Thursday 21 August 2014

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GamesMaster the Database

Can you imagine what sort of sad individual would take the time to catalogue every single review, preview, Consoletation Zone plea, news item, feature, and contestant that constituted each of GamesMaster's 126 episodes, spanning 7 series and 6 years? To transcribe every game played, every game platform, every winner and loser and proud Golden GamesMaster Joystick recipient? Surely they'd be locked up for even contemplating it?

You've watched the TV show, you've read the magazine and got the t-shirt. Now tinker with the database! Mark my words, GMDb will be more huge-er-er-er than IMDb... albeit on a much, much smaller scale and quite a bit less Hollywoody.
What's so nifty about having all this data in a searchable and filterable format is that you can produce fascinating (pretty too!) tables of figures showing the number of joysticks won by celebrities and non-celebrities, the number won by series, and the overall total.

The same goes for game platforms. Come on, you must at some point have wondered how many Amiga games were featured in GamesMaster challenges throughout its run, and desperately craved to have that information at your fingertips and broken down series by series? Haven't you dreamed of a time when you'd be able to see at a glimpse the popularity of platforms through the evolutionary gaming epoch that was the 90s? Their emergence, and eventual demise? No? Just me then. Can you tell I work in finance?

I'd appreciate it if you could have a play with it, make sure everything works, and report any inaccuracies so I can fix them. I'm also open to suggestions for improvement.

I've already uploaded a church-load of screen grabs, but wasn't planning on capturing every single moment for posterity. If you would like to suggest any others you think should be included, I can arrange that.

N.B. This entry featured in the news section of RetroGamingRoundUp's 80th podcast show. Thanks for the plug guys. :)