MarioWiki:Featured articles/N1/Donkey Kong Barrel Blast

Support

 * 1) This article is big, has great coverage all around, has many good quality pictures and is organized quite well. I want it featured.

Oppose

 * 1) The tense is all over the place ("[subject] will [verb root]" is future tense), the attributes section for the characters seems rather undetailed (an undescriptive short sentence for some characters and a "see other character" line for the others), the aliasing around the icons is incredibly visible, there's no development section,  and it fails to abide by the Empty Section Policy.

Comments
Articles seems pretty good from my scan of it, but I have two comments to make

1: Reception section should use the revie template.

2: I find the article's assertion that Barrel Blast is a sequel to Diddy Kong Racing, as well as the constant comparisons to it and mentions of a non-existent "Donkey Kong Racing" series, to be quite odd and arguable. They're both racing games featuring Donkey Kong Country characters, but otherwise there's really no relation between them. You don't need to fit a square peg into a round hole.

Very solid article. I do think the ordering of the headers is a bit strange, and there is a bunch of empty sections that need to be filled out per Empty sections. 17:14, 9 July 2016 (EDT)

3: So, should I remove any mentions of that "series" and supposed ties with Diddy Kong Racing? 17:24, 9 July 2016 (EDT)
 * I do think you should at least remove ties with Diddy Kong Racing (such as the sentence "instead of hovercrafts, planes, etc."), but since we do have an article on Donkey Kong Racing (series), that might be grounds for other discussion. But I'm not Glowsquid, so we'll see what he responds with. 17:28, 9 July 2016 (EDT)
 * Well um, it's true that Rare did try to follow Diddy Kong Racing with various cancelled projects so I suppose having the page makes sense, but in real-world term, the "Donkey Kong Racing series" consist of one game, and a remake of that one game. Can you call that "a series"?


 * I also do not think Barrel Blast should be listed on that page. It has none of the mechanics, levels, or characters introduced in DKR. The only ressemblance is that it's a racing game featuring Donkey Kong Country characters.
 * Indeed. Racing is a broad genre just as how platforming is a broad genre. Lumping Barrel Blast in there is like putting Paper Mario with Mario & Luigi in one series page because both are RPGs that feature Mario characters. 17:42, 10 July 2016 (EDT)

For the review section, it would be a wise idea to list aggregrate scores from MetaCritic/GameRankings into that review template. 17:45, 10 July 2016 (EDT)

A great article indeed that deserves to be featured and I'm happy with this result. AfternoonLight (talk) 19:53, 10 July 2016 (EDT)

What exactly do you mean by empty sections? I do not see any. 09:30, 12 July 2016 (EDT)
 * Empty sections are sections that only link to another article without supplying any information in the main article. For example, this article's "Pre-release and unused content" and "Staff" sections only link to List of Donkey Kong Barrel Blast pre-release and unused content and List of Donkey Kong Barrel Blast staff, respectively. Because they fail to provide any information, they violate the empty section policy. 09:57, 12 July 2016 (EDT)

"there's no development section"

I don't think that's a valid reason. Sometimes this information simply isn't out there for some games; there's no interview (at least in English) or articles about the development of Barrel Blast.

Is this worthy of adding into the development section?
 * 1: That page is just a mirror of Wikipedia's page on Barrel Blast. 2: That section basically says "The game wasn't developed by Rare" (already written in the intro and infobox), "it was originally a gamecube game played with bongos" (relevant information but better fit for pre-release section) and "the game was announced in Famitsu" (doesn't convey interesting or useful information). There's nothing in there that talks about the actual process and decisions in the development of the game.

"the attributes section for the characters seems rather undetailed (an undescriptive short sentence for some characters and a "see other character" line for the others)"

They're not detailed, but they don't really require much more information since the important information is already explained before they're listed. I do think the "see other character" sentence can be changed to just copy-paste information, but otherwise, no extra detail is needed.

The staff section needs to be a paragraph prose format rather than a simplistic list, as the empty policy recommends.

"the aliasing around the icons is incredibly visible" Not really much of a problem for me, and not going to be the difference between a featured and unfeatured article. This is nitpicking.

I also parrot Glowsquid on the requested development section. Development sections are not always needed for articles and it may be asking too much for a game like this. 00:25, 13 July 2016 (EDT)

Is the lead section long enough? I think it's rather short. 20:22, 24 July 2016 (EDT)
 * Could be a bit longer. Maybe you should mention how many players can play with each other? Try looking at other articles with longer leads, like Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash, Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, Mario Kart Wii, see what they do for their length and, if applicable, try emulating them. 20:57, 30 July 2016 (EDT)

I'm sorry for taking so long to write up a reply, irl issues have taken precedence. In any case, the attributes section is still short, and I'm still not entirely comfortable with leaving it as short sentences (especially when other articles like Super Smash Bros. Brawl elaborate further), but it's not that big of a deal. I'm also willing to concede that there isn't enough information available to substantiate a development section, and the empty sections have been appropriately developed. However, I still find the image quality of the icons to be distracting, especially since they're the only images in a section with nothing but text, which makes them all the more prominent, and the article's general tense has yet to be fixed. 22:21, 4 August 2016 (EDT)

I'll see what I can fix about the general tense this coming weekend, but I'm not sure if I can fix the problem about the icons. 18:58, 18 August 2016 (EDT)