When Is A Variant Considered Its Own Game?

[Gloves | 11,783]

5 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

Hey man, it's incredible the amnesia people here have. Famicom and NES were viewed as the same machine all the way up until when, about mid 2000s when Nintendo Age came about? Before then, collectors and gamers saw them as the same. After that point it was always "OMG, make me a NES repro! Throw it in a repro blackbox and make it CIB even though its Samurai Pizza Cats that wasn't even from black box era! OMG take my f'ing money now!!!"

"Dude, I want to play XYZ game on Famicom, but it's only available on NES format. Can we make a repro?"

"OMG, you dirty, dirty man, that's piracy, why would you even think about that?!"

Yeah, let's do a quick ebay search and see the amount of repros going either direction there. 

I'm not sure I see the point of this statement. What amnesia? How does this back up your argument in the slightest lol, this is like I've said before - you so often make counterstatements which back up the other side of the argument to your own detriment. 

People on NA within the groups you're referring to were generally in one of two groups:

1. Out to make a buck pirating software with maybe some minimal hacks to language mod (incredibly minimally, like changing the kanji for "Score" to the English "Score")
2. Wanting to buy games (naively) to support what they considered "devs", "indies", or "homebrewers"

We're talking about people with agendas here, garnering the "support" of the community at large.

I don't give a shit what NintendoAge did, or how people acted, etc.. This isn't NintendoAge, and I'm not suffering from amnesia, as proven by my remembering the pre-2000s where the systems were labelled as the same thing designed for different regions and prioritizing that fact over the whims of some people on a forum in the relative infancy of the niche taking on a collective form. 

[fcgamer | 4,725]

3 minutes ago, Gloves said:

I'm not sure I see the point of this statement. What amnesia? How does this back up your argument in the slightest lol, this is like I've said before - you so often make counterstatements which back up the other side of the argument to your own detriment. 

People on NA within the groups you're referring to were generally in one of two groups:

1. Out to make a buck pirating software with maybe some minimal hacks to language mod (incredibly minimally, like changing the kanji for "Score" to the English "Score")
2. Wanting to buy games (naively) to support what they considered "devs", "indies", or "homebrewers"

We're talking about people with agendas here, garnering the "support" of the community at large.

I don't give a shit what NintendoAge did, or how people acted, etc.. This isn't NintendoAge, and I'm not suffering from amnesia, as proven by my remembering the pre-2000s where the systems were labelled as the same thing designed for different regions and prioritizing that fact over the whims of some people on a forum in the relative infancy of the niche taking on a collective form. 

The people buying the games were not just buying what they considered to be items from "devs", "indies", or "homebrewers", rather it was people who wanted uniformity within their sets. They saw a distinction between NES and Famicom, just as one might see a distinction between an album being on a cassette tape, a record, and a CD despite all three containing the same music. 

The days of people considering the NES and the Famicom as being the same thing and collecting for both machines is long over, it is rare to see people collecting cross-system in an equal manner, though crossing across NES regions is still quite common (i.e. grabbing a PAL Stadium Events, or a die Schluempfe or something). 

Sorry if you aren't observant of the collecting habits of people. 

[fcgamer | 4,725]

8 minutes ago, Gloves said:

as proven by my remembering the pre-2000s where the systems were labelled as the same thing designed for different regions and prioritizing that fact over the whims of some people on a forum in the relative infancy of the niche taking on a collective form. 

So you remember the Sachen fiasco too then?

[Tanooki | 4,934]

Famicom is to NES, as the MVS is to the AES  -- same shit, different pinout, and both had third party magic keys and honeybees to get around the lockout by design.

[RegularGuyGamer | 2,013]

On 8/3/2023 at 1:12 PM, fcgamer said:

rather it was people who wanted uniformity within their sets

Not even a little. 

[fcgamer | 4,725]

1 hour ago, RegularGuyGamer said:

Not even a little. 

Yeah it was.

[Gloves | 11,783]

8 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

Yeah it was.

[FireHazard51 | 2,043]

Soooo New 3DS is it's own console because it has games made for it that only it can play.  Do any of you disagree with that thought?

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

Garbage cart collection would be a sick band name

 

And  its crazy code monkey is not only making an app that tracks every single variant of every region ever, AND A camera that grades games. Or something, not sure but it sounds intense

[Gloves | 11,783]

Just now, MrWunderful said:

And  its crazy code monkey is not only making an app that tracks every single variant of every region ever, AND A camera that grades games. Or something, not sure but it sounds intense

It's also a sex doll I'm super stoked for its release.

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

Just now, Gloves said:

It's also a sex doll I'm super stoked for its release.

Zing! 
 

ill take 2

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

So is the point to find out if variants are different games? Or different variants? 
 

Literally anything different (label, format, tm)= variant

different code= different game 

 

but maybe we should define “variant” and “game” first

[Tulpa | 3,506]

I'm just waiting until we hit variantception.

 

[fcgamer | 4,725]

1 hour ago, MrWunderful said:

So is the point to find out if variants are different games? Or different variants? 
 

Literally anything different (label, format, tm)= variant

different code= different game 

 

but maybe we should define “variant” and “game” first

Yeah, I love when these situations become unnecessarily complicated. Those are the times one thinks maybe it's time to just chuck the whole collection, drop off line and spent the rest of life hiking in the mountains, or doing something productive like volunteering somewhere.

[fcgamer | 4,725]

2 hours ago, Gloves said:

Trust me, I always thought the whole thing was super stupid myself, never understood why everyone was into it, so I'd be embarrassed to admit it was so popular too now.

[TheGameCollector | 18]

I believe something like this is left entirely up to personal choice. In reality, nobody but you should care if you collected multiple versions of a game or not. If something makes a difference to you it matters. If it doesn't then it doesn't.

[Link | 2,713]

15 minutes ago, TheGameCollector said:

I believe something like this is left entirely up to personal choice. In reality, nobody but you should care if you collected multiple versions of a game or not. If something makes a difference to you it matters. If it doesn't then it doesn't.

This is to offer a service that caters to those choices. Not change anybody's mind, but let people track their collection to the specificity that they want.  

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

13 hours ago, MrWunderful said:

Garbage cart collection would be a sick band name

 

And  its crazy code monkey is not only making an app that tracks every single variant of every region ever, AND A camera that grades games. Or something, not sure but it sounds intense

I already wrote the collection tracker for Android and it's already in the Play Store, I'm just not marketing it until I get the pricing figured out. I also already wrote the machine learning model for boxes, cartridges and manuals for the first 75 NES games and it works really well.

If you want intense, I started looking at a different machine learning model for computer vision yesterday and spent about 10 hours teaching myself Python to do it. I'm on the fence right now if I'm going to continue with the model I have or switch everything over to the new platform and start from scratch again.

Once I have the model working, I'll be able to adapt it for game grading but it'll be about a year before I get the pricing figured out. I have about 10,000 eBay sales from the last 2 months to sort through and I would much prefer this model do it for me.

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

13 hours ago, MrWunderful said:

So is the point to find out if variants are different games? Or different variants? 
 

Literally anything different (label, format, tm)= variant

different code= different game 

 

but maybe we should define “variant” and “game” first

I think I figured out what I'm going to do. For legal reference, I came up with this on my own but it is basically what Nintendo Age did as well, and probably why they did it. I'm going to list each variant as a new game, no matter how slightly different it is and you can choose to turn variants on or off for the lists. So if you search through with variants on, it'll show you about 20 different versions of The Legend Of Zelda on NES.

It'll be off by default I think, because people that want to mark they have the game will get super confused which one they're supposed to pick.

At this point I am convinced World Class Track Meet is a variant so it will not show in the non-variant list.

[Tulpa | 3,506]

35 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

 So if you search through with variants on, it'll show you about 20 different versions of The Legend Of Zelda on NES.

 

Are there nuances to the variants in your scheme?  I mean, a Zelda Gray vs. Gold is probably going to be of greater interest than a -1 or whatever on the box.

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

46 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

Are there nuances to the variants in your scheme?  I mean, a Zelda Gray vs. Gold is probably going to be of greater interest than a -1 or whatever on the box.

I'm not exactly sure yet but I was thinking of specifying print runs. So each print run gets listed and a description of the change.

[Tulpa | 3,506]

8 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

I'm not exactly sure yet but I was thinking of specifying print runs. So each print run gets listed and a description of the change.

My main concern would be do we have to sort through a bunch of variants we don't care about, or can there be a filter for major vs minor variants (with a reasonable line drawn between the two)?

It would give some more functionality rather than "Here's a list of individual games, and here's umpteen billion variants!" with no inbetween.

Basically, the more it can be adjusted to specific collector goals, the more popular it will be.

Edited August 5, 2023 by Tulpa

[Tulpa | 3,506]

And to me, personally, a major variant is something noticed right away even by novice collectors, while a minor variant would be a difference you'd have to hunt for.

[T-Pac | 7,550]

On 8/3/2023 at 10:12 AM, fcgamer said:

...it was people who wanted uniformity within their sets. They saw a distinction between NES and Famicom, just as one might see a distinction between an album being on a cassette tape, a record, and a CD despite all three containing the same music. 

 

20 hours ago, RegularGuyGamer said:

Not even a little. 

 

19 hours ago, Gloves said:

I'm actually with @fcgamer on this point haha.
Back when I was deep into the NES scene, but before I started collecting Famicom games, I got PAL copies of all the heavies I wanted (Panic Restaurant, Little Samson, DuckTales 2, etc.) specifically because the cartridges looked uniform on my shelf. And I know I'm not the only collector out there with compulsive tendencies like that...

[T-Pac]

[RegularGuyGamer | 2,013]

53 minutes ago, T-Pac said:

 

 

I'm actually with @fcgamer on this point haha.
Back when I was deep into the NES scene, but before I started collecting Famicom games, I got PAL copies of all the heavies I wanted (Panic Restaurant, Little Samson, DuckTales 2, etc.) specifically because the cartridges looked uniform on my shelf. And I know I'm not the only collector out there with compulsive tendencies like that...

[T-Pac]

The uniformity is there and I can't deny that aspect but the period he's referring to wasn't about the uniformity as much as it was about the rom patches for translations.

The mass majority of the early reproductions weren't just Famicom games stuffed into NES carts. They were translates games like Sweet Home and even games like Namcot Star Wars that were translated so you didn't need a guide to know what the items in the inventory were. 

That or rom patches that augmented original games. Just look at what was sold from the most desirable reproduction maker Time Walk Games. Their biggest sellers were undoubtedly translations and rom hacks. The fact that they were stuff into NES shells and Not Famicom shells wasn't because of an outcry from the community. It was because they were largely being sold to Westerners, namely Americans that don't won't Famicoms in any meaningful numbers.

To say that what started that crazy on the late 2000s early 2010s was the fact that people wanted FC games in NES shells is completely revisionist in that it confuses the outcome with the by product.

The outcome was people wanted games they could fucking read bc we here in America don't speak foreign languages, and Canadians I assume all know French. The by product was that we had NES and not FC so the shells matched the rest of our games. 

E: I actually feel like he's gaslighting by even suggesting it. 

Edited August 6, 2023 by RegularGuyGamer