What happened to darkcityproductions.com? PC Engine fan page

[greg]

I have attempted to contact the maintainer of one site that I miss, Darkcityproducions's Turbo Duo Page. This link is to web.archive.org's cache of the page. The guy had an awesome Valis website on that page. A lot of this stuff isn't surviving even on the web archive site. He had a great gallery of PC Engine CD-Rom error images that are not displaying in this cached version.

I pay for my own domain name and I have like a godzillion megabytes of storage space I'd never begin to fully utilize. I'd like to host this site as an archive on my own page. I've tried reaching out to the maintainer of this site, but even his hotmail account is gone.

Does anybody know what happened to darkcityproductions.com?

[D]

Never knew about this site, cool. lots of stuff.
I love Valis on the SNES, great music.
Like a contact all other pc engine sites/forums? you will find it, probably.
good luck

[ZOM]

He had a great gallery of PC Engine CD-Rom error images

Reading that i suddenly remembered what site you're talking about... can't believe it's gone for good. Last time I visited must've been a few years back.
I hope you can contact the guy, having a backup of his stuff would be nice.

[greg]

Thanks, guys. I'm registering at pcenginefx.com's forum there to ask around there. It's sad when decent homepages disappear like this.

I personally find it depressing how nobody makes true websites anymore. For example, there's a great game-dedicated fan pages such as this Fire Emblem site. But everything is shifting over to the blogosphere. Some retro gaming blogs are great, like magweasel.com, but increasingly the old-style home-made gaming sites are going by the wayside. I'm happy if some game sites remain even if they are not updated, such as Dave's Sega-Saturn.com page that was resurrected. I myself have maintained a Super Famicom-dedicated site for the past 13 years. Although I don't update it much anymore, it's still there and I do work on it from time to time.

Blogs are lazy and they don't have the charm that scratchbuilt homepages written in HTML have. Wordpress is okay, but I have no interest in Facebook or least of all Myspace. Fan-made gaming sites are a dying artform.

[Ed Oscuro]

Blogs are a great way to spread tons of good content out over years in a fashion so nobody can find any specific thing they're looking for. (Tags are no excuse!)

[ZOM]

I fully agree with Oscuro's post, I find myself more and more wasting time on wading through uninteresting life-stories until I find that one bit of info I'm looking for.
Not to mention that google isn't the smartest either when it comes to show the direct link of my search results.

[greg]

Tell me about it. Google is no longer the search engine it used to be. Now it heavily favors profit commercial businesses over content. 10 years ago, doing a search for Super Famicom on Google would show my own Super Famicom-dedicated page as well as others that base the entire content of the site on it. Now, do a search for Super Famicom, you get game sales, Myspace, Amazon.com, retail sites, Twitter.... OK, so now there's a Super Famicom T-shirt I now want, but still...

[ZOM]

Tell me about it. Google is no longer the search engine it used to be. Now it heavily favors profit commercial businesses over content.

Funny story: a few days back I got a call from a security systems company, lady on the phone was trying to sell me stuff; she opened the talk by asking me to google "alarm sytems (in german on google.ch)" and supposedly they should've been on the first spot. Only reply I could give to the lady was "I'm sorry, seems like a few other companies just payed more than you!", they weren't even on the first page.

The worst part is their new business practice, I mean come on, you don't start pointing your potential customer to show on which freaking spot yout company is on a search-engine!

[undamned]

10 years ago, doing a search for Super Famicom on Google would show my own Super Famicom-dedicated page as well as others that base the entire content of the site on it. Now, do a search for Super Famicom, you get game sales, Myspace, Amazon.com, retail sites, Twitter...

If it's obscure enough, it'll still be on top. For example googling "F3 PCB" get's my article on the first page. You just need something crazy like "Superfamicom eats Godzilla's Baby!" Then again, getting people to search for that would prove difficult.
-ud

[greg]

Well, if you search for "anime super famciom," my site does show up first on the list on google at least.

[GaijinPunch]

Blogs are a great way to spread tons of good content out over years in a fashion so nobody can find any specific thing they're looking for. (Tags are no excuse!)

Tags work if implemented properly. You've never found a useful bit of information in a blog?

[greg]

Tags are okay, but a table of contents would be more concise. When blog posts have so many multiple tags, it becomes cloudy. I enjoy blogs, but I prefer straightforward information.

[greg]

Double post time.

Someone at the pcenginefx.com website pointed me to the new home for the site:
http://www.electrohaze.com/duo/

Unfortunately, none of the links seem to work since they're all pointed back to his darkcityproductions.com site that's now defunct. Hopefully he'll find the time to return the website to its original state.

[ZOM]

Thank's for the link. The system card error archive works!
http://www.electrohaze.com/duo/Error_arc.shtml

[greg]

I've had no problems relocating my website three times already. His mistake was to put the full URL into each of the links. Since he's working from one only one site, all he needed to do was use the / and ../ for the filename references.

[electrohaze]

Ironic to find this post 2016.

I am totally replying to a 6 year old thread.

Here goes. This is Darkman aka DJ Electrohaze of the old darkcityproductions.com. In 2006 I bought electrohaze.com and eventually stopped updating darkcityproductions.com and the turbo duo pages. I started doing DJ stuff instead. I wanted to keep the duo pages up, but at some point I didn't want to pay for the domain anymore. For some reason I lost a lot of files in the switch over in 2008 to electrohaze.com. I tried to fix it, and recover lost files... But I lost intrest in doing so, as I sold my entire game collection in 2008-2009 before moving to Japan in 2010.

Now come 2016 some guy out of the blue was asking me about an old project, Ys Special Edition. It was nothing more than me figuring out how to rip the tracks from Ys 1 & 2, replace them and burn it back to a working duo cd again. I guess back in 1999 that was pretty cool, especially sense I made a sexy package design too. Anyway, he wanted the ISO of the game from me that I made. It just so happens I have that CDR still... I made the ISO and updated the page to have the link work again. I imagine the link has been broken for many years.... Also, I discovered some backups of lost images, etc... I am slowly trying to figure out 15 year old HTML I did that makes no since!

I am a bit excited to try to restore my old pages, and although I am not a PCE collector anymore, I still have a few gems laying around... hopefully I'll get some time this year to clean it up, who knows? Maybe I'll even update it.

[GaijinPunch]

My page is basically static -- I have almost no games here although I bust some out every now and again. I will fix up the code at some point but I'm quite lazy about it. Hard to when the pages of old aren't exactly relevant. But, I tip my hat to you. Thanks for checking in.

[GSK]

My page is basically static -- I have almost no games here although I bust some out every now and again. I will fix up the code at some point but I'm quite lazy about it. Hard to when the pages of old aren't exactly relevant. But, I tip my hat to you. Thanks for checking in.

I was going to ask about this, actually--there are a ton of translated interviews and other articles on your site that are no longer accessible, even via wayback. If you don't have the time to fix your site, is there any chance you might just throw the raw text up somewhere so blackoak or someone else can rehost it, if it still exists?

[GaijinPunch]

My page is basically static -- I have almost no games here although I bust some out every now and again. I will fix up the code at some point but I'm quite lazy about it. Hard to when the pages of old aren't exactly relevant. But, I tip my hat to you. Thanks for checking in.

I was going to ask about this, actually--there are a ton of translated interviews and other articles on your site that are no longer accessible, even via wayback. If you don't have the time to fix your site, is there any chance you might just throw the raw text up somewhere so blackoak or someone else can rehost it, if it still exists?

I actually fixed them like an hour ago. You have to use the drop down menu to go through pages, and the static links (in any given translation) won't work, but it's better than nothing. I'll make it better as my life starts to get more routine. It was a bit embarrassing, but these things happen as we get older. Feedback appreciated though.

[Strikers1945guy]

My page is basically static -- I have almost no games here although I bust some out every now and again. I will fix up the code at some point but I'm quite lazy about it. Hard to when the pages of old aren't exactly relevant. But, I tip my hat to you. Thanks for checking in.

I was going to ask about this, actually--there are a ton of translated interviews and other articles on your site that are no longer accessible, even via wayback. If you don't have the time to fix your site, is there any chance you might just throw the raw text up somewhere so blackoak or someone else can rehost it, if it still exists?

I actually fixed them like an hour ago. You have to use the drop down menu to go through pages, and the static links (in any given translation) won't work, but it's better than nothing. I'll make it better as my life starts to get more routine. It was a bit embarrassing, but these things happen as we get older. Feedback appreciated though.

Gamengai was one of the best things to happen to my life

You can't take that away !

[GaijinPunch]

I would never try to.

[STG]

I was going to ask about this, actually--there are a ton of translated interviews and other articles on your site that are no longer accessible, even via wayback. If you don't have the time to fix your site, is there any chance you might just throw the raw text up somewhere so blackoak or someone else can rehost it, if it still exists?

I actually fixed them like an hour ago.

Thank you GaijinPunch, always enjoyed the translations you provided!

[electrohaze]

I miss the way webpage development and game collecting used to be.... sigh.

Anyway... I am a bit inspired you could say to try to fix these pages... long overdue... maybe I can keep the motivation to add some updates too. I always wanted to go into the Valis pages and talk about how the series went the way of the hentai.. and update the content.

DJ and music stuff is a lot more of my life now... I noticed a lot of music on the PCE games is really great, but needs a lot of EQing and remastering... I am very tempted start something new. Not sure what I am going to do yet...

For now, enjoy the Ys Special Edition page, with ISO downloadable and package design! http://electrohaze.com/duo/ysse.shtml
It's mostly working! (not sure why time images are all funky on the top...)

[GSK]

My page is basically static -- I have almost no games here although I bust some out every now and again. I will fix up the code at some point but I'm quite lazy about it. Hard to when the pages of old aren't exactly relevant. But, I tip my hat to you. Thanks for checking in.

I was going to ask about this, actually--there are a ton of translated interviews and other articles on your site that are no longer accessible, even via wayback. If you don't have the time to fix your site, is there any chance you might just throw the raw text up somewhere so blackoak or someone else can rehost it, if it still exists?

I actually fixed them like an hour ago. You have to use the drop down menu to go through pages, and the static links (in any given translation) won't work, but it's better than nothing. I'll make it better as my life starts to get more routine. It was a bit embarrassing, but these things happen as we get older. Feedback appreciated though.

Oh wow, cool! I think yours might be the only Dangun Feveron interview anywhere on the net, so getting that back is particularly appreciated, even if it's fairly terse.

[GaijinPunch]

Glad to help. The translations were one of the fun things I did. I started another one and got like halfway through it before I lost steam. Was pretty cool... maybe one day I'll find the work I did and pick up on it.

[electrohaze]

Glad to help. The translations were one of the fun things I did. I started another one and got like halfway through it before I lost steam. Was pretty cool... maybe one day I'll find the work I did and pick up on it.

That's the real trick isn't it? "maybe one day"

The big mistake I made was moving over to the other domain. I should have continued to pay for the old domain and left it alone... trying to go back to something I did 15 years ago and picking up the pieces is a nightmare. Even if only like 1 person visits my old pages, that's enough for me to want to fix it... but really, I just want to do it for myself. It's like restoring an old memory.

Nice to bring back old projects isn't it? Or at least try to restore old ones.... ever look back at something you did in the past and wonder how you found the time to do it? Or don't even know how you did it?

[GaijinPunch]

Totally. I moved mine to AWS b/c even now after my free year, it's cheaper every month by like $15, and I needed the excuse to try some new stuff as I was looking for any type of tech work. I cut my teeth on AngularJS, but I never finished as I found employment (in the same sector as before). I'll clean it up soon (winter has kicked in) but I definitely do not have the passion I once did, and most of that is due to the gaming environment these days.

[Strikers1945guy]

GaijinPunch do you have any PCBs left at all or just some console stuff left these days? I know a cross continental move with arcade gear would be near impossible just curious if you saved anything at all? You surly kept that Espgaluda II kit? That thing was your baby