Added Ski or Die, Music Construction Set, and Chuck Yeager's Air Combat to the Game Giveaway. Let's hope they last more than a day this time! :-) --Jim

Good grief! The two games I added to the giveaway were already claimed by the time I checked mail today. Dang, that was fast. I guess I'll just have to add more tonight... --Jim

Two more games for the Game Giveaway! I've added Lakers vs. Celtics and Terra Nova to the list; more to come in the next few days...

I noticed some typos and other stuff wrong with the History section of the FAQ, so I managed to correct and slightly expand that as well. Happy reading for the curious... --Jim

The FAQ has been updated for the first time in a while; an hour was spent reworking various sections to be more correct, specific, etc. The two sections that changed the most were the legal mumbo-jumbo section and the Who's Behind MobyGames? question. A new question was also added regarding "How do I enter established game styles, like "Doom" games, "Sierra" games, etc.?".

A couple of people have written in to mention that a petition has been started over at www.star-control.com to try to convince Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III to write another game in the vein of their Star Control masterpieces. Head on over to sign it if you agree.

Just added Knights of the Sky to the Game Giveaway. More to come...

We rolled out a new codebase today that fixes minor bugs, changes the sort order of some reports, etc.

One new addition to the database, however, is alternate titles. For example, most non-North American countries know the game "Out Of This World" as "Another World", so we added the ability to contribute that information. You can not only see alternate titles displayed on the main Rap Sheet for a game, but you can also do searches for them. You can even reference alternate titles in mobytags. For typical examples of alternate titles, check out King's Quest or Out Of This World. For a particularly extreme example, check out Firehawk -- you can thank Sierra's and Game Art's marketing campaign for that fiasco. :-)

New alternate titles can be contributed by going to that game entry's Rap Sheet and selecting Contribute, then Alternate Titles.

Quick news bites: Our second Feature Article is all queued up and ready to go for the month of February, so look for it then. No advance previews, sorry, but if you want a hint, it's an article about one of MobyGames' co-founder's favorite games of all time. A future Feature Article slated for March will be about something many of you have discovered: The (not-so) wonderful world of Abandonware.

If you'd like to write a feature article (and snag some additional bonus Contribution Points for it), feel free to email contributions@mobygames.com with ideas.

I had no idea just how many Kroz games there were until about 4 hours ago. I guess you learn something new every day. --Jim

I grew antsy waiting for someone to add an entry, so I added S.D.I. to the database and tipped us over the edge to 700 game entries in the database. Great job everyone!

On a related note, we're up to 5440 developers (did you ever think there were that many people involved in making games?) and a very coincidental 3333 screenshots.

The style guide now correctly refers to the "game" modifier instead of the other non-working one. Again, sorry about that. Also, the style guide used to state that there is no default behavior when a modifier is omitted; this is now incorrect, and the guide tells you what the default behavior is (does a quick keyword search).

Tags, Tags, and More Tags

The Good News: The use of MobyTags is way up, which enriches the database. Thanks to everyone!

The Bad News: MobyTags are being use incorrectly sometimes. The big problem is the "game" tag. This is the tag that lets you link directly to a game. People have been using "title" instead, which doesn't exist (but we said it did in the documentation so that's our fault -- doh!). We're going to be correcting all the "title" tags into "game" tags in the database to fix this, and also change the documentation later today, but keep this in mind if you don't read documentation. :-)

Also, a reminder that the "developer" tag is for people, not companies; for companies, use the "company" tag. We've seen this confused recently.

Don't get us wrong--we are delighted that people are taking the time to enhance the text they enter with MobyTags; we originally added them for our own benefit, but when we documented them in the style guide, they took off. Big thanks to everyone who uses them!

MobyTrivia: MobyTags were conceived when Jim wondered out loud how to show that Jon Freeman was married to Anne Westfall when you brought up either's Bio page, and Brian suggested them as a concept.

A couple of people are nearing their Game Giveaway mark, so I thought I'd quickly mention that we'll be adding at least three more games to the giveaway in the next week. So if something doesn't appeal to you initially, wait a week and check back here (new Game Giveaway additions are always announced in the News section).

We've added a Horror genre and clarified the Cyberpunk and Sci-Fi / Futuristic (formerly Space) genres so that their definitions make more sense and apply to more games while still maintaining integrity with the information already in the database (ie the existing "Space" games still fit and work under the new moniker "Sci-Fi / Futuristic". Look for these when you add new games to the database, and be sure to read the defintions if you're not sure you know what they mean.

Actually, I'll stress that again: Read the definitions. :-) A couple of times last week, people were asking questions like "Where's the 'God Game', 'Sierra-style', or 'Ultima' genres?" "God Game" is the slang term given to Managerial games, classic Sierra adventures are Adventure + 3rd-Person perspective, and Ultima games are Adventure + Role-Playing + Top-Down perspective. As a historical archive project, we classify things objectively, not by referring to other games. Saying that Phantasie has "Ultima and Wizardry-style elements" doesn't help anyone, since you have to be familiar with Ultima and Wizardry first to understand what that means.

We've added a new genre keyword to the "Other" category called "Media Conversion". This denotes any game that was originally a movie, TV show, book, or other work of fiction before it was a game. Some media conversions are obvious, like The Three Stooges or Blade Runner, but some are not so obvious, like Below The Root, Circuit's Edge, or Companions of Xanth. Food for thought.

Okay, www.cinemaware.com is back online. 'Nuff said.

Okay, I'm not having a psychotic episode--www.cinemaware.com really did exist and was awesome. But first it returned 0 bytes, now it refuses connections. :-(

Further clarification: It was a website put together by two game industry people, not by the reformed Cinemaware itself (although it did mention some future Cinemaware projects, so one can only hope). Let's hope this all gets ironed out. -- Jim

Unfortunately, it seems as if the www.cinemaware.com website is down. It definitly existed last night; I hope that the webmasters can fix the problem soon, since it's a welcome sight for sore eyes. -- Jim

Cinemaware is back! Woohoo!

Box Cover Madness! Check out Recent Modifications to see all of the new box covers that have been improved or added.

Special thanks go to Andy Roark for sending us a CD full of covers of his personal collection over 6 months ago when we were just getting started.

Murphy's Law dictates that I shouldn't tempt fate through humor, as evidenced by the last news item. Around midnight, I tested something and accidentally brought MobyGames down, resulting in about an hour's worth of downtime. Sorry for the inconvience...

Here's wishing you a happy, healthy, and safe Year 2000 celebration.

-- Jim