Get Your Kicks On Route 66

Todays marks the day that MobyGames co-founder Brian Hirt starts "the great American pilgrimage" -- traversing Route 66 from start to end. Route 66 symbolized the renewed spirit of optimism that pervaded the country after economic catastrophe and global war. Often called "The Main Street of America", it linked a remote and under-populated region with two vital 20th century cities - Chicago and Los Angeles.

Brian is taking this trip differently -- he's bicycling the entire 2400 miles. Just Brian, his bike, and various gadgets like an MP3 player and his laptop. You can follow his plans and progress at his Route 66 website. Check it out once a week to see what he sees.

Needless to say, any bugs found in MobyGames are going to have to wait until he gets back! :-)

Andrew Jenner slipped The Game With No Name in under our noses to become the 1300th database entry. Kudos to Andrew!

And on a more sad note: Phil Katz, the creator of the world's most successful compression format/program PKZIP and a hallmark of BBSes everywhere, was found dead in his apartment at the tender age of 37. RIP, PK.

The aforementioned code rollout is live, with new features that a lot of you have asked for (such as grayed-out links on the rap sheet if the info doesn't exist), and some new features that we've wanted (like some internal processes that make approvals quicker and easier for us). And even a feature nobody asked for: screenshot thumbnails are much more intelligible.

If you've wondered why we haven't approved many game entries lately, it's because we're gearing up for a new code rollout. The new codebase contains some behind-the-scenes changes that help us approve entries quickly, so by tomorrow morning, you should see at least 30 new game entries added to the database.

One of our users asked a good question that deserves being answered here: "What exactly is a 'booter'?" A booter, as per the MobyGames platform moniker, is any game that came on a self-booting diskette that used its own operating system. In the PC world, this means that it didn't require DOS; in fact, the diskette wasn't even readable by DOS. Booters are hard to find nowadays, as they were almost always 5.25" disks and usually only ran on original PCs.

Andrew Jenner, creator of the Digger Remastered program and website, slips us past the 1200 game entry mark with a rare oldie, Floppy Frenzy. Way to go, Andrew!