The Vault
The Vault is a concept that is currently being built at gamearchive that will attempt to be the
final solution to archiving of data pertaining to Arcade Video Games and Pinball Machines. Data
stored in the vault will be virtually limitless and the largest strenght will be that you the
user will be an integral part of creating the vault.
The Problem...
Web sites on Arcade Video and Pinball games have been quite popular for the last 3-4 years. Many of these
sites have excellent information but for many reasons fizzle away after going live. The problem is that
this information gradually dissapears from the internet. Various other sites may mirror data but eventally
bits and peices never resurface and that strange data sheet you were once looking for is now gone. This
is the nature of the internet. Most data can be found after some digging and maybe some creative editing of
a sites former URL but this is very time consuming and may often lead nowhere.
The Solution...
The Vault is the solution to this problem. The idea behind the vault is that it will be a totally data
driven web site that archive any information relating to a game. That information may be ROM images, pictures, flyers scans,
Service Manuals, Schematics, reviews, comments, tech support data or just about anything else. Now, this
sounds exactly like the problem listed above... a new site gathers lots of great info on games but then as
the webmasters interest wanes, the site becomes stale and the data old, or even worse, removed for space reasons.
The Difference...
While the data driven design of the vault will give it inherent advantages over static web sites, the biggest difference that
'The Vault' will make is that it is controlled to a large extent by you the users of the site. The power will be that users may
contribute data to the site in any category needed. Even binary files can be uploaded by users and put directly into the database (through
a moderator of course). This will make the site the most powerful archive pertaining to arcade video and pinball machines on the net.
This is the goal for 'The Vault'.