Wikipedia:Featured and good topic candidates/Mana series/archive1

Mana series
The Mana series, known in Japan as Seiken Densetsu (聖剣伝説), is a high-fantasy action role-playing game series from Square (now Square Enix), created by Koichi Ishii. The series began with the 1999 Game Boy game Seiken Densetsu (Final Fantasy Adventure) as a handheld side story to Square's flagship franchise Final Fantasy, though the Final Fantasy-inspired elements were subsequently dropped starting with the second installment, Secret of Mana, as the games became their own series. It has since grown to include games of various genres within the fictional world of Mana, with recurring stories involving a world tree, its associated holy sword, and the fight against forces that would steal their power. Several character designs, creatures, and musical themes reappear frequently.


 * Contributor(s): PresN

A year and a half ago, I decided to bring up first Secret of Mana, then Seiken Densetsu 3 to GA status—two of the best SNES RPGs/2D RPGs ever made. Once I had, though, I went ahead and finished off the whole series, bringing 7 articles to GA with 2 continuing on to FA (I had gotten the music article to GA years prior). Now that it's all done, we have here a tidy little Good Topic- a series article, 8 game articles, and 1 music article, for 3/10 FA and 7/10 GA. If I get any more to FA it won't be for quite a while, so I'm bringing the whole group to GTC now. I'd like to thank (retired) and  (essentially retired) for getting the series article up to FA years ago (recently updated by me), and  (retired) for getting Final Fantasy Adventure to GA in 2013. The image is a free icon of a tree that looked the most to me like the Mana Tree, the central icon of the franchise; there isn't a good free image directly from the games available. Thanks all for reviewing! -- Pres N  18:23, 13 July 2015 (UTC) -- Pres  N  18:23, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Shouldn't the title of the main article match the title of the topic? So either (1) rename Mana (series) to Mana series and leave the topic title as is, or (2) leave the article at Mana (series) and rename this topic just "Mana"? I would think that "Mana series" is the common name for this topic anyway and that all sources call it the "Mana series" rather than just Mana, but I also see that the way the topic candidate template works, this topic becomes "Mana series series". Thought I'd bring it up as a recurring issue, but happy to discuss in another forum. – czar   19:02, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
 * The title of the topic doesn't need to match the title of the lead article- they're completely independent. They often don't match, since the article's name is meant for a different purpose than a "topic title". I could rename the topic to "The Mana Shindig" and it wouldn't affect anything else- it's just a name, the template imposes no formatting. The formatting of the lead article in the template doesn't need to match either one, though it's convenient if it does- it's just a piped link. The (rough) consensus for video game topics seems to be: "X titles" if it's just the games in a series, and "X series" if it's every article related to the series (music, characters, etc.). So, in this case, "Mana series" would be correct for the topic title. I could change it to "Mana", but given that Mana links to something unrelated that seems counterintuitive. As to renaming the actual lead article to "Mana series"- that seems to be more a discussion for WP:VG, though I'm not opposed. -- Pres N  20:20, 13 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Support although the designer could be added at a future date. Where does "Mana" come from? Nergaal (talk) 04:59, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
 * No idea; I suspect that someone in the design team for Secret of Mana said, "We can't call it 'Holy Sword Legend' in English, that's dumb. What's a cool name for magic? Mana? Sounds good." They didn't worry so much about names back then, not when you had major new series called "Dragon Quest" and "Final Fantasy" to compete with. -- Pres N  01:13, 16 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Support - I'm not dead yet! Life just got a lot busier, but I still love Wikipedia, PresN, and the Mana series. I dreamed that this would become a Good Topic someday, glad I got to see it happen! Judgesurreal777 (talk) 00:55, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Glad you did too! Sorry it took 7 years! -- Pres N  01:13, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Closed with a consensus to promote to Good Topic. - GamerPro64  17:47, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Support, but there appears to be enough coverage of the unlisted series titles to warrant their own articles (e.g., Rise of Mana). This said, I wouldn't count them towards the topic right now as I can't find any English-language reviews. – czar   18:20, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Support: While there are gaps in the series, this is a good topic as it stands. Having looked at all the articles, I'm confident that this is good enough for it. Congratulations to for bringing the Mana series this far. --ProtoDrake (talk) 08:28, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Support: I've been waiting for this one. Everything seems to be in order—full coverage, great icon. I don't agree with some of the others that Rise should be included, since it's a Japan-only mobile game whose independent notability is doubtful. Even if we dredged up Japanese sources, I'm very skeptical that they would be meaty enough to warrant a standalone article. If strong sources emerge in the future, Rise can be added to the topic at that time; right now, it's no big deal. Great work. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 22:41, 28 July 2015 (UTC)