Media, Merchandise, and More/FAQ

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Scanner and Camera Details

Flat items that would fit were scanned with a “Brother DCP-7065DN”, Flat bed with no top, BMP Format, 100x100 DPI Resolution, 24bit Color, Brightness and Contrast left alone, Letter Size 8.5x11in (216x280mm). Items that were not flat or too large were captured using a “Canon EOS Rebel T1i 600D” in RAW CR2 with its various ISO settings depending, using a “Canon EF-S 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6 IS” standard zoom lens.

Photoshop Details
Photoshop CS6, Windows Format, RGB Workspace, 8Bit/Channel. Scanned images were brought in as is, Camera RAW images were brought in using “As Shot” or “Auto”, with only slight correction if need be. Minimal rotating, skewing, scaling, cropping, repairing, etc. The heavy majority of work was done manually, but some built-in automation/actions were employed.

Additional Capture and Modification Details

Flat items were captured with front, back, and sides separately and then stitched together. I did try to adhere to a consistent page size standard matching the physical items’ dimensions, to achieve a 1:1 ratio. Example being that if a book was A5 size I used an A5 template in Photoshop. Some items weren’t a 100% match to their stated publication size, so there may be hints of a greyish border, different spacing, or image nudging to fill the difference. Some splines may also appear to have a slight color difference between the front and back, and that was due to taking a picture of them in bulk, versus scanning them individually. In the end I think it would have been just as quick to scan them one-by-one when factoring in the post-process work.

Export for BG Wiki Details
As much as I would like to upload the original image, it would cost our gracious hosts quite an extra amount in storage and monthly bandwidth usage. I applied a 50% pixel Auto Bicubic reduction and saved to a “Low/3” JPEG format. This brought a 5MB image to 100KB, a roughly 98% savings while maintaining enough quality to see/read any key features. This may change in the future.

Watermark Details

BG Wiki has a storied history of having its contents pilfered by other low-effort wikis and websites without credit. None of these images are copywrite to BG Wiki or myself so they are free to be used anywhere, but I put in a lot of effort on this for BG Wiki (and its readers), so I hope the watermark will at least cover where it came from initially. There are three types of watermarking. One with “SephYuyX” and “BG Wiki”, one with just “BG Wiki”, and none at all. The watermark size, color, and opacity is the same that is used on everything else found on the wiki for cohesiveness. The ones marked with “SephYuyX” are images from my personal collection that I scanned and processed, ones marked with just “BG Wiki” are images used on the site already or images given to me from someone else’s collection with permission and credit, and items with no watermark were obtained from an already published source elsewhere with credit given.

Size Standard Details
I adhered to the ISO-216 & JIS-P-0138 formats. The majority of items fell into the A4, A5, A6 (Bunkoban), B5, and B6 sizes. Notably there were a few custom JIS formats using Tankobon (TB), Kiku4 (K4), and AB standards. Music cases fell into two formats, PS2 and Xbox share the same, and PC varied based on thickness.

Sleeves, Dust Jackets, and Obi

A lot of publications use Dust Jackets and/or Obi as additional protection, as a way to market past/present/future publications, a way to give more details about the content, or just a way to add some additional flair. Sleeves and Obi were removed when scanning, but sometimes the Obi was put back on for the spline. This would count as another reason why the splines may look different than the front/back. Dust Jackets were kept on when scanning. It is 50/50, but the dust jacket is not always the same image as the actual publication cover, however, it is rare that a book is sold without it so I felt it best to scan the jacket versus the cover. The opposite was done with sleeved items.

Why Can’t the Community Make Changes?

For the time being I am asking that no one make any changes to the format or similar large kinds of modifications to any of the pages. I will get to that point, but for right now I want to get things to the standards I have in my mind. They might be the wrong standards, but my first goal is to get everything listed, and then go through and make them better, and if that involves support from others, I would be happy to accept. Some of these other questions do mention notes of user submission stuff, but for the time being I’d rather you reach out to me directly. However, I do not mind if someone wants to add details in the provided notes section, or if there are glaring corrections needed. There will need to be a lot of flavor text added over the years, so it would be nice to have some help there too. I am not all knowledgeable, so I am hoping that the community can correct any of my misinformation, or add things I am not aware of, or know. If you have suggestions about anything, I am all ears.

When Will Every Page of Every Publication Be Scanned?

Never. I toyed with the idea at first, but after seeing how much there is, it’s way too much work. Unless someone wants to pay for a service or a fully automated book scanner, it’s not going to happen. There is a slim chance I may at least go through magazines and other kind of publications where FFXI is just a smaller section within it and scan those, but that would be in the very distant future.

When Will European (or Insert Region Here) Items Be Included?
Maybe Eventually? There is a smattering of certain EU items included today, and I do keep a rough eye out, but like the NA stuff, there really isn’t much available outside of those versions of the games, plus some magazines like Edge. Maybe there will be some nice person with a collection who will volunteer their services.

Why Isn’t “Insert Item Here” Listed?
Because I either do not have it, or I am not familiar with its existence. If you notice something missing, please let me know.

Why Is “Insert Item Here” Listed?
The original goal was to include just FFXI proper related items, but over time that grew to also include items from other sources that reference FFXI in one way or another. An example being Shantotto items from Dissidia.

How Were Details Translated?

Some information was already translated on the item itself, but for the most part I used a combination of Bing, Google, DeepL, and Copilot, paired with my superior knowledge of the Japanese language. Sarcasm, but I did take several years of Japanese, and decades of playing JRPGs and watching anime in Japanese has helped this process a bit. I favor literal translation and consistency versus changing it to what may sound better in English.

File Name Format?

I struggled to find a consistent way to name items, that also correlated to their release date order. Each medium provided its own challenges. Magazines were easy enough with their volume numbers, but for other publications I did not realize at the time that ISBNs were not given out in order, you can just grab one of your choosing, and it could pre-date something made ten years ago or more. UPC was the same way, but worse in that some totally separate items can share the same number. Eventually I discovered the NDL (see that section for more info), and that did the trick. The NDL number keeps the items sorted by release date within a filesystem, the prefixes keep the item within its own group, and the suffix denotes the page size. An example for a 4-Koma based Manga would be: “SYXBGMerch_Manga_4Koma_000001234567_B6”. Similarly was done with the games, music, and everything else.

Page and Item Listing Order?

As mentioned above, date release order makes the most sense to me. Yes, there are some things that are part of a series and they might not be exactly together, but this gets troublesome on my side when it comes to organization, so I just stuck with release order. When it comes to main and sub pages, they were either ordered in what would be more interesting, or whichever item in in that section was released first, or a mix of both.

Japanese Resource Details
Aside from just brute force searching for things, these are some sources that assisted with filling in some blanks and details about what exists in the Japanese world: FFO Wiki, localizer Michael (and his Blog), and the Japanese Wikipedia. If anyone has other resources that may be helpful to list, let me know.

What’s a “Mook”?
Mook is a blended word taken from Magazine + Book, and the Japanese seemingly love their Mooks. A lot of publications are a combination of two or more types of designations: Magazine, Book, Guide, Manga, 4-Koma, Doujinshi, etc, so instead of having a Mook category, I just added it to the category that the publication was primarily focused on.

What's a JAN?
The Japanese Article Number is a subset of the European Article Number (EAN), which itself is an evolution of the Universal Product Code (UPC), and is the prevalent barcode method for product identification in Japan.

Doujinshi Details

The number of doujinshi that exists for FFXI is staggering. There is a lot that is digital only, but there is also a ton of it that’s printed. These printed doujinshi range from hand drawn fan creations that are just photocopied loose leaf that is stapled and folded in half, to actual bound publications that are fully inked and colored with backgrounds (by hand or digital). I did take a bit of lowered effort approach with their post-processing because of the amount of them, and their slightly lesser importance. The images were scanned as normal, but I used automated “Crop and Straighten” with custom actions that would then stitch them together and save them, etc. I fixed any egregious errors manually, but there may be more inconsistences on that front. As far as categorizing them, they were put in to three categories: “All Ages”, “Teen”, and “Adult”. “Teen” is a subjective rating on my part, anything that looked a bit risqué from the “All Ages” category was placed there. Depending on what our BG Wiki owners decide, Adult may not be included, or at least be censored. TBD.

What is NDL?

The National Diet Library is an organization that indexes all the libraries in Japan, provides material availability, details bibliographic data, and works on preserving all types of Japanese publications. They were an amazing source used to gather all the supplemental data for the publications listed here, and even allow the downloading of thousands of records in one go in JSON and other formats. Example. The “Bibliographic ID” is the number used to index all the publications here, and they had enough foresight to leave large gaps in their numbering system to where if an older book is found today that hasn’t been indexed, it will get a number that is in date order compared to the other listings. I toyed with what info should be included here, but I was going a bit overboard and, in the end, decided to just provide a link for any additional information desired. Surprisingly, the NDL has about 98% of the FFXI publications (not including magazines, yet), where only a small handful is missing. I am working on getting these items donated so that they can be indexed, but that is taking more time and effort than I had estimated.

What is Redump?

Redump.org is a group of video game preservationists that have put in tireless work to ensure each and every optical disc based video game and its metadata has been indexed. This site does not provide pirated data, but provides metadata to ensure personal backups are accurate via the typical CRC32/MD5/SHA1 checksums. Like the NDL, it provides a variety of helpful data to assist in the effort of preservation and personal collection verification. Redump had a similar 98% inclusion of FFXI related games already, so there was no need to duplicate efforts on creating something myself, and instead of learned how to become a contributor to fill in the gaps. It was very rewarding to assist them, and I encourage you to contribute too if you have the means. Example. I use the serial number as the record to organize by.

What is VGMdb?

VGMdb.net similarly is a group of video game music preservationists that have done amazing work indexing nearly every album in existence, even including fan creations. Their effort is much easier than what Redump is doing, but no less important. From what I’ve seen, they have a listing of every FFXI related OST and then some. I’ve only needed to make some basic edits. Likewise, it’s better to just link to this site, versus re-creating it. Example. I use the catalog number as the record to organize by.

What About Digital Items?

My focus is on physical items, but there’s not a ton of digital stuff either so maybe that will happen eventually. The games and soundtracks eventually transitioned to digital only, and there are a handful of other things like companion pieces, but for the most part FFXI related stuff is physical. This also starts a dangerous path towards archiving official website content like the “Vana’diel Tribune”, which I have done, but also want to avoid that effort for the foreseeable future.

What About Fan Creations?
Yes, they will be included eventually. If you have some items that you purchased or created, let me know; This also may be a user submission area too.

User Contributions?

Ultimately my goal is to personally own everything, but that may not be realistic or happen in a reasonable amount of time. There are a lot of older items that were limited in sale and are very hard to find, and there are items that were only given away at Fan Fests and other type of events or raffles. I may never be able to find these kinds of items to where I will need to rely on our community to provide pictures and details. If you have something that I am notably missing, or have something I may not even know it exists as it’s that rare, please let me know! I would also like to create a section that shows off other’s collections too!

What About a B(uy)/S(ale)/T(rade) Section?

I like the idea, and it would be something I would like to do if there was enough interest and assistance. Maybe it’s just simple enough to do it here on the Wiki or on the forum proper, versus creating a whole new system though. Privacy and scams are always a concern, so some sort of accountability system might be nice; some sites have a system like this already, so maybe leveraging that may work. I of course am always on the look-out for stuff I don’t have, so if you have something that’s not listed here and you’re looking to sell, please reach out. For the time being, I will probably provide a link to items I have for sale/trade.

Updates and Revision Plans

This project will continue to be a very heavy endeavor that will probably go through many changes over the coming years. Maybe at some point mobile support is added, maybe one day all of it is just drastically changed, but what I know for sure is that tweaks and additional details will be added now and then little by little over time. My thought is to get all of the groundwork laid out, and then make passthroughs to add on to them. For example, I’ll try to add what the subject matter of what the publication is about, or if there is a magazine with just a page or two mentioning FFXI, I’ll note what it is and what page it’s on. This just all depends on how much I hate myself and what the people demand.

Why Is This Project Taking So Long?

This has very much been a “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back” effort. Every day I find out something new or additional, encounter issues with this that or the other, needing to validate information, or having to do leg work to complete indexing somewhere. The biggest issue is my own lack of understanding of how much effort this would take. I knew it would take quite a bit, but I always underestimated the process each step of the way. Even with this FAQ and its initial ~30 entries, I thought it would take me a day, but it took me a weeks. There was also a lot of missing information, or misinformation, and I had to reach out to publishers or similar to validate. The NDL is/was missing entries, so I have/will be donating items to them for their inclusion. There were games missing from Redump.org, and music missing from VGMdb.net, so I had to learn how to get those included. I had to eventually refocus to a more “80/20 Rule” to at least get the bones of this project up with at least the basic stuff, and then I’ll circle back around for the more intricate things. Otherwise, these pages would be empty for who knows how much longer.

Contact Info
If you want to contact me, I can be found in all of the usual places under my handle “SephYuyX”. Whether it be here (wiki or the forums), AH, Reddit, Discord, or wherever your internet search brings you. If you just want to send me an email, you can use this Form.

About Me, FFXI, and this Project

This is the part of the recipe where I go in to my personal life and explain how much the creation of this dish is the foundation of my life. But instead of putting at the top, it’s at the bottom because we all hate those things, and no one cares unless you’re bored or nosey, and the creator is probably a self-entitled asshole... wait... whatever, here we go. It all began at the dawn of time… I really enjoy the Final Fantasy franchise, and since the release of FFI it has pretty much guided my preference towards JRPGs above all other genres. Video games in general have been a huge part of my life ever since the release of the Intellivision, and for many years it was my job, which coincidently reached its crescendo in the early years of FFXI. With that good timing and the contacts I knew then, I had access to the Japanese and English betas along with some unique merchandise. Looking back, I wish I took it a bit more seriously though as I gave away a few things, lost/damaged some, and got rid of my initial character. Whoops. It would have been stuck in the Japanese payment system though, so it was probably for the best. I also never really cared for the PS2 versions so I gave them to my buddy. In the end, the order I played was: JP PC Beta, JP PC Retail, NA PC Beta, then finally NA PC Retail. I kept the JP version of POL installed, and alongside the use of Microsoft Japanese IME I was able to keep in contact with the JP friends I had made prior. To this day I still play on the Ragnarok server under the name of “Trixi”, and after all of these decades I probably have only not logged in for a total of a few months. I never really idled to inflate my playtime. I am a BLM main, and I will die on that hill. I did level BST to 75 during the dark ages and loved every moment of that though, and PLD is my tertiary, with WHM, RDM, WAR, and THF as fun jobs, and everything else as just whatever. I was a near top BLM player, but never went the extra mile to get passed the few that were better. These days it may just be mere minutes or an hour that I play, but for at least a decade I basically lived on FFXI. You can also find me in FFXIV as “Trixi Sephyuyx” on Excalibur; I’ve been playing since NA PC 1.0 Alpha. Maybe you’ve seen me in some older games too? Worms 2, Worms Armageddon, Ultima Online, EverQuest, Phantasy Star Online, Phantasy Star Universe, Phantasy Star 2 (JP), Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, Ragnarok Online, Gunbound, Unreal Tournament 2003, and Unreal Tournament 4. I was always a passive collector in general and never really had an actual full collection of anything or went out of my way for stuff in an extreme manner, regardless of the genre. With FFXI I had the typical things a lot of players had: The wonderful Brady guides, the clock, a shirt or two, random small trinkets, the talisman, etc. I also had some store POP displays, some Japanese books and trinkets, a statue, some second-hand fan fest items (I didn’t have the availability to go to any of them), etcetcetc… Years passed, yada yada yada, aannnd then we lost our daughter, aannnd then my wife died, and life is miserable. It is indescribable to have everyone you love be ripped away. I hope that every evening is the last one so I can see them again. They say money doesn’t buy happiness, and that is true, but in my utter fucking misery, “retail therapy” is a thing. I don’t really recall what started all of this obsessive collecting, but one day I just decided to buy ever single piece of FFXI related thing I could find, and at some point, I ended up owning every piece of publication, version of the game, piece of music, and most of everything else in existence. I do know I am missing several older unique items though, along with some other random stuff. I would say I may have 90%? I know I have most all of the purchasable merch, but stuff that were one offs, JP POPs, unique raffle items, and other things that were never sold, etc… No idea. It still seems like every day I discover something new though, and that brings me down another rabbit hole… so who knows, maybe it’s only 75%. To this day I still find myself surprised how much stuff FFXI has; Us folks outside of JP were truly shafted, but that’s not surprising as it’s been common place for half a century now for things to not get localized. At some point though I couldn’t keep track of what I had easily and decided to make a written inventory, but then quickly decided I may as well scan and take pictures of everything, and since I was doing that, I may as well make it available for everyone’s use. I know of no other English source that has a catalog like this, especially with images. There are bits and pieces of things here and there, but they are largely incomplete and half-baked. The Japanese resources are much more near complete, but even they lack images and some details. So here we are. This project has given me something to do for my own sake, but I also hope the community can benefit from it too. Thank you for your understanding and your interest.

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