Virtual console extracted roms

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tag2015
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Virtual console extracted roms

Post by tag2015 »

Lately many GBA roms extracted from Virtual Console releases have been added to the GBA datfile.
Are those really needed? I mean, in my opinion on official datfile should contain only games that have been developed and/or released for that particular system, not extracted from something else (betas and protos are an exception, but those were still supposed to be used on an actual system).

If NoIntro follows this criteria of adding "everything" there are hundreds of Wii Virtual Console roms that should be checked and eventually added to the NES/SNES/MD... dats. The NES mini should be taken into account too, as there are some roms that have been altered for various reasons.

Also, this idea is not future-proof. Nintendo will probably use their old releases again in the future with slight modifications (on new consoles, or maybe even on iOS / Android? ) so all those roms are supposed to end up in the Nintendo dats? In my opinion we should skip these extracted roms altogether or include them in different, "specialized" datfiles.

(The same reasoning applies to the "Arcade" and "Gamecube" releases of SNES and N64 games)
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Tauwasser
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Re: Virtual console extracted roms

Post by Tauwasser »

I think they should just be tagged appropriately and that's it. Somebody looking to play Super Mario for SNES is not going to go through a specialized DAT to find the latest release. Instead, they go through the SNES DAT and select the highest revision Super Mario game they want to play.

Including hard-patched ROMs that are soft-patched on VC is a different matter though. The soft-patches should be preserved and applied if an emulator/user chooses so.
Collecter
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Re: Virtual console extracted roms

Post by Collecter »

So nes mini and the vc roms should not be preserved op?
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tag2015
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Re: Virtual console extracted roms

Post by tag2015 »

Tauwasser wrote:I think they should just be tagged appropriately and that's it. Somebody looking to play Super Mario for SNES is not going to go through a specialized DAT to find the latest release. Instead, they go through the SNES DAT and select the highest revision Super Mario game they want to play.
Well, I guess it depends if the DATs should be focused on preservation or gaming. So you are suggesting that new revisions of e.g. Super Mario World should go in the SNES dat, even if they were not released for the actual SNES system? Sounds a bit counterintuitive ...
Tauwasser wrote: Including hard-patched ROMs that are soft-patched on VC is a different matter though. The soft-patches should be preserved and applied if an emulator/user chooses so.
AFAIR the Mini-NES is a mixed bag, some roms are soft patched while others have been altered. I have one, I'll take a look

Collecter wrote: So nes mini and the vc roms should not be preserved op?
VC roms are already preserved in the unofficial Wii DLC DAT, which also contains Wiiware and game DLC. Adding to the other Nintendo dats seems redundant. (However IMHO it'd be better to split the dat into 3 separate ones ). It's true that the .wad format can't be used easily on emulators, but I don't think that there are so many people interested in using those releases in place of the standard ones available in the nintendo dats. If extracted roms are to be preserved I'd use different dats, as I stated before.

Theoretically, NES and SNES mini are official Nintendo systems and should be granted their own dats.
hking0036
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Re: Virtual console extracted roms

Post by hking0036 »

tag2015 wrote:
Tauwasser wrote:I think they should just be tagged appropriately and that's it. Somebody looking to play Super Mario for SNES is not going to go through a specialized DAT to find the latest release. Instead, they go through the SNES DAT and select the highest revision Super Mario game they want to play.
Well, I guess it depends if the DATs should be focused on preservation or gaming. So you are suggesting that new revisions of e.g. Super Mario World should go in the SNES dat, even if they were not released for the actual SNES system? Sounds a bit counterintuitive ...
I've been dumping all the GBA roms, and I've presented this same dilemma before but it's worth mentioning again. Most of the games do primarily include minor patches (although a lot of them haven't been looked at at all), but others are major (Super Mario Advance 4). On top of this, some games are brand new. A Multi5 EUR release of Drill Dozer was released on VC, previously the EUR version only came in english. Game & Watch Gallery Advance, which was never released in Japan now has a release exclusively through Virtual Console. These are new GBA roms. Where should they fall? GBA or in their own DAT? If in their own, where do you draw the line between what is and isn't worthy enough to fall into the GBA DAT?
KingMike
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Re: Virtual console extracted roms

Post by KingMike »

Is the G&W game a Japanese translation? That would count as a new game then.
Nintendo released the GB Kid Icarus on 3DS VC in Japan, but their site suggests the game itself is the English (western) version. That wouldn't count as a new game, I think.
Whovian9369
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Re: Virtual console extracted roms

Post by Whovian9369 »

I personally vote that the games for, say, SNES VCs go in the SNES DAT instead of its own dat or with all the other 3DS/WiiU/Wii/NESC/SNESC VCs.
It keeps all the games sorted for preservation's sake. If you were to split up the VCs into new DATs by what console the VC is emulating, that clutters up the DOM way more than it needs to be.
Shove all of the VCs into one DAT, that mens that there's no real organization whatsoever and then that makes it harder for the end users collecting all of these VC games.

No-Intro is a preservationalist group first and foremost, in my experience. Having all of the information for the (many) variations of a game in one place is handier than splitting it across many locations, making it harder for some to keep this stuff cataloged in a nice and orderly fashion.

That's just my 2 cents, of course.
hking0036
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Re: Virtual console extracted roms

Post by hking0036 »

KingMike wrote:Is the G&W game a Japanese translation? That would count as a new game then.
Nintendo released the GB Kid Icarus on 3DS VC in Japan, but their site suggests the game itself is the English (western) version. That wouldn't count as a new game, I think.
It's a japanese translation.
hooddy
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Re: Virtual console extracted roms

Post by hooddy »

tag2015 wrote:Lately many GBA roms extracted from Virtual Console releases have been added to the GBA datfile.
Are those really needed? I mean, in my opinion on official datfile should contain only games that have been developed and/or released for that particular system, not extracted from something else (betas and protos are an exception, but those were still supposed to be used on an actual system).
Yes they need to be in no-intro dat imho. And not separatly in some VC dat. All of it is the same game copies like cart dump. Mostly it the same (exept crc and so on). But is some cases it contains some addition stuff which unvailable in usual rom dump (well lets say it DLC like). At least this present in Super Mario Advance 4 where present extra content (additional levels already packed in rom which in usual cart is unvailable (well it available via e-reader cards). So I vote to include for adding VC dumps togetha in cart dumps.
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tag2015
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Re: Virtual console extracted roms

Post by tag2015 »

hking0036 wrote: I've been dumping all the GBA roms, and I've presented this same dilemma before but it's worth mentioning again. Most of the games do primarily include minor patches (although a lot of them haven't been looked at at all), but others are major (Super Mario Advance 4). On top of this, some games are brand new. A Multi5 EUR release of Drill Dozer was released on VC, previously the EUR version only came in english. Game & Watch Gallery Advance, which was never released in Japan now has a release exclusively through Virtual Console. These are new GBA roms. Where should they fall? GBA or in their own DAT? If in their own, where do you draw the line between what is and isn't worthy enough to fall into the GBA DAT?
It's a matter of deciding if the dat refers to the GBA *system* or to GBA *roms*. In the former case, these roms should not be included because they have been released outside the system lifespan, and on a different platform.
Also, it's not always true that newer revisions are improved - for example, all the VC and NES Mini releases of Tecmo Bowl are missing the original player names since Nintendo's NFL licence expired. This is merely an example but I'm sure there are other cases... and an inexperienced gamer would decide to play the latest revision thinking of it as the "best one" while the situation may be different.

The reason why people want to include these roms, to me, looks more practical than preservation/organization-related. Another reason is probably to give some visibility to VC roms that are somewhat obscure (like those you mentioned). But this is a "gamer's" point of view, and since No-Intro is supposedly a preservation effort, should take these aspects into account.

However, as I can see from the replies the current criteria is the preferred one by most, and being Nointro a community effort it'll probably stay like that... but I hope that the datters will at least think about all this.
KingMike
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Re: Virtual console extracted roms

Post by KingMike »

tag2015 wrote:
hking0036 wrote: all the VC and NES Mini releases of Tecmo Bowl are missing the original player names since Nintendo's NFL licence expired.
Tecmo's license, not Nintendo's (and it's because of EA hoarding the NFL license but that's something else).

Maybe I'm just bugged a bit by that kind of mistake lately after people blaming Nintendo for 2K's NBA2K18 (because 2K cheapened out and bought smaller cards that only held part of the game, as well as an absurd save file size. Somehow those are Nintendo's fault?)
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