Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Secret of Mana/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Ian Rose (talk) 00:46, 23 August 2014.

Secret of Mana

 * Nominator(s):  Pres N  19:30, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

When you think of the best 16-bit RPGs ever made, 1993's Secret of Mana is assuredly on the list, up there with Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, and EarthBound. Heck, according to GameRankings, it's one of the best SNES games ever made in any genre. And now, it's available to you for your reviewing pleasure! The article has been fairly solid for a long time—it's a well-known game, after all—but in January I pushed through, rewrote almost all of it, and got it up to GA level. After sitting on it for a few months, I'm still pretty pleased with the way it turned out, and I think it can go all the way. Early-90's games can be hard to source, as the games journalism (cough) field was small and mainly offline, and this game got a surprisingly small marketing push in America for how much it sold in Japan (it's the 21st best-selling SNES game ever, but 80%+ of the sales were in Japan), but I think I've hoovered up everything that could be found and made a pretty nice article. Feel free to explain to me exactly how I'm terribly wrong, or to shock me with easy supports. In any case, thanks for reviewing! -- Pres N  19:30, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Comments from Tezero
Hey, I fielded this page's GAN! Nice to see you've gone a bit further with it; I'll put down some comments later today. Tezero (talk) 20:01, 17 July 2014 (UTC) Alright, here I go. Just a warning; I'm gonna be more stringent with the prose than I was at GAN: I'll be back for Development and onward later. Tezero (talk) 01:39, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The intro's a bit long considering the size of the article; Reception/Legacy in particular is given a lot of real estate. It could stand at two-thirds its current size and be just fine.
 * "the hero, the girl, and the sprite" - Popoi and Primm should be named.
 * "Flammie, a miniature dragon which is controlled by the player and able to fly freely across the world, represented by an overworld map" - Minor question, but is Flammie's gender given?
 * "In an unspecified time period" - A little wordy; I'd prefer "Sometime".
 * "The three main characters do not have names in the original SNES release" - Does the player pick their names?
 * "scamming people at the dwarves' freak show" - This is phrased as though this show is referenced earlier, but the reader knows nothing about it. At the very least, go like "a freak show held by dwarves".
 * "as well as with her father for setting her up for an arranged marriage" - With whom?
 * "Mana Sword, and" - Shouldn't be a comma here.
 * "amnesiac sprite child" - What does he remember back to?
 * "Over time, however, Thanatos narrows his selection to Dyluck" - Does it say elsewhere in the game why he picks Dyluck? If not, why is this an "over time" process?
 * What does the Mana Beast look like?
 * How does it reveal itself?
 * Replying here instead of inline.
 * I don't know why FAC has decided in the past few months that we should all move to 2-paragraph intros, but I disagree- right now game release info, plot, gameplay, development, reception, and legacy get like 1-2 sentences each; any further cut down and I'd be skipping sections. I've done intros this long for much shorter FAs.
 * Done
 * Flammie's male, but it's never relevant beyond that pronouns need to be gendered in English, and I don't see a good way to integrate it into the sentence.
 * Done.
 * Yes, added.
 * Fixed; sorry, characters was clawed out of a lengthier plot section.
 * Done.
 * Done.
 * Video game amnesia, not real amnesia, so all of it, even though he obviously knows language and stuff. The quote is "This child received such a shock from drifting here, it lost all its memories." - It's included in the cited quotes.
 * Reworded it; the relevant quote is "For ages I have been searching...for a human with the power to conquer this world... ...one born in the shadow of darkness, and raised in the light of Mana. Dyluck is the one. I cannot wait any longer. My body has grown weak! It is time! Using his body I will take the Mana Fortress, and rule the world!"
 * Renamed creature to dragon; it looks kinda similar to Flammie, but a lot bigger, more monstrous, and less friendly
 * Reworded to "flies in"; it just kinda... shows up. Flies up to the party from below the screen.
 * alright, responded to everything you've posted so far. -- Pres N  23:23, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Everything else looks fine, I'd say. Tezero (talk) 23:37, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
 * "The real-time battle system used in Secret of Mana is described" - Minor, but perhaps this should be "has been described". It's not a recent description, and perhaps one or more of the creators will die before too long.
 * "a lack of sequential text" - ???
 * "Other Western localizations were done to German and French" - Is "to" the right pronoun, and is "Western" necessary?
 * "Kikuta was originally chosen for Secret of Mana after Kenji Ito, who had composed the soundtrack for Final Fantasy Adventure and was originally slated for the project, was forced to drop it due to other demands on his time such as the soundtrack to Romancing SaGa." - Not awful, but kind of a run-on.
 * "to create an immersive three-dimensional sound" - clarify
 * " Rather than use premade MIDI samples of instruments like most game music composers of the time, Kikuta made his own MIDI samples that matched the hardware capabilities of the SNES so that he would know exactly how the pieces would sound on the system's hardware instead of having to deal with audio hardware differences between the original MIDI sampler and the SNES." - Also quite a dinosaur-bite, as my dad would say.
 * "covers both "ominous" and "light-hearted" tracks" - I'd prefer "includes", or switch "tracks" to "themes".
 * "The title track to the game, "Fear of the Heavens", was designed by Kikuta to sync up with the title screen as it slowly faded in due to hardware limitations; at the time trying to match the audio and visual effects in a game was rare." - Hardware limitations? This seems contradictory. Did he succeed in innovating or not?
 * "Secret of Mana was one of the first soundtrack releases in North America for the North American version of a Japanese game" - Had North American adaptations of Japanese games received soundtrack releases elsewhere? If not, strike "in North America".
 * "with the catalog number N25D-019"/"catalog numbers PSCN-5030 and NTCP-5030" - Relevance?
 * Actually... Given how droning and repetitive the text in this paragraph is - which is, to a large extent, not your fault - it might work better as a bulleted list.
 * "Secret of Mana shipped 1.83 million copies worldwide" - should be "had shipped" or "has shipped"
 * "were also highly reviewed" - There could easily be more releases, so I'd prefer "have also been highly reviewed".
 * Why is Re-releases part of Reception, especially when they're discussed earlier? I'd put it in Development.
 * Not a strict objection, but why is the image of Flammie flying a GIF? It doesn't move.
 * Responses:
 * Done
 * Moved down and reworded
 * Dropped Western and changed to into
 * Split
 * Reworked a bit, though those word choices were Kikuta's
 * Split
 * changed to includes
 * reworded
 * done
 * Removed
 * I'll see what I can do, but embedded lists are rarely the answer.
 * Done
 * Done
 * Done
 * Don't know, that's just what the original image was, and I left it in the article. GIFs don't need to be animated, by the way, that's not their only purpose, though PNG might be better for this image since there aren't large color blocks.
 * -- Pres N  20:33, 23 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Support, then. Interesting about GIFs, that; I did not know that. Tezero (talk) 05:01, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Comments from Mr. Gonna Change My Name Forever
Can you expand the "legacy" part of the article? }I Mr* &#124; (60nna) I{ 03:53, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Not really; if I had sources to do so I would have, but I don't. That's the problem with games from the early 90s that weren't that popular in America as compared to Japan, and whose series kinda faded out outside of Japan- Seiken 3 never got released in English, and Seiken 4 (Legend of Mana) was the last one to do well at all. -- Pres N  23:23, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Support, everything in this article is fine. =D }I Mr* &#124; (60nna) I{ 13:31, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Comments.
 * I agree that lede sections of 3 paragraphs sound fine by me. However, some of the lede feels...  inconsequential?  Is the speed of the translation or the fact that the game was retranslated for iOS really that important?  Also, the reference to two rather minor games in the lede seems to undercut the claim to be influential later on.  Both these bits feel quite cuttable, not because the lede is too long otherwise, but because they aren't really impactful for the lede.
 * I ought to clarify this: I'm not against ledes longer than two paragraphs per se; I'm guilty of that many times over, with an article I have at GAN right now having a four-paragraph lede. Rather, I thought it went into a lot of detail given the amount of text in the article's body. I think I can still support how it is, but like with SnowFire, a bit of compression would be appreciated. Tezero (talk) 05:37, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Nice work overall, of course. SnowFire (talk) 03:48, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure I agree with using the character names in the article. How influential is the iOS version compared to the original?  The old "Nintendo Power" and other printed sources always simply referred to them as the Boy, the Girl, and the Sprite.  Online fansites have traditionally used "Purim" for the Girl's Japanese name rather than "Primm" as well.   Anyway, I'd rather stick to Boy/Girl/Sprite myself short of some evidence the iOS default names are the commonly used ones now, but suppose I'll defer to your judgment.  (That said, regardless, can this reference be included for the names?  More useful than the Japanese page currently there.)
 * "The hero, while unable to use magic, excels at fighting... the sprite is physically the weakest."  Uh, not to be "that guy", but the differences in damage & health in the cast are actually quite minor.  Checking the IGN review linked as the reference, it doesn't say the sprite is physically weak either, merely noting that he's the master of offensive magic.  I'd leave it at just what the IGN review says - the Boy masters weapons quickly, the Girl casts mostly defensive & healing magic, the Sprite casts mostly offensive magic.
 * "mana represents an ethereal, but finite, energy source" --> If it was 'finite' how did the world ever recover? I got the impression from the SNES translation more that bad things happened when the old civ used too much at once for evil purposes, not that it was like oil where once it's gone it's gone.  I'd suggest removing 'finite' and add "technologically advanced" next to civilization, as it should be made clear it was a modern-esque civ.
 * "Dyluck, who was ordered by the King to attack Elinee's Castle, which is considered a virtual suicide mission" --> Is this something added in the iOS version? I don't recall anyone being particularly sure it was a 'suicide mission', and a quick check of the SNES script seems to confirm.  It's not even really that relevant, all that matters is the Girl rans after him to save him - I'd just cut the part out about 'virtual suicide mission.'
 * " leaves the castle to join the hero in his quest, hoping to save Dyluck as well" - Actually, it's more "the girl leaves the castle to save Dyluck, accompanying the Boy as well." The game is interestingly consistent on this, she's only interested in saving Dyluck; if the Boy doesn't even go try to catch up with Dyluck and goes directly to Gaea's Navel, the Girl will leave the party for a time and state she's going to Dyluck.
 * "Unbeknownst to the Emperor or his subordinates, they are being manipulated by Thanatos" -- Thanatos is a chief advisor to all of these people, so it's pretty beknownst. The fact he later betrays them is mentioned later.
 * "as well as music from Bali" - Bali, the Indonesian island? Bali, the name of some other musician?  Seems like a classic case for a wikilink....
 * Per above, a lot of the information in the soundtracks section feels repetive, and the perfect kind of data to slough off in a sidebar infobox.
 * Is it worth also mentioning the referenced RPGFan article comments about the blisteringly poor reception to Secret of Mana Genesis, that it's 'arranged' but almost identical to the OST?
 * 'Kikuta has said that they are "how he wanted the music to sound when he wrote it"' - #1, this is one of those vague bland useless quotes that might as well be cut anyway. #2, it's not clear in the text who you're even quoting from (it is RPGFan in this case) if you want to keep it.
 * Is there anything more to say in the re-releases? New reviews, commentary on the differences, etc.?  Or even just a statement that these re-releases generated little notice.  (Incidentally, if there isn't, that argues more for using the Boy/Girl/Sprite names per the above, but that's just me.)
 * "Secret of Mana has been on numerous all-time "best games" lists" --> This is more a pet peeve of mine, but tons of Wikipedia articles these days are just in love with mentioning every minor listicle they get mentioned in - this song was listed as one of Random British Magazine's 25 hottest songs of the summer, etc.  It's great you dug all this up, but I'd personally suggest sticking some of the awards in a footnote.  (For example, IGN usually provided *two* Top 100s every year, one reader-voted and one editor-submitted.  And there'd be random churn each year.  That's a lot more than 100 games that make such top 100 lists over time, for all that Secret of Mana is in fact great.)  Feel free to disagree though, lots of good WP articles seem to be in love with these lists of mentions, so.
 * Responses:
 * Dropped the less-important bits
 * Removed all places where I used their name directly; the fact that they have names outside of the initial NA release is mentioned once in gameplay and again in setting, but that's it. The iOS version isn't a big enough deal to contradict the lack of names originally; it's just the only version I've played so I over-weighted it. Used that English reference as well.
 * Done
 * Done
 * Done
 * Done
 * Done
 * Done
 * Given that there's an entire Mana music article, I just pulled out a bunch of the boring bits- length, publishing dates, publishers, etc. Tried to rework some of the sentence flow to make it less choppy- most of this section was copied from a GA I did years and years ago, and it shows.
 * Added as a comment after the Kikuta quote
 * Sourced
 * Added a little comment that there were fewer reviews for the other versions, even if they still got high scores- they are just ports, after all, which usually don't get much.
 * Dropped some of them, since they got laborious. What I really want is to replace the whole thing with a source that says definitively that SoM is considered one of the best 16-bit RPGs, or one of the best SNES games, and I guess I'm using top-100 lists as a proxy for that. For a more modern game I could just use awards, but... 1993.
 * -- Pres N  20:03, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I made a few changes myself - please take a look and modify if needed. Anyway, Support.  I will say that while I think this article is FA quality, there is still room for improvement, especially in the Reception & Legacy section, just I'm sure it'll be aggravatingly hard to get good sources for it.  (I think the Edge quote is a bit hyperbolic when it claims SoM arrived "unhyped and unheard of" - anecdotally, SoM was Known among people who owned a SNES, certainly among anyone who enjoyed action-RPGs, and 300K sales in NA was *just fine* by standards then.  And of course there are surely more Japanese sources lurking out there.) SnowFire (talk) 06:34, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Comments from Dank

 * As always, feel free to revert my copyediting.
 * "The Japanese release referred to the three protagonists as Randi, Primm and Popoi ...": It's probably not necessary to say this three times.
 * Support on prose per standard disclaimer. These are my edits. Very readable, and a very easy copyediting job. - Dank (push to talk) 01:43, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much, and I've pulled the extraneous Randis- thought I'd chopped it down to two, but I guess not. -- Pres N  03:47, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Looks good. Happy to help. - Dank (push to talk) 04:00, 13 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Support: A great article. Props to PresN for putting up with a very long and intensive review. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 20:41, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Image check (GermanJoe) - all OK

 * 3 fair-use images of sufficient low resolution and valid rationale (see second comment) - OK.
 * The third fair-use -of a Mode 7 screenshot- is a close call (we have a separate "Mode 7" article, where such a screenshot may be better). But if it's a significant feature of this specific game, it should be OK here aswell.
 * Other images of developers are CC, with sufficient source info and personality rights tag - OK. GermanJoe (talk) 20:34, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Source review by Tezero
Will do. Tezero (talk) 21:23, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
 * 8. You might consider linking Nintendo World Report.
 * All sources look reliable, though you might want to specify right away in the citation somewhere that 34 is an interview since Square Haven doesn't otherwise look like an RS.
 * Spotchecks (is this enough?):
 * 34: good
 * 54: good
 * 44: good, but you might want to specify that these differences are between the SNES originals and the rearrangements
 * 24: good, though it took me a bit to find "FF III" as I'd been looking for the more general "Final Fantasy III", "experience", and "level up"
 * 14: good, I assume
 * 64: good in that it contains the appropriate content, but it was a dead link for me (archive), though this may be because of this library computer's lousy Windows-Firefox setup. I'd recommend checking a few for dead links.

Tezero (talk) 21:38, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks so much! swapped deadurl=no to deadurl=yes for the IGN top100 lists; all three live links are dead for me too. -- Pres N  21:49, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Alright, cool. Continue to support based on sources. Tezero (talk) 21:51, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Ian Rose (talk) 00:46, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.