imo, I agree with Amber that we should leave the original 48 completely alone if at all possible. I also think we should be steady with all prior abbreviations the PP have used, because that'll keep things as simple as possible in the long term.
I also believe we should use b prefixes over Nato's suggestion, for "official use". I have no issue if people just want to say "go GCN BC" and I think that's probably even the best for casual use in wars or lounge. But as far as things like official abbreviations go, especially with bots and all of that, I think having a short code name is still probably preferred, regardless of how long it's used. It just feels weird to switch the whole system to like DS SR, because we already have abbreviations for the older 48.
rRRd and rRRy are examples of the steadiness mentioned, they were used in the same game.
- dRR can stay SNES RR. We're all used to this, and it was the only original DLC Rainbow Road.
- Ribbon Road ironically was never abbreviated RR. On MKSC, it was RiR. dRiR feels right, if anything.
- I would advise that likewise, if GBA Rainbow Road comes back, we label it bRaR. This was also an original distinction used in MKSC because of Ribbon
- rRRd can remain also as an original 48.
- Choco Mountain and Coconut Mall have distinct names. I almost wanted to do bCM1 and bCM2 like MKDS did with the retro LCs, and this could work because of Choco being chronologically first and earlier in the cup order. But I actually am against it now, because it's not intuitive to new players.
I really like bCMo and bCMa over the other options, but there are some drawbacks down the road. They look so much more clean than tHe oNeS tHaT lOoK lIkE tHiS. If one is shorter than the other, it makes the distinction weirder and creates favoritism for one of them I feel like too. So I'd say:
bCMo & bCMa > bChM & bCM or bChM & bCoM
but, we'll run into some conflict later on this.
The bigger question becomes what happens if the later Rainbow Roads enter the discussion. I really don't like the idea of having 2 characters as a suffix also. That makes it weird with MK64, but RR64 is covered for already and Choco Mountain could technically be covered by bCMo.
Whether or not we pre-emptively name things is going to be a big dispute. Like for instance, if SNES Bowser Castle 1 comes back, are we fine with calling it bBC1 knowing that GBA BC1 could also come back in a later pack? Should we name it bBC1s ahead of time? Well, I think we shouldn't, because I don't think we should make things more complicated than they have to be. That's part of the point of this system, it's simple.
However, if GBA BC1 were to come back multiple waves later, I think we should rename both. This is because people entering the scene would really have no understanding why one would be bBC1 and not the other and may get them confused. I know this could get really awkward if like, one is in wave 2 and one comes out over a year in wave 6. But I still think these tracks are new enough that we could just apply an update if needed. It's not like we don't know which tracks are at risk either.
The issue with bCMo and bCMa are as follows. Say we get N64 Sherbet Land in pack 2, and name it bSL. This is fine. But maybe in pack 4, they bring back GBA Snow Land. Like our pack 1 tracks, they still have differing names, but the 2nd word is still Land, so we wouldn't be able to distinguish them in the same style. You'd have to use like bShL and bSnL, which would suggest we use bChM and bCoM. I think these all look gross.
As if this problem couldn't get any worse, this isn't a solution either. Because then you get Shy Guy Beach and Shy Guy Bazaar, where the first words are the same and the last one differs. Surely, this would have to be bSGBa and bSGBe. This problem is just getting out of hand at this point.
I think we should probably do the following: use a suffix system based on origin game, and only apply it when we have to. This may mean updating some of the Booster Tracks as time passes if a conflict arises.
The best suffixes are probably the ones Jazzy brought up. Here's the full list of possibilities.
SNES BC1 - bBC1 or bBC1s
SNES BC2 - bBC2 or bBC2s
SNES BC3 - bBC3 or bBC3s
Choco Mountain - bCM64
N64 Wario - bWS or bWS64
N64 Sherbet - bSL or bSL64
N64 Castle - bBC or bBC64
GBA SGB - bSGB or bSGBa
GBA BC1 - bBC1 or bBC1a (you know the rest)
Snow Land - bSL or bSLa
GBA Luigi - bLC or bLCa
GBA Rainbow - just bRaR tbh
GCN Luigi - bLC or bLCg
GCN Waluigi - bWS or bWSg
GCN Castle - bBC or bBCg
GCN Rainbow - bRR or bRRg
Y'all get the idea now. Suffixes for the following:
MKDS - d
MKWii - w
MK7 - 7
MKTour - t
Other important ones I think:
GCN Mario Circuit - bMaC
GCN Mushroom City - bMuC
but maybe only if they're not the only bMC. For GBA RR, bRaR makes sense I think because Ribbon is in the game already. I would probably just go straight to bMuC though for Mushroom City since it's never been used as MC. GCN MC was rMC in mkw.
We could also just do case by case. It may be more complicated, but I think it could work if we all just agree. I do like bCMo and bCMa more because I hate the 64 suffix being 2 letters, tbh. (i pronounce them bee cee moe and bee cee mah btw, and you can't stop me)
Really, I don't know. There's probably too many avenues to deal with. The thing I would consider is that even after pack 1 we all understand that we may want to be flexible based on what happens in later packs and apply fixes if needed. I would probably start with bCMo and bCMa with consideration that we may change things down the road.
The only 2 things I very much agree with though:
- leave og 48 alone
- only do suffixes if we literally have to in order to distinguish them
edit: oh yeah, another stupid note. We may get bailed out on Banshee Boardwalk and Berlin. This is because they never released a BB, only a BB2, in MKTour. But Tokyo Blur appears to be a hybrid, so we may just get a "Berlin Byways". There's only one current version of it though, so it's hard to say.