Talk:Sega Technical Institute/GA1

GA Review
The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.''

Reviewer: Indrian (talk · contribs) 18:40, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

I'll tackle this one. Indrian (talk) 18:40, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, I will say this does bring back some nostalgia. Thank you, Indrian.  I look forward to your review and how I can make this article the best it can be.   Red Phoenix  talk  20:31, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Just like old times indeed! Lets get started.

History

 * ✅ "After his time with Atari, he worked with Sega in Japan, where he worked on various Master System releases. Cerny worked on various games for the Master System's launch, as well as the console's 3D glasses accessory. - Lets use various words for a little more variety ;).
 * Addressed.  Red Phoenix  talk  20:45, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅"According to Cerny, Naka had quit Sega due to issues with financial compensation and backlash from the company over the time and effort it had taken to finish Sonic." - This is entirely correct, but I wanted to point out we do not have to take Cerny's word for it anymore. In a recently translated interview at shmuplations (if you have never been to the site, go now, its amazing), Naka himself reveals he quit due to poor financial compensation.
 * That is pretty amazing. Question, though - I can't find the original source details, and may have to email shmuplations to get exactly what magazine and issue the interview came from.  Would those be necessary, or just okay to cite shmuplations for the interview details?   Red Phoenix  talk  20:45, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
 * This is a good question and one that I admit I am not an expert on. I personally think its okay to just cite to shmuplations in this case.  If this ever goes to FA, someone else might disagree. If this specific instance is covered in policy (i.e. when all we have is a translation with the original bibliographic info unknown), I have not read it, but my knowledge here is far from exhaustive.  I would probably just use the web citation format with Alex Hightower identified as the translator I suppose. Indrian (talk) 14:35, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅"According to Cerny, another major issue was that the American team of developers were in place already when the Japanese team arrived due to a delay with visas." - Retro Gamer 175 has a fresh interview with Cerny in a "Making of" article for Sonic 2 that sheds a little more light on the visa situation and expands on the old Sega 16 interview. STI was originally supposed to be formed around a core of about a dozen Japanese employees, but visa problems led most of them to not make it into the country.  This was the main reason so many American staff worked on Sonic 2.  This should be fleshed out for completeness on the formative stages of the studio.  The same article also interviewed one of the American artists on the game, who basically said that the Japanese art team were fine to work with, but Naka was quite difficult.
 * I'll look at this after the weekend. I think I have the first 175 issues or so of Retro Gamer on my iPhone, so I'll dig in and see if I can find it.   Red Phoenix  talk  20:45, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Added.  Red Phoenix  talk  14:42, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅"For 1993, STI's Japanese team worked on Sonic the Hedgehog 3, but could not complete the game for the Christmas season." - GamesTM issue 60 has a "Behind the Scenes" article on Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles with a Roger Hector interview. From that article, I don't get the sense the game was ever meant to be ready for Christmas 1993.  What did happen, is that Sonic 3 was split into two games, with 3 dropping in February 1994 and Sonic & Knuckles coming out for the holiday season.  According to the book The History of Sonic the Hedgehog, the main reason the split was necessary was that Sega already had a tie-in with McDonalds for Happy Meal toys due to start in February, which seems to peg that as the original target release date.  One other interesting fact perhaps worth including from the GamesTM article is that Hector tried to surmount the language barrier at the studio by hiring a language teacher to conduct regular Berlitz Japanese classes.
 * That's a pretty interesting article. I added some more from it and clarified the Christmas statement.   Red Phoenix  talk  15:06, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅"Weeks of development time proved fruitless after Stolar rescinded STI's access to Sonic Team's Nights into Dreams engine following an ultimatum by Nights programmer Yuji Naka" - I believe this is copy and pasted from the X-treme article, which is fine, but Bernie Stolar has not been properly introduced in this article.
 * Oops. I actually copied this from the Sega Saturn article, since it had a good summary of the situation, but I totally missed Stolar.  Fixed.  Red Phoenix  talk  21:56, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

That's about it. The article is well-written and pretty thorough. I think by adding in a little more information from the sources mentioned above we can just make it a little more comprehensive. Therefore, I will place this review while changes are made. Indrian (talk) 19:06, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Awesome. I'll work on it more after the weekend.   Red Phoenix  talk  20:45, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Quick question Since you are probably the most knowledgeable Sega person I know as it comes to accuracy, I have an important question about a "fact" I chose to leave out because I couldn't verify it and I was skeptical. This pertains to Nights into Dreams. As much credit as I give Ken Horowitz for the wealth of information he gives at his Sega-16 website that has helped in numerous articles, I have seen errors in his prose before and I have reason to be skeptical about a fact he gives in his article on STI. In it, he states that Naka returned to Japan at the end of 1994, but then came back a few months later and developed Nights at STI. This made, literally, zero sense to me - why would Naka return to the US when he was offered a producer spot at Sega CS3 and reunited with Ohshima, especially in light of his strong opinions on Sonic X-treme? The Nights article — a featured article, no less — states that Nights was developed in the US, but I read the source it's attributed to and it's nowhere to be found there. Nor is it in any past archives of that source. I spent hours trying to research this but could not find any sources that corroborate this. Might you have some insight into it? Red Phoenix talk  20:45, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't have a source that illuminates this per se, but I will say that I have read a lot of sources on Naka and STI in this time period and none of them point to him returning to the US. I think its safe to call this a mistake, and you made the right judgement by not including it.

Okay, that should just about do it. You may want to take another look at the shmuplations cite as stated above, but I feel comfortable promoting this thing to GA status right now. Well done! Indrian (talk) 14:35, 5 June 2018 (UTC)