Help Us Expand the LaunchBox Games Database!

[AstroBob]

The LaunchBox Games Database is at the heart of our platform, powering everything from metadata to media for the games in your library. While we’ve done our best to include the most popular platforms, we know there are still plenty out there worthy of a spot in the database. As such, we recognise the need to expand our platform list to ensure it reflects the diversity of gaming history. That’s where you, the awesome LaunchBox community, come in!

We’re inviting you to help us determine which platforms should be added to the Games Database next. But before you dive in with suggestions, let’s talk about how we define a platform and the criteria we use to decide what belongs.

What Is (and Isn’t) a Platform? 🎮
To ensure the integrity and usability of the Games Database, we follow specific rules to define what constitutes a platform. Here’s what you need to know:

 

What We Consider a Platform: 🤩

• Unique Hardware: A platform must have its own distinct hardware that sets it apart from others. It could have many revisions or a collection of different hardware that plays the same games.
• Unique Firmware/OS: It’s a good indicator if the platform ran on unique firmware, or its own operating system.
• Native Games: Developers created a game, or version of a game, specifically for this platform.
• Cultural Significance: Platforms with a noteworthy impact on gaming history, innovation, or community are prioritized.

 

What We Don’t Consider a Platform: 🫠

• Exclusively Run External Libraries: Devices or services designed to play another platform’s libraries (e.g Super Game Boy, iQue, Sega Nomad, Sega Channel, Amazon Luna, emulation handhelds).
• One-Offs or Prototypes: Items not released commercially or widely available to the public.

Mistakes of the Past 😱
We’ve made some missteps in the past, allowing platforms that don’t strictly adhere to these rules. Unfortunately, we can’t take these mistakes back, and while we’ve learned from those experiences, there may be current platforms that exist, that probably shouldn’t be there.

Therefore we aim to hold new additions to a higher standard to ensure the database remains robust, relevant, and consistent.

How to Make Your Case 💼
If you believe a platform deserves a place in the Games Database, here’s how to make a strong case:

Answer These Five Key Questions:

• What is the full name of the platform you’d like to see added?
• What makes this platform unique?
• What are some examples of its exclusive games or software?
• How significant is its impact on gaming history?
• Does it differ enough from existing platforms in the database?

Provide Evidence 📰
The best cases include well-researched information and credible sources. Providing articles, game lists, or documentation about the platform’s history and significance can help illustrate why it stands out. Highlight exclusive games, unique hardware capabilities, or its cultural impact to showcase its value. A detailed list of exclusives or information on how it fills a gap in the database strengthens your suggestion.

Solid reasoning is also key—explain why the platform should be included and what impact its absence has. Are users struggling to categorize their collections without it? Are important games being misclassified or excluded? Clearly outline the benefits of adding the platform and the challenges posed without it. Concise, well-supported arguments are the most effective!

 

Community Collaboration 👋
We want this to be a collaborative effort! Share your platform suggestions and discussions in this thread, where we’ll be reviewing submissions and debating their merits. Remember, it’s not just about listing platforms but about making a case for why they matter.

 

Please Note ⚠

We sincerely appreciate the time and effort you’ve put into helping us expand our database. However, please understand that we may not be able to accommodate every request. Each suggestion is carefully weighed against our platform guidelines, as well as what we believe will benefit the majority of the community. This means your favorite platform might not make the cut this time. That said, it doesn’t mean it will never be added—just that for this round, we may need to prioritize other options.

So, what platform do you think deserves a spot on the list? Let us know in the comments below!

[Arthurcoutinho600]

Hello Astrobob

There is the list of the platforms that i would love to see in the database:

Tiger Telematics Gizmondo

LJN Video Art

Google Android TV

Samsung Tizen TV

Uzebox

Wasm-4

Vircom 32

Arduboy

Nec PC 6600 Series

Tiger Eletronics R-zone

Tic-80

Bandai Playdia

Terebikko

Sega AI

Plug in Play Devices

Tiger handhelds

Konami Handhelds

Gakken Compact TV Boy

Apple TV

Apple I

Apple III

Epoch Cassette Vision

Symbian OS

Coleco Telstar

Pong Consoles

Vtech 3D Gamate

Thanks a lot

[MrDeKat]

Great idea. My suggestions:

• Mobile Games:

I start by breaking the rules you mention, proposing a platform that groups together mobile games that aren't Android or iPhone. It could include J2ME, Brew, Symbian OS, Palm OS, Blackberry OS, Web OS, Ex-En and others. The reasons:

- The large number of mobile games that are not Android or iPhone. "Colin McRae Rally 2005", "Doom RPG", "Far Cry 2", "Rayman Kart", "Tomb Raider: The Osiris Codex", "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - Legend" or "Asphalt: Urban GT" are some relevant games.

- The large number that it works with these systems. Only for J2ME, Moby games includes more games than Game Boy Advance,  Sega Saturn, Mega Drive or Xbox (and many titles are not added): https://www.mobygames.com/platform/?sort=games&order=desc

- There are numerous emulators that allow to play them and a great job is being done to preserve the games. For example the "Kahvibreak" project has more than 5.000 J2ME games working.

- The historical importance of pre-smartphone games, to create the most important video game market today (although many of us don't like it). "Snake" popularized mobile games and paved the way, as did Pong, Colossal Cave Adventure, Space Invaders or Pac-man at the time.

- The alternative would be to create a platform for each OS, which I don't see as bad either. But it would be necessary to accommodate the "J2ME" and "BREW" somewhere, because they aren't a really operating system.

• Dedicated handheld:

There are numerous dedicated handhelds like the Game& Watch that aren't from Nintendo. The most important are the "Tiger LCD handled", but there are many more from other smaller manufacturers, and I think it would be better to group them into a single platform.

According to MobyGames, there are more than 750 games (although Game&Watch are also included), and obviously, they are not available for other platforms. In addition, many of these games are included in MAME collections, and they are doing a good job of emulating them.

• Bandai Super Vision 8000

Bandai Super Vision 8000 (also known as the TV Jack 8000) is a second generation console, released by Bandai in 1979. It was the first Japanese console that allowed interchangeable cartridges, but its price and the few games it had (only 7) made it fail.

The games work in MAME and it's one of the two more or less relevant consoles that would be missing from this second generation.

• Epoch Cassette Vision

The other relvant console from the second generation. Console developed by Epoch in 1981, it was the best-selling console in Japan until the arrival of the NES. It had 12 games that are dumped, but I think they haven't work on MAME yet.

• Milton Bradley Microvision

The first handheld wich uses interchangeable cartridges. Relased in 1973 by Milton Bradley, have 12 games that work in MAME.

• Bit Corporation Gamate

It's a handheld game console released in 1990 by Bit Corporation, in Australia, some parts of Europe, Taiwan, China, Argentina, and USA. It was a Game Boy competitor like Supervision or MegaDuck, and have 71 games that work in MAME.

• Hartung Game Master

Other handheld released by Hartung in 1990 in Germany. It have different names: Systema 2000 (UK), Game Tronic, Mega Tronic and Super Game (France) and Prodis PDJ-10 (Spain). It have 19 games, not very good, but worked in MAME too.

• Tiger Gizmondo

Another handheld, more known it than the previous ones. Developed by Tiger and released in 2006, it was a sales failure and caused part of Tiger's bankruptcy (maybe the parties for promoted the console and being involved in corrupt plots and mafia gangs also had an effect). It has 14 games (some exclusives like "Gizmondo Motocross 2005" or "Gizmondo Navigator CoPilot 2006") and another 30 canceled. The emulation has been complicated, but it looks like some are starting to work.

• Nichibutsu My Vision

A Japanese console released in 1983 by Nichibutsu, that mainly adapted board games. It didn't have a controller, and instead used some kind of keyboard. It has 6 games that work in MAME and some other emulators.

Edited December 7 by MrDeKat

[AstroBob]

Hi Folks, thanks for the great suggestions so far. Just to let you know we're not ignoring these, but just waiting for a bit more input from the community before we dive in to start discussing our thoughts and suggestions. We appreciate the early input so far.

Cheers,

[Gosunkugi]

Something to cover the whole array of MAME roms that don't fall into the arcade category. I've suggested a MESS platform before, but obviously this doesn't fit the specs required in the OP, so stuff like TV plug and play games, various handhelds, chess machines etc are left in limbo and generating false entries. It's easy to throw up hands and say no biggie, but MAME is being updated every month, so these problem games are growing in number.

[kurzih]

@AstroBob how you checked the "help & support" cases? from the navigation menu or is that now obsolete?

Like: https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/6461/adding-missing-platforms-to-the-games
That one is from 2021 for example and we've been told to forward all requests there. So now the forum is the place to do this? I'm a bit confused... but also happy to hear that there is finally some activity on this front!

I've written quite good reasons why those should be added. I don't think I have much time anymore than what I did in 2021 to add more games (I've added thousands of missing games during the corona years, 291923 changes to the database... ). In the other hand I already did add those platform and games including all media files (covers etcs.) into my local database... if that could be used. Not keen on doing it game-by-game.

 

 

Edited Thursday at 03:29 PM by kurzih

[LonestarK]

TIC-80

• Lifespan: 2017 - Present
• **Examples of its exclusive games:
• 8-Bit Panda, Balmung, and Cauliflower Power are among its top rated games, plus another 4800+ more games.
• **Significance:
• TIC-80 is becoming popular with games programmers who are interested in developing retro style games.  There is a large and growing catalog of games available with roughly 3906 games available for free via the TIC-80 website, and another 947 available via itch.io for various prices.
• Itch.io ranks the TIC-80 as #18 in the top most used game development platforms currently being used by its developers. (https://itch.io/game-development/engines/most-projects)
• **Impact on existing platforms in the database:
• TIC-80 games can be exported and bundled to run on different platforms, including among others Android, Linux, MacOS, Windows, Nintendo 3DS, and the Web Browser platform via HTML5.  I think it would be best to have these games contained within its own platform rather than have duplicated entries among these various platforms.

[LonestarK]

If we're never getting a Super Game Boy platform, can we at least get a new image type for screenshots of the Super Game Boy Borders / Palettes for all the SGB enhanced games?   Something like "Screenshot - SGB Enhancement"

Edited Friday at 05:51 AM by LonestarK
added name suggestion for new screenshot type

[Joe35car]

On 12/13/2024 at 2:59 AM, Gosunkugi said:

Something to cover the whole array of MAME roms that don't fall into the arcade category. I've suggested a MESS platform before, but obviously this doesn't fit the specs required in the OP, so stuff like TV plug and play games, various handhelds, chess machines etc are left in limbo and generating false entries. It's easy to throw up hands and say no biggie, but MAME is being updated every month, so these problem games are growing in number.

Yes. I created my own handheld platform for games like Simon and electronic football. Added Monon Color, plug n play TV games as another category. 

[AstroBob]

@kurzih Thank you for referencing the Bitbucket ticket. There’s no need to rewrite it, as we have it here now and will take it into consideration. We’re still refining the best workflow moving forward, and this thread is an attempt to reignite discussions now that we have a new internal system for adding platforms to the database. We’ll be sure to utilize the information from Bitbucket, but if there are any specific discussions you’d like to highlight, feel free to drop the links here.

 

@LonestarK Thank you for the great suggestions! For full transparency, it’s very unlikely that Super GameBoy will be added as its own platform since it is simply an add-on designed to enhance games for an existing system. This rationale would also extend to creating a new image category specifically for it.

That said, we have a larger infrastructure plan that may address this. Instead of adding additional image types for specific use cases, we are exploring the implementation of a tagging system. This approach would avoid fragmenting “Screenshot” into multiple image types. Instead, we would have a single “Screenshot” image type, with the flexibility for users to apply specific tags. This concept is still a work in progress, but we acknowledge the challenges caused by the rigidity of the current image types.

 

We actually discussed this thread last night, and while we’re not able to action anything significant before the new year, we aim to start implementing some of these changes early in the new year. We appreciate your input—please keep the discussion going in the meantime!

[Joe35car]

Advanced Pico BEENA

Monon Color

Game Pocket Computer

Plug n Play TV games

Compact Vision TV Boy

Coleco Handhelds (Looked like little cabinets)

Misc handheld electronic games (Electronic football, Simon etc.) XML below

Plug n_ Play TV Game.xml

 

Handheld Electronic Games.xml

Edited Friday at 08:14 PM by Joe35car

[Syrinx]

Love the suggestions here regarding systems in MAME other than the arcade games and the fantasy consoles and computers. MAME covers so many different and unique pieces of hardware in one program, that it's a great starting point to expand your library and knowledge of historical hardware. I know I discovered and experienced many different systems I fell in love with through MAME, and I have to assume that's the case for many others as well.

Similarly, I've only recently started diving into the wider world of fantasy consoles past Pico-8, but have instantly fallen in love with their different charms and quirks. It would be great to see all these different platforms given some attention in the database.

Edited 20 hours ago by Syrinx

[Kjetter]

Image tags would be brilliant.

As for systems, you say systems that "exclusively run external libraries" don't make the cut. It's a bit pedantic, but that's not strictly true about things like Sega Channel (and definitively not about Sega Meganet) any more than it is about Satellaview. They both have exclusive content, and even full exclusive releases. I mean, personally I don't think either need to be separated from it's base system, but Satellaview currently is.

So is the Othello Multivision, which - in fairness - was a physical system. But despite having a handful of releases made specifically for it, it is in essence just a licensed Sega SG-1000 clone, and their software libraries are interchangeable.

Not trying to make a case for the inclusion or exclusion of anything, just trying to make the point that it's currently very inconsistent. Maybe a tagging system could work here as well to not unnecessarily, and potentially arbitrarily, divide subsystems from their parent system?

Edited Friday at 08:40 PM by Kjetter