I was having a think the other day, and then I had more of a think. We know a lot about Sonic the Hedgehog 2. We're at a stage where not only do we know who worked on the game, we can match people up with precise assets they created. We know Craig Stitt drew Oil Ocean and Hidden Palace. We know Tom Payne did Metropolis and Genocide City. We know pretty much everything Brenda Ross did was scrapped, and yet until a few minutes ago, the credits on the wiki for these people was just "Zone Artist", because that's how they're credited in game. I think we can do better, so I started a thing: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive)/Production credits Dedicated production credits pages divided into two halves. - The first bit: Credits from games or manuals or whatever. This uses Sega Retro's "creditstable" template to generate automated lists of credits for people. So Craig Stitt is automatically labeled as a "Zone Artist" for Sonic 2. We've had this feature for ages, and it's not going to change. And you probably don't have to worry about it because most Sonic games are done. - The second, new bit: ROLE BREAKDOWNS I've filled in some rough details for some of the artists involved, but my proposal is to create detailed lists of everything these people worked on, in cases where it's not immediately obvious (a.k.a. there's no point listing every function Yuji Naka wrote - we know he did the vast majority of the "main" programming). I'm thinking mostly about graphics and music, the latter so I can automate song credits (although I haven't worked out how best to do that yet). Theoretically this idea could apply to any game across Sonic, Sega or NEC Retro, but we know the most about Sonic, so that's a good starting point. I need you people to add and improve things, and generally relay as much as possible about who did what during a game's development. Sonic 2 is the lowest hanging fruit, but there's of course scope for Sonic 1, Sonic 3, Sonic Spinball... everything, basically. There are references to be found in interviews and Twitter posts and whatever - add those too. Who drew Emerald Hill Zone? Chemical Plant? Aquatic Ruin? Apparently "pink" Casino Night was Rieko Kodama and the updated one was Yasushi Yamaguchi - it all needs writing down, so... write it down! wiki great etc.
Perhaps crediting for each Zone should be listed on their respective zones? Like in the Summary area here? EDIT: Like depending on how complicated a zone's structure is, perhaps it can be listing different names and their function in the zone? "Made By: Tom Payne (Zone Artist), John Smith (Colorist), Jane Doe (Lighting)" "Development Date(s): January 1, 1990 (Start), March 199? (End)" I'm not sure how granular in detail it's possible to get, I'm guessing each zone isn't always going to have such credits found (e.g. like I'd imagine for the smaller, less known games, it might be more difficult to get the answers needed). EDIT 2: How do you edit the "LevelBob" table to add new headers?
https://twitter.com/NaotoOhshima/status/1296149584498929664 DeepL: Someone fluent in Japanese might want to make sense of this.
I started a cargo table for that a while ago. Only the storage side of things was done; I never got around to displaying credits.
That's also an option (although it would be "as well as" rather than "instead of"). I can't imagine we'll ever get precise start and end dates though. The idea would be to have consistency across all our wikis - only Sonic Retro has LevelBob.
There's plenty of information from Hisasi Eguti about Sonic CD's key animation process. However, I'm not actually sure if Sega Retro actually allows that sort of thing (i.e. KA did cut 1,2,5,).
Sega Retro wants everything. It can be made to accommodate whatever you need it to accommodate. I did something with it Jun Senoue will probably need his own "Song credits" sub-page if we start adding games as well as albums. The fun never stops.
Check it: Sonic the Hedgehog 3/Production credits List music credits like this, and the game appears here. Fill in the blanks, etc.
Forgive me for sounding confused...I don't understand what you're looking for in this project now. You have a page just for Jun Senoue. The page lists the different game and songs he worked on, and his role on each. https://segaretro.org/Jun_Senoue Then you have a page for Jun Senoue/Song Credits, and it lists similar, if not the same, information. https://segaretro.org/Jun_Senoue/Song_credits It feels like you're duplicating the information and adding more work than you'd like. Perhaps you're looking to compose an Excel workbook or Access database that can be referenced so that if a person queries "Jun Senoue" and "Songs", then the page will display a table? And would that table contain links to connect? Say if person clicks "Sonic 3" on the table, it will bring the person to the 16-Bit Genesis version of the game, or a link for a label that says "Gumball Machine Bonus Stage"?
The sub-page is automated. The idea is that manually maintained lists of song credits will go. The purpose of this task is to group all the credits pertaining to a game in one place, rather than have it spread across the wiki (or stuck in people's heads).
With the design of role breakdowns, do they all go in a dedicated Breakdown section at the end, or under the credits for the respective version they're appropriate for? Just added some breakdowns for SDI, but it can cause confusion since I didn't specify that they're for the arcade version, so people would need to see the names and scroll back up or use word search to know that info (and that wouldn't work for games where aliases are used). I thought, if a dedicated breakdown is preferred it could maybe have sub-sections for versions like the previous credits, but I don't see that working since the creators are already the sub-sections. I guess, just write into each respective credit which version it's for?
I envisoned it like: Breakdown - Arcade version -- person -- person -- person - Master System version -- person -- person -- person but there might be a better way
Something more like this then? It does look nice, although the nitpick would be that that's a lot of ='s. Well, more than I'm used, so maybe just get used it, haha.
Made Virtua Cop 3/Production credits, mainly doing testing for the Music credits since the only source on them (and several other early 2000's soundtracks) is JASRAC Works Identification Database, which is a problem to deal with as the links always expire and so URL snapshot sites can't archive them, I tested with both Internet Archive and Archive Today. Only solution I could come up with was to link them to show that there is indeed a source, but note on the first credit that all the links can't be viewed since "All references to JASRAC Works Identification Database expire." Maybe there's a solution that does allow for viewing the original data (that isn't just taking screenshots and uploading those somewhere, I don't feel comfortable with that). Other idea is to treat it the same as in-game credits ala Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island and not include links, maybe a note at the bottom (that also makes it clear when JASRAC isn't the source, like with Fang (VC3 Version)'s credit to Kentaro Koyama for being a reused composition.
More experimenting with Song credits, I wanted to see what it looks like (or if it even works) when it's just the person's name attached, since there's instances where a person' mentioned working on a song, but they haven't been credited with anything particular. I did remember a source for FANTASY ZONE with specific credits, though, at least regarding Hiro. Maybe I misremembered that it miscredited him with all the music and even sound effects? Or maybe it was fixed at some point? Anyways, it mostly works from what I can gather, but if they have been credited specifically with something else, that specific credit won't show up if it's paired with a roleless credit link. Alternatively, it was again just because Japanese credits with Rollover Text was used, but it still looked like this even after I tested it with just "Lyrics" used. Either way, probably not a common situation, but it would most often be something like being credited for lyrics but otherwise just "I did that song", since lyrics are sometimes presented separate from the music.
Because I pick weird times to neglect some perfectly good Todo stuff and do something new-ish... I might have overstepped with Production credits, not sure. I spent a lot of time back in October 2022 building this document compiling high score table tables and matching them with developer, since they're often the closest substitute a game has to Production credits (especially 80s arcade games) and otherwise could just provide more insight, depending on the table. Not a complete list, but I've updated it occasionally since then. I've never really known what to do with the info, though. Technically high score tables are already used for Production credits on several pages, like Hang-On, OutRun and Great Golf, plus about a dozen that I've added, but it's a bit slapdash. I decided to risk it and add a couple to Production credits pages, see if it would fly, not necessarily as something that populates other pages, just an additional reference. These I added are for games that already have Production credits, similar to what I did with Super Monaco GP in January. Super Thunder Blade was the first because of the MUT name. Even with the name Bros400 1929 matching Mutsuhiro Fujii's 6216 calling card, I always felt unsure if I did the right thing linking that alias to him, so it was reassuring and therefore informative that the high score table also has MUT as another existing alias. Space Harrier 3D is apparently the one I most recently downloaded a reference screenshot for from YouTube, on June 21, 2023. That was also around the time I was actually taking my own snapshots in MAME of arcade rankings, just for about 25 games. Space Harrier II includes an image that I already uploaded a while ago for the Comparisons page. I just copied Sonic the Hedgehog CD/Hidden content for the image template because that was the only place I knew already had a mention of high score table - developer matchup. Virtua Racing is an example that isn't full of aliases in the Production credits, but even then it's not guaranteed all the initials can be identified. I don't know if this as an addition verges too much on the end of speculation. Although, you can see that some of the more speculative developer matches I had on my document, I actually removed for the Retro additions.
Been adding some more song credits for the first time in a while (just did Ryu ga Gotoku 6: Inochi no Uta Original Soundtrack) and finally realised a thing from the old song credits that aren't accounted for with the new system: It would be nice to add that into the new system, checking for other every name that shares both the role and track value. It also made me wonder if that little extra bit could be added for Production credits. Reminded me how GameStaff@Wiki shows it production histories for developers, like Takashi Atsu's here.
