Question ..

[Myrkul]

I think vgmdb should definitely write/publish a FAQ regarding how to "correctly" enter an album into the database.. i still have myself some questions that could need clear answers.


Regarding Platform


Should we attach an album to platform regarding the release date.. ?
(let say an album released in 1998 can't be normally related to PSP.. -until they reused the music in it ?-)

For example i'll take my recent discussion about Legend of Heroes III Electric Orchestra.
The album was released on 2001, it can't be related to PSP since the PSP game were released in 2004.

Matter is.. i could say the same for the NEC-98 as it's too old.. BUT it's an arrange album.. so we "could" say it's related to every versions.. ?


What if it's clearly an "original soundtrack" and not an arrange album.
What about dramas? (that could be difficulty attached to a particular game)



Regarding --Display-- Titles/Translation

I am often confused how some albums are titled cause they either are translated or romanized, or sometimes they are converted with their US/Euro titles while it's a japanese album...

example:

Ultimate Warriors Dadandarn
It's a litteral translation.. googling for it will result in few website talking about the album entered on vgmdb, but you will not find info/screens about the game.
While googling for Kyukyoku Sentai Dadandarn will find infos/screens for the game, it's a romazination, but that's the most known title.
I know we can enter 3 or 4 different titles for the album, but i am talking about the "display" one..


Or then should we translate "Garou Densetsu" to "Legend of the Hungry Wolf" ? Doukyuusei should be Classmates..

We traducted "Justice Gakuen" to Justice High School.. but we don't translate Choujin Gakuen Gowcaizer ?

We translated "Choaniki - The Ultimate, Invincible, Most Galactically Powerful Man" but not "Aniki no Subete (that should mean "All about Aniki") ?

Houkago Renai Club should be Casual Romance Club ?

We have 1 Animal Crossing while it should be Animal Forest ?

We have both Hajuku Eiyuu and Hanjuko Hero..

These are just a few, but there's plenty more.


Thanks.
I know i sometimes can have boring questions... but i am just a damn perfectionist.


As a bonus question and just to debate about it, do you usually call you albums the "romazined" way ? the literate translation way ? or just the name under you know the game ?
(an example could be the 3 different names for Fatal Frame 2 / Project Zero 2 / Zero: Akai Cho )

[Secret Squirrel]

Platform
For soundtracks, I think this field should only contain the platform that this specific music is from. This is very important for the older platforms, where the music sounded different depending on the platform. For the newer soundtracks, Xbox360 & PC & PS3 all pretty much sound the same because it's usually digital. The gray area for these is the case where the music is reused for versions of the game that come later.

(To make things even more confusing, some of the music from various Koei arrange albums are used in recent Sangokushi and Sangokushi online games.)

Arrange albums are also similarly gray. I don't mind expanding the platforms to include all of the possible ones that the game appeared on. However, please don't do this for an album that has one arrange and the rest are original. This is because....

The original purpose behind the inclusion of the Platform field was to identify the source of music on albums like Lagoon, which comes from the Sharp X68000, and was a source of puzzlement back when we were mainly familiar with the SNES version of the game.

Display Titles
We've been discussing this a lot, and I'll have to re-read what we have in the submission help, because it's pretty important.

We should never translate a game name. If the game has an English release, then use the official title from that release. If not, then stick with the romanization of the Japanese. (There are apparently a couple of exceptions to this, mainly some anime-related titles because of the fansubbing and fan-translations. Blah knows more about these.)

For album titles, it's not quite so set in stone because the title might include a game name along with some other flavor text. So, if Aniki no Subete isn't part of a game name, but just part of the album name, then it's okay to translate it to English.

[Secret Squirrel]

I added some clarification to the help text for the title fields. Hopefully it explains things a little better.