Skip to content

RULES.md

Latest commit

 

History

History
379 lines (297 loc) · 22.4 KB

RULES.md

File metadata and controls

379 lines (297 loc) · 22.4 KB
Raw

Unique Console Games: the ruleset

The rules behind every catalogue here: what qualifies, how the table is shaped, how contested cases are settled, and how to research a new platform. Read this before adding a platform or auditing an existing file. CONSISTENCY.md lists the 20 checks that enforce it.

Build and maintain per-platform catalogues of the games each console gave the world first. One markdown file per platform under catalogs/, table-driven.

Purpose. This is a collecting guide. The end goal is to own physical or digital copies and play them on the original release hardware. So the question each file answers is: "which machine do I need on the shelf to play this game as it first shipped?" That is why debut is the test and why emulation and backward compatibility never count; they are not the original device.

A game qualifies on one test: did it debut here? Whether it later appeared elsewhere does not affect membership; it is recorded as an attribute, not used as a filter.

The inclusion test: did it debut here?

The platform must be the game's first release anywhere, and the only platform it launched on. Nothing else matters for inclusion.

Disqualified:

Reason Example
Port: same game, later platform Bayonetta on Wii U (Xbox 360/PS3, 2009)
Remaster / HD edition The Wind Waker HD: the game is a 2002 GameCube release
Remake, however substantial Metroid: Samus Returns remakes Metroid II (1991); Pokémon Omega Ruby remakes Ruby (2002)

Not disqualified:

  • Compilations. A compilation is a new product and debuts on the platform where that product first shipped. Super Mario All-Stars is an SNES debut; the NES games inside it keep their own separate NES entries. Judge the compilation on its own first-release date, not its contents'.

This cuts both ways and both directions are already in use:

  • A compilation is itself catalogued as a debut where it first shipped.
  • A compilation is also a re-release vehicle for its contents, being folded into WipEout Omega Collection is what makes WipEout 2048 Ported.

Both statements are true at once and neither overrides the other.

  • A prior arcade release. Arcades are out of scope; a cabinet is not a device anyone collects and plays at home, so an arcade original is invisible to this catalogue. Street Fighter II counts as an SNES debut; Pokkén Tournament counts as a Wii U debut. But a prior release on another home platform still disqualifies: NES Donkey Kong is excluded because the Atari 2600 and ColecoVision had it in 1982, not because of the 1981 cabinet.
  • Simultaneous multiplatform launches. A same-day release counts as a debut on every platform it launched on. Breath of the Wild appears in both the Wii U and Switch catalogues. Mark it Sim-ship and list the co-launch platforms in Also On; a collector needs to know either machine will do.

Never pick a "canonical" platform for a sim-ship. It is tempting to table the game once and write "catalogued under X" in the other platform's Excluded section. Do not do this. There is no lead platform for a same-day release, and a collector browsing the PS2 file needs to see Killer7 there, not a pointer to the GameCube file. Duplication across catalogues is correct and intended for these entries.

This applies however many platforms are involved. Mortal Kombat (1993) launched the same day on SNES, Genesis, Game Gear and Master System, so it belongs in all four files.

  • Sequels and spin-offs. Splatoon 2 is a new game. Splatoon's status is untouched.
  • Later ports of any kind. Mario Kart 8 reaching Switch in 2017 does not remove it; it debuted on Wii U and stays in the Wii U catalogue forever.
  • Enhanced editions on the same platform. Soul Sacrifice Delta (Vita).
  • Staggered regional releases. Use the earliest date worldwide as the debut.

Same-day vs. shortly-after: the line that matters

Sim-ship means same day. It does not mean "also came out around then". This distinction does most of the filtering work:

Game Wii U date Elsewhere Verdict
Breath of the Wild 3 Mar 2017 Switch, 3 Mar 2017 Sim-ship: in both catalogues
Assassin's Creed III 18 Nov 2012 PS3/360, 30 Oct 2012 Excluded: Wii U got a later port
Call of Duty: Black Ops II 18 Nov 2012 PS3/360, 13 Nov 2012 Excluded: later port
Mass Effect 3 18 Nov 2012 PS3/360, Mar 2012 Excluded: later port

A console launch line-up is full of the second kind. Treat "released in the launch window" as a port unless the dates actually match.

Status: the exclusivity attribute

Every entry carries a Status recording where it stands today. This is descriptive; it never affects membership.

Status Meaning
Stranded Never officially released anywhere else, in any form.
Ported Released elsewhere later. Fill Also On with platform + year.
Sim-ship Launched the same day on other platforms. Fill Also On with the co-launch platforms. The entry appears in each of those platforms' catalogues too.

Sim-ship outranks Ported. A game can do both, launch same-day on two consoles and then reach a third years later. Forza Horizon 5 sim-shipped on Xbox One and Series X/S in 2021 and reached PS5 in 2025. Keep the status as Sim-ship, because that is the fact about its debut, and list the later platforms in Also On alongside the co-launch ones. Using Ported would hide that it had two debut platforms.

Status decays in one direction: Stranded → Ported, never back. When a port is announced, change the status and fill Also On. Never delete the row, the debut is a permanent historical fact.

What counts as "released elsewhere"

Only officially licensed releases. Emulation is irrelevant: Cemu, Dolphin, Ryujinx and flashcarts never change a status.

PC is not a catalogued platform

This repo catalogues consoles and handhelds, devices you collect and play on. PC is not one of them, which has three consequences:

Situation Result
Console debut, later PC port Still Stranded. Mention the PC release in Notes, leave Also On empty.
Console and PC same day Counts as a console debut. Catalogue it on the console; PC does not make it a Sim-ship.
PC first, console later Excluded: the game already existed. Cave Story, Unepic, Gurumin, SNES Doom.

So a PC version never moves a game out of Stranded, but a PC version that came first keeps it out of the catalogue entirely. Record PC availability in the Notes so a reader knows the game is obtainable, just not on a second console.

Backward compatibility is NOT another platform

A later console running the original release: same SKU, disc, cartridge or store entitlement, is backward compatibility. It does not change a status. Otherwise the attribute collapses: nearly every PSP game runs on a Vita, every Vita game on PlayStation TV, every Wii game on a Wii U, every Switch game on Switch 2.

Counts as another platform Does not
A port or remaster: new build, new SKU (Gravity Rush Remastered) Vita playing a PSP game
A subscription re-release that is a distinct store entry on a new platform (PS Plus Premium's PSP catalogue on PS4/PS5; NSO) PS TV playing a Vita game
A compilation the game is folded into (WipEout Omega Collection) Wii U playing a Wii disc
A cross-buy twin built for the other platform Switch 2 playing a Switch cartridge

The dividing line: did someone build and ship a version for that platform, or is the new hardware merely running the old one?

Contested cases

Some titles do not resolve cleanly. Do not silently pick a side, give them a Contested section with the argument on each side. Under the debut rule the recurring question is almost always "is this a debut or a port?":

  • Handheld sibling versions. Super Mario Maker (Wii U) vs Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS; same game, gutted features, released later.
  • Shared-branding twins. Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and for Nintendo 3DS ship under one name but are separate builds; the 3DS version came first by weeks, which matters under this rule.
  • Remake-or-sequel. Oreshika: Tainted Bloodlines, Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together.
  • Partial compilations. Ultimate NES Remix (3DS) vs NES Remix 1 & 2.
  • Renamed enhanced re-releases. FAST Racing NEO → FAST RMX.

Default to the stricter reading (assume it is a port and exclude it) then record the counter-argument, so the catalogue never overclaims.

Shelved games belong to the hardware they were built for

A game completed for platform X but first released years later on platform Y belongs to X (the hardware it was written for) with the later release recorded as Ported. Star Fox 2 was finished for the SNES in 1995 and first sold on the SNES Classic in 2017; it is an SNES debut that is now Ported. The Virtual Boy's Zero Racers and D-Hopper follow the same rule.

The alternative (treating the delivery vehicle as the debut platform) would put a 1995 SNES cartridge's debut on 2017 hardware, which is not useful to anyone trying to collect it. Before release, such a game is Stranded; after, it is Ported.

Remakes are not debuts

A ground-up remake is tempting to treat as a new game: new engine, new art, often new systems. Resist it. The test is "is this the first release of this game?", and for a remake the answer is no: the game already existed. Metroid: Samus Returns, Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, Fire Emblem Echoes, Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles and Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together are all excluded, however good they are and however exclusive they remain.

Apply this uniformly across platforms; it is the single easiest place for a catalogue to drift into inconsistency.

Table format

One table per platform, identical columns everywhere so files stay diff-able.

| Title | Year | Developer | Publisher | Genre | Players | Online | Status | Also On | Language | Availability | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Column Rule
Title Full official title, region-neutral (prefer NA naming, note PAL name if it differs).
Year Year of first release anywhere, not the local region's date. A range where one row covers several years of releases, both ends spelled in full: 1979–1980. Empty only for a game finished but never commercially released, where there is no such year to give.
Developer Studio, in its own styling: indieszero, tri-Ace, SIMS. Multiple studios separated by /. A shared word is not a shared company. Climax Entertainment made Landstalker in Japan in 1992, Climax Studios made Silent Hill: Origins in Britain in 2007, and Climax Graphics made Blue Stinger; collapsing them because they all start with Climax would be three errors, not one tidy-up.
Publisher Publisher at first release.
Genre Short and consistent; reuse terms already in the file. Qualify with a slash or a word, Puzzle / stealth and Rhythm roguelike, never a parenthesis. A qualifier that carries meaning is not drift: Action / city sim and Online RPG say something the bare genre does not, and 105 genres are used once for that reason. A spelling variant is drift: Stealth beside eleven Stealth action is the same genre twice.
Players Local player count: 1, 1–4, 1–5 (asym.). Use asym. for asymmetric second-screen designs. For an online game with no local mode, record the party size, as Phantasy Star Online does at 1–4. Empty only where the row covers a service rather than a single game and no count applies.
Online Yes, No, or Dead (year) where servers have shut down. A bare Dead means the shutdown is certain but the year is not established; leave it bare rather than guessing, the same way Language is left empty. Do not bold the value to mark a game as badly broken by the shutdown, which was tried on 15 rows out of 111 and said nothing the note beside it did not already say at length. Put that in Notes.
Status Stranded, Ported, or Sim-ship.
Also On Empty when stranded. Otherwise every platform with year: Switch (2017), PC (2020). For Sim-ship, list the co-launch platforms and mark them, e.g. Switch (2017, same day). Spell the PlayStation numbers out, PlayStation 3 rather than PS3, matching the sibling tools, including inside a slash list: PlayStation 4/5, not PlayStation 4/PS5. Same for PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Vita. PSP stays abbreviated, which is what every file already calls it and what no other product could mean.
Language The language the game shipped in, where it is known and worth stating. Leave empty rather than assuming; an empty cell means unrecorded, not English. On hardware that never left one market, every row carries it, because on those platforms it is known for all of them: the WonderSwan, PC-FX, Loopy, Playdia and the three early Japanese consoles are all Japanese, and Geraldinho on a Brazilian Master System is Portuguese. A game released in Japan and PAL shipped in English somewhere, so it stays empty.
Availability Sold if an ordinary public channel still carries it, including the second-hand market. Backup if none does. See Availability.
Notes Required. At least one sentence saying what the release is and why its Status is what it is: the hardware dependency, licence, studio closure or dead server that stranded it, or what carried it off the platform. Not review commentary. See Notes.

Sort by Year, then Title. Keep everything in one table; status is a column, not a section. Splitting by status buries the point that these are all the same kind of thing.

What the Excluded table actually holds

The heading says "Why excluded" and most rows mean it, but the table has been carrying three different kinds of row and a reader has no way to tell them apart. They are all worth keeping. They just need naming.

  1. Genuine exclusions. The game fails the debut test: it appeared first on PC, or on an earlier console, or it is a re-release, or it is not a game. This is the common case and the heading describes it correctly.

  2. Disambiguations. The game does qualify and is in the debut table, and the row exists because something about it invites the opposite conclusion. Crazy Taxi's arcade lineage, Castlevania III being assumed Famicom Disk System-exclusive, Final Fantasy Legend being the SaGa games under a misleading name. These rows begin "Qualifies" and say what the confusion is.

  3. Bulk-qualifying groups. Several games that qualify, share one status, and are recorded as a group rather than given a row each. Munchkin sequels on the Odyssey², the remaining Casio Loopy titles. These say "not separately tabled", and like the Appendix they sit outside the counts: the summary block counts rows, so a group of five counts as none.

The third kind is the one to be careful with, because it means Debut games is a count of table rows rather than of qualifying games, and the two differ wherever a group row exists.

A reason of four words is fine when four words are the whole reason. "PC original.", "Backward compatibility." and "Re-releases by definition." each name the rule that disqualifies the title, which is all this column is for. Length is not the measure; naming the rule is.

Availability: whether it can still be bought

Status says whether a game ever left this platform. Availability says whether you can still get it, which is a different question with a different answer, and the two are independent: a Ported game can be delisted everywhere and a Stranded one can be in print on cartridge.

Value Meaning
Sold Obtainable through an ordinary public channel: a current store listing, a subscription that carries it, or a second-hand disc or cartridge.
Backup Not obtainable through any of those. The remaining route is a backup of media you already own, or a homebrew or community release.

Anything that shipped on physical media is Sold. Discs and cartridges change hands constantly, and a game you can buy used is not preservation-dependent however expensive or obscure it is. Price is not the test, and neither is whether its servers still run.

That keeps Backup narrow. It is for releases that only ever existed as a download and are no longer distributed: the eShop-only Nintendo 3DS and Wii U titles that went down with their storefront, DSiWare, Concord and Destruction AllStars, Ape Quest. Thirty rows out of 1,755. Gran Turismo 5, Too Human and the delisted Forza games are not in that set, because all of them shipped on a disc and the notes explain the delisting instead.

This repo's position is unchanged by recording the state. It links to nothing, names no source, and explains no method. That a game has stopped being distributed is a fact about distribution; what a reader does with it is theirs.

Notes

Every row gets at least one sentence. A row with an empty Notes cell is a title and eight pieces of metadata, which tells a reader nothing they could not get from a list of games, and the whole value of this catalogue is the reason.

A note should answer two things:

  1. What the release is. Enough to recognise it: what kind of game, or what it is known for. One clause is usually enough.
  2. Why its status is what it is. For Stranded, the specific obstacle: hardware nobody can reproduce, a licence that expired, a studio that closed, servers that shut down, a Japan-only release nobody localised. For Ported or Sim-ship, what carried it, where Also On alone does not make it obvious.

"Never rereleased" is not a reason, it is a restatement of the status. If the reason is genuinely unknown, say that: "no stated reason; the rights are with a publisher that has not revisited its back catalogue" is honest, and "unclear why this one was left behind" is better than a confident invention.

No spoilers

These notes describe releases, not plots. A reader consulting a catalogue of stranded games has usually not played the thing they are reading about, and a note is the last place they expect to learn how it ends.

Say what a game is and why it is stuck. Do not say what happens in it. Where a plot point is genuinely load-bearing for the stranding reason, which is rare, name the fact without the outcome: "its licensed soundtrack" rather than the scene the song plays in.

The same applies to the sibling Start_Here routes, which have their own longer treatment of this, since a play-order tool is read by people who are about to start the series.

Naming platforms

The # heading is the platform's identity: it is what the README index links to and what the sibling suggester shows as a label. It uses the full name, with the manufacturer, because a list of sixty-eight of them is where an incomplete name looks wrong. Nintendo Game Boy, not Game Boy, alongside the Nintendo 3DS and Sony PlayStation 2 that were already written that way.

Leave the manufacturer off only where the name already contains it (ColecoVision, Nintendo Entertainment System) or where nobody has ever prefixed it (Atari 2600 is Atari's, and the name says so).

The Also On column follows the same rule, since it is a list of platforms. Prose does not: "the Game Boy's defining trick" is better than the alternative, and the short name is what people say.

Per-platform file structure

catalogs/<platform-slug>.md:

  1. Header: platform, lifespan, store/online status, backward-compat note, category spine used, date last verified, honest coverage statement.
  2. Summary: total debut-exclusives, how many still stranded, and the one-paragraph story of why this platform strands what it strands.
  3. Debut-exclusive games: the single main table.
  4. Contested: the argument on both sides.
  5. Excluded: titles commonly assumed to qualify but that fail the debut test, with the reason recorded so they are not re-added. See What the Excluded table actually holds.
  6. Appendix: long tails assessed in bulk rather than individually, clearly labelled and kept out of the counts.
  7. Sources: links, with the date checked.

Research method

  1. Start from the platform's full release list (Wikipedia List of <platform> games) ; these do not mark exclusivity or debut, so they are only a spine.
  2. Use Wikipedia's Category:<Platform>-only games where it exists. It is a good seed but it is incomplete and noisy, the Vita category contains ~20 franchise articles for anime series that are not games at all, and categories miss titles that plainly qualify.
  3. Treat "never ported" listicles as leads, not facts: they conflate "not on the successor console" with "exclusive". ZombiU, Watch Dogs and Sonic Lost World all appear on Wii U "never ported to Switch" lists; all three are multiplatform.
  4. For each candidate, verify the debut specifically, an earlier release on another home console, PC or handheld is the most common disqualifier and the easiest to miss. Arcade originals are out of scope and never disqualify.
  5. Re-verify Stranded entries on every pass. Status decays: Xenoblade Chronicles X was stranded until March 2025, The Wonderful 101 until 2020, Persona 3 Portable until 2023.

Maintenance

  • Put the verification date in the header and update it every pass.
  • When a stranded game gets ported, flip Status and fill Also On. Never delete.
  • Long-tail budget/eShop titles are the usual coverage gap. State in the header what the catalogue does and does not claim to cover.
  • When a tail is too large to verify title-by-title, group it by publisher in an appendix, label the confidence, and keep it out of the counts. Look for a categorical cause first, e.g. Nintendo denied RCMADIAX a Switch dev licence in 2018, which strands all 33 of its Wii U titles at once.
  • Where a platform's status is inherently unstable, say so loudly. PSP Stranded claims are undermined by the PS Plus Premium Classics catalogue, which rotates monthly with no published list.