What's the deal with all the numbers being added to so many Nintendo titles?

[haloofthesun]

I was looking through my collection, when I started to see many of my Nintendo titles now had a series of numbers in parentheses after them.

Example 1: https://vgcollect.com/item/2163

I don't even know if the version I have is correctly listed now because I was just assigned these

Incorrect. You were not "assigned" to have one variant added over another. You willingly added it to your personal collection. Both the front and back artwork are original to the entry, where the back artwork easily reads EAN-5 00101. The information has always been present as long as the entry has been created. As such, when it came to adding variant entries to the database, the original entry was given the 00101 descriptor.

Incorrect. You yourself edited the title. It's in the history. "10-05-2021    dhaabi    Name    Animal Crossing (00101)". I added this to my collection years before. The reason why 1000+ members have it is because there was only one entry. You retitled it and created variants. This is nonsense clutter and it's ridiculous.

[haloofthesun]

The issue is that everyone wants something different. Some want to just track "games" some want to track exactly what they have. Some like to collect variations and some don't, some collect loose, boxed or sealed. Unfortunately with all of the different ways people collect, the site only has one way to view it.

As for the numbers being in descriptors, when a variation is found we have to determine what is the best way to describe it. Unfortunately with some variations, only a number is different or is the easiest to describe.

There are worse titles like these:
Transformers: The Game - Greatest Hits (81977.207.US)
Transformers: The Game - Greatest Hits (83851.207.US)

And I think there is at least one set that has only a barcode difference, despite that we do not really want to have barcodes in descriptors. And it is further likely that the content on the media itself is different for these different revisions, which is something that is of great interest to archivists and data collectors, although we try to minimize the usefulness of the site in regards to data collectors.

It really seems like all of these descriptors could be relegated to the notes section. The site already allows users to have multiple entries in their collection for the same game, that seems like the perfect use for it, rather than having multiple entries in the database with a string of numbers and letters afterwards that only a very small amount of users are actually going to care about.

I suppose ideally someone would be able to do something like search for "Animal Crossing", choose the Gamecube version, and then be able to select specific information such as region, edition, and any other variants possible. As is the site is just becoming more and more of a frustrating user experience and there surely has to be a better way.

[Cartagia]

I was looking through my collection, when I started to see many of my Nintendo titles now had a series of numbers in parentheses after them.

Example 1: https://vgcollect.com/item/2163

I don't even know if the version I have is correctly listed now because I was just assigned these

Incorrect. You were not "assigned" to have one variant added over another. You willingly added it to your personal collection. Both the front and back artwork are original to the entry, where the back artwork easily reads EAN-5 00101. The information has always been present as long as the entry has been created. As such, when it came to adding variant entries to the database, the original entry was given the 00101 descriptor.

Incorrect. You yourself edited the title. It's in the history. "10-05-2021    dhaabi    Name    Animal Crossing (00101)". I added this to my collection years before. The reason why 1000+ members have it is because there was only one entry. You retitled it and created variants. This is nonsense clutter and it's ridiculous.

It was always 00101 - it says so on the image of the package.  You added it.  The fact the name was updated after the fact to reflect the packaging does not change that it was the version you added.

[dhaabi]

The reason why 1000+ members have it is because there was only one entry. You retitled it and created variants.

Correct. The only reason 1,000+ members have this specific entry added to their collection is because, for many years, there existed one entry for an item that has at least three variants. Now, that oversight has been amended.

What is interesting about this situation is that the original 00101 entry is not even the first or second print, either. It's the third. So an entry that was, for a time, representative of every variant was not even submitted with first print information. However, regardless of if the entry was submitted with the first or second print information, it still would have be given a title descriptor, as, again, there are at least three variants to exist, with three having been submitted to the database. To ensure that no entry in a specific category shares its entry name with another entry, descriptors (and TLDs, when necessary) are used.

As has been previously said, VGCollect will not at any time stop documenting variant items. So, until a better means of presenting this information to users is developed, items with variants will continue to look like this.

[telly]

Variants of games have always been in the database from "greatest hits", 3 and 5-screw carts, different covers and disc arts, all the way down to minute differences like item numbers. Whether one variant is acceptable to you or not is really a matter of personal taste. I think the best solution is to have these options available as a selectable feature.

[koemo1]

Now I'm also not a fan of these numbers or other things added to the titles of games.
Many times I have seen my games or my entries turned into Italian versions of the game.
Personally, I think this discourages new adopters of VGcollect because it adds extra layers of difficulty to put your collection in.