CoNniversary the Twelfth: 2009

The site's twelve now. As many of you know, this means that the Caves of Narshe is certainly what the media folks call a "tween," and I believe it; just the other day, Climmy threw a temper tantrum when I wouldn't buy him a Jonas Brothers poster.

He then proceeded to murder a bystander. The analogy only goes so far.

All that aside, the site is indeed twelve - however, to my eye, she's got the lustre of a site only half her age, and the vitality to boot. It's been a pretty shiny year for CoN, even though some might have wondered last year how many more good years we had under our belts. We might have even wondered it ourselves, and as such, we made the second half of 2008 the catalyst for change and carried that through to now. In terms of development, I think we turned the last year of the site into a pretty significant one, with the launch of the big new Chrono Trigger section. We'd thought about covering Chrono Trigger almost from the very day that we put Final Fantasy IV on the site, and as the stars aligned with the impressive DS port, we took the leap. The result was CoN progress like we hadn't seen in years, with a large group all coming together and really banging it out (in this case, "it" being the first major collection of data for the SNES/PSX and DS versions all in one spot). Not only did we do that, we also put together a new wallpaper section, giving some love to a section of the site that hadn't been loved in over a year and a half. It's the only place to find wallpapers designed with the CoN user in mind, and there are over two hundred wallpapers there among all sizes and designs. Not content with those two big projects, we even rolled out a new way to publish gaming news to you folks, including better ways to organize and browse and even a way to get you guys more involved by submitting your own.

You should think this was enough, right? Wrong, sucka. Got even a little bit more, going up today. First, we're broadening the avatar gallery with a wider array from our newest game, Chrono Trigger and a huge selection of pins from Square's big 2008 hit, The World Ends With You. For those of you who have a thing for CoN History, like we do, we also decided to put together, well, pretty much every page from every previous version of CoN and put it back online. It's goofy, sure, but no more goofy than the quality of the code on most of it, which I've managed to largely leave unadulterated. The CoN History page has links to all four previous design iterations just waiting for you. Please, visit and mock the skills I had back in the time of the ancients.

Finally, and I think this is the big one (hence it being last, and in friggin' bold, duh), is the return of a feature that people loved many a year ago: the CoN quiz is now back on the road and ready to abuse you, with a twist. Now the questions aren't just from our covered games - those only make up the first tier, called "Local" since the questions are, y'know, local to the site. We've got two new tiers of questions, "Regional" and "Global," which are pulled from the entire Square Enix canon and all of gaming, resepectively. So, if you think you know your stuff, there are quizzes open right now. Get started. And, hey, since we like giving away AmaCoN money, here's the new CoNtest for the rest of this year: whoever ends this calendar year (as of 23:59:59 GMT on 31 December 2009) on top of the Top Scorers page for all quizzes (with at least ten quizzes taken) will take home $25 in AmaCoN dollars or their local equivalent. Also, let me take this time to personally thank all the folks who participated in the closed beta for this new project over the last couple weeks; we made some significant improvements that everyone will appreciate, and we'll look to do more of that in the near future.

So, there we go, we have another year's worth of work in place. And it's surely enough to convince everyone that we, unlike most everyone else out there, have yet to give up the ghost. So we'll go into our lucky thirteenth year, knowing that the experience of the previous twelve years will keep us going with new projects and new ways to keep the site going and useful to you guys. We, of course, have a few things planned already to make things better. However, we have also come to learn that you also know what you want, and we're always willing to hear what those things are (even if we don't ever actually, you know, do them). So here's a thread perfect for you to tell us what you liked and disliked this year, and also to tell us what you want to see next year to keep you here and happy. As usual, while we certainly love CoN, it's a lot less lovable if the people who really make it fun, you folks, stop coming. So, I'll wrap up this year by saying that you should keep posting good threads, and keep submitting new content to the site, and that should the mood strike you this summer or any time hence, to come visit us in chat (which has been a bit quiet lately, which makes me quite bored at work), and throw some commentary our way about most anything.

And, speaking of work, well, I'm quite busy today trying to get through the most difficult of my office work so that I have time to put some more effort into CoN yet today. Cheerio, friends, and I hope to see you checking in quite soon to celebrate another great year of CoN with us!