Talk:EarthBound

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:EarthBound/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Jaguar (talk · contribs) 20:12, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

I remember this game, it was interesting. I'll leave down the some initial comments tomorrow morning.

Note: There are numerous "cite error"s in the references (I count seven), it would be more efficient if these were fixed before or during the review. Thanks! ☠ Jaguar ☠ 20:12, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Oops—must have done that right before the nom. All fixed now. Thanks for the heads up czar ♔ 21:06, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for addressing them, doing the review now. ☠ Jaguar ☠ 20:05, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. References to sources:

   B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused:

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

   B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

Initial comments

Lead

• "As Ness and his party of four, the player travels the world to collect melodies en route to defeating the evil alien force Giygas." - just a query here, most video game leads often start of with "the player assumes the role of [protagonist]...", would if be worth putting this in here? Such as the player controls Ness and his party of four or do you think it should be left like this? Just a suggestion?
• "The game's expensive "this game stinks" marketing campaign was based on crude humor." - do you think it would be best to better describe this campaign by saying that it included 'scratch and sniff' advertisements in the lead?
• The lead summarises the whole article well, complying per WP:LEAD

Development

• "Its sequel, Mother 2, or EarthBound, was developed over five years[12] by Ape (later Creatures[13]) and HAL, and published through Nintendo." - how about something like Its sequel, Mother 2 (EarthBound outside of Japan) was developed over five years by developers Ape (later Creatures), HAL and published through Nintendo.
• "The game was originally scheduled for release in January 1993 on a 12 megabit cartridge. It was finished around May 1994 and the Japanese release was set for August 27, 1994" - was there a reason why it got pushed back a year and a half? (delays etc)
• "He worked alone, with great latitude, and in direct contact with the headquarters" - the Japanese or American headquarters?

References

There are no problems with the references other than a few citations are out of place - they should usually be at the end of sentences however this is no problem and it doesn't affect the GA criteria. The article is well referenced.

On hold

This article is beautifully written, I've read through it all and could not find any copy editing issues with the latter half of the article despite this review feeling short. It is well referenced and the prose is in good standing, showing signs of the GA criteria. Once those minor issues have been addressed this article will have a good chance at passing the GAN. I've also corrected a few minor problems myself, if it helps. Thank you ☠ Jaguar ☠ 21:00, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

@Jaguar, thanks for the review and the compliment—I appreciate it! I made a few changes from your suggestions and I think it should be good now. Some responses: I prefer the current phrasing of the lede sentences you mentioned. I'm aware of the precedents, but I'm personally not a big fan, especially when I find a better or more suitable way to phrase it. I'd keep scratch and sniff out so the lede can stay lean. No extra details on why it was delayed but it's usually due to bad estimates. If the delay was notable enough, someone would have published about it. I believe, though, that the citations were fine where they were. End-of-sentence cites often makes verifiability harder if the sentence is a mix of multiple sources. czar ♔ 21:21, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Close - promoted

The article now meets the GA criteria, thank you for the extra work! The lead summarises the article, the prose is of good quality and all the citations, like you said, are better off like they are. I agree with you on the current phrasing of the lead, it's better off the way it is and I wasn't sure myself if you liked my suggestions on the lead. EarthBound is also in depth and well focused, to be honest this article already looks like FA material as its cult status already has a lot of content. Just saying! Regards ☠ Jaguar ☠ 12:14, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Overly long "reception" and "legacy"

I've never really been able to read this entire article from start to finish because of these sections. They contain way too many trivial opinions from individual writers ("its reliance on "personal experiences" made it "exactly the sort of title that would thrive today as an indie hit"" - is that so?). It's also hard to figure out which reviews were contemporary or retrospective - they should be divided from each other.

The point of a "legacy" section is to summarize what made the subject culturally significant. Some of these statements could be reconfigured into another section covering the game's idiosyncrasies or quirkiness ("IGN's Thompson noted its 1990s homage as "a love letter to 20th-century Americana", with a payphone as a save point, ATMs to transfer money, yo-yos as weapons, skateboarders and hippies as enemies, and references to classic rock bands."). ----Ilovetopaint (talk) 16:28, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

This was one of my first Reception sections so there's plenty of room to rework the "X said Y" structure and follow my own advice from Wikipedia:Copyediting reception sections, if that's what you mean. I have a separate draft where I've been working on updates. But not seeing why reception/legacy of the game's "quirkiness" should be treated apart from its general reception/legacy. What kind of "section covering the game's idiosyncrasies or quirkiness" are you proposing? Also the sections aren't divided into contemporary/retrospective, but opinion of the game and assessment of its impact. czar 20:49, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

What I meant was, perhaps, make the "weird stuff" (i.e. the player saves their game using a telephone) into its own paragraph or such under "Gameplay". As it stands now, there is a substantial amount of info regarding the game's contents under sections where it's only supposed to be talking about, in general terms, what made the game stand out in 1994. Plus there's a lot of OR going on - many banal "thumbs up/down" style references attributed to "multiple reviewers" that are really only the opinion of a single writer. Here's one sentence that encapsulates it all pretty well:

"It 'would be a great disservice', GameZone said, merely to call EarthBound 'a gem'.".

Besides how nauseating that statement reads, I have never even heard of a site or magazine called GameZone. What credibility could they possibly have? Another quote that could be summarized in a more useful fashion:

"Jeremy Parish of USgamer called EarthBound "the all-time champion" of self-aware games that "warp ... perceptions and boundaries" and break the fourth wall, citing its frequent internal commentary about the medium and the final scenes where the player is directly addressed by the game."

...could become something like...

"Numerous elements in EarthBound repeatedly break the fourth wall, sometimes going so far as to directly address the player."

...if something of that sort hasn't already been included. It's interesting whatever made EarthBound unique compared to other RPG games of the era; it's not so interesting reading variations of "EarthBound is awesome" over and over again. --Ilovetopaint (talk) 12:30, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

I just noticed that "North American release" literally includes details about the game's release and reception in the US, not just its localization process. Those details should have been under "Reception" as well - more evidence that "Reception" should be split into "Release" and "Retrospective reviews". ----Ilovetopaint (talk) 13:04, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

 Done Took action myself - I removed a couple of the fluff opinions and rearranged some of the sections - huge improvements IMO.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 13:41, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

re: the "Release" section changes made today, a game's marketing and release is part of its development process (WP:VGORDER). It's common to include it in the Development section unless the marketing/release of the game have enough standing to warrant a separate section. czar 04:22, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Gaps (Kouichi Ooyama, Japan reception)

I noticed that the article does not have a word about the contributions of graphic artist Kouichi Ooyama, nor the game's reception in Japan (discounting a passing reference to its sales figures). At least a couple sentences would be nice (if any info is out there...) --Ilovetopaint (talk) 03:57, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Proposal to split Ness back into his own article

Until 9 December 2014, Ness had his own article at Ness (character). On 7 December 2014, Czar proposed that it be merged into this article at Talk:Ness (character)#Potential merge. He received one comment from ThomasO1989 noting that several sections in the current page were unfinished, and due to a lack of any objecting comments, he WP:BOLDly performed the merger and redirected the page two days later. Fast forward to three days ago, Skybunder WP:BOLDly restores the article with some (dubious) sourcing improvements and it would go on to receive a few more edits by TarkusAB later on. The next day, Bbb23 blocks Skybunder as a sock and reverts all of his edits per WP:BANREVERT. 74.95.107.53 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) then undoes the reversion (presumably due to the lack of reason for reversion in Bbb23's edit summary, I didn't pick up on Skybunder being a blocked sock until I checked his talk in the process of writing this) which is then reverted again by Abelmoschus Esculentus with reasoning "Unexplained". I caught this exchange in NPP, looked over the draft and history, and not seeing any issues (again, didn't notice Skybunder was blocked) I reverted the article back due to the lack of explanation, leaving the comment "I see no issues with this article, it's well sourced and doesn't have any major obvious problems, either provide a reasoning for overwriting it or take it to AfD." TarkusAB then reverted me again (leaving the page back as a redirect), saying "Really? There is obviously contention about this article. Follow WP:BRD and take the discussion to the EarthBound talk page before re-instating."

Okay, so there's quite a bit of messy history involved here, but now that that's out of the way here's the point I'm getting to: let's split Ness back out into his own article. He doesn't have much coverage on this page (only two fairly outdated paragraphs, mostly on his Smash appearances), he's extremely well known as a Smash character now with the sources to back it up, and the original merge into this was due to the page at the time being partially unfinished, which can be easily resolved. Are there any objections to this? Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 07:33, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

• This is a matter of sourcing. What reliable, secondary source coverage warrants splitting the section to its own article? What needs to be said for a general audience and why wouldn't it be sufficient to say it within the existing section? Looking at the last revision of the character article, it looks more like a coat rack to list trivia about the character and to accrete passing mentions in sources than something that asserts the character's standalone notability from the game that featured him. The substance of this split article would all be repeated from the existing article (the existing Ness section, the EarthBound plot and development info). The only unmerged detail is trivia such as his moves in Smash, his listicle placements, and passing Reception that isn't encyclopedic in the first place:

  Thomas East from Official Nintendo Magazine ranked him eighth on his list of "Smash Bros characters who need to be dropped for Wii U and 3DS", explaining "Ness was considered to be an obscure choice back in 1999, it is perhaps more of a surprise that he is still hanging around."[22] Russ Frushtick of UGO Networks stated that Ness was cool because "Ness' childlike appearance belies his potent psychic abilities."[23] The same site later placed Ness at the ninth spot on its "Top 30" list of "The Coolest Helmets and Headgear in Video Games", and also ranked him as the 45th best kid in video games in their "Top 50", with the writer Marissa Meli saying "he is the best RPG star of all time".

  Encyclopedia articles shouldn't have that kind of fluff. czar 16:02, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Japanese Title

While I will admit, that the mentioned Japanese title in the lead does read in English as Mother 2: Gyiys Strikes back (Note the spelling of "Giygas") in the ingame title card, I don't think it's an official title for Mother 2 on the grounds that the most official Japanese material surrounding the game reads it as MOTHER2 ギーグの逆襲 (Mother 2: Giygas' Counterattack), and not Gyiys Strikes Back. Also that the English translation changed the title to The War Against Giygas, and no official western material, that I know of, is acknowledging the game as EarthBound: The War Against Giygas. So I don't think the title card name should be acknowledged here. Sarujo (talk) 19:57, 19 July 2020 (UTC)