RF Generation Message Board

Hello all.

I would like your feedback on a website project that I have been working on for the past few months - The Video Game Console Library.

This site is dedicated to both mainstream and the obscure video game systems, with technical data and reviews/ratings on each. Only about 20 pages or so have been uploaded and completed, but I would appreciate your feedback at this early stage nonetheless.  The System Overview articles that I have been writing appear here with expanded content, pictures and video.

You will notice that this site is a collaboration between various individuals, including reviews from 98PaceCar and articles contributed by Dark Watcher and The Video Game Critic (all respected video game enthusiasts/website operators). The goal is to provide accurate and stimulating reading on the hardware that drives the games we love that both the collector and gamer would find interesting. We collectively own 99% of every system ever made (referring to consoles) and want to provide a first hand account of each.

As the site develops, multiple reviews on the same system will be displayed together, to give the reader a few different points of perspective on said system.

The link to the site:

http://www.videogameconsolelibrary.com

Main feedback I am looking for is the overall look and feel of the site, ease of navigation and layout of the article and system pages. You have seen most of the reviews here at RFG, but please feel free to leave your thoughts on them as well (either here or in the Comments section of each page). To avoid hunting through the menu for the pages that are 'live', please refer to the Site Map page which gives a direct link to them (I am still adding a ton of consoles to this page too, so this is under construction as well):

http://www.videogameconsolelibrary.com/main-map.htm

Thanks all and I look forward to your thoughts.

Terry

Yeah, I accidentally came across this a few weeks ago, and I must say, it looks really good. I like the layout, and navigation, it looks like it will become a great resource.

Well considering your in-depth knowledge of a lot of systems your a good man for the job.
I just gave it a look and wow. I love it. It looks very nice, 'n' sharp. It's easy to navigate and I actually find it easy to find everything with the navigation bar without even having to use the site map. I look forward to its completion.

My ONLY gripe is I think you should use PNGs rather that JPGs or turn the quality up considerably before re-saving the JPGs to remove the jpeg artifacts.

I think you know my opinion since I've been testing/looking at the site ever since it was started. It's going to be the best console resource on the entire internet. If you need any help, let me know. I can provide full sets of pictures of the PS3 and the Wii if you need them.

Very nice site

Very nice site, informative and easy to use.
I'm dieing to know which console(s) you guys don't own, must be one hell of a rare console.

Thanks for the feedback all - it is greatly appreciated!
Answers to some specific items:

Cobra - Yes, I used the pictures that I have submitted here to RFG (550 pix wide max).  I will upload the high-res ones once I have the time to watermark them and such.

Tondog - I will probably take you up on that offer for the pics  :)

NES - The two primary collectors are myself and 98PaceCar.  Regarding main consoles, the only one we collectively do not own is the CreatiVision and a couple of protos that were never released.

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Thanks again all!

Terry

wow, its come a long way since the early versions you showed me some time ago.

It looks sharp.  Keep it up!

Ben - it has come a long way, thanks to everyone's input including yours  :).  My appreciation is extended to you for having to bear those earlier versions - thanks for the input!

Terry

Lookin good Terry.  Very professional looking.  Take it from us, running a site is hard work, but it looks like you guys are up to the challenge.  Best of luck to you and the rest of the guys.

Thanks Eddie - glad you like the layout.  The goal is to have a clean, crisp and professional look, but as is any website, it is always a work in progress.  I have already eliminated the 'Comments' section from each page due to some advice from a few people.  Though written, I doubt the forum will ever see the light of day - RFG and like forums are light years ahead and I don't want to get into the forum moderation business. 

Thanks again all for the support.

It is looks great, I am really looking forward to it's continuing development.

I noticed the image format has shifted from jpg to gif. While it is good in one respect as it stops images from becoming washed out, the gif file format has a very limited colour palette. Anything exceeding this limitation becomes grainy as you'll see with photos.

I really recommend png files. You get almost bmp quality at a much much much smaller file size.

Sweet site! It will look nice in my firefox bookmarks!  :laugh:

I am about to do the same thing also. Personally your website is nice but the name has be something diffrent. Maybe if you can logo that into soemthing like.

VGCD or something like that.

Thanks again for all the feedback - I truly appreciate it.

Cobra - I agree - PNG format is the way to go.  I have a few GIF files sprinkled throughout the site - I just haven't gotten around to converting all the files to one format as of yet.

logical - Thanks!

Regal - I was a bit torn on the name as well, along with the absurdly long URL.  The URLs that were available were a bit limited (at least the ones I was looking at), and anything that was available the owner wanted $1K for the name - which I am not going to shell out for a hobby of mine (unless it is video game consoles  :)  ).  I am working on trying to get the main title a bit more graphical and into a logo.  The current 'logo' for the title is my third try.  I hope the next one or two efforts will hit the mark.

Thanks again everyone.

Terry

Pretty awesome site, I think I stumbled upon this the other day when looking up some info on the M2.

How do you decide what gets listed, and when? I noticed the Phantom is listed, showing you list prototype / vaporware systems,  the X'Eye is listed, showing you list combo systems, but I don't think I saw the Neptune listed (I might have missed it).

Also, are you not listing handhelds? And how do you decide when a system is too much of a computer to be a video game system? For example, do you list the MSX? (I couldn't find it, but I didn't look too hard). I found a few articles on this, like http://www.videogameconsolelibrary.com/art-console.htm
I think it's too bad that you guys don't list handhelds. It would be awesome to have a database like this for handheld systems, as well.

Also, how do you handle variations and clone systems? There were countless 2600 clones in the '80s, and nowadays there are countless famiclones.

I know some of my questions were already answered in that link I found, so consider it another +1 for the FAQ counter, then.

Finally, I think a really snazzy interface for narrowing down and browsing would be awesome. Right now the only way I found the data listed was by year. I would love to see you eventually have something like Moby Game's game browser : http://www.mobygames.com/browse/games
Would be cool to be able to narrow down the search by manufacturer, media type, or whatever else.

Hello Chainclow.  Thanks for the great feedback.  Let me tackle your thoughts one at a time

I am working on getting all of the pages completed at the moment.  You are right - I do list some vaporware and combo systems.  The Sega Neptune should be added - I agree with you.  As to when items get listed, this is dependant upon what I can get written in between work and home life.  There is not a real plan for what pages get updated first, though i am focusing on all the obscure systems first.

To be honest, I really am not into handhelds.  I have a few of the original Mattel Electronics games from the late 1970's, but that is about it.  Consoles are my bag (I have around 140 systems).

Differentiating between computers and a console is difficult, especially in the late 70's up through the early 1990's.  The hard part is that a great many of these systems accepted cartridges - which further muddles the picture.  I have a great many of these hybrid computers (TI 99/4A, C64, Tomy Pyuuta, Panasonic FS-A1, etc.) but the main purpose of these units is not gaming - it is computing.  Down the road a special section will probably be written to highlight these units.  The MSX technology is represented well in the Daewoo Zemmix line of consoles - which are pure gaming machines.

Variations and clones are listed on their respective 'parent' page.  My goal is not to list every single clone that is out there, but to capture the major big hitters.  Once the site is fully developed, I may revisit this thinking.

I like your idea for browsing as demonstrated in the Moby example.  I haven't completed the site search engine script as of yet - I have been busy trying to get all the pages written\uploaded first.  This will definitely be added to my list of items to incorporate.

Thanks again Chainclaw - great thoughts and ideas!

Keep up the great work, this is just the type of thing the web needs. I can tell you are putting bucket loads of time and effort behind it as it shows.