Treat Game Versions as First-Class Entries

Related Requests

Group Related Games Across Platforms

Add a Better Version Picker for Combined Games

📋 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.

❗ 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.

💡 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.

🧩 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

📦 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

⚠️ 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.