Hivebrain

From Sega Retro

About the Wiki Articles, I did that just for now, Im gonna edit them and change the info to something like that from time to time (You know, adding screenshots, covers, and gameplay info.) These were very wip. Also, its nice to have some info to start - Elratauru 3:23, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

So, ok, cleaned them. Sorry about the copy-paste thing. Now they have screens, covers (not that high res, but I couldnt find better ones...), I added gameplay info and credits too. Elratauru 7:07, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

List of Games

Why are you giving the list of games a seperate page on Mega Drive but you are listing them on the same page as the system on other pages? They should each have their own page if you want to keep things consistant.--MathUser 23:02, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Lists will eventually be placed on their own pages. Consistency has to be worked on, not deleted into existence. - Hivebrain 23:05, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

-Um, the "List of Mega Drive games" pages should be finished.... -Firbin4576

Confusion on "Sands of Destruction"

On AnimeNetsNetwork's Sega page, "Sands of Destruction" is listed with "Original Creator, Production" as their credit; You can see for yourself if you want. Notice that nearly all the other things with "Original Creator/Concept/Copyright" on their credit are considered properties they themselves own. Therefore, I would argue that the page for the anime deserves to be reinstated (There should probably also be a page on the game, but I've never played it and thus can't give much details other than what I've heard.) You're free to debate this still if you want - I'm fairly confused over the ramifications of "Producer" credits for the likes of Evangelion myself, and am wondering if it warrants Wiki entries.--KiddoCabbusses 04:20, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Regarding DPL-friendliness

This particular method isn't as DPL-friendly, no, but I didn't know that was a consideration. What current/future DPL uses did you have in mind? Garrett 21:37, 6 January 2012 (CST)

Concerning Dates

See Sandbox - it's perfectly capable of doing date sorts in DD-MM-YYYY format.- Scarred Sun 14:49, 31 March 2012 (CDT)

That's good, but we've used yyyy-mm-dd on hundreds of other pages. - Hivebrain 14:52, 31 March 2012 (CDT)
The root problem being, of course, that we have at least three different date formats floating around on pages. - Scarred Sun 15:09, 31 March 2012 (CDT) [Groan -- I'll just switch the existing stuff over to yyyy-mm-dd]
I think I like yyyy-mm-dd better anyway. Anything else might look a bit jumbled on a "list of games" table. - Hivebrain 15:46, 31 March 2012 (CDT)

Ay up

Don't know if you're still in the business of adding prices to Master System games but I found something in my travels

This is apparently the compatibility list for the Master Gear Converter, though it's been nice enough to include RRPs of SMS games in the US for some reason. Don't know how reliable it is (since there's no such thing as a "Zillion III") but yeah -Black Squirrel 10:56, 19 May 2012 (CDT)

Meam Machines Sega

About upside-down pages... This pages presented in some issues and they were scanned definetely like this... Upside-down. And I specially didn't overturn them. -Depressor (talk) 01:19, 16 September 2014 (CDT)
I have sources so if you think it would be right, i can rebuild this issues.

Maybe you can work it out

n/a

Notavailable.svg
Hivebrain
System(s): whoop
Publisher: whoop
Developer:
Sound driver: whoop
Peripherals supported: whoop
Genre: whoop

















Series: whoop
Number of players: whoop

I think the genre2num template generates an extra line break -->

I tried to solve it the other day but all I managed to do is make template code unreadable. Fancy a challenge? -Black Squirrel (talk) 14:42, 20 January 2015 (CST)

It's doing that because there's a div inside a p. I'm going to tidy up the bob templates eventually, so that they'll only use tables or divs. Until then I don't think there's a quick way to fix it. - Hivebrain (talk) 14:59, 20 January 2015 (CST)

scanbox

there's also things like Nomad PowerBack where the top side is in the wrong position... if you see what I mean. Because not all cuboid nets are the same unless I rotate the top image by 180 degrees this is really awkward to describe in text form -Black Squirrel (talk) 03:42, 23 February 2015 (CST)

Also thinking proper support for "disc 2", "disc 3" etc. might be an idea - at least up to disc 4, just so that it looks a bit nicer. There's a few extremes like Sakura Taisen Complete Box which shipped with ten discs, but I don't know if we want to be making special considerations for them. -Black Squirrel (talk) 08:10, 23 February 2015 (CST)
I've fixed the linebreak issue, and added discs up to 4. I know what you mean about the top/bottom images occasionally being wrong. I'll add an option to rotate them with css (so the images themselves don't need to be upside-down) some other time. - Hivebrain (talk) 14:08, 23 February 2015 (CST)

Mean Machines

Maybe better upload full magazines? *Depressor (talk) 06:53, 26 June 2015 (CDT)

It's a non-Sega magazine. The pages I removed were out of scope (NES reviews mostly). - Hivebrain (talk) 07:49, 26 June 2015 (CDT)
On this point, because I'm not keen on half-finished magazines either - Retro CDN? At some point you'll hit TurboGrafx coverage so it's something NEC Retro will need -Black Squirrel (talk) 11:38, 26 June 2015 (CDT)
I've started putting them on Retro CDN as of issue 5, because of Sonic content. I could upload full issues, but then I'd have to do it for every magazine and that would take up a significant amount of storage (I have several hundred gigs of magazine scans). My upload speed isn't good enough to do that regularly anyway. - Hivebrain (talk) 11:56, 26 June 2015 (CDT)
Might I suggest blank pages for the bits you've cut out then - just so we don't have to edit a bazillion ratings if someone turns up with a complete scan -Black Squirrel (talk) 12:25, 26 June 2015 (CDT)

I can upload full magazines after little rework, as i did with MMS or other sega-relate magazines *Depressor (talk) 13:51, 26 June 2015 (CDT)

I still think full magazines are out of scope and shouldn't be uploaded. Are we just talking about Mean Machines (because it evolved into MMS), or do we upload every issue of CVG, GamePro, EGM etc? - Hivebrain (talk) 14:30, 26 June 2015 (CDT)
I would say if the magazine has something of value in it, then yes. Assuming it's more than a couple of pages (else just upload those specific pages like the old days)
It's not an ideal situation, but I don't fundementally like the idea of only preserving half of something, on the grounds that some of it isn't in scope today. If we'd done this in 2010, we'd have a full set of cropped up Mean Machines scans, which would then need to be re-uploaded in a less cropped-up form for NEC Retro's launch. What if it turns out in another five years time we've got a wiki that deals with the Amstrad GX4000? Mean Machines would need to be re-uploaded for a third time.
Future proofing, in a world where gigabytes will cost less and etc. But blank placeholder pages at least means we won't have to re-edit wikis if the above happens. You could also probably argue that developments in the Nintendo sphere were probably important to Sega - they were competitors basing business decisions on the actions of each other, and the important bits usually coincide with when Sega games were being covered.
If a magazine is printed without any Sega (or NEC) stuff in it at all, we probably don't have to care. So that would discount 1982/1983 issues of CVG and things like that. -Black Squirrel (talk) 15:22, 26 June 2015 (CDT)
also the same logic might mean I could go through all the Sega Saturn Magazine scans and crop out all those damn adverts for spot treatment. But then it would be a 95% complete scan and that would annoy me more than anything. =P -Black Squirrel (talk) 15:24, 26 June 2015 (CDT)
How about if I upload the full mags with JPEG compression dialled up to 20%? It'll reduce file sizes down to less than half, without affecting readability. Seems like a good compromise that'll satisfy everyone's concerns. - Hivebrain (talk) 18:49, 26 June 2015 (CDT)
That could work -Black Squirrel (talk) 04:42, 27 June 2015 (CDT)

One Login

Hi. Is it possible to make one login procedure to all wiki's? (sonicretro, segaretro, NEC, Retro CDN) *Depressor (talk)

There were plans for something like that, but I'm not sure if it's still being worked on. Register with the same name each time, and hopefully the accounts can be merged in the future. - Hivebrain (talk) 12:29, 30 September 2015 (CDT)

About Repro covers

Dunno if this is a right place to talk with you.. about that M.U.S.H.A. repro cover,I added that one for educational purposes. You see a lotta people complained that it's pretty close to the original one and may confuse some people to think that it's an original copy.. I personally think that differences are pretty obvious but still this is a nice place to educate people and let them know which one is real etc. --Foxnoodles

Re: Does that mean we'll have multipage PDF thumbs?

File:SSM UK 22.pdf


this raises the possibility of being clever

File:SSM UK 22.pdf File:SSM UK 22.pdf rest of magrow template here

those added spaces might cause problems though. Food for thought -Black Squirrel (talk) 13:12, 11 June 2016 (CDT)

or do that -Black Squirrel (talk) 13:16, 11 June 2016 (CDT)
That's a bit disappointing. I thought it would make a single image thumbnail from the specified pages, and it doesn't work in galleries at all. - Hivebrain (talk) 13:42, 11 June 2016 (CDT)

Multipage thumbs part 2

Removing the spaces is possible with a bit of css. Maybe we could make our own gallery template that employs loops somehow. - Hivebrain (talk) 15:42, 20 June 2016 (CDT)

Ratings template version 32142

Sega Retro Average 
Publication Score Source
90 Look
80 magazines
70 that
60 aren't
50 in
40 the
30 old
20 template
VHS Video
 55
Based on
8 reviews

template:RatingsTest

I've built a ratings template that uses loops and fancy functions to generate a table, rather than having to check against its own list of publications. Feed it a code and it'll generate a name - should be a lot easier to maintain.

There isn't any support for websites, which is why I'm here - do we want to handle these in a different way? At some point there has to be a judgement about which websites are big or significant enough to be included, and regions aren't always applicable. Do we even want to handle websites at all? Just leave it to Metacritic?

Also it doesn't automatically order by name. Also it doesn't include those little explanations about how scores are calculated.

I'm also thinking it might be better to have sources make use of the ref template - that way everything is grouped together at the bottom of the screen and it makes these wikis look more researched and cool.

p.s. I had to fight this template to get it to work - it may be possible to simplify it. Or at least make the code look prettier -Black Squirrel (talk) 11:33, 15 June 2016 (CDT)

Looks like it works pretty well, even with multiple instances of the template. Websites I don't care much about. Maybe we could just have a link to Metacritic at the bottom of the collapsible bit, which appears when metacritic=yes is set or something. Using the ref template should be as simple as modifying template:num slightly, which I would be in favour of. - Hivebrain (talk) 14:38, 15 June 2016 (CDT)

Promotional material

I think we need a rethink on how we do promotional material. At the moment we're just dumping things in a gallery - I would hazard a guess this might get a bit unwieldy over time (with the Mega Drive it already is), and galleries aren't great for describing things in detail.

Rather than upload print adverts individually as JPEGs, I'm tempted to just use the PDF magazines they were printed in (where applicable). That way we don't have duplicate files and have a better means to date things - we can work out exactly when Sega started advertising x deal or y game, which in turn gives us a clearer understanding of when games were released and etc. We can also work out which magazines Sega prioritised - I know Sega Europe fell out with DC-UK, so did they pull advertising? That sort of thing.

It would also let us see if, for example, France got a game a few months before Germany - you could extrapolate it and say, well Sega of France is offering better deals so maybe the console isn't doing as well in that country, and so on.

I know some television campaigns started in the half-time Superbowl ad break in the US. I know some arcade flyers were only offered at ECTS or an AM Show or whatever. I also have a fairly reasonable understanding of who was in charge of Sega of America's marketing budget at any given point (in the 90s at least)


But I'm unsure how to display all this - another sub-page like magazine articles? Do we mix TV and print ads? Magtable template, or something more... "visual"? Leave it alone until someone fixes MP4 support? -Black Squirrel (talk) 14:07, 3 July 2016 (CDT)

My plan was to delete separate jpegs and use pdfs where possible (with template:gallery for two-page ads). There needs to be a bit more info, such as dates and a list of places the ad was published. I don't think it warrants a sub-page because most games would only have 2-3 ads per country.

Mega UK 01.pdf¦page#9¦UK print advert in Computer & Video Games (UK) #123: "February 1992" (1992-01-15)also published in MegaTech, Sega Magazine.

[[File:Mega UK 01.pdf¦page#10-11¦UK print advert in Mega (UK) #1: "October 1992" (1992-09-17); also published in Edge, Mean Machines.|120x120px]]
[[File:Mega UK 01.pdf¦page#10-11¦UK print advert in Mega (UK) #1: "October 1992" (1992-09-17); also published in Edge, Mean Machines.]]
This is more or less what I had in mind. - Hivebrain (talk) 16:02, 3 July 2016 (CDT)
The "also published in" things could have refs. - Hivebrain (talk) 15:37, 5 July 2016 (CDT)
So if we had the same advert in four or five magazines, which mag gets to be used in the gallery? First published, best quality scan, first alphabetically or do we not care? Would we want to prioritise official Sega magazines (e.g. Sega Visions), and, uh... "cleaner" variants (i.e. ones that don't have "CIRCLE X ON READER SERVICE CARD" printed at the bottom)? -Black Squirrel (talk) 04:47, 6 July 2016 (CDT)
First published probably. Although I imagine the ads were sent to publishers all at the same time, and which one came first is just down to the magazine's particular schedule, so it may not matter too much. - Hivebrain (talk) 06:50, 6 July 2016 (CDT)

Something to note - some print adverts jump between pages (e.g. there might be one spread across pages 1, 3, 5 and 7, as opposed to 1, 2, 3 and 4) - we might have to add support for this at some stage. It doesn't affect Sega adverts too much, but I've come across a couple of TG16 ones.

p.s. we need a better way of handling more... "popular" ads. I've got this Phantasy Star ad linked up to four magazines so far, and that's just EGM. The description is already twice the height of the thumbnail -Black Squirrel (talk) 10:58, 9 July 2016 (CDT)

EGM US BuyersGuide 1989.pdf¦page#53¦US print advert in Electronic Gaming Monthly (US) #bg89: "1989 Buyer's Guide" (1989-xx-xx);

also published in
Electronic Gaming Monthly (US) #1: "May 1989" (1989-0x-xx)[1], Electronic Gaming Monthly (US) #2: "July/August 1989" (1989-04-22)[2], Electronic Gaming Monthly (US) #3: "September/October 1989" (1989-0x-xx)[3]
Maybe this? - Hivebrain (talk) 11:34, 9 July 2016 (CDT)


EGM US BuyersGuide 1989.pdf¦page#53¦US print advert in Electronic Gaming Monthly (US) #bg89: "1989 Buyer's Guide" (1989-xx-xx);

also published in 
Electronic Gaming Monthly (US) #1: "May 1989" (1989-0x-xx)[1], Electronic Gaming Monthly (US) #2: "July/August 1989" (1989-04-22)[2], Electronic Gaming Monthly (US) #3: "September/October 1989" (1989-0x-xx)[3]

this would be better, but might I suggest we template all this stuff - something like: 

{{gallery
...
|{{printad|EGM US BuyersGuide 1989.pdf|egm|bg89|53
|EGM US 001.pdf|egm|1|47
|EGM US 002.pdf|egm|2|68
|EGM US 003.pdf|egm|3|55
}}
...
}}

if we're feeling adventurous, we might even be able to auto-sort by date -Black Squirrel (talk) 12:06, 9 July 2016 (CDT)

Logo-pdf.svg
Print advert in Sega Visions (US) #1: "June/July 1990" (1990-xx-xx)
also published in:
Logo-pdf.svg

I'll let you play with the formatting. I'm thinking a mixture of collapsable stuff, smaller text and bullet points might be the easiest on the eye? -Black Squirrel (talk) 13:10, 9 July 2016 (CDT)

Okay so I'm happy with this template now. It may be more aesthetically pleasing to have the "also published in:" text aligned the the right. Dunno. -Black Squirrel (talk) 04:37, 10 July 2016 (CDT)
Looks perfect, and you managed to get it to work with the gallery template. - Hivebrain (talk) 08:04, 10 July 2016 (CDT)

Same game?

Are this the same games with two separate pages? - http://segaretro.org/Sekaishi_Nenpyou_(Monbushou_Shidouyouryou_Junkyo) - http://segaretro.org/Sekaishi_Nenpyou

Right-to-left scans

File:AMLife JP 14.pdf

Japanese magazines and books sometimes read right-to-left. I've uploaded this one as left-to-right - a good plan, or should it be compiled as it was originally put together? (i.e. the last page would be the first)

the source, if you're interested. -Black Squirrel (talk) 16:19, 12 August 2016 (CDT)

Probably how you've done it is right. That's the order the pages are meant to be read, it preserves page numbering (in theory), and the default page should be the "front" cover. - Hivebrain (talk) 16:34, 12 August 2016 (CDT)

genre icons

aka a weekend with Inkscape

Genre adventure.svgGenre puzzle.svgGenre racing.svgGenre rpg.svgGenre shmup.svgGenre simulation.svg

Some came out better than others. The only one missing is "table"... which I'm not planning to do because the icons are inconsistent across boxes and it's a really weird classification at the best of times.

-Black Squirrel (talk) 11:40, 28 August 2016 (CDT)

Press kits

Something I came across in my travels:

IIRC Sega Retro has absorbed one (or more) official press kits in the past - do any of these look familiar?

I'm thinking we might want our own archived copies if they're the real deal too. But I don't want to be the one who sorts it out because 600MB+ per file and not much time and patience and lazy -Black Squirrel (talk) 14:43, 25 October 2016 (CDT)

I've saved them so I can have a closer look later. - Hivebrain (talk) 16:33, 25 October 2016 (CDT)

Defunct Radica Games UK website

They have the manuals for "Arcade Legends" consoles on a chip,"Street Fighter II': Special Champion Edition‎",Sensible Soccer Plus,Outrun 2019 and Menacer...since i am a little noob at editing i leave it for you if you don't mind... i just want to contribute...

https://web.archive.org/web/20070222125945/http://www.radicauk.com/manuals.htm --Asagoth (talk) 04:26, 12 February 2017 (CST)

Thanks, I'll take a look. - Hivebrain (talk) 11:59, 12 February 2017 (CST)

Ulala no Channel J

I think I'd struggle to make the page, but I can at least update the template:

http://web.archive.org/web/20040813220715/http://www.sonicteam.com/chJ/

I had assumed this was one game, but turns out it's a service with several games/ringtones/whatever that are individually paid for and downloaded. Do we want to cover this in a single "Ulala no Channel J" page or split things.

My first thought was to group everything, but turns out there's a bit of Astro Boy/Puyo Puyo content in there plus some original things -Black Squirrel (talk) 10:34, 24 February 2017 (CST)

oh and some of it might have been redistributed as part of sonic cafe. -Black Squirrel (talk) 10:36, 24 February 2017 (CST)
I suppose everything will need its own page. Would ringtones be classed as music or software? I've never downloaded one, so I don't know how they're packaged or anything. - Hivebrain (talk) 13:23, 24 February 2017 (CST)
I don't know exactly how they were handled in the days of the Nokia 3310, but by the early 2000s most handsets were migrating to bog-standard MIDI/WAV/MP3 files (at which point they become difficult to charge for as they're so easy to distribute).
I have no idea was the story was in Japan though. 381040824 proprietary standards in phones is why there's so many emojis in unicode. -Black Squirrel (talk) 14:01, 24 February 2017 (CST)

so this is a thing

cdn:Template:Descriptions/Namco

Namco

nec:Namco

"Scary Transcluding", as it's called.

I can't decide whether this is a good plan. The benefits are obvious, but it's an extra hurdle for the less able wiki user, and it's apparently not very efficient. An opportunity to unify some templates though?

-Black Squirrel (talk) 13:54, 11 April 2017 (CDT)

It's a good idea for basic text. Anything complicated, like MagazineName templates, isn't going to work (I tried already). - Hivebrain (talk) 14:07, 11 April 2017 (CDT)

Japan only Category

Can you give any time period where you will be adding this category that you talked about a while ago?--Trippled (talk) 15:08, 21 June 2017 (CDT)

About that TUME Demo

You can delete that video ( was made by me... it's awful... I'm an amateur... i made a better one and i linked it to the TUME PAGE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDd_ExmQ114&t=162s ... i can upload this new video if you prefer... is the original demo (a DOS executable, made by the original developers...i just recorded a video with DOSBox) included in the File:TUME.zip... but i think you will need to repair it like you did with the first one...--Asagoth (talk) 15:08, 15 August 2017 (CDT)

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 File:EGM US 001.pdf, page 47
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 File:EGM US 002.pdf, page 68
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 File:EGM US 003.pdf, page 55
  4. ↑ Electronic Gaming Monthly, "August 1990" (US; 1990-xx-xx), page 7
  5. ↑ GamePro, "July 1990" (US; 1990-xx-xx), page 61
  6. ↑ VideoGames & Computer Entertainment, "July 1990" (US; 1990-0x-xx), page 59
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