Black Squirrel

From Sega Retro

Nice work on the cleanup of some articles out there, I also thought that we should had use the original title screen and not one from a port in the info part. - User:Elratauru 11:00, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Contents

Is there a way to display single-page pdf thumbnails?

Hey again, my bad for that extra page scan. Is there a way to display a single page of a hosted pdf file as a thumbnail? Sorry again, thank you for helping me learn this stuff :) CartridgeCulture (talk) 05:17, 2 November 2021 (EDT)

File:MeanMachinesSega40UK.pdf yes -Black Squirrel (talk) 05:24, 2 November 2021 (EDT)

oh awesome, thats exactly what I needed. I genuinely appreciate the help so much, and for working with me as I get more accustomed to the little things like this. Thank you Black Squirrel CartridgeCulture (talk) 05:28, 2 November 2021 (EDT)

For convenience

This Japanese chap has been kind enough to buy and review all sorts of Mega Drive related hardware, and from the looks of things, he's still actively doing stuff

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.yahoo.co.jp%2Frig_veda%2Ffolder%2F1499935.html&sl=ja&tl=en

Bubble Bobble 2

I changed the name to what is on the title screen. Does the boxart actually only translate to what you posted and not whats on the title screen?

Traditionally the game's just known as "Rainbow Islands". Nobody's really paid attention to the subtitle before (and by nobody, that means wikipedia, mobygames and numerous other databases). There's also a bit of confusion to be had, as there are other games called "Bubble Bobble II" or "Bubble Bobble Part II". And to make matters worse, Parasol Stars is sometimes called "Bubble Bobble III" or "Rainbow Islands 2". It's easier on everybody if the games are just called "Bubble Bobble", "Rainbow Islands" and "Parasol Stars".
The European Master System box actually calls it "Rainbow Islands: Story of THE Bubble Bobble 2". So I'm really not all that sure. -Black Squirrel 21:29, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
Well, on Sonic Retro we go by what's on the title screen. An example is calling the game Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball rather than just Sonic Spinball. I'm sure that still applies over here.--MathUser 21:32, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

TeamPlayer

I tried to make sense of why there are 3 wires. Correct it if I'm mistaken on my guess.

About old logos (MD ones for example)

I believe that the main problem about these logos...is that it seems that according to what I have read over the years, these logos were not vectorial (At least the EU and US Megadrive logos). I mean, these logos were painted by hand like any other old Sonic logo. Letter by letter, and shadow by shadow.

Even so, I examined the cover for the Megadrive Collections they released...and they used the same logo I uploaded here... The "Collection" words looked really really vectorial, but all the other logo parts looked the same old hand painted (and kinda low quality for its resolution) logo.

For now, I believe that'll be nice to have SVG's for now like I said, I also retraced the logos following everything the most accurate I could too (I took pics from boxes, so I'd not even miss a detail.)-Elratauru 18:42, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I think it's very unlikely that you'll ever find vector versions of the US and EU Mega Drive logos. But we're not desperate for them since Sega Retro has some massive PNGs already. The Japanese one, however, is very simple, and simplistic logos tend to suggest that somewhere there's an official vector-based copy. I haven't done a lot of research in the subject, but I think most professional logos use the EPS format, which has been around since the mid-1980s. Don't know how Sega work, but there's always a possibility the raw copy exists somewhere.
I a lot of the logos I've uploaded were rippped from PDFs, which I believe is often the format used for creating manuals and covers these days. So if Japan were to get a Sega Mega Drive collection and a PDF replacement manual was hosted on Sega of Japan's website, we might get lucky.
But I don't think we should be endulging in fan-made works, partly because we don't allow fan-made scans and partly because it's never a good idea to spread wrong data. -Black Squirrel 19:10, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Do I pay you via PayPal?

I hope you don't mind correcting the list; it did give me an excuse to make more unlicensed game articles... in fact - Andlabs 11:12, 29 March 2011 (CDT)

I don't mind at all =P. I only made it a user page out of fear it might be too big for the the current Sega Mega Drive page. It'll need to be shifted to somewhere more meaningful at a later date-Black Squirrel 11:15, 29 March 2011 (CDT)

SMS cart scans

I see you put one of the carts scans I've just done into place. =P I've put most of the rest up but 3 elude me due to alt box covers:

Any thoughts? Overlord 16:53, 2 January 2012 (CST)

This is why I stopped after Aerial Assault, I figured you'd know better =P
(Castle of Illusion also has this problem by the way)
I would imagine there were no changes to the cartridges (or at least, the front of them) between EU releases. They might even be identical to the US versions too. The only one I'm not sure about is that OutRun Europa cart, because it's a third-party one.
this image suggests a red version of OutRun Europa exists, and assuming that cartridge is both legitmate and came in that box, this would suggest that the white label one goes with this (though honestly, it feels like it should be the other way around). There's a few similar U.S. Gold releases which probably follow similar rules... unless SMS Power have the answer I'll have to check this all up at a later date since I'm short on time at the mo -Black Squirrel 17:08, 2 January 2012 (CST)
Fair enough. I've added Castle of Illusion above - best to leave it I think until it's verified rather than rush into it and make a mistake we never end up fixing. These are the only loose carts I've got, just annoying that half of the buggers have alt covers! Overlord 18:09, 2 January 2012 (CST)

This piqued my interest

"Most Dreamcast scans are fake - see spine for product code, PAL games =/= jewel case " — are we talking region-specific here?. I know most of the US ones are crap, but the EU collection I have seems to check out. Have I been mislabeling?

The PAL set here is fine (although it might be missing a few language variants), it's just that at the time of writing that note, our collection was incomplete and image searches were throwing up more fake covers than real ones. I also spotted one or two dodgy covers on Sonic Retro back in the day too so people must have been getting caught out
https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=dreamcast+pal+cover&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=Nus8UfrVCKzb7AbB4ICwDw&biw=1920&bih=951&sei=N-s8UYznFYqe0QX7koHICg
you don't have to scroll down very far until the fakes turn up - a few months ago fakes were more common than the real things (thankfully though, easy to spot because we had crazy boxes unique to the DC). The US/JP set isn't quite as lucky, and in fact a few fake covers managed to slip through:
(IIRC non-fake scans of these games suck even worse than these four, which is why I haven't bothered to replace them)
Sites like GameFAQs and Giant Bomb were all using fake covers at the time too (and probably still are) so it easy to be misled -Black Squirrel (talk) 15:28, 10 March 2013 (CDT)

Saturn spines

With IF+XM, they pulled the old "there's no interpunct" stunt... although the logos are actually drawn like that, and I'm going to start using them. With Souky, pretty much everything related to the game writes it that way, and as much as I'd like to override that, this is not my wiki. Obviously, if whatever English spine starts cutting out subtitles (this goes way beyond Saturn spines), we override that. With Garou Densetsu 3, the announcer says the subtitle because they always did in the originals; Sega simply didn't see the subtitle as important, or it was a mistake that stuck around. I'm actually seeing a bigger problem with the logo of GD3 always using "ROAD TO THE FINAL VICTORY", even as the announcer says the Japanese form. In fact... Despatche (talk) 14:43, 15 April 2013 (CDT)

oh

ok --Uno10 (talk) 09:12, 4 August 2013 (CDT)

Victory Goal credits

Hi! You added the credits for the game, can you tell me which source you used? Regards.--Hydao (talk) 08:08, 15 April 2014 (CDT)

IIRC it was a video on YouTube, and I think I had to do some digging to find it. It was a while ago - good chance the video has been removed since.
Doubtless it needs double checking - most things do. -Black Squirrel (talk) 08:27, 15 April 2014 (CDT)
Oh that's ok, if you used the video, then it's fine. The names are correct. I was just not sure about the "Nifty-Serve Soccer Forum", but no big deal. Thanks.--Hydao (talk) 09:58, 15 April 2014 (CDT)

My Uploads

Hi. What are you doing with my uploads?) If I understand correctly, adding to them This image is a scan, photo or promotional image of a Sega 32X video game box etc.. Second question - what about deleting old versions of files, like worse scans? Third - about upload resolution limit. I mean - for example in wiki scan - 600x800, 500Kb. I have 1200x1600, 2Mb - upload like new file version?Depressor (talk) 14:39, 19 June 2014 (CDT)

When you upload a file, MediaWiki automatically creates a page for it, which in turn is treated like any other page on the wiki. I'm adding this template which we use to categorise those pages/files (there are tons for all sorts of systems and scan types).
"Upload a new version of this file" is the way to replace an old file with a new one. There's an incredibly tedious bug on Sega Retro which means the thumbnails don't always update straight away - sometimes it can take days for the wiki to wake up, but the file will have been replaced. The wiki keeps track of old revisions just in case we need to revert back to an earlier version - they hang around indefinitely (there's no point in deleting them because doing so doesn't actually remove things from the server - you can't do that from this end, it just blocks access).
There shouldn' be a resolution "limit" - we aim for 300dpi because that generally brings out all the detail, but 600dpi is often better and above that can be good too. But usually it gets to a stage with scans where you reach an artificial limit - when the scanner stops picking up extra "art" and starts picking up the really tiny patterns caused by ink droplets and the like. When you start scanning more dots per inch than what the original printer could print.
There also shouldn't be a super strict file size limit (if there is, contact an admin because it shouldn't be there) - we aim for something along the lines of the highest quality JPEGs with scans and photos. Lossless PNGs, which we use for screenshots, don't lend themselves well to big images (by their very nature scans are imperfect, so it's pointless to losslessly preserve the imperfections), and low quality JPEGs distort the picture too much. Typically (and this isn't scientifically accurate) that leads a really good Mega Drive cover scan around the 5-10MB mark, so if you're exceeding 20MB on an image like that you're probably doing something wrong. There's plenty of space on the server, regardless.
p.s. sign comments with "-~~~~" -Black Squirrel (talk) 12:59, 19 June 2014 (CDT)

Thanks For Answer... One more. Adding this template - it's kind of verification from you, or i can add it too? And another one - the sequence of files influences their display? I mean scans - |front=, |back=, |Spine= looks like |front=, |Spine=, |back=, ?Depressor (talk) 14:39, 19 June 2014 (CDT)

You can use that template - when you first upload a file, the initial "summary" becomes the page contents, so it can all be done in one go
And no the order doesn't matter -Black Squirrel (talk) 15:29, 19 June 2014 (CDT)

New day - new questions) What about hardware manuals? I have scans of manuals (Sega Megadrive 32X (1994)(E), Sega Genesis 32X Instruction Manual (1994)(U)) & other texts (Genesis Super 32X Overview & Hardware Reference (1994)(U), MIDI Converter v1.30 (1994)(U)). Upload? And if "yes" - there i can show them like game manuals?Depressor (talk) 09:38, 20 June 2014 (CDT)

Yep. For consoles there are new-ish pages like this one that should accommodate for any documentation, be it manuals or ammendments or leaflets or flyers or whatever. But even if we don't have a page for them right now, it's better to upload and have them sit on the wiki rather than sit on a private hard drive somewhere. Stuff can always be accessed through categories and the like. -Black Squirrel (talk) 10:24, 20 June 2014 (CDT)

What about scans of official hints for Master system? Is there are tag or template for them? And where i can place them? Gallery, or beside manual? Depressor (talk) 09:04, 27 June 2014 (CDT)

Gallery, for now. The Scanbox templates are used to keep track of stuff that came with the release of a game (e.g. carts, manuals, box scan, maps. etc.) - everything else should be stored outside. And we can worry about categories and templates and whatever later, no worries there -Black Squirrel (talk) 10:13, 27 June 2014 (CDT)

Another Day - Another Questions) 1 - If game were released in several regions, from which version i can make a title screenshot for her page? 2 - I have some scans of our russian very unlicensed cartridges (one-game cart & some multi-cart) - where i can place them (if i can, of course) 3 - In-game screenshots - only for big articles about game, or i can place some in gallery? -Depressor (talk) 09:52, 28 June 2014 (CDT)

We try and have title screen screenshots match the name of the page... so if we're using the US title, we use a screenshot from the US ROM. Titles are chosen based on which is the most popular name, then, failing that, US -> EU -> JP -> whatever. Although to be honest the situation really depends on the game - Langrisser for example uses the Japanese title, because "Warsong" felt out of place when every other entry in the series used the original name.
Multi-cart scans are good, as are scans for these sorts of unlicensed games. As for pirated copies of "legitimate" releases or bootlegs or whatever your choice of words are, I'm genuinely not sure what the stance is. Technically mass-produced knock-offs are within this project's scope, but there are thousands of Mega Drive cartridges and I wouldn't begin to know how to document them all. Russian stuff in particular is a problem because I get the impression cartridges are still being produced today - it almost feels as if you could fill another wiki with that stuff.
In-game screenshots are fine - most pages don't have them because nobody has put themselves forward to talk about games in great detail. Organisational stuff can be handled later - getting content on the wiki is more important. -Black Squirrel (talk) 10:27, 28 June 2014 (CDT)

I have some scans of Magazines & Books, especially on Russian, each about 50-250 MB. So...
1) What about uploads of full scanned Magazines & Books? In both pdf & cbr formats.
2) If i create page - name it on English - translate or just translit (i mean book 52 Игры Для Sega Megadrive, page - 52 Games For Sega Megadrive or 52 Igri Dlya Sega Megadrive)
3) Why create empty templates for game versions or empty line (like cart=)? Such many TW or AU SMS games - there are nothing in them.
4) Little offtop) I have some manuals for sonic games, but i think i cannot pass validation on sonicretro) Any other ways to upload this stuff?
I hope I don't look silly) I just think that if i take more from internet i must give something instead. -Depressor (talk) 09:27, 16 July 2014 (CDT)

Don't bother with the CBR versions - that was the "old" format before introduced better PDF support
"52 Igri Dlya Sega Mega Drive" would be preferable
Empty scan templates are for the scan tracker (http://andlabs.sonicretro.org/scans/), so we have a better idea of what is needed
I can upload Sonic Retro stuff on your behalf -Black Squirrel (talk) 10:45, 16 July 2014 (CDT)

Hi again) I upload all i have from DMC 4 now, i think. Any chance to return to preview *.pdf's with first page in it on thumbnails? For Now i see only pdf-icon after upload. Depressor (talk)

Unfortunately PDF thumbnails were turned off for performance reasons - I don't have the power to turn them back on, and even if I did, the wiki would slow to a crawl.
I'm hoping one day there'll be some server upgrades to let this become a reality again. Until then, we have to make-do with placeholder images :( -Black Squirrel (talk) 13:35, 10 September 2024 (EDT)

Ok. Understandable. We'll wait for this day) Depressor (talk)

Cartridge images

Hi,

I've uploaded my own shot of File:Phelios_MD_US_Cart.jpg, which I believe is clearer. Is this the correct practice? I should be able to take shots of a similar quality of File:Columns MD EU Cart.jpg (my cart is in better condition), File:Toki MD EU Cart.jpg (Better condition + neutral background), and others games in my collection, if it is wanted. LTom (talk) 10:56, 29 June 2014 (CDT)

Yep
Generally scans are better than photos (although this isn't always clear cut with cartridges because they're not always "flat"), but good photos are better than bad scans... and good photos are of course better than bad photos. -Black Squirrel (talk) 11:05, 29 June 2014 (CDT)

Posters

Maybe for posters make something like for Gallery? I mean separate them from cover\cart\manual scans. Many of SMS posters have games catalog in their back that have no connection with the games in this catalog... And those posters was on sale without games, present on them. -Depressor (talk) 09:23, 5 July 2014 (CDT)

The ScanBox template is meant to house any material that came with a game, and as most of these posters came with games, their best place is in the template. It can make things a bit messy if a release shipped with a bazillion addendums, and promotional material is likely to be duplicated, but it's the best option we have right now.
This is particularly true of generic Sega posters which effectively just advertise a system. If a game like Fantasy Zone which saw two separate US releases, has two different posters/catalogues/whatever, it can get a bit tricky to describe the differences in a gallery, because you're having to explain exactly which US release received what. There's a German release of Fantasy Zone and a pan-Euro one - Germany is in Europe, but it doesn't mean it received the same stuff as the rest of the continent, and you might find yourself having to re-explain that, etc. -Black Squirrel (talk) 09:41, 5 July 2014 (CDT)

IMHO, of course, but template with posters\cover\cart for every region looks little... big) And strange to see R-Type, for example, with poster After Burner & Catalog on its back. Maybe another way - make wiki page for back scan-catalog and then place hyperlink on game page... Little offtop - where i can place scanned SMS catalogs not in poster format? -Depressor (talk) 10:00, 5 July 2014 (CDT)

Most of the scanbox templates are arguably too small because they're incomplete =P
As for categories, upload first and we'll deal with the admin stuff later -Black Squirrel (talk) 10:23, 5 July 2014 (CDT)

OK. I have about 20 GB scanned materials (mainly manuals from all around internet) only for Sega consoles... Too sad, most of manuals are double-pages scans and all of them - converted from pdf to cbr. Another little offtop - i have some covers for Korean SMS games (45 Hap, Geim Moeumjip 188 Hap, Janggunui Adeul, Jang Pung 3) but cannot find pages for this games. And, if i figured things right - i cannot create game pages. -Depressor (talk) 10:41, 5 July 2014 (CDT)

All registered users can make pages - you need to search for a page title, and when the wiki doesn't return any results, it will ask if you want to create a page with the title you've just searched for. Alternatively click on red links (e.g. 45 Hap). -Black Squirrel (talk) 12:35, 5 July 2014 (CDT)

I looking for button "Create Page") Ok. Will try it.

Fully scanned posters from magazines like Sega Force tagged - Poster Scans->Magazine Scans->Sega Force Poster Scans? Or just Poster->Sega Force. Some of this posters not present in magazine scan, some just scanned separately from magazine scan and have better resolution, or just combined in one big image. -Depressor (talk) 10:57, 17 August 2014 (CDT)

Poster scans -> Sega Force poster scans
-Black Squirrel (talk) 11:03, 17 August 2014 (CDT)

About Errors

I see those pages like on this screen - [1]. Error in creating miniatures. In Opera 12 & FireFox. That's why i edit this pages.

This was flagged up a while ago - nothing to worry about -Black Squirrel (talk) 03:41, 6 July 2014 (CDT)

Need New Category)

Can you add some new category for scans? Scans->Catalog Scans->SMS Catalog Scans & Scans->Advert Scans-> SMS Advert Scans - something like that & maybe something for Garantee Scans & Epilepsy Warning Scans

We've been classing guarantees and warnings and things of that ilk as manuals - I can't imagine there'll be enough to justify their own categories.
As for adverts... eehhh I might have to think about that one. If they're individual pages from magazines they might be superseded by full magazine scans at a later date. If it's a slip of paper from inside a game box or something I might end up classing it as something else (at some point someone will have to come up with a plan for special or collectors editions of games - the ones that might come with toys or odd things) - I'm thinking of a general "miscellaneous" category to handle all of this extra tat but I'm not sure yet -Black Squirrel (talk) 13:48, 12 July 2014 (CDT)

I divide my collection of scans on manuals and other stuff) So maybe other or something similar for optional things it's the right category -Depressor (talk) 14:38, 12 July 2014 (CDT)

Russian Dreamcast Scans

Ok. I have a lot of them... Covers, Discs & Inlay\Inside. All our releases are unlicensed, so If i correctly understand, i can't put this scans in Physical Scans on game pages? Second - I am not confident in tags for VideoCD for Dreamcast.

These are all bootlegs to yes, they need to stay off the game pages. I'll have to chat with the admins to see if we can figure out a nice place to put them (same with the Mega Drive stuff I uploaded a couple of weeks ago).
If by "Video CD for Dreamcast" you mean software that lets the Dreamcast run Video CDs, we'd class that as a Dreamcast accessory (so {{accessory|Dreamcast}} or {{DCBox|accessory}} etc.. That would include things like boot discs for now... until we figure out a more elegant solution). -Black Squirrel (talk) 14:56, 2 August 2014 (CDT)
Oh hang on you mean like this
That's an odd one. If it's a Video CD in the sense that it follows the Video CD standard it shouldn't be on this wiki because it's not strictly a Sega-related product (it just has unofficial Dreamcast branding and would work in any Video CD player). If it's some wacky piece of software that needs to run on a Dreamcast for whatever reason, I... guess we'd have to treat it as a game or something. I'm not sure -Black Squirrel (talk) 15:01, 2 August 2014 (CDT)

At last... I load everything i have. About VideoCD - it's simple mpeg4 video with autoloading videoplayer for Dreamcast only. -Depressor (talk) 05:18, 14 August 2014 (CDT)

Sourcing reviews from Sega Power Issue 59?

That would be helpful for Pirate Dragon, who's organizing magazines that have had reviews added. So, please? -Firbin4576

I've been thinking about this for a while myself--we need the equivalent of the scan tracker for magazines. Right now I have no idea how we'd do this other than a giant table with every issue of every mag- Scarred Sun (talk) 20:39, 25 August 2014 (CDT)
I twoked that image from an eBay auction - it's not a proper scan, just a placeholder (and there weren't any other pages). -Black Squirrel (talk) 09:56, 26 August 2014 (CDT)

Suggestions for separating the tops from the sides? Is there a way at the moment this can look good in the boxes? I've been doing it this way because ultimately it's the same sticker.

Would you prefer something more like this, perhaps? https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26958538/lionKing.png

There's a "carttop=" field - (see: the Korean version of Decap Attack). So you'd do exactly as you've been doing, just upload two images rather than one -Black Squirrel (talk) 05:28, 8 September 2014 (CDT)

Re; it's better off split into two pages

While Worldwide Soccer/Sega International Victory Goal reuses a lot of Victory Goal's assets, Sega International Victory Goal in Japan is rebuilt near-entirely (different teams, different cutscenes, different menus, different soundtrack, etc).

In terms of semantics it's still pretty much the same game, just with different teams and a few varying features. It's not so drastically different as to require an entirely different page, but the "'Worldwide Soccer' for the Western release and "Sega International Victory Goal" for Eastern release" generalization should still be noted.

While the NA/EU version of SIVG is clearly just a localized VG, and WS97 is a localized VG96, SIVG as it is known in Japan appears to be a stand-alone "ver. 1.5" of VG, whose features (including an updated, more internationally-appealing soundtrack and international team range [Brazil, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, England, Argentina, France, Denmark, Spain, Romania, South Korea, Japan]) would not become a permanent component of the original VG games (as VG96 reverts back to all-Japan teams), instead being more at home with WS games despite not actually being one. This became streamlined with '96, which is why this doesn't happen with the other annual releases.

The best way to think about JA SIVG is as a "rare variant" or a "special edition" releases after all the others. E-102 (talk) 07:47, 17 October 2014 (CDT)

A few questions

1. Why are some arcade flyers under "Promotional Material" and others under "Physical Scans"?
2. Are screenshots of Levels/Stages/Rounds and/or lists of moves (fighting games) wanted?
3. What about lists of items/enemies/bosses with sprites? --AllisonKidd (talk) 13:54, 8 November 2014 (CST)

1 Before we had PDF support, we were using template:scanflyer to house flyers, but these days it's out of date and shouldn't be used. The only reason some pages still use it is because we haven't got around to converting sets of flyers into PDFs - the aim is to put everything under the "promotional material" heading.
2 yes
3 yes
(Daytona USA is an example of how I've been doing it)
-Black Squirrel (talk) 15:17, 8 November 2014 (CST)
Ah I see. I'll work on that then and make a list of "duplicates" on my user page for the admins to delete. --AllisonKidd (talk) 15:31, 8 November 2014 (CST)

Question about digital albums

I was going to start pages for the Digital albums for Virtua Fighter soon, but then I thought about how stuff in the Shining series like Shining Tears Music Collection, Shining Force EXA Music Collection, and Shining Wind Music Collection also have iTunes releases with slightly different track lists that COULD be seen as different releases and if they should have their own pages somehow. There are also some JP OSTs that were released in Volumes when they hit iTunes overseas and those would then need their own individual pages as well. In fact, Sega Japan has put up some of their OWN OSTs in Volumes up on iTunes (like the Shining Force Cross Raid Original Sound Track), so would those need pages too?

I'm not sure what these would be named (maybe something like "insert name here (Digital Album)"?) since the Virtua Fighter releases are their own thing and not simply a JP release being released digitally overseas with some tracks missing.

What do you think? JaxTH (talk) 19:59, 23 November 2014 (CST)

I added the digital release to Alex Kidd Complete Album a couple of days ago. I'm not 100% happy with how it looks, but making several pages for what is basically the same album wouldn't make any sense either. If the track listing is different, just put both versions on the page (like how they do on Wikipedia). - Hivebrain (talk) 23:15, 23 November 2014 (CST)
Okay, so Shining Force Cross Original Sound Track is an example of a game with only a digital OST that was also released in volumes. Satisfactory? JaxTH (talk) 02:08, 26 November 2014 (CST)
Technically those images aren't scans (because there's nothing to scan) - do we want to do something special with them or just class them as artwork? -Black Squirrel (talk) 13:58, 26 November 2014 (CST)
What about calling them "Digital Covers"? JaxTH (talk) 01:25, 5 December 2014 (CST)

Show Summaries

Since the search function still isn't working on SEGA Retro I've held off on making album pages and have instead directed my sights toward the various SEGA anime. I'm planning to watch series and make episode summaries for them. I played around on the wiki a bit an came up with this (The summaries themselves are from wikipedia for demonstrative purposes):

No. Title Original Air Date Episode Summary
1 "It'll Always Be 10 Years Too Early for You!" (いつだって10年早いんだよ!) October 8, 2014 Dreamcast, Sega Saturn, and Mega Drive get acquainted with each other, discussing what kind of guys Saturn might like. As the classes begins, their teacher, a cybernetic 8-bit bunny named Center, explains that in order to graduate from their academics, they must collect 100 medals. For their first lesson, Center sends the girls into the world of Virtua Fighter, where they are confronted by Akira Yuki.
2 "Connect Your Passions into a Combo" (コンボでつなげ 熱い気持ち) October 15, 2014 Tasked with winning 100 matches in order to clear the lesson and earn some medals, the girls use each of their abilities to beat Akira. As the matches continue and the opponents get even weirder, ranging from giant beetles to various palette swaps of Golden Axe enemies, it soon becomes apparent that Dreamcast's flying headbutt attack can instantly defeat them. They are soon confronted by Sakura Shinguji from Sakura Wars, whose steam-powered armor defeats Mega Drive, but Dreamcast once again defeats it with a headbutt. After the lesson, only Saturn receives five medals, as Mega Drive was eliminated and Dreamcast was disqualified for attacking before the "Fight!" announcement in an earlier battle.
3 "Up, Down, Left, Right, and Occasionally, Up Diagonal" (アップ、ダウン、レフト、ライト、たまにナナメ上) October 22, 2014 After Saturn contemplates her future career and love life and Mega Drive tries her hand at weather forecasting, the girls are tasked with entering the world of Space Channel 5, where they must help improve the channel's ratings and retrieve two of Center's friends. While trying to get a hang on their dancing moves, the girls soon meet up with the game's heroine, Ulala.
4 "We Tried to Dance Space Channel 5" (【セハガール】スペースチャンネル5【踊ってみた】) October 29, 2014 While helping Ulala with fighting against the Morolians, Mega Drive slightly less so, the girls find that the ratings are starting to gradually decrease. The girls attempt to raise their ratings by rescuing Center's friend, Jeffry from Virtua Fighter, putting Saturn in a swimsuit for added sex appeal, and getting the cooperation of Center's other friend, Golden Axe's Gilius Thunderhead, who exhibits a dubious affection towards Saturn. They soon end up facing the Morolian Boss, which is defeated by Saturn. At the end of the day, Mega Drive and Dreamcast get five medals each, whilst Saturn gets none after the Space PTA complains about her attempts at using sex appeal.

What do you think? It might need a bit of work but I did what I could. Acceptable? JaxTH (talk) 06:04, 12 February 2015 (CST)

Seems fine to me - I would use the ISO 8601 standard for dates though, i.e. yyyy-mm-dd - that's what we're using elsewhere -Black Squirrel (talk) 06:09, 12 February 2015 (CST)

Out Run

The first game was explicitly called "Out Run" in its flyers, which is really all you have. All those computer ports used it as well. Apparently, some of the Western-made MS games like Europa (which exist in some marketing limbo anyway) also use it.

Sega started using "OutRun" for Turbo and kept that for all future games, even going as far as to rename all later ports of the original game. Despatche (talk) 20:39, 22 June 2015 (CDT)

NEC Retro & Retro CDN

Hi, just curious. I noticed a while ago that the NEC Retro and Retro CDN sites no longer work. What happened to them? Over9000 (talk) 07:42, 1 August 2015 (CDT)

NEC Retro isn't open yet - all I know is it'll be opened at some point "later this year", as there's some server stuff to take care of first. We've been planning for it months in advance, which is why we've been moving shared content over to Retro CDN.
Retro CDN accidentally broke a couple of days ago (there was wiki maintenance on the 30th). We need ScarredSun to flick a few switches, but I'm sure it'll be back soon -Black Squirrel (talk) 08:08, 1 August 2015 (CDT)
I see. I didn't realize NEC Retro doesn't exist yet. It looks like an interesting project though, so best of luck with it. Over9000 (talk) 00:50, 2 August 2015 (CDT)

Question

What's the consensus on books like these? http://www.worldcat.org/title/secret-codes-2001-playstation-2-playstation-dreamcast-nintendo-64-game-boy/oclc/46479673&referer=brief_results

Obviously it contains SEGA content, but are we documenting things likes this or not?

Okay quick EDIT for another question but, was this ever a cover for Rome: Total War - Destroy Carthage? It's all over eBay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Total-War-Rome-Destroy-Carthage-David-Gibbins-9780230770966-/391243871938?hash=item5b17f3b6c2 JaxTH (talk) 04:50, 10 September 2015 (CDT)

For codebooks on the like, I'm guessing pages on Sega Retro aren't a priority, but scans for Retro CDN will still be welcome. We might find a use for them.
I don't know much about Total War stuff - perhaps it was a placeholder image of some sort? You'd have to look up the history. -Black Squirrel (talk) 11:13, 10 September 2015 (CDT)

The Terminator (SMS credits)

Hey Black Squirrel! What source you used for this? http://segaretro.org/index.php?title=The_Terminator&diff=103208&oldid=95471 You added "Programmed by Mark Knowles" but I was checking the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywxynryr6XA and it says "Programmed by Dominic Wood, Artwork by Mark Knowles". Am I missing something? Thanks. --Hydao (talk) 08:27, 19 October 2015 (CDT)

I'm probably wrong, you're probably right =P -Black Squirrel (talk) 11:25, 19 October 2015 (CDT)

Album Question

Okay, so I found out that Aliens: Colonial Marines TECHNICALLY has an OST. The man behind the music (Kevin Riepl) put up a download on his website in uncompressed .WAV format for a few weeks starting sometime in August 2013, complete with album cover art (even an insert) by a "Javier Burgos Gasco". So, I look up this guy who did the artwork for it and a I spot "Captain America: Super Soldier" among his cover arts that he has done. Apparently the guy who did the music for that game (Bill Brown) did a similar thing as well (though this is just a front cover). Now, after Kevin Riepl took the link to his Aliens OST down he put it on Soundcloud. Bill Brown also has the Captain America OST on Soundcloud.

The thing I want to know is whether we are going to treat these as official and makes pages on Sega Retro or treat them as fan made even though the artists themselves have put them out there?

Another thing I noticed while browsing Javier's website is that there were two Dead Space 3 covers (complete with art for inlays and discs and etc.) with links to the iTunes page for the OST. I was curious why there were two until I realized that two people did all the music. Apparently they both commissioned this guy to make art for them in case for some reason people want to burn and make jewel cases out of just their tracks? I don't really understand why someone would want to do that when the full OST in on iTunes. Anyway, this got me weary of Kevin Riepl and Bill Brown simply because I have no idea if they worked on their game tracks all alone or if there were other contributing artists, which would mean their OSTs would be incomplete without the other artists.

Another thing to note is that the Aliens track only mentions Gearbox while Sega's name is only to be found into the Soundcloud description for Colonial Marines while the Captain America: Super Solider Soundcloud doesn't mention Sega OR Marvel (Also it has two covers so I wouldn't know which one to use regardless). So once again, I ask, what course of action do we take?

Kevin Riepl's 2013 Facebook announcement about putting the tracks out there: https://www.facebook.com/kevinrieplmusic/posts/10151761897789383

His website's page on the Aliens: Colonial Marines Soundtrack: http://www.kevinriepl.com/wordpress/index.php/aliens-colonial-marines-soundtrack

Javier Burgos Gasco's website: https://javierburgosgasco.wordpress.com/

The Captain America: Super Soldier Page in particular: https://javierburgosgasco.wordpress.com/2015/05/11/bill-brown-captain-america-super-soldier/

Soundcloud Page for Aliens: https://soundcloud.com/kevin-riepl-music/sets/aliens-colonial-marines-1

Soundcloud Page for Captain America: https://soundcloud.com/billbrownmusic/sets/captain-america-super-soldier JaxTH (talk) 09:50, 9 November 2015 (CST)

A tricky one
Were it one or two tracks I wouldn't bother, but given that these sets are fairly big, I think you could get away with making pages. As long as they were labeled so that there's no mistaking them as officially endorsed albums designed to make lots of money, I don't have much problem. Might want to seek a second opinion too though. -Black Squirrel (talk) 11:34, 9 November 2015 (CST)
I'll wait on a second opinion then. JaxTH (talk) 04:04, 10 November 2015 (CST)
It's been 10 days with no second opinion so I went ahead and made the pages:
Aliens: Colonial Marines: http://segaretro.org/Aliens:_Colonial_Marines_Original_Soundtrack_Recording
Captain America: Super Soldier: http://segaretro.org/Captain_America:_Super_Soldier_Original_Soundtrack
Let me know what you think. JaxTH (talk) 20:55, 20 November 2015 (CST)

Lets talk: Few questions

How do you feel about taking Wikipedia articles, and copy pasting them. I'd make an effort and change them up a bit, but I've seen qute a few that are just copypaste

Articles for every little update of a game. Especially for arcade titlles, that have the whole Ver. 2.83 with online updates etc. thing going on, I'm not sure if this a thing that should be kept. Theres no multiple articles for mobiles or PSO2 as well, so I'm not sure.

As you are probably are aware I am in the process of changing up the development studio articles. The way I am currently doing is taking stuff of my two lists: Video Games produced by Sega and Arcade video games produced by Sega, which are non-italic and alphabetic order, rather than in chronological order. I guess I am asking, if at least for the time being, you are ok with some lists being like this. Doing it chronological and adding italics, is a lot of busywork...Also you insist of keeping some small substudios like AM Annex. Hmmmm...there some substudios that can technically get thier pages as well, but I refused simply because I guess am not used to every little thing having its own page. I'll try to adapt, lets how it goes.

Are there any more advanced ways to format or is this it? Its a little a barebones, but I'll manage.--Trippled (talk) 15:27, 20 November 2015 (CST)

I've never been a fan of pages which are copy-pasted from Wikipedia - there were more in the old days of Sega Retro, but over time they've been re-written and made... uh... better.
Fundementally Sega Retro isn't Wikipedia - Wikipedia covers every topic imaginable, but will never go into detail about many subjects. Sega Retro exists because we're doing the things Wikipedia can't do - we document everything related to Sega - the broad stuff, and the super duper niche topics - every single game, every single accessory, all the books, all the videos etc. Much of this stuff is already available on the internet, but we aggregate it so it's all in one place.
Another difference is, for example, Wikipedia links out to external sources, we have big archives of scans and original research and that sort of thing. Wikipedia is always trying to prove that what is says is true - we know what we say is true... most of the time... if that makes any sense at all.
My thinking is that every developement team within Sega should have its own page, so if one disbands and is replaced with another, that would be two pages (e.g. Sega AM1 and WOW Entertainment). Of course, the problem is, we don't honestly know where a lot of these rebrands and major reshuffles happened - it's a mess, which is why I didn't instantly undo your redirects (p.s. this is an area that Wikipedia was provably wrong about).
We can afford to have a bazillion pages on this subject - I don't want to mislead people into thinking a game was developed by a studio which didn't yet exist (which I think is the case for many of the classic "AM2" projects - e.g. Power Drift was likely made by Sega R&D 8 - the assumption is that team became AM2, but we don't know if it was a simple rename or a more significant restructuring). Team Andromeda and Team Aquila were probably part of AM6, but they were working on their own games, so are kind-of separate studios within a separate studio, etc.
Either way it's important to point out exactly who made a game when we can, rather than some umbrella group.
However, some of them I can definitely vouch for. AM Annex was it's own thing, split from AM3, housed in its own building and working on its own projects. [Have an interview].


The problem with making big lists of every game Sega has ever made is... someone has to maintain it. Sega are still making games - the list could be endless - I'd be more tempted to go down the DPL route and have it automated, if it even needs to exist at all (and with that you can get it to do the italics/ordering for you).
As for arcade games with revisions - I've separated some where the update is... "significant" (e.g. Border Break), but the really minor ones probably don't deserve their own pages, for the same reason we don't bother to have separate pages for US, EU and Japanese releases. IIRC there's a couple of arcade games which swap out an advertisement or two - if it can be described fully in less than a couple of sentences, it's probably not worth the effort, but it'll depend on the game. If a game page becomes massive one day we can always revisit the question.

-Black Squirrel (talk) 16:20, 20 November 2015 (CST)

I definitly want to maintain a list that covers all Sega games. It's also more for me...and in general to see which games haven't had a page. I guess a category of, games produced/published/developed by Sega should exist (and in the future sub-categories of differnet types of arcade games), so there can be a DLP which fits. But again alot of busywok goes into adding that in hundred of games.

Regarding studios - yes mentioning within the page that games were branded as different studios is probably something that should be done. BTW my source is this: [2] And my assesement was that having umbrella groups for pages would be for the best, with so many frequent smaller sub-groups where output is hard to attach. In the end AM Annex and also Digiral Rex are probably the ones where I would agree that seperate pages would make sense. RPG game, PC, 32X, Sega CD, medal game, theme park groups are hard to attach output to. I put the Sega Production and Engineering Department as an entire umbrella group that handles manufacturing not related to arcade videogames. I wonder how you feel about that. --Trippled (talk) 02:33, 21 November 2015 (CST)

Scorpion Illuminati

we're not too interested in indie releases, nevermind pages on people who haven't yet released an indie game =P

I fully understand, but would like to make you aware that there is in fact source code available here. If it would not be too much trouble, could you please not allow the creation of the developer and game pages with the exception of mods, admins and me? I would like to try to avoid using certain words and phrases that would make me the target of an unfair ceast and desist or possible lawsuit. I ask due to these recent events.

Thanks Scorpion Illuminati (talk)

PSR-3 error

Hi Black Squirrel. I've been getting a strange error lately. Whenever I click the following links:

I get an error stating:

"MediaWiki requires the PSR-3 logging library to be present. This library is not embedded directly in MediaWiki's git repository and must be installed separately by the end user. Please see mediawiki.org for help on installing the required components."

Do you know what might be going on here? I tried doing what it says, but no luck so far. Is there a way to fix this problem? Over9000 (talk) 07:21, 14 December 2015 (CST)

They work for me (p.s. by "end user" it means the owner of the wiki)
The software just got an upgrade, I imagine it's just some teething problems? -Black Squirrel (talk) 11:15, 14 December 2015 (CST)

the whole cs1 and cs2 articles by the user "trippled" are a fucking mess

like, why is the cs1 article a redirect of am7, which is (supposedly) supposed to be a division WITHIN cs1, and may have worked on different games separate from the whole cs1 softography??? why does the cs2 article have a mention of sonic team, when it's clear that the CURRENT cs2 division team is just a re-branded sonic team with little to do with the (supposedly) old, pre-existing cs2???? and did the cs divisions even fucking exist back then?!?! please fix this shit asap --Uno10 (talk) 12:19, 1 January 2016 (CST)

Permission to use your scans you have uploaded

Hi there Black Squirrel,

Just a short question, I am currently making a massive database with all the console variations ever created. it will be a website with thousands of other variations of different companies. You my friend have the largest Sega database i've ever seen and I would be honored to use those scans for my website (which is in development) Could I have your permission to use your scans you have uploaded? It will be pure for information purposes. ofcourse we will thank you with your name and website to the source,

Please let me know! Thanks and best regards -Vinyl

Found some more magazine articles regarding Spikeout

https://archive.org/details/Arcade_Issue_01_1998-12_Future_Publishing_GB - page 148

https://archive.org/stream/ng_unedited/ng_47_unedited#page/n19/mode/2up (interview w/ Toshihiro Nagoshi on the game; says development started around April 1998)

Would it be at all possible to upload these magazine issues onto Sega Retro? --Uno10 (talk) 14:10, 12 January 2016 (CST)

Not onto Sega Retro - we're not doing that for magazines anymore - Retro CDN:
http://retrocdn.net/File:Arcade_UK_01.pdf
And we have a full set of Arcades :)
I'd like to do those Next Generation scans but they need cleaning up first. Also we're putting the breaks on uploading too many more magazines right now - I found out earlier today that we're running out of disk space. Whoops -Black Squirrel (talk) 15:31, 12 January 2016 (CST)
Oh for the record anything uploaded on Retro CDN can be accessed through Sega Retro (or Sonic Retro, or NEC Retro). It's just decided not to render thumbnails today. Don't know why -Black Squirrel (talk) 15:32, 12 January 2016 (CST)
Also there's a full-ish set of Edge scans - lots of content is shared between Edge and NG, so it might be up here in some form already -Black Squirrel (talk) 15:33, 12 January 2016 (CST)
I'm aware that Next Generation is basically the American version of Edge. Problem is, I tried checking the Edge magazines during the 1998 period from August to November (since the latter month is when the specific Next Generation issue w/ Nagoshi stating the beginning of Spikeout's development was published), and since Edge #62 (which would've been the 1998 September issue) has yet to be scanned by any of the online gamemag preservation sites, I can't seem to find that tidbit anywhere else. The corresponding Nagoshi interview in Edge #63 (page 139) has no mention of the development date whatsoever.

Can you at least tell me when, if ever, you'll acquire more server space for Retro CDN, so that the corresponding Next Generation issue can be uploaded?

By the way, some magazine preservation sites you might wanna check out if you haven't seen them already and/or for quick reference:

https://archive.org/details/gamemagazines
https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Imagine+Publishing%22
https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22Next+Generation%22
https://archive.org/details/ng_unedited

http://www.smspower.org/Scans/Magazines
http://www.oldgamemags.com/
https://www.retromags.com/
http://www.outofprintarchive.com/
http://amr.abime.net/

http://retroactionmagazine.com/retrolinks/videogaming-magazine-preservation/

Might be some more sites I'm missing, but whatever. --Uno10 (talk) 09:40, 16 January 2016 (CST)

word on the street is it could be a while

new advice: if it's on archive.com use the {{ref|}} template

It won't work for galleries or embedding files or whatever, but it's better than nothing. At a later date I can then look through lists of references and pick out the ones that should be hosted on-site. -Black Squirrel (talk) 14:13, 18 January 2016 (CST)

"if it's on archive.com use the {{ref|}} template"

yeah i've actually been doing that since i saw you make such an edit on another article, so --Uno10 (talk) 14:17, 18 January 2016 (CST)

Re: Spikeout

fine, but i can really only post bits of my unfinished work that are finished, rather than a whole block of scrambled text and notes. i mean that just looks really goddamn unprofessional that way??? --Uno10 (talk) 14:26, 16 September 2016 (CDT)

I like to think that badly presented information is better than no information - if it has a Cleanup template in there, it'll both warn people of impending suckage and add it to the list of jobs to do -Black Squirrel (talk) 14:43, 16 September 2016 (CDT)

What Happened to the Videos?

I've noticed over the last couple months (I don't know if it was a server upgrade or if the site went down) that many files (mainly videos, some radio commercials as well) have just disappeared from the site. The boxes are still there with descriptions after all this time but the files themselves are just gone.

Some examples are the videos on the Aliens: Crucible page as well as the JP TV Advert and US radio advert for Fighters Megamix. But really it just seems to be all the videos and such directly on Sega Retro. I've gone directly to these blank files (kind of a hassle to do that) in the past and am only greeted with an error. JaxTH (talk) 23:07, 14 October 2016 (CDT)

It's a known issue, but no admins have got around to fixing it. I don't have the permissions to attempt a fix myself -Black Squirrel (talk) 03:42, 15 October 2016 (CDT)
The table used by the TimedMediaHandler extension ("sonicret_sega.wiki_transcode" according to this example pointed by Hivebrain) seems to be missing. Fixing it might be as simple as running the update script (update.php) to create it as the extension's page says, though only an admin can give it a try. Note that it also says mp4 isn't supported by default, which must be added to $wgFileExtensions manually. --AllisonKidd (talk) 16:14, 15 October 2016 (CDT)

Some Help...

Could you please delete the scans of "The Ren & Stimpy Show Presents Stimpy's Invention" manual? I messed up... and i don't know how to do it... im a noob at this... sorry to bother you and thanks in advance...

Sure
The wiki doesn't update everything instantly these days - thumbnails can take a few hours to kick in and even the recent changes page only updates once an hour. It's a mixture between trying not to overload the server, and the unfriendly nature of Mediawiki. Top tip is to use Ctrl + F5 to see if changes have actually happened.
Also sign off comments with "-~~~~" - there's a button second from the right at the top of this import form.
While I'm here - watch out for file names (I wrote a guide once) and try to categorise files when you upload them. We're big fans of people contributing content, but I'd hate for things to get lost while we're fighting technical problems -Black Squirrel (talk) 13:27, 15 January 2017 (CST)
Ok...understood... sorry for the inconvenience... i only asked you because i've seen your work here and as i can see you're a Pro at this...--Asagoth (talk) 14:11, 15 January 2017 (CST)

Sword of Vermilion Hint Book

Two years ago i found a pdf of this book but its not a good one... the pages aren't scaled to fit ...should i upload the book and you decide what to do?It´s in full color and complete...--Asagoth (talk) 15:09, 15 January 2017 (CST)
Bad scans are better than no scans :) -Black Squirrel (talk) 15:16, 15 January 2017 (CST)
It's Done... do what you want with it--Asagoth (talk) 15:36, 15 January 2017 (CST)

Boris Vallejo Gallery

Artwork for Onslaught,Starflight,Wings of wor/Gynoug,etc...

http://vallejo.ural.net/ --Asagoth (talk) 15:11, 24 January 2017 (CST)

Bullet point bug

Hi. There seems to be a bug with the bullet points, which look messed-up in many articles. Do you know what the problem might be? Over9000 (talk) 03:33, 11 February 2017 (CST)

Scarred Sun's been adjusting the CSS - nothing to do with me, and I'm sure she'll resolve it -Black Squirrel (talk) 04:04, 11 February 2017 (CST)

Starlight Fortune

I found this https://mamedev.emulab.it/undumped/index.php?title=Starlight_Fortune ... maybe you can use this image...--Asagoth (talk) 13:27, 13 February 2017 (CST)

Hey

I have been thinking, should Am2 and Sonic Team also get multiple pages then too? Would it not be consistent?--Trippled (talk) 12:37, 24 February 2017 (CST)

If the name stays the same, it's probably not worth the bother, but the earlier titles like Space Harrier and OutRun definitely should, as they pre-date the name "Sega AM2". -Black Squirrel (talk) 12:44, 24 February 2017 (CST)
Here is the funny thing tough. I read one of the 3D Sega Classics Interview with Yosuke Okunari, there was this: "AM1 – One of SEGA’s former arcade development groups. They are currently called dai-ichi kenkyuu kaihatsu bu (1st R&D Department), but SEGA employees are still often called AM1 internally anyway." So for Sega, R&D or AM R&D does not matter much. If there is WOW Entertainment in between and it get it's old name back...I think should be page like Sega Am1 (2005 current), or Sega Am3(2005-current). For studios like Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, Sonic Team, Team Andromeda, I think it would be benefecial do have a double - both the corporate division page and a page for the brand name.--Trippled (talk) 13:08, 24 February 2017 (CST)

Press releases

I myself am too lazy but perhaps you can make good use of the archived links here, here and here (those are all between 1996 and 2007/2008 though). SoA's official site is better than The Free Library, I guess. --AllisonKidd (talk) 17:01, 24 February 2017 (CST)

I think I caught most of the pre-1999 ones on my last round - I've been searching recently for more early-2000s business-y stuff, but have been picking up games and third-party releases along the way.
We don't have many press releases from 2004-onwards, probably because there's likely to be some overlap with the PDF releases from Sega's press sites. I've been taking the path of least resistance so I haven't checked -Black Squirrel (talk) 04:29, 25 February 2017 (CST)

How to make navigational templates (scrollable div horizontal)

How does it work to properly assign things to different time periods (I am editing your SoJ template). I keep increasing columns, but it keeps moving to the right. I can't find anything on the internet to figure how this works.--Trippled (talk) 19:40, 2 March 2017 (CST)

My solution isn't great - it's just a bog-standard table with colspans, and I've been individually defining empty columns (which I don't need to do).
Mediawiki tables are identical to HTML ones, they just have "simpler" syntax. To get a better feel with what's going on, you could always try adding a few borders
My SoA and SoJ templates
are laid out
a bit like this
-Black Squirrel (talk) 10:56, 3 March 2017 (CST)
So to speak clearly, this is how it works...

!52||53||54||55||56||57||58||59||60||61||62||63||64||65||66||67||68||69||70||71||72||73||74||75||76||77||78||79||80||81||82||83||84||85||86||87||88||89||90||91||92||93||94||95||96||97||98||99||00||01||02||03||04||05||06||07||08||09||10||11||12||13||14||15||16||17||18 < this is the general colspan that applies to all

||| || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || < this is the amount of of columns for each row right? How can I determine where it starts and where it stops?

|colspan="6" class="colour-bg-yellow" style="border: 1px solid #999;"|R&D 8 < this determines how much columns an object has right? again how do I determine where it starts and where it begins?--Trippled (talk) 02:22, 4 March 2017 (CST)

Every "||" is an empty column. So just delete some of them -Black Squirrel (talk) 05:17, 4 March 2017 (CST)
That is not a problem. I add or remove columns, there is no consistency to where it starts or it ends up. Does it depend on the colors?--Trippled (talk) 06:34, 4 March 2017 (CST)

do we need pages for every renaming of a sega department?

The argument thaT Sega AM2 and Sonic Team are the only ones to stay consistent is wrong. Staff and names changed just as much as the other sega divisions.--Trippled (talk) 14:12, 15 March 2017 (CDT)

When there are opportunities to avoid massive lists, yes.
I'm open to the idea of splitting AM2 and Sonic Team as well - I just don't know how best to organise it and don't have a lovely text replace tool at my disposal right now to make the changes effeciently.
But in cases where we've already split pages, it's counter-productive to re-combine them. -Black Squirrel (talk) 15:06, 15 March 2017 (CDT)
I'm making tons of changes and pages without explanation. Expect one when I'm feeling that I'm done. And again I want to say, I can't figure how to edit that SoJ template.--Trippled (talk) 15:46, 15 March 2017 (CDT)

Segadev32,T.U.M.E map editor, and some genesis software manuals

I have Segadev32 software and Tume(Universal Map Editor) tool and two technical manuals, one is called "Genesis Software Manual" from 1989 an the other "Genesis Software Development Manual" from 1991.Has you may know TUME map editor was used in a great number of mega drive games https://games.greggman.com/game/tume___the_universal_map_editor/ ... i don't know if this could be useful for SEGA RETRO/SONIC RETRO... what do you think? I don't want to bother you im just asking... i don't have any documentation for segadev32 just the software and a readme file with the revisions,it says "western technologies"...--Asagoth (talk) 17:04, 9 May 2017 (CDT)

All of those would be useful - feel free to upload -Black Squirrel (talk) 06:14, 10 May 2017 (CDT)
 I don't know where to put this stuff so i just upload it, do what you want with that...--Asagoth (talk) 06:53, 10 May 2017 (CDT)

Just one thing that makes me confused...

I don´t want to spread rumors... just some observation... i remember when i was a kid to have played Puzzle & Action: Tant-R and Puzzle & Action: Ichidant-R in the local amusement arcade(Portugal)... and i remember seeing them in Spain also... the first was not translated,the second was in english...they were not supposed to have left Japan... I did not even know there was versions of those games for Mega Drive... --Asagoth (talk) 13:08, 10 May 2017 (CDT)

Two Spanish blog's that refer to what i said https://mediaramablog.wordpress.com/2016/01/27/el-rincon-de-los-cinco-duros-4-puzzle-action-tant-r/; http://www.vandal.net/retro/puzzle-action-tantr ...they are in Spanish... just an observation i wanted to share...sorry to bother you--Asagoth (talk) 13:40, 10 May 2017 (CDT)
Our wiki's probably wrong - feel free to correct it. I'm relatively sure I've seen an English version of Tant-R online, though I don't know exactly where it was released -Black Squirrel (talk) 13:44, 10 May 2017 (CDT)

Realtime Games Software

Look what i have found http://www.crashonline.org.uk/29/realtime.htm , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realtime_Games_Software ... Ian Oliver created the snasm68k and later founded cross products company to produce game development systems... i became aware of this guy when i bought the book "Playing at The Next Level-A History of American Sega Games" by Ken Horowitz of Sega 16 site ... it was this guy who made improvements in the sound drivers provided by Sega to developers ... the book does not mention the SMPS sound driver only referring to it by the name "Genesis Sound Driver".It looks that this sound driver was designed only for music but Ian Oliver was able to make it more flexible adapting it for dynamic sounds and effects... he created the snasm68k because the pc version of "M-1 Abrams Battle Tank" had been codded in C language and there was no way to port it over with the cartridge size and ram available he then decide to rewrite the entire game in 68000 Assembly Language heven though he didn´t have a complete set of tools for doing so...he had an assembler and linker but he handmade the ram board himself this allowed him to do simple debugging of both 68000 and Z80 processors and with a single button press he could have the game rebuilt an running on Mega Drive hardware in about half a minute... what a genius... and then the snasm68k was born... i nedded to share this... sorry to bother you...--Asagoth (talk) 16:23, 11 May 2017 (CDT)

Todo Sega Magazine

I have the scan of "Todo Sega" issue 2 with all the pages cropped... I extracted the images from the original pdf,cropped the images,compressed the images,created another pdf,compressed this same pdf... the result...140 mb... all this was done online... i can't compress more than this...the images in the original pdf were 2mb or more in size...I don't know what to do...--Asagoth (talk) 15:17, 27 May 2017 (CDT)

Find a place to host it and I'll upload it for you -Black Squirrel (talk) 15:33, 27 May 2017 (CDT)
Here it is https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B11cl5uRBh5kS1VQS1FOa3JsSFk/view ... just one thing... i have some US mega drive manuals,missing here in Sega Retro,Art of Fighthing,Batman Returns and some more,the problem is that they have pixel watermarks, and i can´t remove them ... and some european game gear manuals too...--Asagoth (talk) 16:41, 27 May 2017 (CDT)
File:TodoSega ES 02.pdf :) -Black Squirrel (talk) 04:09, 28 May 2017 (CDT)

Doujinshi Phantasy Star

I have 6 scans of these... can't find any reference about them here... some sort of comic book or manga... i don't know... some have 300 pages...more or less.--Asagoth (talk) 06:40, 28 May 2017 (CDT)

Sounds good - Sega Retro is always a work in progress, so just because we don't have a page yet, doesn't meant we don't want scans -Black Squirrel (talk) 06:45, 28 May 2017 (CDT)
Observation..."Phantasy Star II Joukan" and "Phantasy Star II Gekan"... looks like those two are a JP Phantasy Star II Hint Book being "Joukan" the 1st part and "Gekan" the 2nd part...--Asagoth (talk) 09:49, 28 May 2017 (CDT)

Small Request

So I just made a page on amiibo, and then further made a page on the Sonic one. On Sonic Retro (which I can't log in to), the "Amiibo" page there is just for the Sonic one anyway. Could you move the Amiibo page on Sonic Retro to "Sonic (amiibo)" so that Sega and Sonic Retro link up properly? JaxTH (talk) 23:58, 29 May 2017 (CDT)

Memorial Drama CD & Fanbook "Phantasy Star: Fuujirareshi Kioku"

I have the the entire audio riped in a single mp3 file... should i upload it?--Asagoth (talk) 06:53, 30 May 2017 (CDT)

We don't currently host big audio files - that's not to say it wouldn't be done in the future, but there are sites out there more suited to that sort of thing.
Also from a preservation standpoint we'd want it in a higher quality, lossless format. It's not really my speciality though -Black Squirrel (talk) 11:38, 30 May 2017 (CDT)
OK... you're the boss...I'll keep it for now...--Asagoth (talk) 11:56, 30 May 2017 (CDT)

Fire Pro Wrestling S: 6Men Scramble

I can´t upload this one... 108MB in size...says it's too big...here https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B11cl5uRBh5kaFZEWm5QZWdOT2s/view?usp=sharing... when you have time please upload it...Thank's in advance...--Asagoth (talk) 04:07, 7 June 2017 (CDT)

Sega Porta Drive

https://assemblergames.com/threads/news-sega-prototype-system-sega-portadrive.5248/page-2 Thought you'd like to write a article about this.--MathUser (talk) 08:22, 18 June 2017 (CDT)

Some Ecofilmes Curiosities....

I found some things... im not triyng to show off... im just a curious guy with a great love for SEGA (especially the Mega Drive,my childhood console) and i like to share the little i know about something Sega related... it happens that Dragon Ball Z: Buyuu Retsuden was initially sold in is original form (Japanese version,same cover,same cartridge) with the manual replaced by an awful photocopy of the Spanish half of the French/Spanish Láppel du Destin and a Mega Key 2 ( i can´t precise the year)...only after that ,someware in 1996 ( in fact the Mega Game II box anounces the launch of the game in 1997) the cover was changed... so three diferent versions of the game were sold in Portugal. Now another curiosity...as you may know Ecofilmes sold some games with Genesis cartridges and PAL Covers...they are easy to identify...in these the seal "Garantia Sega Portugal" is printed and not just sticked,the same goes for the text in the box wich this time is all translated to Portuguese...You will say "nothing new"... it happens that the majority of this versions are Acclaim,Flying Edge,Probe,Arena Entertainment games (all the same) with a mind blowing exception,an that is X-Men 2: Clone Wars.The game was developed by Headgames but came in the same plastic box with Acclaim embossed seal in the inside (like the others...a deal between Acclaim and Ecofilmes? Who knows?)...there was also cases of complete Genesis versions sold by Ecofilmes like Justice League Task Force(nothing was changed,just a Portuguese manual included,)...I owned 2 of these versions F1(US cover,cartridge,manual) and Champions World Class Soccer(PAL Cover,US manual,text in the back of the box entirely in Portuguese,US cartridge).One thing of note is that those games were originaly sold in the correct european form when they were launched,that genesis "mess" only started somewhere in the end of 1995 beginning of 1996 the same time that Mega Game II started to show on the shelves ... 2 videos that show this curiosities here :

About Dragon Ball Z- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBdfhDlcFV0

About the "Genesis mess"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-plgbotpZM&t=557s

Sorry they are not translated,just in portuguese, but you can see some of the games that were sold with a genesis cartridge in the videos... the guy that made the videos was helped by Ivan Barroso a famous (here in my country) Portuguese Game journalist who wrote for now defunct portuguese magazine "Mega Score" (the succsessor of the Portuguese Mega Force Magazine) and know does videogame reviews for "O Público" portuguese newspaper an portuguese retro gaming magazine "PUSHSTART".Take a look when you have time... sorry to bother you...--Asagoth (talk) 03:16, 24 June 2017 (CDT)

Footage from Sega Euro Challenge 92 held in France

A huge compilation of French SEGA commercials(59:22 minutes) with footage from Sega Euro Challenge 92 (starting at 13:37)- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ja7gYElTeo&t=610s ...--Asagoth (talk) 07:20, 24 June 2017 (CDT)

Feel free to actually add some of this stuff to the wiki (were appropriate) - as lovely as these things are, they're not much use being posted on my talk page :) -Black Squirrel (talk) 08:42, 24 June 2017 (CDT)

French Press Releases

Do you want those translated? - https://web.archive.org/web/19970715055726/http://www.sega-europe.com:80/PRESSE.HTM --Asagoth (talk) 07:33, 26 June 2017 (CDT)

We do - we've already got the French versions on the wiki - the idea would be to put the English translations underneath the French on each page. -Black Squirrel (talk) 08:21, 26 June 2017 (CDT)
OK just look if is something wrong with the English and adjust it as you like--Asagoth (talk) 09:21, 26 June 2017 (CDT)

Teradrive

I don't know if i have found something important or not but you have to see this: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B11cl5uRBh5kZWU0Y3Z6cjhWNzQ/view?usp=sharing... Dumps from a Teradrive Computer, bios dump,documentation,etc... i have also found similar stuff for Mega PC and Dreamcast Dev.Box...--Asagoth (talk) 07:44, 29 June 2017 (CDT)

Sega Game Server and Sega Channel Computer US Manual (General Instrument).pdf

On Page 27 one can see a menu of sega game server with a game called "TINYSTAR.GI",could this be Ristar?... i don't want to annoy you ... but since you guys at sonic retro found some more sega channel stuff this could be interesting...--Asagoth (talk) 10:20, 30 June 2017 (CDT)

Can you Help Me?

Can you save this in a document form? https://web.archive.org/web/20120402115825/http://www.ylw.mmtr.or.jp/~hosino/ma-net/sndgen/japanese/manual/ym2610/ym2610am.htm ... is the YM2610 Application Manual in Japanese...--Asagoth (talk) 16:54, 25 July 2017 (CDT)

There's an English translation on the net, but for this Japanese version, I'm not sure how you would cleanly convert an HTML page to PDF. There are online converters out there - your mileage may vary -Black Squirrel (talk) 05:15, 26 July 2017 (CDT)
I've tried some of them ... but they are just crap... it's not extremely important... Thank you anyway...--Asagoth (talk) 05:34, 26 July 2017 (CDT)

Just to inform...

I uploaded this book to Retro CDN File:FM TOWNS JP Technical Data Book.pdf ... is in Japanese, has a lot of information about the Yamaha YM2612 starting on page 217 to page 241 ... i've translated some portions of the text on google translator and i could see this is serious stuff ... take a look if you wan't... if you think this is not important just ignore it... i'm just asking for an opinion...--Asagoth (talk) 13:19, 27 July 2017 (CDT)

Rob Northen compression

Hello, I do not know if this is the most appropriate way of getting in contact but here we go. I'm translating Stargate for Sega Genesis to brazilian portuguese, but some of the data is compressed. The best clue I've got to keep my work going was to find a compression method page which mention on Stargate game. On brute force (real time hex editing) I managed to find the tiles addresses. I would like to know if you could help me out on de/compression of the data chunk. Thanks in advance.

I'm not well versed on the technical side of old Mega Drive games I'm afraid - you'd be better off contacting someone on the Sonic Retro forums -Black Squirrel (talk) 11:37, 4 September 2017 (CDT)

Super Smash Bros.

So, I made a long needed page on Super Smash Bros. Brawl which links to Sonic Retro, because it's nothing but Sonic related in that game. However, with Smash 4, I'm torn.

The page on Sonic Retro only talks about Sonic, but he's obviously joined by fellow Sega character Bayonetta. Because of this, if I make pages for Smash 4, I was wondering should we still have those pages be on Sonic Retro and update for Bayonetta info there, or should the Smash 4 pages be moved to Sega Retro? JaxTH (talk) 20:17, 3 September 2017 (CDT)

I've not played the game so I don't know how much non-Sonic Sega stuff there is in terms of trophies and what have you, but I'd be tempted to put it on Sonic Retro. It's more Sonic-centric than Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, anyway, and if that's where Smash 3 is going to live, it might as well sit next to Smash 4. -Black Squirrel (talk) 11:43, 4 September 2017 (CDT)

Joseph B Hewitt IV Ex- Designer/Graphics Artist at Westwood Studios

I'm pending approval and most likely i will never be approved (i'm not complaining... rules are rules)... so i can't contact with no one at the forums... so regarding that Mr. Joseph B. Hewitt IV former designer/graphic artist at Westwood Studios was kind enough to collaborate with some information and regarding that he was pratically involved in every title and conversion made by Westwood Studios it would be a waste not to take this opportunity, so i'll sugest that someone with more experience could made him some more questions, i was thinking in Researcher: ICEKnight, he interviewed many people before. We're supposed to act as a team so it doesn't matter who interviews who (correct me if i'm wrong) so can you talk to him to see if he agreeds with this?... it was Mr.Hewitt who made the background art on The Lion King --Asagoth (talk) 04:38, 26 September 2017 (CDT)

ESPN Sunday Night NFL

Hello Black Squirrel. Can you access the ESPN Sunday Night NFL Sega CD credits? All you need to do is just finish a single (exhibition) game just like the SNES and Genesis versions. I tried the SCD version but for whatever reason I can't play it. If you can provide a video/screenshots, I'll insert the credits. Thanks. --Hydao (talk) 16:11, 7 November 2017 (CST)

I haven't got a physical copy so I'd have to go down the ISO route - it would honestly be no quicker than if you did it -Black Squirrel (talk) 12:01, 8 November 2017 (CST)

Credits PDFs

Do you think either this PDF or this one is usable? Or maybe taking screenshots at a non-native (e.g. 640x480) would be a better idea? --AllisonKidd (talk) 19:13, 15 November 2017 (CST)

I think I read up on the PDF standard once and found that while it is capable of storing lossless images, there's a few extra hoops to jump through. The JPEGtoPDF program we've got hosted on RetroCDN converts everything to JPEG (unless the file is already a JPEG, in which case it leaves it alone).
A lot of modern image editors let you set the "quality" of a JPEG when you save - the resulting image is always lossy, but the highest quality JPEGs are very close to a lossless image to the untrained eye. If you want the best image possible, save your JPEGs at the maximum quality (100 in Paint.NET, which is what I use):
Put these into JPEGtoPDF and you'll get a better idea (I've got test images exactly for questions like these :) ).
There are lossless variants of JPEG (and JPEG 2000) - they're not widely supported though.
The being said, as long as it's readable, it should be fine. -Black Squirrel (talk) 11:37, 16 November 2017 (CST)
Those PDFs actually contain lossless PNGs, but PdfHandler creates lossy JPEG thumbnails (with subsampling). I converted the images to high quality JPEGs and used JPEGtoPDF as you suggested (rather than PNGs with ImageMagick) and it seems to render better now, although it's much heavier. --AllisonKidd (talk) 15:53, 16 November 2017 (CST)
I used JPEG2000 with JPEGtoPDF for this file. Worked pretty well. - Hivebrain (talk) 15:59, 16 November 2017 (CST)

Mark Voorsanger

I added some references to the page... i haven't touched in the production history... but after I saved the page, the production history disappeared ... what is strange is that when we click the preview button we can see the production history but after saving the page we don't see it... maybe you can fix it... is just to keep you informed...--Asagoth (talk) 07:36, 20 December 2017 (CST)

Edit: It's all ok now... false alarm... now i get it... just ignore it--Asagoth (talk) 09:35, 20 December 2017 (CST)
"purge cache" :) -Black Squirrel (talk) 11:15, 20 December 2017 (CST)

Tails and the Music Maker

Despite us having a page on the game here on Sega Retro, the redirect to Sonic Retro is still active which means anyone who looks for the game through the search bar will end up there. The only way to end up on the Sega retro page is through a direct link.

I'd fix it myself but I don't know how since both pages are existing together. JaxTH (talk) 00:00, 25 December 2017 (CST)

Mega Score Magazine (Portugal) issue 01

Could you upload it to Retro CDN? It has 137 MB of size...it's already compressed... i can't upload it... here https://drive.google.com/file/d/17-wFvzBIa-0vqCGPoM4dmgbp1ay-wf1f/view?usp=sharing --Asagoth (talk) 13:17, 27 December 2017 (CST)

File:MegaScore PT 01.pdf :) -Black Squirrel (talk) 14:27, 27 December 2017 (CST)
Thank you...--Asagoth (talk) 14:33, 27 December 2017 (CST)

What about this?

Do you think we can save it ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq7C6xzoegk&t=267s ...(read the description in the video)--Asagoth (talk) 12:38, 28 December 2017 (CST)

Ah yes, that's another thing we need to sort out at some point - Sega created some educational material for schools, and that video is part of it:
My guess is that there were other bits of teaching material too. You might be able to extract the ads - I don't know enough about video editing to do a good job myself.
IIRC I got distracted at the time by the other teaching-related VHS which involved lifeguards (and TV's Chris Evans!) -Black Squirrel (talk) 12:55, 28 December 2017 (CST)
Well... i'm not an expert at video editing either... i just use this https://ezgif.com/crop-video ... that's my "secret" :) --Asagoth (talk) 13:06, 28 December 2017 (CST)
Edit: I scaled the video a bit and now it has 156 MB you'll have to upload it , here https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bSvcW0PodLteVnlEiqjHI_ymHtdUFlcq/view?usp=sharing ... is the first time i've used the scaling tool, but it looks ok, i hope it works...--Asagoth (talk) 14:47, 28 December 2017 (CST)
156MB is quite large for 30 seconds or so of footage - or is this the whole VHS? -Black Squirrel (talk) 14:59, 28 December 2017 (CST)
Yes is the whole thing... and there's some more on the web...but i can upload the original which is just 68,3 MB (res:480X360)--Asagoth (talk) 15:02, 28 December 2017 (CST)

Yes upload the original - scaling 360p to 720p just adds to the file size - it can't improve the image quality :) -Black Squirrel (talk) 15:27, 28 December 2017 (CST)

Sonic Chaos Master System EU manual and high resolution cover

Can you upload these two to Sonic Retro? ... https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c9SriaV9zz98fgLa78KkwafVP2Pm06kS/view?usp=sharing --Asagoth (talk) 12:52, 14 January 2018 (CST)

Apparently not - the upload form is failing over there - I shall poke GerbilSoft -Black Squirrel (talk) 12:59, 14 January 2018 (CST)
OK then... no problem... it's in good hands now...--Asagoth (talk) 13:04, 14 January 2018 (CST)

I need you to upload this for me

https://medias.games2gether.com/comics/Endless%20Space%202%20-%20Cravers%20-%20The%20Raid.pdf

It's 122MB (only 2MB over) so it's past the upload limit. Our page here: Endless Space 2 Stories.

I'd like it to be named "Issue_005_-_Endless_Space_2_-_Cravers_-_The_Raid.pdf". JaxTH (talk) 21:53, 4 March 2018 (CST)

I'm also restricted right now - the extension I usually use for bigger uploads is bork, so this might have to wait
I would hope it was fixed around the same time the CSS issues above are addressed :) -Black Squirrel (talk) 11:30, 5 March 2018 (CST)
Bringing this back. Tried to upload this again since the upload limit is increased, but all I get is a "Secure Connection Failed" error along with a "PR_CONNECT_RESET_ERROR". Not sure what I can do. JaxTH (talk) 14:21, 11 June 2020 (EDT)
https://retrocdn.net/Special:UploadWizard
Use that one -Black Squirrel (talk) 14:23, 11 June 2020 (EDT)

DPL edit to pull all variants of a release

This starts to hit up at my edge of DPL knowledge, but figured I'd ask: on something like List of PC games in Japan, it'd be really useful to pull in all JP variants, as I'm trying to make sure every HCJ serial number is accounted for without having to jump back and forth on pages to ensure we've got every variant (spoiler we usually don't). Is there a way to render unique rows for every variant, too? - Scarred Sun (talk) 19:38, 17 April 2018 (CDT)

There is, but it could clash with Hivebrain's plans
A better way might be to use the cargo extension and hit it up with some SQL calls - Special:CargoTables/releases should have every release accounted for.
{{#cargo_query:
table=releases
|fields=name,console,code
|where=region="JP"
}}
-Black Squirrel (talk) 12:55, 18 April 2018 (CDT)

Codename: Sailor V - The Game

Why did you deleted the article about an existing video game? The game is released officially on Dreamcast for Europe. Soniccis96 (talk) 11:32, 28 July 2018 (CDT)

I can assure you, it wasn't. Though you're welcome to try and prove otherwise!
We do not cover homebrew games on Sega Retro, therefore this... thing will not get a page. -Black Squirrel (talk) 11:43, 28 July 2018 (CDT)
As a way the old website is a source for it. Soniccis96 (talk) 11:48, 28 July 2018 (CDT)
Or the video with YouTube gameplay of this video game. A PC-9801 - ported videogame is not just a homebrew video game. Soniccis96 (talk) 11:49, 28 July 2018 (CDT)

OK, for a PC-8801 mkII game see this link. For Dreamcast it will be soon released. Soniccis96 (talk) 12:04, 28 July 2018 (CDT)

Metrostar XT16

As a way, XT16 and System 16 are similar to Dreamcast, so X286 is a coprocessor for initial RAM-disk and monitor. I have one XT16 in my house. Why not? Or Metro is just a piece of sh*** (oops-oops-oops, sorry for that)? Soniccis96 (talk) 15:18, 31 July 2018 (CDT)

Anyway, this situation is just similar as with S3K PC bootlegs, am I must to redirect it again, bro? About CN: SVG for Dreamcast, I'll scan the CD and instructions and I'll take a Longplay of this. About XT16 (I don't have original System 16, only its modified analogue, so I created the article that is related to it): I'll soon take scans with instructions manuals of the Bulgarian arcade board. So be it. Soniccis96 (talk) 15:25, 31 July 2018 (CDT)

Sonic R 1997 GAME Running Animation

Hi! In the "General information" thread from the Sega forum on Sonic Retro, I noticed you mentioning about Sonic, Tails and Knuckles running on a black background as a promo for Sonic R in GAME, but couldn't prove that it existed. I think I may have what you're looking for.

Please see this Youtube video from around 0:11 to 0:20, and it may well be what you're after. If not, at least you can rule it out! --Tongara (talk) 05:15, 8 October 2018 (CDT)

That's probably it - it's been 21 years so I can't say if it's exactly the same footage but yeah - thanks! -Black Squirrel (talk) 11:16, 8 October 2018 (CDT)

Korean mags...

Sorry to interrupt you... but can you please delete this mag so I can continue to upload the rest of them? ... yep I did the same mistake again... with the sleep last night... that one is the September 1997 issue and not the May 1997 issue... it's just to avoid conflicts with names...--Asagoth (talk) 06:47, 13 October 2018 (CDT)

Done :) -Black Squirrel (talk) 06:48, 13 October 2018 (CDT)
Thanks a lot man...--Asagoth (talk) 06:53, 13 October 2018 (CDT)

The Sega-Gremlin Tape Archive

I'm sure you're going to love it... watch it with your own eyes... Gold... Pure Gold!!!...--Asagoth (talk) 14:22, 24 November 2018 (CST)

This is is a thing of beauty - exceedingly good find! -Black Squirrel (talk) 15:01, 24 November 2018 (CST)
So... what can we do with these?...--Asagoth (talk) 15:05, 24 November 2018 (CST)
Uploading the adverts now - I will consult my superiors on the massive promotional videos (but I totally want to see them here)
There is an image archive that complements this - https://archive.org/details/sega-gremlin-photos
I think we can safely leave the photos of that airport alone, but there are design documents for unreleased games and general weirdness that I don't yet understand. -Black Squirrel (talk) 15:53, 24 November 2018 (CST)
Ok... I'm downloading them too ... I can shrink the larger ones... there's some online tools which can do it easily...--Asagoth (talk) 16:02, 24 November 2018 (CST)

Nihon Goraku Bussan

I don't even know what to do with this info... really confusing... take a look...--Asagoth (talk) 15:43, 30 November 2018 (CST)

I've noticed these trade publications are a bit loose with their language from time to time.
In 1960, "Sega, Inc." was a trading name for Nihon Kikai Seizou, while "Utamatic, Inc." was a trading name for Nihon Goraku Bussan. NGB bought NKS at some point (1964?) and started trading as "Sega". At least that's what we think - Scarred Sun wrote most of this before we had a means of referencing material.
Exactly what happened between 1945 and 1960... I honestly don't know. I'm not sure any of us do (including modern Sega). -Black Squirrel (talk) 15:58, 30 November 2018 (CST)
Oh and NKS manufactured tings, NGB sold stuff. We think they're both remnants of Service Games, Japan but I don't know why they'd split and then... un-split. -Black Squirrel (talk) 16:00, 30 November 2018 (CST)
I will use it as reference in the Service Games, Japan page then... it fits perfectly there...--Asagoth (talk) 16:25, 30 November 2018 (CST)

Hey

I saw you talking about me on the Sonic Retro Forums

//forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?showtopic=38336&view=findpost&p=936370

Generally I can agree that backing my stuff up with more references would be a good idea. But generally, the Japanese Game Wiki regarding game staff (https://www13.atwiki.jp/game_staff/pages/213.html#id_65c1b46a) is the most accurate thing you will get (I proofchecked it all when finding stuff on the Japanese web, and then there are magazines which you often don't have access to).

However only relying on Sega Sammy or Sega documents for divisions of game development won't work. The reason for that is, is that you often you only get the business divisions listed, but not for game developement (often just summed up with R&D, and that's it.)--Trippled-3 (talk) 10:02, 13 January 2019 (EST)

Magazine articles

Hi. I would like to ask if there is a possibility that all jpg files in magazine articles have the same icon as pdf files? More specifically, they would look like this:[3].

Thanks for the help.-Lukdriver14

The idea is that magazines should be archived (in full) as PDF files - that's what the Magtable template expects. It's not really optimised for individual JPEG files.
That red PDF icon is a placeholder - the eventual plan is to show thumbnails of every article (like we do with promotional material), but currently the wiki slows to a crawl when there are loads of thumbnails on-screen. There will be a software upgrade at some point that will hopefully sort that out - until then, it's going to keep looking messy.
At some point we'll also be transitioning to a template where you don't have to specify the file name (like template:Magref), so things could change. I wouldn't worry too much about this though - you're keeping a record, and recording the facts is more important than how those facts are presented -Black Squirrel (talk) 12:41, 22 January 2019 (EST)

If I have the option, I insert the file in pdf format, however, most of the files I found are in the format are DJVU and unfortunately I can not convert it to pdf (most of the files that I will convert is pink). I also do not want to convert files that have one information about Sega. I prefer to insert this one page. I wanted to set these miniatures because my latest version of the improved files that I put on the Retro CDN does not display in the mobile version (their small version). I do not know why. Lukdriver14

SegaParkBrighton Outside.jpg

hi! I notice that in 2014 you uploaded my photo on Sega Retro. I'm honored to have one of my images on this incredibile website, but the image missing the correct attribution. please, can you add the source and the author of the picture? if needed, I can release such photo with a difference license (for example, Creative Commons). --Valepert (talk) 08:15, 10 February 2019 (EST)

lo - it would probably be quicker, given that you've now got an account, that you edit the file page yourself, then you can make the choice - File:SegaParkBrighton Outside.jpg (Actions -> Edit) -Black Squirrel (talk) 08:22, 10 February 2019 (EST)

Asking for adminship

Is it okay for you to grant me with admin rights? I am interested in anti-vandalism work here. Also, could you make User:Lukdriver14 an admin too? GoldenGamerGal (talk) 09:33, 23 February 2019 (EST)
That's not how it works :)
Don't come to us, we'll come to you -Black Squirrel (talk) 12:19, 23 February 2019 (EST)

Bad references...

You know that I'm not that smart in this things ... but I used "<ref>" because some URL's will only work that way... if you use "{{ref|" it will not work ... that's my workaround because I don't know any better... --Asagoth (talk) 08:15, 23 March 2019 (EDT)

Sonic 3D Blast Trailer 1996 information

Hi, I saw in the "The Supreme Topic of 'Other' Knowledge" thread in the "General Sonic Discussion" forum that the Sonic 3D Blast 1996 trailer was being discussed by yourself, but not having much of a clue about where the footage came from, etc. The footage was provided directly by Sega Of Anerica to a company called "Video Pipeline" (Now known as Video Detective) who used provide trailers to retailers and distributors to show in stores and for promotional purposes. Please see the description of my video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0js7u50ZCrs which goes into detail about the company, etc. It should clear things up a bit. haha

Thanks for the tip - I'll look into this -Black Squirrel (talk) 13:36, 25 March 2019 (EDT)
No problem! Sorry that I forgot to sign the last post. Hope the info leads to cool stuff, etc~ -Tongara (talk) 23:44, 25 March 2019 (EDT)

Did we get everything from Sega's blogs backed up on Sega Retro?

I just noticed that the Sega blog (blogs.sega.com) is gone. I know we were linking to some interviews from them so not quite sure if we had everything hosted here as well. JaxTH (talk) 17:04, 14 April 2019 (EDT)

Nope
It should have been done, but it requires motivated individuals willing to fight this stuff, and people like that are hard to come by. Now they'll have to be even more motivated!
That being said, some of the images were cross-posted from official press gubbins, and Hivebrain's added most of those. So some of it's here, but yeah - someone needs to sift through. I think the most I ever personally did was get some of the artwork for Sega Rally Revo from there, but it wasn't all of it, and I was a bit disorganised at the time. -Black Squirrel (talk) 12:33, 15 April 2019 (EDT)

Error creating thumbnail

What can I do to fix this error? https://retrocdn.net/File:Neo_1_PL.pdf --Lukdriver14 (talk) 15:23, 22 April 2019 (EDT)

Not much - the software has a hard time rendering thumbnails for certain PDFs for some reason. It's a known bug and I wouldn't worry too much about it.
Hivebrain seems to be able to fix things - I'm not sure what his technique is -Black Squirrel (talk) 15:43, 22 April 2019 (EDT)

BPjS / BPjM indexed games

I found an index of banned games in Germany. https://www.mobygames.com/game-group/bpjs-bpjm-indexed-games/offset,275/so,1d/ Is there anything of these on this site? I've found only this and I do not have better references for now .--Lukdriver14 (talk) 10:59, 27 April 2019 (EDT)

We don't have a list, though we might need one. -Black Squirrel (talk) 11:58, 27 April 2019 (EDT)

Non-Sega consoles navigational template

Dunno if it's necessary or not, but I made a nagivational template for non-Sega consoles for the sake of navigation between them, even placing them under the appropriate category when added to a page. I suppose you could use it how you please, and use Text Replacement to put it where it goes. --SorachiJirachi (talk) 12:54, 27 April 2019 (EDT)

Sonic X-Treme E3 1996 Footage

Just thought you might enjoy this video I uploaded. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2WU5xalYkk --Tongara (talk) 14:42, 4 May 2019 (EDT)

Nicely done :) -Black Squirrel (talk) 14:45, 4 May 2019 (EDT)

deleting

Why do you keep deleting the pic. Looks legit

Top Secret scans

So, you removed JPG of Top Secret scans from articles and I wanted to ask what you're going to replace this?--Lukdriver14 (talk) 10:17, 11 May 2019 (EDT)

Oops, that wasn't intentional - which page(s) have I broken?
They should be getting collected in Category:Bad magazine reference so I know what to fix - is that not the case? -Black Squirrel (talk) 11:20, 11 May 2019 (EDT)
There aren't there. Tomorrow I fix it myself. One more question that is not related to this topic. Is it possible to create articles about television programs about games that are not entirely dedicated to the Sega game but have game reviews for Sega consoles and several different systems?--Lukdriver14 (talk) 13:08, 11 May 2019 (EDT)
Videos will be welcome on Retro CDN
I'm not sure about making pages for multi-platform TV shows though - these might end up being on Retro CDN one day too, but I think I want to see databases being shared across our wikis first. I honestly don't know.
I started a list in Template:VideoNameStore so at least we're acknowledging TV shows exist. -Black Squirrel (talk) 13:19, 11 May 2019 (EDT)
I also thought about creating a separate section for each game, such as articles from magazines. Only in some cases I wanted to provide a YouTube link rather than send entire video.--Lukdriver14 (talk) 13:50, 11 May 2019 (EDT)
In Portugal there was three shows... Templo dos Jogos (SIC... games for several platforms were reviewed, tips & tricks revealed, etc ... by far the most cherished among kids... 5 years) CyberMaster (RTP... inspired on the British show Gamemaster ... kids competed each other in order to win prizes... exclusive to Sega Consoles... Mega Drive and Saturn ... Opening... and the only incomplete episode available on Youtube ) and "O Ultimo Nível" (also on RTP ... basycally the same as CyberMaster but was not exclusive to Sega Consoles ... it was a multiplatform show... all have greasy watermarks... because everyone wants to be a "Star"...--Asagoth (talk) 06:20, 12 May 2019 (EDT)
Edit: I almost forgot... the staff of "O Templo dos Jogos" also went to some E3 Shows during that time and there's exclusive interviews with game developers and Sega executives ... this photo of Andy Mee was taken from one of the episodes during E3 1995... there's 8 episodes of the 1st season, 44 of the 2nd season and 40 of the 3rd season on Youtube...just to let you know...--Asagoth (talk) 07:20, 12 May 2019 (EDT)
Interesting.I was thinking about creating a template for television programs such as for magazine articles to be available under each game.Then you can insert a video or link to YouTube. Unfortunately, I do not know anything about creating templates so this only remains as a suggestion for the future.--Lukdriver14 (talk) 15:53, 12 May 2019 (EDT)
That would be cool... oh by the way... there were actually four shows ... I was forgeting "Cybernet" which aired on TVI ... which was basically the Portuguese localization/adaptation of the British show with the same name...--Asagoth (talk) 21:33, 13 May 2019 (EDT)

Magistr Drive 2 (mini; 160 games)

Did you mean this model ? http://newgameural.ru/node/122--Lukdriver14 (talk) 13:15, 7 July 2019 (EDT)

Those ones, I think -Black Squirrel (talk) 14:01, 7 July 2019 (EDT)

More Sonic R E3 Era footage

2 videos this time, hope you enjoy!

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsHe1LDFu8g 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR_28ttWmQ0 --Tongara (talk) 09:38, 21 July 2019 (EDT)

Sega Arcade Birmingham above Silver Blades Ice Rink

So, in addition to the Sonic R stuff above, I saw the "SegaWorld Birmingham, Tamworth, Wolverhampton" thread on the forum got bumped and someone finally talked about this. Being from Birmingham myself, I can confirm it was a thing, and it was located at Silver Blades Ice Rink, 73-75 Pershore Street, in Birmingham City Centre.

The top part of the outside of the building advertised with big signs what was inside, and one of them was Sonic from the Sonic 1 Mega Drive box art, just like what was seen outside of "Oriental City" in London back in the day. I seem to remember a "SEGAWORLD" sign being there, too, but I can't confirm that 100%. I seem to remember the sign saying "SEGAWORLD" being removed a year or two before the Sonic sign was, and the area simply being refereed to as "Game Zone" on the outside of the building (which remained until later redevelopment).

I remember the Sonic sign being there from at least the mid-90's until sometime between 1999-2001, when it was finally removed. The silhouette of where it had been was there for a few years after (the surrounding wall was obviously weathered and darkened due to rain, etc). I believe it was at the same time that it was renamed to "Planet Ice", and a bowling alley was also a feature.

A few years later (Maybe 2003), a fire started inside from what is believed to be faulty DJ equipment on the second floor. The building then remained disused for about 7 years until it was bought by another company, and everything on the outside was completely covered up, transforming the look of the building, being renamed once again to "The Leisurebox". It reopened for a few years until it finally shut down again in 2013/14, and was then torn down sometime in the last 5 years and the area is being turned into "269 one-bedroom and 67 two-bedroom apartments, 71 parking spaces, and 3,400 sq ft of commercial space". No idea if that has been completed or not, I haven't been to the area in a god few years now.

And sadly, that is everything I know. I remember finding a picture online of Sonic on the outside of the building before, but can no longer find it. If I manage to find it again, I'll be sure to share it to here.

--Tongara (talk) 17:41, 22 July 2019 (EDT)

Nice - feel free to make a page ;) -Black Squirrel (talk) 12:24, 23 July 2019 (EDT)

Mag Reference Table?

Hey, just checking in since it looks like Magrow now reads off a table to find the corresponding magazine file--but I can't track down where it is. Help? - Scarred Sun (talk) 11:36, 3 August 2019 (EDT)

Template:IssueNameStore/JP
I have a feeling the Mega Drive Fans should be using the "19xx-xx" number scheme but it's a lot of work to change it -Black Squirrel (talk) 11:40, 3 August 2019 (EDT)
Eh, probably not. That said, can you please do more to document how templates are supposed to work and how they're interrelated? It's getting incredibly hard to tease out and while I know it's all in your head, it's not in anyone else's. :/ - Scarred Sun (talk) 11:44, 3 August 2019 (EDT)
Hivebrain's head - I keep forgetting where it is too ;)
But yes I agree, the learning curve is too steep -Black Squirrel (talk) 11:54, 3 August 2019 (EDT)
I'm probably going to change how mag tables work (again) when we move them to CDN. The idea is to have an article about each magazine with all the issue info stored there. I'll try to make the templates less laggy and easier to edit. - Hivebrain (talk) 12:11, 3 August 2019 (EDT)

CIRSA/UNIDESA

What do you prefer? One page for the two companies or one page for each company?...--Asagoth (talk) 15:18, 20 August 2019 (EDT)

I don't know how relevant Cirsa is, but it looks like Amusetec is related to it as well, so it'll be either two or three - whatever you think is best
I found these flyers accidentally on this site. Mirroring all the Sega-related knowledge is a big-ish task -Black Squirrel (talk) 15:28, 20 August 2019 (EDT)
Well... Cirsa is Manuel Lao's first company founded in 1978, Unidesa was established in 1982... and I know that their first pinball machines were made by

Stargame a company that born independent from them and later began manufacturing pinballs at their request ... they later bought that company... Stargame probably became AmuseTec : flyer front , flyer back ... dunno... I'l have to investigate...--Asagoth (talk) 15:57, 20 August 2019 (EDT)

Mundo Vending (Vending World) ...

I guess I don't need to explain what this is (you can change the years in that box)... this mag was founded in Barcelona in 1990... as you can see is more directed to the vending sector (Coffee Machines, Coin Counters, Food, Drinks, etc, etc... is basically what Azar is for the Spanish Gaming Sector... some of them have ads for the several FER shows for those years... and lists with the companies that attended them... the only difference is that there's no way to download them as a pdf... just the good old method of picking page by page... Do you want them all?...--Asagoth (talk) 15:44, 22 August 2019 (EDT)

If there's any relevant ones, go for it. It's unlikely we'll need all 20 years' worth though ;) -Black Squirrel (talk) 16:05, 22 August 2019 (EDT)
Yes of course ... I was refering to the first decade... from 199 things0 to 2000... I saw one from 97 ... it mentions Segasa, Unidesa, AmuseTEC and the usual suspects... they give us a good idea of how things were in Spain at the time :) ... --Asagoth (talk) 16:13, 22 August 2019 (EDT)
Edit: Salex-Parkex 95, São Paulo, Brazil... Sega was present to show Virtua Striker... :) ... these mags don't have much info... just some stuff... we will probably need just two or three of them... but that's something...--Asagoth (talk) 17:51, 22 August 2019 (EDT)

Phantasy Star Online 2 Cloud

Im beginning to have doubts whether the separate entry for Phantasy Star Online 2 Cloud should exist. I can understand having a separate page if the amount of differences is significant like with Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Adventure 2 Battle or the version differences between Phantasy Star Online and Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II. However the game is basically the PC version running on a Cloud server (as the name implies) and can also be played on PC from the same launcher that launches the regular PC version. The game is identical and accesses the same play data, even 'exclusive' content is not locked to the version. I know I covered some differences on the main PSO2 Cloud page but I now feel that the page is unnecessary as the bulk of the differences are covered in the newly made Phantasy Star Online 2 Comparison page.

I think it's fine having its own page, because even if it's mostly the same game, having massive game pages is never ideal. It will have its own history and marketing and what-have-you - there's still a fair bit to say. It's similar to the various Sega Ages re-releases of games that currently have pages - the actual "game" is more-or-less the same, but separating them out stops the wiki from becoming too cluttered.
The game's contents (including comparisons) can go on the regular Phantasy Star Online 2 page - that's fine (I think? I know nothing about PSO2 other than it exists). I don't think we've got an ideal solution for some of these problems yet -Black Squirrel (talk) 14:46, 22 November 2019 (EST)

A little favour...

Can you please trash this document? I confused it with the intended one... I can't move the page ... it tells me it's "forbidden"...--- Asagoth

Sure thing -Black Squirrel (talk) 14:51, 24 November 2019 (EST)
A huge thanks to you...---Asagoth

Ratings

Is it possible to add, in addition to percentages, values such as 4+/ 6, 5/10, ✓✓ / ✓✓✓✓✓? Several magazines have such ratings and in the future I wanted to put a proper rating in each game.--Lukdriver14 (talk) 09:11, 22 December 2019 (EST)

It needs to be a percentage to create an average score, although admittedly it can look a bit misleading. See: Sega Retro:Ratings.
We've looked into this in the past but nothing ever happened. If you put what you think the real rating should be in HTML comments alongside the converted value (<!-- like this -->) we might sort something out eventually -Black Squirrel (talk) 09:25, 22 December 2019 (EST)

Phantasy Star Series Questions

I have been editing various articles relating to the Phantasy Star series and I have got a couple of questions I would like some input on moving forward if it is alright.

  • The differences between each version of Phantasy Star Online are akin to the differences found between the likes of Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Adventure 2 Battle or Skies of Arcadia and Skies of Arcadia Legends. In the case of PSO, each version of the game adds more to it; new classes, new areas, etc. I had been thinking about, at least for V1 and V2 (which were both on Dreamcast and few merchandise ever made the distinction), have the two of them share an Omni and several common pages. Would this the best approach?
  • Following up from the previous question, would it be possible if down the line the capability to list alternate versions of a game could be made possible? (e.g "Main Page (V2, Ep I & II, Blue Burst)).
  • For updates/ports/rereleases that introduce major differences (as is the case with Phantasy Star Online and its Gamecube/Xbox port or Phantasy Star Portable 2 and its standalone expansion, Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity) would it be best to use the Comparison page only to document minor additions and comparisons between sections that match its original counterpart and note all major new features in the port/update's page?
  • Genuine curiosity, what difference would there be between the "Development" and "History" pages?
  • Would it be alright to use different video sources for the comparison pages for PSO GC/Xbox and Phantasy Star Universe's PC and Xbox 360 port?

Thanks in advance!

yo
"History" would also include what happened after the game released (so I suppose in PSO's case, units sold, popularity, any special events, when servers were closed etc.). "Development" is part of the game's history, but it's usually the biggest bit.
Videos are good
I don't know what the best solution is in terms of Omni templates and comparison pages - my general belief is the more screenshots, the better. I think we'd want to still keep different Omni templates for each release of PSO, if not just because the magazine and promotional material pages could get huge, but there might be other ways to "link" things
But do whatever seems best - we can always reogranise things at a later date -Black Squirrel (talk) 07:47, 8 March 2020 (EDT)

Game Hihyou

I can't upload this one (1.1G... tried two times... nearly 3 hours to upload... session ends after an hour and a "few cents"...) what should I do? ...--Asagoth (talk) 08:29, 30 March 2020 (EDT)

It might be struggling with files that size - leave it for now and I'll make a note -Black Squirrel (talk) 09:09, 30 March 2020 (EDT)
Ok man... as you wish... do you need some help with these?--Asagoth (talk) 09:14, 30 March 2020 (EDT)
There's only one left, and it's uploading as we speak ;) -Black Squirrel (talk) 09:28, 30 March 2020 (EDT)
Oh ... sorry ... my bad :) ...--Asagoth (talk) 09:36, 30 March 2020 (EDT)

Print ads and replace text

You may have already noticed by now, but your last replace text broke every page with a flyer on it. (example) - Hivebrain (talk) 12:26, 6 April 2020 (EDT)

I think that's all of them fixed - it's even better when the server is under too much load to render pages. -Black Squirrel (talk) 15:12, 6 April 2020 (EDT)

British Magazines

I'm lost... which mags do you want us to upload from this batch? ... besides the obvious ones of course...--Asagoth (talk) 13:46, 21 April 2020 (EDT)

these two
But other than that, we might have everything. Not sure what the status is with the Nintendo/Xbox/PlayStation mags - a bunch have been uploaded, but I've not checked if we're missing a few (relevant) ones. Some of those Amiga mags might have Sega reviews in them too (though it's unlikely for anything printed after 1992) -Black Squirrel (talk) 13:55, 21 April 2020 (EDT)
Ok then... I will upload those two and then those Amiga magazines ;) ...--Asagoth (talk) 14:00, 21 April 2020 (EDT)

File Uploads

The last two file I've uploaded (https://segaretro.org/File:SegaHeroesTitleScreen.png) and (https://segaretro.org/File:GoogleStadiaHardware.jpg) have both errored out. Would you happen to know any reason why? JaxTH (talk) 17:04, 2 May 2020 (EDT)

Thumbnails are broken across all wikis. Continue as if they weren't, and it should fix itself in time -Black Squirrel (talk) 17:21, 2 May 2020 (EDT)

Top Secret (Poland)...

I noticed that some of these have watermarks too... those at archive.org were probably download from the same place... should I continue?--Asagoth (talk) 12:43, 4 May 2020 (EDT)

Yeah I saw that - better than nothing though I suppose -Black Squirrel (talk) 12:49, 4 May 2020 (EDT)
Cool... that's the spirit ;) --Asagoth (talk) 12:51, 4 May 2020 (EDT)

Question

I have been editing here for several years and I still don't understand one thing. How does copyright law work on this site relative to magazines? Can you explain it to me?-Lukdriver14 (talk) 06:12, 6 May 2020 (EDT)

We host things until someone tells us to stop, basically -Black Squirrel (talk) 06:29, 6 May 2020 (EDT)
And what about these sites?
If content is still in print or is available digitally for a fee, we probably don't want to be housing that on our wikis. But use your own judgement - most Sega-related things are going to be at least 20 years old. -Black Squirrel (talk) 09:13, 6 May 2020 (EDT)
Even if they are outdated, I still want them to be removed. I mean Dutch and Hungarian ones.-Lukdriver14 (talk) 09:43, 6 May 2020 (EDT)

Gamers' Republic

Can you please delete this magazine here? There's a larger scan of this magazine that I want to upload...--Asagoth (talk) 03:53, 9 June 2020 (EDT)

Done -Black Squirrel (talk) 03:51, 9 June 2020 (EDT)
Thank you very much ;) ...--Asagoth (talk) 03:53, 9 June 2020 (EDT)

KW-501U

Is this deserve a separate article or can I put it with the rest of the KW-501?-15:50, 27 June 2020 (EDT)

Keep it with the rest of the KW-501 machines for now - it looks like it's just a minor variant to me -Black Squirrel (talk) 16:59, 27 June 2020 (EDT)

Questions that need answers

1. Can this site be given as a source because as far as I know it is not a free resource. And I don't have full access to it, I just take the first sentences available for free.https://www.telecompaper.com/news/video-games-market-small--23097

2. Is it possible to add game titles in other languages, not from game boxes, but from magazine reviews?Lukdriver14 (talk) 15:16, 22 July 2020 (EDT)

1 yes
2 I've been listing "unofficial" titles in the magazine articles pages (such as the many made-up names for Twin Cobra). On main game pages, we'd probably just want official names. If an officially licensed Sega distributor is calling it by something different, then that's fine, but if it's a magazine that hasn't read the box properly, then no. -Black Squirrel (talk) 16:48, 22 July 2020 (EDT)
Well, some magazines mainly translated titles of movie based games or to attract customers https://retrocdn.net/File:ABC_41-10_CZ_Wolfchild_Tale_Spin.jpg but if you say so, I add them to magazine articles pages--17:10, 22 July 2020 (EDT)

Delete

Can you delete the rest of the files on Retro CDN and Sega Retro? Most of the files I marked are no longer used anyway.-08:32, 29 July 2020 (EDT)

When you delete files marked by me, I promise that I won't bother you anymore.-11:46, 30 July 2020 (EDT)
It'll be done in time - there's a lot on both wikis to sift through :) -Black Squirrel (talk) 12:34, 30 July 2020 (EDT)
It's good that you removed those from Sega Retro. However, they are still on Retro CDN.-11:57, 29 August 2020 (EDT)
Back again. Can you delete once again files from there https://segaretro.org/Category:Pages_to_be_deleted . Thanks
Will you now be able to remove the rest?
You deleted Sega TR advert 1997.03. Now file is missing like that one https://segaretro.org/Aral .

About Achievements

Do we have a way of displaying two pictures side by side for them? I was looking at them and noticed most pictures are different between the early Xbox and PlayStation icons. I tried messing around with the templates to get it to work but couldn't without every single game needing two pictures (A not avalible picture would end up next to everything). JaxTH (talk) 08:36, 7 August 2020 (EDT)

We don't, but upload the icons anyway (or make a note of which games are affected... or both) and I'll make it happen at some point -Black Squirrel (talk) 08:39, 7 August 2020 (EDT)
Will do. JaxTH (talk) 08:43, 7 August 2020 (EDT)

New platform logos on Retro CDN

I'm trying to create new logos for digital platforms, right now HumbleBundle and DirectG (a Korean platform), for Streets of Rage 4. I can see that they're missing and that most logos are stored at Retro CDN instead of SegaRetro. But I can't create an account on Retro CDN so I can't upload those logos.

I already got a svg logo for HumbleBundle, directly from the official website. Is it ok to upload this one (and DirectG logo when I'll get) on SegaRetro only? Xinyingho (talk) 04:17, 20 August 2020 (EDT)

If you have a plan, then yes - I can always shift it later -Black Squirrel (talk) 04:26, 20 August 2020 (EDT)

I uploaded those logos but now I want to upload 61 mugshots from all the enemies in SoR4. Is there a tool to batch upload files with the same description? Xinyingho (talk) 13:43, 22 August 2020 (EDT)

There used to be, but I'm afraid it doesn't work anymore. You'll have to upload things separately -Black Squirrel (talk) 13:45, 22 August 2020 (EDT)

I have another issue: on the article about SoR4, I can't add a Chinese Steam release within the information box. I can see that Steam releases are wrapped within the template ReleasesDigital, which uses the template list Regions/Mobile. I added CN for China in this list but it still doesn't display the Chinese Steam release. Is there anything else to modify to make this work? I'm really not an expert with wiki templating... Xinyingho (talk) 03:56, 3 September 2020 (EDT)

You need a date for things to show :) -Black Squirrel (talk) 04:12, 3 September 2020 (EDT)

I can't believe I missed that lol. But the price for the Chinese release doesn't display the currency unit despite having modified the template Price with a line "CN=¥". I still miss something here... Xinyingho (talk) 05:21, 3 September 2020 (EDT)

Consoles +

Bit of a heads up - I've noticed the magazine Consoles + marks which games are imports (e.g. Dragon Ball Z or Puyo Puyo) in the information fields above the ratings, which (along with other tells such as screenshots and what regions games were released in) should help with discerning which versions were used for review. --SorachiJirachi (talk) 08:06, 24 August 2020 (EDT)

Book Scan Upload Good and Bad

Is there anything good or bad about uploading a scanned book? -Nemesislivezx (talk) 07:49, 21 December 2020 (EST)

If the book is relevant to the interests of Sonic/Sega/NEC Retro, then yes scans are good. We will want the highest quality version of that book uploaded to Retro CDN.
The only reasons we wouldn't be interested in book scans, is if the book was too new (i.e. it was still in print), or if it wasn't relevant to our interests -Black Squirrel (talk) 08:03, 21 December 2020 (EST)

Internet Archive and Fandom

Do you know Internet Archive and Fandom?

-Nemesislivezx (talk) 09:45, 22 December 2020 (EST)

Question about albums

So I've noticed commercial albums that have Sega music (or remixes of Sega music) on them where there is only one Sega related song or so on them, how would we handle these (if at all)?

Examples:

JaxTH (talk) 03:33, 1 December 2020 (EST)

I don't tend to bother unless it's officially licensed by Sega. Others might have different opinions -Black Squirrel (talk) 03:42, 1 December 2020 (EST)

Errors

Hi. Recently, I found some strange bugs on this site so I decided to tell you about it:

1.C'est plus fort que toi

2.Sega Mega Drive/Promotional material/Poland If you click Print advert in Gry Komputerowe (PL) #26: "5-6/1996" (1996-xx-xx) you will got Fullurl:File:

3.KW-501#Promotional_material If you click Print advert in Velikiy Drakon (RU) #29 (1996-12-01) you will got VD 29 RU.pdf

-07:41, 16 February 2021 (EST)

yo
1 is a bug - I'll report that
2 can be fixed, although a full scan is preferable
3 is expected behavior, because a PDF version exists

-Black Squirrel (talk) 08:23, 16 February 2021 (EST)

3.Yeah, but some files (like in this case) are better quality than the pdf ones or the pdfs are missing a few pages and that would be helpful.
Anyway thanks for your help.-08:59, 16 February 2021 (EST)

Missing prototype page

With the recent prototype page creations, it seems that one prototype, the M404 prototype of the Master System boot ROM, got mysteriously booted off the prototypes category even though the page itself has the category assigned to it. Do you know what might have caused this? --SorachiJirachi (talk) 15:08, 16 February 2021 (EST)

Yes I noticed it kicked off one of the Tempo ones earlier - no idea why. Usually you can fix category strangeness just by saving the page again -Black Squirrel (talk) 16:00, 16 February 2021 (EST)

Price

Is it possible to add a dollar price for Russia? I need it for this article [4]-08:51, 18 February 2021 (EST)

That might be awkward - it's only set up to use official currencies, though I suppose there would be situations where things are priced in foreign currencies. I'll have to think about this
In the mean time, I'd suggest adding it as a comment, e.g.
<!-- $99.99 USD -->
Then at least it's on the page, just not visible yet -Black Squirrel (talk) 08:56, 18 February 2021 (EST)
I have a rather strange question. There is a "time" column in TV programs. Does it refer to the time the program lasts or to the time at which the program was on TV? With some programs, I have the second information and I don't know where to add it.-08:05, 20 February 2021 (EST)
Which table/template/page are you looking at? -Black Squirrel (talk) 08:17, 20 February 2021 (EST)
Template:Episode-08:19, 20 February 2021 (EST)
That's airtime, as in, the time of day the program was shown on TV. I'll fix the table
Shouldn't need to worry about how long an episode was - that should be handled when a video file is uploaded -Black Squirrel (talk) 09:00, 20 February 2021 (EST)
Thanks-09:05, 20 February 2021 (EST)

ROM hashes

https://www.romhacking.net/hash/

This will be handy to use when you download prototypes in bulk to make pages for and add them to Romtables. I got hashes for some prototypes up, but there's thousands to go through. --SorachiJirachi (talk) 14:20, 23 February 2021 (EST)

Zillion II and Thunder Blade continue cheats

The continue cheats in Zillion II and Thunder Blade technically aren't "hidden content" as they are both documented in their respective US and EU manuals. I'm considering deleting them if that's okay (though in the case of Thunder Blade I could replace it with the PC Engine version's level select so the page has a reason to live). --SorachiJirachi (talk) 19:30, 20 March 2021 (EDT)

Sure no worries -Black Squirrel (talk) 06:27, 21 March 2021 (EDT)

Ratings

Could you create a rating similar to the German academic system but the other way around, that is, 1 is 0 and 6+ is 100?-Lukdriver14 (talk) 11:56, 31 March 2021 (EDT)

Could do - which magazine is this for -Black Squirrel (talk) 13:25, 31 March 2021 (EDT)
So far, I know that this system is used by Click! and Strana Igr-Lukdriver14 (talk) 08:39, 1 April 2021 (EDT)
There you go - I've called it "1-6+"
You're going to have problems setting it as a default for Click! though - the system won't know that "24-2000" comes before "1-2001" (that's why we use "2000-24", "2001-01" elsewhere) -Black Squirrel (talk) 11:42, 1 April 2021 (EDT)
On the subject of this, I think we might need a trimmed down version of the GamePro rating which only has the Fun Factor, since the January 1997 issue had a special feature which gave several Game Boy and Game Gear games a Fun Factor only. The two Game Gear games they covered for that feature were Bugs Bunny in Double Trouble and X-Men: Mojo World. --SorachiJirachi (talk) 12:38, 1 April 2021 (EDT)
So, if you change the names to 2000-24 and 2001-01, it will work normally?-Lukdriver14 (talk) 09:30, 2 April 2021 (EDT)
Should do, once you fill in the defaultratingsystem2_issue field - see Computer and Video Games for an example -Black Squirrel (talk) 09:33, 2 April 2021 (EDT)
I think 6- is missing.Black & White/Magazine articles - Lukdriver14 (talk) 08:05, 3 April 2021 (EDT)
Is there a 1-10 rating system that also has 0.5, like 3.5 or 7.5?-Lukdriver14 (talk) 07:59, 8 April 2021 (EDT)
those should just work with the standard 0-10 or 1-10 systems
e.g. Resident Evil Code: Veronica/Magazine articles - the Dorimaga score at the bottom -Black Squirrel (talk) 08:17, 8 April 2021 (EDT)

I have come to the conclusion that this 1-6 + scale is a percentage too low. 5- is only 67%, which is not much for a high score. In my opinion it should look something like this: 1- 0%, 1 10%, 1+ 20%, 2- 30%, 2 40%, 2+ 50%, 3- 60%, 3 65%, 3+ 70%, 4- 75%, 4 80%, 4+ 85%, 5- 90%, 5 93%, 5+ 95%, 6- 98%, 6 99%,6+ 100%. What do you think and is there any other way?-Lukdriver14 (talk) 15:15, 19 April 2021 (EDT)

I'd rather each rating was evenly spaced to avoid a positive or negative bias. Not all rating systems translate well into numbers, but it's the least worst option -Black Squirrel (talk) 16:23, 19 April 2021 (EDT)

Thanks for the help with deletion/formatting/stuff!

Appreciate all the help and assistance, means a lot! could you also teach me how to properly add youtube videos in a gallery? Like in the Michael Jackson in Scramble Training article. thanks so much for everything ;) CartridgeCulture (talk) 07:31, 20 April 2021 (EDT)

You can't - galleries only work with content hosted on-site (either on Sega Retro or Retro CDN) -Black Squirrel (talk) 07:56, 20 April 2021 (EDT)
Gotcha. I’ll look into getting any needed videos uploaded then, thanks! CartridgeCulture (talk) 08:02, 20 April 2021 (EDT)

Books and TV


1. Should book reviews be included in magazine articles section? Some of them have their own score system.
2. Many episodes from a gaming shows have an unknown episode number, only the air date is correct. What give instead episode number so that it can be placed in video coverage? -Lukdriver14 (talk) 12:48, 5 May 2021 (EDT)

We'll definitely want to make a note of book reviews, although I can't guarantee they'll work with the magtable templates as they stand right now. We'll come up with a better plan eventually, but the code behind it needs some thought.
With TV shows the first argument of the episode template just needs to be a unique identifier, so you should be able to get away with:
...
{{episode|1992-01-07|name=Series x, episode y|date=1992-01-07|time=18:30|video=}}
{{episode|1992-01-14|name=Series x, episode y|date=1992-01-14|time=18:30|video=}}
...
We can change it at a later date when we learn more. -Black Squirrel (talk) 14:00, 5 May 2021 (EDT)
So it works. All you need is a new rating from 0-50.
And when it comes to the TV shows. If I only have a date, I can write it like this: 1995-1, 1995-2, 1995-3 etc.?-Lukdriver14 (talk) 04:05, 6 May 2021 (EDT)
Yes, as long as the identifier is unique it should work -Black Squirrel (talk) 04:17, 6 May 2021 (EDT)
Gods/Magazine_articles. This one review uses the 0-40 system. Could you add it?-Lukdriver14 (talk) 05:52, 9 May 2021 (EDT)
done -Black Squirrel (talk) 06:21, 9 May 2021 (EDT)
Thanks. Sega_Dreamcast/Magazine_articles. There is another problem. In PSX Extreme (PL), "02/99" one of the ratings is not shown. Could you add it?-Lukdriver14 (talk) 07:49, 10 May 2021 (EDT)
And PSX Extreme in the following issues uses a rating that's probably not here, from 0-10 but with 5-, 7+, 6, 9- etc.-Lukdriver14 (talk) 08:36, 10 May 2021 (EDT)

LTL

I wanted to add some releases for Lithuania with prices but it doesn't show this country. Do you know where I can add regions to releases now?-Lukdriver14 (talk) 17:15, 18 May 2021 (EDT)

LT
where are you trying to add releases to - some ReleasesXXX templates might not yet support the full list of countries -Black Squirrel (talk) 17:19, 18 May 2021 (EDT)
NBA Action-Lukdriver14 (talk) 17:30, 18 May 2021 (EDT)
Thanks again.-Lukdriver14 (talk) 17:46, 18 May 2021 (EDT)

Atlus stuff

https://www.amazon.com/s?i=digital-text&rh=p_27%3ADoubleJump&s=relevancerank&text=DoubleJump&ref=dp_byline_sr_ebooks_1

These eBooks are technically in scope (all from 2014 onwards), do we want to count them? JaxTH (talk) 22:14, 23 May 2021 (EDT)

Quite possibly - I'm letting you be our Atlus man, since I don't know enough :)
If Sega is credited somewhere it'll be within scope -Black Squirrel (talk) 03:47, 24 May 2021 (EDT)

Price^2

Master System consoles in Asia
1. In Russia, they are not rubles, but dollars. You have to change the currency.
2. Is it possible to put a flag in the CIS? Exactly this one -Lukdriver14 (talk) 09:03, 24 May 2021 (EDT)

Maybe we will take Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova to the CIS in Asia instead of changing the same information in two different articles?-Lukdriver14 (talk) 04:55, 25 May 2021 (EDT)
I think there is some mistake with the currency in Lithuania. This country has the euro since 2015.-Lukdriver14 (talk) 12:18, 27 May 2021 (EDT)
My mistake - I had it set to 2002 like the original batch of countries -Black Squirrel (talk) 14:00, 27 May 2021 (EDT)

vids errors

Currently attempting to update a few pages to add new videos but keep getting this string of errors in return when saving, dunno if flagged before or not -Ted618 (talk) 14:19, 31 May 2021 (GMT)

The wiki has trouble with some video codecs, but yes, littering the page with error logs is a known issue :( -Black Squirrel (talk) 10:11, 31 May 2021 (EDT)
this is the thing, on Retro CDN these uploads are fine and stream without any issues, but when I attempt to edit the pages on here to actually include them, they either won't display the video or prevent me from updating it with the internal error page
https://retrocdn.net/File:SegaWorld_London_Tros_2Vandaag.mp4
https://retrocdn.net/File:MTVPremiereParty_1997_GameWorks.mp4
https://retrocdn.net/File:GameCatalogII_180996_TokyoJoypolis.mp4
it's the same for all of the above three videos and is different to the issues i've faced before, so this leads me to believe this is could be another thing entirely - hope not -Ted618 (talk) 16:40, 1 June 2021 (GMT)
Yeah that's a different thing but is also noted - I think we have every episode of GamesMaster at this point, but if you have a look in Category:Video coverage you'll notice that whenever it's referenced, there's a placeholder icon instead of the video itself, and the link goes to Retro CDN. You might find you'll have to do something similar until someone fixes the bug -Black Squirrel (talk) 12:01, 1 June 2021 (EDT)
If you want to use a CDN video on here, you need to use the gallery template instead of the gallery tag like this:
{{gallery|
{{gitem|Video name.mp4|caption}}
{{gitem|Another video.mp4|caption}}
}}
- Hivebrain (talk) 13:49, 1 June 2021 (EDT)
was attempting that earlier but probably wasn't typing it up right, thanks for the clarity Ted618 (talk) 21:46, 1 June 2021 (GMT)

DC bootlegs

Could you create a new BootlegReleaseTable, but for Dreamcast which would contain name and cd instead of cart ?-Lukdriver14 (talk) 07:43, 24 June 2021 (EDT)

genuinely thought "disc=" would have existed - done -Black Squirrel (talk) 08:02, 24 June 2021 (EDT)

Sonic promotional material

Is it possible to send promotional materials from Sonicretro to Segaretro because most of them don't work?-Lukdriver14 (talk) 06:19, 29 June 2021 (EDT)

I think I'd prefer Sonic-specific content to stay on Sonic Retro, even if the thumbnails don't render correctly (this is a bug that needs fixing, not avoiding), but other sysops may think differently -Black Squirrel (talk) 06:27, 29 June 2021 (EDT)
Ok then-Lukdriver14 (talk) 06:37, 29 June 2021 (EDT)

Willy Wombat

Hi there! I'm doing some research for a video I'm making about Willy Wombat on the SEGA Saturn. I want to include your claim that the game forced Naughty Dog to change their "Willy Wombat" to Crash Bandicoot, but I can't find anything that verifies this. Do you have anything like a magazine article, interview, book, what have you that gives a source to this claim? I just wanna verify this before I properly start writing, so if you have anything to link me, that'd be great. Thanks!

Think you might be right - Crash Bandicoot's development talks about a "other non-game property with the same name", so a different Willie -Black Squirrel (talk) 03:24, 28 July 2021 (EDT)

KW-501 info

[5] I found such info about the KW-501, Wywy, Kingway and Algeria and I was wondering if it was worth mentioning or not because twitter isn't exactly best thing to reference.-Lukdriver14 (talk) 15:45, 23 September 2021 (EDT)

Twitter might not be a brilliant reference but scans posted there could be :) -Black Squirrel (talk) 16:13, 23 September 2021 (EDT)

Been meaning to say this

So Mexico seems to have it's own ratings now, at least for physical products. The last game to not be rated by this would be Shin Megami Tensei III Noctune HD Remaster. That's pretty much it. It went info effect May 2021. Info here: https://dentons.lopez-velarde.com/en/insights/articles/2020/december/4/new-video-games-rating-classification-in-mexico JaxTH (talk) 21:44, 2 October 2021 (EDT)

So yeah, Nintendo is using this for all digital pages now so I guess this is in full effect since last year so we need these on the wiki now. JaxTH (talk) 00:50, 19 October 2022 (EDT)
Done, in theory -Black Squirrel (talk) 03:27, 19 October 2022 (EDT)

Do you know what the AE/UAE uses for raitngs?

So far I've only seen these games do it, but the wiki uses PEGI for the ratings when it's done:

As an aside, ZA seems to use PEGI ratings when digital, but the wiki brings up South Africa's FPB ratings. Not sure what to do there. JaxTH (talk) 02:46, 18 October 2021 (EDT)

You'd have to play with templates - we'll be doing something similar with the UK, with some games rated by the BBFC and others by PEGI
But if you're not comfortable with that, as with most things, pretend it works, and mark a talk page with {{TODO}} -Black Squirrel (talk) 03:01, 18 October 2021 (EDT)

Something's not working

I don't know if it is the fault of the work on the website or if something is simply not working again, but some files look like this: [6][7][8] I report this in case you don't know.

"NTSC"/"PAL" on handhelds

Does it really make sense to be using "NTSC" and "PAL" television standard terms for handheld systems like the Game Gear and Game Boy Advance? While it would make sense for home consoles and some home computers like the Amiga, handheld systems never used analog television standards in the first place. Wouldn't region codes fit them better instead?

Not to mention how there is the possibility of multiple region- or country-specific versions of the same game that use the same video standard. --SorachiJirachi (talk) 12:56, 24 October 2021 (EDT)

No it makes no sense at all, but I don't know how best to handle it, because Australia. Ditto for PCs -Black Squirrel (talk) 13:40, 24 October 2021 (EDT)
Perhaps using region codes (like those in the releases fields) might work better for handheld/PC games for the time being? It's what I did for the Sonic games on DS and plan on doing with the GBA ones once I get around to them. --SorachiJirachi (talk) 13:50, 24 October 2021 (EDT)

Newark Post...

Sorry to ask "boss" but... can you do better than this? (I had to use Microsoft "print to pdf" but the pages are a bit cut off at the bottom and I'm an amateur with this stuff...)... Source...--Asagoth (talk) 07:33, 30 October 2021 (EDT)

Thank you very much "boss" ... a big hug ;)...--Asagoth (talk) 07:51, 30 October 2021 (EDT)
I played about a bit
https://studylib.net/viewer_next/web/study?file=%2F%2Fs2p.studylib.net%2Fstore%2Fdata%2F018727333.pdf%3Fk%3DEwAAAXzQ-r7_AAACWCoCDH-ZStAArU-mChDnZomcOBiO35uxxUr-Wzj0F3hd&img=%2F%2Fs2.studylib.net%2Fstore%2Fdata%2F018727333_1-b0022f18d8b5527642f006a3765e8670.png&ads=true
Diving into the source you can isolate their PDF viewer, and that URL reveals how it works - it's taking three arguments:
  • file=%2F%2Fs2p.studylib.net%2Fstore%2Fdata%2F018727333.pdf%3Fk%3DEwAAAXzQ-r7_AAACWCoCDH-ZStAArU-mChDnZomcOBiO35uxxUr-Wzj0F3hd
  • &img=%2F%2Fs2.studylib.net%2Fstore%2Fdata%2F018727333_1-b0022f18d8b5527642f006a3765e8670.png
  • &ads=true
"file" is the important one. swap out all those % encodings and you get
//s2p.studylib.net/store/data/018727333.pdf?k=EwAAAXzQ-r7_AAACWCoCDH-ZStAArU-mChDnZomcOBiO35uxxUr-Wzj0F3hd
or https://s2p.studylib.net/store/data/018727333.pdf?k=EwAAAXzQ-r7_AAACWCoCDH-ZStAArU-mChDnZomcOBiO35uxxUr-Wzj0F3hd
I put it through some of our tools and ding! -Black Squirrel (talk) 07:54, 30 October 2021 (EDT)
That's something I didn't know... thanks for the tip... you rule! =) ...--Asagoth (talk) 08:01, 30 October 2021 (EDT)

Facebook as a reference

Facebook can't be archived with Wayback or Archive so what should we do about this? A regular Facebook link also wants you to log in so you can't see it anyway. At the moment we are about to push over 100 Facebook links (let's just assume all of them are references). I'm not sure when Facebook stopped being archiveable since we do have some links on the wiki that work from years ago, but it's something to think about. Someone might just have to go around screenshotting everything at this point and make a category just for Facebook pictures, I dunno.

This came to me when I was making the Shenmue the Animation page and couldn't find a way to archive a facebook link so I just forgoed it for a link with the same info that I could archive. But editing some other pages, Facebook is a reference and I don't know what to do. Any thoughts? JaxTH (talk) 01:26, 13 November 2021 (EST)

To chime in on this, I like your idea: copy text manually, save images/videos manually, and screenshot anything else? Hm, there are a few ways we can go about this... for the moment I think it'd make the most sense to copy/upload any text/media that can be done so as-is, and for the very few posts that need like... further context that it's from a Facebook post, we can maybe get a screenshot? But that context can probably just be written in to the reference itself:: "'Relevant quote' -author on Facebook". Hm. Brings up another question, do any of these Facebook refs contain anything that can't already be copied over as-is? CartridgeCulture (talk) 01:52, 13 November 2021 (EST)
I guess there are two options:
1) Reference the live link and hope for the best
2) Copy-paste the details somewhere and refence that. That's what we've done with press releases, though it's not super ideal.
Otherwise you're into "write a script that uses Facebook's API to put the contents on an external site somewhere, then archive", which I'm guessing is not something anyone is going to do -Black Squirrel (talk) 06:29, 13 November 2021 (EST)

Do Interviews account for multiple names?

Basically, if a group interview is happening, can the wiki disern that or does it just go with the first name provided? JaxTH (talk) 13:09, 2 December 2021 (EST)

Probably not, but with a bit of template editing it can be made to do things -Black Squirrel (talk) 13:16, 2 December 2021 (EST)
Guess I'll make the pages and see what happens. JaxTH (talk) 13:18, 2 December 2021 (EST)
Is there a way to list alternate names for InterviewList like we are doing with ProductionHistory? Katsuhisa Sato is at fault right now since I made Interview: Kats Sato (2020-05-14) by Manga/Asta. JaxTH (talk) 18:49, 2 December 2021 (EST)

''The Lord of the Wikis: The Fellowship of the Hedgehog" ...

Shall we? ...--Asagoth (talk) 10:02, 6 December 2021 (EST)

New version upload

So I tried to upload the new version of this [9] (new version is here now [10]) but I got this error Could not read or write file due to insufficient permissions or missing directories/containers. Could you upload it yourself? Thank you.-Lukdriver14 (talk) 17:33, 13 December 2021 (EST)

Apparently not:
Could not read or write file "mwstore://local-backend/local-public/3/3e/MegaDream2_MD_Manual.png" due to insufficient permissions or missing directories/containers.
Could not store file "/home/sonicret/domains/segaretro.org/public_html/images/temp/localcopy_0604645a6d20.jpg" at "mwstore://local-backend/local-public/3/3e/MegaDream2_MD_Manual.png".
I'll poke someone -Black Squirrel (talk) 17:43, 13 December 2021 (EST)

NEC Retro

NEC Retro has already died or is there a chance to revive it?-Lukdriver14 (talk) 15:29, 15 December 2021 (EST)

I honestly have no idea at this point - I report the bugs, but nobody's ever around to fix them :( -Black Squirrel (talk) 15:58, 15 December 2021 (EST)

West Germany

Until 1990, Master System was distributed only in West Germany, so would you be able to somehow split these iso code into two so it would be visible ?-Lukdriver14 (talk) 08:41, 18 December 2021 (EST)

When Germany was unified, it chose the West German ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code, which was DE. East Germany used "DD". It's only the name of the country ("West Germany" vs. "Germany") that would need to change -Black Squirrel (talk) 09:46, 18 December 2021 (EST)

What is this ?

The category of unknown in 1700 igr dlya Sega 2003 has gathered a lot of games that are either just bad translations of existing Asian titles, homebrew, unfinished games or some other undocumented half-games which are not even worth mentioning. But I came across China Warrior review for Sega in one of the Russian magazines, but I don't know what it is and how did it happen that this game was ported to this system?-Lukdriver14 (talk) 09:13, 25 December 2021 (EST)

It's probably a mistake, unless you find another book or magazine mentioning it. I've not seen that ported to the Mega Drive before -Black Squirrel (talk) 07:12, 26 December 2021 (EST)

Data Bus newsletter...

Sorry to interrupt you... but can you please delete this one?... I uploaded that issue to Retro CDN unaware that we already had it and since your scan is better (cropped and looking good) I replaced my scan with yours on Retro CDN... but the files have the same name which causes a conflict in AMOA 1980 page...--Asagoth (talk) 13:35, 29 December 2021 (EST)

done :) -Black Squirrel (talk) 14:01, 29 December 2021 (EST)
Thank you very much ;) ...--Asagoth (talk) 14:06, 29 December 2021 (EST)

Forbidden Errors

[Edit: Nevermind, i can edit now after waiting for a hour]

I can't edit the wiki pages because of these errors. Any solution?

[* Forbidden. Your IP belongs to a high spam risk network. *]

[*** Forbidden. You sent forms too often. Please wait a few minutes. ***]

Extra parameter for Romtable

To circumvent the false positives for unreleased games, would it be possible to add a parameter to Romtable to specify if a game is unreleased? Something like "unreleased=yes", which if entered would tell the template not to add the game's page to the missing ROM dumps category. --SorachiJirachi (talk) 16:59, 2 January 2022 (EST)

Streets of Rage 4 Edit

Hi, I wanted to know why you deleted a section of the Level & Soundtrack chapter of the SoR4 article? This deleted section explained why there are some retro levels in the game. Xinyingho (talk) 03:00, 11 January 2022 (EST)

Because it's hidden content - Streets of Rage 4/Hidden content -Black Squirrel (talk) 03:04, 11 January 2022 (EST)

A renewed request

2 years ago I asked you to delete my files. I repeat this request again. I know you're still busy, but it's better to do it sooner than later. I really don't want these files to show me as the author of the upload. I really didn't want to upload them, but it was a pity for me to lose this valuable data. I want to finish editing this portal, but I am afraid that in the future someone will misuse these files and I will suffer the consequences. I am so afraid that I already have mental problems (I am not lying). Really, please remove my authored files from SegaRetro/RetroCDN/SonicRetro/NecRetro, just please don't do this for the next 2 years but now for this time. If you care and you really want to, you can consider uploading them back to your account. I mean it very seriously and sorry for the problems, I may never have uploaded them here. -Lukdriver14 (talk) 13:10, 27 March 2022 (EDT)

Hi, fellow Lukdriver14... I know it's not my business, but... is someone harassing you because you uploaded some scans here or something?...--Asagoth (talk) 09:29, 28 March 2022 (EDT)
Let's say I had a similar situation. So far, nothing has gone wrong with it, but I'm afraid that such situations will repeat themselves more and more often and they will not be without consequences for me. I just don't want to live, always having on back of my head that this will happen and I feel that it will happen one day. There are people who don't care, but I do. I only think this way about the files, not the texts that I wrote.-Lukdriver14 (talk) 11:23, 29 March 2022 (EDT)
I understand ... but you don't need to feel bad about that... it was not any big "crime" (it's not)... and if someone doesn't want to see their files here, they can request their removal... just don't fell bad with yourself because of that, man... you're not any "murderer" or "rober"...--Asagoth (talk) 13:51, 29 March 2022 (EDT)
The point is, these files won't always be here. Everyone can take them, and if the person who has claims to the file reports to the person who took it from here, he will immediately show me as the guilty one. And it is worth mentioning that not everyone can get along with deleting a file or adding a source. Even if you write a lot of arguments that I am wrong, I will still be with my original thought.-Lukdriver14 (talk) 15:24, 29 March 2022 (EDT)
I'm not saying that you are wrong... it's your way to see things and I'm ok with that... you don't need to upload more stuff here if you don't feel comfortable with it... in my opinion you did nothing wrong...and I hope everything gets resolved soon.--Asagoth (talk) 16:55, 29 March 2022 (EDT)
Black Squirrel, at least say something...-Lukdriver14 (talk) 01:50, 30 March 2022 (EDT)
I removed the files that were broken and/or replaced with PDFs a few days ago.
As for the rest - they're marked for deletion without a reason, and I don't have the time to check 200+ files to make sure we have PDF alternatives. But someone else might -Black Squirrel (talk) 03:25, 30 March 2022 (EDT)
1. As I said, files marked as delete were placed there because they already have PDF or we agreed in 2020 that you will delete them when, as you said, 'you will have time'
2. As I wrote above, I wanted you to delete all my files from all sites as requested by the user who uploaded it. I know it will take a long time, but PLEASE do it. If you think they are needed, you can send them back after removing them, of course, if you really want to.-Lukdriver14 (talk) 13:28, 30 March 2022 (EDT)
Listen, if you don't start doing it or write about it, I will bother you anyway and in the worst case I will start throwing files away from the pages and I don't want to, because that is extra work for you and that's why I say to get along. I mean only the files from the pages, not the text. I know it's a lot, but once you do it, I won't boder you again ever. It is important for me if you haven't noticed it yet. I would have done it myself if I could, but I can't.-Lukdriver14 (talk) 10:18, 9 April 2022 (EDT)

I am not going to go through every file you've ever uploaded to any of our wikis to remove them. Chances are most files, if not all, are fine, and I don't have the time or patience to establish which specific files are causing problems. I can't mass delete files, so it's a massive faff, and the software doesn't really delete files anyway - there's always backups on disk just in case a sysop wants to change his or her mind later on. The exercise just makes files less visible, which is also what the delete template does (albeit that one lets normal users see what's happening).

I will "delete" files if there are better replacements, but someone else will have to upload those replacements. My advice would be to mark any offending files using template:Replace with a link to a better version - that will at least save people the effort of having to look this stuff up.

If there is somebody bothering you about files uploaded to this wiki, they need to stop doing that and come and talk to me (or another sysop). But if it's not been mentioned in two years, there's a good chance they've stopped caring. -Black Squirrel (talk) 11:22, 9 April 2022 (EDT)

I just don't want my name to show up as the person who uploaded this file ever. I do not know which files are offended, they can be any, I will not be here forever to notify you that something needs to be deleted, even the e-mail that I have for this account is not visited by me. I just regret that I started putting these files on this pages, I haven't seen how it all works yet, because then it was my first Wiki of this type, you can say that I was young and stupid. I just want to fix this mistake because my psyche cannot withstand the fact that in a few years I can wake up with this forgotten problem, and I have already started to transfer these problems to real life. That's why I wanted you to delete them and if you really want you can upload them again, not tomorrow, it may even take 3-4 months, but not half a year or a whole year. I just want to see some effect and I'll calm down. If you really don't want to do it, at least give the contact of the person who will do. For me it's VERY important.-Lukdriver14 (talk) 12:42, 12 April 2022 (EDT)
Look, you don't write back or do anything about it, so soon I'll start removing files from each pages, even though I really don't want to do it, you'll have more work to do. If you think that I will stop bothering you with this problem, you are very wrong. I will not rest until you remove it or find some other satisfactory way out of this situation. Do it at least for the sake of my contribution that I made for this site for so many years.-Lukdriver14 (talk) 09:26, 19 April 2022 (EDT)
If you don't want to talk about it anymore, at least give me a contact to someone who will solve my problem or to the main administrator.-Lukdriver14 (talk) 04:04, 20 April 2022 (EDT)
How many times do I have to write, how many times do I have to remove things from articles before you understand that I don't want these files to be here and that I will keep on doing so until they are deleted?-Lukdriver14 (talk) 01:06, 20 May 2022 (EDT)
You still will have to delete it because there is no pdf only jpg. You still will have to delete because the file names are wrong in some of the files. How many times will I ask you to do that. This can't be so hard. And you still can upload them again with your username. Why do you force me to come back here when I could just disappear after you fulfill my request.-Lukdriver14 (talk) 03:50, 3 June 2022 (EDT)
I will continue to remove content from pages until you do something.-Lukdriver14 (talk) 14:19, 21 June 2022 (EDT)
I won't change my postulates and I will continue to spam these messages. How can I convince you to finally do something?-Lukdriver14 (talk) 04:50, 26 July 2022 (EDT)
Delete files.-Lukdriver14 (talk) 12:23, 14 August 2022 (EDT)

Japanese Sega Game Centers rebranding as GiGO

If you haven't heard, Sega sold the entirety of their Japanese arcade business Genda Sega Entertainment to Genda back in January. They've rebranded the business as Genda GiGO Entertainment and they're planning on rebranding all of the Sega venues under the GiGO name that Sega once held.

Will the pages be rebranded under the name even though Sega no longer owns them? LTPHarry3 (talk) 20:16, 25 April 2022 (EDT)

Left under the Sega name - now that these venues aren't owned by Sega, they're not technically within the scope of Sega Retro. It's the same situation for arcades that became Game Taito Stations or shopping centres or whatever - the pages become a historical record of venues Sega used to own, but what happened afterwards is just a footnote as far as we're concerned.
The best example we have is SegaWorld London, i.e. we mention what happened after Sega pulled out, but the core focus is when Sega was in charge. The Trocadero still exists as a building and has since been repurposed for something else, but this is outsite our scope so we don't cover it
I am guessing all of our Japanese Sega arcade pages are out of date. I think I was waiting for the dust to settle (because if the Sega brand was still to be used, this is worth covering)... but then forgot to check back -Black Squirrel (talk) 07:46, 26 April 2022 (EDT)
Sounds like a good plan. Genda is doing the rebranding in phases, so far, all four of the Akihabara game centers, and the Shinjuku Kabukicho game center have rebranded under the GiGO name as far as I know and have edited all of them to represent this. LTPHarry3 (talk) 09:59, 26 April 2022 (EDT)

Mic5959

Hey Black Squirrel, it’s Harry. I’ve noticed you had suspicion of the user mentioned above. Well, I know this person from Wikipedia.

He frequently vandalises pages in relation to Infogrames/Atari titles on Wikipedia, to the point those pages were protected as he sock-puppetted through IPs.

I’d recommend you delete the pages he made because he gives no sources or any information about those specific titles listed on his user page having Dreamcast releases. LTPHarry3 (talk) 18:19, 22 May 2022 (EDT)

Unlicensed games in navigation templates

Looking at the navigation template for the Pokémon series, I've thought of the idea that unlicensed games related to a series could be included in their own sections on navigation templates, especially since Pokémon has been a popular target for bootleggers over the years and the series got a good handful of unlicensed games on the Mega Drive. Should we do this for unlicensed games? --SorachiJirachi (talk) 04:33, 28 May 2022 (EDT)

Yep, can do :) -Black Squirrel (talk) 06:10, 28 May 2022 (EDT)

Song credits update

I probably should have brought this up sooner, but I'm not sure about Song credits getting removed from pages yet as there's still some little fixes needed. 1. is that only one credit is displayed per song, so unless every track credits list has a single credit per person, some credits get lost, like if someone's under Music then an Arrangement credit wouldn't show up if it's in a different line. 2. Credits displayed with rolloverText don't appear either, so otherwise every credit would need to be translated instead. Kentaro Koyama seems a good example of both of these issues, with all arrangement credits missing and Ryu ga Gotoku 3 Original Soundtrack also missing. Would they be quick fixes? --Nicolaas Hamman (talk) 23:51, 6 December 2022 (GMT+2)

It's not so much a case of information being "lost", it's a case of it not being picked up fully by the templates. The credits are still on the wiki, there's just a few edge cases where the information isn't being relayed to the right place, but yes, at some point it'll get better.
https://segaretro.org/index.php?title=Special%3ACargoQuery&tables=trackcredits&fields=_pageName%3DPage%2Crole%3Drole%2Cname%3Dname%2Cgame%3Dgame%2Ctrack%3Dtrack%2Cconsole%3Dconsole%2Cdate%3Ddate%2Csource%3Dsource%2Cpdf%3Dpdf%2Cpdfpage%3Dpdfpage&where=name%3D%22Kentaro+Koyama%22&join_on=&group_by=&having=&order_by%5B0%5D=&order_by_options%5B0%5D=ASC&limit=500&offset=0&format=
For example, the arrangements are being picked up, just not displayed for whatever reason. But it's there (the Yakuza 3 issue still needs more thought though). -Black Squirrel (talk) 17:01, 6 December 2022 (EST)

Sonic Speed Simulator releases

Something's screwing up the releases fields on Sonic Speed Simulator and is preventing them from displaying properly, and I can't find the cause. Can you look into this? --SorachiJirachi (talk) 17:24, 12 December 2022 (EST)

Apparently we didn't support WORLD. Now we do -Black Squirrel (talk) 03:18, 13 December 2022 (EST)

Differences between the two Genesis versions of Altered Beast made in Taiwan

Hello what are the differences between the versions "Mega Drive, US (Made in Taiwan; alt)" and "Mega Drive, US (Made in Taiwan)"? Cheers P.S. I don't have much experience using messages between users, I hope this is the correct way to communicate HBL-980 (talk)

If you check the older cover:
https://segaretro.org/images/archive/2/22/20201017131850%21Altbeast_md_us_cover.png
I think it was the white vertical grid lines next to the address. But you might have to double check to see if that's actually a thing in real life -Black Squirrel (talk) 18:03, 15 January 2023 (EST)

Dreameye/Visual Park

I was wondering if you have a higher resolution scan of the Dreameye/Visual Park box that you might be willing to send to me? I'm drawing some graphics in a similar style and would appreciate being able to see it "closer" with more fine detail. Thanks in advance! Matt (talk) 10:41, 18 January 2023 (EST)

None of the scans on this wiki are mine (and if they were, the highest quality possible version will be available already) - I just help collate them all in one place :) -Black Squirrel (talk) 10:49, 18 January 2023 (EST)
Ah, OK. Then what is the original source of this scan? Maybe they can help. Matt (talk) 14:48, 18 January 2023 (EST)
It was years ago, I can't remember, sorry -Black Squirrel (talk) 17:03, 18 January 2023 (EST)

Maybe an issue with arcade revisions for some systems?

I've been looking into the dates where some games in MJ series got updated to Ver.A, B, C and such, so tried to add them using one of the few games I know that lists arcade revisions: Virtua Fighter 5 (later I realised G-LOC basically does the same thing). Problem is, lbredex doesn't seem to work properly and only shows the first date entered (lbredex_date_1 and lbredex_type_1 don't display anything).

I've tested it by just copying over the values from Virtua Fighter 5, and that works, but as soon as I change lb to lbredex, it only shows the first date. Same with copying over G-LOC''s dates. My guess would be the template doesn't support Lindbergh Red EX (and maybe other Lindbergh variants) the same way, but I don't know very much.

Also, if I keep the initial release lbredex, but change the updates to lb_date_1 and lb_type_1 (same with 2, etc.), the lb dates are listed above the lbredex date. Don't know if that's necessarily something to worry about, I don't know if there's any arcade games that switched variants in their lifetime. --Nicolaas Hamman (talk) 19:39, 19 March 2023 (GMT+2)

Yes Template:ReleasesArcade is out of date
If you copy the pattern with Lindbergh for any other systems you need (you might need to add _3 and _4 and so on), that should solve things for now. Some of the other templates are more intelligent than this (see: Template:ReleasesMD), but migrating over to that system is... awkward (at least when there's a bazillion types of arcade hardware that would need checking) -Black Squirrel (talk) 14:10, 19 March 2023 (EDT)

Russian bootlegs

So, I have seen that you start new pages about bootleg games. There exist pages about Russian ones so I want to ask you if these can go also with regular ones ?

PS. The Lord of the Rings 3 is also a hack.Geti3220 (talk) 11:53, 16 May 2023 (EDT)

Yes the idea is all bootlegs will go in the bootlegs sub-pages at some point :) -Black Squirrel (talk) 11:56, 16 May 2023 (EDT)
Notes on this topic
1. Saga is not a distributor, this name is on the every back of the cartridge. The name was given by one of the Sega Retro contributor, probably because it hard to come up with better name. This series is seen like 90% of the time on Ukrainian site despite Russian text on the back. It is possible that Kin Wai (Hong Kong) Investment Limited produced them and óthers distributed it regionaly.
2. Gastin series were produced by Gastin and sold by Simba's (all have the same text and design of the back box until Gold releases)
3. Insta series was produced by Insta and sold by ???
4. This page also counts ?
5. 16 Битный картридж have two designs
6. Looking at Russian auction sites, I won't mention that we don't even have half of what was released in each ones, but that's for the future
7. After collecting all releases, the pages will probably have that many Russian/CIS versions like in this one not mention Unknown section

-Geti3220 (talk) 13:11, 17 May 2023 (EDT)

Nice idea to separate Russian language translations as hacks but I think it would be problematic. Besides Gastin, Gastin Re-release, Insta, 16 Битный картридж (early design) and selected position of Striped Spine series, rest is using translation into Russian which some are unique and other one reuse someones work.
To complicate things even more, 16 Битный картридж (later design) and Saga has two version. First is English release and second one is Russian with only difference is cartridge and if you are lucky, this label for New Game or this for Saga. I trying to get specific date of each other but some are not credited. The most I got are from Padis releases. -Geti3220 (talk) 11:24, 22 May 2023 (EDT)
Oh yes it'll get incredibly messy. I'm expecting most bootleg cartridges to contain hacked versions of games, whether they be full translations into Russian, or versions that just remove (or replace) copyright information. The only reason I've been listing them under "unknown" is because I can't easily verify what the contents are.
If the pages get too big, we can find ways to split them up further. That shouldn't be a problem -Black Squirrel (talk) 13:35, 22 May 2023 (EDT)

E tolarjev ×ternal JPEG reference

I have found some wierd error.- Geti3220 (talk) 13:39, 17 June 2023 (EDT)

Yeah I should fix that some day
It's the code looking for off-site JPEG references. It should be adding the page to Category:External JPEG reference -Black Squirrel (talk) 13:46, 17 June 2023 (EDT)

Sorry I don't mean to be editing this page but I can't email you so I guess I'll post it here.

I've been trying to edit the Japanese Sega World page specifically to change all the Open Venues to Closed now that GiGO has acquired Sega's shares and they all have been rebranded. Still, the coding to that page is super intangible and I can't make changes without accidentally deleting an entire section. Do you think you could help me with this or be able to do this at all? Onethinkings 11:21, 24 August 2023 (MST)

I think you've got most of it, all you need to add is:
{{VenueBrandingRow|name=closed|date=2022}}
Below the others in the branding table :) -Black Squirrel (talk) 03:29, 25 August 2023 (EDT)

Power Unlimited...

Please... delete this one... I'll have to upload it again because something went wrong (I'm trying to upload it since last night... internet issues due to bad weather)... Thanks!...--Asagoth (talk) 08:02, 2 November 2023 (EDT)

done -Black Squirrel (talk) 08:06, 2 November 2023 (EDT)
The same shit again... I don't know what's happening... it's one "error" after another... I think I'll try it later...--Asagoth (talk) 10:25, 2 November 2023 (EDT)

Random issue with credit values

Hello Black Squirrel! An issue that's kinda random and which neither me or SorachiJirachi know how to fix is some games just... not adding the credits to their credit values. I just had that issue with Dynamite Baseball today (and it might the same issue that happened for Airline Pilots/Production credits and Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis/Credits (I'm only just now noticing those two have different titles, but that's a different story), and hear that CartridgeCulture had it with Nightmare Circus before. I thought it might be the same as an issue I'd had sometimes on stuff like Major League or Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder, where it would get fixed if I just tweaked it at a later date, just do any whatever edit to it. Doesn't seem like it, though, since Nightmare Circus still didn't fix itself after that. So, I've got no idea what to do further. Hope there's an issue you can spot in a flash. --Nicolaas Hamman (talk) 16:42, 7 December 2023 (GMT+2)

There's a few errors
The easiest way to work out what's going on with issues like these is to check Special:CargoTables (or in this case, Special:CargoTables/credits). If you then scroll down and click "More..." it'll fill in an SQL-like query at the bottom of the page.
type some stuff and you can get information:

https://segaretro.org/index.php?title=Special%3ACargoQuery&tables=credits&fields=_pageName%3DPage%2Crole%3Drole%2Cname%3Dname%2Cgame%3Dgame%2Cconsole%3Dconsole%2Cdate%3Ddate%2Cpdf%3Dpdf%2Cpdfpage%3Dpdfpage&where=game%3D%22Airline+Pilots%22&join_on=&group_by=&having=&order_by[0]=`_pageName`&order_by_options[0]=ASC&order_by[1]=`role`&order_by_options[1]=ASC&order_by[2]=`name`&order_by_options[2]=ASC&order_by[3]=`game`&order_by_options[3]=ASC&order_by[4]=`console`&order_by_options[4]=ASC&limit=100&offset=&format=

In this case, you were passing the multicol template the NAOMIMB argument, not the creditstable one, so it wasn't being picked up. If the creditstable template is confused, it won't be adding any info to that cargo table, so other pages won't be able to display it.
It's also dependent on what template:Bob says. Bob adds rows to Special:CargoTables/releases - without getting too technical, a game's release needs to exist before you can attach credits to it (this is literally just so it can print the release date side-by-side). In Dynamite Baseball's case, the creditstable is specifying the console as MOD2 (i.e. Model 2), but the Bob says "Model 2B CRX" because we're sort-of treating the flavours of Model 2 (and Model 3) differently... but also not. This is also why the game's not being automatically added to the Sega AM1 page - it's unresolved weirdness we're not addressing properly.
Until then, just pretend that it works and one day it actually might. -Black Squirrel (talk) 11:52, 7 December 2023 (EST)
I always forget about that the order of multicol and creditstable actually matter. Thanks on that one. As for Dynamite Baseball, while I do technically know about the Model 2 and Model 2B CRX issue, I kinda already just pretend it works, and it's confusing because that wasn't actually an issue before. There was a completely different set of credits for the game that I overwrote which did in fact display the credits on the people pages (I could still see it on the Masanori Takeuchi page before its cache was cleared). So, that can't be what was causing the issue. Plus, I got the impression the console would function just fine if it matched a release value in the bobscreen (so, similarly, a PC game could be displayed if the release value under releasesPC was PC, even if the bob's system was Windows PC aka Win. No clue about the other 2 games, Nightmare Circus, PSO2 New Genesis and of course Dynamite Baseball just don't show up in Special:CargoTables/credits. --Nicolaas Hamman (talk) 21:15, 7 December 2023 (GMT+2)

Saudi prices

From weird reason, Saudi prices don't do well with |dateprice as you can see here Saturn consoles in Asia#The_Gulf. Might you fix it ? - Geti3220 (talk) 09:01, 27 January 2024 (EST)

Done - that was a weird one -Black Squirrel (talk) 11:42, 27 January 2024 (EST)

Spam message issue

Hi, so I have decided to start editing here again to help out with the music side mostly, but whenever I edit it comes up with the "Forbidden: Message seems to be spam." issue. I've heard a lot of people have had that issue but got it fixed at least for them, would you be able to do the same for me? Thanks. SpaceBurger (talk) 09:47, 1 February 2024 (EST)

It's a bug that seems to go away the more you edit the wiki - I think some people were having success after editing their user page? It might even work now that you've posted here
It's been on the list of issues to fix for an age, but it's above my pay grade I'm afraid. It'll work for you eventually -Black Squirrel (talk) 09:56, 1 February 2024 (EST)
Ah, I see. I'll try editing my page, if it still doesn't fix it then I guess I'll just have to be patient. SpaceBurger (talk) 09:59, 1 February 2024 (EST)

PSX mags

Why this were deleted ?

  • PlayStation Plus
  • PSX Fan
  • Total PlayStation (Poland)
  • Oficjalny Polski PlayStation Magazyn
  • PlayStation Magazin (Hungary)
  • Sluzbeni HR Playstation Magazin
  • Nintendo Club Magazín (from 2000s so Sega reviews should be here) Geti3220 (talk) 15:13, 28 March 2024 (EDT)
I didn't look like they were in the scope of this wiki - PlayStation magazines only really become relevant to us in the latter half of 2001, because that's when Sega games started being brought to the PlayStation 2. Publications that only cover the original PlayStation aren't likely to have anything we need (or at least, enough to justify pages) -Black Squirrel (talk) 15:42, 28 March 2024 (EDT)
PSX Fan was closed in late 2003 (might have some reviews), Oficjalny Polski PlayStation Magazyn in 2001 (same), Sluzebni HR PS Magazin in 2003 (same), Nintendo Club CZ in 2000s so I don't think these were necessary to delete. - Geti3220 (talk) 16:18, 28 March 2024 (EDT)

Guitar Idol

What do you think if i make an article for this? https://web.archive.org/web/20120206070552/http://www.interama.net/pt/guitar-idol Myusernameisanything (talk) 13:44, 24 April 2024 (EDT)

It's not really Sega-related so it shouldn't have its own page - we already have some coverage on the Mega Drive 4 (Tectoy) page though, so I'd just add any information to that -Black Squirrel (talk) 14:33, 24 April 2024 (EDT)

ScreenThumb links

Alright, so I've made edits to the ScreenThumb template and its variants to add link support for the purposes of using them on categories, but it leads to a new issue: if the "link" parameter is not specified by default, it causes the thumbnail to not link to the full screenshot anymore and I have no idea how to fix that. --SorachiJirachi (talk) 17:36, 14 June 2024 (EDT)

Tokyo Movie Shinsha/TMS-K/TMS Entertainment

So, the TMS Entertainment page has some inaccurate information. Here is the whole story, back when the TMS Entertainment was founded in 1946 (as Asahi Gloves), they began life as a textile manufacturer before expanding into other sectors (amusement centers, animal breeding and fur) with no involvement in animation until 1995, when they acquired TMS from Sega (before its eventual rename to TMS Entertainment and its later buyout by Sega Sammy years later). To address the confusions, we could split the pre-1995 history into a page for Tokyo Movie Shinsha (having its history and its involvement with Sega at that time) and retain the post-95 history for Kyokuichi Tokyo Movie/TMS-K/TMS Entertainment on the latter page. But there's one problem: the TMS abbreviation was used by both Tokyo Movie Shinsha and Kyokuichi Tokyo Movie (with the latter also using the TMS-Kyokuichi (TMS-K) name, but internationally). SEGA2004 (talk) 10:04, 26 June 2024 (EDT)

No worries - change things if they need to be changed :) -Black Squirrel (talk) 10:14, 26 June 2024 (EDT)
thanks, also for the TMS redirect should we use a notice about the previous TMS incarnation and TMS Entertainment alongside respective links for both of these because I don’t want to redirect the TMS page to Tokyo Movie Shinsha (if the page gets created) and the TMS name is used by both companies. SEGAAA2004 (talk) 10:24, 26 June 2024 (EDT)

Are reprints in scope?

So I'm going through some Persona books that I put on the template back in 2020 and noticed that one that I labeled 2019 is actually from 2011 (outside of Japan anyway) and that in 2019 it got a reprint (and another in 2021 it seems though the reprints were only for the West). Would that even be in scope though? JaxTH (talk) 05:28, 4 September 2024 (EDT)

Yep - we don't have a particularly neat way of handling them but there's a few guide books that had more than one print run too -Black Squirrel (talk) 05:29, 4 September 2024 (EDT)
Okay then. JaxTH (talk) 05:43, 4 September 2024 (EDT)

JP ISBN

For some reason some JP ISBN numbers don't show up on the main page of an article and instead are just showing the last two digits of the ISBN10. So far this is affecting Persona 5: The Original Art Book and Persona 5 the Animation Material Book. It's also affecting a third book I'm making a page for but I'm not sure why it's happening in the first place. Some other JP books are fine. JaxTH (talk) 00:33, 12 September 2024 (EDT)

Watch this - #len is meant to measure the length of a string:
{{#len:‎4047331902}}
11
Your ten digit ISBN10 is actually 11 characters long. Magic!
There's a secret Unicode character in there - the left-to-right mark. Today I learnt Mediawiki templates don't ignore it, which is a little concerning because there's a whole bunch of "control characters" in Unicode.
There's also several hundred pages on Sega Retro that have accidentally had LRMs added to them. I've "fixed" the ISBN10 template, but there's too many templates on these wikis to realistically "protect" them all.
So yeah I guess if you see weirdness, check it's actually 10 characters long and not secretly more. -Black Squirrel (talk) 12:21, 12 September 2024 (EDT)
Retrieved from "https://segaretro.org/index.php?title=User_talk:Black_Squirrel&oldid=1006434"