Tagging games with numbers as series

Question

Do we want to be consistent with numbering in our tags? There's generally two conventions, your standard 0-9, and roman numerals (i, ii, etc), and we're already using both. It seemed harmless at first, until I thought about games we haven't covered yet that would be numbered, and I saw...

[megaman-x]

Many people unfamiliar with the timeline confused Megaman X as being the "10th game in the series" rather than a separate series altogether. Now that we actually have a 10 to stifle that confusion, it's understood that X would refer to the actual letter, not the number.

Further research shows that I'm actually bad at memory and the first 6 games weren't numbered with roman numerals. However, the 5 games on the Game Boy were. Which means there's literally bother a [megaman-5] and a [megaman-v]. So it's really a confusing if you don't actually know the series to know that they're separate games.

In review, the majority of game tags we currently have do use 0-9, it's only a small handful that use roman numerals. Do we think it's a good idea we solidify the 0-9 system for numbering the different games in a specific series? Or maybe we really should just stick with how it is rendered in the actual game title, even if it can be confusing?

Answer 1

My thought, using your specific megaman example (which seems to be a good example), is to not use roman numerals ever, and to provide a console context when needed, and you should be able to distinguish between all of these. So the three games you mentioned would be:

[megaman-5] [gameboy]
[megaman-5] [nes]
[megaman-x]

(Note: [snes] tag is not actually needed on Megaman X, but might be nice for a console spanning series like that)

Answer 2

Maybe it's best to use the actual name of the game. For example, there is no game called "Diablo 2", but there is one called "Diablo II".

But then again, not everyone knows (or cares about) the correct game name...

EDIT I'm keeping my answer here for historical purposes but I do like to say I prefer Adam's solution better after all.

Answer 3

Creating synonyms for the games released with roman numerals (and a search that picks it up) might be a solution, so that [final-fantasy-7] automatically becomes [final-fantasy-vii].

This solution also allows the mega-man games to co-exits under their proper name, by not creating a synonym where applicable.

also here...

BTW: the Mega Man Series are annoying anyways ;)

Answer 4

What is the situation here? Megaman aside, nobody seems to have disagreed with alexanderpas and Oak's answers, but we're not acting on those suggestions. The most notable example, somewhat inevitably, is [starcraft-2].