Platforms 2014 (2018 update)

I thought to start a new "platforms" thread, and use this post to regularly update the platform suggestions list, so Andrea will not have to skim through many posts to know which platform should be added / deleted / modified.

Feel free to edit it yourself to add / delete suggestions. I think the discussion about why / how to add / delete / modify these entries should be done as a reply to this thread, and this post should link to the post in which it is discussed.

Currently, here is what is suggested:

Additions:
* Gamate *DONE*
* Windows Phone 8 (to be discussed more?)
* Interact Home Computer*DONEish* (to be discussed more?)
* DAI Personal Computer
* VTech Laser 200
* Sanyo PHC-25
* Jupiter Ace
* Camputers Lynx *DONE*
* Memotech MTX *DONE*
* Mega Duck / Cougar Boy
* Galaksija
* EI NIS Pecom 32/64
* PEL Varaždin Orao
* Tesla PMD 85
* MSX2+ / MSX Turbo-R
* VideoBrain Family Computer*STARTED*

* CompuColor 8001I (*?*) / CompuColor II *STARTED*
* Exidy Sorcerer *DONE*
* Cambridge Z88

Deletion:
* Odyssey 200

Modifications:
* Odyssey³† *DONE*
* KC 85
* Vii *DONE*
* VC-4000
* Apple IIe

To be discussed more?
Zenith/Heath Z80 CPU systems
Zenith/Heath 8080 CPU systems


*†Odyssey³
* Sharp X1 series (to be discussed)
* ZPA IQ 151
* Amstrad PCW *DONE*
*CP/M
* HP Calculators
Please discuss more.

* Elektronika-60
More Info Needed.

* Hitachi S1
More info needed.

Many thanks for this summary!

222 consoles

http://greatnscott.deviantart.com/art/222-Console-History-99487643

There is a number of Eastern European home computer systems that are not yet included. I'll admit that I'm not at all knowledgeable about this subject, so I can't say which of them are worth adding. Certainly not all, since some are just clones of other systems, but here are some suggestions that to me seem noteworthy (the list is not meant to be exhaustive in any way):

*Galaksija, Yugoslavia
*PEL Varaždin Orao, Yugoslavia
*EI NIS Pecom 32/64, Yugoslavia
*Tesla PMD 85, Czechoslovakia
*ZPA IQ 151, Czechoslovakia

So...what do you think? Maybe someone knows a bit more about them?
Btw, here's a nice page about Eastern European home computers.

I would rather have a list of games for one of these systems before entering them. And yes I think all of these platforms have some games. Non-commercial, not well known hobbiest ones I think. A platform that stays with 0 games for a long time looks out of place. So if someone enters a bunch of games after adding a fresh platform I'm all for it.

Besides that I don't know the systems myself and thus cannot say which of them is a clone or a platform on its own. Needs some research.

Odyssey³ -> Videopac G7400

Certainly, whether there are actually any games for the system is something that must be considered.

I have found this lovely page which lists games for the Galaksija, Pecom and Orao. It is in Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian (whatever you like to call it) but even without knowledge of the language it's easy to navigate.

Some software, mostly games, for the PMD 85 can be found here (Slovak).

About the IQ 151 I'm not so sure anymore, seems to be more difficult to find information at least.

What about the MSX2+ and the MSX Turbo-R systems?
Ok, there are not many games but some of them are very popular.

MSX2+:
F1 Spirit 3D Special
Laydock 2

MSX Turbo-R:
Illusion City
Fray

List of exclusive MSX2+ games:
http://www.generation-msx.nl/software/result?q=system%3AMSX2%2B+AND+NOT+system%3AMSX2+AND+NOT+system%3ATurbo-R&searchtype=advanced

List of exclusive MSX Turbo-R games:
http://www.generation-msx.nl/software/result?q=system%3ATurbo-R+AND+NOT+system%3AMSX2+AND+NOT+system%3AMSX2%2B&searchtype=advanced

Could be done with tags, could be done with seperate platforms. This problem is similar to my "Sharp X1" question I had. As long as there is no new platform I suggest to enter the games under MSX2 and tag them.

And its not only Sharp and MSX, but the other Japanese computers as well. From Fujitsu we have the FM-7 (in UVL) and FM-77 (not in UVL. FM-77 seems downwards compatible to FM-7, but I am not sure how much it can be considered its own platform. Maybe similar to what the Atari STE is to the Atari ST. Sometimes it seems to be better I think to subsume a group a machines under one name like Atari 8-bit for the whole range of early Atari computers.

Big update on the first post, now you can directly check propositions and discussions by clicking on "spoiler", or go to the original post by clicking on the system name.

I also updated with recent propositions.

About Sharp X1 and MSX, I'm not familiar with these platforms but I think we can handle these as tags. For now, at least. I tend to agree with teran01: the Atari 8-bit entry lists Atari 400/800/600XL/800XL/1200XL/65XE/130XE/1020/XEGS - which don't need to have their own entry as they're basically the same family of systems. Same for Thomson MO5/MO6/TO7/TO7-70/TO8/TO9/TO9+/TO16. Plus, it is also difficult to know if a game is compatible with a specific model; games can be compatible on several models; so it is much easier to mark the game as a "Atari 8-bit game" or "Thomson game", and use tags if we know which system is compatible with the game.
It may not be the exact same thing for Sharp X1 and MSX, but I think it is a good solution, unless someone come here with a good reason to say that platform_name_here needs to have its own entry.

I've added Odyssey 200 to custom platforms, the platform can be deleted now.

What is the problem of adding new platforms? At least for completion purposes it would be nice to add all the existing platforms. And it's nice to have the platform entry with its own article and photo :)

By the way, the C128 platform adds only more speed and memory to the C64 platform and it has few exclusive games, should not be out too?

Raspberry Pi maybe? There's a port of Minecraft for it at least. Tho custom platform is probably better for that than actual platform entry, or just Unix/Linux as there's Debian based Linux for it that's needed by that Minecraft at least.

Adding new platforms is not a problem. The problem, in my opinion, is about adding a new platform which is compatible with another platform already registered in the database. For example, we just have Atari ST instead of Atari 520ST and Atari 1040ST because most games can run on both machines. Having separated platform would force us to duplicate identical games.

As I said before, I'm not familiar with MSX2+ / MSX Turbo-R or Sharp X1 Turbo / Sharp X1 Turbo Z, so maybe we need to have them as separate platform, I do not know.

Regarding MSX I think they can be considered different platforms. They all represented a whole new generation of MSX with different minimum system specs retaining most of backwards compatability. I think of MSX -> MSX2 and so on like Amiga OCS -> Amiga AGA. So they were a real step forward not just some extra RAM like Atari 520ST -> 1040ST or Amiga 500 -> Amiga 2000.

If you look at all the MSX1 models you will recognize how diverse they were. MSX was a standard, but the hardware producers all made different models, some cheaper with less RAM, some with more RAM and many extras. The same applies to MSX2 and so on. The standard just made sure that the machines were compatible with each other. I think the problem lies in the naming of MSX2+ which sounds like a little upgrade of an MSX2. Well it seems that the jump from MSX2 to MSX2+ and later the MSX Turbo was indeed not as big, but there were exclusive games for all these machines. The games for MSX1 and MSX2 were always marketed differently. They did not use the same code. A game like 1942 for MSX1 and MSX2 were two completely different ports. Its not the same code that would recognize an MSX2 and would thus run with more colors. For these instances it is very good to decide to have two different platforms. You can pretty much always say whether it is clearly an MSX1 or MSX2 etc. game.

Now what about the Sharp X series? I do not know how it was done there. For me the main question is: How much do the games overlap here? Are there instances when the same game was published in a Sharp X1 version and a Sharp X1 Turbo (Z) version and how did they do it? Did they came on one and the same disk sharing the code and the system would recognise if it was a Sharp X1 Turbo and would display more colors for example? Or did they came in different game boxes marketed especially towards one range of Sharp X1 computer? In the second case and in the case that there is actually no overlapping of games between the systems I am for separate platforms, because we have a clear line and definition here when a game belongs to which platform. If there is overlapping and you have cases where you have one single game and you have to decide under which platform to put it (or both) then I would say merging of platforms makes sense. Similar as we have it for Atari 8-bit or C16/Plus4.

On top of all of that overlap issues, we also have long standing practice of including various ~enhanced tags (HP 48GX, Super Gameyboy 2, Coco 3, CPC+, Spectrum 128K, Super Gameboy) which exist to reduce duplicate games despite some differences. So are those Sharp X games exactly the same, totally different, or just same game that runs in slightly altered form on the other platform?

I would like to start adding games to Amstrad PCW platform (~210-220 games).

Recently, I wandered if it would be better to add CP/M platform instead of PCW, as Zerothis suggested years ago... but I disagree with that: most CPC games ran on Basic but a few ones ran on CP/M ; most PCW games run on CP/M but a few ones ran on Basic, so... maybe the better solution would simply be to add CP/M tag to games which run on CP/M (instead of removing all CPC / CP/M games from the CPC platform and transfer them to the new CP/M platform).

Mobygames added Amstrad PCW just recently to their list of platforms. A good indicator that its a valid candidate to add. Personally I don't know much about it. Only read some bits here and there in old Amstrad specific magazines when adding reviews from those mags.

There you've gone and said the M word :) Seriously though. On the one hand they are pretty strict on what they add. I'm sure there was quite a debate about it. One the otherhand, they often list classify platforms in a completely different way than we do.

I'd like to see the debate they had.

Till then
Can you transfer most any PCW C/PM game to say an IBM 8086 system run it without hacks?
Can you transfer most any PCW BASIC game to say an IBM 8086 system run it without hacks?
Now those same questions for a 68k platform?

I don't think so but I really don't know all of that. I only know that Amstrad released soon after a range of Amstrad PC, and games for it were IBM-DOS compatibles.

I know that some PCW games could also run on a CPC but I think it was more something like PCW version on a side of the disk, CPC version on the other side.

I also know that a software existed, called WYSIWYG 1.0, to be installed on both MS-DOS PC and CP/M PCW computers, to transfer data from one machine to another.

This may not help. But what is the PCW architecture? If it's x86, and the PCW is a PC clone, then it's DOS and as-of-yet-not-included CP/M. Note, the IBM-PC (and clones) were DOS or CP/M as well. It's just CP/M for IBM-PC sold so incredibly poorly this fact is forgotten.
CP/M came in Z80 and 68k versions also.

Yes, I believe I saw on a webpage years ago, someone had collected 75 applications designed to transfer files from system whatever or OS whatever to CP/M

I'll update on my earlier post.

About the IQ 151:
the only thing I could find are very simple games from a czechoslovakian textbrook from 1987 that I found online. Here is the link in case someone is interested, games are on p. 161-197. I don't feel like typing them in.
So maybe that one should be a bit lower on the priority list.

The other systems that I proposed are still worth adding in my opinion. None of them are clones of other systems. The page that I linked above is actually very trustworthy it seems, so if they don't mention that a home computer is a clone, then it probably isn't.

I have to correct myself about the name:
The manufacturer of the Pecom32/64 is written EI Niš or Ei Niš (probably the "i" should be upper-case, though the company's logo has a lower-case i). EI/Ei is short for Elektronska Industrija, but it's definitely "Niš" (that's the city where the company is located), not "NIS".

Also, clones:
The PMD 85 has the following versions: PMD 85, 85-1, 85-2, 85-2A, 85-3, Mato.
Didaktik Alfa/Beta are clones of the PMD 85 and the Consul 2717 is a clone of the PMD 85-2.

I will look into other systems that seem worth adding later. I think it will be enough work to add games for the systems that I proposed already.
There is so much more that could be added. Maybe even printers ;-)

I have two corrections about existing platforms:

KC85:
Maybe the platform KC85 should be renamed to KC85/2-4 (there were three models: KC85/2, KC85/3 and KC85/4, HC900 is another name for the KC85/2). There are two series of computers from the German Democratic Republic that go by the name KC85, there is also the KC85/1 (=KC87), so just KC85 is a bit ambiguous. There is no compatibility between the two series. The KC85 on UVL should be the KC85/2-4.

Also R.F.T. is listed as the developer of the KC85 (KC85/2-4). It should be Mikroelektronik Mühlhausen (or if that name is not long enough for you VEB Mikroelektronik Mühlhausen or VEB Mikroelektronik „Wilhelm Pieck" Mühlhausen). Mikroelektronik Mühlhausen was part of the VEB Kombinat Mikroelektronik „Karl Marx" Erfurt, but the developer should be Mikroelektronik Mühlhausen, I think.

The KC85/1 on the other hand was produced by VEB Robotron-Meßelektronik „Otto Schön" Dresden, part of the VEB Kombinat Robotron.

Vii:
All information I found suggest that it was released in 2007, not 2006. See Wikipedia or BootlegGames Wiki

Amstrad did produce PC clone and called it Amstrad PC. Amstrad PCW are Z80 CP/M, and CP/M was included.

I'm not sure if it deserves its own platform as I'm not very familiar with this. But if it does not, I'd like to know which platform should be used for these games in your opinion. If we create a CP/M platform, what should we do with games which are Amstrad CPC / CP/M or IBM PC / CP/M?

We could tag CPM or BASIC and have an Amstrad PCW platform.
His presents an issue for CP/M games for IBM-PC and clones. As we have no IBM-PC and clones platforms. For IBM-PC we have operating systems as platforms. It would not be very intuitive to tag, say, MS-DOS games as CP/M. For this we could add an IBM-PC-CP/M platform.

We could have a CP/M platform. This covers CP/M but not so much BASIC for Amstrad PCW. And the actual systems(s) it runs on would need to be tagged. This would lead to oddities such as tagging "Apple2", "Commodore 128", "Commodore 64", "Atari 8-bit"

Any other choices?


To include CP/M properly, we would need to include this list of platforms in some way (over 200). Many systems on this list can run other OSes besides CP/M by default or installed later. And, MSX machines can also run CP/M



Known CP/M games:
Rogue
Wanderer
Nemesis
Sargon Chess
Caves of the Orb
Zork I
Zork II
Zork III
Starcross
Deadline
Suspended
Witness
Planetfall
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Sorcerer
Wishbringer
Leather Goddesses of Phobos
Bureaucracy
Border Zone
Beyond Zork
Arthur
about 80 additional text adventures
104 Creative Computing BASIC Games
Probably more.

I'll reply on this later, but I just need to notice something before I forget it:

It seems that the platform VC-4000 is only one model upon a large varieties of software-compatible machines.

VC-4000 production started in 1974, but the console was released in 1978 only.

The first one released was the 1292 Advanced Programmable Video System, in the UK in 1976, also known as Radofin Programmierbares Video System, released in Germany the same year.

Radofin licensed its technology to many companies across Europe (and maybe also USA, Canada, Australia and Venezuela) and every company released its own console:
Radofin (1292 Advanced Programmable Video System, 1392 Advanced Programmable Video System)
Hanimex (HMG-1292 Advanced Programmable Video System, HMG-1392 Advanced Programmable Video System)
Fountain (Force 2, 1292 Advanced Programmable Video System, 1392 Advanced Programmable Video System)
Grandstand (Advanced Programmable Video System)
Lansay (Lansay 1392)
Audiosonic (PP-1292 Advanced Programmable Video System, PP-1392 Advanced Programmable Video System)
Prinztronic (VC-6000, Tournament)
Acetronic (MPU-1000, MPU-2000)
Videomaster (Database)
Voltmace (Database)
Rowtron (Television Computer System)
Karvan (Jeu Vidéo TV)
Société Occitane Eléctronique (OC-2000)
ITMC (MPT-05)
Grundig (Super Play Computer 4000)
Interton (VC 4000)

These systems are not all compatible because of the shapes of the cartridges, but they are software-compatibles. It seems unclear if Interton built their system from scratch or bought the technology from another company.

So: what I want to bring up here is that I think we should add every game of these numerous platforms to a single platform (NB: I think this is already done). Should it be VC-4000 or 1292 APVS ? It may be 1292 APVS as it was the first one released ; or VC-4000 as it was the first one produced ; or MPU-1000 as it is the most famous and most sold of all these systems. But whatever we choose, I think we should choose the release date of 1976, and it seems strange to me not to choose 1292 APVS, the only one released in 1976, in this case.

Sources:
Consoledatabase
Wikipedia
Videogameconsolelibrary

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Apple IIe platform seems to includes games from all the Apple II computers family (Apple I, Apple II, Apple IIe, Apple IIc - but not Apple IIGS which have its own platform). The 1976 release date indicated tend to prove it (Apple I was released in 1976, Apple II in 1977, Apple IIe in 1983). So maybe we should rename it to "Apple II" or "Apple II series"?
Or maybe we could switch "Apple IIe" platform to all the Apple computers above, but that would be a huge work.

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I also found new computers:
VideoBrain Family Computer, from Umtech, first introduced in December 1977 and first sold in March 1978. 6 games + 5 educational software are known to exist for it. First computer with a cartridge port.

CompuColor 8001 and CompuColor II, released in December 1976 and 1977, by CompuColor Corporation, are considered as the first color computers. A great website is dedicated to the CompuColor II, containing an ActionScript emulator of the computer and many informations about the computer and games released for it.

Apple /// is an entirely different animal. It has more in common with the Sega Mega CD than the Apple ][

I noticed that but forgot to correct it: done.

Apple I/II series
Or just
Apple II series
Seems reasonably ok to cover everything except ][gs

Not really. I prefer the first one, as I think we should give priority to "platform = machine" rather than "platform = OS" when it is possible. This may not be a great solution BTW, but I can't find another for now.

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Another early computer I found:
Exidy Sorcerer, by Exidy (USA) in 1978. Sold in Europe in 1979 by Liveport Ltd (UK) and CompuData (Netherlands). CPU Zilog Z80, 4k RAM expandable to 48, 4k ROM, display 64x30, monochrome screen, no sound. ~6 or 7 games are known to exist, mainly clones of arcade hits (Space Invaders, Galaxian, Pac-Man, Breakout, ...).

I think I have a third choice, which is even worse is some ways but solves a lot. And we are currently using parts of this solution already.

Join _all_ OS-Platform occurrences into their host machine. There is but one "IBM and clones" (Intel PC Architecture) platform, and tag all operating systems. But elevate selected container groups (OS Tags) so that they can appear and be counted in UVL as platforms. And finally, ensure that these selected container groups are properly counted or not counted (depending on context) when used across multiple platforms OS/2-x86, OS/2-PPC, CP/M-IBM, CP/M-PCW, CP/M-C128, CP/M-TRS80, and so on. IBM and clones would actually appear as multiple platforms depending on context. The oft ignored 'PC Booters', is covered by this also. This also solves the Linux is not UNIX and the non-UNIX/Linux games currently in the Linux platform.

Ah, I was wondering about this:

So in theory, its like modern java. However, I wonder if, in practice, game authors often used CPU specific or even platform specific code in their games, or like with modern java, took perfectly cross-platform games and wrapped then in OS-dependent containers, in such a way that the 'CP/M application' effectively became OS specific?

I remember both DOS and Apple applications that asked me to correctly specify details like this before they would function properly. I think this need not count towards platform compatibility. That said, I will also note that I have never used CP/M in life, virtual life, or emulated life.

Assembly optimization is probably still a thing, at least for the high end engines like Unreal, id Tech, and probably Unity as well. And this is also where some more interesting CPU requirements come from (though usually they try to set the requirement to some decent baseline that has wide user base, covering both certain generation AMD and Intel CPUs instead of being limited to just one or the other). Probably closer to compiler shorthands for ASM than pure use of it. This is also where comes the ability of x86 CPUs ability to actually report what they're capable of.

Though I guess modern compilers are smart enough about things to remove that need and profiled compilations probably make it even less needed.

A few notable examples spring to mind. Rollercoaster Tycoon has a miniscule set of code for DirectX overhead and everything else is highly optimized assembly. It unusually experienced high sales without the expected ports to 'everything'. Clearly the assembly code was the barrier to this.

ZSNES is highly optimized 32-bit assembly as well. In this case, it is so specific as to run slower on 64-bit machines and no one has yet made a practical 64-bit build. Canonical's repository volunteers will not add it to 64-bit repositories with 32-bit dependencies (like they do with most other 32-bit dependents). The project lead recommends users setup a 32-bit chroot environment.

After thinking a bit about the "unlocking content" relation, I came to the conclusion that the Sony PocketStation and the Sega VMU would also be worth adding. Both are peripherals for other consoles, namely for PlayStation and Dreamcast respectively, but both also work as handheld consoles. Several PlayStation/DC games came with games that could be loaded onto the peripheral and played in order to unlock content in the main game, but the PocketStation even has some "independent" (non-homebrew) games it appears.
There are also homebrew games for both systems, I think the VMU has more.

From the sounds of it, it might be simpler to add them as hardware the game supports rather than platforms of their own unless they specifically had games built for them alone.

The PocketStation/VMU games had games specifically for them. Only those games typically (always?) came with PS1/DC games. But that should not be a reason not to add them.

I'll give an example. Final Fantasy VIII came with Chocobo World (CW). Players of the PC version might be familiar with that game as this version also contained a port of CW (and on the PC it could be very easily exploited to get tons of rare and useful items). However, originally this was a PocketStation game.
CW could be described as a very simple RPG: you control Boko, a Chocobo (a Chicobo actually), and steer him
on a map onto certain events. Events can be battles, meeting Cactuar who gives Boko items that can be transferred to FF8, meeting Moomba who will give you a new weapon and other special events depending on your level. If you want to learn more, please read the article on the Final Fantasy Wiki. The point is, it is a totally different game from Final Fantasy VIII which is running on a different system.

But I agree that there should also be PocketStation and VMU tags for games that support those peripherals. It would make it possible to search for such games (which a relation would not). Besides the VMU is sometimes supported by DC games that do not come with a VMU game but use it for second screen functionality.

Platform Tandy has a release date of 1993. Not sure how that year got there.
http://www.uvlist.net/platforms/detail/72-Tandy

Tandy is a complicated matter, but I think that this platform is meant to be for the "Coco / Color Computer" series. If thats so the release date would be 1980.

At the moment we have only the "Epoch Cassette Vision" as platform. Shouldn't the "Super Cassette Vision" get its own entry as well? Actually most of the games listed for the Cassette Vision are actually Super Cassette Vision games.

I've delved into some Japanese websites with Epoch Cassette Vision info and gleaned this (hopefully not losing too much in translation). Yes, these are different.

dandyboh has mentioned this platform before.

The original Matra Alice was a straight TRS-80 clonebased on the TRS-80 MC-10 and developed in cooperation with Tandy
The followup computers
Matra Alice 32
and
Matra Alice 90
Were also based on the original Alice but contained custom chips (mainly the video processor) meaning many Alice 32/90 games will not run on Tandy computers. Also, they use SCART and French TV signals, so again, not on Tandy.

Alice 32
CPU: Motorola 6803
8k RAM
8k video RAM
EF9345 video chip
16k ROM
AZERTY keyboard
built-in assembler (like Apple ][)
RS-232C serial interface
Cassette interface
Péritel video out
Expansion slot

Alice 90
32k RAM
CPU: Motorola 6803
8k RAM
8k video RAM
EF9345 video chip
8k ROM (Microsoft BASIC)
full sized AZERTY keyboard
RS-232C
Cassette
Péritel video out
video in (graphics could be overlayed onto video)
Expansion slot

They were apparently popular in French schools.

MC-10 and Alice hardware are not related to Tandy Color Computer (Coco) nor TRS-80 Mofel 1/3/4.

For now, such games are listed with matra-alice tag.

I've added an amstradpcw platform tag and made it a child of uvl-platform-limitation. I will be adding these games under the Amstrad CPC until/unless a better temporary solution is agreed upon.

Thanks.

Most PCW games seem to be CPC ports, but it seems that some of them were released only on PCW. For now, I just add a comment to games that were not released on CPC, only on PCW.

I've added an Memotech MTX platform tag and made it a child of uvl-platform-limitation. I will be adding these games under the Sinclair QL until/unless a better temporary solution is agreed upon.

Windowing and memory paging on that deceptive little 8-bit computer

I was thinking of using a CamputersLynx tag and putting the games into the Commodore 128 platform simply because it is so dissimilar to anything but comparable to (yet more advanced) than a C 128. I estimate there are currently 50 games for it.

I've added Tatung Einstein as CPC game.

EDIT: Initial entries complete!

Timex Sinclair 2068 in Dragon 32

Camputers Lynx in Commodore 128
EDIT: Initial entries complete!

Platform suggestion 1: I think real Bada (Wave) should be it's own platform.
Platform suggestion 2: Tizen should be it's own platform with tags for forks (Sailfish, River Trail, etc).

Samsung Linux was an early effort by Samsung to make their own Linux based OS for mobile and other devices. No known games.

Samsung LiMo / LiMo Linux / EFL project was another effort by Samsung to make their own Linux based OS for mobile and other devices. EFL project became LiMo. LiMo actual became the Tizen project. No known games.

Samsung Bada / Samsung Wave was a more successful (and non-Linux) effort (they actual released some devices that used Bada and Wave) by Samsung to make their own smart phone OS for mobile and other devices. They considered making it open source but eventually chose to end further development but merged Bada into Tizen (so, it did kinda become open source.) There merging efforts included incentives for Bada devs to port fully to Tizen At least 50 games.
Anything named "Bada" after 2014 is actually Tizen.

Samsung Tizen / Intel Tizen / Tizen Linux / Linux Foundation Tizen is a project within the Linux Foundation with support from Samsung, Intel, Huawei, Fujitsu, NEC, Panasonic, KT Corporation, Sprint Corporation, Sprint Nextel, SK Telecom, Orange, NTT DoCoMo, Vodafone, Automotive Grade Linux Workgroup. Tizen devices use X Windows, Wayland, Dalvik (runs android apps), Python, and/or Qt. It is code level (API) compatible with mer. HTML5 apps intended for Android, Firefox OS, Ubuntu Touch, Windows Phone, and webOS will run without modification on Tizen. Galaxy Gear, Samsung Gear 2, Galaxy Gear Watch. Samsung Gear S, Samsung Gear S2, Samsung Connect Auto (this is cool, it plugs into OBD II diagnostic ports on cars and turns them into Linux powered smart cars), Samsung NX1, Samsung NX300M, NX200, NX300, Samsung Z1, Samsung Z3, Systena Tablet, devices use Tizen. Intel Tizen will run on IBM-PCs and it will run under Windows. Tizen is released under the Flora License which is essentially the BSD license plus "Tizen Certified" platforms are allowed to use Samsung's patents without restriction. This is essentially a support issue (Samsung blocking forks so they never have to provide support for them. They managed to top TiVo's efforts). This draconian solution means the Flora License is not OSI approved (and duh, their's no point in summiting the license for FSF approval). The licensing scheme is ultimately vague as cource code access is guaranteed by Samsung but any use outside "Tizen Certified" platforms is probably illegal (patent violation, not just a mere license violation which is not a violation of law) despite Samsung's encouraging devs to do exactly that. The Tizen SDK is free to use but proprietary (as Samsung holds all the copyrights, they could do this even if Tizen was GPL 1 or 2).
Like everything else from Samsung, Apple sued. Apple also sued HTC and LG (for just thinking about Tizen apparently, since these companies are not making Tizen devices) But, Tizen is essentially Linux so Apple lost.

Bada (Post-2014), Cordova, PhoneGap, River Trail, and Sailfish OS are forks of Tizen.


MeeGo is unrelated to Tizen. Intel abandoned it in favor of Tizen and didn't take anything with them.

Say hello to the Apple I games

Three Apple I games are documented in TOSEC dats. With only 200 Apple I computers sold I am surprised there exist games for it at all.

Woz

I'm surprised there isn't more
I'm surprised there isn't breakout

You forgot the second CPU, a Z80, an entirely different architecture. Horizontally doubled resolution for text and graphics. It runs CP/M games.

Coleco ADAM is currently misplatformed in ColecoVision. And there are more Coleco ADAM games than ColecoVision games. And I am far from being done entering all the ADAM games.

I always assumed that the Adam was meant to be under Colecovision as well. With a little note or "adam-only" tag when a game runs only on the Adam.

Atari 8-bit and Atari 5200 are far more alike than Coleco and ADAM. ADAM, for instance, has 3 additional processors. Also the processors common to both (CPU, GPU, SPU) can be used on ADAM in ways not possible on ColecoVision. Also, ADAM has 8 times more general use RAM and is upgradeable to 32 times more. The greatest difference, I think, is that ColecoVision development virtually ended when Coleco ceased support (until retrogaming); but ADAM development never stopped.

HTML5 has become a platform of its own, playable online or offline (download the .html and possibly other files, perhaps in a .zip) depending on the distribution method. Largely platform independent except for needing a browser or other piece of software capable of rendering HTML5 (likely also JavaScript and WebGL and few other parts optional to HTML itself, like Local Storage). This is even an export target in Unity and some other game making tools. For now I'll keep marking these as html5 and platform limitation since they're likely included in Internet Only platform which is misleading in some instances.

I still propose to remove "Internet only" and add "Browser" platform. HTML5 would fit well under that platform I think.

I regretted "Internet Only" very soon after suggesting it. A "browser" platform is a good idea. Games in the browser platform can be tagged with all applicable scripts/languages (HTML, Dynamic HTML, Coldfusion, HTML5, PHP, Java, Flash, Air, ActionScript, ruby). Noting, now, however, many of these can be used for a game packaged for a specific platform and function independently of a browser. So the game would have that entry as well. There are some borderline cases such as Google Native Client and similar platforms, which run native code (they actually not browser games, but are packaged to run via browsers). But I lean toward making these "browser" games as well (again, except in cases specific platform packaging).

Assuming we would rename it. Are there games amongst the currently 345 "Internet only" games that are not Browser based and have to be put under a different platform? From screenshots only its hard to say.

I recently came across a list of nearly 200 games that (nearly) all were published and intended to run on a total of 104 platforms (I actually truncated that list, it could be as high as 180 platforms). of 80 of these 104 platforms were supported _only_ because of the ability of these games and to run on CP/M and the ability of the platforms .

So, I would really like us editors to reach a concensus on what to do about about CP/M. Today, I'm leaning toward adding 66 platforms and entering C/PM games for each individual platform. But that's _a lot_ of entries if something else is decided about CP/M later.

Lets be realistic. Adding those platforms is not an option. We should find a solution to group this kind of stuff. How do other gaming databases do this? Adding so many super-obscure platforms, better not. Would a general CP/M platform fit and write in the description which computers this encompasses?

Edit: Just saw you already suggested the CP/M platform in the title. So this is definitely the better way to try.

For the 66 new to UVL platforms? other gaming databases focus on a single platform. Other gaming databases that are multiplatform, don't have them at all. UVL would be the only multiplatform gaming database on the web to have them.
For CP/M? gaming databases for CP/M don't exist (as far as I can tell)

I feel I should note that these 66 platforms are all likely to have their own platform specific games outside of CP/M. And, as I have now discovered, there is CPU specific CP/M games, architecture specific CP/M games, and platform specific CP/M games. There are also CP/M games independent of one, two, or all three of these categories.

I wonder if these 250+ games are almost unique, or there will be 66 versions of the same game in most of the 250 cases?

Yes, they are all unique. Some of them share the same concept (ie: falling blocks, mastermind, hangman) but each does it a in a unique way ('hangman math', 'hangman trivia', 'mastermind with words', etc...). However, my initial estimate was high. After scrutinising each game, some of them turned out to be more like activities. Others were 'projects', the beginnings of a game that the end user was encouraged to finish in their own way or incorporate into their own games. Leaving about 135, but on the same number of platforms.

Previously I've estimated the PDP-11 to have fewer than 10 games, I'm going to revise my estimate to 100 games.

A somewhat extensive update has been made to the Tandy Color Computer platform and related tags. But I suspect there are at least 500 more titles. Also, we are not yet near utopic completion for the titles already listed.

I am currently working on games on the MS-DOS platform and what is still bugging me quite a bit are the double entries for several PCJr and Tandy1000 versions under the MS-DOS platform. I plan to merge these entries in those cases. The pcjr and tandy1000 tag will be added for games that have either a "special" PCJr, Tandy1000 version/mode or are exclusively released for PCJr/Tandy1000. Making a whole new platform for them is also not necessary in my eyes, because they belong into the IBM-PC compatible category and they belong into the same family as MS-DOS (or lets say DOSBox family).

I found a list of RISC OS 4 games that are variously compatible with different ARM related CPUs.
ARM2, ARM250, ARM3, ARM4, StrongARM, RISC, Kinetic Risc, ARM5, ARM6, ARM7, ARM610, ARM710, ARM8, ARM9, ARM926EJS, Xscale, S3C2440, ARM7500-FE, ARM7500.

I have split Timex Sinclair 2068 to its own platform.

No idea how Google Stadia should be handled. It's a weird video game streaming service accessible via Chromecast, Chrome browser, and some other unknown options, somehow linked to Youtube streaming also.

* https://store.google.com/product/stadia_founders_edition
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Stadia

"requires no additional computer hardware, only requiring the device to have an Internet connection and support for Google Chrome" I guess would be the important part.

Well does anyone know on what basis the Stadia games are programmed? Are they just the PC/Windows versions and Stadia (Linux basis me seems) is for streaming? So they are technically PC-Windows games. Or could it be any platform like PS4 whatever they want? Would a PS4 game streamed by Stadia be a PS4 entry with Stadia tag? I really don't know yet.

I have yet a 4th option for CP/M that, *sigh*, dosn't really solve any problems. I only mention it because:

Some other gaming databases now include architectures-as-platforms that co-exist with their platforms. For example, a game can be "6800" and noted as being for CP/M. Or it can be "x86" and noted as being for CP/M. To translate this to UVL we would need these platforms:
68000
6800
6803
x86
z80
z8000
6502 (*yikers!*)
8048 (*double yikers!*)
Network (there is a network-only version C/PM, theoretically truly platform independent)
System/390

That list is from memory (except I re-confirmed 8048 and 6502 because I still didn't believe). There are probably others I haven't found and/or don't remember.

Adding the architecture-platforms to UVL seems problematic and it would only be because of CP/M, so these would actually only be for CP/M ("CPMx86", "CPMz80", "CPM6800", etc). I am leaning heavily to a single CP/M platform with CPU tags (when applicable) and , *sigh*, platform tags. So we would have "CP/M" games tagged "Commodore128" that were not listed in the Commodore 128 platform. This 4th option would have a similar problem, a Commodore 128 only CP/M game would be "CPMz80" platform, tagged "Commodore128", and not appear in the Commodore 128 platform

Fifth option: A sister site called "CPMVL".

Its no secret that I am not a fan of CPM platform.

I have see two issues for me personally with the C128 example. Lets take the example of a CPM game written for C128. At the moment it would be listed under C128 games.

1.) If we add a CPM platform and the rule would be to add the very same game under two different platforms (CPM an C128) it feels wrong to me. It also ruins statistics which counts games. Reviews and everything would need to be added for both entries. For me its simply a duplicate.

2.) If we add CPM platform and the rule would be to add CPM games only to CPM platform with tag of other platform. Now I have the problem that I might enter the game under the wrong platform because I simply don't know that its CPM. A normal editor who is not really proficient with recognizing something as CPM gets problems here. A person who searches for C128 and uses platform C128 might think its not in UVL and would never search it under CPM.

If it really comes to a CPM platform I would suggest #2. But that also means a lot of fixing/migrating older entries and lots of learning about CPM (and hope it would it would not apply to too many games).


Yes yes yes yes

I added the VideoBrain platform 3 times. sorry.

Yeah once falsely created, platforms cannot be deleted. But they can be overwritten with data for two fresh platforms eventually. We just have to think about this when the time comes.