PC-FX was NEC's Japan-only console; the first games for it were released in the late 1994, the last in 1998. It sold very poorly and was heavily criticized for abundance of licensed anime titles with limited gameplay. Nevertheless, it is still dear to some anime-loving gamers, mainly thanks to beautiful anime-style FMVs in its games, but also because of some rare exclusive quality titles (such as for example Team Innocent).

I'm proud to announce than the entire PC-FX library (61 games) is now documented on MobyGames. The one "missing" entry is Anime Freak Vol. 4; however, this peculiar "magazine on CD" does not contain, unlike other installments of this series, any games.

I would like to thank the approvers (especially Servo) for the fast and flawless approval process that made adding all those games a pleasure for me.

I also thank the creators of Magic Engine FX, the outstanding PC-FX emulator.

I have submitted game entries and captured screenshots for most of the games (unfortunately, a few titles do not work with the current version of the emulator). What is severely lacking are PC-FX covers; only a few games in the database have them. PC-FX collectors of all countries, unite! We need more covers! :)

Analytically browsing through German games magazines, Patrick Bregger has managed to add almost 500 games in the 8 months he's been registered at the site. Not to mention a great number of MobyRanks, credits and trivia.

Props! And keep up the good work.

More than a year after our previous featured article, The World of Western RPGs by Drunken Irishman (now known as Rabbi Guru), we have a special treat for you!

Our resident expert Unicorn B. Lynx tackles a much-overlooked games genre: Hentai RPGs. An elephant in the room, never shown on our frontpage, but buried deep down into the search engine, the history and highlights of the genre are dissected. Unicorn B. Lynx distils the essential gameplay that made its mark, to weed out the titles that are important and need to be played, and not just for the pretty pictures.

Read Leveling Down: The Story of Hentai RPGs

I remember that once Kitsune Sniper told me he would probably never reach 10,000 contribution points here at MobyGames. Well, turns out he did! Kit is here for 6 years now and is mostly known among the regulars for his intense forum activity (not only at our boards, by the way) and his approval duties. He's also a licensed English/Spanish translator, if you need one! =P

Congratulations, Kit, and keep up the good work!

Brian has updated the search engine based on the feedback we received in the last round of testing. The new search is now the default search engine being used. The old search engine is still accessible for a little while longer. We encourage you to keep testing the new search and provide us with feedback. In another few weeks, we will be removing the old search completely. Thanks for all the valuable feedback.

We've also set up a MobyGames Twitter account. News posts are automatically tweeted when they are approved. If you have other ideas on how to integrate with Twitter, we would love to hear your suggestions in the forum.

Contributor, approver, and recently an admin of MobyGames, the world-famous Xoleras just surpassed Corn Popper as MG's all-time Number Two contributor. Is it just a matter of time before he surpasses the unsurpassable Sciere? Will gold and silver medals remain forever in Europe? Stay tuned.

Brian put out a new quick search yesterday that has made a lot of improvements in usability and more relevant results based on the input of our admins and approvers. We now feel it's ready for more general testing. You can access it from the quick search page. Right now, the old search is still the default, but you can switch back and forth between them. Please take some time and check it out. We also encourage you to seed us feedback with the provided link on the search page and/or this news thread so we can continue to improve it and make it better. Once we've run it through the hoops, we'll switch the new search to the default and finally phase out the old search.

Although roughly 400 points ago, it still needs to be noted that yet another contributor has passed the legendary 10,000 point line. This time it was djsquarewave, with his immense knowledge of all things Japanese and console related. He's been relentless in updating, contributing and adding missing information on everything and anything Japanese in the roughly two years since he registered his user name on MobyGames.

Keep up the good work, and keep the submissions coming!

One of the misfits in gaming history, this year marks the Lynx's twentieth anniversary. Although ambitious at the time, the Lynx ultimately faded into obscurity.

Released in 1989, at a price of $189.95, the Lynx was the first to feature a full color, back lit LCD screen. Released the same year as the Game Boy, Lynx seemed to do reasonably well in it's first year. It has much better graphics than Game Boy, and stereo sound. It even had a couple of popular games like Paper Boy and Raiden.

But sadly, due to it's price, notoriously short battery life, and few quality titles, it started to fade away quickly. In 1991 the Lynx was slimmed down, the price was dropped and was given slightly better battery life, but not even that could save it. By 1992 it was all but extinct. The Lynx now has a small fan base, but any future hardware seems unlikely. A not so Happy Anniversary to the Lynx.

For those of you who weren't feeling old enough, this year the Genesis also hits the twenty year mark. The console that dared to knock Nintendo off their perch as number one console in the world, it's remembered as one of the best consoles ever made, and for it's notorious rivalry with the Super Nintendo. Launched in 1989, it was bundled with Altered Beast. In 1991 Sega launched it's signature game, Sonic, and by 1992 it had managed to gain a 55% market share over the Super Nintendo.

The Genesis was praised for it's wide assortment of games. Everything from shooters to RPGs. In 1993 Sega got the edge over Nintendo by having a uncensored version of Mortal Kombat on the Genesis. The Genesis was on top of the world. But two poor add-ons (Sega CD and 32X) dampened it's popularity. Along with Donkey Kong Country, Nintendo was slowly chipping away at Sega. Despite this, the Genesis was still on store shelves all the way into 1998.

Still one of Sega's most popular consoles, the games it spawned are still popular today. Emulation and game collections still make it a highly regarded console today. Happy anniversary Genesis.

This year also marks the tenth anniversary of Sega's last console, the Dreamcast. A bold, but unsuccessful attempt to put themselves back on top of the console world. Released in 1999, it sold 500,000 units in just two weeks. It featured revolutionary graphics at the time that even beat out some PC games.

While not the first console with online capabilities, (that would be the Saturn), it was the first to offer broadband internet play. It was well beloved by gamers, but was ultimately crushed by Sony's Playstation 2. Sega, who no longer produced hardware after the Dreamcast's failure, went on to produce software for all consoles.

A console ahead of it's time, and one that died too soon, the Dreamcast will always have a special place in videogame history.

Happy anniversary to the Lynx, Genesis and Dreamcast !

To strengthen the forces working at the back-end of the site, long-time German contributor and approver Xoleras has been appointed an administrator at the site. After getting used to all the quirks and inner workings, I'm sure he'll be able to get a lot more done. Good luck!

Thirteen years after its original release, the fine people over at Policenauts.net released an English translation patch for the PSX version of the critically acclaimed adventure/interactive movie game Policenauts, developed by this little fellow, who was still fairly unknown back then. The game can finally be played by people incapable (or not sufficiently capable) of deciphering the geometrical explosion known as written Japanese.

The translation includes each and every depiction of kanji in the whole game. Voice acting was thankfully left alone. Even the game's rare bugs have been eliminated, and a (for unknown reasons) previously locked text choice has been unlocked and can be selected for the first time.

A critical bug is currently corrupting the game data in various areas. To prevent further damage, all approvals are currently on hold until the system is back to normal. As soon as this is resolved, expect the regular updates to be back on speed. We'll keep you posted.

Update: Brian was out of town this weekend, sorry for the delay in getting a fix pushed out. The good news is that everything is working fine now and there wasn't any data corruption. It turned out to be an problem with caching, which also had an easy fix.