Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Home versions of Mortal Kombat II


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was redirect to Mortal Kombat II. And merge back an appropriately condensed version from the history.  Sandstein  16:47, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Home versions of Mortal Kombat II

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This was split off from the former Mortal Kombat II article since it had its own section that was getting pretty large. However, I, and perhaps most other people, fail to see the significance of this topic. It mostly is minutia that falls under WP:GAMECRUFT, particularly Point #10. It has some citations, but the issue is not its sourcing, only its notability. No attempt is made to explain why the subject matters; any notable points can easily be included in the article for the original game. It's the only article of its kind that I can even find on Wikipedia, which I know can be the inverse of WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. This matters mostly only to people who care about this sort of thing, of whom I happen to be one (which is how I know). This material would be better suited to a fansite, like the Mortal Kombat Wikia. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist  (Speak quickly) (Follow my trail) 06:17, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Video games-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 15:19, 25 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Merge back to parent article. I agree with the nominators sentiments - it seems like it's become a magnet for trivia, and once you trim all that out, it can just be a subject in the main article. Sergecross73   msg me  18:17, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep - It's a logical extension of the Mortal Kombat II article. If we accept that it sometimes makes sense to split off a separate article for a game's characters, an aspect of the game's fictional world, then it follows that it sometimes makes sense to split off a separate article for a game's different versions, an aspect of the game itself. GAMECRUFT point 10 says "A list of every version/beta/patch is inappropriate. Consider a summary of development instead." So that point is clearly referring to pre-release updates, not separate releases, which is what this article covers. As for there being no other articles of its kind, check out Official versions of Doom. It makes sense for there to be only a small number of articles of this type; by my reasoning, we should only have them for games which have a large number of different versions which differ substantially from each other, and which have been significantly covered by sources on an individual basis. Mortal Kombat II and Doom both certainly meet those qualifications.--Martin IIIa (talk) 17:19, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Then I take back what I said about this being an inverse application of WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS - this is more of a straight-up example than I thought. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist  (Speak quickly) (Follow my trail) 09:40, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I also didn't say there were no other articles like it, I said I couldn't find any. I'm always careful to word it like that because I could just as easily be proven wrong. Nevertheless, the WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS point still stands. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist  (Speak quickly) (Follow my trail) 03:06, 29 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Merge with Mortal Kombat II. This information is important but it can be condensed and placed in the main article.The World Warrior (talk) 17:21, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Redirect back to Mortal Kombat II. To preface, this would be a valid WP:SPLIT from the main article due to size/length/editorial reasons, so it wouldn't fall under WP:N guideline (or WP:NOTINHERITED). I also would argue that since this is primarily about full releases, development history and notable differences, it's not purely WP:GAMECRUFT. The game has a veritable non-minor release history. However, the sourcing just isn't good enough. It's a whole lot of unsourced material, lots of primary sites and borderline WP:OR connections and notes (using "for example" is really bad for establishing facts or connections that aren't just WP:SYNTH). If there had been some sources that specifically talked about the different home versions as a whole, I could see this as separate content. But without some sources explicitly discussing the "topic", it feels like WP:TRIVIA due to being a collection of facts whose relation to each other isn't established in any sources. I'm not sure what content to merge here, since the aforementioned lack of sources tying it all together. I think the main article already mentions what it can without going into excessive detail. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 17:23, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm baffled at your comments on the sourcing. Looking over the article, far from "a whole lot of unsourced material, lots of primary sites", the majority of the content is cited to articles from GamePro, Amiga Power, GameSpot, EGM, etc. - basically all the "usual suspects" of notable/reliable gaming sources. We usually consider having sourcing even a tenth as good as this to be sufficient grounds for "keep".--Martin IIIa (talk) 18:12, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
 * As for "a whole lot of unsourced material", I can confirm this much: Entire chunks, like the Game Boy section, the PlayStation section, most of the Sega Saturn section, and the entire Midway Arcade Treasures blurb are all unsourced. Otherwise, the Genesis, Game Gear/Master System, and MS-DOS sections have almost no sourcing. That's definitely what I would call "a whole lot". Zeke, the Mad Horrorist  (Speak quickly) (Follow my trail) 03:06, 29 March 2017 (UTC)
 * That's a bit out of context, and my main point is that no sources discuss the content as a single topic. Without a connection between all the versions by sources, we're just picking out individual details and comparisons and filling out the blanks (WP:SYNTH). At that point, this would be just a list, and I don't think it would pass WP:LISTN as having sources that discuss it as a group. The majority of sources here are not bad, just not for the whole topic. In fact, we could probably write content for certain versions of the game. We just don't seem to do that for video games. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 15:51, 29 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I think I know exactly what you're saying. Say somebody notable reviews the Game Boy version and we use it as a source for the content of that port of the game. It would be OR/SYNTH if, for example, the review says it has eight playable characters without saying it's missing any, but we write that it's got eight playable characters and is missing several from the arcade version. We're not the ones allowed to make the comparison; at least one of the sources we gather must explicitly do so or else we can't draw attention to it here on Wikipedia.
 * With that, come to think of it, I certainly think the diversity of game ports way back in the day is an interesting and even notable topic. Ports these days are often identical to the originals they're based on, but it was a lot different a few decades ago and even as recently as the turn of the millenium. Each system was different, so the ports of a single game already couldn't be 100% identical, but there was still enough room to tinker with the overall presentation, which gave each port its own unique flavor in many ways. I certainly see the potential for this topic to be examined in and of itself in its own article, but what remains to be seen is discussion of this topic in and of itself in third-party sources, let alone in enough of them to build articles without merely or primarily using one source per article.
 * To conclude, even with all that I think the best solution for this article is to blow it up and start over. There needs to be so much more comparison not just to the arcade but between versions without focusing on minutia like shadow sprites in a particular version of a particular stage, but again we don't have the third-party leverage to do that yet. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist  (Speak quickly) (Follow my trail) 23:12, 29 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't follow why you think list-type article must be limited to sources which discuss all the items on the list as a whole. I have yet to see a single list-type article which meets that qualification - which only makes sense, because the whole concept of a list-type article is to cover multiple subjects which are related but ultimately separate.--Martin IIIa (talk) 13:45, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
 * That's part of WP:LISTN. If a source doesn't discuss something a group, what reason do we have to group it (OR/SYNTH)? Occasionally, it's an obvious defining characteristic, like a genre or something. But when it's not, there should be appropriate sourcing. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 14:10, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Saying each source we use has to include every item on the list is stretching it just a bit. We don't need every source discussing every single item on the list in comparison to each other. We just need a source to say, for example, that the Game Boy version is missing several characters - actually them - that were present in the arcade version. We need good, reliable sources that actually say on their own what we want to say about the subject on Wikipedia. It is not necessary that to be valid for use in this article a source has to document  the different versions. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist  (Speak quickly) (Follow my trail) 03:09, 31 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Comment Another thing I think is worth pointing out is that every entry on this list is essentially trying to be the same game. Most of these ports play exactly as the arcade version does, regardless of any other differences, which often boil down to things like one stage lacking shadow sprites in one version of the game. We're basically describing the same game over and over. The differences between them are not significant enough to warrant a complete, thorough cataloguing by Wikipedia, let alone in an article devoted entirely to such things. Even if we had the abundance of sources necessary to reliably point these things out, I still say the article should get the ax. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist  (Speak quickly) (Follow my trail) 06:32, 31 March 2017 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.