Irreplaceable Web Game Resources

dynagod · Post by **dynagod** » Sat May 27, 2006 9:12 pm

In light of the recent loss of the Sheeps world-of-arcades, its become painfully evident that there are some sites that are simply priceless in their wealth of "tribal knowledge". Loosing the sheeps site hurt..Not that all that info isnt out there somewhere, but having it all in one place,neatly filed was a luxury i dont think i quite fully appreciated till it was too late.
i would like to perform an archive of other sites, like Solvalous dip & rom structure archives for example, while their still kicking and all their links are still live. Its a hell of alot easier than trying to reconstruct them after the fact from fragments..
What other sites can you think of, shmup or arcade gaming related, that contain information that simply cannot be easily replaced or ammassed again?

Andi · Post by **Andi** » Sun May 28, 2006 12:02 am

Dude, I constantly fear for the safety of The Underdogs (the-underdogs.info). They get closed down, or have their domain stolen, or have some sort of huge site-crashing technical problem about twice a year...every year.

Great resource on (mostly western) computer games.

dynagod · Post by **dynagod** » Tue May 30, 2006 5:45 pm

I dia complete back up of System-16 over the weekend.
weighed in at a little over 1.6 gigs

icycalm · Post by **icycalm** » Tue May 30, 2006 7:37 pm

How exactly do you backup a site?

Post by **system11** » Tue May 30, 2006 7:50 pm

dynagod wrote:I dia complete back up of System-16 over the weekend.
weighed in at a little over 1.6 gigs

The guy who runs the site would rather you didn't, because he has to pay for the bandwidth.

Super Laydock · Post by **Super Laydock** » Tue May 30, 2006 8:31 pm

bloodflowers wrote:
dynagod wrote:I dia complete back up of System-16 over the weekend.
weighed in at a little over 1.6 gigs
The guy who runs the site would rather you didn't, because he has to pay for the bandwidth.

True, but what about asking permission to site owners? Telling hem you are archiving their site for the future good of gamers should help right!?

I'd help pay for a site completely compiling game site info... and I am sure others would too. Some of this info seem pretty much invaluable to me, and needs to be preserved somehow.

Sixtoe · Post by **Sixtoe** » Tue May 30, 2006 8:33 pm

bloodflowers wrote:
dynagod wrote:I dia complete back up of System-16 over the weekend.
weighed in at a little over 1.6 gigs
The guy who runs the site would rather you didn't, because he has to pay for the bandwidth.

It would be ironic, would it not, that in someone leaching the entire site to protect it caused it to vanish from the internet.

Also, your downloader is broken. If you are going to rip a site, make sure you do it right, the total size of the site is no bigger than 500 meg so you've wasted over 3 times the bandwidth you needed to. I hope you clicked on the banner advert a few times.

Toby...

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Tue May 30, 2006 11:12 pm

icycalm wrote:How exactly do you backup a site?

I assume there are tools out there to do this. If not, there's probably a Perl module. Save that, you could write a Perl script in a couple of hours probably.

TalkingOctopus · Post by **TalkingOctopus** » Wed May 31, 2006 12:35 am

GaijinPunch wrote:
icycalm wrote:How exactly do you backup a site?
I assume there are tools out there to do this. If not, there's probably a Perl module. Save that, you could write a Perl script in a couple of hours probably.

WGet - http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/

iatneH · Post by **iatneH** » Wed May 31, 2006 1:45 am

I kind of miss toaplan.com

Ganelon · Post by **Ganelon** » Wed May 31, 2006 3:05 pm

I've always relied on The Magic Box and Insert Credit for gaming news. They cover pretty much all the gaming news that I'm interested in. Occasionally, I check out VideogamerX if I want bleeding edge news.

Hardcore Gaming has pretty detailed series reviews that would be sorely missed if it ever went down.

And Langrisser would lose its only comprehensive coverage if the Xingyin site disappeared.

dynagod · Post by **dynagod** » Wed May 31, 2006 4:04 pm

indeed, its not the best way to go about it, but the very first thing posted when sheeps site went down by posters was
"does anyone have a backup of the site?"

the reason for the size is because im also archiving all offsite links up to 4 levels just to ensure that any pertinent offsite info is also kept. the System-16 folder is only one of 30 folders to archive the site completely. 29 of which are from external sites. So the 1.6gb worth of bandwidth consumption was NOT on system-16's shoulders.

the program i use is one given to me by a friend who runs a hosting company. its extremely effective at ripping a site from stem to stern. archives, images, files of any type. ANYTHING that resides under that domain name is harvested.

more sites need to go this route.

If you donate $15 or more ($21 for non-US addresses) to help offset costs, we will mail you a free DVD-ROM with the entire Coinop.Org Knowledgebase

http://coinop.org/donate.aspx

Blade · Post by **Blade** » Wed May 31, 2006 5:19 pm

Might I suggest some of the more dedicated shmupper fans download as much PC shmup programs as they can from said sites and just back them up somewhere so that when a dedicated server is found, gamers can obtain the stuff?

Benjamin · Post by **Benjamin** » Wed May 31, 2006 6:36 pm

dynagod wrote:What other sites can you think of, shmup or arcade gaming related, that contain information that simply cannot be easily replaced or ammassed again?

KLOV and the Genesis Collective come to mind. I know Good Cow Films has a SegaNet archive up along with a bunch of other stuff that's nice to still be able to check out.

Have you tried archive.org to revisit old sites? The Wayback Machine will time out quite a bit since the server is so slow, but if you check at off peak hours, I'd bet it'd turn up the site.

D · Post by D » Thu Jun 01, 2006 9:02 am

Maybe we should make a list of gaming sites that we need to backup in case of dissappearance. (Damn, look at what kind of nerd I've become)
This official sega site comes to mind:
http://sega.jp/community/segahard/
all hardware and software released by Sega before the Dreamcast
I bet some of you were unaware of this site for instance:
http://sega.jp/community/album/12_gunstar/
what about crazykong.com

Thunder Force · Post by **Thunder Force** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 10:10 am

Sixtoe wrote:
bloodflowers wrote:
dynagod wrote:I dia complete back up of System-16 over the weekend.
weighed in at a little over 1.6 gigs
The guy who runs the site would rather you didn't, because he has to pay for the bandwidth.
It would be ironic, would it not, that in someone leaching the entire site to protect it caused it to vanish from the internet.

Also, your downloader is broken. If you are going to rip a site, make sure you do it right, the total size of the site is no bigger than 500 meg so you've wasted over 3 times the bandwidth you needed to. I hope you clicked on the banner advert a few times.

Toby...

Quoted for emphasis.

AAA niche sites like System16.com must be a big enough burden to maintain already, it would be tragic to kill their future with excessive unnecessary leaching.

chtimi-CLA · Post by **chtimi-CLA** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 10:17 am

the AIVA site with all the records should be mentionned too

FatCobra · Post by **FatCobra** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 12:56 pm

Despite the fact that their forums are full of whiners, I would be upset if GameFaqs suddenly fell off the face of the earth. The user-sent FAQS are great and the reviews are good because they are made by gamers who actually played the games. *

*Although a review is still just an opinion, but if there is unaminous hate or praise, then they must be right, right?

Benjamin · Post by **Benjamin** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 2:46 pm

Speak of the devil...

http://www.sega-saturn.com/

Post by **system11** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 2:48 pm

Looks like a prank or a defacing.

mice · Post by **mice** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 3:27 pm

dynagod, you now that Sixtoe is the owner of system16, right?
So you could have at least answered his post in a polite manner...
Just my 2cc.

crithit5000 · Post by **crithit5000** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 5:25 pm

bloodflowers wrote:Looks like a prank or a defacing.

Nope, DaveZ killed his personal site off as well.

dynagod · Post by **dynagod** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 6:33 pm

damn good sites are dropping like flies.
its a shame that the way back machine wasnt more comprehensive.

shmups.system11.org

Irreplaceable Web Game Resources

Irreplaceable Web Game Resources

Re: Irreplaceable Web Game Resources