Reviving Retool.

One Game, One ROM needed more than a region filter.

A preservation catalogue file, commonly called a DAT, can contain dozens of releases of the same game. Regions, languages, revisions, budget rereleases, compilations and prototypes all sit beside one another. Traditional One Game, One ROM selection relies heavily on parent-and-clone links and region order. That can select a French release because Canada ranked first, or an older revision because it happened to appear earlier in the file.

Retool, created by unexpectedpanda, tackled the harder question. It ignored the parent-and-clone assignments inherited from the input catalogue, derived relationships from normalized title names, and supplemented them with human-maintained lists of equivalent releases. Region, language, version, release status and edition all became ordered policy rather than a single score.

It also understood that some decisions require research. A compilation may supersede several separate releases. A regional title may be the same game under another name. A cosmetic reskin may belong to the same family, while a release with new levels deserves its own identity. Retool recorded that knowledge instead of asking every user to rediscover it.

Retool’s great contribution was treating curation as a body of knowledge that software could apply repeatedly.

Retool is no longer maintained, but its idea and carefully assembled tables still form part of Archivist’s selection policy.

Retool worked one catalogue at a time.

Retool reads one No-Intro or Redump catalogue, applies the user’s preferences, and writes a smaller catalogue for a collection manager. The input file defines the universe of possible titles. Equivalent-release detection, exclusions and selection all happen inside that boundary.

That boundary made Retool practical. It could understand the naming conventions of two preservation groups deeply, maintain equivalence lists for each catalogue, and leave file management to established tools such as RomVault, CLRMAMEPro and Igir.

Its documentation is candid about the catalogues it left alone. MAME and FinalBurn Neo would have required a large, frequently updated curated list. The Old School Emulation Center spans thousands of catalogue files and uses a naming system Retool didn’t implement. Retool chose depth over pretending to cover inputs it couldn’t curate well.

Archivist has a different unit of work: the historical system. A Sega Master System game may appear in No-Intro, a MAME software list, FinalBurn Neo, RetroAchievements and an older TOSEC catalogue. Those sources can disagree about names, categories, parentage and even which system owns the release. None of them gets to define the player’s shelf alone.

Preservation records far more than games.

No-Intro, Redump, TOSEC and MAME document media and machines for preservation. Their breadth is the reason Archivist can exist. It also means a raw import is a poor game menu.

Import every available catalogue and you collect hundreds of thousands of rows that were never meant to represent distinct playable games: commercials, magazine cover media, manuals, system firmware, test cartridges, store kiosks, McDonald’s toys, educational software, multimedia discs and many varieties of demo and prototype.

Choosing only a folder or category called Games doesn’t solve it. Gambling machines, skill testers and vending machines can still slip through. A real game can be filed under Multimedia, Applications, Unofficial, a generic software list, or an unexpected system name. Categories are evidence from the cataloguer who supplied them. They aren’t a final verdict on what belongs in Archivist.

That distinction isn’t a complaint about the preservation projects. A commercial, a diagnostic cartridge and a soda dispenser controller may all be worth preserving. Archivist is making the narrower promise that a player can browse the history of playable games without wading through every other artefact preserved alongside them.

Gather every account before choosing.

Archivist begins with a reviewed system definition. That definition names the relevant catalogue sources, whether they use the common DAT format or another structured format such as XML. It also records aliases for catalogues whose filenames don’t line up neatly with the system’s canonical name. A source contributes to the playable collection only after it has been accepted into policy.

Each accepted manifest is parsed into the same release model. Archivist records its title and description, playable state, provider identifiers, parent relationships, media hashes and source path. The selection pass then runs across every accepted source for that system. When several catalogues describe the same game, their source paths accumulate under one selected title.

Some catalogues are useful as recognition evidence without being allowed to create titles. RetroAchievements, for example, can confirm that another source describes the same game while its unmatched rows wait for dedicated review. This lets Archivist retain useful evidence without silently expanding the playable collection.

Mechanical rules, reviewed exceptions.

Once the sources have been joined, Archivist applies policy in layers. The broad rules are fast and repeatable. The narrow decisions record cases where filenames and provider metadata don’t tell the whole story.

A broad rule can reject entries marked (Unl), but some original-era commercial unlicensed games belong in the canon. A Games category can still contain a sewing-machine controller. A title with Collection in its name may be a redundant package or the only surviving release of unique material. Those cases become source-owned decisions with an explicit action and a stable canonical identity.

The review process inspects every plausible source, every selected title, every discarded title and every parent/clone family. Archivist pins dated releases from each preservation catalogue so the review has a stable foundation. The catalogue for a system such as the Magnavox Odyssey is unlikely to change radically next week. Fixing the inputs lets us audit its sources and exceptions against a known body of evidence.

Freshness is the trade-off. TOSEC’s complete packs have recently arrived about once a year. No-Intro records can change several times in a day, Redump exposes catalogue files from its live database, and MAME publishes monthly. Many changes concern the furthest edges of the archive: a newly dumped prototype, a corrected category, or perhaps someone finally getting the Coca-Cola button working on a first-generation Burger King fountain controller.

Archivist won’t ingest each change as it lands. A new source can reopen decisions elsewhere in the joined system catalogue, so its snapshots will arrive less often. The preservation projects remain the live record. Archivist trades immediacy for a more thorough player-facing review.

MAME needs its own playable canon.

Retool never attempted MAME. Its author described the likely solution as a massive curated list that would demand frequent updates. That diagnosis was fair. Archivist is taking on the work because MAME preserves too much of video game history to sit outside the catalogue.

MAME already provides valuable canonical structure. Its parent and clone sets group closely related machine revisions and allow ROM data to be shared. Its software lists group releases, media parts and known variants for emulated systems. These relationships were designed around preservation, emulation and efficient storage. They don’t promise that the parent is the best player-facing release, and software-list parent links can’t cross from one list to another.

The remaining classification is leaky. Keeping runnable machines or rows labelled as games still admits gambling cabinets, redemption machines, skill testers, test fixtures, coffee and soda dispensers, and other fixed-function equipment. Filtering harder can remove unusual games, dedicated handhelds and playable electromechanical machines that belong in the history.

Our current MAME 0.288 audit starts with 50,097 machine records. The classifier proposes groups, but every uncertain boundary still requires review.

The player gets the finished shelf.

When three catalogues describe the same game, Archivist records all three as provenance under one title. When a later revision should win, the policy chooses it. When a provider’s category is wrong, the reviewed override supplies the decision. When an unusual release remains uncertain, it stays out of the default collection until someone has done the research.

The selected catalogue identity connects this policy to the rest of Archivist. It tells the Historian catalogue service which files count as evidence, the collection verifier what a complete release requires, the interface which title to display, and the launch system what should run.

Reviving Retool means accepting the same wager its author made: good curation can be written down, shared and improved. Archivist extends that wager across preservation projects and into MAME, then ships the result as part of the product.

The archive can stay complete. The player’s shelf can stay curated.