Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

--- prominos-lexx-playground [2025/02/02 03:15] – prominos
+++ prominos-lexx-playground [2025/02/06 22:43] (current) – [How this guide is structured] prominos
@@ Line 23: / Line 23: @@
 and many more
-===== How this guide is structured =====
+===== How is this guide structured? =====
 This guide will first cover topics that are universal to any cataloging effort regardless of what is being cataloged. This will cover topics such as how to read and interpret UPC barcodes.
@@ Line 33: / Line 33: @@
 Each system will also have a separate page concerning hardware cataloging for that specific system.
-Finally I plan to have a that describes every publisher part numbering system. These systems are often applied by publishers. If one of those system is instead specific to a developer or distributor then a page will be created accordingly.
+Finally I plan to create a unique page for every publisher part numbering system. These systems are often applied by publishers. If one such system is instead specific to a developer or distributor then a page will be created accordingly.
+===== A primer on barcodes =====
+Barcodes have become an ubiquitous way to tag every unique products sold by an organization. Video games products are no exception, therefore I can't overstate their usefulness in cataloging products. It also comes as no surprise that stores and warehouses use the profusely in their inventory system. With a barcode in hand you can:
+  * Identify the distributor of the product.
+  * Identify the distributor's country of origin.
+  * Uniquely identify each product for that publisher/distributor
+  * Given a list of known barcodes and products for an organization, identify gaps in their barcode space that can lead to the discovery of previously unknown or unreleased products from that organization.
+Some limitations of barcodes:
+  * They are not always present. Not every companies adopted barcodes at the same time, in my experience with video game products, vintage and retro video games that came out before the 1990's have good chances to be lacking a barcode. Additionally, products that are part of a bundle or were not sold for retail, like contest prizes, development tools, display cases etc also often lack a barcode.
+  * While barcodes are a good way to identify different products in a cataloging project, they almost never uniquely identify packaging (cover and boxes), art revision or sometimes even different language boxes/covers and/or editions. If we're striving to catalog every variations/correction to a product packaging then we can't rely solely on barcodes.
+In the next section, I will introduce the most important format of barcodes you should know when cataloging video games. I won't go over every single format in existence my focus will mainly be on what you'll encounter when looking at video game products.
+=== International Article Number AKA EAN (European Article Number) ===
+{{:ean2.jpg?400|}}{{:ean_guards.jpg?400|}}
+You will find this format of barcode mostly on products that are sold outside of North America and Japan.
+   * It consists of 13 numbers.
+   * The first 7 numbers identifies the company (also called the prefix).
+       * Within these 7 numbers, the first 3 identifies the country of the GS1 organization responsible for assigning that prefix. Often that will match the country where the product is being sold but it is not a requirement.
+   * The next 5 numbers uniquely identifies a product sold or distributed by that company (also called the suffix).
+   * The last digit is called a check digit and is an error detection measure used to make sure the rest of the barcode has been read correctly. (Usually by a barcode reader but it can also be calculated manually)
+We can analyze the above EAN barcode the following way:
+   * 497: This falls withing the 490 to 499 country code range which corresponds to the prefixes administrated by GS1 Japan. This barcode comes from Sonic the Hedgehog (8-bit) for Master System sold in Europe, notice how even though the final product was sold in Europe the barcode indicates Japan. This is a good example showing that where a product is sold and where its barcode is issued doesn't necessarily matches. The cover for this product, however, indicates that it was Made in Japan so there's still a logical explanation to this.
+   * 4365: This is the numbers that were assigned to Sega of Japan, sure enough this is a Sonic the Hedgehog game so that make sense. With that said when we talk about the manufacturer/company prefix we usually include the entire 7 numbers so Sega of Japan's barcode prefix would be 4974365.
+   * 63476: This is the product code for Sonic the Hedgehog (8-bit) for master system (European Version). The company to which the prefix belongs (in this case Sega of Japan) is responsible for managing this range of 5 digits meaning they can register products from 4974365 00000X to 4974364 99999X for a total of 100 000 unique products. If they want to register more than 100 000 products they would have to go back to GS1 to get a additional prefix recorded, then they'd have a new range for an additional 100 000 products.
+   * 6: This is the check digit, I won't go into the detail of how it is calculated but just know that its value depends on the 12 previous digits.
+One last thing to mention is that you might runs into EAN barcodes that ends with a ">" (greater than) symbol (see the image above). This is called a guard mark and it is not part of the barcode per se, it is just used to help barcode readers read it properly. I have also heard that some barcodes can start with "<" (lesser than) this also works in the same way and is not considered part of the barcode so you can safely omit them when cataloging.
+=== Universal Product Code (UPC) ===
+{{::upc-a.jpg?400|}}
+You'll mostly see these in North America. They were the first version of the barcode to be used en masse and it originated in the United States. They work the exact same way as the EAN but the company prefix is 6 digits long instead of 7. You can easily convert a UPC to EAN by prepending a 0 to the UPC (this has no impact on the check digit). You'll notice that visually the check digit is shown separated from the product code contrary to the EAN where the check digit is grouped with the product code. What I've shown here is a UPC-A format, there are other UPC formats but I haven't seen them used with video game products.
+  * 04: With UPC-A you can consider that there's always an implicit 0 at the start so this is really a country code of 004. Since the first number is always a 0 that implies that the country code always indicate the United States given that GS1 country codes between 000 to 099 are either assigned to the USA, are reserved or have some other special meanings.
+  * 5496: This company prefix is assigned to Nintendo. We usually refer to it including the country code (without the implicit 0) so 045496.
+  * 59043: This is the product code that Nintendo assigned to the Legend of Zelda - Breath of the Wild, Canadian version on Nintendo Switch (remember barcode country code is not necessarily equal to place of sale). .
+  * 7: This is the check digit, it serves the same purpose as described above in the EAN section.