How would you know if a game is the same throughout Europe? Surely each release in some of the major countries in Europe like the UK, Holland, Germany, France and Spain will all have minor variations such as text or titles on the boxes/ books due to the different languages spoken.
This will be based on what is documented, and I assume should be adaptable if needed. You are correct that most consoles have multiple releases within Europe, especially all of the recent ones. This does not make any PAL games/info/scans submitted to the current database obsolete, however, as it could all be transferred to the new system in pieces. There are some consoles, though, that, as far as I know, have the same releases throughout Europe, such as some of the Sega consoles.
Also what will happen with all of the PAL games already in the database as these will not have been designated to being from a specific region when originally entered?
These will be reentered if needed, with all of the proper credits transferred as well. So all credits from game/info/scan/etc submissions will remain the same
The majority of European PAL games that have been submitted include the product numbers, which can usually be used to trace it to a specific region within Europe (there are other means as well, such as scans, etc). It won't be easy, but it should be doable, and as far as I'm concerned is something that needs to be done. It will take time to get it all in there, but it will allow much more flexibility for PAL collections and can be used to document regional variants, etc.
I think that's all that I can answer for now, if I've made any incorrect assumptions, please feel free to correct me Eddie