RF Generation Message Board

To all staff and members involved with either approving or submitting European submissions:

Please try and fill in the part numbers or UPCs as much as possible or choose specific countries. It's plain to see that European wide releases for some systems are actually few and far between. So expect us to become more critical of blank submissions in the future as many if not most of them are incorrect.

Once we have an ongoing list of items like that listed above to help us nail down the proper region, we can publish this into a guideline for both staff and members to use in the future. We can also use existing scans and in some cases, existing UPCs in our database to verify some of the current game entries as well.

Thank you

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Items to look for for identifying proper region/countries:

Nintendo DS part numbers:

XXX-XXX-NOE - Germany
XXX-XXX-UKV - United Kingdom
XXX-XXX-FHUG - Germany / Netherlands / France / UK
XXX-XXX-SCN - Sweden / Norway / Denmark
XXX-XXX-EUR - UK / Italy / Spain (possibly others)

Nintendo NES part numbers:

XXX-XX-ITA - Italy
XXX-XX-FRA - France
XXX-XX-SCN - Scandinavia (Sweden, Norway, Denmark)
XXX-XX-UKV - United Kingdom
XXX-XX-EEC - Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands

Other Nintendo part numbers:

FAH - France/Netherlands
HOL -  Netherlands
FR - France
ITA - Italy
SWD - Schweden
FRG -  France/Germany

Sega Master System, Saturn and Dreamcast part numbers:

And the following for Master System Games: if a game Part# ends with something like
-XX then XX identifies the region. This is often used for limited editions (e.g. Olympic Gold, World Cup USA '94 or Disney-Games Jungle Book, Lion King)

-50 regionwide one
-18 Germany
-09 France
-06 Spain
-13 Italy
-05 UK

Flag identification:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_Europe#Flags_of_European_Union_members

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_Europe#Flags_of_other_European_nations

A good initiative.

Maybe just a question though: When multiple languages are displayed on the back of the cover, can I add those countries or is it wrong assuming the exact same versions came out in this or that country.

Example: Games found in Belgium will often feature both Dutch, French, Italian, German and English text on the back (not all games though) Is it ok to select Germany and France aswell for countries? Because it's hard to be 100% sure, I'd have to go to those countries to see if the exact same variation is for sale there :P

Sure go ahead. Better to do it that way than have a European region wide release when no such thing exists. ;)

Alright, I'll do that in the future. I'm glad we worked the whole "European region wide" thing out in the other topic, so the database can evolve in the right direction now :)

Yes, good thing indeed. I'd much rather it be right than a bunch of confusing entries be in the database.

Keep an eye on the top post of this thread as it will be updated every time a new piece of info for identifying proper region is posted. :)

Also feel free to post more in this thread and I will add it to the top.

This is what I found out about the serials of european nintendo games:

EUR   Europe (often released in all the countries below, but often only in UK/Spain/Italy --> look at the back)
FHG   France/Netherlands/UK/Germany
NOE   Germany
UKV   UK
FAH   France/Netherlands
HOL   Netherlands
FHUG   France/Netherlands/UK/Germany
FR   France
ITA   Italy
SCN   Skandinavia (Schweden/Norway/Denmark)
SWD   Schweden
FRG   France/Germany

I suppose there are other codes for Spain, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Norway, Denmark.


And the following for Master System Games: if a game Part# ends with something like
-XX then XX identifies the region. This is often used for limited editions (e.g. Olympic Gold, World Cup USA '94 or Disney-Games Jungle Book, Lion King)

-50 regionwide one
-18 Germany
-09 France
-06 Spain
-13 Italy
-05 UK

This works for Dreamcast games too, I have a Shadow man german copy with T-8104D-18, and the one in the database
http://www.rfgeneration.com/cgi-bin/getinfo.pl?ID=E-071-S-01600-A
has an T-8104D-05 and an english text on the manual, so I think this is an UK version.

maybe this works for Mega Drive, Saturn, Mega CD and Game Gear too, because alot of them ends with a -50, maybe someone can have a look at his/her games.  The problem is, that there are a lot of different IDs on all of these games, so it's a bit hard to decide which one should be used as the Part#...

Nice work Tan & Madir!!! :D

And now that I think of it, I do have NES/SNES games ending in EUR, EEC and FRA. I'll have to edit those when I find the time for it.

i've seen an error in my list

this is not FHG this should be FHUG (same as in the top list) and you can move these codes to the ds section.

Add the Saturn to the MS and DC list.

Something about CDI Games/Movies:

Normally european CD-i games start with

81x, I've looked around on a lot of sites and covers and I found ot the following european codes for CD-i games:
  810 - Europe
  811 - UK (not very sure about that)
  812 - France (pretty sure)
  813 - Germany (nearly 100% sure)
  814 - Netherlands (pretty sure)
  815 - ???
  816 - Spain (pretty sure)
  817 - ???
  818 - ???
  819 - ??? (I think this is regionwide too)

I hope someone is able to verify and maybe to fill the gaps.

Have attention because there are some strange games like this:
http://www.rfgeneration.com/cgi-bin/getinfo.pl?ID=E-049-S-00020-A

You see an 814 on the back cover but all text is in english. Have a look ad the CD and read the copyright information they will give you a hint.

But in most cases the back cover or manual language should fit the codes from above.

btw:
US games starts with 310... and there are some third party publishers with own Part#. A demo cd has the same code as the full version.

greetings Madir.

Nice research! If we do this for all consoles/games then it'd become much easier to determine where a game was released. :)

The text may be in English but the copyright info on the disk is in Dutch. So that means it's a Dutch release...but was it also released in Belgium?

This is a big problem I mentioned before. It's really hard to find out if you don't have an experts for every console in every country. Just think of all the small ones like Monaco, Andorra, San Marino, Liechtenstein,... who would ever know.
I think a good way is to start with a country you are sure about. And if someone knows another one so this should be added and so on....

Another thing are the regionwide releases. As I understood, if a system was released in more than one country in europe then a game have to be released in all these countries to, to be a regionwide. This makes alot of more work too.

Madir

The chances that true regionwide releases exist in Europe are slim at best.

With a "true" regionwide release I mean a game that has the exact same cover in all countries it's been released in and that it's being released in all European countries.

The problem (as you said in your post) lies in the fact that it's impossible to find out whether a game has been released in all 30ish (?) European countries. We'd have to have a gaming expert in each of those like you say; sadly there's only about 20 active European members on RFG, with most of those being from the UK.

EDIT: In other words: We'll have to manage with the info we're able to find ourselves. ;)  Games that we're unsure of can simply be left as regionwide releases (which most European entries are) until we know how many variations exist and where it has been released.

I think if there are at least two versions released in different countries. This truely should be divided and the variations should be associated with the countries.
But if there is only one european version this should be a regionwide one.

Madir

What I meant was leaving games as "regionwide" until we're sure what exactly they are. :) (Even though we know they probably aren't regionwide)

i think that there are definatly 3 places wheer the games relased in Europe are regionwide and that is on the PSN, Xbox live arcade and Virtual Console, in fact if im not wrong arent the nearly the same as the versions relased in other regions makeing the database very easy to fill out (at the moment i cant find any xbox live arcade listed for europe)

You're right, but 99,9% of all physical games aren't regionwide because of the different languages.

I guess nobody from Europe has yet submitted Xbox Live Arcade games. We're quite a bit behind compared to the US database. (Which is only normal seeing how many Europeans are active on RFG)