Official DP Strategy Guide Rarity List thread!

[maxlords]

Ok gang, as promised, here's the melon at the end of the trailer park! Don't ask me where the hell that came from...

Anyway, here's what I'm gonna need, and I'm open to ideas as well. In short, I'm planning a strategy guide section for the online rarity lists. I plan to include every guide made from Atari to present. But there's NO way I'll find em all on my own so I'm gonna need a bit of support from everyone that's willing. Here's the data I'm asking for:

Strategy guide title - the complete title, including any extraneous text such as "the unofficial" or whatever else they deem necessary to print

Publisher of the guide (Sandwich Islands, Prima, Brady, etc.)

Extras - detailed list of any extras that came with the guide (posters, CDs, maps, stickers, tattoos, etc)

Format - Is the guide Hardcover? Softcover? Black & White? Color? Glossy?

Author(s)? - What's the name of the author or editor? Almost forgot this..thanks Vectorman0!

Platforms - Is the guide multiplatform? If so...which platforms? Thanks again to Vectorman0!

Any other pertinent details you may think are necessary would also be appreciated, such as if the guide was mail order only, etc. I want the maximum data possible.

For simplicity, please keep the data as streamlined as possible...as I'm gonna be sorting through THOUSANDS of entries! For the Format section:

HC = Hardcover
SC = Softcover
B&W = Black & White
G = Glossy
C = Color

If you can think of any other distinguishers, let me know. I thought about adding "Squarebound" but most softcover strategy guides are squarebound anyway, so it's kind of overkill.

Anyway, what I would like anyone willing to help to do is email me a list of EVERY guide they personally own at first. Once I get the main part of the guide databased, I'll be asking for people to help fill in the gaps with more obscure titles, etc. I may later on be needing photo verification of some of the more obscure guides, but I don't want that at this time.

Please email all submissions to strategyguides@gmail.com so I can consolidate them in one email account. There is not enough PM space for me to take PMs about this section!

If you wish to talk to me via IM, here are my available contact handles:

AIM: maxlords01
ICQ: 23188772
MSN: maxlords@hotmail.com

I'm really looking forward to this project, and any help will be greatly appreciated! Let's pull it together for another DP first! Please post any and all general thoughts about formatting, questions, etc, here in this thread (or forum) and we'll get underway! Let's do it!

[Qixmaster]

wow, great idea. I will get a list of all strat. guides i own and send it your way.

[Vectorman0]

Should we list the platforms the guides apply to? As some guides are cross platform, as others aren't.

What does everyone think? Is it necessary, or just overkill?

[Crush Crawfish]

wow, this is a gonna be quite the task, huh? I have tons of guides...I'll start going through them soon.

[Dangerboy]

...

I will see if i can help..i have... a LOT of guides....don't hold your breath though =/

also..after reading this thread and the 'list of shrinkwrap variants' thread....

have we as a collective gaming group completely lost our minds?

[Ed Oscuro]

Ednote: BE SURE TO SEND ISBN #s!

I'll be sending a few import guides your way soon, Max. :)

[Ed Oscuro]

also..after reading this thread and the 'list of shrinkwrap variants' thread....

have we as a collective gaming group completely lost our minds? O_O

I don't like the shrinkwrap thread, but guides would be great to know about.

[hydr0x]

ehm only US guides or from all countries??

i've got a whole bunch of uk, dutch and german guides...

[maxlords]

At this time I'm not planning on adding ANY import guides, only domestic US guides. THanks hydrox and Ed, but I'm not gonna add those at the moment. Heck, JUST US guides will be hard enough!

Ed: ISBNs might not be a bad idea either. Thoughts everyone?

Dangerboy: Probably! But I think guides are less obsessive than shrinkwrap variants A lot of gamers have guides and collect em, and they're becoming more and more popular.

[kainemaxwell]

I'll get mine together shortly too!

[digitalpress]

Should we list the platforms the guides apply to? As some guides are cross platform, as others aren't.

What does everyone think? Is it necessary, or just overkill?

There's no such thing as "overkill" HERE

I'd say list which platforms the book covers in a descriptive field. Maxlords, you might want to add that info to you initial thread here.

Should be an interesting project, I have no idea how many of these things there actually ARE.

[kainemaxwell]

I had already been adding the systems to my lists. Submitted a batch just now, likely do more later on.

[Ed Oscuro]

Hmm...I just discovered that the old Super Game Boy, Super Metroid, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island and Super Mario RPG guides from Nintendo Power did NOT have an ISBN # in them. However, they have UPC barcodes which I will also mention.

I've included far more information in this post that you should need; the general thrust of it is that you can use search sites (such as the one listed; it's a bit slow but works perfectly) to find ALL the information you require when an ISBN # is present - INCLUDING the exact date of release in many cases.

ISBN INFO
When you can find ISBN #s, you can find stuff like this: ding

There's a number of pages out there that let you do ISBN # OR keyword searches, but the one I've linked to is great for that: Example. It doesn't give an results for F-Zero GX, say, in such a manner (ISBN # 1-930206-35-6).

It also gives release dates (i.e. Devil May Cry, ISBN #0-74400-094-7, 2001-10-17).

It's interesting that there aren't ISBN #s for the old NP guides, and I don't know if they were commonly sold in stores around the Super Metroid era...Prima's Super Mario RPG Game Secrets: Unauthorized (ISBN #0-76150-762-0, paperback 1996-06-26) DOES have an ISBN # - so do at least a few of the Japanese game guides I own (possibly all of them; I haven't checked), some going back to the early 1990s. This is explained by those being printed by regular publishers.

BARCODE INFO: EAN-13 +X and its subset UPC-A
All the guides listed have bar codes.

Bar codes are tricky to decipher, but this page explains it a bit. We don't need to get too technical just as long as we can figure out why different codes are showing up all the time and that we can glean a little bit of information from them!

Some items (i.e. the Prima Super Mario RPG guide) have two sets of bars (a first number, then a barcode with two groups of five numbers - there won't be a last number after the first barcode - and then a second barcode with five numbers). Some have just two groups, along with a number in front and back of the barcode (UPC-A). I'll explain which each of these are in a moment.

Prima SMRPG guide: 9 780761, 507628 +51299
This is EAN-13 +5. There are different types of EAN; UPC is a subset of EAN. EAN-13, meaning the first thirteen numbers shown (9 780761, 507628 +51299), can have two or five numbers added on, those are found under the second barcode.

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars Nintendo Player's Guide (no ISBN #): 0 45496 69109 7. This is UPC-A. You don't find the ISBN # above this kind. The format is type (first number), manufacturer code (45496 here), product code (69109), and a check code (7). This is useful for Nintendo guides because the manufacturer code is always 45496, and the product code will be something along the lines of 69XXX.

Here's some UPC-A product codes from a few Nintendo guides (the type code will always be 0 and the check code doesn't matter though it does change):

69075 Super Metroid
69091 SGB guide
69096 Yoshi's Island
69109 SMRPG
69258 F-Zero GX
69280 Metroid Zero Mission

As you can see, the product code is a great way to order guides when you don't know dates. Note that you can do this with either UPC-A or EAN-13 + 2 or 5.

Some guides will have two barcodes, and they actually don't go in a specific order (i.e. EAN-13+5 before UPC or vice versa). A few guides I have by BradyGames are a good example:

Official Tenchu Strategy Guide: Stealth Assassins (ISBN: 1-56686-821-1 Edition: Paperback; 1998-10-01). Barcodes are UPC-A in a left box and EAN-13+5 on the right. The ISBN# is above the EAN-13; whenever you can find ISBN #s on a guide's cover they're usually found here.

Threads of Fate Official Strategy Guide (Tim Cox, Publisher: International Thomson Publishing ISBN: 1-56686-998-6 Edition: Paperback; 2000-07-12). Now barcodes are EAN-13 +5 on the left and UPC-A on the right. So if you use barcodes be aware that they're tricky.

For UPC-A
the BradyGames mfgr. code is 52073
the Nintendo mfgr. code is 45496

For EAN-13 +X
the BradyGames mfgr. code is 781566
the Nintendo mfgr. code is 781930
the Versus books mfgr. code is 74470

On that Versus books code, I used the Versus Books Metroid Prime Official Perfect Guide (Craig Keller, Publisher: Empire 21 Publishing, Inc. ISBN: 1-93188-612-1 Edition: Paperback; 2002). This one has EAN-13 +2 (not +5 as with every other guide I've listed), and where the ISBN number should be there's a D/I on the front. No clue about that one.

[Ed Oscuro]

Some Versus Books guides.

Five pages of Brady Games guides!

Not everything is listed, but a lot of it is.

Given this information, it's up to Maxlords whether he wants to include all this info (I'd just write down the official name as given by the ISBN) because all you have to do is give a link to this site and say "have at it." However we still want to create rarity/price information.

For games without ISBNs, the project has far more meaning because these older guides tend to have more value and higher scarcity.

[maxlords]

Well, I started databasing the stuff this afternoon and I noticed the exact same thing you did Ed. Seems all the old Nintendo guides are lacking ISBNs because they aren't registered as books but rather magazines. Only books have ISBN (International Service Bin Number) numbers.

For the format, here's what I've gone with so far and an example:

Arc the Lad PS2 Strategy guide

System - PS2

Game (that the guide is for): Arc The Lad Twilight of the Spirits

Title (of the guide): Arc the Lad Twilight of the Spirits The Official Strategy Guide

Publisher: Dimension Publishing/Brady Publishing

Imprint: BradyGAMES

Dollar Value: $5

Rarity: R1

Retail Price: $14.99

Author: Thomas Layton

Description:

Copyright Date: 2003

ISBN: 0-744002966

That's the format I"m planning on using and the way I'm planning to input data. I'll explain a bit of the reasoning in case anyone doesn't understand. I realized when I started this that every guide has a different official title that doesn't make ANY sense alphabetically. And if we inputted all that data into the DP database, you'd never be able to find anything alphabetically. Very inconvenient. So I added a Game section that has the title of each game, giving us an easy way to sort the database itself, then a second field for the Guide Title so you know what the full name of the guide is.

In the same way, I added two sections for publishers for a similar reason. It turns out that while Prima and Nintendo and most others publish their own guides, BradyGAMES is actually an imprint of other corporations that just use the BradyGAMES name on their guides. The two main companies that have/do use the BradyGAMES imprint are Pearson Education and Macmillian USA (also called Macmillian Digital USA). They're the actual publishers and BradyGAMES is just the imprint...the name everyone knows. So I added two publisher fields, one for the actual publisher, and a second called the "Imprint" for the Imprinted makers of the guide if they vary from the actual publisher.

After that, I realized it might be interesting (if not particularly useful) to have the original retail price of the guides listed as well, so I added a "Retail Price" field. Most guides are $14.99, but some of the older guides vary. For example, the Final Fantasy Strategy Guide from Nintendo Power that came with your subscription had a cover price of $3.50, but it's still designated a "strategy guide" by the publishing information, though it's in a magazine format. The Earthbound guide that came with the game has a sale value of $11.00 in the publishing information. They do vary, and I figured why not include that too?

I added fields for multiple authors, and where I can't find the author, I'm listing the Editor in Chief as (ed.) after the name.

There is a field for "Description" for other information, like if the guide was mail order, or a pack in or only available online or came with posters. Most guides will have this information blank.

I added the Copyright Date of the guide, and I've also considered adding the number of pages in each guide. Thoughts anyone?

Other than that, I don't see anything else that NEEDS to be added. The UPC numbers aren't necessary IMO when a game doesn't have an ISBN. Some guides won't even have UPCs. I've begun listing the ISBNs of guides that don't have them as "N/A".

I didn't go with any release dates because we can't verify many of them....if they're decided as necessary, I'll add them when possible though!

I can't think of anything else necessary to the database at this point. I'd like to hear people's thoughts. I've gotten about 25 entries into the database so far and it's looking pretty good. Submissions are already starting to roll in too. I'd ask that people not submit mutliple emails each with a single guide's information though, as I've had that a bit already. Please submit all the guides you have in one email, whether typed or in a Word or Excel document. Much easier that way!

Anyway...we're getting going!

[Ed Oscuro]

Well, I started databasing the stuff this afternoon and I noticed the exact same thing you did Ed. Seems all the old Nintendo guides are lacking UPCs

Huh? I never said that as none of the ones I've listed lack UPCs (you must have pre-SNES stuff?). They lack ISBNs, yes.

I like the idea of seperating imprint/publisher, and I guess the format has to be a bit bloated in order to allow easy DB entry...I like the ISBN style better though.

Also I mentioned that we can get specific dates of release for much stuff - any plans for including those?

[maxlords]

I don't know if release dates matter for this. Anyone else want to chime in? I say they don't, Ed obviously says they do. I'll wait to decide until we get some more votes.

As for the UPCs...the Earthbound guide at least, doesn't have one. I'm not going to include all the UPCs from all the guides when we have ISBNs to wkr with. I'm not doing the official name as given by the ISBN because the database would be too hard to navigate if you're not looking for a specific entry. Vetoed

[Ed Oscuro]

Official name should give you more terms to search for, you know; with the system in place for games typing in "Metroid" without selecting a system will give you a wide number of matches. Not putting in the official name makes no sense to me. We do it for games. It's not like adding another word will suddenly make it not fit. o_O

Dates. By the same logic, why do we both with release dates for games?

As for UPCs...granted they're of no use. Just on a point, though, I've got guides that have no ISBN but have UPCs/EAN-13 +x codes, starting with the Super Metroid guide. You've got earlier ones, yeah?

[kainemaxwell]

Maxlords, is the format I sent my first batch ok then?

[Ed Oscuro]

Maxlords, is the format I sent my first batch ok then?

My prompting is beside the point - if there's more information to be found, it'll be found. We all want more information, but probably we will have to start out with somewhat limited scope. I don't see how there can be a problem.