Rom Management: How do I filter my ROM files???

[atomikbohm]

Here's my situation:

I'm attempting to setup Hyperspin with a couple of different No-Intro ROM Sets (Sega Genesis, Sega CD, 32X, NES, SNES, and N64 (& possibly more to come in the future).  I think I've figured out how to get the ROMs in a given folder into a list and get Hyperspin to put the list on a wheel. (That took me longer than I'd like to admit )

The only problem is I don't want to see multiple regions / occurrences of the same ROM on my list.  (i.e. different versions and / or regions)

The problem that I'd like help resolving is: How do I filter ROM files by the following criteria:

1) Language: English
2) Region: US - Euro - Jap
(1 Result per title regardless of regional name differences (Example: Resident Evil (US) would be selected and Bio Hazard (Pal) would be omitted))

Anyone have an easy / automated way to do (any / all) of this?   I'd prefer to not have to do this manually as it takes a lot of time a research that I really don't want to have to do.   

I hope this makes sense and there is an easy and quick way to do this.  Thanks in advance for any assistance.

[Megaweapon]

Yes, this is an old thread.  Deal with it.   

Replying because I am working through the same issues and finding a surprising lack of information.  I got further than the original poster by learning the internet's best-kept secret (1G1R) which cleans out the clones based on region.  This leaves me with (in the case of SNES) around 926 Japan-only releases (not including games with complete fan translations and some misc. things).

So since there are no console DAT files based on language (that I'm aware of, anyway) what else can I do?  I've spent hours crawling through forum search results only to come up with a list of maybe 25 games.  The threads splinter off into talk of games that were "better" in one region or another (literally the last thing I'm worried about here) and lists of fan translations (already got those on lockdown, Chief).

Am I safe just assuming that the other 900 really are unplayable?

[nullPointer]

Hello, I was working through a similar situation a while back.  I posted a thread over at GameEx forums containing a solution that did the trick for me.

Best Practices for Filtering by Country

Your mileage may vary of course

[Megaweapon]

Thanks for the reply, but I've already gone one better than that.  Instead of relying on the file names, I've filtered my set based on a No-Intro DAT file that keeps track of parent/clone game relationships.  Using this with clrmamepro I can prioritize regions (Ex: USA, EUR, JPN) and the computer does the rest, finding clones and eliminating them.

So because of this I now have Contra III in my SNES set, but not Super Probotector or Contra Spirits.

The advantage over file name-based methods is that I am not missing any games that were only released in other regions.  So I also have Waterworld (EUR-only) and Gokujou Parodius (JPN-only).

The disadvantage is that I have no way of telling which JPN-only games are playable for an English-only audience.