The article was promoted by Sarastro1 via FACBot ( talk) 21:52, 19 October 2017 [1].
Sonic the Hedgehog is a 2006 video game published by Sega for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles. It's best known for its negative reception, often being cited as one of the worst games in the Sonic series and in gaming in general.
However, its story is one that is not widely known. You see, the game that became what is now known as Sonic '06 wasn't even supposed to be a Sonic game. It was conceived as a separate, completely different property. But, when it came time to create a new game in the Sonic franchise, series creator Yuji Naka wanted something big. He wanted to give Sonic a facelift, like how DC Comics had revived Batman for his 2005 outing Batman Begins. Thus, development on Sonic the Hedgehog began. The designers, with the advanced technical capabilities of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, began to create a vast, more realistic world for Sonic and his friends to explore. With these innovations, they created a new character (Silver) and experimented with new ideas never seen before. But it all went downhill from there. Naka suddenly resigned, and there was no one left who had worked on the first games in the series anymore. Then Sega got development kits for a system then known as the Revolution, and it split the game's development team into two: one to work on Sonic '06, and another to work on a completely different game that would eventually become Sonic and the Secret Rings for the Wii. There was now a small, inexperienced development team working on the former and... they rushed it. When it finally came out, critics blasted Sonic the Hedgehog as an insult to Sonic's fifteen years of making gaming history. What was supposed to be the Batman Begins for Sonic turned into the Fantastic Four (2015) for Sonic, and it left a stain that is still felt today.
Since the last FAC, this article has undergone a copyedit courtesy of TarkusAB. We worked really hard -- re-writing the lead, plot, and reception, archiving URLs, etc. ... and I believe it's finally ready. It's reliably sourced, well-written, and it covers all topics. Everything's here. Indeed, I believe this article meets the FA standards. ~ TheJoebro64 ( talk) 12:13, 4 September 2017 (UTC)
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Wonderful work with this article; once my comments are addressed, I will support this for promotion. This is certainly an interesting part of gaming history, more so featuring how not to run a franchise or a reboot process. Aoba47 ( talk) 00:17, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
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Quickly glossed over on section of the article: Music. It has major sourcing and verifiability issues. It's entirely sourced from store pages which are not good sources.
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-- The1337gamer ( talk) 22:15, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
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That's all I found. Very close to supporting. Freikorp ( talk) 23:45, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
Good ALT text. Jo-Jo Eumerus ( talk, contributions) 12:35, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
Comment: I just realized something. If this passes, it'll be the first mainline Sonic game to achieve FA-status! ~ TheJoebro64 ( talk) 15:31, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
It's clear that this article is very polished after going through more a number of reviews. I've arrived late to the party but since all I brought up was very minor nitpicking I'd be happy to lend my support now. I think prose-wise it meets the FA criteria. JAG UAR 19:20, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
As requested, I'll also perform a source review for this article. I will comb through each source first to see if the content matches the prose in the article, and then I'll check if they're reliable:
I couldn't find any dependencies content-wise, so other than that I think the sourcing has improved quite a bit since last time. I'll take another look at this once all of the above have been dealt with. JAG UAR 16:08, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
Coordinator comment: At the last FAC, David Fuchs opposed this on the grounds of prose and sourcing. I'd be interested in his opinion of the article now. And on a similar note, this still requires a source review which can be requested at the top of WT:FAC. Sarastro1 ( talk) 21:28, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
Follow up: As David Fuchs is currently inactive, I think we need someone else to check his concerns from the last FAC. His comments can be read here. I wonder if czar is available to take a look? And maybe Mike could also have a look (although he might be considering a change of address to avoid being pinged by coordinators!) Sarastro1 ( talk) 22:00, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
I'll add comments as I go through the article. I'm copyediting; please revert as needed.
Though positively received in pre-release showings, it experienced a difficult development cycle: this is true, but it might be better to talk about development before mentioning the reception. I'd suggest cutting "Though positively received in pre-release showings" and adding that information to the final paragraph of the lead instead, where it would be in chronological order.
In the land of Soleanna, Sonic and Tails protect Princess Elise: this is the first mention of Tails; I assume Tails, Blaze, and Rouge are sidekicks? It might be helpful to mention them in the Gameplay section, or else add a word or two to introduce them in the Plot section.
Sonic the Hedgehog had a troubled development, and multiple frequently discussed features were scrapped before the game was released: I think you can cut this sentence completely. It summarizes what follows, but there's no need to do that; the problems will be apparent to the reader as they go through the section, and are explicitly referenced as "challenges" or "problems".
It was initially conceived as an original non-Sonic project, but was reworked into a Sonic title as the developers believed the project's realistic tone combined with the world of Sonic would allow them to create expansive levels previously impossible on earlier sixth generation consoles, and experiment with multiple play-styles.: I don't think this is quite what the source says. Amaike says they were "considering" creating a game set in a realistic world using the physics engine (presumably Havok), so it doesn't appear they had a definite development project. Then his team was reassigned to work on the new Sonic game, and they decided to use those ideas in the Sonic franchise. That's not quite the same as reworking an existing game development project. A bigger problem with the wording is that you say "as the developers believed"; in fact they didn't switch development to a Sonic game in order to take advantage of the engine; it was more or less the other way round.
The game's title was chosen to signify it as a "move to reset and reinvent the series": the quote is from a review which guesses that this might be the case; I don't think you can state it as fact in this way.
As Sonic Team no longer had the rights to use the RenderWare game engine used in prior games, they used the Havok engine, previously used in their PlayStation 2 title Astro Boy (2004): A couple of problems here. I may be missing something, but I don't see anything in the source given that indicates Sonic Team lost the rights to use RenderWare; that may be just because I'm not familiar with how these rights work. Can you point to the text that supports this? Second, and this may make the first point moot, I don't see any support for "As" at the start of the sentence -- the source's discussion of their use of Havok doesn't say they would have used RenderWare if it were available. Is there any reason to mention RenderWare?
As Sonic the Hedgehog was designed to reboot the series for the seventh generation: I couldn't find support for this in the source; can you point me at the right text? I used Google Translate, which may be why I missed it.
the design team created a more realistic setting than previous Sonic games and gave the human characters a photorealistic look: this is the second half of the sentence I queried above; looking at the source I don't see anything that says they created the setting because it was a reboot, or anything about the photorealistic look.
As Sonic the Hedgehog was designed to reboot the series for the seventh generation, the design team created a more realistic setting than previous Sonic games, which means that the reason the team went for realism is because it was a reboot. The first two paragraphs of the Gamespot source say "marrying the classic Sonic elements...with the power of the new boxes", and "The power available, thanks to the new consoles, posed a new challenge, which the team has embraced", but these are just saying that they had new consoles and they used them. There's no causal relationship given. Mike Christie ( talk - contribs - library) 15:17, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
I'm going to stop here as I suspect my lack of knowledge of video games may be causing me problems in interpreting these sources. Once we've sorted these out I'll go ahead with the rest of the review. Mike Christie ( talk - contribs - library) 11:51, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
More comments:
After its reveal: this seems to be a bit of gaming vocabulary that most people won't know. Can you link to an explanation, or rephrase?
According to former Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske, Naka's departure affected the spirit of the development team, as he was the only remaining member of the team who had worked on the first game: I don't think this is a good paraphrase of Kalinske's comments. Was Naka in fact the only remaining member of the first development team? The source says "The team that initially made Sonic so great – Naka, designer/director Naoto Ohshima, producer Mark Cerny, and others – was gone"; had the others on that team already left, or did they leave to go to Prope? Kalinske doesn't really talk about the team that remained after Naka's departure, so I don't think we can say "affected the spirit". The key phrase is "the heart and soul of Sonic". How about "Naka had been the last remaining member of the original Sonic development team, and with his departure, "the heart and soul of Sonic" was gone, according to former Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske"? I think you'd need another source for Naka being the last member of the 1991 team, though.
led the other half to begin work on a new Sonicgame—later revealed to be Sonic and the Secret Rings—for the Wii: I don't think it matters to the reader that at the time this happened the name of the game was not known; it would be more concise to make this "led the other half to begin work on Sonic and the Secret Rings for the Wii".
current series producer Takashi Iizuka stated: What does "current" mean here? If it means that as of today he's the series producer, we need some kind of WP:ASOF indicator. If you know when Iizuka became series producer, we could make this "Takashi Iizuka, who became series producer in 20xx".
Stopping there for now. I think the reception and legacy sections are much better than some I've seen. Have you looked at WP:RECEPTION? There's some advice there for structuring these sections for readability. You've avoided the "A said B" problem, but in some places you give reviewer names where I don't think they're need. For example, unless Jeff Gerstmann is notable in his own right, I think we could just say "Gamespot" instead of "Jeff Gerstmann of Gamespot". Pinging Czar, who is far more experienced than I am at video game reception writing; Czar, do you have time to look through this section and the legacy section? If not I'll do a pass. Mike Christie ( talk - contribs - library) 13:51, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
More comments:
The decision to include Sonic the Hedgehog stages and bosses in Sonic Generations was controversial: is "controversial" the right word? It would mean there was a controversy about it, but it sounds like at least one person suggested it was a poor decision, rather than that there was any controversy.
-- Mike Christie ( talk - contribs - library) 11:20, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
Support. Mike Christie ( talk - contribs - library) 11:53, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
The article was promoted by Sarastro1 via FACBot ( talk) 21:52, 19 October 2017 [1].
Sonic the Hedgehog is a 2006 video game published by Sega for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles. It's best known for its negative reception, often being cited as one of the worst games in the Sonic series and in gaming in general.
However, its story is one that is not widely known. You see, the game that became what is now known as Sonic '06 wasn't even supposed to be a Sonic game. It was conceived as a separate, completely different property. But, when it came time to create a new game in the Sonic franchise, series creator Yuji Naka wanted something big. He wanted to give Sonic a facelift, like how DC Comics had revived Batman for his 2005 outing Batman Begins. Thus, development on Sonic the Hedgehog began. The designers, with the advanced technical capabilities of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, began to create a vast, more realistic world for Sonic and his friends to explore. With these innovations, they created a new character (Silver) and experimented with new ideas never seen before. But it all went downhill from there. Naka suddenly resigned, and there was no one left who had worked on the first games in the series anymore. Then Sega got development kits for a system then known as the Revolution, and it split the game's development team into two: one to work on Sonic '06, and another to work on a completely different game that would eventually become Sonic and the Secret Rings for the Wii. There was now a small, inexperienced development team working on the former and... they rushed it. When it finally came out, critics blasted Sonic the Hedgehog as an insult to Sonic's fifteen years of making gaming history. What was supposed to be the Batman Begins for Sonic turned into the Fantastic Four (2015) for Sonic, and it left a stain that is still felt today.
Since the last FAC, this article has undergone a copyedit courtesy of TarkusAB. We worked really hard -- re-writing the lead, plot, and reception, archiving URLs, etc. ... and I believe it's finally ready. It's reliably sourced, well-written, and it covers all topics. Everything's here. Indeed, I believe this article meets the FA standards. ~ TheJoebro64 ( talk) 12:13, 4 September 2017 (UTC)
Resolved
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Wonderful work with this article; once my comments are addressed, I will support this for promotion. This is certainly an interesting part of gaming history, more so featuring how not to run a franchise or a reboot process. Aoba47 ( talk) 00:17, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
Resolved
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Quickly glossed over on section of the article: Music. It has major sourcing and verifiability issues. It's entirely sourced from store pages which are not good sources.
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-- The1337gamer ( talk) 22:15, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
Resolved
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That's all I found. Very close to supporting. Freikorp ( talk) 23:45, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
Good ALT text. Jo-Jo Eumerus ( talk, contributions) 12:35, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
Comment: I just realized something. If this passes, it'll be the first mainline Sonic game to achieve FA-status! ~ TheJoebro64 ( talk) 15:31, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
It's clear that this article is very polished after going through more a number of reviews. I've arrived late to the party but since all I brought up was very minor nitpicking I'd be happy to lend my support now. I think prose-wise it meets the FA criteria. JAG UAR 19:20, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
As requested, I'll also perform a source review for this article. I will comb through each source first to see if the content matches the prose in the article, and then I'll check if they're reliable:
I couldn't find any dependencies content-wise, so other than that I think the sourcing has improved quite a bit since last time. I'll take another look at this once all of the above have been dealt with. JAG UAR 16:08, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
Coordinator comment: At the last FAC, David Fuchs opposed this on the grounds of prose and sourcing. I'd be interested in his opinion of the article now. And on a similar note, this still requires a source review which can be requested at the top of WT:FAC. Sarastro1 ( talk) 21:28, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
Follow up: As David Fuchs is currently inactive, I think we need someone else to check his concerns from the last FAC. His comments can be read here. I wonder if czar is available to take a look? And maybe Mike could also have a look (although he might be considering a change of address to avoid being pinged by coordinators!) Sarastro1 ( talk) 22:00, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
I'll add comments as I go through the article. I'm copyediting; please revert as needed.
Though positively received in pre-release showings, it experienced a difficult development cycle: this is true, but it might be better to talk about development before mentioning the reception. I'd suggest cutting "Though positively received in pre-release showings" and adding that information to the final paragraph of the lead instead, where it would be in chronological order.
In the land of Soleanna, Sonic and Tails protect Princess Elise: this is the first mention of Tails; I assume Tails, Blaze, and Rouge are sidekicks? It might be helpful to mention them in the Gameplay section, or else add a word or two to introduce them in the Plot section.
Sonic the Hedgehog had a troubled development, and multiple frequently discussed features were scrapped before the game was released: I think you can cut this sentence completely. It summarizes what follows, but there's no need to do that; the problems will be apparent to the reader as they go through the section, and are explicitly referenced as "challenges" or "problems".
It was initially conceived as an original non-Sonic project, but was reworked into a Sonic title as the developers believed the project's realistic tone combined with the world of Sonic would allow them to create expansive levels previously impossible on earlier sixth generation consoles, and experiment with multiple play-styles.: I don't think this is quite what the source says. Amaike says they were "considering" creating a game set in a realistic world using the physics engine (presumably Havok), so it doesn't appear they had a definite development project. Then his team was reassigned to work on the new Sonic game, and they decided to use those ideas in the Sonic franchise. That's not quite the same as reworking an existing game development project. A bigger problem with the wording is that you say "as the developers believed"; in fact they didn't switch development to a Sonic game in order to take advantage of the engine; it was more or less the other way round.
The game's title was chosen to signify it as a "move to reset and reinvent the series": the quote is from a review which guesses that this might be the case; I don't think you can state it as fact in this way.
As Sonic Team no longer had the rights to use the RenderWare game engine used in prior games, they used the Havok engine, previously used in their PlayStation 2 title Astro Boy (2004): A couple of problems here. I may be missing something, but I don't see anything in the source given that indicates Sonic Team lost the rights to use RenderWare; that may be just because I'm not familiar with how these rights work. Can you point to the text that supports this? Second, and this may make the first point moot, I don't see any support for "As" at the start of the sentence -- the source's discussion of their use of Havok doesn't say they would have used RenderWare if it were available. Is there any reason to mention RenderWare?
As Sonic the Hedgehog was designed to reboot the series for the seventh generation: I couldn't find support for this in the source; can you point me at the right text? I used Google Translate, which may be why I missed it.
the design team created a more realistic setting than previous Sonic games and gave the human characters a photorealistic look: this is the second half of the sentence I queried above; looking at the source I don't see anything that says they created the setting because it was a reboot, or anything about the photorealistic look.
As Sonic the Hedgehog was designed to reboot the series for the seventh generation, the design team created a more realistic setting than previous Sonic games, which means that the reason the team went for realism is because it was a reboot. The first two paragraphs of the Gamespot source say "marrying the classic Sonic elements...with the power of the new boxes", and "The power available, thanks to the new consoles, posed a new challenge, which the team has embraced", but these are just saying that they had new consoles and they used them. There's no causal relationship given. Mike Christie ( talk - contribs - library) 15:17, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
I'm going to stop here as I suspect my lack of knowledge of video games may be causing me problems in interpreting these sources. Once we've sorted these out I'll go ahead with the rest of the review. Mike Christie ( talk - contribs - library) 11:51, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
More comments:
After its reveal: this seems to be a bit of gaming vocabulary that most people won't know. Can you link to an explanation, or rephrase?
According to former Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske, Naka's departure affected the spirit of the development team, as he was the only remaining member of the team who had worked on the first game: I don't think this is a good paraphrase of Kalinske's comments. Was Naka in fact the only remaining member of the first development team? The source says "The team that initially made Sonic so great – Naka, designer/director Naoto Ohshima, producer Mark Cerny, and others – was gone"; had the others on that team already left, or did they leave to go to Prope? Kalinske doesn't really talk about the team that remained after Naka's departure, so I don't think we can say "affected the spirit". The key phrase is "the heart and soul of Sonic". How about "Naka had been the last remaining member of the original Sonic development team, and with his departure, "the heart and soul of Sonic" was gone, according to former Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske"? I think you'd need another source for Naka being the last member of the 1991 team, though.
led the other half to begin work on a new Sonicgame—later revealed to be Sonic and the Secret Rings—for the Wii: I don't think it matters to the reader that at the time this happened the name of the game was not known; it would be more concise to make this "led the other half to begin work on Sonic and the Secret Rings for the Wii".
current series producer Takashi Iizuka stated: What does "current" mean here? If it means that as of today he's the series producer, we need some kind of WP:ASOF indicator. If you know when Iizuka became series producer, we could make this "Takashi Iizuka, who became series producer in 20xx".
Stopping there for now. I think the reception and legacy sections are much better than some I've seen. Have you looked at WP:RECEPTION? There's some advice there for structuring these sections for readability. You've avoided the "A said B" problem, but in some places you give reviewer names where I don't think they're need. For example, unless Jeff Gerstmann is notable in his own right, I think we could just say "Gamespot" instead of "Jeff Gerstmann of Gamespot". Pinging Czar, who is far more experienced than I am at video game reception writing; Czar, do you have time to look through this section and the legacy section? If not I'll do a pass. Mike Christie ( talk - contribs - library) 13:51, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
More comments:
The decision to include Sonic the Hedgehog stages and bosses in Sonic Generations was controversial: is "controversial" the right word? It would mean there was a controversy about it, but it sounds like at least one person suggested it was a poor decision, rather than that there was any controversy.
-- Mike Christie ( talk - contribs - library) 11:20, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
Support. Mike Christie ( talk - contribs - library) 11:53, 18 October 2017 (UTC)