Things have been like a roller-coaster over here, as we've had a ton of new contributions from new people (thank you!), and at the same time we've been too busy to attend to them in a timely manner. I myself am moving into a new house this week, and will lose my high-speed Internet access for a month or more. Thank goodness we have contributing help from our resident third wheel David Berk, who was also quick to step in with this week's featured Game of the Week. And just how did he know that piece of trivia? He used to work for EA. :-)

Mark Isaacson contributed our 2800th entry with Glover

It turns out that our 2700th entry was a duplicate, so the real 2700th entry was the Christian "shooter" Catechumen, entered by Kasey Chang.

And it looks like that email blitz I was going to do never panned out, as I've spent the good half of today simply approving entries. Ah, brings a warmth to my heart to see so much activity...

William Shawn McDonie was the helpful user who contributed our 2700th entry, Fast Attack. Thanks, Will!

We found a pocket of free time last night and started to go through the many additions and corrections that helpful people have emailed to us at our support and contributions email addresses. The end result of this was a partially confusing barrage of return emails, as our helpful contributors were getting replies to email they'd sent months ago. Don't be alarmed if you get one of these. :-)

All of Monday we'll be doing the same thing, so expect some more "time warp" replies during that time.

We've received a fairly high number of emails criticizing us yet again for our Game of the Week selection. :-) This time, people have an issue with the text "...which not only debuted over a year before Doom but had a better 3D engine as well". A lot of people thought that Ultima Underworld's engine was a modified Wolfenstein 3D engine. It's not. Ultima Underworld's engine is a full 6-degrees-of-freedom engine, like Descent. You could just as well play a primitive version of Descent with UU's engine (which is exactly what happens in System Shock, which uses the same engine and is of course impossible with Doom's engine). You can go up slopes, go under bridges, look in any direction you want to, etc.

Just setting the record straight. :-) Yet another reason why Blue Sky Productions -- AKA Looking Glass Studios -- was way ahead of its time.

New stuff! The GOTW, weekly poll, and feature article have been changed. You read that right: We have a new feature article, courtesy of long-time contributor Tomer Gabel, which answers some burning questions about "What ever happened to One Must Fall?"

If anyone with some design and graphics skills is interested in helping us create some new themes for our upcomming release, please contact me for more information about what we are doing. I can be reached by email at bhirt@mobygames.com or on AIM, screenname is 'hirtb' Thanks.

I just approved a batch of covers scanned at a very high res (about 1400x1800) and had excellent color correction. Thanks! Kudos to those who take the time to scan and submit cover shots, as they really enrich the database for everyone.

Our mission of quality over quantity is working: Over half of the commercial games in the database have at least one cover on file. Kick ass!

William Shawn McDonie added our 2600th entry for approval, entitled Powerhouse.

I also found a couple of problems with the MobyGames Counter-Strike server (it would crash whenever some bozo would try to join with a wacko color logo spray), so it should remain up at all times from now on.

To start the year off with a bit of fun, we'd like to announce our Half-Life: Counter-Strike server, listed under the name "MobyGames.com CS 1.0 Server" in your favorite WON or GameSpy listing. Located on the same backbone as the MobyGames infrastructure, you should be able to get decent ping times from most corners of the western hemisphere; one Swedish friend of mine said he got a 150ms ping time, just as good as the servers he had access to in Sweden!.

I'm usually on it myself between 9pm and 11pm CST (-6 GMT), so if you want to serve me my ass on a platter during that time, you're welcome to try. ;-)

As with MobyGames itself, please report all cases of abuse you see on the MobyGames Counter-Strike server. We will deal swift and harsh punishment to all offenders. :-)

Happy New Year!