I would like to help you.
I have made a bunch of entries for my personal use (and I'm only getting warmed-up) and would like to share them.
I think I get the spirit of what this project is about, which is mainly about accuracy. Therefore, I will take some time to document my entries and leave off the dubious ones for my personal use only.
Some questions that would help me get started:
- If I have entries with unverified label wording (but that I know exactly what they do in-game, should I leave them out or do you have a use for them?
- Do you accept individual entries for games that were part of multi-game systems like the Neo Geo or do you want those to remain at the system level (generic A, B, C & D buttons, in this case) as they are now
- I have gone one step further for the games that I've researched and tried to document the layout of the buttons, not just their labels, so that I can play them as faithful to the original as possible; is there a way to incorporate this type of information in the project (perhaps I can use the misc details area)?
- Do you have a standard set of required documentation you maintain for each entry?
Best regards and thanks for creating this fantastic project.
I think this is covered elsewhere, but when we mean "official label" it has absolutely nothing to do with the button/controls function. We want the label as it appears on the control panel overlay. Of course for controls that don't have a label, we try to get as official as we can via manuals and ect.. The reason neo-geo games only have "A, B, C, D" labels is two-fold:
1. All neo-geo overlays use these labels.... they are the official labels.
2. Every single solitary neo-geo game starts with a "how to play" screen that describes, in detail, what button does what.
That should pretty much answer all of your questions just with that example.
Because documentation is sparse there is no standardized set but here is a list of acceptable sources, from best to worst.
1. A picture of the games actual cpo.
2. An official source of documentation from the game, stating the controls (instruction card, game manual, ect)
3. A "how to play" screen found within the game.
4. Some other official source directly from the game's manufacturers.
5. Common sense (This one is rarely accepted unless the controls are really simple or we have precident with another game in the series)
Some examples of #5:
It's a 4-way joystick game with no buttons. We can safely assume that the labels are either non-existant (common for joysticks) or are up/down/left/right.
SF III Third Strike.... We can't find an official cpo image, but we already have a entry for the original sf III so we can assume they are the same.
Judge Dread.... It's a prototype so no official cpo or labels exist. We can look at photos of the prototype if possible, but if not, their function will have to do.