They've discovered my secret!!July 3, 2013 by

Apparently not everybody URL-hacks for fun like I do, but somebody is like me out there and tapped into IGN's URL structure for graphics. Not only was it passed along as a "Hey, didja know?", but it somehow even made the news...

Good times! I'm not sure exactly how so many of my fellow co-workers had no idea about this, but as I've learned over the years, just do the work and eventually something will catch on.

And yes, the library is limited as far as how many games actually have full-res images. We had a partner years ago that gave us their graphics to store, but they were super crappy quality -- I was paying collectors to scan their box images for us to store for a little while, but our system was so bulky at the time that I couldn't afford the manpower to enter the scans in even when they started coming in, so that didn't last long (it did result in a killer Master System graphics library). Back in the day, also, we had to manually make the sizes for graphics and were limited in the max size that could be used on the site, so lots of the PS1/PS2 era games are under par. But now we have resizers, and storage is not a problem, and who cares to know all this so enough blather.

If it helps to know, I use this same trick all the time at work. For instance, if you like the graphics used on an iOS or Android game, just tickle their URLs a bit and you have the full-scale images:


There are also similar tricks you can do with Amazon and PlayStation Store. Give it a try, even if you work here it's still fun! Enjoy.

(Kind of curious how long it'll take before somebody discovers the hidden treasure found in Lock Ness...)


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