Research Realm:Discussion archives/Video game versions
The wiki pages on Rock Raiders are shaping up nicely, but I was curious, does anyone else think we should split the PC and PS1 versions of Rock Raiders into different pages?
— Klavvy (Baraklava) 11:30, 24 January 2023 (CET)
I've thought about it. I'm conflicted though leaning against it.
On the one hand they're pretty different, I can't really think of ports like that that were basically different games. And I remember something about DDI wanting to port the PS game to PC as a separate game.
On the other hand they were marketed as one title, and started off being more similar right? And they share a lot of assets and concepts and development that'd be duplicated on each page. And most sites seem to treat games as a single "thing" based on them being named the same or developed and marketed as one thing even if some versions are different.
Plus how would whatever's decided apply to other Lego games? internally I'm sure most game versions are different but like on the surface the three main versions of Lego Racers for example are all pretty much the same. the GBC version seems different but that's mostly because it's crunched onto a Gameboy. Meanwhile all the Lego Island 2 versions have a lot of differences but they're still more similar in their core gameplay than Rock Raiders.
I guess I'm not sure because this game has such a weird unique situation. For now I'm treating it as a single title, and if people want the different versions split up we'd probably want to decide how to apply that to other games, or just have different pages for technical and file stuff and keep a single Wikipedia-style overview page for all versions. But idk what everyone else thinks.
Are there any other games like this where a (non handheld) port was very different and made by the same developers? I'd imagine most cases are because of a port being passed off to a different studio or something, not because half the team was told at the last minute to change plans
Maybe this situation is so unique just because Lego Media was just so uniquely incompetent.
— Ringtail Raider 13:24, 24 January 2023 (CET)
Powerslave/ Exhumed, but that's out of technical limitations
Console releases were a custom engine but pc was just in build engine and not as good Very different games because of that despite sharing assets, I'm talking completely different mechanics and level design
I'm personally all for pc and psx being seperate pages
— EmeraldCoasttt 18:52, 24 January 2023 (CET)
This is very true x3
One argument I'd make for splitting them is simple because of how different they work, so if you for example want to check out how to mod vehicles or something, which is only for the PC version, it might be confusing that the PS version is there too
— Klavvy (Baraklava) 21:21, 24 January 2023 (CET)
Isn't that true for most Lego games tho? Like we haven't worked out how to mod Lego Racers PS/N64 yet even though they're basically the same game.
I'd assume modding stuff would be its own page tho idk
— Ringtail Raider 21:25, 24 January 2023 (CET)
Yeah that's fair enough, you have a point. Let's go with combining them unless we come to some other conclusion in the future!
— Klavvy (Baraklava) 21:30, 24 January 2023 (CET)
I think they should be split because they're vastly different mechanically
And thus it would be hard to use it as a resource while playing the game
Whereas something like the different versions of Lego Racers' mechanical differences can be handled in a paragraph
— EmeraldCoasttt 23:01, 24 January 2023 (CET)
The more I think about it the harder time I'm having disagreeing... only issue I have against is how to handle development stuff that applies to both games like art and cutscenes, and whether to treat them equally or make the PC game the "primary" article
— Ringtail Raider 00:30, 27 January 2023 (CET)
