Yesterday is only the second time in my life that I've had an opportunity to buy a Vectrex at a reasonable price. The first time was about 15 years ago. I was in college and couldn't justify paying $40 for a pre-crash video-game system when I was picking up systems like the Emerson Arcadia 2001 and the Atari 5200 for $10 each. But yesterday, I saw a Vectrex with five cartridges marked "as is" for $75 plus sales tax. So, I bought it, figuring I was effectively buying a lottory ticket. I thought there was a 50% chance that the screen was burnt out.

Turns out that the screen is fine, but something is wrong with the controller connection. I see the title screen for each game (including the built-in "Mine Storm"), but the player-selection screen reads "Player 0". The instruction books for the games and the instruction book for the system (yes, I got those, too) don't say anything about this condition. I don't know what the appropriate Google search terms would be, but searches for things like "Vectrex controller" turn up the instructions for disassemblying and repairning physical wear and tear. As it stands, I can't even deduce whether it's the Vectrex console or the controller that is at fault, so I'm reluctant to dismantle the controller (a difficult task to do right). I tried a Genesis controller with little effect, although the plug may not be settling all of the way in. So, I'm stuck until I can get access to another Vectrex console or another Vectrex controller in order to troubleshoot.

Chances are, even if the console is hosed, the controller and the five cartridges (including overlays, boxes and instructions) are probably worth more than I paid for them.

Honestly, I had expected it to be there, but it didn't show up in the pop-up when I hovered over the "Forums" link, so I didn't bother actually clicking it. However, if you do need help or want to report defects, you can click on the "Forums" link to get to the forums page and scroll down to "GameSpot Support Forums". So, it isn't as well-hidden as my previous post implied. And now I see a "Help" link in themiddle of one of the menu bars on the lower part of this page and other pages. Was I blind and/or stupid when I went looking for it when I needed it? Or did they just add the help link after I posted? And the help forums? Complete with entries dated in the past?

...Sometimes I wish everyone was out to get me. It would mean that I have someone else to blame for my mistakes.

It's unfortunate that there either isn't a "Contact Us" link on this site or that it is so very well hidden that I cannot find it. Maybe in the near future, the developers of this site will add one, making this blog post archaic. Many sites do have some sort of feedback loop that allows users to report defects. Being a software engineer and currently masquerading as a test engineer, I have great respect for good-quality software and for developers who take advantage of every possibility to harvest input.

Thus, I am disappointed in this site for both the lack of that feedback loop and for the poor quality of the "Search" feature. I am migrating here from IGN because I need an operational, online, public (yet protected via pseudonym) list of my game collection. However, adding my games has been very difficult so far.

First, it would be convenient if I could filter by system and order alphabetically. If the system filter exists directly, I can't find it. I've resorted to searching for the symbols that this site uses (example: "(GEN)" when I want the list of Sega Genesis games), but that can be difficult when the symbol isn't unique ("(PS) turned up Playstation, Playstation 2, Playstation 3, and Playstation Portable games, plus a smattering of games that aren't on any of those platforms) or when the symbol is difficult to guess ("(MVSN)" apparently means Microvision).

I can live with that, but I can't understand why the search results aren't alphabetically sortable. The choices are "Rank", "Date", and "Score". What usability study determined that alphabetical is less important than each of those? You can't tell me that it's harder to order alphabetically than by score. I've had to sort by date and bounce my way through the list on my PDA in order to get games in.

Before I go on to the worst flaw, though, I will point out that being able to add games to my collection in one click without leaving the search page is absolutely the way to go. The last time IGN was operational, I had to add the game to my "favorites" and then go to the favorites page to move it to my collection.

Unfortunately, the search feature here is seriously flawed. I've seen at least two distinct classes of errors. The first is that pagination breaks often. I can consistently see this by following these steps:

1) Type "SMS" in the search box (not with the quotes).

2) Click "Search" (or hit the "Enter" key on your keyboard.

3) On the results page, select "Sort by Date".

4) Click on the last page in the pagination links at the bottom of the results.

5) Click "Prev" at the bottom of the results. Repeat this step until you get the "No Results Found" page.

I think there may be a little intermittence, but it should be reasonably repeatable, and this isn't the only way to do it.

The second type of defect I've seen is that search text that should turn up results doesn't, but widening or narrowing the text may. This seems to be more intermittent, but I had issues where "Raiden" produced no results (at all!) but "Raiden (JAG)" produced one result (the correct one). I also had issues with "After Burner (SMS)". At the moment, these seem to be working, so maybe operations saw some error logs and deployed a fix or something. Or maybe caching takes forever. That could be the root cause of the first failure as well.

In general, I'd recommend that these developers perform better testing of their product. If it is a caching-performance issue, then perhaps they should run automated tests with Selenium or HtmlUnit. With the name of a well-established company like CBS behind them, they really should put more effort into upholding a reputation for quality.

If not, I may have to go find another place to put my collection. If there isn't one that meets the minimum standard of quality, maybe I'll have to implement one....

P.S. The spellchecker doesn't know the word "blog", which is absolutely silly for a spellchecker embedded in a blogging feature. Here is what it suggests: "blog: bl og, bl-og, bog, log, blag, bloc, biog, bldg, blow, blob, blot, clog, flog, slog"