TalonMan said:
That's one of the enhancements of the new database - the ability to record the real Japanese title (along with any Japanese writing associated with the title). As has been discussed already, the design of the game search page doesn't have enough room for regional sales to display, anyway - so even if you wanted to see all the Japanese sales for a game with Super Mario in the title, you wouldn't be able to get at that because we're currently showing only the "Total Sales" for a given game. |
I guess I'm just confused. When I perform a game search with the Japanese region selected and "super mario" in the name box I obtain a fairly complete set of Super Mario games with the Japanese sales data. The search won't return any results when I use the partial Japanese title "スーパーマリオ", despite that title appearing in most of the Super Mario titles as part of an alternate name. The Japanese region search only works when the game details field "Japanese Name (if different):", which contains the English pronunciation of the Japanese title, is not empty... and in that case it entirely supersedes the English name. Presumably, typing "super mario" as a Japanese region search only works because most Super Mario titles have an empty romanization field.
Intuitively, it feels like the region field should restrict the sales column to data only from that region. And in that way it works... when we select a region from the dropdown menu, it will only show sales data for that region. But it seems strange that it would require a user to input the name of the game in that region (or in this case the English pronunciation of the name) in order to obtain the data, especially when the database doesn't have most of the data. Regardless of the region, selecting a game from the search will yield the same page and I don't think the database differentiates between Japanese vs NA vs PAL versions of games in our collections. Ideally, I would be able to type "zelda" or "zeruda" or ”ゼルダ" into the search and still obtain a list of all Zelda games. The region selector would still change the display name of the game and the sales data to reflect the region.
Anyways, I appreciate the work you've completed since your return. There's a fresh sense of optimism and activity that has been missing throughout the past few years. I've already taken advantage of the new database (and submitted plenty of edits to keep the team busy :D).
