Author Topic: Naming when cartridge has more than 1 game or name has forward slash  (Read 848 times)

Offline KashtPR

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Hello, new here. I am going through a bunch of DAT files for some very old consoles and notice a few inconsistencies depending on who created the DAT file. Here are a couple scenarios:

1. Cartridge has 2 or more games in it. Examples are "Hang On/Safari Hunt" (SMS), Black Jack/Poker (Arcadia 2001), etc. I see that some people like to do "Hang On + Safari Hunt", other people like to do "Hang On & Safari Hunt". Is there a consensus on whether to use the plus (+) sign or the ampersand (&) to indicate more than one game? In my opinion, I believe there are less games using the plus (+) sign in their titles when compared to games having the ampersand (&) in their titles, hence this may be the better option.

2. Games with a forward slash as part of their name (not indicating 2 games in one cart). The only example I can come up with is Turtles/Turpin (Arcadia 2001). This is a game that was originally called Turtles, but due to licensing issues the game was renamed later to Turpin. While other ports of the game kept the Turtles name, the Arcadia 2001 port has Turtles/Turpin as the name of the game. I think in this situation, it is best to just remove the forward slash and leave it as "Turtles Turpin", which is how it is currently in the DAT.

One last scenario, unrelated to the above, is the following:

3. The TOSEC naming convention states that if a game starts with The or A, those are appended at the end of the name, separated by a comma. That is fine for examples like "The Lion King", so it makes sense to do "Lion King, The". But what if the game is only 2 words? There is a game in the Arcadia 2001 list called "The End". According to the TOSEC naming convention, it would have to be renamed "End, The". However, this is not very helpful in this particular scenario as people would probably search for "The End" instead of End. I cannot think of any other games that start with "The" or "A", only followed by 1 more word. Anyhow, this could be an exception to the rule, but I wanted to make sure what the opinion is here or if what I am saying makes sense at all. :)

Thanks.



Offline proffrink

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Re: Naming when cartridge has more than 1 game or name has forward slash
« Reply #1 on: November 02, 2021, 09:15:48 AM »
1. Cartridge has 2 or more games in it. Examples are "Hang On/Safari Hunt" (SMS), Black Jack/Poker (Arcadia 2001), etc. I see that some people like to do "Hang On + Safari Hunt", other people like to do "Hang On & Safari Hunt". Is there a consensus on whether to use the plus (+) sign or the ampersand (&) to indicate more than one game? In my opinion, I believe there are less games using the plus (+) sign in their titles when compared to games having the ampersand (&) in their titles, hence this may be the better option.

I'd be interested in this, too. I went with & in the last DAT I did mainly because it conformed with the sources I consulted for that particular ROM, but I do like +.