Context:
I recently submitted this run of NES Pinball.
In the discussion thread, I mentioned that I couldn't beat the time of the submission when using the VS Pinball ROM with the standard DIP Switch settings.
£e Nécroyeur suggested that I relook into the VS ROM with different DIP switch settings, because the default setting is slow ball movement. I investigated the DIP switch settings and changed the proper one to allow fast ball movement instead of slow. TASing with this setting did allow me to beat the time of the sumbission linked above.
As ThunderAxe31 had claimed the submission for judging, I privately asked his opinion on what to do regarding the submission and the new faster run that used the VS ROM. This was what I sent:
My question is three-part:
1) Are the VS game ROMs for NES games considered Arcade or NES for site publication? If they aren't considered arcade, we may need to consider that they should be (since that's the 'system' they were intended to be).
2) If VS games are considered Arcade, could I make an additional submission of that version and potentially have both published; one on each 'system'.
3) If VS games are only considered NES platform and not arcade, should i cancel the current submission and make a new one (since the ROM also changes); or should i just provide a userfile to update the current submission? In the latter case, I'd also update the temp encode and submission notes.
ThunderAxe31 informed me that he believes this may be a new situation that has never been discussed before. Thus I've created this thread.
What I believe needs Discussed:
1) What system do we want to consider these VS Nintendo ROMs?
While the VS game ROMs (at least this one) run on BizHawk under NES emulation, their purpose was for Arcade cabinet use. I feel that the site needs to make a definitive decision on which system to consider these VS ROMs.
My personal stance would be to consider them as Arcade as that's the 'system' they were intended for even though BizHawk runs them under NES emulation.
2) Should VS ROMs be able to obsolete runs of other system/region?
This is a multi-part issue.
If it's decided that VS ROMs are to be considered Arcade and not NES system, then we'd be looking at the question of whether or not to have one system potentially obsolete a different system. I think this may have already happened in the past, but I don't know for sure.
If it's decided that VS ROMs are to be considered NES system--just a different 'region' ROM--then it's an issue of one region ROM obsoleting a different region; I know there's already precedent for this (due to one of my own US region runs being obsoleted by a JP region run of the same game).
My personal stance on this one is to lean toward more inclusivity and less obsoletion regardless of what 'system' the VS ROMs are ultimately decided to be considered. I'm one who feels that, even if a game/TAS is identical between two different systems, there's value in having a publication of both systems--if for no other reason than the possibility that some viewers may only look for a particular game on one system and not another system, because they may not know the game was ported to multiple systems.I'm curious to hear other people's thoughts on how to handle the VS ROMs.
I'll just point out we have GB/SGB freely able to obsolete each other, we have GB games marked as GB when running under GBC emulation, also I'll pop up this libtas movie: [4496] Windows Backyard Baseball "Pick-Up Game" by TiKevin83 in 04:45.05
Arcade makes sense and we already have precedent for this.
This discussion can (and maybe should) be extended to Arcade engines based on home consoles in general.
IMO the VS system should be listed on the NES page with a different tag similar to what's done for FDS. The same can apply to cases like Gamecube and Triforce.
Obsoletion should probably be done on a case-by-case basis. If different versions of the games and the resulted movies are similar enough, it's reasonable for them to be able to obsolete each other.
1) What system do we want to consider these VS Nintendo ROMs?
While the VS game ROMs (at least this one) run on BizHawk under NES emulation, their purpose was for Arcade cabinet use. I feel that the site needs to make a definitive decision on which system to consider these VS ROMs.
My personal stance would be to consider them as Arcade as that's the 'system' they were intended for even though BizHawk runs them under NES emulation.
The definitive aspect is whether it runs on actual NES. If not, it needs a different platform name.
DrD2k9 wrote:
2) Should VS ROMs be able to obsolete runs of other system/region?
This is a multi-part issue.
If it's decided that VS ROMs are to be considered Arcade and not NES system, then we'd be looking at the question of whether or not to have one system potentially obsolete a different system. I think this may have already happened in the past, but I don't know for sure.
If it's decided that VS ROMs are to be considered NES system--just a different 'region' ROM--then it's an issue of one region ROM obsoleting a different region; I know there's already precedent for this (due to one of my own US region runs being obsoleted by a JP region run of the same game).
My personal stance on this one is to lean toward more inclusivity and less obsoletion regardless of what 'system' the VS ROMs are ultimately decided to be considered. I'm one who feels that, even if a game/TAS is identical between two different systems, there's value in having a publication of both systems--if for no other reason than the possibility that some viewers may only look for a particular game on one system and not another system, because they may not know the game was ported to multiple systems.
If they have enough differences to feel as separate branches, they should not obsolete one another. If it's really the same exact game with minimal (for example, cosmetic) changes, it should obsolete.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
The definitive aspect is whether it runs on actual NES. If not, it needs a different platform name.
But that's not what we do for GB/GBC/GBA games: we use the system naming depending on the game itself, not on the system in which is played. For this reason, I think that VS games should be labelled as "VS" or as "Arcade".
For the rest, I agree that the VS and the NES version should be able to potentially obsolete each other, if a game is too much similar. I will be looking into about this specific game and see if it's the case.
Since the system naming can be figured later, as it doesn't affect the judgement process, I suppose you can proceed with submitting the VS version as a new submission, so that I can compare the two submissions side by side, while also gathering more opinions from audience and staff.
By the way, did you already also try the Game Cube VC version and the FDS version?
But that's not what we do for GB/GBC/GBA games: we use the system naming depending on the game itself, not on the system in which is played.
Those are ways to run a game on an actual device. Originally the game runs on whatever device it was designed for, and then on some newer ones thanks to backwards compatibility modes. I don't know if it's possible to insert an NES game into a VS Arcade machine, or vice versa.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
But that's not what we do for GB/GBC/GBA games: we use the system naming depending on the game itself, not on the system in which is played.
Those are ways to run a game on an actual device. Originally the game runs on whatever device it was designed for, and then on some newer ones thanks to backwards compatibility modes. I don't know if it's possible to insert an NES game into a VS Arcade machine, or vice versa.
The Windows movie on libTAS is probably a better example here than GB/C.
Besides that, no you can't just run an NES game on a VS Arcade machine. No way to insert a cart (it's an arcade machine lol) and the VS is different enough where trying to put the ROM in without any modifications it would not work (mostly due to I/O regs being swapped around sometimes and special PPUs VS systems use).
Okay so for the purpose of any potential future reorganization, it should be okay to have these movies as VS (neither NES, nor Arcade), and then we can list them alongside other systems that are close to them. So we need the parser to have VS and to be able to read it from FCEUX and NESHawk movies. But I never checked if they store this info...
EDIT: Wait isn't Pinball (VS).nes just a conversion into an actual NES ROM? What's the Arcade equivalent if there is any? Arcade ROM called pinball is not relevant it seems. MAME doesn't even run Pinball (VS).nes: Fatal error: Unimplemented Mapper 99
Okay yeah I guess we'll have to keep those as NES and VS as game version. Too much overhead infrastructure to implement in emulators and parsers otherwise.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
https://tasvideos.org/Forum/Topics/12519?CurrentPage=81&Highlight=510672#510672
I'm not sure about the other games but the MAME set for VS. Castlevania includes a .u7 file and a .pal file, with the .u7 file being the headerless rom recorded in the Bizhawk gamedb; although it can't be run at the moment due to issues, the runnable .nes file I found is just that rom with a header.
Bizhawk saves the VS settings in SyncSettings.json, while FCEUX doesn't seem to have a place to configure that at all or even emulate the sound for VS Castlevania in particular correctly. Unless I missed something, VS games should be required to be done on Bizhawk for submission and a parser for VS should be possible if it can read from SyncSettings.json.
Yeah I figured this out. VS games have archive names starting with vs, and VS is also in their game titles. So yes we know that they run fine in MAME. Also some of them have multiple screens.
So since they are proper Arcade images, and iNES versions seem to have been created manually, we'd have to add extremely specific logic to parsing MAME-RR movies and movies from MAME in Bizhawk, if we want them to show up as NES, VS, or any other system. This would introduce questionable complexity into the system and feel like a hacky workaround.
Instead of hacking the system, we should instead have UI on the site that displays related games on other systems, especially if the ports are nearly identical and there are cross-system obsoletions. We will work on this when we redesign game based navigation to be more usable.
In terms of emulators and site logistics, marking VS games as Arcade is the cleanest approach.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
My opinion: They are NES games. They are revised versions of games (often with enhancements) that have been slightly modified to run on an arcade machine which is 99% the same as the NES. They were even emulated by NES emulators (using the iNES format files and Mapper 99) long before MAME supported the games.
As for if they should obsolete their NES counterparts, you don't obsolete Super Mario 2 with Super Mario All Stars. That is an example of a revised re-release of a NES game.
My opinion: They are NES games. They are revised versions of games (often with enhancements) that have been slightly modified to run on an arcade machine which is 99% the same as the NES. They were even emulated by NES emulators (using the iNES format files and Mapper 99) long before MAME supported the games.
They are still Arcade games too. They were meant for standalone Arcade cabinets and they were coin based. So we're not being inaccurate by marking them this way.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
