 40K entries and an acceptable data complexity. Check out the pages for GTA IV or Doom III for a glimpse. There's also some editorial content such as reviews and other features offered.
- The first Brazilian project on our monitoring list is the Video Game Data Base, or VGDB. From what I could gather using the Google Translator, this project is aimed at consoles only, documenting hardware and software alike. Check out the pages for the Mega Drive and Battle Toads as examples. The data model shown on the game pages is rather simple, the focus seems to be more on collecting YouTube links with playthroughs for every game, as many game pages feature these. Unsurprisingly, the VGDB also has its own YouTube channel.
- As the name suggests, the Acorn Electron World collects everything about this British home computer. Using their own words, the project is "an electronic collection of everything that was ever produced for the Acorn Electron. This web site showcases libraries of professional and public domain software, companion discs, articles, instructions, reviews, screenshots, solutions and game help.". And as the first project I ever saw, the people behind AEW consider the database to be completed, as in having everything about the Electron archived. Hats off, if this is true!
- The people behind the Acorn Electron World also maintain the Dragon 32 Universe, which also has the goal of "building a library of all the software for the Dragon 32 computer and archiving it for future generations.". As regards games, they seem to have completed their goal by ~91%, which is great.
- The goal of the Handheld Games Museum is to "document (primarily photographically) every electronic handheld game made in the late 1970's to the mid 1980's.". The site seems to not have been updated since 2014, but nonetheless offers a wide variety of pictures of handheld electronic games.
- The LGDB (Linux Game Database) is - to no surprise - a crowd-sourced database for Linux games, which offers information about ~2050 games at the time of this writing. The goal of the site is not to collect as much games as possible, but to "list interesting games, that are likely to be played and are a valuable asset to the Linux gaming community". This project is definitely worth checking out for Linux gamers, it offers an acceptable data complexity within its modern design.
- The project System 16 - The Arcade Museum offers information about Arcade machines, namely hardware and games alike. Checkout Check out the page fopr for the joint Namco/Sega/Nintendo board Triforce to get a glimpse of the site's content.
- The IFDB (Interactive Fiction Database) solely focuses on the IF genre, which could also be described as "adventuring by reading and typing". The site lists around 8,500 games by now, and offers strong community features around its database. User reviews, user game lists, playlists and wishlists, and polls among them. The data complexity is also satisfying, check out the entry for Planetfall to get an impression.
- Another game genre with a humongous library is the Visual Novel, which could be described as eye-pleasing Interactive Fiction, but with little interactivity. The main site dedicated to this genre is the VNDB (Visual Novel Database). This project lists around 20,500 games as of now, with a data complexity that rivals the best projects out there. There's releases with screenshots, extensive additional data per release, a tagging system, character database, game relations, company and people credits, and so forth. Check out some random games for some database lover's eye candy.
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