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| id | key | text | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arcade board | The Arcade hardware landscape is made of many, many different boards, each running one or more games inside a cabinet. Please see this list for further information. In order to not pollute our hardware platforms too much with all these board information, we should push those one level down into the sub-platforms, hence the entry here. The relationship to the games released for these boards can later be mapped using the compatibility facility. | |
| 2 | Hardware model | Not every machine of one hardware platform is the same. For instance, the console manufacturers used to release different generations of one console, with slight modifications, or let third party companies release clones under different names to increase game sales. See here for the Sega genesis example. This entry is to document these (official) different models, and document game incompatibilities that inevitably arose with them. | |
| 3 | Inofficial clone | This is like case 3, but regards to the illegal / inofficial re-builds of popular hardware platforms. Please read on here for further information. These clones could gain quite some popularity, especially within countries where the original hardware wasn't available, like in the Eastern Bloc. | |
| 4 | Hardware with Emulator | This entry represents all published special hardware devices that make games playable on a specific game hardware , that were previously available in on the original hardware (console or computer) playable on a specific new game hardware using an internal emulator. |
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