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Reviews
Posted: Sun Jan 24, 2010 12:27 am
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For now, we are not adding personal reviews. There is a good reason for this: professional reviews tend to be more objective, and we don't want to have to process all reviews to remove the insanity. This may change in the future.
Many old magazines had a "mini-review" section at the back summarising old reviews. We are interested in adding these at first, although of course full reviews are also interesting (and perhaps more suitable for OCR). If you want to contribute then I guess at the moment, this thread is the best place for it. I have an archive of mini-reviews from Sega Pro magazine (UK) that I am slowly adding. |
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Posted: Sun Jan 24, 2010 11:46 am |
Reviews from old magazines should eventually be linked to the corresponding magazine scan.
One interesting information we can get from old magazines reviews, if we manage to gather enough of them, is that by recouping their dates we may be able to evaluate the release date of some games. Although the release date of Japanese games is well known, having a chronology of releases for US and Europe would be nice as well. Additionally we should as well be able to link to games review or articles from the internet (if done well), but their rating if any should not be aggregated in the same location as the "old magazines" reviews. It's cool to separate the early days ratings and opinion from those of todays so we can distinguish and compare them. Aside from reviews we will probably in the future run some kind of user poll to classify and rate game quality. We don't know yet what form it will take, but we want to do this well to collect quality opinions. |
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Posted: Sun Jan 24, 2010 11:53 am |
I have done some preliminary work ( http://wip2.smspower.org/Games/Vote ) on a public voting algorithm where each vote is only "I prefer game X to game Y". With enough votes, this approximates the result of a Concordet voting system, which is a ranking that minimises the number of votes that disagree with it. Right now, voting doesn't do anything, though. | |
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Posted: Sun Jan 24, 2010 2:30 pm |
I had a go at OCRing some of the Sega Force scans; it works pretty well (I am using FineReader 8). Here are the first three 8-bit reviews in issue 1:
http://wip2.smspower.org/Reviews/SonicTheHedgehog-SMS-SegaForce http://wip2.smspower.org/Reviews/WorldClassLeaderBoard-SMS-SegaForce http://wip2.smspower.org/Reviews/HeroesOfTheLance-SMS-SegaForce Eventually we will of course have the scans linked, I didn't make the Magazines section yet. |
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Posted: Sat May 15, 2010 4:53 pm |
How would I go about adding U.S. reviews to this database? | |
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Posted: Sat May 15, 2010 8:09 pm |
From what source? It basically consists of us giving you edit permissions and then you add a page to the site for each review. Do you have them in text form? | |
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Posted: Mon May 17, 2010 8:57 am |
Here's a longer version...
1. Make a reviews index page, if there isn't one already If there's already at least one review for the game in question, you don't need to do this step. Just click on the Reviews heading on the main game page. If there isn't, then on the game page you should see at the bottom:
If you don't see that, you don't have editing permissions. The Reviews link should show up with a dotted underline to show the page doesn't exist yet. Click that, and you should see the Game Over (page not found) page, showing:
You want "Template - Game Page". This populates the page with code to make it work as wanted, you just have to save it (you have to add an edit comment, something like "Added" is fine here.) 2. Make a review page Now you're on a page with a URL like: http://www.smspower.org/Reviews/SonicTheHedgehog-SMS Add some text to the end to uniquely identify the review - a good way is to type the magazine name. Use a hyphen after the system and use CamelCase for the text. So you get a result like: http://www.smspower.org/Reviews/SonicTheHedgehog-SMS-SegaVisions You then get the Game Over page again. This time, click on "Template - Review". This gives you a template to start from. The important bits are: 1. The review text comes first. You can use formatting, insert pictures, etc (the help box under the editing box gets you started on that). 2. At the end, there are two lines of code that specify the score (convert to a score out of 100 if necessary) and the reviewer (typically, the magazine name). These are what shows up in the game index page and the main game page. Once you're done, save the review page and it should show up on the site immediately. |
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Posted: Thu Nov 25, 2010 3:51 pm |
I OCRed all the reviews in http://www.smspower.org/Reviews/RecentChanges |
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Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2010 3:05 pm |
Well, I was off sick for a few days and OCRed all the rest of the 8-bit reviews in Sega Force :)
http://www.smspower.org/Reviews/Index?action=search&group=Reviews&q=%22S... |
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Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2011 1:10 pm |
From what I see, we're not uploading actual scans of magazines, but rather transcriptions of them?
Second question: would Italian magazines qualify if I can dig up something from my old shelves? |
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Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2011 3:11 pm |
We can upload scans of magazines if they are strongly relevant to Sega 8-bit. Reviews can be in any language, as it's designed (much like metacritic) to extract the percentage for the summary, and there's a little flag to act as a warning about language. We just don't have a large mass of reviews to act as an example. | |
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Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2011 9:57 am |
As an example, I've been working through the CVG scans and uploading only the front cover and Sega 8-bit related pages, as here:
http://www.smspower.org/Scans/CVG-Magazine-Issue71 with accompanying reviews (which get auto-linked at the bottom of the page) OCRed: http://www.smspower.org/Reviews/HangOn-SMS-CVG-71 http://www.smspower.org/Reviews/WorldGrandPrix-SMS-CVG-71 I think that's a nice middle ground between us having thousands of Ni****do magazine pages and not having these magazines at all. We may also end up OCRing other pages - articles, for example - where they are of interest. |
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Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2011 11:53 am |
Yes, I never meant to scan entire magazines, my idea was to scan relevant pages (or even sections of pages).
I'll think if I'm still up to do this. |
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Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2011 4:20 pm |
I think it's good to have reviews from a range of countries, if OCRed they can be run through Google translate. Just uploading the front page and sega 8-bit pages from multi-format magazines is sensible, I shall collate those from some others.
This site has issues of "Sega Force" from Sweden, I think it's unrelated to the UK magazine of the same name. http://segaforce.ramis.se/ I've packed them together for a more convenient download, it's about 150MB. http://www.multiupload.com/FF35FPKMT8 Sega Force (Sweden): 9201/18 [MS] Sagaia - 50% 9201/19 [MS] Wimbledon - 80% 9201/20 [MS] Champions of Europe - 90% 9201/21 [MS] Super Space Invaders - 60% 9201/24 [GG] Axe Battler - 75% 9201/24 [GG] Chessmaster - 90% 9201/25 [GG] Spiderman - 75% 9201/25 [GG] Olympic Gold - 85% 9202/23 [MS] Prince of Persia - 88% 9202/24 [MS] Marble Madness - 70% 9202/24 [MS] Ayrton Senna's GP - 73% 9202/24 [MS] Chuck Rock - 74% 9202/24 [MS] Arcade Classics - 75% 9202/26 [GG] Crystal Warriors - 91% 9202/27 [GG] Devilish - 72% 9301/19 [MS] Sonic 2 - 98% 9301/20 [MS] Tazmania - 89% 9301/21 [GG] Super Space Invaders - 83% 9301/21 [GG] Paperboy - 68% 9301/22 [GG] Chuck Rock - 74% 9301/22 [GG] Super Off Road - 86% 9302/19 [MS] Batman Returns - 90% 9302/20 [MS] Alien 3 - 95% 9302/21 [MS] Mickey Mouse II - 80% 9302/23 [GG] Lemmings - 83% 9302/23 [GG] Outrun Europa - 51% 9303/24 [MS] Asterix - 85% 9303/25 [MS] Lucky Dime Caper - 87% 9303/26 [GG] Batman Returns - 77% 9303/26 [GG] Klax - 88% 9304/20 [MS] Global Gladiators - 86% 9304/21 [MS] Superman - 85% 9304/22 [GG] Vampire - 83% 9304/22 [GG] Sonic 2 - 93% 9304/23 [GG] Land of Illusion - 92% 9305/24 [MS] Wolfchild - 74% 9305/26 [GG] Superman - 63% 9305/28 [GG] Global Gladiators - 86% 9306/26 [MS] James Bond - 007 The Duel - 70% 9306/27 [GG] Popils - 94% 9306/27 [GG] Double Dragon - 95% 9307/23 [MS] James Pond 2 - Robocod - 93% 9307/24 [MS] Sonic Chaos - 92% 9307/26 [GG] Jurassic Park - 74% 9307/26 [GG] Ecco The Dolphin - 92% 9308 - Missing 9401/27 [GG] Sonic Chaos - 90% 9401/27 [GG] Star Wars - 74% 9402+ - Missing |
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Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2011 1:03 pm Last edited by BKK on Fri Sep 30, 2011 8:06 am; edited 1 time in total |
Some reviews from other British multiformat magazines.
"TGM" (The Games Machine) launched around the same time as the SMS in the UK, after three years it was rebranded and relaunched as "Raze" continuing for a further year before being split into "Sega Force", and some other "Force" :) TGM SMS Reviews (19MB) Raze SMS & GG Reviews (42MB) Around the same time Future Publishing launched their first multiformat magazine; "ACE" (Advanced Computing Entertainment). With a more serious tone than other gaming magazines at the time it can be seen as a forerunner to Future's later multiformat magazine "Edge", which still runs today. Interestingly they scored games out of a thousand, slightly overkill :) ACE ran for around four years, with Future selling it off to EMAP, rival publisher of CVG about two years in. Not long after selling ACE Future launched the UK's first dedicated console magazine "S - The Sega mag", which would later be rebranded as Sega Power. ACE SMS Reviews (13MB) A little late to the party was "Zero", launching towards the end of 1989. Zero had a dedicated console section called "Console Action". After two years the console coverage was span out to a new magazine "Game Zone", which a year later would be split into "Sega Zone" and another "Zone". Zero then dropped console coverage altogether, but less than a year later the magazine had a complete redesign, with console coverage returning. However this only lasted for a few issues before Zero was folded completely. Zero SMS & GG Reviews only (48MB) Zero Console Action (Full, 200MB) TGM Reviews: 03/39 [MS] Action Fighter - 63% 03/39 [MS] Secret Command - 74% 03/60 [MS] Outrun - 72% 04/54 [MS] After Burner -60% 04/55 [MS] Alien Syndrome - 61% 04/56 [MS] Rocky - 79% 04/56 [MS] Zillion - 76% 05/43 [MS] Global Defense - 81% 05/65 [MS] Zillion 2 - 83% 07/56 [MS] Blade Eagle - 58% 07/65 [MS] Fantasy Zone: The Maze - 78% 08/59 [MS] Rescue Mission - 74% 11/58 [MS] Penguin Land - 79% 11/58 [MS] Maze Hunter 3D - 62% 11/59 [MS] Aztec Adventure - 41% 11/59 [MS] Alex Kidd - The Lost Stars - 72% 13/39 [MS] Thunder Blade - 76% 13/51 [MS] Kenseiden - 86% 13/51 [MS] Monopoly - 64% 13/72 [MS] Miracle Warriors - 40% 14/58 [MS] Shinobi - 82% 14/74 [MS] Captain Silver - 49% 14/74 [MS] Golvellius - 66% 14/75 [MS] Double Dragon - 81% 14/75 [MS] Lord of the Sword - 58% 17/50 [MS] Rastan - 43% 18/36 [MS] Ys - 90% 18/49 [MS] Altered Beast - 43% 18/53 [MS] California Games - 78% 18/59 [MS] Vigilante - 80% 18/65 [MS] Time Soldiers - 78% 22/96 [MS] Ghostbusters - 22% 22/97 [MS] Galaxy Force - 60% 22/97 [MS] The Baseball - 72% 26/26 [MS] Wonder Boy III - 71% 26/78 [MS] Alex Kidd: High-Tech World - 76% 26/82 [MS] Cloud Master - 20% 26/83 [MS] Tennis Ace - 76% 27/57 [MS] Wanted - 67% 27/57 [MS] Casino Games - 70% 29/34 [MS] Psycho Fox - 83% 29/56 [MS] Dynamite Dux - 85% 32/50 [MS] Battle Outrun - 75% 32/51 [MS] Golden Axe - 80% 32/51 [MS] Scramble Spirits - 50% 32/51 [MS] Slap Shot - 77% 32/52 [MS] World Games - 80% 32/53 [MS] Assault City - 51% 32/57 [MS] Basketball Nightmare - 61% 34/56 [MS] R.C. Grand prix - 79% 34/59 [MS] Operation Wolf - 90% 34/62 [MS] Chase HQ - 55% Raze Reviews: 01/62 [MS] Super Monaco GP - 87% 03/38 [MS] Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - 89% 03/39 [MS] Gauntlet - 64% 03/39 [MS] Mission Impossible - 87% 03/43 [MS] Fire & Forget II - 78% 04/32 [MS] Columns - 90% 04/36 [MS] E-SWAT - 76% 05/44 [MS] World Cup Italia '90 - 94% 07/39 [MS] Danan the Jungle Figther - 66% 07/48 [MS] The Cyber Shinobi - 71% 07/52 [MS] Speedball - 87% 08/26 [MS] Submarine Attack - 67% 08/34 [MS] Gain Ground - 71% 08/46 [MS] Dick Tracy - 34% 09/40 [MS] Joe Montana Football - 68% 09/54 [MS] Heavyweight Champ - 65% 09/56 [MS] World Class Leaderboard - 84% 10/27 [MS] Pac-mania - 86% 10/46 [MS] Psychic World - 70% 10/47 [MS] Ghouls 'n' Ghosts - 54% 11/28 [MS] Populous - 90% 11/44 [GG] GG Shinobi - 82% 11/48 [GG] Dragon Crystal - 84% 11/54 [GG] G-LOC - 76% 12/52 [GG] Devilish - 80% 12/52 [GG] Woody Pop - 69% ACE Reviews: 02/58 [MS] Outrun - 85% (852) 07/45 [MS] Rescue Mission - 74% (739) 07/51 [MS] After Burner - 70% (702) 08/63 [MS] Alien Syndrome - 56% (564) 14/49 [MS] Global Defense - 62% (618) 14/58 [MS] Shanghai - 80% (796) 16/76 [MS] Thunder Blade - 64% (644) 16/76 [MS] Captain Silver - 71% (706) 16/77 [MS] Monopoly - 71% (712) 16/77 [MS] Golvellius - 74% (741) 16/77 [MS] Lord of the Sword - 41% (412) 19/60 [MS] R-Type - 81% (808) 19/60 [MS] Rambo III - 58% (582) 19/60 [MS] Rastan - 78% (784) 19/60 [MS] Rampage - 52% (520) 20/44 [MS] Ys - 78% (784) 20/44 [MS] Bomber Raid - 67% (672) 20/44 [MS] Cyborg Hunter - 48% (478) 21/50 [MS] California Games 71% (710) 21/50 [MS] Vigilante - 66% (661) 21/50 [MS] Time Soldier - 51% (505) 21/50 [MS] Altered Beast - 66% (661) 22/57 [MS] Galaxy Force - 82% (815) 23/63 [MS] The Baseball - 71% (711) 23/70 [MS] Pro-Football - 92% (920) 27/79 [MS] Cloud Master - 85% (845) 27/80 [MS] Wanted - 64% (635) 28/50 [MS] Wonder Boy III - 68% (675) 28/50 [MS] Ghostbusters - 73% (725) 31/60 [MS] Tennis Ace - 76% (760) 31/60 [MS] Psycho Fox - 84% (835) 31/61 [MS] Spellcaster - 71% (710) 33/63 [MS] Golden Axe - 89% (890) 33/63 [MS] Scramble Spirits - 85% (845) 34/56 [MS] Assault City - 48% (480) 34/57 [MS] R.C. Grand Prix - 61% (610) 34/57 [MS] Slap Shot - 65% (650) 34/58 [MS] Golfmania - 92% (915) 34/58 [MS] Battle Outrun - 56% (560) 35/63 [MS] Ultima IV - 93% (929) 36/58 [MS] Aerial Assault - 63% (630) 37/87 [MS] Gauntlet II - 86% (859) 37/87 [MS] Impossible Mission - 80% (802) 44/71 [MS] Pacmania - 80% (800) Zero Reviews: 01/063 [MS] Vigilante - 84% 02/101 [MS] Alex Kidd: High Tech World - 71% 03/058 [MS] Spellcaster - 91% 04/084 [MS] Wonder Boy III - 73% 04/087 [MS] American Baseball - 81% 05/054 [MS] Baketball Nightmare - 88% 06/074 [MS] Golden Axe - 85% 08/091 [MS] Assault City - 78% 09/075 [MS] Battle Outrun - 87% 10/075 [MS] Operation Wolf - 82% 10/079 [MS] Chase HQ - 85% 12/089 [MS] Aerial Assault - 79% 12/092 [MS] Ultima IV - N/A 14/128 [MS] Alex Kidd in Shinobi World - 78% 16/087 [MS] Paperboy - 83% 16/087 [MS] Impossible Mission - 86% 16/087 [MS] Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - 88% 17/088 [MS] Gauntlet - 77% 18/082 [MS] Speedball - 85% 19/091 [GG] Columns - 93% 19/091 [GG] Super Monaco GP - 88% 19/091 [GG] Super Wonderboy - 87% 19/091 [GG] Pengo - 76% 20/070 [MS] Pacmania - 90% 21/062 [GG] Castle of Illusion - 85% 22/071 [GG] GG Shinobi - 90% 24/085 [MS] Populous - 90% 24/085 [GG] Chase HQ - 62% 33/078 [GG] Ax Battler - 87% 34/037 [MS] Terminator - 80% 34/065 [MS] Champions of Europe - 87% 34/076 [GG] Olympic Gold - 87% 34/078 [GG] Prince of Persia - 91% 35/036 [MS] Ninja Gaiden - 90% 35/080 [GG] Wonderboy: The Dragon's Trap - 93% 35/080 [GG] Devilish - 82% 35/081 [GG] Klax - 90% 35/081 [GG] Popils - 90% |
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Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2011 6:53 pm |
I have a lot to catch up with... I'll see if I can make a script to populate skeleton pages with all the review scores, and then I have some downloading and OCRing to do. Anyone want to help with that? | |
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Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2011 12:39 pm |
How's this? It's kind of a two in one review, so I left out the PC Engine Monster's Lair parts.
Edit: The others from that issue
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Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 4:02 pm |
I added your four reviews above to the site. I also gave you editing rights - navigate to a URL in the form
http://www.smspower.org/Reviews/GameName-SMS-TGM where GameName matches the name used on the game's main page. I noticed a few OCR errors - punctuation mostly - which you might want to chase down. Also, it'd be good to know the reviewers' full names if available. I'll try to get on top of adding the scans soon. |
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Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2011 6:52 pm |
Added all TGM reviews, and proof read them so most OCR errors should have been caught.
http://www.smspower.org/Reviews/Index?action=search&group=Reviews&q=%22T... TGM only credited reviewers in later editions, WL = Warren Lapworth, who already had a page from his Sega Force reviews. Judging by his review style he probably reviewed the earlier games too, but there's no way to know for sure. I guess the WL page is redundant now and should probably be deleted. http://www.smspower.org/People/WL I'll do Raze next. |
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Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2011 8:50 pm |
Great stuff!
As an addendum, you might want to do two other things: 1. Name review pages as GameName-Platform-Magazine-IssueNumber, e.g. Ys-SMS-CVG-89. 2. Add a speculative scans page link, in the form :Scans:[[Scans/TGM-Magazine-Issue05?gallerypage=55]]
I intend to add the scans when I get a chance, although at the rate you're going you'll finish before I do :) Both of these are entirely optional, though. |
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Posted: Fri Oct 07, 2011 9:12 pm |
All Zero reviews are done. Some very contentious stuff in there - WB3 on SMS gets one of their lowest scores in an early issue and the GG version gets one of the highest in a late issue...
I added some magazine review indexes to the scans pages, as well as some of the above descriptions - here's the page for Zero: http://www.smspower.org/Scans/Zero-Magazine |
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Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2011 8:07 am |
Yes, I found Zero, ACE, and TGM all to have strangely low scores for WBIII. Zero was a totally different magazine by the end compared to the beginning, so I guess they had different reviewers too.
I finally completed the Raze reviews; http://www.smspower.org/Scans/Raze-Magazine I see you have nearly finished with ACE too :) so I'll start on some other UK magazines where I only have scans for a few issues. |
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Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2011 6:01 pm |
Yes, ACE is now done:
http://www.smspower.org/Scans/ACE-Magazine I may take a break from OCRing now as it's been rather hard work and I have some other projects to work on. It has been a real blast to read all of those reviews, though, especially the ones I disagree with :) |
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