Forums > MobyGames > Nintendo media PM
Bregalad (937) on 4/15/2007 6:34 PM · Permalink · Report
Some people have started to contribue "Nintendo media PN" (wich is actually the catalog ID) recently under game's "technical specs". Because the great majority of games submited doesn't have this yet, and because the catalog ID varies between regions, I wonder how Moby Games should handle this.
For example, I'd take Mega Man 3 for the NES. Here you are it's calalog ID (or "Media PN") : Japan : CAP-XU United States : NES-XU-USA Canada : NES-XU-CAN Germany : NES-XU-FRG France : NES-XU-FRA etc....
As for different parts of europe, I noted NES games often comes in slightly different packaging, but with the exact same game inside the cartridge, and with different calalog ID. Sometimes, even the same game in the same region will get several various catalog ID (-EEC, -FRG and -NOE are all German carts, and it's possible to see the same carts with different catalogs ID in the same region).
So, would the best just place the Japanese catalog ID (which also indicate the company, in the example above "CAP-" is for Capcom) and one could logically build the others (which always beings with "NES-") ? I think the best would be to place both catalog ID with the company name and with just "NES", but without the third term wich highly varies (here, only CAP-XU and NES-XU would be registered, without "-USA" or anything else), because some games were not released in Japan so does only have the American catalog ID (or the exact Japanese ID may just not be known).
What do you guys think about it ?
chirinea (47508) on 4/15/2007 6:43 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
[Q --start Bregalad wrote--]Some people have started to contribue "Nintendo media PN" (wich is actually the catalog ID) recently under game's "technical specs".[/Q --end Bregalad wrote--] Really, under tech specs? And who approved it?
By now, we deal with them listing along release info. So, if a game was released in several countries, and got several PNs, each country gets its own PN. Sometimes, codes are shared, and sometimes, as you said, the same region gets two or more different codes (like the USA, USA-1, USA-2, etc. suffixes). So it really isn't an issue. Maybe the worst situation is with Japanese NES codes (or better yet, Famicom codes). From the Suyper Famicom on, they became to be more standardized, but the Famicom codes are really messy...
Bregalad (937) on 4/15/2007 7:30 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
Ah, maybe it was in release info. So yeah, this clarifies things, however, often the european release dates are foggy and unavailable, especially for the NES where the different regions are a big mess. I think number suffixes are there for revisions of the cart. Japanese codes are just different than everything else (because the first term is for the company and not for the console). I've heard that not all games had any codes, but I cannot veryfy because I don't have many FC games.
EDIT : Oh, forgive me I'm retarded. I haven't even noticed that Moby Games had built-in place for entering catalog codes in release data. The only real problem is that it doesn't allow you to enter the full code, for famicom games is wants you to have the format NES-xxx-JPN, while this is wrong, since most FC games have the format company-xxx instead.
Joshua J. Slone (4666) on 4/15/2007 8:13 PM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start Bregalad wrote--]EDIT : Oh, forgive me I'm retarded. I haven't even noticed that Moby Games had built-in place for entering catalog codes in release data. The only real problem is that it doesn't allow you to enter the full code, for famicom games is wants you to have the format NES-xxx-JPN, while this is wrong, since most FC games have the format company-xxx instead. [/Q --end Bregalad wrote--] Oh? Then that's something that should be changed. Could you point to a few example boxes/carts?
Bregalad (937) on 4/16/2007 5:02 PM · Permalink · Report
My Just Breed copy has the media PM EFC-I5. I submitted scans of the box so that it's easy to see this here. However, it's impossible to enter this code because it's not the form "NES-xxx-country". If Just Breed would have been released in the USA, it's code would most probably be "NES-I5-USA", but it wasn't, and it's false to say the code is "NES-I5-JPN" because it isn't.