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GameFAQs is a popular website about video games that has helped gamers through "FAQs" and "walkthroughs" for games since November 1995. It was started and is maintained by Jeff "CJayC" Veasey. It has the second largest database of video games on the Internet, behind IGN (). The systems and games range from the 8-bit Atari days to the Next-Gen consoles of today. The site supplies FAQs, guides, images, codes, game saves, reviews, and game data free of charge to anyone who visits the site. Registration allows access to the extremely active message board community (which has posted over 180 million messages in over 17 million topics by over 2 million users) and the ability to contribute.
LAWL PENIS
GameFAQs culture
GameFAQs is noteworthy for its active message board community. Because of the high volume of posts it recieves each day, messages on the boards are purged daily, keeping the total number of posts to a reasonable level.
GameFAQs spinoff/clone boards
Many people have created their own sites based upon the GameFAQs look and feel. Most of these simply copy the GameFAQs boards; these are commonly referred to as GameFAQs spinoffs. Some go further, emulating GameFAQs' contribution systems as well.
The first spinoff was called GameFAQs Hell, created by Chuck "NeoGenesis" Sakoda in 2002. His first attempt at cloning the boards was performed in ASP and MS Access database services. After giving up on that, he made a new version in PHP and MySQL. He released the source code under the GNU General Public License. It has been confirmed by CJayC that he had a link to GameFAQs Hell in the board help section for promotion of the source.
Since the GameFAQs Hell time, there have been dozens of other spinoffs opened up, and more sources appeared, including:
- GameFAQs Hell-based
- GameFAQs Hell - GameFAQs Hell was the first spinoff. Originally it was thought that only 3 or 4 releases of the code still existed; since then many more have surfaced. The boards were originally writen in ASP but were never finished and then were abandoned and rewritten in PHP, and were run on a server owned by the boards' creator, Chuck Sakoda. The server (rhn.skwerl.net) contained several source code downloads up until some time in Spring 2004, but later all of the content was deleted.
- GameFAQsInfo - GameFAQsInfo is one of the newest GameFAQs spinoffs. The original site was started up in April 2004 and hosted by Angelfire. However, the site's owner, Easter Eggs, declared the Angelfire as a "bad host" and in May of the same year moved to a .net domain. The site offers information on the happenings at GameFAQs, although most of the users that register there simply use the boards (which are flooded with racism and other offensive material).
- Mediarchive - Mediarchive was one of the more feature-full spinoffs. It contained a contribution system similar to GameFAQs'. The source code was leaked toward the end of its days. The creator, Jay, claims that he would have released it two days later if it weren't leaked by Counteray, the guy who paid for and hosted Mediarchive. The leak of Mediarchive led to many more spinoffs popping up and others adding more features and fixes to MA code.
- Outboards - The oldest spinoff remaining in existence, founded in August 2002. It currently uses a heavily modified version of Mediarchive by Jay and Outbreakorn. Over time, it has been the subject of controversy due to staff-encouraged 'invasions' of other spinoffs as well as controversial discussion content.
- Special Ops - The owner of Special Ops, Anthony "Ant P" Parsons, started hacking at GameFAQs Hell in April 2003 to make it more GameFAQs-like and remove severe exploits and bugs in the original GameFAQs Hell. It contains several major new features and is XHTML-compliant, The site design is noticeably biased against Internet Explorer users, with its extensive use of modern web standards such as CSS 2/3 and transparent PNG images.
- Twisted Legacy - Twisted Legacy is the third oldest spin-off still in existence, created in late September 2002 as a refuge for GameFAQs "The Couch" members. It has flourished since then, with many source improvements, made formerly by Aquatakat and now by Insder. While the source still has some bugs in it, it has been drastically changed since its Outboards 2 (GFH-Based) beginnings.
- whiteFyre - whiteFyre is the second oldest spinoff in existence, started in September 2002 by ultimategamer00. It is the first spinoff to truly have the appearance of the actual GameFAQs boards, as much of the GameFAQs HTML was directly copied. The source code was leaked following a break-in using code exploits on August 8 2003 (a similar attack was made exactly one year later), and ultimateGamer's official release followed six months later in February 2004.
- LUE2 - One of the many LUE2 spinoffs that exist. This particular LUE2 appeared in an article on Something Awful in December 2004.
- Original Source - This is a list of spinoffs not based off of GameFAQs Hell (most are closed-source, thus derivatives of them are few, if any)
- Archetype Zero - A very feature-rich spinoff that contains several features from Special Ops, whiteFyre, and some unique to Archetype Zero. It was started in January 2004 and became open source in July 2004. The boards closed down at the end of September 2004.
- Eugenic GameFAQs Clone - Written by the creator of Archetype Zero, this was intended to be as complete a clone of the new PHP GameFAQs as possible, except using valid XHTML and CSS code. The creator had a conversation with CJayC about it and was given the possibility of having it advertised in the help files as GFH was (see above), but since then work has been discontinued. There are downloads available from the author, as well as on a few other sites below.
- Flying Turkey - A spinoff that is very user-friendly. It has a lot of options that normal users can do and even more through the shop and higher levels. Flying Turkey is a spinoff with an origin of The Couch made by Magus.
- GameFAQs Clone X - The first working spinoff written in ASP, although not the first attempt (see section intro). GFCX was the closest to a true GameFAQs spinoff there is, until GameFAQs itself changed from ASP to PHP. The original set of boards were hacked because the owner left the database path in the released source code, and the passwords were unencrypted. The source is available for download at various sites.
- GameFAQs Clone 2 - A board with an original ASP source that uses the new GameFAQs layout.
- LUElinks - A private site with boards created by LlamaGuy, strictly for members of the message board LUE only. It has since developed into one of the few spinoffs that offer more than simply boards. The interface is similar to that of GameFAQs, but several features are added, most notably the abilities to vote on links and receive tokens for adding good links. There is a running joke among LUELinkers that whenever someone asks for the URL for the board, they all claim that the site does not exist.
- LUE2 - First GameFAQs spinoff to use the new GameFAQs layout. Originally created by Tsietisin in November 2003 on the day of SteriLUEzation (see site history), for three days it was the largest GameFAQs spinoff to ever exist. After Tsietisin resigned, programmer Mark Lin revived and took over the community in January 2004. After two hackings and numerous shutdowns due to bandwidth overconsumption on the outdated and inefficient Mediarchive software, a new and efficient source code was developed by August 2004 while the original user and post databases were retained.
- Metaboards - A source code made by U.X.O (also known as Fish and radfox). The purpose was to create a new and "properly coded" version of GameFAQs Hell. It was very active in development for the first three months, however it hasn't received much attention since February 2004, and at version 0.4 has been considered abandoned. All versions of the source have been preserved, some of which still exist on the site's FTP.
- Radiance - This is an original spinoff with layout similar to Aquatakat's boards. The source is currently moving from MySQL to SQLite under the name of Radiance Revolution.
- Solar Conflict Message Boards - This is an original spinoff written by Sasha Slutsker using PHP and MySQL. The code has not been released.
- Slate Boards - An original spinoff that uses one PHP file. The source code is stable with no known exploits, but the administration system is lacking compared to others.
- The Flux Network - The first active spin-off to be based on an OOP design, ns1987 made it because he was tired of the whiteFyre source. Based on GameFAQs Hell Lite, by Ant P.
- Thunderboards - An almost completely original spinoff still relatively new and the first released spinoff to use SQLite. The owner, lancelott, is more concerned with code perfection than adding more features, so the source is very secure and stable though a bit bare.
- Turkeybot - The owner of Turkeybot, Tonglebeak, wanted to make "the best spinoff there ever was", with more features and better speed than others. It contains customizable CSS themes like most other spinoffs, added account security, many other features, and claims to never have been hacked.
Anthony Parsons keeps a small archive of free sources for download. A much more complete source collection (though without descriptions) is available at lancelott's directory. There is a list of sources and reviews to accompany them at Slate Boards, however this list is censored to show only negative opinions of other spinoffs. There is also another user-submitted list at Aquatakat's site. The former site of Archetype Zero contains an archived spinoff board listing for historic purposes. None of these sites are entirely up-to-date, due to the rate at which new boards appear and others disappear.
A large former spinoff, Darkside Legion, was a banned word ("darksidelegion") at GameFAQs after receiving a notorious reputation, because its members were said to contact unsuspecting people and persuade them to give his or her password away. Many Mediarchive-based spinoffs have been hacked by spinoff coders. There has been long-standing tension between Outboards and whiteFyre, the two longest-running spinoffs.
GameFAQs spinoff/clone feuds
There have been many feuds between spinoffs, their owners, and their users. whiteFyre has been victim to two hackings - both on August 8th, and in 2003 and 2004. On the first one, the whiteFyre source code weas leaked. Six months after, ultimategamer00 officially released the source code. When whiteFyre was down in 2004, uG posted Archetype Zero source code because he had a feud with Batteries.
The Gay LUE2 Fuse
LUE2 sucks cock. Major cock. Who cares about those fags.
See also
External links
Official sites
Unofficial sites
- Kirby Still On Top's Secondary Boards FAQ - KSOT's Secondary Boards FAQ is recognised by many users as a comprehensive guide to the features and works of the GameFAQs message boards, answering questions and giving factual information that cannot be already found in the Help Files.
- GameFAQs Photo Album
- GameFAQs Archive - The GFA is a collection of saved humourous, interesting, and noteworthy topics and messages posted originally on the GameFAQs message boards themselves throughout their illustrious history between the years 1999 and 2004. The Archive was coded and designed by Roaddhogg, originally to serve as a follow-up to ColdFusion's "Nostalgia Project", which became defunct in late 2002. The GameFAQs Archive currently stores in excess of 1,000 pages and has over 300,000 hits. User submissions are encouraged.
- SCk24 - A site devoted to covering the GameFAQs contests
- GameFAQs Users Site Made by moderator Crono Lvl 99, this is similar to the photo albums. The site is dead at this stage.