|
|
|
PIXEL TIMEOUT: THE PIXEL EMPIRE'S 2ND BIRTHDAY
The writers: Tom Clare
Posted: 19th May 2014
Posted: 19th May 2014
This year we’ve delved into the rich depths of gaming history, reliving the highs and lows of the medium with reviews and features spanning four decades, yet in a somewhat fitting twist, time has caught up with us – The Pixel Empire’s is already two years-old! The continued contributions of Chris, Shane and Alan have helped immeasurably in our efforts to make a complete gaming archive. Our aim of building a site that covers fairly and squarely all games across all eras is a tiny bit closer to realisation, though there’s a heck of a long way to go!
But no teary speeches: here’s another statathon to celebrate our second birthday. Learn many quaint and quirky facts about our writers, our readers and the games we’ve covered. You never know, some of them might surprise you.
4,898 The number of trophies Alan, Shane and Tom have accrued between them on the PSN. Impressively, Shane’s 722 have been amassed within the last five months! He's clearly not hanging around now he's got his hands on a PS3.
6.82 In some shocking news, the average review score meted out in The Pixel Empire is down this year by a whopping 0.04 out of 10! Pixel Seconds saw an even more gigantic drop of 0.05, down to a positively stingy 7.62 average! Yeah. Well, we’re nothing if not consistent I guess. As with last year, Tom has the stingiest review average of 6.59 from 107 reviews (read on for a full set of writers' averages), though by his own admission, this may have as much to do with his inability to avoid awful budget PS2 software as him being mean to his games.
Even our least-super Super game turned out to be pretty good.
|
7/10 Here’s a teaser for you: just how super are games that have ‘Super’ in their name? Well, we conducted a highly scientific experiment involving 5 such games (i.e. we looked at the scores we awarded them in our reviews) and, thanks to strong showings from the likes of Super Tennis and Super Monaco GP, we can deduce our Super games fare relatively well, posting an average score of 7/10. Perhaps more importantly, none of them turned out to be pants, with each scoring at least 6/10. See: it’s not all false advertising after all.
|
16 What do the 3DO, TurboGrafx-16, Amstrad CPC, GX4000, Atari 2600, NES, SNES, Game Boy, DS, Wii, WiiU, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 4, PC and SEGA Master System all have in common? Well, apart from the fact you can play video games on them, they’ve all been covered in review by our era-hopping retro maestro Chris. The 16 formats he’s so far covered span a whopping seven generations of gaming, with 32 years separating Defender (1981, 2600) from Resogun (2013, PS4).
130 The number of countries and territories The Pixel Empire has received visits from since the site went live in 2012. We’re really happy to see the site reaching such a broad audience: Pakistan has leapt from 36th last year to 3rd this, and France is up to 5th from 8th last year, whilst we continue to enjoy fantastic support from Oman and Gibraltar. 2013/2014 also saw first-time from China, South Sudan and Micronesia. Leave us a message in the comments box and let us know where you’re reading from!
Street Fighter II: Officially still a big thing, internet confirms
|
1.88% Street Fighter II
evidently still has the golden touch. And before you ask, no, 1.88% isn't our review
score or indeed SFII's metacritic. Chris’s review of seminal SNES
port The World Warrior, which laid the foundations for all 2D beat 'em ups that have followed, has accounted for nearly 2%
of all clicks The Pixel Empire has received over the last twelve months. Remove
homepage visits from the equation and that share rises to a whopping 2.67%,
which means that more or less 1 in every 37 clicks the site received
were to relive the spinning-bird kicks and yoga-flames of youths past. It
appears we gamers will be forever throwing fireballs.
|
|
2,275 As well as enjoying some excellent support from local regions, The Pixel Empire has rather unfathomably been visited from no fewer than 2,275 towns and cities throughout the world. This left us rather lost for words, which is of course a considerable problem when your job consists almost entirely of writing. It also suggests that we’re averaging only 3-4 readers per location. So please: tell your friends/neighbours/random strangers about TPE!
|
Pixel Hotspots
|
102,713 We were really happy to reach the milestone of 100,000 page views just prior to our second birthday, a target that had seemed rather fanciful not so very long ago. Still, whilst the overall viewing figure is a smidgen down on our first twelve months, the number of visitors has increased considerably. Pixel Readers have been drawn to a mixture of modern titles such as Jak II: Renegade, Pilot Down Behind Enemy Lines and Half-Life 2, and classic retro games, with Top Gear, Street Fighter II and Batman proving particularly popular. We’re delighted that both our modern and retro coverage is finding an audience, and we try our best to fulfil review requests where time/expense permits.
EMPIRE BUILDING: PIXEL YEAR-ON-YEAR PERFORMANCE
|
2012/13 2013/14 Difference |
Visitors
5,733 8,557 +49.25% |
Page Views
51,842 50,871 -1.7% |
Pages with 200+ views
42 39 -7.1% |
PIXEL
|
|
|
|
|
|
Average Review Score
Most popular reviews (May 19th 2013 - May 18th 2014) |
MOST POPULAR FEATURES
|
Tom and PS2 have Skyscraper/The Sniper 2 to thank for their low averages
|
TOP PERFORMING FORMATS (MIN. 10 REVIEWS)
|
Top formats by average:
1. PC (8.1 from 14 reviews) 2. GX4K (7.1 from 10 reviews) 3. PS (7.0 from 21 reviews) 4. SNES (6.9 from 13 reviews) 5. PS3 (6.9 from 24 reviews) |
Formats with most reviews:
1. X360 (43 reviews at 6.7) 2. PS3 (34 reviews at 6.9) 3. PS2 (29 reviews at 5.7) 4. PS (21 reviews at 7.0) 5. PC (14 reviews at 8.1) |
AND FINALLY...
A brief but heartfelt thanks to Alan, Chris and Shane for their tireless contributions to the site, the diversity and quality of which would have suffered immeasurably without their contributions. Thanks also to our readers, notably super-fan Hamza, and to all those who’ve got involved with the site via our facebook and twitter pages, engaging us in discussion about the games we’ve loved covering. With the return of Landmark Levels and some more industry interviews on the way in the coming months, we’re really excited about what the future holds for the Empire.
HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE PIXEL EMPIRE'S SECOND YEAR
Pixel Hi-Score Duel #4 - Wip3out
Tom and Chris took part in our closest duel, 0.13 seconds separating them. 
Pixel Q&A - Jon "Jops" Hare (CEO of Tower Studios)
Al got the lowdown on Speedball 2 HD from the legend that is Jops. |
|