Treat Game Versions as First-Class Entries
Related Requests
Group Related Games Across Platforms
Add a Better Version Picker for Combined Games
š Summary
Expand version handling so regional variants, ROM hacks, prototypes, translations, demos, and similar versions can have full metadata, media, and tracking under one parent game.
ā Problem
Additional Apps and alternate versions are useful, but they do not behave like full game entries.
Users may want each version of a game to have its own:
Title
Region
Release date
Description
Media
Manual
Play count
Play time
Progress status
Achievement set
This is especially important for collectors, ROM hacks, fan translations, prototypes, demos, and regional variants.
š” Proposal
Introduce first-class version entries under a single parent game.
A parent game could contain multiple fully tracked versions, such as:
USA release
Japan release
Fan translation
Prototype
ROM hack
Demo
Enhanced edition
Each version could keep its own metadata and media while still appearing under one clean parent entry.
Users should also be able to choose the default version that controls the main Play action and primary displayed artwork.
š§© Use Cases
Track playtime separately for different regional versions
Give ROM hacks and translations their own metadata and media
Store different manuals, screenshots, or box art per version
Switch the default version shown for a game
Use a merged view or expanded collector-style view
š¦ Benefits
Better support for collectors and archivists
Removes limitations of Additional Apps
Cleaner libraries without losing version detail
More accurate tracking for regions, hacks, prototypes, and translations
Stronger Big Box presentation for multi-version games
ā ļø Considerations
This is a larger long-term feature. It should be treated separately from simpler UI improvements like a better version picker or related-game grouping.
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Comments2
Retrofrogg
Jan 8
Yeah something like this would be an ideal solution. Combining ROMs is a very clean approach and it does make it nice and easy to quickly choose which version of the game you want - but currently this is at the expense of having any information or metadata on the combined ROMs. The comined ROMs will also not show in auto-playlists - only the main one does.
So yeah I fully support this.
This is very similar to Megadanās request:
https://feedback.launchbox.gg/p/ability-to-search-or-filter-on-combined-rom
HanzJWeasel
Nov 14, 2025
I would absolutely like to see something a little more robust when it comes to regional differences. Regional differences such as graphics changes and what not (e.g. Contra and Probotector) make me want to have each of them as their own entry, but they show up as duplicates in the audit.