System Updates

We continuously address small bug fixes as well as regularly work to improve the responsiveness of our pages through programming rewrites and data caching. Additionally, here are some of the more significant site improvements we have worked on recently:

Date Description
April 14, 2025 We now support tying together pinball machines as part of a group. In recent years, a new release of a pinball machine (ie: Mandalorian) often brings with it multiple release versions, such as 'Pro', 'Premium', and 'Limited Edition', each with slightly different playfield features, software, and back glass art. There previously hasn't been any official policy on whether to have 3 different entries for such a new release, or one. We are now standardizing having different versions for each release. And we’ve added the ability to combine these 3 different entries into a 'group' so that looking at the entry of one will display links to the others, and entries of a group will be identified as such when looking at a list of games or conducting a search. The 'group' feature is currently only supported for Pinball machines.
April 07, 2025 Now that we have recently fully integrated the TAFA flyer database with the rest of the site, we have now added a full set of flyer contribution features to encourage new uploads! Currently it’s open to members that have been signed up with us for at least a year.
April 07, 2025 We’ve added support to be able to move an image from one game entry to another. Also, a few days have been spent addressing a lot of minor UI/UX issues.
March 10, 2025 Several weeks of work on the flyers (TAFA) section has been released. TAFA used its own manufacturer database which was independent of the manufacturer database used by the rest of the site. This has been eliminated, and all records have been tied to our main manufacturer database. This required numerous additions to our manufacturer database, and extensive efforts to tie all records in TAFA to main database game and/or manufacturer records. Previously about 2/3 were, but not all. We also improved the search functionality in TAFA, and recreated all thumbnails in .webp format to speed up page load times.
March 03, 2025 For image uploads, we added support for the Apple iPhone .heic image format.
February 26, 2025 Many improvements to the game manual contribution features were released, generally improving the manual contribution upload experience.
February 19, 2025 We've added the ability for members to add new photos to their VAPS member profiles – a feature that hasn’t been active since the launch of the new site a year ago. We also added several new features not seen before. Members can select 'Make Primary' to pick which single image (if you have several) appears on your primary profile page, and they can click 'Sort' and then drag images around to change the order of how images are publicly displayed. Images can also be removed from public display.
February 12, 2025 Manufacturer detail pages now show a lot more information, expanded with multiple tabs providing quick access to generation manufacturer Information, Media, Video links, Patents, People, machines for sale by members made by that Manufacturer, and more.
February 12, 2025 A new Video page has been created (Games & Machines -> Videos), which displays all the videos linked in the encyclopedia, with the ability to search and play any of them. See: https://www.arcade-museum.com/games-and-machines/video/game
January 30, 2025 Significant improvements have been made to members private stats pages (Account -> Stats).
January 25, 2025 Many admin and moderator features continue to be improved. There is now easier ability to merge game records, merge manufacturer records, moderate content, help users, and more.
January 22, 2025 An expanded ‘Contributions’ tab on VAPS Member detail pages help give credit for recent content contributions made by members.
January 21, 2025 The International Arcade Museum Library has added a great new feature to the eLibrary online PDF system. Previously one could click on a title (ie: Automatic Age) and then an issue, and then navigate from one page to the next (Previous, Page Numbers, and Next buttons). Now we've added a Gallery view - click on the Gallery button to see thumbnails of all the pages in a particular issue! Then you may click on a thumbnail to go to a page that looks interesting.
January 19, 2025 There is now an easy way to link ads and articles in the eLibrary pdf section to individual game entries. Copy the eLibrary URL, go to a game entry on the main site, and while logged in (if you have been a member at least 30 days), click 'Add eLibrary Links'. Add the URL and select whether it is a link to an ad or an article. Then hit 'save'. That’s all there is too it! For examples of links already added, see the page on Atari's 1983 hit 'Star Wars' and Bally's 1934 pinball 'Spark Plug'.
January 03, 2025 Happy New Year! We just launched a Leaderboard to give credit to member's contributions in many ways. Points are awarded for content contributions to the site, recent activity, and donations. From the main menu, see More -> Member Contribution Leaderboard.
December 20, 2024 The home page (scroll down) now shows the 10 most recent member additions and 10 most recent member edits to the various databases here.
December 18, 2024 For years we've had the ability to set up legacy/series/franchise data on a game. For example, if you look up any Area 51 series game and scroll down to the Legacy section, you can see the history of the series with links to other games in the series. Today we released the ability for our members to create, add to, and edit these relationship lists directly (logged in, just go to a game entry and near the top click 'edit Legacy'). Additionally, we've also created a new report to show all these legacy lists. From the Main Menu see Games & Machines -> List by Legacy or Series.
December 11, 2024 We've always had a (major) News page, but now we have made publicly accessible our System Updates page then notes our site improvements of notes. If you are reading this update, you are probably on the page we are talking about!
December 10, 2024 A improvement was made to allow Admins & Moderators to change the name of a machine, or the type of a machine (for example, from Video Game to Arcade or Pinball). This was previously restricted as error checking had to be added to prevent duplicate URLs.
December 09, 2024 We just spent a week and a half working on the search functions of the eLibrary online PDF system. We upgraded the search engine to be able to do fuzzy searches (to find misspellings and more), and added custom support for Spanish and French language (through the French magazine title still has to be re-processed as it was OCRed in English). 99% of the upgrades have launched, though next week we will likely add the ability for users to adjust the 'fuzziness' of their searches.
November 30, 2024 On manufacturer detail pages, we added a 'For Sale' tab to see all the machines that other members are selling made by that manufacturer. For example, please see Cinematronics - For Sale or Universal - For Sale.
November 29, 2024 We released a major upgrade to our encyclopedia's Genres & Themes classification system. On the main site, under 'Games & Machines', select 'List by Genre', or jump directly go our Genres page. Logged in members can Read More About It. Additionally, under game records, we added 'Limited Test Release' to class, in addition to the existing Wide Release, Bootleg, Concept/One-Off-Hoax, Hack/Rom Swap, and Prototype.
November 28, 2024 Almost 20 years ago, we had graphic images that displayed the Japanese names of games. We've finally converted 3,794 of them to a text field which is much more usable, launched use of them today. These foreign names aren't yet searchable in our game search boxes, but will be soon.
November 28, 2024 Admin tools were added that improve the ability to help users with their accounts.
November 12, 2024 In our eLibrary online pdf section, we added the ability to filter the titles show by type of magazine, by decade, or by country.