The Retro Game Room now randomly chooses the sort order of the default index page. There's a few reasons for doing this, one of the reasons for doing this is so that more games get recognition and so that users continue to find and discover games that they may normally not come across. If the index is always displaying the same games, the users who don't go out of their way to search for new games may not find many new games.

One of the things that make the RGR so great in my opinion is the fact that you it allows users to discover retro classics that they've never heard of and may never experience. I'm constantly doing things to draw attention to various games in the RGR: Game of Week, Game of Day, Latest Score, Latest Speedrun, Latest Screenshot, Latest Video, Latest Review, etc... and than on the game pages, recommended games based on the game you're playing.

Anyways, the index will now randomly sort based on 5 different orders and each of those sort orders will be the default 20% of the time. Here they are:

Views: Displays the top viewed games.
Popularity: Displays the games that have been played the most each day.
Best: Using my formula, this displays the best games first.
Date: This will display newly added games, a great way to get the newly added games some quick recognition.
Rating: The highest rated games. The games that show up on the first few pages of this order have a perfect 10 and they usually don't deserve a perfect 10 so bringing recognition to these games will help these games get a proper rating. These games usually have a 10 either because 1 person thought it was a great game and was too lazy to think about what rating it deserved so therefore just gave it a 10 or because someone wanted the quick Viz for rating it. Either way, this will bring balance.

The "Sort By" drop down will also now show you the default sort order, it didn't do that before so therefore by default no one knew what the default order was unless they either remembered me posting about it or if they clicked 'Next' page. I should also point out that if you want to "test" this update, don't press refresh on the page because the details in the Sort by box will stay the same, instead you'll want to either do a hard refresh or click into the page again (by clicking the banner or leaving the page and coming back).

Awesome update. This will surely bring the bottom of the barrel out for show, and maybe even some rare gems could be found.

Nice update. Maybe this can draw attention to a few of my hacks...
Whats the formula for the best games?

Awesome update! Now the retro game room index will look less boring for me since it is always filled with the same pokemon games, lol. I don't really play pokemon. (no offence, I'm just not that type of person) Anyways, thanks for the update!

earthwarrior : It's my secret formula, you have a better chance of getting Coca Cola's formula

The formula is pretty simple, rating * votes. It's a great formula though because if you look at the top rated games, they're not always great games and if a game only has 1 vote but has a rating of 10, that doesn't mean it deserves to be displayed a 10 and be categorized with the games that have a rating of 10. The more votes a game has, the more accurate its rating and also the more popular it is so the "best" order is sorta a combination of what's popular and what's highly rated.

mohammedroxx3 : Yeah that's another thing I forgot to point out, even though I greatly enjoy Pokemon games, I hate having them fill up the RGR index because that's not going to appeal to those who aren't into Pokemon.

Awesome! I am not going to lie (and I kinda feel stupid saying it) I didn't know the games page changed lol. I thought the games on it was just always there (because every time I looked it seemed to be the same games). I like that some hidden gems will now get a little more plays because they need it. 

Thanks for the hard work man, not every site owner (not many site owners) would put so much work into their creations. 

tRIUNE : This update probably benefits you the most since it'll bring more attention to games that you add. Since this update, have you noticed the newly added games getting more plays?

I have a suggestion. Firstly it sounds complicated to make but then again I only know basic HTML so I guess coding is not my strong point. You mentioned the change was in some sense because the whole game room was made up of pretty much pokemon games. I guess it would be unattractive to those who do not enjoy it. Then again this may annoy pokemon fans! 
So I was thinking that we could have a retro game room that would suggest games for you relying on your game history. Say you played a lot of Mario then on the RGR home page you will get the most popular platforms, say 5 of them and underneath the top 5 of the developers and so on. This could get confusing if someone plays a huge variety of games also could it put more strain on the server, just like the member list does?

MechaMento : A feature like that would be pretty cool actually but it would be a time consuming feature to make. I could look into something like that one day.

I did notice that, although I didn't connect it to this update until now.

I think this was a good idea as well. I like Pokémon and all, but I was tired of seeing the same old Pokémon games on the index page every single day, lol.

I have a question;

You said to not press the refresh button on the page because it won't change the Sort by box if I wanted to test it out. However, it apparently did change the order of the Sort by box when I refreshed from the page. Is it supposed to do that? Or is the order only meant to be changed by a hard refresh rather than the page refresh?

Mistress : Maybe it would change for different browsers.