I will start with a game I downloaded this morning and I first thought it is original:
POPULOUS.3.THE.BEGINNING-PARADiGM
Why did I thought that?
-it says on NZB King: 1998 SCENE FILES NOT 2002 REPACK
-I thought if SFV has dates in it like 14:26.27 1998-11-04, that it's 100% original. But thinking more about it, this can be generated even right now, you can simply change date in Windows to be close to release date.
But now I searched srrDB, and I see this:
https://www.srrdb.com/release/details/P ... G-PARADiGM
https://www.srrdb.com/release/details/P ... iSO_REPACK
Same releases, second one is marked as a repack, first one has PARADiGM in the name, but we all know they used PDMiSO in 1998.
I also opened the BIN and it was strange to me that folder dates are from December 1998, and it says in the NFO the game was released in November 1998.
Populous_3_The_Beginning-PDMiSO is also on the missing list, so my verdict:
100% a repack
EDIT 2019.02.05:
Some additional evidence it is a repack:
http://www.forum.torrminatorr.com/viewt ... 096#p22096
So what I learned so far in determining repacks:
1. If it's not even on srrDB. That means it's very unlikely that yours is scene. And even if it were, you don't have anything to compare it to.
2. Most obvious way to tell is if the RAR parts are 50 MB instead of 15 MB, then you don't have to look further.
3. Another simple and quick way is to open the RAR's and check the date of the bin/cue. If it's later than the release date of the game, that means it's a repack.
But date can even be earlier as these repackers are sloppy and don't check the exact release date of the game.
Game may also be a re-release, that's mostly CLASSIC, RARNeT and iNTERNAL releases. But most of the time the release year is written in the NFO.
4. Of course, bin/cue date can also be modified. But you can mount the bin and check the folder dates. They shouldn't be later than the date in the NFO, but they can be some days earlier.
I will paste a list of all major missing games on Pastebin. List of repacks is not that big for now, so I will just paste it here.
I have so more questions, so I hope someone else joins the discussion.
But 1998 is almost pointless to discuss, I only found 10 originals out of almost a 100, so that means only 10% got preserved.
1999 is better, I think I even got 50%. And 2000 90-95%.
I will replace the missing games with Redump.org games which I think are the second best option. But it's too bad there isn't some forum where you can share them, so my major source is Archive.org.
Of course there is no rule we can't share them here under P2P Released Games, but it has to be some interest first. I have quite a collection of them already.
Added in 27 minutes 39 seconds:
This one is interesting:
OutRage-DVNiSO
https://www.srrdb.com/release/details/OutRage-DVNiSO
It was very hard to find, so I checked the NFO and googled outrage nms software game. This is what I found:
https://www.mobygames.com/company/nms-software-ltd
When NMS went bust the racing game Hover / Outrage was finished (gold) but never got released.
But I don't even like to collect less known games and games which were scored less than 70%. I check the scores at our very good Slovenian magazine:
https://jocker.eu.org/arhiv.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joker_(Sl ... _magazine)
I can't say for sure as I don't know them all, but it was (last number was October 2017) probably one of the best if not the best video game magazines in the world.
Sadly it's not even listed here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_v ... _magazines
But it's understandable, as the population is only 2mil and the magazine had a circulation of only around 10.000 in it's best years, in the end around half less.
What I like the most is that their scores were very thought through and they always took account of scores of previous games. It's not like with some magazines like PC Format where they were almost random.
But I checked a lot of games on Metacritic and the scores are +/- 5 for 95% of games, so that's also a place to look.
Serbian Svet kompjutera is also probably in the top 5 in the world, but sadly they don't have a score archive.