Re: Rules on game manuals, search function and mor

Try Archive.org, they're usually open to people uploading whatever. Although the issue you're facing here is copyright law. All games and game manuals are considered intellectual property and belong to their respective rights holders. The more recently published they are, the more likely the rights holders are to take notice and potentially file DMCA claims against the uploader. This is why Vimm's Lair restricts uploads of more recently published material, since after a certain amount of time the rights holders will be less attentive. It's still illegal to upload any of this, but when games are out of print there's much less of a financial incentive to go after uploaders.

Vimm's Lair does not accept donations.

I don't know what anyone else's thoughts are on this but here are mine:

In my opinion,there should be no restrictions as to uploading game manuals from "Gen 8 and 9". I can understand the current "rule" of 2 generations back with games to some degree but for manuals, I don't see the reasoning it would apply.

That being said, it seems 99% of games haven't come with a real manual since the end of the PS3 & Xbox 360 era unless it's some outrageously priced collector's set, or the ridiculous "Limited" nonsense. This is just one reason of many why uploading manuals from said Gen 8/9 and beyond should continually uploaded.

Personally, I think the same should be done with the guides in as many places as possible seeing as how cancel culture hasn't gotten completely cancelled yet. If this were done, I would definitely spend some time collecting & organizing them as I have been doing with ROMs I've gathered separately from a Raspberry Pi I bought about 5 years ago.

If it's not done here, there should be more threads pointing to where people can find them; more open source type files like dropbox or google drive. Even though I can't stand google as a company having the ability to create shared accounts on these platforms is beneficial to all of us, so I guess they're not "all bad".

As far as the search function goes; in the game section I think it works incredibly well! It would be beneficial for the newbies can go back in the archives and not ask the same questions over and over again. I include myself in that category and even though I am learning fairly quickly, this is stuff I have been interested in for years but recently just pulled the trigger on

I realize this takes time, probably a lot of work and keeping a website such as this running, let alone in tip top shape certainly isn't free no matter how many ads are run. I have no idea if the people who do the moderating here ever see threads like this but this is why there should be some sort of donate button. A buck here, 5 bucks there, crypto....whatever. Nobody should have to do all of this upkeep for free and I have thought multiple times now that I wanted to donate.

Feel free to add any other ideas.