2025 main site improvements to date (TAFA uploads, Member Photo Uploads, & More)

mclemore

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You can always see main site major news here: https://www.arcade-museum.com/news, and a more extensive list of updates here: https://www.arcade-museum.com/news-system-updates.

Continuous work continues to improve the site. Here are a few highlights from 2025 so far:
  • A member contribution leaderboard was launched: https://www.arcade-museum.com/top-contributors
  • The ability to link game entries to eLibrary pdf pages were released. See the eLibrary Links section of Star Wars for an example: https://www.arcade-museum.com/Videogame/star-wars
  • The ability to view an eLibrary magazine issue in a gallery thumbnail was released. See: https://elibrary.arcade-museum.com/Atari-Coin-Connection/1977-February-1-03/gallery for an example.
  • An expanded 'Contributions' tab on VAPS Member detail pages help give credit for recent content contributions made by members.
  • Significant improvements have been made to members private stats pages (Account -> Stats).
  • 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
  • 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.
  • We've (finally after a year) re-added the ability for members to upload photos to their VAPS member profiles, and now also allowed those images to be resorted. You can also remove an image to vote.
  • The tech manual upload process was improved
  • For image uploads, we added support for the Apple iPhone .heic image format.
  • We finally fully integrated TAFA. We removed the TAFA manufacturer database and now all TAFA records are tied to the main game and/or manufacturer database tables. And we've finally added the ability to upload new flyers (which must be tied to a manufacturer or game entry, so if such doesn't exist, it needs to be added first).
 
A developer continues to work on the site on a full-time basis currently.

Major Items of Note:

July 25 2025 - Tag Games to Arcade Locations! - We've launched the ability to add game lists to locations in the Arcade Map, and tied them to our main our main encyclopedia. Now when looking at a game, you can see what locations you can play it at! And when looking at participating locations, you can see what they have on the floor.

October 23 2025 - Major eLibrary Upgrade! - A -major- upgrade to the International Arcade Museum Library's Arcade PDF eLibrary officially launched today (after months of parts of its 'soft' launching). Full multi-language support has been added, including for the search engine, and a new page turning issue reading feature has been added to enhance your research experience. You can also read issues the legacy way if you want (one pdf at a time). The already fast search engine has been made even faster.

October 31 2025 - New Account Dashboard - We've created a new account dashboard (when logged in, click on Account at top right), to provide links to all account related functions site-wide, including personal information, account preferences, personal stats, forum setting, contributions, VAPS, and tools such as 'Recommend a User for the Forums'. Previously a user had to go to multiple places on the site to find different functions.

December 01 2025 - Mold-A-Rama Support - We've expanded our Mold-A-Rama support to include an updated Mold-A-Rama Information Center, with a Database of Mold-A-Rama Styles, a list of known Mold-A-Map to find both history and current operating locations! We've also saved what we could from the 2011-2016 Moldville archive, and taken down the original archive as it didn't fully function with modern browsers.

and

December 02, 2025We have added the ability to upload token photo pairs (front and back) to attach to Arcade Map locations! See our page for the Arcade Map: Petersen Automotive Museum as an example.
November 17, 2025Throughout the site, we've added the ability to re-edit (crop, rotate, etc.) previously uploaded photos.
October 31, 2025We've added multi-lingual hints when searching in the eLibrary. Search for names like Sega, Nintendo, Stern, Midway, Cave, or Bally, and the system will automatically include the Japanese versions of these names for expanded search results A single click turns the expanded search off if you just want to search for English words.
August 20, 2025In the VAPS/Members game section, a member can now add a distance limit on a game want record. For a common game (ie: Pac-Man), maybe you only want to know about local machines for sale, but for a super rare game, maybe you are willing to ship it across an ocean. Then if you look at a want list report: Members/VAPS -> Trading -> Logged In: Your Watchlist Matches, it wlll show you all matching want list records (filtering recorfds that exceed a distance you might have set), with the distance of each item for sale.
August 18, 2025In the VAPS/Members section, you can now tie (or untie) your photos uploads to specific games in your profile -- time to update your for-sale listings
August 15, 2025We noticed that a number of VAPS members were not deleting a game entry when they no longer owned it and instead have added comments to the game like 'sold'. We've now added a 'Sold' status option in addition to 'Have' and 'Want' to address this.
August 12, 2025In the VAPS/Member section, when looking at their game list, a member will now see the general rating they have given each game, and be invited (via a single click) to rate any games they haven't previously.
August 08, 2025A VAPS/Member game entry field called 'Knowledge level' was deprecated and hidden as it wasn't well explained and membes were using it for different things (technical knowledge, game play knowledge, knowledge of the game their owned, etc.)
August 07, 2025We made numerous subtle improvements to the Calendar/Events pages -- in particular to the adding and editing of events.
August 05, 2025We've re-enabled the ability to upload photos to the VAPS/Members section, and added new features like the ability to sort the order of images and to soft delete previously uploaded images.
July 31, 2025VAPS Member's public profile pages now have a 'Contributions' tab showing their Rated Games & Rated Locations as well as their added entries for : Games, Game Images, Manufacturers, Manufacturer Images, Locations, Events, Manual, and People.
July 30, 2025VAPS Member's public profile pages now include a 'Visited' tab showing what locations a member has visited, along with their ratings and comments about same.
July 25, 2025A major reorganization of the VAPS member pages was completed. VAPS no longer has its own (very different menu bar) from the rest of the site, and now simply resides as its own menu tab on the menu bar.
July 14, 2025Content moderators may now merge duplicate manufacturers together. Previously we added the ability for them to merge game records.
July 07, 2025The calculations for how popular a game is or how much detail we have on a game has been completed reworked. This impacts the status bars shown when one is looking at a list of games (or search results) in the main encyclopedia
June 12, 2025Social media quick link buttons have been moved to the bottom of pages instead of at the top.
June 11, 2025On the Arcade Map, click on the legend icons below the map to turn each category on or off. This filters the results accordingly.
June 04, 2025On the Arcade Map, a 'My Visits' tab has been added then takes someone to a single report in VAPS showing the locations they have visited and what ratings have been given to them.
April 14, 2025We 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, 2025We'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.






We continue to list our major items of note here:

and other updates here:

We also regularly speed up pages, address bugs, implement security enhancements (primarily to deter bots and thieves), and more.
 
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