Official NES Homebrew Seal of Quality

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DRW
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Re: Official NES Homebrew Seal of Quality

Post by DRW »

Are you guys aware that you are talking about and mixing two totally different things?

One topic in this thread is:
Let's create a nice-looking public domain "Nintendo Seal of Quality" imitation that developers can use to make their game boxes and cartridges resemble the official ones from the 80s for nostalgic reasons.

The other, completely different topic is:
Let us, as a community, establish an official seal or logo that all the NES developers can put on their games, so that customers are readily aware of the nature of the game. Namely, an authentic NES game that runs on real hardware, but was developed in modern days.

Are you sure those two topics belong in the same thread?


My opinion on each of them:

Seal for nostalgic reasons:
Fine to me as long as it doesn't resemble Nintendo's official version too much. I don't need it myself because the seal wasn't a simple design convention, but communicated a specific message. Either, I can claim to have the rights to put the real seal on my box. And since I can't, there's no point in putting any seal there at all. But yeah, if people wanna do some parody seal, may they go ahead.

Seal for identification:
I find it pretty pointless. Not only is the homebrew community not unified, so why should I put some random thing on my game that some random people invented?
But also the seal itself is pretty redundant:
You don't need to tell the customer that this is an authentic NES game. They know this because the game comes on an NES cartridge.
You don't need to tell them that this is an "NES 2 era" game. A copyright of 2022 should be pretty indicative of the fact that this is not a 1989 game made by Konami or Sunsoft.
Besides, during the NES lifespan there weren't "eras" either. The boxes didn't come with seals saying "arcade-style era", "platformer era", "limit-pushing era" or "trying to survive against the SNES era". Why should there be an indicator on the box that explicitly says "this in a modern game for an old console"?
My game "City Trouble":
Gameplay video: https://youtu.be/Eee0yurkIW4
Download (ROM, manual, artworks): http://www.denny-r-walter.de/city.html
SethAbramson
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Re: Official NES Homebrew Seal of Quality

Post by SethAbramson »

DRW, just to clarify, one reason I think I misunderstood that Topic #1 even *could* be the chief topic of this thread is that... well... you all are creating unlicensed NES games. Unlicensed NES games *never* had a Seal of Quality—not in the 1980s, not in the 1990s, not in the 2000s, not in the 2010s. Why would someone feel so much nostalgia for a Seal that their own "category" of game was always denied by Nintendo?

It would only make sense if either (a) devs of unlicensed games wanted to publicly express their disappointment at being devs of unlicensed rather than licensed games, or (b) devs wanted to create some way to legitimize unlicensed games the way Nintendo did licensed games with the "Seal of Quality." That latter possibility was why I took this thread to be about what you refer to as Topic #2, which is admittedly a much more problematic topic. If a Seal is in any way intended to legitimize a game—which candidly shouldn't be needed—my point was that the basis of the seal should be as inarguable and non-qualitative as possible, i.e. time-based rather than founded in a contentious term like "homebrew."

On your second point, I can only speak from what I know as a collector as well as a gamer: there are *many* NES games getting released right now that are *not* self-evidently from the present time.

So many companies are now publishing NES prototypes that are from the 1980s and 1990s—which cannot be called homebrews and cannot be said to be "from 2022"—that actually a seal saying that an NES game published in 2022 is *actually* from the post-NES period *is* necessary. In fact, at RETRO I am about to publish a huge list of 100+ games that many, many people *think* are NES2 games but are actually not. And the reason they think this is not just because so many boxed for-sale prototypes are on the market now but also reproductions, localizations, and certain types of misleadingly marketed "special editions." (And don't get me started on hacks—can we really say a light edit of Super Mario Bros. 2 is "from 2022"?) I understand not everyone sees this problem because not everyone is a collector, but if I can bring that perspective to bear here I will say that it is, in fact, a pressing problem that many NES games are easily mistaken for NES2 games.

It is simply wrong, to me as a gamer and collector and NES2 fan, when people think Makai Island or Spy vs. Spy II: The Island Caper is indistinguishable from Trophy or Project Blue or Slow Mole.
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DRW
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Re: Official NES Homebrew Seal of Quality

Post by DRW »

SethAbramson wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 4:58 pm So many companies are now publishing NES prototypes that are from the 1980s and 1990s—which cannot be called homebrews and cannot be said to be "from 2022"—that actually a seal saying that an NES game published in 2022 is *actually* from the post-NES period *is* necessary.
So, tell me: If you invent a seal to indicate "modern NES game", and a specific game doesn't have that seal, how is the customer supposed to know whether this is some prototype/rerelease/whatever or whether it's a modern homebrew game by a developer who just doesn't care about your seal?

Someone who explicitly wants to communicate that his game is not old, but new doesn't need a dedicated seal. He would simply make sure that the copyright is prominently visible.
And a game that doesn't have the seal can still be a modern game or an old rerelease, so the customer wouldn't be any wiser and has to research in the same way as always.

Or to say it likes this:

Whoever publishes a game where people have difficulties to determine whether it's new or old, home-made or company-made, won't care about some fan-made seal that tells those things.

Do you think the guys at DataEast will slap the NESDev community's "old rerelease on new cartidge" seal on their box? Most likely not.
And do you think the script kiddie who hacks together a barely functional ROM and sloppily forgets to include a year on the title screen will care to take your "new home-made release" seal to use it? Nope.
And what about a huge company that invests 50.000 dollars to develop and publish a new NES game? Do you think they feel the need to rely on a seal created by some NESDev forum members?

And whoever publishes a game and has the strong desire that the first thing his customers note is that the game is not from the past, but brand new, has no need for a standardized seal either. He could simply write "Brand new NES game from 2022" on his box in whatever way he likes.


Also:

Why is the time of development and the nature of the developer such an important factor? You're making it sound like this is the objective, definite distinguishing factor of NES games. But "release date" and "developer" are just two of many arbitrary properties of a game. Why single out this piece of information to dedicate a seal to?

Maybe someone else doesn't care about the game's generation. Maybe he cares more about the complexity of a game and would therefore argue that a seal on an NES box should be an indicator of the size of the game. Or of the used mapper: "Seal of pure, barebones NROM game", "Seal of huge graphics UNROM game", "Seal of many midframe scanline effects and a ton of huge levels MMC3 game".

Imagine if somebody said:
So many homebrewers are now publishing primitive ROM files which can barely be called proper games. A seal saying that an NES game *actually* has enough levels, so that an experienced player needs at least 45 minutes to beat the game *is* necessary.

You see how random your filtering of era and developer is? It's in no way the distinguishing factor of an NES game. Just one of a hundred properties of a game. So, why should that standardized seal of yours specifically be about this particular piece of trivia? Why an era seal? Why not instead a seal that tells you from which country the game comes? Or a seal based on the number of objects on the screen that the game can handle simultaneously without lags? Why is "era" and "developer type" so important that it justifies a dedicated logo that all future NES developers are encouraged to use?
My game "City Trouble":
Gameplay video: https://youtu.be/Eee0yurkIW4
Download (ROM, manual, artworks): http://www.denny-r-walter.de/city.html
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Goose2k
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Re: Official NES Homebrew Seal of Quality

Post by Goose2k »

DRW wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 5:55 pm
SethAbramson wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 4:58 pm So many companies are now publishing NES prototypes that are from the 1980s and 1990s—which cannot be called homebrews and cannot be said to be "from 2022"—that actually a seal saying that an NES game published in 2022 is *actually* from the post-NES period *is* necessary.
So, tell me: If you invent a seal to indicate "modern NES game", and a specific game doesn't have that seal, how is the customer supposed to know whether this is some prototype/rerelease/whatever or whether it's a modern homebrew game by a developer who just doesn't care about your seal?
Wouldn't this label just be short hand for "this is a modern nes game"? Seems pretty simple to me. :? Not having it would not mean it's *not* modern, just that if you see it you know it is (similar to seeing "Copyright 2022" on it). The seal idea is nice though because it works for smaller images like thumbnails on Itch.io etc.

I think if it happens, it will likely be something that will happen organically. If some indicator (seal, icon, naming, etc) becomes how people quickly identify their games as part of a group, they'll just use it (similar to how they use "homebrew" even for games made by companies).
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Goose2k
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Re: Official NES Homebrew Seal of Quality

Post by Goose2k »

Thinking about it some more, maybe I could update the seal image I posted before, and just add an "est. 2020" or something to kill 2 birds with 1 stone.
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Re: Official NES Homebrew Seal of Quality

Post by Drag »

Ehh, don't read too deeply into this. :P

At the end of the day, any and all homebrew seals would be available for anyone who chooses to use them.

In general, having some vector seals and badges available for the community to use in labels, boxes, promotion, etc, (and maybe even some graphic design templates) would be nice resources for everybody who wants to use them.

For the purposes of documentation and preservation, we've got some ways to determine whether something is "technically" this or that, as has been discussed in the previous posts. :P

Having a definitive list of which ROMs are unreleased, homebrews, pirates, unlicensed, etc is the job of validation tools and databases, where I think seals and badges, as discussed in this thread, are more for fun than anything else (and that's perfectly ok).
SethAbramson
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Re: Official NES Homebrew Seal of Quality

Post by SethAbramson »

DRW, just to be clear, I do not have a seal, have not created a seal, and am not creating a seal. So there is no "your seal."

But to answer your question, five different categories of people who are not devs but are absolutely essential to maintaining a market (intellectual and consumer) for video games—video game journalists, video game historians, digital communications academics, museum curators, and long-term collectors—use periodization to distinguish between games.

That is why you know, I know, and everyone in this conversation knows that the NES was part of the third generation of video games. Not the first, not the sixth, not the thirty-fifth, but the third. Your suggestion that the fourth dimension of all existence—Time—is no more important to our understanding of a phenomenon than how many sprites appear on a television screen at once seems... respectfully... totally bizarre to me.
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DRW
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Re: Official NES Homebrew Seal of Quality

Post by DRW »

Goose2k wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 6:43 pm Wouldn't this label just be short hand for "this is a modern nes game"? Seems pretty simple to me. :? Not having it would not mean it's *not* modern, just that if you see it you know it is (similar to seeing "Copyright 2022" on it). The seal idea is nice though because it works for smaller images like thumbnails on Itch.io etc.
Yeah, and again my question: Why does the information "This is a modern NES game" deserve such a prominent display that you invent a dedicated seal for it? Do you want to clutter your box with 20 different seals?
A seal for "This is an MMC3 game".
A seal for "This game has more than 20 levels".
A seal for "This game has passwords/battery."
A seal for "This game uses obscure hardware tricks for cool effects".

If you don't want to do so many seals, why do we single out the property "modern" to give a seal to it? It is neither the thing that games from back then did. (Games didn't have symbols on the box that explicitly communicated the generation of the game. Their seal was about the game being licensed by the hardware company.) Nor is the release year any more definite than any other property of the game.
SethAbramson wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 10:08 pm DRW, just to be clear, I do not have a seal, have not created a seal, and am not creating a seal. So there is no "your seal."
Yeah, I'm talking about your hypothetical seal.
SethAbramson wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 10:08 pm But to answer your question, five different categories of people who are not devs but are absolutely essential to maintaining a market (intellectual and consumer) for video games—video game journalists, video game historians, digital communications academics, museum curators, and long-term collectors—use periodization to distinguish between games.
And none of these people needs a shortcut for this kind of information. Do you think a videogame journalist doesn't know what year a game came out unless it has a standardized round logo on the box?

Your seal is supposed to be intended for the average customer who does not do intense research. And for these people, my question was: Why do you believe that "era"/"generation" is the thing that these people are most interested in and need to see it at first glance? Why not "genre" or "complexity"? Why single out "era" for a seal for noobs, but not "genre"?
SethAbramson wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 10:08 pm That is why you know, I know, and everyone in this conversation knows that the NES was part of the third generation of video games. Not the first, not the sixth, not the thirty-fifth, but the third.
Notice something? None of these generation numbers had to appear as a seal on the console's box for you to know this. Preserving the generation is already covered by the copyright notice. A seal for it is redundant.
SethAbramson wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 10:08 pm Your suggestion that the fourth dimension of all existence—Time—is no more important to our understanding of a phenomenon than how many sprites appear on a television screen at once seems... respectfully... totally bizarre to me.
Because "time" is not important to the enjoyment of a game. If a customer sees two games and doesn't know anything about each of them, the question "What genre is each game?" or "How complex is each game?" is much more important for his decision which game to buy than the question "In what year did the game come out?" Even the question whether this was made in NESMaker, in C or in pure Assembly is more indicative of what kind of game you get.
"Time" is important for people who archive information about the games. But those people don't need a shortcut logo that is designed in a way so that even the biggest noob can understand it. They can simply look at the copyright screen.


Conclusion: Do your seal if it makes you happy, but I don't believe this particular piece of information is definite and important enough to justify a unique artistic symbol on the box and I 100% don't believe that such a seal will ever become any meaningful community standard.
My game "City Trouble":
Gameplay video: https://youtu.be/Eee0yurkIW4
Download (ROM, manual, artworks): http://www.denny-r-walter.de/city.html
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Re: Official NES Homebrew Seal of Quality

Post by SethAbramson »

OK, got it.
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DRW
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Re: Official NES Homebrew Seal of Quality

Post by DRW »

By the way, I wasn't trying to put you down. If you have a game and you want to put such a label on it, go ahead. I was just pointing out that you're trying to solve a problem that nobody has.

An official "NESDev Seal of Quality" might even make kind of sense. If you want to give an indicator that a certain game is approved by the community as a product of quality and not a rush job, then establishing such a seal would serve both as nostalgia and as legitimization.

But a purely informational seal ("This game is an NES2 era game") serves no purpose:
It isn't nostalgic because this kind of seal was never used in commercial games.
It's redundant because it just repeats what the copyright already says anyway.
And if we establish this seal, we have to establish a dozen other seals as well (genre, player number, mapper/technology, game size, difficulty, ...).
My game "City Trouble":
Gameplay video: https://youtu.be/Eee0yurkIW4
Download (ROM, manual, artworks): http://www.denny-r-walter.de/city.html
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Re: Official NES Homebrew Seal of Quality

Post by gauauu »

A seal for "This is an MMC3 game".
A seal for "This game has more than 20 levels".
A seal for "This game has passwords/battery."
A seal for "This game uses obscure hardware tricks for cool effects".
I actually kind of like the idea of using some sort of semi-standard badge that indicates some of this stuff, sort of like Nintendo Power's short-lived badges that showed tech specs like mappers. I don't know how you'd come up with a small but readable system that contains the right things that different people would care about, but it would be really fun to be able to see, at a glance:

- what mapper and size
- does it user a battery/password/flash
- estimated game time for completion
- number of players and supported peripherals
- some sort of bragging about tech (nesmaker, assembly, cool raster effects, etc?)

That said, I don't see this ever actually happening in a useful way.
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Re: Official NES Homebrew Seal of Quality

Post by qbradq »

gauauu wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 9:35 am ...but it would be really fun to be able to see, at a glance:

- what mapper and size
- does it user a battery/password/flash
- estimated game time for completion
- number of players and supported peripherals
- some sort of bragging about tech (nesmaker, assembly, cool raster effects, etc?)

That said, I don't see this ever actually happening in a useful way.
Not that my opinion should mean much around here, but isn't this what the back of the box is for? Or at least what it has always been used for? I get most of this information on the back of most game boxes.

That said if the OP wants to use a snazzy graphic to communication this information and they would like it on the front of the box, go for it. If they want others to adopt it, make the graphic open-source and do it in a vector format like SVG. Others that like the idea may take them up on it.

But like I said, my opinion should mean very little. I do a drive-by on this forum once every few years when the 8-bit bug strikes :)
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Re: Official NES Homebrew Seal of Quality

Post by Goose2k »

gauauu wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 9:35 am I actually kind of like the idea of using some sort of semi-standard badge that indicates some of this stuff, sort of like Nintendo Power's short-lived badges that showed tech specs like mappers.
To me, what info goes on the cover just depends on if the information is a marketable data point. MicroMages showed that even being NROM can be marketable if framed in an interesting way. For me being an actual NES game is the most important part of these games, so much that I plopped a big NES image on top of my cover art on Itch :o

Image

The stuff that was important back in the licensed era doesn't seem as relevant today. I'm just speaking subjectively though. I'm not sure what the vast majority of people care about.

https://imgur.com/gallery/687mOK8
qbradq wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 9:53 am That said if the OP wants to use a snazzy graphic to communication this information and they would like it on the front of the box, go for it. If they want others to adopt it, make the graphic open-source and do it in a vector format like SVG. Others that like the idea may take them up on it.
Exactly.
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Re: Official NES Homebrew Seal of Quality

Post by gauauu »

Goose2k wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 9:57 am I'm not sure what the vast majority of people care about.
There's the rub. Everyone cares about different things anyway.
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Re: Official NES Homebrew Seal of Quality

Post by tepples »

This is the last post on the page of 15, so it'll probably get ignored. I'll share my thoughts anyway.

"NES2" to me connotes the top-loading New-Style NES Control Deck (NES-101).

To me, "homebrew" means "indie" plus "unlicensed". I see merit in a definition of an "indie" developer proposed by ceoyoyo on Slashdot in June 2015: either an individual or a company too small to qualify for venture capital. Under current law in what is probably the largest single-language market allowing public criticism of elected officials, an accredited investor is a business with at least 5 million USD of net worth.

As for the nature of the developer being important: One major wiki that catalogs unlicensed games excludes homebrew games from its scope. It defines homebrew games as those that are "made as a hobby and usually don't have a full-time development team behind them." I felt somewhat called out by this definition, seeing as I currently work less than full-time for Retrotainment Games. So in July 2018, nesrocks proposed "officebrew".

As for seals saying era: Black box means "first-party game from the discrete mapper era." Gray box using black box angle motif means "first batch of first-party games using an ASIC mapper." Regardless of publisher, in North America, a round Nintendo Seal means early, and red band at top means "trying to survive against Genesis and Super NES."

Various box designs of unlicensed games had their own emblems in place of the Official Nintendo Seal. 💠️ U+1F4A0 TENGEN SEAL OF QUALITY comes to mind.

"the third generation of video games"
This is made up by Wikipedia editors. It misses the substantial step in capability from the early second generation (Channel F, Apple II, Atari 2600, Odyssey 2) to the late second generation (Intellivision, Atari 400/800/5200, C64, ColecoVision), particularly seeing as one console with an identical chipset to the ColecoVision (SG-1000) was released the same month as the Famicom.

"what mapper and size"
Reminds me of Sega Master System and Neo Geo game boxes bragging about how many megabits are on the cartridge.
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