Comprehensive list of Famicom and NES titles?

[Ghegs]

(Not sure if the thread's a better fit here or in Other Gaming)

I was doing some researching into NES games exclusive to either US or PAL and was surprised to find that there doesn't seem to be a single, comprehensive, all-encompassing list of all officially licensed games for Famicom (including FDS) and NES. This seems odd, considering the importance of the system world-wide.

In Wikipedia there's these lists:
List of Famicom games
List of Famicom Disk System games
List of Nintendo Entertainment System games

Usually I'd just grab the lists and write some code to combine and parse them, but this proved problematic.

The lists aren't entirely accurate. The "List of Famicom games" claims that the Famicom Tetris is same game as NES Tetris, despite the two being very different. There's Power Blazer / Power Blade which IMO are different enough that they should be considered separate titles, but they're listed as the same in the list.

The NES list has separate entries for "Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!" and "Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream" which I kind of get, but at the end of the day the difference is just a sprite swap of a single character, not really something that should be considered a separate game. And that could lead into "Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream wasn't released in Japan, but Japan has the exclusive Gold cartridge Punch-Out which doesn't have Mike Tyson/Mr. Dream at all, so that should be considered a separate release, even if it wasn't released in retail" -types of discussions...

And the Lolo/Eggerland games are a whole mess.

I'm starting to wonder if making a single comprehensive list is even possible. At the very least there would have to be tons of footnotes. But if somebody knows of a list like that, do let me know.

[P]

I have done similar research for other Nintendo systems and it was basically impossible to find a list of all released games for the system by just searching the internet. I found many lists all with very different numbers of games listed.

Here are my thoughts:

Wikipedia seems to generally be no good at all for this.
The first thing I notice in the Wikipedia article is that Family BASIC is mentioned in a note and not part of the list. Why not just add it to the list instead of adding a note about it? Because it isn't a game? We are not really interested if a title is a game or not, we are only interested if it is a licensed release which it is so it should definitely be in the list without question. It's not a special case or anything, if terminology is a problem we can just say "titles" or "releases" instead of "games".
It's not like Family BASIC and V3 are the only non-game titles either, so the list is clearly missing many games.

Famicom World has its own list which is much more detailed with the release IDs listed, but I'm not sure if it is complete, also it has a focus on Famicom titles and are missing NES exclusives.

Like you say the border between a revision and a different title is not always clear. I think Mike Tyson and Mr Dream versions of Punch-Out are clearly different revisions of the same title so they count as one game. Although Gold Punch-Out is basically a prototype version of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, since it's a promotional release I think it is its own title and even has its own release ID (HVC-PT-S instead of HVC-PT). Family BASIC and Family BASIC V3 are also clearly two different titles and they also has separate release IDs (HVC-BS and HVC-VT respectively) so I don't think there is any doubt that they should have individual entries in the list. Versions 1, 2 and 2A of Family BASIC however are just different revisions of HVC-BS and thus they are all the same title. V3 has much more than just an updated version of NS-HuBASIC and came in its own box, and is therefore its own release.

A list should probably base its content on Nintendo's catalogue this way, if it has its own ID it is its own release (though NES releases doesn't have IDs AFAIK). But a system for handling special cases is most likely needed, for example promotional games and other unconventional releases that doesn't have a release ID.

A title would have revisional variants and regional variants, but revisional variants are usually not included in a database of titles, so a footnote is required for games like the Mr Dream version of Punch-Out which changes its name with the revision.
Regional variants should have their relationship marked somehow like in Famicom World's database, although there are probably a bunch of special cases where you could argue a regional variant is so different that it is no longer the same game as the original.

Then we have unlicensed games which is an entirely different beast. Especially since any homebrew you make is unlicensed there is no possible way to make a complete list of all homebrew in existence. A list of unlicensed commercial games may be possible and more desirable though, as well as lists of homebrew that are available for a free release and has spread.

[Ghegs]

"Titles" or "Releases" would probably be the term to use, to cover them all. I do agree that Famicom BASIC and other similar releases should be included in the list.

Famicom  World's list is indeed lacking the NES exclusives, but it's probably the best and most complete starting point. If the staff has any interest in expanding it to cover NES titles as well, that'd be awesome, but it'd certainly be somewhat out of scope for the website's focus.

This is pretty interesting to think about. I do have some experience in designing databases and making UI's to look through the data, but the database structure for this gets pretty complex fast the more I think about it. EDIT: Actually, no...I think I was just going about it the wrong way, it wouldn't be a terribly complex structure after all.

But a system for handling special cases is most likely needed, for example promotional games and other unconventional releases that doesn't have a release ID.

True, stuff like Gradius Archimendes Hen and Kidou Senshi Z-Gundam: Hot Scramble Final Version...and then there's Datach Joint ROM System and Karaoke Studio that come with their own specialized cartridges, in the former's case for games and in the latter's for more songs, and they're expansion packs which can't be played without the "main" release, so that's another footnote.

Then we have unlicensed games which is an entirely different beast. Especially since any homebrew you make is unlicensed there is no possible way to make a complete list of all homebrew in existence. A list of unlicensed commercial games may be possible and more desirable though, as well as lists of homebrew that are available for a free release and has spread.

I'd leave out unlicensed and homebrew releases out of this hypothetical master list, because like you said it's a different beast and it would also require constant updating to keep up-to-date as more homebrews come out. A Famicom/NES Master List for official releases could be possible to create and then freeze (other than for making corrections, anyway).

The best homebrew list I know of is this one but it apparently hasn't been updated since 2019, so it's lacking a lot of recent really good stuff like F-Theta, From Below, Witch 'n Wiz, Alwa's Awakening, etc.

[P]

I agree, listing any unlicensed titles (including unlicensed commercial titles, non-commercial homebrew, bootlegs, hacks and prototypes of licensed titles) would be a sister project and far harder to complete.

Licensed games for the system are indeed finite and even if Nintendo would officially release a new licensed title after the date that the Famicom/NES was officially considered discontinued it would be a special case and probably not need to become part of the original master list of licensed games.