DP Online Guide Suggestion Box

[anagrama]

this is the huge problem with europe, every country got it's own versions in a lot of cases, so you can expect multiple entries for every game that hasn't got the -EUR code :-/


I know this has been gone over before, but in the case of PAL games I still think it'd be preferable to have a single entry for each game, and to list all the region variations in the description instead.

[digitalpress]

this is the huge problem with europe, every country got it's own versions in a lot of cases, so you can expect multiple entries for every game that hasn't got the -EUR code :-/


I know this has been gone over before, but in the case of PAL games I still think it'd be preferable to have a single entry for each game, and to list all the region variations in the description instead.

Wholeheartedly agreed.

[davidleeroth]

I could definitely live with that, they confuse you when you want to make that superquick search. But, instead of adding them to the description, I would prefer seeing them as a new searchable field.
As there's more Japanese stuff hitting the guide soon this would be a great help. Identifying loose carts and such by number is *so* much easier and exact than translating a Japanese symbol to English and guessing it's proper written form.

[digitalpress]

I could definitely live with that, they confuse you when you want to make that superquick search. But, instead of adding them to the description, I would prefer seeing them as a new searchable field.
As there's more Japanese stuff hitting the guide soon this would be a great help. Identifying loose carts and such by number is *so* much easier and exact than translating a Japanese symbol to English and guessing it's proper written form.

Wholeheartedly agreed.

*adds to list of things to do*

[anagrama]

While we're listing possible improvements, would it be possible for a search to search the 'AKA' field along with the title?
So, for example, if I search for "Streets of Rage", it would also show the entries for "Bare Knuckle" (or at least it would once the JP Megadrive section is done).

[hydr0x]

about the variations

i could live with a single entry per game AS LONG as there would be a new field in the db just for the pal variations or something like that, having them all in the description would make editing them a lot harder and also reading the description, i don't like that possibility... an additional field would worth thinking about though ;)

[digitalpress]

While we're listing possible improvements, would it be possible for a search to search the 'AKA' field along with the title?
So, for example, if I search for "Streets of Rage", it would also show the entries for "Bare Knuckle" (or at least it would once the JP Megadrive section is done).

Ooh good idea.

[vintagegamecrazy]

I have just thought of a good idea for label variations. I like the way mvs games are listed, this should be used for the rest of the guide for label variations. Example, Gravitar silver label is listed in the description not as its own heading. There are a lot of games that variations are talked about but not listed. Listing them as separate entries makes the database too confusing. Here are entries that should be changed

Space Chase Monogrammed should be listed under the Space chase listing and the rarity should be in the cart description and not listed as its own game.

Miner 2049er (atari 5200) there should be a rarity and dollar amount in the description for the gold label variation. One of the other ones that comes to mind is "Action 52 for the nes. That game should have a rarity and price for the foil blue variation listed in the game description just as Gravitar does.

There are a few games that should have their own listing, those are the ones that are produced by two different companies, examples that come to mind are "Zone Ranger" for the 5200. The silver label is not a variation but is produced by telegames and not Activision, and in the 2600 section every game by atari and sears that is the same game has its own listing. The other one that should get its own listing is the re-release of Dragon Ball GT. (PSX) because it is Released by Atari and not Bandai. The other thing I had a question about is why is the Romox ECPC cartridge for the atari 2600 not listed? I did research on it and it is a legit cart even if it doesn't have a game in it, and it is no different than the green red and blue genesis carts.

Hopefully that cart will be listed and my ideas for label variations could be updated into the next update.

[hydr0x]

@vintagegamecrazy

the problem are not the label variations, in pal territories carts actually have different ROMS inside in different countries (i already placed all box variations with the same cart into the description field), so in fact, a german cart is even more different from a uk cart than a uk cart from a us cart :-/ that's the reason why i don't want this information to get lost in the description field and asked for a new additional field...

[anagrama]

@vintagegamecrazy

the problem are not the label variations, in pal territories carts actually have different ROMS inside in different countries (i already placed all box variations with the same cart into the description field), so in fact, a german cart is even more different from a uk cart than a uk cart from a us cart :-/ that's the reason why i don't want this information to get lost in the description field and asked for a new additional field...

I don't really see how it would get "lost" in the description field - it's there to see, and even with an extra 'variations' field sthe information would still be displayed in the same place - it would be in the same paragraph in one of the books, or on the same page in the Online Guide.

I didn't have a problem with the Megadrive list (although I appreciate there's not as many variations as the SNES), and tackled it like this:

The Jungle Book: R2/$4 [T-70176-05]. Also released as El Libro de la Selva [Spain, T-70176-06], Le Livre de la Jungle [France, T-70176-04], Das Dschunglebuch [Germany].

[hydr0x]

The Jungle Book: R2/$4 [T-70176-05]. Also released as El Libro de la Selva [Spain, T-70176-06], Le Livre de la Jungle [France, T-70176-04], Das Dschunglebuch [Germany].

yeah but how do you deal with this scenario (not a real example):


Super Mario World

Italy: Cart -EUR , Box -ITA
France: Cart -FRH, Box -FRA
Netherlands: Cart -FRH, Box -HOL
Spain: Cart -EUR, Box -SPA
Switzerland: Cart -FRG, Box -NOE
Germany: Cart -NOE, Box -NOE
UK: Cart -UKV, Box -UKV
Australia: Cart -UKV, Box -AUS


this is an absolutely possible scenario, but how do you do it??

[vintagegamecrazy]

I wanted Joe to see my last post, I am not referring to the non US lists, but to the american stuff it would be so much more easy to find stuff.

[anagrama]

this is an absolutely possible scenario, but how do you do it??

I'd say that the primary concern is to get a solid list of all released games, along with rarity/pricing info. In the vast majority of cases, I doubt there is much difference in demand or pricing between regional variations (granted, RPGs and other text-heavy games are the probable exceptions).
For variations, I'd suggest concentrating on the carts rather than boxes - after all, unless a game was bought new, there's no way to guarantee that the cart/box hasn't been mis-matched together at some point. It probably doesn't happen that often, but it does mean that listing every known combination is a little fruitless.

For your Mario World example, something like this may be viable:

Super Mario World: R1/$? [SNSP-MW-xxx]
Known carts: -EUR, -UKV, -FRH, -NOE.
Known boxes: -ITA, -FRA, -HOL, -SPA, -NOE, -UKV, -AUS

Could something like that not work? You could add a brief comment if any particulr version was much rarer or expensive, but in most cases I doubt it would make a huge difference.

[hydr0x]

For your Mario World example, something like this may be viable:

Super Mario World: R1/$? [SNSP-MW-xxx]
Known carts: -EUR, -UKV, -FRH, -NOE.
Known boxes: -ITA, -FRA, -HOL, -SPA, -NOE, -UKV, -AUS

Could something like that not work? You could add a brief comment if any particulr version was much rarer or expensive, but in most cases I doubt it would make a huge difference.

you're right about the mixing up if it wasn't sealed, ALTHOUGH it's pretty obvious if a combination is correct or not

something LIKE your example would work, but i'll do something that lists cart/box combinations known rather than all carts and boxes..

[SpasticFuctard]

It searches the AKA field now too.

SF

[anagrama]

Groovey!

[gleavepaul]

the only thing id say for the guides is to at more pal stuff or even a whole pal edition? @_@

[anagrama]

An 'Import Guide' is possibly in the pipeline, and there's plenty of PAL stuff in the works - the Sega side seems pretty well covered at the mo (Euro SMS, MD, 32X, Saturn & DC lists are all in the database, and the MegaCD section should be sorted soon), hydr0x is currently hard at work on the SNES section and I'm sure there's other stuff going on.
Other systems need other section editors - are there any PAL NES or N64 experts, for example?

[hydr0x]

Other systems need other section editors - are there any PAL NES or N64 experts, for example?

well, ruud is the nes expert... we should hire stan from nesworld for this, he's got an amazing list :D

N64? i only know some german guy who had n64 listings and that stuff on his homepage but i don't think he has enough knowledge for something like this and i also think he just doesn't fit into the team, sorry if that sounds rude :o

what other systems need to be covered??

CD-I
3DO
Gameboy
Playstation

not the easiest ones :p

is anyone doing game gear?

[anagrama]

I've got a rough GG list, but it would need quite a bit of work before being submitted. I'll maybe think about it after the PAL MegaCD and JP Megadrive sections are done ;)

I know PAL PSX stuff has been mentioned by QoF in the past but I don't know what stage it's at. Almost all pre-NES stuff currently in the guide lists only the PAL exclusives, so there's room for imporvement there aswell.

Also, there was someone on here who had a pretty good Australian N64 list - that would probably be a good base to expand upon for a full PAL listing. The Nintendo Europe website has a list of all releases aswell, but like most 'official' lists, there's probably a few errors & omissions.

re NesWorld Stan - you mean Mr. Stepanic, the one-man-SMS-price-raising phenomenon? ;)
He's a regular at sms.com these days aswell and has been horrendously over-paying for uncommon-rare games :)

[davidleeroth]

Well, I found my old Excel sheet a few weeks back with a lot of PSX part numbers, developers and such. A lot of new releases since then too but I guess it's a good start.

[mikeetler]

what other systems need to be covered??

Gameboy


If anyone does want to start work on a complete non-US GB list let me know. I've been researching a lot of exclusive non-US games and AKAs but haven't been touching the titles also released in the US. Nintendo's UK website was no help at all as they only list a few dozen titles.

-Mike

[hydr0x]

@james

well, a GG list with just the releases would be better than nothing, there's a lot of time until the book but if it's just releases anyone will be happy to have it in the online guide

you're right about the n64 list, and as i said there is a guy on a german forum who claims his n64 list is complete, so that one would be a good start too, i'm not going to do it though, DC, 32X and especially SNES are enough right now, SNES is a bitch, there were so many movie-license games that even some of those are among the rarest games, even some sports games are rarer than you would ever guess, i know about 20 games that MUST HAVE been released (seens boxarts in mags, people mentioning owning it, reviews in mags and all that stuff) of which i haven't found any 100% proof of yet x_x (popular examples being the Beethoven games, "We're Back" and Whirlo)

might be that stan is not knowing what what is worth, but his release list is pretty accurate for europe, thx to my australian-only-games additions LOL

@david

yep, that would be a good start, i once went into some stores and wrote down a lot of the newer releasese, i've got that list SOMEWHERE, it might be a nice addition to that start :p

@mike

i don't ;) but your collected info would also make a good start

[anagrama]

Yeah, I'll give the GG list a once-over when I get the chance. There's still 20 or so games I need to confirm and probably a few that are still missing.

Stan knows that he's overpaying (and constantly gets reminded :) ) but he seems to be on a mission to acquire every as soon as possible and has the money to throw around. I'm very glad he didn't see that Smurfs 2 - he would probably have offered about £500 for it ;)

[davidleeroth]

@david

yep, that would be a good start, i once went into some stores and wrote down a lot of the newer releasese, i've got that list SOMEWHERE, it might be a nice addition to that start :p

That would all help. I worked at a game shop in the PlayStation days and I asked the manager (and friend of mine) to give me a list of all the games he has stocked. He has stopped selling new games in the last year or so, so a lot of those newer releases will be missing.
I should get the list soon but I'm more excited if he's managed to carry the data about when these titles were added to the stock, it would give a pretty accurate release date list to work on.

[vintagegamecrazy]

Sorry guys, but I'm not able to help with non us releases, have a bunch of small obscure consoles released inthe states that i am researching. I have a suggestion for the online database though. There needs to be a break somewhere inbetween 8 and 16 bit. Ex If I pulled up a search for all of the releases by Activision, I would like to be able have the database search only in 8 bit and older, and then 16 bit and newer only. I think it would be awsome if you could search within a eras like that. Then when I wanted to I could pull up everything at once.

[Ruudos]

This is also a way to list SNES codes:

Example Super Mario World:

SNSP-MW-[FAH*NOE*ITA*SCN*UKV]

[stuffedmonkey]

I notice a few release dates are blank - but the info is there on nintendo.com (the downloadable pdf guides with the list of each system's games) and at IGN.com.


If anyone is interested let me know... I have the extra ones for the N64 on my computer at home - I had pulled all the online guide info into a spreadsheet so that i could make check list and put in notes.... then I filled in the holes off the sources above. A bit anal I know, but I spent a few summers doing data entry as a summer job, and it left me picky about such things :)

[anagrama]

Now that there are increasing amounts of Non-US games being added into the database, there really needs to be a better way of displaying these other than the catch-all 'Non-US Releases' category - for example, there's no way of being able to select just Japanese Mega Drive games without listing all the European titles aswell.

What I would suggest is that instead of just the 2 'US Releases' & 'Non-US Releases' categories, there should be 4 options: US Releases/Japanese Releases/European Releases/Other. (It's debatable whether Australian & NZ releases should be filed with European games (since they're also PAL) or under 'Other').
While it's possible to sort the current Non-US listings by country, this isn't perfect since not all systems will be alphabetically listed when this happens. Also, this means that the Country field could be used to show when games were released, for example, in just the UK or Germany while keeping them as part of the main 'Europe' list.
This would also mean it would be possible to have a check-box on the main search page to select games of a particular region.

[tinsair]

Now that there are increasing amounts of Non-US games being added into the database, there really needs to be a better way of displaying these other than the catch-all 'Non-US Releases' category - for example, there's no way of being able to select just Japanese Mega Drive games without listing all the European titles aswell.

What I would suggest is that instead of just the 2 'US Releases' & 'Non-US Releases' categories, there should be 4 options: US Releases/Japanese Releases/European Releases/Other. (It's debatable whether Australian & NZ releases should be filed with European games (since they're also PAL) or under 'Other').
While it's possible to sort the current Non-US listings by country, this isn't perfect since not all systems will be alphabetically listed when this happens. Also, this means that the Country field could be used to show when games were released, for example, in just the UK or Germany while keeping them as part of the main 'Europe' list.
This would also mean it would be possible to have a check-box on the main search page to select games of a particular region.

Yeah that's a good point anagrama, it's really annoying when searching in the Non-US Genesis list and there is JAP games between the european games.

[vintagegamecrazy]

anagrama wrote:
Now that there are increasing amounts of Non-US games being added into the database, there really needs to be a better way of displaying these other than the catch-all 'Non-US Releases' category - for example, there's no way of being able to select just Japanese Mega Drive games without listing all the European titles aswell.

What I would suggest is that instead of just the 2 'US Releases' & 'Non-US Releases' categories, there should be 4 options: US Releases/Japanese Releases/European Releases/Other. (It's debatable whether Australian & NZ releases should be filed with European games (since they're also PAL) or under 'Other').
While it's possible to sort the current Non-US listings by country, this isn't perfect since not all systems will be alphabetically listed when this happens. Also, this means that the Country field could be used to show when games were released, for example, in just the UK or Germany while keeping them as part of the main 'Europe' list.
This would also mean it would be possible to have a check-box on the main search page to select games of a particular region.


Yeah that's a good point anagrama, it's really annoying when searching in the Non-US Genesis list and there is JAP games between the european games.

I'll third that.

[Keir]

I love the fact that you can search different fields besides Title (Manufacturer, Developer, etc.) One field that I would like to see added is “Special Peripherals”. Then, for example, one could search for every Atari 2600 game that uses paddles, or all the CoCo games that require the CoCo3.

[digitalpress]

I love the fact that you can search different fields besides Title (Manufacturer, Developer, etc.) One field that I would like to see added is “Special Peripherals”. Then, for example, one could search for every Atari 2600 game that uses paddles, or all the CoCo games that require the CoCo3.

Should be do-able.

I'd also like to add a search on the "part number" field, which is invaluable when trying to hunt down the name of a Japanese game.

I may also change some of the supplemental filters to include seaching on titles that have images attached, for example.

To be continued... forever!

[SpasticFuctard]

It's good to want things, Sans-Testiclese!

SF - damning the man since 1977.

[Vectorman0]

I often find myself using the search database, but I am always clicking on the names of games just to be able to see the price estimate. I think it would be a nice addition to have an option to have it right next to the scarcity in the search results, if it is at all possible. It would also be great for those of us who copy and paste the stuff into our own Excel files for our own referencing.

[vintagegamecrazy]

I don't think this has been mentioned before, but I would love to have a option that would say exclusive and that would only show games strictly on that system and not just U.S. but worldwide. It would need a lot of a.k.a. tweaks but that would be soooo cool.