Updates

For years I have kept the comment section completely open to anyone who wishes to ask questions or share their opinions. Spam has always been an issue for the comments section, but it was manageable aside from the occasional spike in bot activity.

The situation changed a couple of years ago, when the amount of spam the site recieved tripled from a handful of comments a day to 20-30 and it’s only gotten worse over time. These comments often have nothing to do with the subject of gaming and contain links to dubious websites. At the same time, legitimate comments sometimes get flagged as spam. This has made it necessary to review every comment manually, which is annoying when 99% of them are from bots. Even worse, time spent combing through spam is time not spent on improving this website.

Over the years I’ve temporarily locked the comments for non-registered users during periods of excessive spam. Usually, I’ve only had to lock comments for a month at most. This method has done little to combat the current spam avalanche, so I’m locking comments to non-registered users indefinitely.

I hate to do this, because I know keeping track of accounts in this day and age is a headache, but the security of this site and its users has to come first. If you wish to leave a comment, please take a few minutes to create an account as shown in the Login/Create Account tab. I’m sorry for the inconvenience, with any luck I’ll be able to reopen the comments to everyone some day.

A few days ago the comments section was locked in an effort to combat spam. This happens every year or so. I have reopened the comments section to everyone and it will likely remain that way for a while.

The comments section is usually open to everyone, but a massive influx of spam has forced me to restrict it to logged in users. Anyone who wishes to comment on a page or topic is welcome to create an account and log in to do so. The comments section will be reopened to anonymous users in the near future.

Visitors can now create their own accounts complete with profiles and avatars, via the Login/Create Account option on the main menu. A forum, which is also located on the main menu, has also been added. The comment section is open to all, but you will need an account to post on the forum. Right now the forum is under construction. Users can make reply to posts, create topics, and choose the Retro Game of the Month. More features are on the way.

Accounts are free and we do not share private user information, though forum posts and profile information can be viewed publicly.

Spring must be spam season, because we’re getting a huge influx of fake comments. To combat this I’ve placed some temporary restrictions on our comments sections. This means it may take a while for your comment to appear (anywhere from 30 minutes to 6 hours) so don’t worry if your comment isn’t visible right away.

I hate having to do this, but spam comments almost always contain links to malicious sites and I would rather visitors be slightly inconvenienced than see something unpleasant happen to someone who accidentally clicked on a bad link. Spam also makes it difficult for real humans whi have something to say to get their message across, which is another reason why I put anti-spam measures in place. I would share a few choice words for the individuals behind this spam campaign, but the likelihood that they are even aware of the existence of this site is near zero, so I won’t waste my time.

The restrictions will be in place until the deluge slows down to its usual or trickle, which will hopefully only take a day or two. Once again, I apologize for this inconvenience.

While the last round of improvements saw better navigation for game home pages and save file pages, this next upgrade will be applied to guides, reviews, and cheat/password pages. The premise will be the same for the most part, since it is just a simple bar with links to the home page and game catalog for each title.

That said, the new system will only be applied to newly added titles for the time being. There’s hundreds of pages that could use this upgrade, but I want to focus on adding to the site for a while. With any luck I’ll slowly start converting older pages this winter.

~tankMage

Our resident movie buff Grawlix is back after a long break with a review for From Dusk Till Dawn! The Movie Review page has also been cleaned up a bit, so it should be easier use.