Now the holiday season is approaching, MobyGames would just like to wish all of its contributors a very happy 2018, and a merry 2019, too!

As our database stats and daily requests for API access show, we continue to have the largest set of credits, screenshots and covers with open access anywhere online - and THANK YOU if you are a net contributors to it! Now, let's roll on, 2019...

As threatened for a while, contributors are now allowed to upload magazine ads that they've scanned onto MobyGames! We're really excited to build a database around these, since there's nowhere online that you can see them all in one place.

Some quick guidelines: Magazine Advertisement is now a promo image 'type'. So to add them, simply go to add 'promo images', create a new promo image group called Magazine Advertisements, and title each image with the magazine name, country, issue, and date. [Fabricated example: Sinclair User (United Kingdom), Issue 73 (September 1994).]

(If there are already some magazine ads uploaded for that game, then just add them to the existing promo image group. There are also a few edge cases, so feel free to discuss them in comments. And good luck!)

Congratulations are in order for the following MobyGames users for some new milestones:

- Riki has made it to 150k MobyPoints (9th in the all-time list.)
- Kam1Kaz3NL77 is now at 100k (14th all-time!)
- Harmony made it over 20k, an excellent achievement based on many obscure titles.
- Cavalary is at the 10k milestone - congrats there, too!

PS - Side note - we need some new 'Featured Game' reviews. Add some here, if you have a chance!

MobyGames contributor Ms. Tea has been a member of the site for some time, but has majorly stepped up contributions this year, adding a bunch of interesting & rare titles, so we wanted to thank her!

Some notable additions include the very rare Cookie's Bustle, an odd Japanese PC mini-game fest, as well as bizarre Nuon skydiving title Freefall 3050 AD and odd unofficial Genesis game Smart Mouse, among many others. Hurray!

It's increasingly tricky to keep up on MobyGames user milestones, but a quick shout-out to 3 regulars that I wrote down recently (& presumably isn't too out of date!)

Firstly, Patrick Bregger made it over 200,000 MobyPoints, and is currently 3rd all-time - much appreciated! Secondly, Pseudo_Intellectual has been on the site for nearly 15 years & made it over 60k Points in the past few weeks, woot. And thirdly, new contributor Leeona is already over 45k MobyPoints, in less than a year, many of them for Australian cover art we didn't have - SUPER impressive work, y'all.

Just a quick note - if you are a regular contributor to MobyGames, or would like to help us out after having contributed, we're looking for new approvers!

Your job (should you choose to accept it) is to scour the submission queues for info and verify that the user-submitted data is correct before it goes up on our website. We're also looking for existing approvers to expand their scope to new queues/platforms. Either way, please PM me and I can sort you out!

As we cruise through the summer months, wanted to highlight a couple of notable MobyGames contributors who just reached new milestones in terms of MobyPoints:

- GTramp, who has added all kinds of things but has been particularly strong on screenshots (13,000 so far!) has made it over 60,000 MobyPoints.

- mars_rulez, who is invaluable for adding brand new releases for PC and digital console, just made it over 40,000 points. So many thanks to him, too!

Do we have necessary requirements for user to enter tech specs for a specific game? Well, one obvious way is to go add the game or tech specs, and see if it's available.

Now, the easier way is simply to visit this updated 'Tech Specs' page and see if anything is missing and how data is grouped. That page lists all tech specs that currently exist on MobyGames, regardless of the platforms to which each spec is attached.

Feel free to comment on potential issues in the forum thread attached to this post!

In the past few days a couple more platforms have been added, so a brief introduction is in order...



Galaksija (left) was a do-it-yourself (DIY) computer made in ex-Yugoslavia in 1983. It used monochromatic monitor and text-mode graphics (two year later Galaksija Plus introduced hi-res mode with polygon graphics). How to assemble the computer was done in a magazine so everyone's computer looked a bit different. You wanted a joystick to play games? Take a soldering iron and build yourself one. That was the principle for upgrades. Here's a brief showcase of how the games looked on original Galaxy computer.

Amazon Alexa (right) has great many skills. Many of those skills are categorized as games and it was only a matter of time until it found itself on MobyGames. While many skills are entertaining, not all are actual games. Skill groups help determine that a bit, but best way is always to try it out, seeing how they're all free. What does Alexa game "look" like? Well, a word speaks 1000 of pictures ;))

Largely because Vedder is adding a mountain of old games in his attempt to document early titles better (look at 1976's much-augmented list, for example) Kabushi has added all of the below game platforms recently: PCs: Altair 8800, HP 9800, Intel 8008, Intel 8080, KIM-1, Microtan 65, SWTPC 6800, Tektronix 4050, Zilog Z80; Consoles: Bubble, Interton Video 2000, Tele-Spiel ES-2201, Telstar Arcade. And Vedder has added more since then which he can mention in the comments to this news story if he wants, haha.

Oh, and we added the Pokitto too! Go us!

Thanks to everyone for bearing with us through some site downtime a couple of days ago. Our (slightly old site) had its 'task manager' malfunction, so it required some complex surgery from Reed & special guest helper Brian H! Seems to be working now, but feel free to post or PM if you see anything amiss.

Secondly, we took advantage of the editing to add a new stretch MobyGoal - 7,000 iPhone games. Yep, we know they're not such a popular area to add for contributors, but there are a lot of smartphone games played by millions and not yet documented, so we thought we'd ask nicely!

Following up from the last post about this, and noting some of the congratulations mentioned in the news comments, wanted to point out:

- Rainer S, who does an amazing job of adding cover art for German titles in particular, is now over 100k MobyPoints, one of a select few (less than 15!) to ever do that.

- The incredibly methodical Piltdown Man is now over the 150k points mark - thanks to him for adding a lot of obscure PC shareware games of recent.

Thanks to these two, and please post other user milestones in the comments as you see them!