Mr. Needlemouse Makes an Appearance

I think the best course of action would be to just leave the "Needlemouse" references/explanation/tweets in the Sega Test and Sonic 4 articles, since they're the only places where it should be actually relevant (unless there's plans for a "hoaxes and misinformation" page =P).

 

This is actually a really good idea. One centralized place to clear up common misconceptions, rather than having them noted in scattered articles or not even covered at all.

 

I'd rather not - it would just be keeping myths alive.

"Mr. Needlemouse" was used (and will likely continue to be used) by official sources, so will need to be covered in the Sonic 1 development page. It'll be no more than "Sega began calling this character Mr. Needlemouse, but this is incorrect[ref]" - it doesn't need to go anywhere else as far as I can see.

 

The intent is more to serve as a graveyard for myths instead.

I suppose it's just as valid to make note of it in various articles rather than one centralized article, but my real concern is that the corrections are made at least somewhere. Myths are more likely to survive by ignoring them, rather than actively debunking them.

An encyclopedia should be a factual, authoritative source of information backed by credible research. If anyone wants to intentionally ignore facts because they'd prefer to believe fantasy, there's little that can be done about that.

 

I personally think a dedicated hoaxes and misinformation page would be a great idea precisely due to acting as a graveyard, as well as being something people can easily be pointed to when they bring up something that's known to be incorrect or misleading. It would also be informative by its own right and could potentially give historical context to various things that have come up or been incorrectly believed along the way.

 

I prefer to take the view that if it's not on the wiki, it's not a thing. And if it is a thing, someone should put it on the wiki.

Otherwise it'll be a massive list of everything we've corrected over the years. "Tails is a girl", "Tails is the guardian of the master emerald in Sonic 2", "Speed shoes vs. Power sneakers", "most games don't call them Badniks" - it's a lot of noise to maintain. For Sega Retro, most of the release dates on Wikipedia were wrong, and we've spent 11 years correcting them - there will be more myths than facts on the internet these days.

Here's something fun: until this year the Donkey Kong Wiki was claiming the war they invented was canon. That's been up online in various forms since 2013, so if we were ever to make a similar wiki and do it properly, we'd have to spend time debunking fan fiction because it had been in the public eye for eight years.

It's grade A nonsense and totally worth a read, but if we were debunking things like this for a living, Lord help us. And there's nothing stopping someone inventing a similar story for Sonic the Hedgehog and getting airtime (though not on Sonic Retro, obviously ).

 

Woah! I thought the Great Ape War was just a joke made in the satirical video titled "Kong - A Documentary"

 

"We have a Mr. Needlemouse page?"
(last edit: me, October 2019)
"oh"

Yes kill it with fire. Redirect the page to Sonic 1 development.

 

Personally, I was thinking of rewriting the Mr. Needlemouse page to be about the misconception, though I think it might be better served to create a "Hoaxes and misconceptions" article and have "Mr. Needlemouse" redirect there.

 

Mr. Needlemouse is enough of a thing to warrant its inclusion (and correction) on the wiki in some form.

It doesn't have to be all or nothing. Obviously a list of every harebrained brainfart from ages ago would be a lame article, but it would be manageable (and informative) if the scope were narrowly focused on pervasive myths that are still taken as fact by the general public (so much so that even SEGA themselves apparently believe some of it).

We probably don't need to point out that Tails isn't female or that the big gem in S2 HPZ isn't the Master Emerald, but misconceptions like Needlemouse have lasted a lot longer and have had much more impact.

So isn't that all the more reason to document misconceptions in an effort to correct them? More people becoming better informed is better than none, even if you can't reach everybody.

 

This might be getting abit off-topic from the original purpose of this thread but what would a hypothetical misconceptions page contain? The only thing that comes to mind at the moment asides from Mr. Needlemouse/Mr. Hedgehog is the Dust Hill/Sand Shower confusion.

 

I was thinking this last night after I signed off - while I don't think there should be a page, if there's enough people on this board willing to create and maintain one (to the point where I don't have to get involved), that's kinda almost fine.

But there is only one Sonic-related misconception of note, and that's Mr. Needlemouse. And the reason it's notable is because Sega made the mistake, and kept making the same mistake for 20+ years. I can't think of any others either (at least on the Sonic side), and on those grounds alone a dedicated page would be difficult to justify.


Dust Hill Zone is a misconception the community has made for 20+ years, but as I said documenting all the times the internet has been wrong is a fool's game.

 

Can I just add a huge +1 to the misconceptions page idea?

During my time researching for the Sonic Wikipedia articles I've found there's a HUGE amount of crap that's been spewed as fact for decades at this point. For example, a lot of sources say that Sonic Team developed the classic games, that Sonic Team was once named AM8, that Sonic replaced Alex Kidd as Sega's mascot... all of which is total crap.

A misconceptions page would be a fantastic way to debunk all these errors.

 

Wait... All those were misconceptions?
Then what's the truth of all of those?

 

• Sonic Team, as an entity, didn't exist until 1996, when Nights into Dreams was released. The first game was developed by a team that called itself "Sonic Team", but this was not an official designation. Sonic 2 and 3&K were developed by Sega Technical Institute, while Sonic CD was developed by a bunch of Sega staff from a few different teams.
• The whole "Sonic Team was once known as AM8" is a misamalgamation of Sega R&D #8, a designation Sonic Team did have during the Dreamcast era. Additionally, Sonic Team could never have been known as AM8 because AM2 had only been established in 1988/1989 and AM3 didn't exist until 1991. Red Phoenix on Wikipedia, who's a literal walking encyclopedia of Sega knowledge, did some research on the whole thing and posted his findings here.
• Alex Kidd was never Sega's mascot. This misconception stems from the assumption that a Super Mario Bros.-like game had to have been made to compete with Nintendo and Mario. It is possible that Sega would've promoted Alex Kidd as a mascot had his games been successful, but he was never the official mascot. Alex Kidd's creator addressed the situation in this interview.

 

I think this right here is the best argument in favor of such a page. If there's people on our own forum who believe these misconceptions, then they absolutely need to be addressed.

 

Wouldn't the fact they called themselves "Sonic Team" in the game make the designation official enough?