Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Unreleased Sonic the Hedgehog games/archive1

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

The article was archived by Gog the Mild via FACBot (talk) 13 May 2025 [1].

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Unreleased Sonic the Hedgehog games

Nominator(s): JOEBRO⁶⁴ 14:23, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

I've brought a few articles on released Sonic the Hedgehog games to FAC, so why not change things up a bit? This article chronicles the Sonic games that, for one reason or another, never made it to store shelves, ranging from fully-finished products to those that never progressed beyond the conceptual phase. I've done a fair amount of work on this article after getting it promoted to GA last month and I think it's ready to get a go at FAC. I hope you enjoy! JOEBRO⁶⁴ 14:23, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Vacant0

Will review this. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 16:44, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

• What makes Destructoid and TheGamer high quality in this case?
  • The two Destructoid references were written by James Stephanie Sterling, the site's then-EiC who has written for multiple sources the project deems reliable, and Jed Whitaker, a staffer who has written for reliable sources including Vice, Paste, and GameRevolution. The article from TheGamer was written by James Troughton, who previously wrote for reliable sources such as IGN and VG247, and was published after the cut-off at which articles from the site are deemed reliable. JOEBRO⁶⁴ 17:01, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

  Sounds good. Thanks. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 13:36, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

• Is Ref 3 and 13 (Games That Weren't) reliable?
  • Yes, according to WP:VG/S it's considered reliable for information on unreleased games. Its operator, Frank Gasking, is a published author via Bitmap Books, who are well-regarded. JOEBRO⁶⁴ 17:01, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 13:36, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

• I did not notice any issues in the lede. It seems to be explained well.
• Maybe give a brief introduction of the Sonic the Hedgehog series in the body for the readers?
  • I adjusted the text in the Sonic's Edusoft section to introduce it as "Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog franchise". I think this should be sufficient. JOEBRO⁶⁴ 12:19, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
• for the Master System → for the Master System console
  • Not done, saying "console" after the console name is tautological. JOEBRO⁶⁴ 12:19, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
• Do we know when The Games Machine published the screenshots?
  • They were published alongside the magazine's review of Sonic the Hedgehog in mid-1991. Clarified. JOEBRO⁶⁴ 12:19, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
• for the PC-8801 → for the PC-8801 home computer
  • Not done for the same reason as the Master System comment. All that's important for this article is the platform name. JOEBRO⁶⁴ 12:19, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
• Explain what Chaos Emeralds are
  • Not done because the link should be sufficient enough for readers who want to learn more/are confused. We don't need to explain what they are in every individual Sonic article. JOEBRO⁶⁴ 12:19, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
• that features similar gameplay concepts, such as?
  • Done JOEBRO⁶⁴ 12:19, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

Procedural question

Procedural question Is this the right venue, or would this be a better fit for WP:Featured list candidates? It seems like a borderline case to me, where it could go either way. TompaDompa (talk) 15:17, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

• Apologies for jumping into this conversation, but I would consider it an article rather than a list given the amount of prose in the article itself. FLs on video games generally have the prose restricted to just the lead and the games are listed in a table. See List of Civilization media or List of Mario role-playing games for what I mean by this. So while this boils down to a list of unreleased video games, it has prose for individual entries to that point that I would consider it an article. Not to emphasize this point too much, but I have not seen a list that would have this level of prose beyond the lead. Aoba47 (talk) 20:59, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
  • It's ultimately up to the coords and I'll adhere to whatever they say, but I think FAC is the right venue here. The article is almost entirely prose, and to my understanding there's a distinction between list-format articles (which are rated on the normal quality scale) and actual lists (which go to FLC). Looking at previous examples, Superman in film, a similarly-structured article, was promoted to FA rather than FL, so I think we're at the right place. JOEBRO⁶⁴ 12:22, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
• I was going to raise the same question. This is a collection of brief entries describing each part of a set. That's a list. It doesn't become an article just because the information wasn't crammed into a table or punctuated with bullet points. This is a list that provides helpful information for each item, which many lists decline to do. If the length of individual entries is an issue, then the long ones could be split into main articles for the games and then condensed in the list. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 03:50, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

  Comment, but a similar article I wrote, Pokémon episodes removed from rotation, has a very similar structure to this one, yet was determined by FLC coords to be more akin to an article than a list. While I personally disagree with the assessment, it seems to indicate a precedent that these kinds of articles are deemed closer to articles than lists. Magneton Considerer: Pokelego999 (Talk) (Contribs) 20:29, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

  If a set index is considered a list, then I don't see why these wouldn't be as well. It's the same amount of information in the same format. The only difference is that it doesn't have a disambiguation aspect. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 21:06, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

Coordinator note

This has been open for more than three weeks and has yet to pick up a support. Unless it attracts considerable movement towards a consensus to promote over the next three or four days I am afraid that it is liable to be archived. Gog the Mild (talk) 21:24, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

• Closing note: This candidate has been archived, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Gog the Mild (talk) 15:32, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.