The Brothers DuoMazov [2.0] Returns - 100% Rebooted/Restored!!!!

[NightWolve]

3/10/2025 - Re: The Brothers DuoMazov 2.0 100% Rebooted
pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/


6/10/2018 - Re: Brothers DuoMazov (thebrothersduomazov.com) Domain Expired 6/4/2018 - The End ??

thebrothersduomazov.com/2010/12/emerald-dragon.html

I was looking for Bonk III screenshots, tried an old ED link, got a dead site with domain expired message... I sent a message to @Emerald Rocker to see what's up, but who knows... Shame if it doesn't return, so FYI.

BUT, let's check the The WayBack Machine....

wayback://thebrothersduomazov.com/2010/12/emerald-dragon.html






Yep, that works, and since they were all static HTML articles, it can all remain accessible.


Which brings me to the other case where the site is truly, currently dead, PCECP.com...

http://www.pcecp.com

Sorry ... for 16+ years, pcecp.com has server up info about every PCEngine, every Turbo and every PC-FX game ever made. However the site has been sorely neglected for the last few years. The code that runs pcecp now suffers from multiple deprecated calls, and fixing it, though not impossible, is a large under taking that I currently do not have time for.
So for the time being, pcecp is on vacation. Hopefully it will find new life, but as you are well aware there are other resources out there that are more modern, and support better media representation of our beloved systems.

Now it's been broken for years, and it's dynamic so WayBack does not apply, so I hoped it'd get fixed eventually, but now BT Garner formally shut it down with that message... I actually reached out to him on Facebook and offered to fix the PHP if he's interested, so I'll see.

But anyway, shame to officially lose both of these websites... If it's to be, then RIP...

[gilbert]

That with PCECP closing is a bad news (as mentioned the Brothers Duomazov pages are at least archived), as it was only half-broken (search function was not working but there were ways to read the entries) and now we couldn't even access any of its pages.

[ParanoiaDragon]

Yeah, i hadn't been to pcecp in years, & then went last nite & boom, gone.  And then I find out about Brothers DuoMazov!

[Xanadu Gaiden]

Shame about the DuoMazov domain, I read through their every single review last year before buying my console...

[NightWolve]

Well, if somebody can reach them, I might be able to help!

A few days ago while working on PCEFX, I discovered the search indexing feature of the forum takes up 500MB of space, almost more than the main database table that stores all the forum posts! I turned it off, which deletes the indexing, freeing up all that space, so the database no longer needs 1GB, only about half that, which means my increase of image attachments space by 100MB will be OK (I prefer members mostly use it for important tech guides, not say for random photo crap) and there's plenty to spare...

That said, if someone can reach them, I can offer to host their site on PCEFX. I could make a subfolder, pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov, throw a copy of all root files, folders, images, etc. in there. I'm sure Aaron won't mind, but I'll have to clear it later. This assumes they don't wanna pay hosting/domain fees anymore and that's the problem versus being unable to (death, life-changing event, etc)...

This is runinrider's account, I just sent him a message too since I still didn't hear from Emerald Rocker via PM or Twitter...

pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?action=profile&u=1012

Anybody know how to reach them another way, give it a shot! What if they just forgot to renew ? Doesn't seem planned or they would've given some months notice prior on the site...

[nopepper]

Would be great to have that site perpetually available, as it has some of the funniest, most well written reviews in all of gamedom (although I don't agree with a lot of their tastes).

I rarely use the search function here, but I'm assuming you meant the full text index and if so, will that mean slower searches since it will have to do full table scans? (I'm a SQL Server guy, so I'm not sure if those apply to whatever DB this site is using).

[NightWolve]

I rarely use the search function here, but I'm assuming you meant the full text index and if so, will that mean slower searches since it will have to do full table scans? (I'm a SQL Server guy, so I'm not sure if those apply to whatever DB this site is using).

Yep, you know what I'm talking about!

A "LIKE" sql query will hit the main table instead of this index table now. You were warned that by turning the feature off, the search feature will be slower on big sites, but it seems OK to me. Search isn't used that often and it's more accurate to query the main table than something that was probably out of sync anyway. The tradeoff to gain 500MB disk space for more forum image attachments and for future posts/content is well worth it.

Note: It's a custom Simple Machine forum software feature, it relied on another custom table for indexing which it warned can grow bigger than the actual posts table! It's not the database feature of creating indexes on the actual table to speed up common queries, although what SMF did for their index table involved that I'm sure.

We're running on a mySQL backend. I also worked with SQL Server in IT jobs for intranet services as well as Oracle for business websites myself. But free is free, my main gripe is not having a good front end GUI for most which at least Microsoft payware always had you covered for!

Anyway, we have the space for their site, I imagine it's in the 100-150 MB range, just static HTML and image files, and shouldn't be a big deal. I know it's unnecessary if WayBack does the job well enough but yeah, the offer stands.

[nopepper]

Yeah, once you have used SSMS or the like, going to more rudimentary GUIs or command line can be hard. I do like PostgreSQL and PGAdmin, which doesn't feel too much like going back to dark ages, and that DB is fast.

Back on topic, yes, I think it's a worthy tradeoff, provided the majority do not use the search function too often. Also, I'd rather have the Duomazov site hosted and easily linkable, google searchable, etc., instead of having to use the wayback, as it will be easier to find for noobs and get more people exposed to the wonderful Turbo/PCE library...but I might be in the minority on that topic.

[NightWolve]

I just emailed both of them with my yahoo account, it's possible a % of private message notifications get marked as spam so worth an additional try. Still would like to know what happened...

[Gypsy]

PCE is dying.

Soon only the facefuck groups will be left. *shivers*

[NightWolve]

[Emerald Rocker]

Thanks to Nightwolve for reaching out to me.  I had actually noticed the expiration a few days ago.  Unfortunately, since I was just a site-pimper and not a contributor, there isn't anything that I can add to this topic.

That aside, seeing as I've already logged in, I think I'll start posting around here again. 

[xcrement5x]

Thanks to Nightwolve for reaching out to me.  I had actually noticed the expiration a few days ago.  Unfortunately, since I was just a site-pimper and not a contributor, there isn't anything that I can add to this topic.

That aside, seeing as I've already logged in, I think I'll start posting around here again. 

If you've got a contact for runinruder (wasn't he the hoster?) and he has access to the files or something I'd be happy to rehost, I loved the reviews on there. 

[NightWolve]

Yep, RuninRuder is who we need to reach, but can't thus far...

[geepee16]

I've been away for a while but wasn't Nat H*** affiliated with DuoMazov? With the loss of the TML, I have been so out of touch with the Turbo community, with one or two exceptions. Anyway, the loss of DuoMazov (despite the archives) is lamentable.

[Bardoly]

I have really enjoyed the duomazov website over the years, so I hope that this is only temporary.

[pixeljunkie]

I hope this story has a happy ending - I've always loved that site. Good looking out Nightwolve!

[NightWolve]

Alright, so I made good on this for selections I felt worth saving!

Presenting: https://www.pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/

I cleaned up, sync'ed A LOT of crappy HTML, stripped all the Internet WayBack inserted popup menus, and formatted/indented it nicely with Microsoft Expression Web 4 (free!) which is REALLY handy for this with nice extras like helping to eliminate unused classes in the CSS style sheet, etc. Too much grunt work for so few reviews, but I willed myself though it can still be cleaned up better.

https://www.pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/1941-counter-attack.html
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/cosmic-fantasy-2.html
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/daimakaimura-ghouls-n-ghosts.html
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/dracula-x-rondo-of-blood.html
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/emerald-dragon.html
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/legend-of-xanadu.html
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/legend-of-xanadu-ii.html
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/xak-i-and-ii.html
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/xak-iii-eternal-recurrence.html
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/ys-book-i-and-ii.html
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/ys-iii-wanderers-from-ys.html
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/ys-iv-dawn-of-ys.html

Of course we had to save Dracula X and Ys reviews if they were at risk! ;)

I did one more thing, built a dropdown combobox list connected to The WayBack Archive so you can reach 100% of DuoMazov with it, BUT it's slow, will take some seconds to load a page. You can insert my JavaScript in any page if you wish to add it to your own Review site and I know there is at least one person here who has one.

The JavaScript code for The Brothers DuoMazov WayBack linker is here:

https://www.pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/Old-duomazov.js

Download that file, link it within your page/site, and with the following code, you'll have the whole site available.

Code Select Expand

<head>
<script src="duomazov.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
DuoMazov Reviews:
<script>WriteReviewMenu()</script>

Just look at any of the pages I preserved to see how it works, like Ys Book I&II. Click on the "Select More DuoMazov Reviews" area and pick whatever to test it... So DuoMazov is 100% always available.

DuoMazov Reviews:

I'm not going forward with any more importing that I did because it's lengthy grunt work and I'd rather get the whole site from RuninRider if he wants and isn't planning on resumption himself. Emerald Rocker also worries he may return and not want this, so yeah, I will stop here and wait till the end of the year to see if he shows up again before ever importing more of his articles on over off of WayBack, etc.

I've been away for a while but wasn't Nat H*** affiliated with DuoMazov?

Yeah, Nat Hall is credited as the designer in the HTML pages. It appears that RuninRider/IvaNEC carried most of the site (as in producing reviews) until now though...

[NightWolve]

Too much great PCE eye candy to just let DuoMazov die without a fight! ;)

https://www.pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/1941-counter-attack.html



https://www.pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/daimakaimura-ghouls-n-ghosts.html

[NightWolve]

https://www.pcengine-fx.com/reviews/

As Zigfried/EmeraldRocker mentioned, we moved on the idea of a PCEFX Reviews section for both new and classic reviews of his that are no longer published on the Internet. I think the "mission" of PCEFX has gone off-track for some years and I wanna see some return to what PCE preservation should be about going forward. More content, ideas for content, and getting back to some "fun" and an atmosphere of comradery wouldn't hurt either!

As stated in the title, anyone that wants to publish a PCE/PCFX review here can drop me a line. If you bring the quality, I'll get it uploaded/published. Aaron used to have a few people in the late 90's actually but the motivation died off I guess, as some things inevitably do. We'll figure out how to link it up in the index and either you or I can apply the template to it that EmeraldRocker made which fits with the PCEFX look.


https://www.pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/

On June of this year, per my earlier thread, The Brothers DuoMazov domain mysteriously expired... RuninRuder/IvaNEC cannot be reached from his Facebook page, email or anywhere else... We don't know if this is the end for sure or what, but the longer the domain is without an owner, the hopes of a return to normal grow more bleak. Thankfully, The WayBack Machine has pretty much copied the whole website, so I decided to import what I valued the most and I also created a dropdown combobox linker that lets you access 100% of the other reviews with the WayBack site. WayBack did accomplish this, but my linker is a tad better from some of the broken pages that are archived and it's a piece of cake to add to other sites.

Now, keep in mind this all may be temporary as RuninRuder could return without warning at any time, so this was done with the respectful assumption that he might not and that his content is worth preservation for future PCE-loving generations to enjoy. If at the end of the year he/his site still doesn't return, I may continue to import more articles onto PCEFX for better preservation than WayBack so long as the space is there to allow for it.

What a shame if fan work like this was to be lost for good or only left as a remnant inside The WayBack Machine with its popup menu insertions and slow response time...

https://www.pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/legend-of-xanadu.html




I like the colorful PCE 16-bit eye candy upfront, instant, versus waiting for it in a YouTube review personally.

Anyway, that concludes this update. The grunt work needed to clean up those pages for importation was quite tedious and the effort could be in vain at any moment, so don't wanna go too far with this until RuninRuder turns up again. It'd be better to get a ZIP of the whole site from him if he decided he doesn't wanna host his review site himself anymore...

[xcrement5x]

Here's hoping you can get the whole thing mirrored!

[nopepper]

Great job with the drop down and I really do hope we can get all of them hosted here, as the wayback is slow AF.

Not only are these really well written, but the screenshots are second to none.

[NightWolve]

I dug around DuoMazov in WayBack just now and have more info worth sharing I guess:

* IvanNEC/RuninRuder's Profile: https://www.blogger.com/profile/14144108295923664593
When you click in it, it says "Profile Not Available. The Blogger Profile you requested cannot be displayed."

Not a good sign...


* Nat Hall's Profile: https://www.blogger.com/profile/06419369101317521714
That leads to some live reviews/YYYUGE strategy guides :
http://natisalunatic.blogspot.com/
http://natisalunatic.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2011-08-02T08:12:00-07:00&max-results=7
http://natisalunatic.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2011-07-28T00:32:00-07:00&max-results=7&start=1&by-date=false

Looks like he'd build his reviews/guides there before publishing to thebrothersduomazov.com blog profile but there could be something unpublished I suppose.


* Duomitri's Profile: https://www.blogger.com/profile/15011159541258393046
Don't know his forum alias, err, I do NOW, he was none other than GUTS, but notice his profile account is also present like Nat's, visible, though nothing view-able beyond that...

So with all of that, it appears RuninRuder/IvanNEC took action on just his own account to close it, and couple that with the BrothersDuomazov domain expiring, it looks like this was a quiet shutdown/closing... I still have trouble accepting that though, after producing all the content, to just quietly dump it, let it expire, doesn't seem like something he/they would do so easily'n'voluntarily...

Anyway, that's the scoop. Nat also has an account here, we can try the PM system or emailing him some time, see if he knows anything about Runin. Not ready to say RIP, but this was another step in that direction... :/

[NightWolve]

BUMP

Well, I checked again, thebrothersduomazov,com is indeed still expired and RuninRuder is not reachable anywhere via email or Facebook. So you can officially RIP good bye it...

I held off on any more imports because EmeraldRocker felt Runin might be bothered that we are saving some of his reviews here, so I thought I should give it more time till 2019, see if he returns, but it looks like he's still MIA, the site is dead...

If you wanna help me, you can start downloading all articles I don't have here, https://www.pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/, and give me a ZIP when it's all finished, I could use help like that to know somebody else cares enough.

The process for downloading starts with The WayBack Machine at this link, use Chrome preferably:
https://web.archive.org/web/20171105071508/http://www.thebrothersduomazov.com/

esteban has also agreed to hosting /duomazov/ someday on his www.tg-16.com site, he's known to host alternative PCE content when fans are in need. I asked a few months ago in case there's a problem with Aaron hosting it here, and given Sparky's gloating earlier today that he has been harassing Aaron to sabotage my relations with him going forward in 2019, we may need to keep that option in mind in the future...

That's about all, there's no rush I suppose since all the articles are safe in WayBack, but they're not Google friendly/searchable as nopepper pointed out, you have to know you wanna search for DuoMazov AT the WayBack site it seems. But yeah, I do hope someone can help with this and to help perfect the clean-up of the formatting, it was quite a bit of grunt work for what I already did...


2023 Update:

I happen to notice that someone closed/privated/deleted the DuoMazov Facebook page...
https://www.facebook.com/The-Brothers-Duomazov-577412522283559/
That used to be public, available at all times and doesn't cost a dime in hosting... So why go back and shut it down/scrub it from the Internet ? Guess Runin's not proud of it now ?? Oh well. : (

[nectarsis]

S far as I know Runin was never on Facebook and ghosted here years ago Nat long before him

[nat]

I'm five years late here, and it looks like this forum is now dead but I wanted to set the record straight for history's sake in case a weary soul ever travels this way, wondering.

The Brothers Duomazov was an idea cooked up primarily by my old friend runinruder, along with myself (Ai Cho Alexei) and GUTS/Duomitri late one night. Runin did the lion's share of the reviews (the good ones), and I did the site design, layout and coding and occasionally contributed reviews, as did GUTS.

The reason the site is gone is entirely my fault. In addition to maintaining the site, I also owned the domain. I was going through a big life change (moving from California to Washington, entering into a new cohabiting situation, etc) around the time the domain was set to expire and to be frank, I was no longer at all involved in the scene.

The expiration of the site was not on my radar at this point, and although runin tried to get ahold of me through the only email he had for me, unfortunately that also was one I had abandoned due to excessive spam. I didn't even realize until almost a year had gone by that it had expired. I tried to reach out to runin at this point but never got a response. I will assume he was probably furious with me, and rightly so. He poured so much time into those reviews, the fact the site is gone is criminal.

It was never supposed to have ended the way it did. I was extremely proud of the work we did there over the 10 years we were active and I had always envisioned the site would endure even after my interest waned. I am still proud to have been a part of it. I should have "signed over the domain" to him long before it expired but my exit wasn't sudden or planned, it was a gradual thing that just sort of happened.

So, to everyone out there who used our site as a resource, and primarily to runin, wherever he may be today, I sincerely apologize for the way it panned out. I hope you were able to archive all your reviews before it went offline. Also, hope life finds you healthy and happy.

Nat

[nat]

See my post above in the other thread for what happened. It was all my fault.

Also, I don't recall anything about a Duomazov facebook page. I don't even remember discussing it with runin, but it wasn't anything I had anything to do with. That would have been all him.

[NightWolve]

Hi @nat, wow! I never thought we'd see you again...

Ah, I see... Thanks for the info about Brothers Duomazov and stopping by to clear it up!

It reminds me about a discussion @Voultar started some time back how those who migrated to video/YouTube thrived (think TurboViews, GameSack, Happy Console Gamer) but all those [sites/people] who stuck with text/image reviews/guides/content faded or continue to fade into irrelevancy, obscurity, were left behind... In my pursuits I always wanted to improve my writing for post history at least but I see I missed the boat when I should've been honing video editing skills. Just a little food for thought.

Anyway, hope you're doing well and thanks again for dropping by. I think it was also a mistake for Nanto to close PCEFX the way he did but I'll pay for it now as long as I'm still breathing for history/archive's sake and continue to research better display/showcasing ideas for our 20 years of PC Engine/TurboGrafx history.


I still wanted to automate a full download of the site from Wayback to rehost it here but rebuilding PCEFX was tough enough, and I see even less interest now. Sadly, if you didn't migrate to a YouTube channel like GameSack, Turbo Views, HCG, you have a way of fading to irrelevancy...

While we weren't friends here, and didn't interact much when you were active eons ago, I remember you and appreciate your contributions to PCE fandom. If I don't see you again, best wishes for wherever life has taken you now.

P. S. Wish you had thrown out some of the toxic turbo trolls in these forums years ago before you left and before I eventually had the displeasure/nightmare of dealing with them, but oh well... It's all better left buried in the past but part of me wonders if we could've been a small scale AtariAge AKA PCEngineAge with better management and still hold some relevancy/goodwill...

P. S. (x 2) I left a "fan tribute" so-to-speak in your profile, feel free to edit/change if you wish. It's a best-of highlight reel to remember the person by I sometimes do for special cases.

[NightWolve]

pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/
pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/ys-book-i-and-ii.html
pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/ys-iv-dawn-of-ys.html


I took a quick excursion tonight to make my small collection of DuoMazov reviews format better on mobile (Android phone in my case). : )

Here's how it looks on my Samsung Galaxy OLED. Quick'n'dirty CSS dynamic media resizing I learned, good enough.

The way that Nat coded the pages made it pretty easy to work something up in a few hours. So the width is changed to 100%, all images to 49%, and the title & side bars made invisible when the window/screen width is < 720-860px using dynamic support in CSS (JavaScript not necessary).

Future: Yeah, I'd still like to build a script to download/process the whole site some day from WayBack, or if Nat has all the files in a local HDD to share, that'd be nice too!

P. S. In case I didn't mention here, I did start a preliminary Perl script for such a purpose to work with Wayback and used it to download the TurboStation-16 PCEFX section that Aaron deleted in 2003:

https://www.pcengine-fx.com/TS/


Also, try the "?dir" command option I added to the site to access all media/images:

https://www.pcengine-fx.com/TS/?dir

Not everything was saved in Wayback, most of the videos and audio files were lost unfortunately. But lots of manual scans were recovered, nearly all - I patched some missing ones and ~2 Falcom audio tracks.

https://www.pcengine-fx.com/TS/mp3_selections_-_ys_collection.html

_{► /mp3/Ys Piano Collection 2 - 06.mp3}

_{► /mp3/TOWER OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH-04.mp3}

[NightWolve]

Progress: Last night I finished a decent Wayback download Perl script to download the whole Brothers DuoMazov website to finally move forward in totally rebuilding/rehosting it here on PCEFX 2.0!

There are 5,814 images / screenshots, 100% uploaded to PCEFX:
pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/images/?dir

It's live!!! Presenting "The Brothers DuoMazov 2.0" - 100% Rebooted/Restored!!!!:
pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/


The next step is another script to clean up the HTML and decide the basic template for which to upgrade all the review body/content, etc. Some new basic ideas like appending a @ChrisBucci TurboViews video will be considered for extra benefit when time/progress permit.

But yeah, seeing/realizing that ~7 years elapsed (WOW!) from when I first made these threads and manually downloaded/patched about a dozen reviews gave me some motivation to finally continue since nobody else cares or has done so, etc. I did mention somebody is working on rebuilding pcecp.com though, nice to see.



More Ideas:
* New Github entry to share the Wayback Download script.
* Full Offline copy of Brothers DuoMazov. A simple ZIP/7z file that you download and works 100% locally letting you browse/see everything. And we can send it to WayBack for final/guaranteed backup/preservation in the end. I do tend to think about the inevitable, if something happens to me, what happens to my work ? So I'm gearing up to eventually share my projects/code to Github, Wayback, or to friends, etc.