Merge PCE

[[link:/platforms/detail/18 PCE]] and [[link:/platforms/detail/119 PCE CD]] should be merged, as the only difference between the two is that the latter is PCE with CD-ROM <b>add-on</b> hardware included. So there really is no difference. It's like having DOS and DOS CD platforms (floppy vs. CD), just a piece of extra hardware you can attach to the machine. So all PCE CD games should be in PCE with CD-ROM listed in hardware field. Unless there large number of games released under the same name for both with significant differences.

Edit: possibly same for Megadrive and 32X as that's add-on hardware as well.

Kinda annoying only PC is ignored for the "add-on" hardware yet all other platforms with them get duplicate platform entries to handle them.

[[quote:Kinda annoying only PC is ignored for the "add-on" hardware yet all other platforms with them get duplicate platform entries to handle them.]]

Not only PC, the same for Jaguar / Jaguar CD, Neo Geo AES / CD, PC Engine CD-Rom² / PC Engine Super CD-Rom² / PC Engine Arcade CD-Rom², CPC / CPC+, maybe others...

But I agree that Megadrive / Mega-CD / 32X could be merged, the problem is... How to manage game released on MD, MCD and 32X ? Hardware field should include "cartridge; 32x; cd-rom", but then, at least 95% of the MegaDrive (+MegaCD & 32X) games would have the "cartridge" hardware, I'm not sure that would be a good thing... That's the same for Neo Geo games that have been released both on cartridge and CD: if the hardware field is "cd-rom", how do we know that this game have been released on cartridge also ?

[[quote:how do we know that this game have been released on cartridge also ?]]
The same way we know DOS games have been released for both CD and floppy. We just have to list all the media in the hardware field and make an assumption on what's the default media in others, or list it even in them.

I propose a proper "media" field (chackbox for multiple values) to methodically fill it, even for default values (i.e. 3 1/2 Floppy for most Amiga games.)

So it would have what? 5¼ floppy, 3½ floppy, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, cartridge,... probably add some "default" there for platforms that only support one.

[[quote:So it would have what? 5¼ floppy, 3½ floppy, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, cartridge,... probably add some "default" there for platforms that only support one.]]

Plus 3 floppy for the CPC (don' t know if some systems use 8 floppy...), card (for PCE Hu-Cards ans SMS Segacards), GD-ROM for Dreamcast (or maybe CD / GD / DVD / HDDVD / Nintendo Optical Discs / etc... could be all listed as "disc"), tape cassette (for Amstrad, Thomson, ZX etc...), VHS for Action Max, "none" for games that exist only built-in or found only in the internet, what for Arcade games ?

But I think it's a good idea.

In the case of the PC-Engine / PC-Engine CD and MegaDrive / Mega CD / 32X I would like to see them as different platforms like it is done now. Same for Neo Geo CD and Jaguar CD. I think we should make a difference with consoles and homecomputers here.

[[quote:In the case of the PC-Engine / PC-Engine CD and MegaDrive / Mega CD / 32X I would like to see them as different platforms like it is done now. Same for Neo Geo CD and Jaguar CD. I think we should make a difference with consoles and homecomputers here.]]

I prefer that too. Same for Amiga CD32 which could be added as a platform (it's not even an add-on but a single platform).

[[quote:probably add some "default" there for platforms that only support one.]]
Not sure "default" is a good idea, as this filed is obviously searchable, and searching for "default" should a bit pointless
[[quote:what for Arcade games ?]]
Oldest arcades would be "built in/none" while the latest are using cd-rom or Hard Disk, (even if players don't see the media used).
[[quote:In the case of the PC-Engine / PC-Engine CD and MegaDrive / Mega CD / 32X I would like to see them as different platforms like it is done now.]]
Yes, but what is the threshold for a system being different from another?
The CD32 was different from an Amiga1200 with CD-rom for having an additional chip (Akiko) that was almost never used, IMHO. In this case we have a computer and a console, so what to do with that C64 without keyboard sold as console?

[[quote:I agree that Megadrive / Mega-CD / 32X could be merged, the problem is... How to manage game released on MD, MCD and 32X ? ]]

It shouldn't be forgotten that if 'a game' is released on Megadrive, Mega-CD, and 32X that they could very well be 3 different games. Jurrassic Park for Megadrive and Jurrassic Park for MegaCD are completely dissimilar.

Amiga CD/CD32. As I understand it, you can't just pop one CD into the other machine and expect it to work. Hackers came up with software to correct this is beyond the machine's design and saying hacked compatibility is a reason to merge systems means Atari 800 and Atari 5200, NES and GameBoy, Genesis and Gamegear and Mastersystem, and all commodore machines.

[[quote:I propose a proper "media" field (chackbox for multiple values) to methodically fill it, even for default values (i.e. 3 1/2 Floppy for most Amiga games.)]]

Here are all medias I found:

* Cartridge (lots of systems)

* Card (PC Engine, Master System, Nintendo DS, ...)

* Disc
> CD-Rom (lots of systems)
> DVD-Rom (PS2, X-Box, ...)
> GD-Rom (Dreamcast)
> LD-Rom (Mega LD)
> NGC Game Disc (GameCube)
> Optical Disc (Wii)
> Blu-Ray Disc (PS3)
> Magnetic Disc (N64 via 64DD)

* Cassette Tape (lots of systems)

* Diskette
> 8 floppy (Altair, Flex, ...)
> 5.25 floppy (lots of systems)
> 3.5 floppy (lots of systems)
> 3 floppy (Amstrad CPC, Oric)
> 2.8 floppy (Famicom Disk System)

* VHS (Action Max)

* Flash Memory Card
> SD (Gizmondo, GP2X)
> MMC (Gizmondo, N-Gage)
> SmartMedia (GamePark 32)

* Paper Tape (Altair used it, I don't know if games were released by this media...)

* UMD (PSP)

* None
> Built-in (lots of systems, Game & Watch, ...)
> Downloaded ? For Internet freeware, maybe mobile games (don't know how mobile games work), ...

Something else ?

[[quote:don't know how mobile games work]]
These are either received through WAP or uploaded to the phone through data cable/bluetooth.

[[quote:Not sure "default" is a good idea, as this filed is obviously searchable, and searching for "default" should a bit pointless]]
So is listing media for platforms that only support one. Like most modern game consoles.

[[quote:In the case of the PC-Engine / PC-Engine CD and MegaDrive / Mega CD / 32X I would like to see them as different platforms like it is done now. Same for Neo Geo CD and Jaguar CD. I think we should make a difference with consoles and homecomputers here.]]
There should be no difference between the two when we're talking about add-on hardware. It's the same for both.

Famicom Disk System is apparently yet another piece of add-on hardware. I had assumed it was its whole own platform, but apparently it isn't.

[[quote:Famicom Disk System is apparently yet another piece of add-on hardware. I had assumed it was its whole own platform, but apparently it isn't.]]

Hm. I won't fight for an own FDS platform as I would for PCE CD or MegaCD/32X. But I don't see the positive aspect of a merging here. As a collector I consider them as two different platforms.

That (old!) consoles are treated differently for add-on hardware I will never understand. Why not separate games using different controllers as well? That certainly is as big difference (at least in my eyes).

It should be enough to recognize the fact it requires the add-on hardware, not treat it as a wholly different platform.

It would be more valuable for historical purposes that way, too, or the platforms as they're should be moved to hardware as that's exactly what they seem to be: individual pieces of different platforms instead of the platforms themselves (meaning, our platform list is inaccurately called platform list since it's a mix of platforms and hardware).

And I still would like to get the other add-on hardware moved to hardware lists as well. Games under same name that are still different shouldn't need separate platforms to get the difference become obvious, it just makes other aspects very confusing (such as why we have hardware separated in the first place, why are add-on hardware called platforms, and so on). Exceptions are the bane of accurate info (and unfortunately PC games will have several of them in the hardware lists due to the experimental nature of the platform and the fact it isn't controlled by single entity).

Therefore, instead of clinging to the inaccuracy simply because of convenience, I would suggest that people who wish to keep the extraneous platforms think up on _how_ that difference could be shown without having to dedicate a whole platform for it.

---Edit---
Since games of the same name on the two media formats are apparently completely different (at least that's what I seem to be lead to believe), were their release dates, developers and publishers the same too? That should be enough for the regular game listing if they weren't. I can only wonder what was going on in that platform's game business if they had all of those the same.

FDS games belong to a separate pool of games than NES/Famicom. Same with PCE and PCE-CD or MegaDrive / Mega CD. It's not about only "old" consoles. Newer (console) systems just don't have this kind of upgrade any more and computer systems should be handled differently. As I said maybe we can discuss the FDS being merged or not, but not with PCE etc. please.

[[quote:Therefore, instead of clinging to the inaccuracy simply because of convenience]]

Is it a terrible fault to be inaccurate when we stretch the platform definition a bit in a few cases for the sake of convenience? There is nobody who will punish us for this...

[[quote:I would suggest that people who wish to keep the extraneous platforms think up on _how_ that difference could be shown without having to dedicate a whole platform for it.]]

I can't come up with a good suggestion right now. But I can define what I want to see after they would be merged under the same platform. I want to be able to give different ratings for let's say "Altered Beast (PCE)" and "Altered Beast PCE-CD" and want to have different tags for "owning", "completing", "favorite", "want" for each of them and want them separately count as "xxx owns/wants ### games". This is currently not possible. And as long as its not possible I'm against merging certain platforms, because that would make UVL more unconvenient and less useful as it is now for me.

We could make a deal here though. When I get your support in merging game addons (such as Links - Course disks or expansions like WoW - Burning Crusade") with the main titles via an extra field inside the main game info (so that these addons/expansions don't get their own entry!)... then you get my full support and blessing for some platform mergers.

Like with your PCE titles, I would like to keep the possibility for owning, wanting, having played, etc. options for many of the expansions as well (at least if they're real expansions and not just "packs"). Also any publisher/developer info as well since they don't always match (and with that the release dates, too). Many older expansions didn't have much to offer, but currently expansions are quite thorough on the new things they bring (no-one would in their right mind pay more than 5$ for the kind of expansions they used to make back in the days). This, however, is not possible right now, as you said. (I would've preferred if the compilations had been allowed as well, but that's gone now...) It's also a bit unfair to compare platform add-on hw merge to making expansions a footnote (I actually do mark the "expansion" packs as footnotes, but things like Starcraft: Brood War? No way!)

And I never said the games themselves should be merged (if they really are different games), only the platforms. There are plenty of games on PC platforms that were enhanced when they were re-released on CD or DVD or whatever, but most didn't bother enhancing the old releases.. not specifically with the media change at least. And PC (and many other) publishers at least had the courtesy of not using the same name for different games like they apparently did with PCE. And even if they're the same game but "enhanced" versions of them, the guide did say that remakes do get their own entry (unfortunately drawing the line for these seems to be a bit fickle at times).

In case the games aren't different between the two media, I don't see why we'd do something with them that we don't do with PC.

Because I'm actively searching for PCE-CD games and Mega CD games or 32X games. I would never make a search for PC CD-ROM games. The CD-ROM for PC is just another means to store the data. I could copy the contents of a floppy disk to a CD and play the game normally, I don't say its a "CD game" or "3,5" disk game".. I say its a PC game. This is different with consoles. The so called addon-hardware has its own "pool of games" and when I play a game I say that I play a Mega CD game and not a MegaDrive game. It's not a MegaDrive game that comes on CD, but its a Mega CD game.

A system that is already (rightfully) merged is Neo Geo and Neo Geo CD. In this case the CDs seem to have the exact content of the cartridges and are just a means to bring the same game cheaper to the gamers (although the loading times must be awful from CD from what I have heard). You can't speak of an own pool of games for the cartridge and CD here. So the merging made sense.

PC CD, PC DVD, ever notice those words on game boxes? People just don't care what media it's on for PC and don't associate any kind of identity on them like the PCE and Megadrive seem to have. Still it's add-on hardware (which could easily be called that Mega CD and PCE-CD), and I don't see how this is such an awful thing to have instead of the current split platforms. It's separate hardware that may have later been sold as possibly physical non-removable part of the platform, but as far as I can tell, you can still play the games for the "normal drive" because it's still present.

Also, PC covers extremely wide range of incompatible hardware and software (operating systems), yet it still has only about 3 platforms to cover them, and anything else is done by hardware field and tags (even if the platform they're recorded under is completely incompatible with it). I see this as much greater cause for extra distinction than single add-on hardware for a console. Yet that's where it will apparently remain, because the hardware field and tags are apparently enough for it (which should be the case for all platforms in terms of add-on hardware).


Unfair statement because this is pretty much only possible on PC and other "computer" platforms. And those names are actually used when new add-on hardware is introduced, since not all have the add-on hardware. The use just falls quickly out of use when it becomes commonplace for everyone to have them. (I personally have re-introduced one of them since I haven't had a 3½ floppy drive in years)

Edit: Getting a bit long-winded with these, but in short: It's add-on hardware, please treat it as such. Beyond that, I don't care much.

For the "Amiga CD32" platform, (tag CD32) I noticed that some games were linked to the OCS/ECS platform, whereas other are linked to the AGA platform. It seems that when a game was released on OCS and CD32 but not AGA, the CD32 tag was added to the OCS game. Sometimes, this CD32 tag is used to describe CDTV games.

I'm not very familiar with these Amiga platorms (AGA and CD32), but I think that CD32 is very similar to AGA, we can even consider it as a AGA platform without keyboard and floppy disk drive replaced by a CD-ROM drive (that's why we have CD32 as a tag and not as a platform); same thing for CDTV / OCS platform..


So, do you think we can remove all these CD32 tags and replaced them by CDROM tags (which would implicitly means CDTV games for OCS entries and CD32 games for AGA entries)? I don't think we need a specific CD32 (or CDTV) tag as AFAIK all AGA CD-ROM games are CD32, all OCS CD-ROM games are CDTV.

Not really, or lets say you would have to updgrade the console CD32 with lots of extra peripherals (hard drive etc.) to run non CD32 CD-ROMs. The whole Amiga world is a bit complicated with its Kikstart and graphics chip version. The way to split it into two distinct Amiga platforms is the most plausible one and other sites do this as well, because the change to Kikstart 3.x with AGA graphics chip is the most signifikant improvement in its time. I think the cd32 tag more or less should mean that the game was marketed as a "console" game having a CD32 logo on the box and is fully compatible with a standard CD32 console. Same for CDTV. While CD-ROM is the tag for the media type itself.

These kind of add-ons existed and was available to purchase back then: external 3.5" floppy disk drive, hard disk and IBM PC keyboard could be added to a CD32 platform to make it similar to an Amiga 1200 and run Amiga 1200 games .

OK. But that leads me to another question (which was what I wanted to ask in the first place): which platform should we add this CD32 tag? Some CD32 games are ported(?) from OCS games, other from AGA games, other only exist as CD32 games. The platform mostly used is AGA, as many games were released both for AGA and CD32 (and are very similar), but is it the rule we should apply?

1. We could add cd32 tags:
* to the OCS entry if the game was published on this platform but not on AGA
* to the AGA entry if the game was published on this platform
* to a new AGA entry if the game only exists as a CD32 game

2. We could always add this tag to AGA games only, creating a new AGA entry for every game that was not already published on AGA.

3. We could add CD32 platform (and CDTV?). This would avoid us to have an AGA (or OCS) entry for a game that was never released on it, and because the CD32 is a standalone platform and CD32 games AFAIK do not run on any other platform. As a reminder, Andrea does not agree with that because :


Personally, I prefer the second or third option, but the first one was mostly used for now.

I would add the cd32 tag to exactly those games that I would enter under a separate CD32 platform if it existed. If there is an OCS version of an Amiga game an AGA ersion it is very very likely that the CD32 version is based on the AGA entry. And I guess it is easily to find out. If both versions are explicitely promoted as CD32 compatible I would put the cd32 tag into both, OCS and AGA, entries.

If there is an OCS version and they later released a CD32 version of it, it is important to find out if it uses the AGA chip for enhanced graphics or if it is a 1:1 port.

I can't think of a perfect solution. I try to avoid redundancy. If there was a CD32 platform and I would buy a CD-ROM which is playable on AGA Amigas with CD-ROM as well as on a CD32 console I would have to check both entries as "owned". So the total games owned is "2" by one and the same game. Not a big issue with a few games, but with whole platforms it feels strange. Or you had to exclude games marketed as CD32 games from getting an Amiga AGA entry. But that also feels not right *shrug*. As I said I can live with the solution right now and tagging CD32 without being platform specific for the tag.

While some CD system and other types of add-ons are just a drives to read another formst, many have additional CPUs and system RAM.
32x has 2 cpus
MegaCd has a CPU
On the other hand, games may not have access to all of the CPUs and RAM. Or were not intended to but some do anyway. For instance, there is an external floppy drive for Commodores that uses a CPU internally. But a handfull of games make use of this external CPU for other calculations than the intended reading and writing of disks.

Not all systems offer any way to access them (directly), especially if they're simply controllers. Like RAM in CD add-on device could be dedicated read ahead cache. And the extra CPU might be there to control the add-on and/or communicate (hence aforementioned controller) with the main system so the game can actually be launched and read data from the add-on media properly (also, if the system normally uses on-game-card memory for saves or similar, the add-on could have flash memory or similar of its own to provide alternate location for the saved data that the CD can't do on its own). And so forth.

However, several of these are add-ons, thus not platforms of their own. The platform distinction is only there because we don't have better way to deal with the needs of collectors in their regard.

Despite having 5¼ floppies and cassettes, They dun did 8 inch floppies for the Ohio Scientific Challenger Series.