Good day all. Some of you will be aware of this already, but I'm going to explain from scratch that way nothing is left out.

I have spent the past few years working on obtaining every DOS game that was released in English. I have used mobygames as a primary resource for identifying games, and as we all know, there are games missing here. So I have tried to fill in the blanks where I can, while also submitting corrections to existing games when possible.

A fellow DOS enthusiast who is working on his own dos collection has put together database software, and recently he exported a list for me that compared all known games they are aware (and have acquired) to all known games here at mobygames. Shareware games were left out of this scan, so the list of games I have here should be commercial releases and freeware only.

I think that statistically, the numbers are remarkable. Currently there are 5603 DOS games in the mobygames database, with a large number of those being compilations. When boiled down to unique releases, the number is below 4,000.

After running a scan of unique commercially released dos games versus the mobygames database, we have identified 2178 games not listed here. Some of these are definitely going to be false positives, and only by working through the list will I be able to determine the exact number. Others though are fairly major releases, such as Zork Quest 1 & 2. I believe that after panning the list, at least half of these will pan out.

So then the debate arose within our group as to if we should submit missing games to mobygames. While generally, it is something we would all like to do, it simply isn't feasible to sit here and manually go through the process of entering 1,000 games.

So, while it will take me some time to work through this list, I wanted to ask if there would be a possibility of submitting a database or excel spreadsheet of my final checks to the admins/mods/approvers, and have it "mass added".

At this time, I am basically going through each entry on the list, searching it on moby, and verifying it is not listed under a variation or different name. The end goal is to have a list of games I am positive are not represented here.

Currently the database tracks: release year publisher genre game name release languages

Unfortunately, I believe developer info is missing.

I am curious to know how the mobygames crew wants to approach this data.

While you wait for an official answer, you could add the missing games to our missing game spreadsheet. =)

The only way of massive submission is going Unicorn Lynx-style. Last year, he added 700+ games, so 1000 seems possible.

Thanks for naming the style after me :) But yeah, the only way to do it is just that... do it. At first the task seems daunting, but it's feasible.

To me, daunting is look at a list of 5,000 DOS games and saying, "I'm going to find all of these, make them work in dosbox, integrate it into a front end, acquire all scans/art/manuals possible, and document the dosbox fixes on their website." Entering a thousand or more games to mobygames manually is just tedious.

Basically, between my work, and the work of Hargle's group, we have identified a ton of missing games. When all is said and done, we will have a very nearly complete database of all dos releases. We are offering to share that info with you guys, as we would like to see mobygames as up to date as possible.

However, i won't be typing these in one by one and then dealing with the approval process. If someone else wants to volunteer to do it, I'll give them the list after I have finished verifying it. As far as proof for the games go, well - we have them all. Or, if the site wants to look into a way to do a mass add, then that is fine too, and probably preferable for all involved.

Look a little higher, there's an online list of missing games here. Adding them in (possibly a separate sheet just to be sure) would be a first step.

Glad to see the ZQ games are here. They don't turn up in a search with the space.

And yes, I saw the missing games list. When I am done parsing out the false positives from this list, I'll download a copy of this list and run a delete query on my list to clear out the dupes. At that point, I'll format my list to match and copy my missing games over.

Well, even if a mass submission was technically possible - which I doubt; in my experience our database can't do absolutely nothing it was not specifically designed to do - someone still has to come up with descriptions. This is not only a lot of effort, but I bet the only way to describe many (if not most) games in the list properly is to actually play them.

However, we sure would appreciate it if you could provide us with the list as comprehensible reference point. When adding a game, every bit of information helps. And of course the knowledge that a games exists in the first place!

But I have to be frank, we also have a big trustworthy database of Amiga games to our disposal (Hall of Lights) and we still miss many, many, many Amiga games.

That is fine, I'm just providing the info here. I have already located nearly every dos game mobygames has listed, so I had to move on and find new sources.

Both ZorkQuest games are here, they just don't have a space in their name.

Could it be turned into some sort of... distributed data entry? MobyGames being what it is, running on "ancient" code and with nobody to make any changes to it anymore, that list could be split into reasonable pieces among a number of experienced contributors who'd volunteer for it. The problem then, as said above as well, is descriptions though... And the fact that somebody'd still have to approve them all.

But MultimediaMike's list already has this capability, it was compiled by numerous users, it can hold all text data you need, URLs.

eXo, send a Private Message to MultimediaMike to get access to the list.

My question is: how did your friend dumped a list of games from MobyGames? Not manually, I presume?

BTW: the number of compilations for DOS is only about 600.