Resolved - Splitting super nintendo games into two reduntant categories of platform sfc snes, No need for this - Informational

[DOS76]

how would this work for games with the same name across regions.

[CriticalCid]

I’m not sure if I get you but I would also want region priorities. Similar to the image priorities you could configure in which order the regions should be preferred when a game has either no artwork/metadata for its exact region, is multi-region, has (World) as region or has no region info at all.

[DOS76]

Ok the region priority like the image priority sounds like it would be a good solution. This way if you import games under NEC PC Engine and then make Japan the prioritized region it should only get images for the Japanese release.

[alexis524]

CriticalCid said This assumes that the rom files even have the region tag. It also would mean that LB would treat rom file names differently than it's always done - which is to ignore text within special characters. I would say once again that this is probably harder to implement than it sounds - it'd have to be setup in such a way as to recognize the region tag (which can be in a number of different forms like U/US/USA/NA/NTSC and J/JAP/JPN etc.) and simultaneously ignore everything else in special characters. It seems possible, but potentially problematic. Here's a random C64 rom file name from my library: Rick Dangerous (1989)(Firebird Software)[cr REM][t +6 REM][a][Docs].d64 Gooooooood luck with that haha

Couldn't the No-Intro naming convention (which are what most of us are probably using) be useful? Could the lettered region tag in the rom title itself be used to determine region specific console and all associated artwork? P.S. My set up is just like Critical Cid's with everything separated and love it FTW. That's just how I roll.

[Zombeaver]

CriticalCid said I don’t know what you think it would do but all it does is to fill in the “Region” value based on the tag in the ROM filename. The value exists since a long time but was never automatically parsed when you have imported games.

I don't know what it does, that's why I'm asking haha. I thought based on the description it was going to auto assign the associated platform based on the region it saw (so TurboGrafx-16 for ones that have a (USA) tag and PC Engine for ones that have a (Japan) tag, for example) but it doesn't seem to do that, which is fine by me, it's just not how I interpreted the feature description.

CriticalCid said All I’m saying is that LB should use this value to determine which region should be used for the artwork and name (when alternative names get added to the db).

That seems reasonable to me. Again, my issue has never been with the concept of merging the entries, in and of itself - it's that I don't want to merge them if existing region-specific data is going to be lost as result of it. If they can be merged without anything being lost in transition, I'm all for it.

Part of my IRL job is systems analysis. I've borne witness to data migration on multiple occasions and you know what the recurring theme was literally every single time? Shit breaks or it gets lost or it gets corrupted in some way; often all of the above. So long as we can do what you're suggesting without those things happening, we should do it. I'm not being stubborn or confrontational - I just don't want good data that people have spent time and effort compiling and submitting to be lost.

Based on a quick browse through the Super Famicom platform on the DB, that platform shouldn't be particularly difficult to merge into SNES at all. I saw... Assault Suits Valken (Cybernator) which could just be deleted... and a boatload of Japan-exclusive stuff. If we want to say all of these are for the "SNES"...okay then. It's not technically accurate but it's not really going to hurt anything either. The Famicom, however, seemed to have quite a bit more multi-region crossover. Moving exclusive stuff over shouldn't be a problem, but what about say Galaga vs Galaxian? They're both...mostly the same game, but with different titles per region and currently neither entry has images from the other. Should the Galaxian images be added to the existing Galaga entry and the Galaxian entry deleted or should the Galaxian entry just be changed to "NES"? What about Probotector vs Contra? I'm assuming this is what you're talking about when you mention alternate names. I think that's a good idea so long as the data from the alternate region is properly migrated over.

I'm repeating myself at this point, but as long as existing good data can be merged together but still region-separated within one game entry, we should do it. It's just that that's not as simple as flipping a switch and saying "Now they're all NES!"

Edited August 11, 2016 by Zombeaver
formatting

[silvusvalentine]

For what it's worth, I think the two should be separate. The games can be played on either system, but you would have to either modify the SNES cartridges to fit inside the Super Famicom, or you would have to modify the SNES to allow the Super Famicom cartridges to fit inside the SNES. If you want to draw a parallel, many games can be played across GameBoy, GameBoy Color, GameBoy Advance, and the GameCube GameBoy Player. Here's the compatibility chart. In addition, there were some Super Famicom games that were never released for the SNES. In some cases, the games were released under different titles. For example, Final Fantasy III for SNES was actually Final Fantasy VI for the Super Famicom. In terms of artwork, the boxes were a completely different shape, so the artwork doesn't match from one system to the other, without creating custom artwork. So it makes more sense to me for the two to remain separate, but that's just my opinion.

[Cebion]

14 hours ago, silvusvalentine said:

For what it's worth, I think the two should be separate. The games can be played on either system, but you would have to either modify the SNES cartridges to fit inside the Super Famicom, or you would have to modify the SNES to allow the Super Famicom cartridges to fit inside the SNES. If you want to draw a parallel, many games can be played across GameBoy, GameBoy Color, GameBoy Advance, and the GameCube GameBoy Player. Here's the compatibility chart. In addition, there were some Super Famicom games that were never released for the SNES. In some cases, the games were released under different titles. For example, Final Fantasy III for SNES was actually Final Fantasy VI for the Super Famicom. In terms of artwork, the boxes were a completely different shape, so the artwork doesn't match from one system to the other, without creating custom artwork. So it makes more sense to me for the two to remain separate, but that's just my opinion.

But it's primary about the games and not the platforms. It's like saying this game came out for an Amiga tape and after that in Europe as a floppy.with a different name. It's still the same game, albeit the different regional settings (maybe other hardware, covert art title). You should have a game entry and if that game has been released in another country you create a regional sub-title for that game that's it.

So if you take your Final Fantasy III for snes thats then (Japan, Final Fantasy VI) with its own artwork etc. Each sub-Title has its own stuff. Mobygames and other sites do it this way and this is the correct way.

And don't forget with SNES / Super Famicom it's pretty simple. There are systems where it's far more complicated. 

I'm looking at you PC Booter / Ms-Dos and Win 3.1 in one and the same game 

 

 

[Freestate]

On 10/8/2016 at 6:58 PM, silvusvalentine said:

For what it's worth, I think the two should be separate. The games can be played on either system, but you would have to either modify the SNES cartridges to fit inside the Super Famicom, or you would have to modify the SNES to allow the Super Famicom cartridges to fit inside the SNES. If you want to draw a parallel, many games can be played across GameBoy, GameBoy Color, GameBoy Advance, and the GameCube GameBoy Player. Here's the compatibility chart. In addition, there were some Super Famicom games that were never released for the SNES. In some cases, the games were released under different titles. For example, Final Fantasy III for SNES was actually Final Fantasy VI for the Super Famicom. In terms of artwork, the boxes were a completely different shape, so the artwork doesn't match from one system to the other, without creating custom artwork. So it makes more sense to me for the two to remain separate, but that's just my opinion.

They are the same platform, and we are playing with emulators. To avoid duplicates and have a good database is better to have a unique super nes/super famicom list with regional info, when is implemented we can choose to download japan data or us data or euro data or split games acording regions on view options of launchbox. This is a mess of workaround to do this. Please, reasign to Super Nintendo and stop this nonsense. In the forums are sayed by devs that nes and famicom must me merged in the future, if the coming news is to merge platforms we don't must aprove another spliting.

[Vlansix]

Platforms merged. Closing thread.