Talk:Fortress

Merge with Tower
I think that Tower and Fortress articles should be merged. They both serve the same purpose and the names are interchangeable. For example, in New Super Mario Bros. U they are called towers but look like fortresses.

Proposer: Deadline: December 20, 2012, 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) Per my proposal.

Oppose

 * 1) No because they aren't the same a tower is not a fortress so they shouldn't be merged together even if they often play the same role.
 * 2) As much as I'm for merging articles, I'm going to have to disagree on this one. Fortresses are the things at the end of each level. Towers are the things that the koopalings are in.
 * So, after some thought and seeing how the articles have been re-arranged, I now disagree to a merge. Towers essentially replaced fortresses, yes, but that doesn't automatically make the fortresses of SMB3 and SMW suddenly towers now as well. That would be like saying Shellcreepers are Koopa Troopas because the latter replaced the former as turtle-like enemies for Mario.
 * 1) per 1337star.
 * 2) per 1337star.
 * 3) Tsk, tsk, tsk. The Towers (yes, NSMBW counts) look more, well, tower-like, so to speak. The fortresses resemble real-life forts actually. Besides, the towers are vertical and hardly have any enemies at all (besides a few Dry Bones here and there) and the main obstacles are moving platforms. Fortresses are filled will enemies and are puzzle-oriented (especially in SMB3). Although they have the same music, and still act as mini-boss levels (even featuring the guys from the Fortresses in SMB3 and SMW, respectively, in NSMB2 and NSMBU), they have, overall, a different look and feel to them.

Comments
Coooool123, read the fortress article. There are two types of fortresses. The ones at the end of levels and the ones that function like towers. BluePiranha (talk)
 * They're still two different things.

Actually, why don't we just move over the NSMB info to the tower page instead of merging? NSMB's fortresses may be towers, but the SMB3, SMW, and end of level fortresses are not. DonnyKD (talk) 16:03, 6 December 2012 (EST)


 * I would personally vastly prefer the information on the end of level fortresses to be removed, regardless of whether this proposal passes. Covering them starts to seep into violating Generic subjects. As for pre-NSMB fortress levels, how are they different, than, say the towers of NSMBU? -- 1337star (Mailbox SP) 16:24, 6 December 2012 (EST)


 * Well, for starters, every fortress in SMW is not vertical, unlike NSMBU's towers. And in SMW, fortresses are infrequent and are generally harder than the castles. While SMB3's fortresses don't share the latter's benefit, it does have the former. DonnyKD (talk) 16:27, 6 December 2012 (EST)


 * I've noticed that our policy for things like this seems to be that if it has different characteristics, it's different. Towers are vertically scrolling.  Fortresses, however, are sidescrolling.  Seems like a big difference to me.-BowserJunior (talk) 23:25, 6 December 2012 (EST)

Well, I guess it's fine now. But if the fortresses in New Super Mario Bros. Wii are actually towers, then the NSMBW tower icon should link to the tower page instead. And it shouldn't be used to represent fortresses on the SMB3 pages. BluePiranha (talk) 04:37, 8 December 2012 (EST)


 * Man…This is getting complicated. Because then we'd have to create a new fortress icon…This is just getting bigger and bigger.-BowserJunior (talk) 19:59, 10 December 2012 (EST)


 * No, not really. The SMW fortress icon can be the Fortress symbol, and the one NSMBW uses is the tower symbol. DonnyKD (talk) 23:12, 10 December 2012 (EST)

New Fortress icon
Since the NSMBW icon represents towers, we should use a different icon for fortresses. Here's a comparison of fortress sprites from past games. What do think we should use?

Aokage (talk) 06:35, 25 December 2012 (EST)
 * I think the All-Stars fortress icon fits best. DonnyKD (talk) 06:37, 25 December 2012 (EST)


 * I think we can rule out SMB3 because of the color scheme. Personally I think the Advance and All-stars are the best example. They are both very similar to each other, so either one will do. World looks more like a castle somehow. 08:03, 25 December 2012 (EST)

Fortress or Castle?
A lot of the information here is listed in the Castle article as well, which makes sense, especially since they were called Castles in New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Should this just be merged with that, or something similar? I can't remember if NSMB2 or NSMBU called them Fortresses or Castles. 01:45, 2 August 2017 (CT)

Hiya! 368 days later, minus 23 minutes, I'm bumping this a bit to question whether articles like World 1-Fortress (New Super Mario Bros. Wii) should be moved to, while World 1-Tower (New Super Mario Bros. Wii) be moved to World 1-Fortress (New Super Mario Bros. Wii) for specific game accuracy's sake. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 02:22, 5 August 2018 (EDT)
 * I think you misread the "Fortress/Castle" part from the manual. I understood it as "The Koopalings fight you in fortresses and castles".


 * Also, the naming of fortresses/towers is pretty inconsistent between Japanese and English. Here's the Japanese version naming iirc:
 * NSMB: The official site calls them "fortresses", but then calls them "tower courses" in the description.
 * NSMBW: Fortresses.
 * NSMB2: Towers.
 * NSMBU: Fortresses, even though they're known as towers in English. SmokedChili (talk) 07:10, 5 August 2018 (EDT)
 * While it does say "Fortress/Castle," since "Fortress" comes first and is on the left, it's logical that those would be the midpoint ones. Also note that unlike in NSMB, the "Towers" don't look particularly tower-like on the map, though this design does carry over into NSMBU, where they are explicitly called towers in the level names. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 11:45, 5 August 2018 (EDT)

Stemming from the above...
OK, the main complaint above seems to have been resolved at some point. However, some details gleaned from it make me question how we handle this. The Fortresses in NSMBW look and function just like the Fortresses in SMB3 and SMW, so this seems more like the same concept that has evolved. The problem is, a "Tower" level was in SMB3, though it more resembled the Tower of Babel than anything else. I think a merge of some sort should be proposed, but I'd like to hear more opinions on this, because the current system seems misleading at best (particularly with how we name NSMBW levels). As an additional note, the "towers" in NSMB and NSMB2 have a distinct appearance from the "Fortress" design. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 19:16, November 21, 2019 (EST)
 * I really think the way we handle Fortresses/Towers is weird and messy. The Fortress article tries to cover both the end of level castles introduced in SMB and the level type in SMB3, SMW, and Yoshi games. It just doesn't work for me though, one's a level and one's little more than a background element. Personally, I suggest splitting this article into two articles for the level type and the end of level structure. Ideally, all of the fortress-y levels go on the same page as the Tower levels from the NSMB series, although the fact that the fortress levels are horizontal while the tower levels are vertical could bring some opposition to that. Either way, something needs to be done because this is messy and confusing in its current state. -- 19:31, November 21, 2019 (EST)