Oh no! Allgame.com shutting down Dec 12th

[Rickstilwell1]

http://www.allgame.com/

I am really going to miss this website. They had helpful lists of games and while not perfectly accurate they made it easy to navigate and search by genre, type, year and alphabetically. I wish someone would make a backup of the website somehow just so what they had could be viewed. While GameFAQs probably has everything here covered and more accurately dated, I just really liked the way it was organized. I even originally used to print checklists of games using this site and highlighted the ones I bought as I collected them. Ever since I was a teenager. Their sister sites allmusic and allmovie seem to be staying put though.

Did anyone else here enjoy this website?

[ProjectCamaro]

I had never heard of the website before today.

[Spartacus]

I went there frequently and really liked using the genre search function to get lists of the types of games I enjoy across multiple platforms quickly and easily. I'm going to miss that.
I also appreciated quickly getting information about what the game controls did.
It looks like the companion sites AllMovie and AllMusic are still going. I might give them a try.
It's too bad about AllGame though.

I still use Mobygames, but it has changed. I really miss Video Game Rebirth too. I used to quickly grab the names of games there in Japanese text and then look for games at Yahoo Japan.

I know a lot of people don't like gamefaqs, but if that place ever went down, I'd really be hurting for game information.

[Rickstilwell1]

I'm using a program I found called HTTrack so I can try to download the entire website into my computer and access it offline. It's been copying the website since this morning and so far is at over 2GB of data. I wonder how much more it has to go. Heh maybe this dying website would be good to upload as a torrent.

[ccovell]

This sounds like a job for the Archive Team! http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

You ought to set up a project to save the site over there.

[Rickstilwell1]

This sounds like a job for the Archive Team! http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

You ought to set up a project to save the site over there.

I tried to use this program and it worked for some of the site but a lot of the links won't work :(

[Edmond Dantes]

that sucks. I rarely used allgame but I did find them helpful, for example when looking into PC games their typeup of system requirements is very clear (some other sites are kinda opaque or misleading) and they also tell you what's in the box, if you're looking to get a complete game.

I do hope your archive project succeeds!

[Rickstilwell1]

It's not going to succeed, we need help if we want to save it. I wish I had enough money to buy all the paper and ink needed to print out every single system's lists one last time. Let alone any individual descriptions

[JSoup]

Perhaps the operators of allgame have an archive backup they'd be willing to share for the purposes of retaining the information.

[CRTGAMER]

It's not going to succeed, we need help if we want to save it. I wish I had enough money to buy all the paper and ink needed to print out every single system's lists one last time. Let alone any individual descriptions

This is terrible news, I have used Allgame myself mainly to confirm the control options for Wii games. Allgame will help me dtermine which games required the silly waggle which I would avoid. Saving every page digitally would be the best option, shame that program you mentioned earlier did not work.


Perhaps the operators of allgame have an archive backup they'd be willing to share for the purposes of retaining the information.

I did not see any info from the site concerning an archive backup to download. Though doubtful, I hope that they would offer the archive of HTML files. I would love to purchase a disc from them.

There is a Feedback Section, recommend everyone submit something like this to encourage the archive. The Feedback has a section to enter your Email.

http://www.allgame.com/pages/a_contact.php


I am sorry to see your site shutting down soon. Allgames is a great research site for games. I love the section that dictates the control options, useful for instance for the Wii; which games require waggle controls. Most other sites or even the game cases do not state this.

Please archive the entire Allgame HTMLs and offer a purchase of a CD Rom or a Digital Download. I would certainly buy a copy, please send me an Email with the sales link if you ever do.

Thank You,
CRTGAMER

[JSoup]

I did not see any info from the site concerning an archive backup to download.

I assumed e-mailing them about it was implied.

[Rickstilwell1]

I tried emailing their business inquiry section. No response.

[Rickstilwell1]

Oh look, the site is down but wayback machine already archived what seems to be a fully functional copy of the site in March
http://web.archive.org/web/20140302213226/http://www.allgame.com/

[danawhitaker]

Oh look, the site is down but wayback machine already archived what seems to be a fully functional copy of the site in March
http://web.archive.org/web/20140302213226/http://www.allgame.com/

It appears to be intact, but not fully functional since the search feature doesn't work (at least for me). This is unfortunate, but I'd rather have it exist in some form than not at all. I was able to manually navigate to specific pages, but for consoles with massive lists of games, that becomes very tedious.

I've contacted All Media several times since the original announcement about whether any form of the database will be made available to people and never received a response. I used to use allgame on a daily basis as a research starting point for my own console database. It's such a strange feeling to know it's not there anymore.

One interesting thing I noticed is that it appears all the box art (and I'd assume other images) are still online: http://image.allmusic.com/00/agg/screen110/drt600/t663/t66387omxnj.jpg

[retroman]

I did not mind the site, and thought it had some ok history write ups on the game systems, but I did not go to the web site very much because for some reason a few time that I did my Norton's would go off saying it was blocking some type of spyware. I try and stay away from sites like that.

[Rickstilwell1]

I managed to manually copy every page of the game lists for all systems the night before using the save as function in my web browser, sorted by release date (which can be erroneous for a lot of older games especially arcade ports) because that is how I like to group games most of the time. This way I can still at least print checklists in the way I was familiar and keep using it as a backup source for alternate possible release dates. On the wayback version, I would mainly use it to search by genre or style.

[danawhitaker]

I managed to manually copy every page of the game lists for all systems the night before using the save as function in my web browser, sorted by release date (which can be erroneous for a lot of older games especially arcade ports) because that is how I like to group games most of the time. This way I can still at least print checklists in the way I was familiar and keep using it as a backup source for alternate possible release dates. On the wayback version, I would mainly use it to search by genre or style.

Something like that had been my intention initially, for all the consoles and handhelds. Unfortunately, the 12th snuck up on me with everything else I had to do and I didn't realize it until the night of the 11th. I started copying some stuff on the 11th. What I wasn't sure of - and what they weren't clear about - was whether they'd be up all day on the 12th and *then* go dark, or whether they'd go dark at some random point that day. Unfortunately, it was earlier in the day than I'd anticipated them going down, and I missed my opportunity.

I did my first work on my own database post-allgame.com on Saturday. I supplemented with info from GameFAQs and for the most part was satisfied. I discovered what I'm going to miss it most for is determining for old games whether something is a Sears clone and also for classifying categories for new games as they're released. And unfortunately the first half of my database uses them for Developer and Publisher info. While I can get that information elsewhere (though I found checking among various sources there's often not a lot of consistency in the way names are formatted or how companies are referred to) it's going to bug me to lose that consistency. Over time, I can eventually attempt to normalize that between the halves of the database, but that's a large undertaking.

In regards to the person who had Norton flagging spyware, that's strange, and I wouldn't be surprised if that were a false reading. I don't trust Norton at all after what it did on one of my systems in the past (constant false alerts, and then it started causing my machine to BSOD at random after an update). I used the site for years across multiple systems and not once did I have any kind of spyware. I admit, I also adblock and flashblock and block pretty much any kind of scripting there is except on a case-by-case basis, so maybe I was bypassing some tainted ads.

I have to admit, thinking back over the past year, I should have seen this coming. The search feature was completely broken for almost a week at one point on the site, with absolutely no response from their support team. Then I noticed shortly before the announcement the search was screwed up another way, and never got a response from support with that either. That error wasn't *as* screwed up, but was still pretty bad, in that searching for specific titles wouldn't yield any results, but dropping a word or two from the title would bring it up. Alas. It was clear also from the fact they hadn't added PS4 and Xbox One to their main page that less and less attention was being paid to the site. Though, for all those failings, they were often on the nose with new releases - often more accurate than Game Informer, Joystiq, or GameSpot. On that note, does anyone have an *accurate* site for listing all new retail releases each week? I right now use a combination of several sites and then error-check it by seeing which games have been released on Amazon in the past 30 days. It's rare for any of my sources to be accurate each week. They either miss a console or two from each release, or they end up leaving off less popular titles entirely. I'm interested in all retail releases regardless of how "cool" they're going to be.

[Rickstilwell1]

Something like that had been my intention initially, for all the consoles and handhelds. Unfortunately, the 12th snuck up on me with everything else I had to do and I didn't realize it until the night of the 11th. I started copying some stuff on the 11th. What I wasn't sure of - and what they weren't clear about - was whether they'd be up all day on the 12th and *then* go dark, or whether they'd go dark at some random point that day. Unfortunately, it was earlier in the day than I'd anticipated them going down, and I missed my opportunity.

I did my first work on my own database post-allgame.com on Saturday. I supplemented with info from GameFAQs and for the most part was satisfied. I discovered what I'm going to miss it most for is determining for old games whether something is a Sears clone and also for classifying categories for new games as they're released. And unfortunately the first half of my database uses them for Developer and Publisher info. While I can get that information elsewhere (though I found checking among various sources there's often not a lot of consistency in the way names are formatted or how companies are referred to) it's going to bug me to lose that consistency. Over time, I can eventually attempt to normalize that between the halves of the database, but that's a large undertaking.

In regards to the person who had Norton flagging spyware, that's strange, and I wouldn't be surprised if that were a false reading. I don't trust Norton at all after what it did on one of my systems in the past (constant false alerts, and then it started causing my machine to BSOD at random after an update). I used the site for years across multiple systems and not once did I have any kind of spyware. I admit, I also adblock and flashblock and block pretty much any kind of scripting there is except on a case-by-case basis, so maybe I was bypassing some tainted ads.

I have to admit, thinking back over the past year, I should have seen this coming. The search feature was completely broken for almost a week at one point on the site, with absolutely no response from their support team. Then I noticed shortly before the announcement the search was screwed up another way, and never got a response from support with that either. That error wasn't *as* screwed up, but was still pretty bad, in that searching for specific titles wouldn't yield any results, but dropping a word or two from the title would bring it up. Alas. It was clear also from the fact they hadn't added PS4 and Xbox One to their main page that less and less attention was being paid to the site. Though, for all those failings, they were often on the nose with new releases - often more accurate than Game Informer, Joystiq, or GameSpot. On that note, does anyone have an *accurate* site for listing all new retail releases each week? I right now use a combination of several sites and then error-check it by seeing which games have been released on Amazon in the past 30 days. It's rare for any of my sources to be accurate each week. They either miss a console or two from each release, or they end up leaving off less popular titles entirely. I'm interested in all retail releases regardless of how "cool" they're going to be.

Is yours a personal database or is it online somewhere? If it's a website that would be cool to see.

[danawhitaker]

Is yours a personal database or is it online somewhere? If it's a website that would be cool to see.

Personal at the moment. I intend at some point to actually do something productive with it in the future, ideally a website and an app. That's a ways off because I don't have as much spare time to work on it as I'd like.