Add 152 missing release years across 11 platforms

[ArjunKdaf]

Add 152 missing release years across 11 platforms

Fills gaps in metadat/releaseyear/ for 152 games that had entries in other metadat categories (genre/developer/publisher) but no release year. All entries were matched to existing games by the ROM CRC already present in the database — no new titles, no renames, no changes to existing entries.

Coverage

• Nintendo - Game Boy Advance — 41
• Sega - Master System - Mark III — 29
• Sega - Game Gear — 16
• Sega - Mega Drive - Genesis — 15
• Atari - Lynx — 14
• Nintendo - Game Boy — 12
• Nintendo - Game Boy Color — 8
• Nintendo - Super Nintendo Entertainment System — 6
• Bandai - WonderSwan Color — 4
• SNK - Neo Geo Pocket Color — 4
• Bandai - WonderSwan — 3

Sourcing

Each year was verified against two or more independent sources — platform-authoritative references (Sega Retro and SMS Power for Sega systems; AtariAge and scanned manuals for Lynx; regional Wikipedia for Japan-only WonderSwan titles) corroborated by a general source (Wikipedia, MobyGames, GameFAQs).

The year is region-matched to the No-Intro name: (USA) → North American release, (Europe) → European, (Japan) → Japanese; for multi-region dumps like (USA, Europe) the earliest listed region's year is used, consistent with existing entries in these files.

A few representative disambiguations:

• Castle of Illusion (SMS/GG) dated to its 1991 8-bit release, not the 1990 Genesis version.
• Wario Land II (GBC) → 1999, the color re-release, not the 1998 mono original.
• Faselei! (NGPC) → 2000 from the UK release, since the US release was cancelled.
• Judgement Silversword (WonderSwan) → 2004 Qute retail cartridge, not the 2001 WonderWitch contest build.

Format / verification

Entries follow the existing file format exactly (tab-indented comment/releaseyear/rom ( crc … ) blocks), inserted in the files' alphabetical order. All 11 modified files were checked to have balanced game ( / ) blocks with one releaseyear per game.

[dasTanmoy0096]

Not a reviewer, but just wanna ask did you manually verify them? Not condoning AI, but since it's a large commit, most likely AI has been used, and thus, a manual check might be necessary.

[ArjunKdaf]

AI-gathered (Claude), yes — I direct, it researches, I review. Not eyeballed line by line; verified by method instead: every entry required at least two independent sources, and the year is matched to the No-Intro region in the title — for a "(USA, Europe)" release the year is the earliest of those two. Entries that couldn't meet that bar were dropped from the batch.

Sources are mostly Wikipedia, Sega Retro, SMS Power, Nintendo Life, GameFAQs and MobyGames (some via Wayback snapshots). Two examples from the record:

• Donkey Kong (Japan, USA) (En) (SGB Enhanced) → 1994 — Wikipedia, MobyGames, Super Mario Wiki (JP 1994-06-14, US 1994-07)
• Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (USA, Europe) → 1990 — Sega Retro, Wikipedia (US 1990-11-26, EU 1991-03 → 1990)

I also re-ran a mechanical check today against master after the Aug 1 no-intro update: all 152 CRCs still exist in the current dats; 8 titles were renamed in that update (e.g. Lynx "(USA, Europe)" → "(World)"), so those comments are stale but the CRC keys are correct. The full per-entry record (sources, region basis, confidence) is on file.

[ArjunKdaf]

Update: the 8 renamed titles are fixed on the branch now (254b36e) — comments match the current no-intro names, CRCs unchanged. Nothing stale left in the PR.

[dasTanmoy0096]

LGTM, low impact changes mostly release year updates