Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Peer review/Ultimate Play The Game

Ultimate Play The Game

It's just been rated a few days ago as Start class, but it's a fairly comprehensive article (and referenced) with practically all there is on the company. They were famously secretive, even more so than their successor Rare are today, and we've discussed all the major points of their relatively brief spell at the top. So any input as to what's not done well/should do should do next would be appreciated. Cheers, Miremare 15:21, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Anyone?! Miremare 21:40, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Review by Anomie

• Your lead is a bit short, see WP:LEAD.
• Maybe it's a nitpick, but the fair use rationales on your images should mention the article they are fair use in.
• Your images should say where you obtained them. If you took them yourself, say so, otherwise link the website or specify the magazine (down to the page number if you can).
• You're close to having text squished between the "Knight Lore" and "'big box' packaging" images. If you can easily space them out better, that would be good.
• Since your image captions are written as sentences, they should have periods.
• I'm not sure that usage of the Sabre Wulf screenshot is justified by the text. It's certainly not being used to "aid in the description of the fictional world", as there is no description of the fictional world in the article.
• Same for the The Staff of Karnath screenshot.
• The Knight Lore screenshot, on the other hand, is well supported by the need to illustrate the new graphical style. Change the fair use rationale to say that instead of "aid in the description of the fictional world".
• There are a lot of parenthetical expressions and strung-out sentences. Notably:
  • The first sentence of the 4th paragraph under Early history (discussing Lunar Jetman) could use work.
  • The last sentence under Decline and fall needs work.
  • The second and third paragraphs under "Authorship" need work, and probably should be merged into one.
• A reference for those Ocean Software games copying the Filmation viewpoint would be good. Ditto for the criticism mentioned in the next paragraph.
• Say something like "$377 million" instead of "$377m".
• What is "RRP"? Generally, acronyms are to be avoided in article text, or at least spelled out fully the first time they are used.
• "The press" and "The fans" might be changed to "Press" and "Fans".
• If you can expand "The fans", that would be good.
• I think you're missing a period at the end of the Tim Stamper quote, but obviously I don't have the original to check.
• Under "The fans", reword the list to get rid of the "etc.".
• Why a major section for "Commodore 64 releases", when most of their games were made for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum? I'm not sure how to fix it though, maybe just mention the groundbreaking games in "Early history and rise" and combine the rest of the game info in a new section "Games".
• Consider moving the "Authorship" to before "Relationship with the press and fan". If you go with the "Games" section I mentioned above, put that before Authorship.

Hope this helps! Anomie 23:26, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

X201

Anomie has covered a lot of the points I was going to raise so I'll just mention the two that stuck out to me.

• The lead could do with some work, it feels a bit brutal, it gets the points across well but doesn't feel as though it's inviting the reader into the article.

• The section about the price rise to £9.95. It reads as if the complaints were about the fact that the price was a big increase on UPG's existing prices which whilst true, wasn't the whole story. The complaints were because £9.95 was way above what all companies were charging for their games at the time.

Other than that, an enjoyable informative read.- X201 15:44, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your time guys, I've made (I think) all the changes suggested, though I'll have to ask the uploader for the source of the game images. The lead is maybe still a bit short though. The Commodore 64 section is there I suppose to highlight an often overlooked part of the Ultimate catalogue. The "main" series on the Speccy, Amstrad etc., that they're known for is pretty much covered in the rest of the article, as that's really what it's about, whereas the C64 titles don't really seem important enough in the context of the company's history to include there. But I feel these are deserving of mention here as Ultimate's attempt at producing for the most successful 8-bit format of all time, and they will certainly be a lot of people's only experience of Ultimate games. I know it doesn't seem quite right to dedicate a whole section to one format that wasn't so important to the Ultimate story as a whole (but then, Lunar Jetman's trailer got a whole section too!), so I will have to give this some thought, unless anyone else comes up with something first. Maybe a "games" section as Anomie suggested, but I thought originally that with the template at the bottom of the article, a section listing the games might be a bit redundant..? Any further comments/advice would of course be very welcome. Thanks again, Miremare 00:39, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

I'd second Miremare about the C64 titles. While the Spectrum is the platform they're most remembered for, they developed 6 original titles for the C64, none of which were simple clones of Spectrum titles (although they additionally ported, via Firebird, several of the most popular Spectrum titles too). No other platform received this sort of attention from Ultimate - the BBC, Amstrad and MSX just received ports from the Spectrum. And while the quality of these titles varied (c.f. the appalling Imhotep), several were well-received, Entombed most notably. Anyway, I guess that all I'm saying is that the C64 titles do stand up on their own, and constitute an important, if secondary, strand to Ultimate's history. Cheers, --Plumbago 09:24, 30 June 2007 (UTC)