Differentiate between (and scrape metadata for) separate region releases of the same game.

Issue #314 resolved
Alakazander created an issue

First off, major kudos are in order. Lauchbox is almost exactly what I have been trying to find for a very long time. However, for me it has one major hiccup that is holding it back: As far as I can tell, if I import a game with 3 different releases, then Launchbox will create 3 duplicate entries with the same name, cover art, and other data. The most important things for organization and ease of browsing would be something to denote the region of the game in the title (something like "Game Title [NTSC-U]") and having the corresponding box arts.

I suppose the most accurate way to tell under which region the game was released would be to scrape data from something like redump.org, but the easiest would probably be to just have Launchbox automatically sort the games based on the ROM filename since most of them use similar syntax, e.g "Game Title(U)/NTSCU/NTSC-U", "Game Title(J)/NTSCJ/NTSC-J", "Game Title(E)/PAL/PAL-E". Or if people have each region separated into folders, they could specify which region they wanted all of the games to be listed under when they imported that whole folder.

I don't know of any large sites that have release dates, disc serials, publishers, etc. on a per release basis, but there are sites devoted to specific consoles like http://psxdatacenter.com/ (warning: looks and navigates like a site made in 1998) that would have information like that.

Anyway, just thought I'd throw that out there, since this is what is keeping Launchbox from filling basically every one of my collection needs.

I apologize if a similar suggestion has already been made, I used several different search terms and the only one I found that mentioned something similar was this: https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/266/option-to-remove-games-that-no-longer

Comments (9)

  1. CriticalCid

    I highly agree with this. I’m from Germany so I have a lot of European ROMs and ISOs in my game collection. It would be really great if LaunchBox could scrap the right cover based on the region tag in the filename. Especially systems like Genesis/MegaDrive or the PS1 have completely other covers between the different regions.

  2. Jason Carr repo owner

    Good news, we're working with MobyGames as a new scraper, and I believe they probably would support this. Agreed that it would be a better way to organize.

  3. ALI ESSA

    if it could be possible to separate roms US,EU,JP when importing and quickly switch between just showing one region or costume filter when under a system that be fantastic

  4. ALI ESSA

    Jason Carr having different versions of the same game as one rev 1,2,3 and such would make LB close to perfect.

  5. Jason Carr repo owner

    What's missing from the region ticket is the usage of the right regional artwork/metadata based on the value in the region field + Region priorities for games which either are multi-region/world or haven’t any region associated to them

  6. Jason Carr repo owner

    This is basically all implemented guys. Let me know if there's something that we're missing, but this has been implemented for a while.

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