Talk:Super Mario Land (series)

Is Super Mario 3D Land a game from the Super Mario Land series? I want to write about it here, but I'm not very sure. -- Super  Radio
 * No. It is not considered to be a Super Mario Land series game.

The Super Mario Land games are confirmed canon by Nintendo
Nintendo on their Japanese 30th anniversary website has posted "the history of the super mario series." All the games considered canon are still on the list, however the Super Mario Land games (specifically the first mario land and six golden coins)are added. Since this is indeed an official source by Nintendo, we have no choice but to delete the "Super Mario Land series" article to fit this official picture by Nintendo. If there is any reason why we should deny this official source please speak up. Here is the official source.

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/mario30th/index.html#/history/

Merge to Super Mario (series)
For the Super Mario Bros. 30th Anniversary, Nintendo retconned from what they didn't do for the 25th Anniversary: include Super Mario Land and Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins in the line-up of the main Super Mario platforming games. This wiki hasn't do anything at this respect, except for pointing this curiousity in the pages. With this change of mind from Nintendo, we no longer need this article on its own and should be merged with the Super Mario series one, no matter if they weren't made by Miyamoto or his EAD team, what it should matter is that they were made by Nintendo and they have been offically included to a greater, and more important, series. But what about Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3? well, up to this point people should know that game belongs more to the Wario Land series, 'nuff said, it's the inaugural game for that series. This is similar to the case for Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, who took the name of another game in order to appeal people to get the game. Nintendo did that because they were experimenting for the then-new series, but a name doesn't necesarily make a game part of a series, that's why we never included Super Mario 3D Land to this page. We should be aware that Yoshi's Island was called a main Mario game by Miyamoto, but has been excluded from the line-up for the 25th and 30th Anniversaries of Super Mario Bros. so Wario Land is no different for this. Wario Land will be fine on its own series.

Proposer: Deadline: October 17, 2015, 23:59 GMT.

Support

 * 1) - If people is not convinced, I would suggest reading my comment below.
 * 2) Per Byllant.

Oppose

 * 1) - Per what I said in this proposal. While I think the SM series page should include the first two SML games (and Yoshi's Island) somehow, like how it has all the random SMB remakes and whatnot listed separately from the main games, it should NOT be instead of having a separate SML series page. It isn't just some redundant/nested subseries (as "" would be): it's straddling both the SM and Wario Land series, and it is not our place to arbitrarily cut perfectly good series in half. WL:SML3 (and VB Mario Land) would indeed be out of place in the SM series page, but I think it's important that there is a series page that groups all the Land games together (like how we have a Super Mario Advance (series) page to group Yoshi's Island with the three main SM remakes). Furthermore, it's not just the series pages at stake: History sections, templates and categories are all affected by how we organize these games (we want to be consistent, after all), and I feel very strongly that it makes sense to keep the SML games separate in these capacities, given how different the games are to the usual SM games (SM3DL is no SML), the awkwardness of how the three finished games bridge two series, and their historic separation - the 30th anniversary stuff may include them now, but the 25th's exclusion of them should not be ignored, nor should all the years of separation preceding it. Also keep in mind that the 30th stuff leaves out major remakes like SMAS and the SMA series, the US version leaves out Lost Levels, and neither it nor the 25th stuff included the aforementioned random SMB remakes we still gotta keep in our article: Nintendo's free to pick and choose what to celebrate in their highlight reel, but we're stuck reporting on everything, and keeping the SML series intact is the best way to organize that info.
 * 2) In general, per Walkazo. In the long, pretty much what I said last time. There are some interesting talking points to be had and both sides are going to make the same valid arguments, but there just isn't enough compelling reasons to A. Shake up our entire core structure (with this proposal acting as the first quake), B. Disrupt the main point of MarioWiki, which is to document all things Mario, with an emphasis on the games and C. Make broad, unsupported judgement about what is or is not valid (keeping in mind that our main designation is "educational archive", thus we document, not judge). Perhaps we could display the perceived discrepancy differently or otherwise work it into relevant article bodies better, but I fully disagree with burning the forest for the trees.
 * 3) Per Walkazo. Putting the SML games in the Mario 30th anniversary history doesn't consider as part of the Super Mario series. Nintendo just put the SML games as part of the Mario platforming series, although didn't include the Wario Land games and the Yoshi's Island games.
 * 4) Per Walkazo's wall of text
 * 5) Per all; I don't see the benefit that anyone will receive if we implement this, especially when considering the amount of work that will be necessary. This is not laziness, but a realistic look at how this will affect the workload that we already have, including what we have outside of the wiki. We're not going to be subservient if nobody actually benefits.
 * 6) I'd oppose for several reasons, fairly similar to this proposal, which I'm aware that has been brought up several times: little payoff from merging this disjoint series just because some anniversary media group it alongside with the mainstream Mario games. Also Walkazo rightfully points out, the media has only a limited amount of time and space to devote to covering the Mario series, so I do agree the argument that including the Super Mario Land games in the medium is a choice, not a requirement, unlike our coverage in this Wiki. This proposal is even less ideal than the one brought up, despite the former being quite contentious, because this one advocates a complete merger of a good page (for pathetic standards of series pages, more on that) while the other is expansion on existing pages. I do not like resorting to organizational slippery slope cases, but there is really no overwhelming compelling source of evidence; the situation is a gray area especially with Nintendo's approach to this whole mess. Finally, the way the series pages are handled in this wiki leaves a lot to be desired, so if you really care about this, then I suggest starting with the skeletal structure of these pages before making proposals like these.

Comments
I really wish people who would oppose this will not shield up with the excuse these games weren't made by the former Nintendo EAD or Shigeru Miyamoto, I mean, we can compare this to The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, which was developed by Capcom and Vanpool and not Nintendo EAD, with Keiji Inafune directing the game and not Eiji Aonuma, yet is still a canon Zelda game. Also, we should be aware that this retcon makes this page as if we have a page for the New Super Mario Bros. games, which by the way, failed to be made as an actual page, so people who opposed that proposal should consider the same arguments they gave for that proposal as well.

-- BYLLANT   04:11, 3 October 2015 (EDT)
 * I don't know why most of the users in this wiki like to live from the past, what happened for the 25th Anniversary is now history, that's why Nintendo updated the line-up, it's as if you don't know what the word "retcon" means. While I agree it is right to document everything from this games for the wiki's sake, it doesn't compensate to the current standards of the series. This is the "Rocky Wrench is not Monty Mole because an old 27-year old manual says otherwise" case again. Let me rectify some stuff to the opposers:


 * @Walkazo: You are saying it is not arbitrarily cut perfectly good series in half because there are history sections, templates and categories that would be affected, that clearly implies laziness from part of editors to organize this stuff, because it is possible to do it, it just would require a tiresome editing session. The SMA series have a page because they are a series of enhanced remakes, they are not ports, they have been reworked to incorporate new content, a perfect reason for them to have a well-deserving page. You say these games are different, I guess you mean the shooting sections from SML because I don't find something different about SML2 (it's like a SMW for GB), I don't think that's an effective argument as SMB2 is also way to different to the rest of the Mario games, and if we look at SMS, we have Mario with a water pump gimmick. As far as I can tell, the 25th Aniversary didn't keep track on the SMA series (so there's no point on bringing them on) and the reason SMAS was included in the North American and European version (but not in the original Japanese version) of the Super Mario History manual was to document the SMB:TLL memo. So, in a sense, that game wasn't left out at all. I don't know why you bring the ports or remakes to the discussion, of course they wouldn't be taken on count. It's curious that Super Mario Maker was there too. We shouldn't ignore the 25th Anniversary but the 30th Anniversay should take the priority over it, anyway, even if the merge doesn't happen, and in the future, what will be dictaminated for the 35th Anniversary should be listened.


 * @Ghost Jam: "Burning the forest for the trees"? of course not, we would be moving this forest to a greater forest, for the sake of its "survival", there's no need to "burn" anything, that would be waste. We won't be judging a series when it has been integrated to another series, after all, we never judged them, Nintendo did. I had this similar dicussion on Wikipedia about this, where WL and YI are on the SM series article, despite my protests they officially aren't (at that time Miyamoto remained silent about YI), once again an official source would be ignored.


 * @Infinite8: If being incorporated on a conmemorative celebration about a long-running series of platform games doesn't make you part of that series, then, I don't know what is it. You're kinda right, I'm fearful someday Nintendo will recall those awful CDi game on an anniversary conmemoration. That makes me shiver.


 * I got to tell that if we don't merge, as I can see it's very likely, still take on count what this 30th anniversary has lead to, the SML games deserve more recognition for being part [finally] of the main games, that is a great achievement.


 * -- BYLLANT  Ak-Un.png 03:54, 4 October 2015 (EDT)


 * You may gripe that other users like living in the past, but I personally find it much more frustrating to have to deal with merge-happy users periodically seeking to destroy perfectly good articles and pretend like the past never happened. It's our job to document everything, and sometimes, keeping things separated is the clearest way to present all the info, especially when the subjects themselves were accepted by everyone as being separate things for years: easy navigation is important, and if nothing else, separate articles are more likely to funnels in search traffic too. As for your specific points, SML is different in many ways: different setting, different princess, different basic flower power-up, and different enemies (only one is shared with any other game), to name the biggest ones. SML2 is still unique from the rest of the series, from its different design of Fire Mario, to its basic plot (no princess at all, nor kingdoms to save, just Wario squatting in Mario's castle), to the fact that most of its enemy roster are one-offs too. And before you say "but SMB2 is different too", well, it still had Peach in some capacity (same with SM3DW), Wart is a much closer stand-in for Bowser than Wario or Tatanga, and many of its enemies became recurring fixtures of SM and the Mario series as a whole, whereas all we got from the SML games were Daisy and Wario in spin-offs (with the only effect on the SM platformers being Wario in SM64DS - pretty small impact all things considered). The Super Mario History 1985-2010 booklet that came with Super Mario All-Stars Limited Edition (aka Super Mario All-Stars - 25th Anniversary Edition) included a timeline of SM games that included the three SMA remakes (and Classic NES Series: Super Mario Bros., iirc), so there is a point in mentioning them here. And I was saying SMAS was left out of the 30th Anniversary stuff, not the 25th, where it was included both as an excuse to talk about Lost Levels and in its own right in the aforementioned timeline, so again, it missing from the 30th stuff is a valid point in my overall "neither anniversary are complete listings of the SM games anyway" argument against using it as the definitive SM game list for the wiki (which is also why I mention the misc. ports and remakes). And having to potentially flip-flop and reorganize the wiki every five years should Nintendo change their minds again come next anniversary is in itself another reason why blindly following these things is a bad idea. - 16:52, 4 October 2015 (EDT)

"@Walkazo: You are saying it is not arbitrarily cut perfectly good series in half because there are history sections, templates and categories that would be affected, that clearly implies laziness from part of editors to organize this stuff, because it is possible to do it, it just would require a tiresome editing session."

The problem is the pay-off from all of this work. I don't like how you accuse editors of how it "clearly" (emphasis on quotes) implies laziness when frankly, a good deal of them already have a bunch of piled-up editing work; this is a much more major project than you think, and I do question exactly why should this page be merged. It seems fine perfectly on its own. 15:15, 5 October 2015 (EDT)