I agree with @Blue Spikeball and @Crappy Blue Luigi on this matter. If anything, I think a standard description of the lore/story/plot of individual Sonic games ought to be on their respective Wikipedia pages. Sure, some Sonic games have clearly defined narrative links, and this can be mentioned where appropriate on the related games' pages, without veering off into super-detail hyper-fanatic territory.
I finally finished those last two sections and put it up for basic review. We're one step closer to featured. Boy, writing that took forever. The word "labor" in "labor of love" certainly doesn't mean nothing.
Just a bit of an update: it's currently going through the review right now. The review is mostly done (we've gone through the history section and cleared up some inaccuracies regarding the first game, as well as the development of Sonic 3); we've just got "related media" and "reception and legacy" to review. After it's through GAN, I'm planning to submit it for featured article candidacy.
Another update: the review has been stalled for a little while, but it'll get done eventually. The reviewer is a busy person, and COVID-shutdown-related shenanigans and the like certainly haven't helped. However, it shouldn't be too long, and the reviewer has committed to finishing the review. In the meantime, I've been rewriting the Sonic 4: Episode I article to kill time, and just have to finish the Reception section before I submit it for GAN. Here's how it looks right now compared to earlier this month, in case anyone's interested.
So we are on Sonic Retro forums ... which has three wikis and a central repository... which counts by its hand fingers the number of volunteers it has ... discussing how good a wikipedia page about Sonic looks ?
The aim of Wikipedia and the Retro project could not be more different (accepting that they're both online wikis). One focuses on general knowledge as relevant for the public to allow a reasonably strong understanding of the fundamentals - potentially even being accessible to people who've never played a video game before, due to the judicious cross-referencing - while the other revolves around specific, deep-dive archivial knowledge that nobody'd care to keep track of if we didn't.
Bumping with an update: after a long review process... the article passed a good article review! Most of the work had to do with addressing issues related to Sonic 1's development (turns out that a LOT of seemingly common knowledge about the nature of its development is actually false, like "Alex Kidd was Sega's mascot", "Sonic was chosen in a design contest", and "Sonic Team was originally AM8"), but it overall went pretty smoothly. It's currently going through peer review right now from fellow Wikipedia users so it'll be spotless before it reaches the featured article review.
Hold on, where did you hear that these things were false? The Alex Kidd one is spot on because he was always an unofficial mascot but I've heard the others so many times and I'm sure from official sources that this has me utterly confused. I'm happy your work on the article is finally coming together so you can have this dream come true but I'm really surprised by that.
Here’s the gist: There was a contest, but it was not for a mascot. Sega began accepting proposals for a flagship game from its developers. Ohshima and Naka were working on what would become Sonic 1 and their proposal was accepted, but they were not using Sonic yet. They were using a rabbit at the time, and it wasn’t until Yashura joined that they created Sonic. The whole “Sonic Team was AM8” is a mis-amalgamation of R&D #8, a designation Sonic Team did have in 1999. Sega only had two or three AM teams at the time Sonic 1 was made, and even then it wouldn’t make sense that Sonic Team was AM8 because AM teams were focused on arcade development. In fact, Sonic Team as we know it didn't exist until Nights into Dreams in 1996.
Yeah this isn't true. Wikipedia should be a small subset of what Sonic/Sega Retro offer, because they tackle video game topics with broad strokes. Sonic Retro should be the full fat version, detailing everything Wikipedia has and more. And it should have the full range of entry points, from "I don't know what a video game is" to "where are these subroutines stored in the ROM". Everything (officially) related to Sonic the Hedgehog should be documented on Sonic Retro, possibly in ways people haven't thought of yet.
I actually try to put Sonic Retro as an external link in the Sonic articles I work on, because anyone interested in what Wikipedia would cut as unnecessarily detailed cruft can just find it on Retro.
It's finally done - today, the article was promoted to Featured Article status. I had nominated at the very beginning of September, and it spent a long time in review. I never anticipated that this would take over a year to accomplish, and just wanted to say it wouldn't have been possible without Retro. The wiki and the forums were a huge help in writing it because they provided me with the sources and information the article needed. I wanted to thank all of you for making it possible.
Congrats! I just read over the whole thing, and it's clear that a lot of time, effort, and passion has gone into this! Can't wait to see it on the front page on June 23rd!
