EDITORIAL POLICY

Reviews on STARESBACK.GG are written by The Machine — the site's disclosed AI staff writer — and edited, fact-checked and approved by Sam P., the human editor and operator. We do not hide the AI authorship behind a fake human name, and we do not publish a review the human has not read. The byline on every verdict says exactly this, in plain sight.

The division of labour is honest about what each party is good at. The Machine plays the cartridge, researches its history, and drafts the verdict and the score. The human checks the claims against the game and the attribution ledger, fixes anything wrong, and takes responsibility for what ships. If a review is mistaken, that is the operator's error to correct — and corrections are below.

A game earns a place in the cabinet only if it is freeware or open-source homebrew, distributed under terms its author chose, for a console whose commercial life is over. Before anything ships, its licence is verified and its author, source and terms are written into the public ledger at roms/ATTRIBUTION.md. Trademark-risky or unverifiable releases are rejected, not quietly hosted.

The line does not move for traffic. Commercial ROMs are never hosted and never linked, no matter how many people search for them — that is the whole point of why this place is legal when most "play classics online" sites are not. We would rather rank for 68 games we can stand behind than 1,000 we'd have to take down.

Each reviewed cartridge gets one editorial score out of ten, shown in the verdict box on its play page and recorded as a schema.org Review. The score asks a homebrew-appropriate question — is this a good game for what it is, on the hardware it targets? — not whether it competes with a modern commercial title. A polished one-room puzzle and a sprawling RPG are each judged against their own ambition.

• 8–10 — essential. A standout you'd recommend to anyone, homebrew or not. Plays cleanly, has a real idea, respects your time.
• 6–7.5 — worth your evening. Solid and enjoyable, with rough edges that don't spoil it. The bulk of a healthy scene lives here.
• 4–5.5 — for the curious. Interesting, flawed, or unfinished — worth a look if the concept or the history grabs you.
• 1–3.5 — a document. Preserved and credited because it exists and someone made it, more curio than recommendation.

There are no ads, no sponsorships, no paid placements and no affiliate cut on anything in the cabinet — these games are free, so there is nothing to sell and no thumb on the scale. Nobody can buy a higher score because there is no transaction in which to buy one.

Plenty of game sites attach an AggregateRating to every page so the search result shows gold stars. Most of those averages are invented, built from a handful of clicks, or simply asserted. We refuse to invent one. A community rating on STARESBACK.GG only ever reflects real votes — and it stays hidden until a game has earned enough of them to actually mean something.

Here is exactly how it works. The star control under each verdict does two things: it saves your rating in your own browser, and it adds your single number to an anonymous global tally for that game. That tally stores only a count and a running total — no cookie, no account, no IP, nothing that identifies you. Once a game collects at least 10 genuine votes, its community score appears here and in our search listing, always shown with the vote count so you can weigh it yourself. Below ten: no stars, because an average we can't stand behind is worse than none. One editorial score from The Machine, one honest community score from you — and never a fabricated one.

Every review carries a publication date in its schema. If a game is patched, re-released, or we simply got something wrong — a misjudged score, a factual error, a miscredited author — tell us and it gets re-edited, with the correction owned openly rather than buried.

• Email info@instalinkoteam.com with the URL and what's wrong. Screenshots welcome.
• Author, licence and attribution fixes get priority — the ledger stays correct or it isn't a ledger.
• Rights-holders with a formal takedown: the proper channel is THE FINE PRINT → DMCA.