Welcome to N Masters v5! Yep, this is the fifth time the site has been designed from scratch. I know the previous version never really took off, unfortunately. It was caught a bit in between several ideas that were all never able to properly be finished and there was a lot wheel reinventing. Anyway, that’s a story for another post. Probably a N Masters story section in the About page. For now, let’s focus on what’s in this new design and what are the plans for it overall.
First of all, N Masters v5 is still in Beta. But unlike the previous version, there are planned updates already and a clear focus on reviews, guides, and other sort of articles. Additionally, there’s also streams and our YouTube channel has been active once more. There’s also going to be community tools like a new forum, our Guilded server, and likely something to replace the old Card Generator. Additionally, there’ll also be events for the community to interact together. Finally, N Masters won’t be covering gaming news anymore. There’s several other options out there nowadays. At most, we will have editorials that could talk about recent news or just chat about the latest news at the forum or, most likely, the Guilded server.
So let’s now talk about what’s available right now at the website. First of all, all our backlog of reviews has already been ported to the new system. This includes reviews that were done back on N Masters v3, which were our first reviews. Guides are also now available. This is technically a new section considering the only guide we had before was made just before N Masters was put into hiatus. Now it’s up and ready in its proper section.
Finally, there’s also more types of articles available as well. They are all categorized under Specials, which some of you may remember from v3. Currently, these are the available categories in this section:
- First Play: You may have seen this name in our YouTube videos. Articles in this category will talk about the first impressions of a game.
- A Look At: This is a category that I brought from my personal blog. Posts in this category will let you take a close look at collectable or physical items that are gaming related. Things like limited booklets or original soundtracks.
- Comparisons: These posts will go in details about comparing one version of a stage, course, level, or even game against a different one. They will usually be accompanied by our YouTube comparison videos.
In the future, there are plans to also add an Editorial category when an article of that type is posted. These would be commentaries about gaming related events, news, or just situations.
Now let’s talk about what’s coming next, during these next few days and weeks. First of all, the launch of our new forum. This will be smaller and more focused. Images and other touch-ups will also be done to all the older reviews that don’t have anything yet. Besides this, new articles and content will also keep being posted. Right now, you should be able to see a few of the new ones already that were prepared for launch day.
There’s also two site features we had before that I hadn’t talked about. The Game Profile Cards or Game Cards are completely gone for now and don’t have any plans for a new version of them anytime soon. This was previously announced at my blog including when they would go away. The other section was the Amiibo Gallery. This is very likely to come back sooner but it’s not the priority at the moment.
Like I said at the beginning, the site is currently still in beta phase, so expect to see updates to the site and pages during the next few days until I feel it’s more complete. And I promise I will try to keep maintenance times at the minimum while these things happen. Hopefully, there will be none at all.
By the way, N Masters is still completely free of any ads so any support is welcome.
For now, welcome and please enjoy the new N Masters!
Link-NM is the administrator of N Masters, Makendo Central, and aspiring indie game developer at NovaFan Games. His favorite game franchises include Mega Man X, The Legend of Zelda, and Mario Kart.