Longer term we plan to expand how tagging individual files works for platforms, but in the meantime I recommend using a tag.
This is what I guess I don't understand, because what you're saying lines up with why I think console-based platforms should be included. That said, I'm not a game dev (or the guy who envisioned this site in the first place) so maybe at a dev or your level it makes more sense. I guess a best an "other" platform would be beneficial to have as a way for devs to explicitly state "this is not a program designed to run natively on the traditional modern platforms"? Not sure. I guess things have worked okay the way they are now, though.
[Edit] In replying to somebody else, I think I was able to properly put it into words:
if I made a Windows game designed to look like MacOS, could I platform that under Mac because Mac users could run it in a virtual machine on their OS and play that way? The platforms make sense until you consider that the tags are set up in a way that my (albeit stupid) example is absolutely being used right now. "This Windows game looks like an NES game so we'll tag it with NES". IMO the structure should be Platform (the program is designed to work in this environment) -> Tags (the program has these traits).
and also the inconsistency of tags - such as having "NES ROM" and also "NES (Nintendo Entertainment System)" and how we have "Genesis" and "Mega Drive" as separate categories, but nothing explicitly stating "This tag is meant for ROMs"
Thanks again for your time, Leafo - I don't expect another reply back, but I hope my comment helped explain where I was coming from.
My response was to your suggestion of dropping platforms altogether and just treating them like tags. We will not do that.
I already agreed with your suggestion of adding more platforms in my initial post. It will require some internal refactoring and is low priority for us, hence my suggestion to use a tag in the meantime if you want anyone to have a chance of finding your ROM when browsing games.
This discussion made me realize something that botherd me for a while.
The tag box with the suggested tags should include certain special tags as suggestions.
Including the platforms. It already includes the genres, even though they are listed as filters on the left side.
That ties in with this issue: the regular search box will actually display the existence of the https://itch.io/games/tag-unreal-engine , when searching https://itch.io/search?q=unreal , but there is https://itch.io/games/made-with-unreal-engine which is not displayed as a result (because it is not in the suggested tag box). It is not even listed in the footer directory - which is hard to reach with endless scroll enabled, btw.
From the directory, you can go Tools & Engines > Game Engines to find all the “Made with…” links.
The “Made with…” pages are indexed in the auto-completer but are not currently indexed in the full page search results. The UI of that page needs to be redesigned before we start introducing new result types & filtering.
Oh, there they are. Btw, the header link, https://itch.io/game-development is empty ("see all tools", on directory)
I had to think what auto completer meant. Yes, the results while typing do show the special tags and platforms. And the actual results will not.
I thought it might be a simple matter to just include the special tags in the list of the suggested tags, so they would also appear as search results and also be visible when using the suggested tag box. That one does not have an auto completer. It only searches the content of the drop down box.