Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Knight Lore/archive1

• Comment. I think there is a need for some care in the legacy section of this article. No one can doubt the technical excellence of Knight Lore and the impact it had in cementing the reputation of the Stamper Brothers, but outside of Europe, it had no impact at all. Certainly it led to a brisk local trade in isometric arcade adventures, but it did not popularize isometric gaming anywhere else. Zaxxon, Diablo, Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Crusader: No Remorse, these are the games that popularized the isometric view worldwide, and none of their creators would have ever played Knight Lore. Syndicate, Populous, and X-COM played a role too, and their creators may well have been influenced by Knight Lore and its ilk, but that leaves it with an indirect worldwide influence only. Until just this past decade, the United States and Japan were the two largest video game markets in the world, and it's safe to say Knight Lore did not directly influence either one. Does not make the game any less impressive nor does it detract from the game's regional influence, but the article as it stands does not properly qualify these achievements. Indrian (talk) 07:46, 3 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Indrian, what parts do you find unproportional? I thought the Legacy was exceptionally metered—I qualified the sources as British whenever it was particularly relevant and I have yet to find a source that qualified its influence as strictly limited to the UK. The sources say that games like Diablo are descendants but they don't claim a direct link the same way modern games don't claim direct links to their predecessors. czar 07:56, 3 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's influence is largely limited to Europe because no one outside of Europe played ZX Spectrum games. All the sources discussing its impact are British, so they are biased towards that perspective: they don't qualify their statements because they are speaking to a British audience. Retro Gamer is a fun source with good interviews, but it's not scholarly; it's written for (primarily British) enthusiasts of old games. The lack of coverage in U.S.-centric sources tells the tale of its complete lack of impact anywhere else (not a knock on the game, just the facts of 1980s market conditions).

The legacy section is mostly fine and all well-written; there are only two small problems really. First, the Gillen quote about Elite and Knight Lore should be qualified as coming from a UK market perspective, which is actually how he qualifies himself in the original source ("In terms of the Brit industry in the 1980s"). It's only common sense that he is referring only to British game icons, as no knowledgeable person would put both of those games ahead of Super Mario Bros. as a 1980s icon (just look at how many greatest games of all time lists Mario tops). Second, the statement about how Knight Lore popularized the isometric view has to be qualified as Europe only. It's possible that Knight Lore indirectly influenced late 1990s isometric games in the US since several isometric games from the UK came across the pond in the early 1990s (Diablo, for example, adopted an isometric view due to the influence of British-made X-COM). It did not, however, popularize the isometric viewpoint anywhere but Europe because no one played it outside of Europe. For the same reason, Filmation was not at the center of anything outside Europe. If Europe were the largest market at the time, a qualifier might not be necessary, but the U.S. and Japan were both larger. Implying global popularity for a local phenomenon distorts the accuracy of the article. Indrian (talk) 15:22, 3 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Indrian, I added some qualifiers to the Legacy section—do you think that does the trick, or do you recommend other sources? I was already using a piece from USgamer (American website) that read, "Knight Lore inspired console action-adventure games such as Solstice, Equinox, and the Landstalker series, but it resonated most with microcomputer fans, and inspired a flood of clones, cementing isometric viewpoint as a computer game staple." (note no British qualifier). Still, I revised the Legacy section to be incontrovertibly conservative on its extra-British influence, if you'll take a look. (I think we'll need sources if we're going to argue with Retro Gamer—a trusted source—that Ultimate and Filmation were not at the center/centre of the isometric graphics style.) It would be great to get a review of the rest of the article too, if you have a chance czar 19:45, 8 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to have an initial read-through now. I'll list some minor points first:

• The opening sentence "Knight Lore is a 1984 action-adventure game by Ultimate Play the Game known for popularising isometric graphics in video games" - I don't know if I'm prying too deep, but the latter half sounds like a run-on. How about Knight Lore is a 1984 action-adventure game by developed and published by Ultimate Play the Game, who were known for popularising isometric graphics in video games or rework that to something similar. I just go with the norm
• "It was written by company founders Chris and Tim Stamper in their Sabreman series" - the use of "in their" sounds abrupt here. How about It was written by company founders Chris and Tim Stamper and is the third game (or instalment) in the Sabreman series, although it was the first completed.. Also, 'Sabreman' needs to be italicised
• "Each castle room is depicted in monochrome" - link monochrome
• "could overlap other images without visual collision" - would it be right linking attribute clash here?
• "Knight Lore was released third in the Sabreman series despite being the first completed" - I think this sentence needs to be moved to the first paragraph, where I suggested that you rephrase "It was written by company founders Chris and Tim Stamper and is the third game...".
• "Ultimate released Knight Lore shortly after its first two Sabreman titles in November 1984" - needs italics
• "The game was later included in compilations including Rare's 2015 Xbox One retrospective compilation, Rare Replay" - I notice a plural here. Were there any other compilations? Could be worth mentioning They Sold a Million II here
• Make sure that all instances of "Spectrum" have the full name "ZX Spectrum", for consistency. For example there's a "has been included in multiple lists of top Spectrum games" in the lead, without the ZX prefix
• "They praised the game's controls and atmosphere of mystery" - mysterious atmosphere should be fine
• "and criticized its sound" - criticised (if you want to stay consistent)
• "And when the isometric, flick-screen style fell out of fashion" - this sounds informal. I'm not too keen on starting a sentence with an "and"
• "The game's only directions are given through a poem included with the game's cassette tape" - I couldn't find anything about directions in a poem in the given CVG source
• "The player often needs to move bricks to reach objects out of reach" - bricks or stone blocks?
• "the player must return 14 objects in a specific order from throughout the castle to a cauldron room in its centre staffed by the wizard Melkhior" - the cauldron room is in the centre of the castle? Also, a tweak is needed: the castle to a cauldron room in its centre, which is staffed by the wizard Melkhior
• "The game does not support leaderboards" - the Rare Replay version does ;-D

• I used the online transcript for checking. It's referred to as "Hall of Fame", so you could mention that it was cut due to lack of space, which is interesting

• "single-screen rooms ("flip-screen")" - the lead states "flick-screen"
• "Ultimate Play the Game, represented by its co-founding Stamper brothers" - I think it's best to introduce them as Chris and Tim Stamper
• If you want to get comprehensive, a brief background on Ultimate Play The Game would do nicely in the development section. I remember I put in a 'template' in Underwurlde which you can use, like a sentence or two should do it
• "While Knight Lore was released as the third game in the Sabreman series" - italics needed
• "they thought that Knight Lore's advancements—copyrighted as the Filmation engine" - link Filmation
• "would hurt sales of their upcoming Sabre Wulf" - wikilink the game
• "The Stampers used the extra time to prepare another Filmation game (Alien 8) so as to preempt the publishers that would rush to copy the technique" - I don't get this part, Ultimate Play The Game published it? Or is this referring to different publishers? Competitors who wanted to copy their engine?
• "Sabre Wulf released to commercial and critical success in 1984" - which month?
• The development section contains a fair amount of release info, so it seems fitting to rename the section to "Development and release"
• "Ultimate asked Shahid Ahmad, who developed the Knight Lore-inspired Chimera (1985), to write the Commodore 64 port" - I didn't know it was ported for the Commodore 64. This isn't mentioned anywhere else; lead or infobox
• "In 1986, the Famicom Disk System release of Knight Lore bore little resemblance to its namesake" - can this be more specific?
• "and the 2015 Xbox One compilation of 30 Ultimate and Rare titles Rare Replay" - comma needed between "titles" and "Rare"
• "Computer game magazines lauded Knight Lore" - sounds a bit odd. How about The game received positive reviews (or critical acclaim) from critics/reviewers/magazines/publications upon release
• "British magazine Retro Gamer described players' first impressions of Knight Lore" - no need
• "but Retro Gamer said that its gameplay was comparatively dull" - however
• "customizing each port for the processing limitations of its platform" - customising

That's all for now. I haven't gone through the sources yet, but when I do I'll post back some more comments. I feel that the gameplay section could be expanded somewhat, as it doesn't mention what type of enemies there are, what functions the items serve etc. I'll do some more checking when I get the time. I'm sorry if I went too deep, I'll offer whatever I can as this is a subject I have an interest in. JAGUAR  22:38, 9 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Jaguar, nice, thanks! I think I've addressed everything, if you'll take a look. To my best recollection, I don't remember the sources calling special attention to the type of enemies, but if you find parts you think need mention, we can discuss. I didn't italicize "Sabreman series" because I see it the series as about the character Sabreman (unitalicized as a name) and not the series of games by the italicized title Sabreman. I don't like the "despite being the first completed" construction in the first paragraph because I think it warrants more explanation (and thus fits better in the dev ¶). This lede already had a lot of (I think worthy) stuff trimmed out, so the non-independently notable second compilation didn't make the cut. Flip- and flick-screen are the same—I liked it the way it was, but unified it anyway. The CVG poem is in the bottom left of the page: "... your clue comes in the form of a poem printed on the cassette inlay ..." Spectrum and ZX Spectrum are used interchangeably in the sources, so I think it's fine to use the former when I've already established the latter once in the section. I wasn't sure on what authority Crash knew the leaderboard was cut for a lack of space so I thought it was best to exclude that detail. I also thought it was fine for the Stampers to not have names—I prefer not to give the extra detail when it isn't something the reader needs to remember. For the lede, it's fine (to give accurate credit) but the dev paragraph doesn't refer to them as individuals. No month listed for Sabre Wulf—let me know if you find it, but I remember the sources being imprecise. "Development" sufficiently covered the ¶, I think. "Release" is self-contained within the "Development" process. There is quite literally no coverage of the Famicom port, so nothing I can add that wouldn't be original research. It was mentioned in a single Retro Gamer caption with a screenshot—it just visually looked little like Knight Lore. I took most of the suggestions but the ones I didn't I thought were fine as is. I set up Retro Gamer as a "British magazine" to qualify the comments by Indrian above. czar 16:38, 13 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Google Scholar is throwing up some extra snippets.[2][3][4]

The full search is here, but I'm not sure if that BritSoft book would have anything. The article is comprehensive enough as it is. Thanks for clarifying the above, I'll start doing a source check. JAGUAR  23:37, 13 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I had seen 1001 and some of the others but I didn't think they added anything that wasn't already covered better elsewhere. Appreciate the searching czar 00:00, 14 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Jaguar, is there anything else that you think needs to be addressed? David did a source check so should be okay in that regard czar 15:33, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Reception:

• "Crash called it the Spectrum's best game and said it was unlikely to be improved." Does this mean they thought it was likely to be surpassed in quality (by other games)? If so, I would not use "improved" in this way.
• "but nevertheless named Knight Lore the Amstrad's among of the best three games on the console": I think some extra words must have been left in during an edit. Moisejp (talk) 04:14, 22 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Legacy:

• "Ultimate's last two isometric games were poorly executed, but consumer interest in the genre endured." Consider rewriting to make the opinion sound more objective (e.g., "were widely considered to be poorly executed" or "were described as poorly executed by XXX source). Moisejp (talk) 04:32, 22 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• "Sandy White of the pre-Knight Lore isometric game Ant Attack was impressed at Ultimate's in-game "balance" and gutsy design decisions." So White was a developer of Ant Attack? I'm not sure that "Sandy White OF Ant Attack" is the clearest way to express this.
• Here you have a nice list of titles that uses a clean parallel structure (i.e., dates in parentheses after each title): "Retro Gamer wrote that Knight Lore's influence persisted 30 years later through titles such as Populous (1989), Syndicate (1993), UFO: Enemy Unknown (1994), and Civilization II (1996)." It would be great to similarly use a parallel structure for this list: "Apart from Fairlight, Sweevo's World and Get Dexter, there was Jon Ritman's Knight Lore-inspired Batman (1986), 1987's Head over Heels, The Last Ninja, La Abadia del Crimen, the 1990 Cadaver and console games Solstice[17] and Landstalker (1992)." Moisejp (talk) 04:44, 22 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

More comments to follow. Moisejp (talk) 04:54, 22 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Moisejp, rephrased. Appreciate the review! czar 05:45, 22 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'll try to finish off this review in the next few days if possible. More comments:

• I'm a native speaker of English and consider myself reasonably learned, but I found the overall difficulty level of the vocabulary in this article to be quite high. Some of the following words or terms I more or less understand but still think they could possibly be difficult for some people, and other words I only understand somewhat or less: seminal (used twice), harbinger, taciturn, crepuscular, nascent, sea change. I can tell from your writing that you are a very intelligent person, and I'm sure these are all everyday terms for you. But people reading the article may be of different education levels, and others won't necessarily be native speakers of English. I'm not asking you to "dumb down" the content, but I think if some of these terms were replaced with easier turns of phrases, it would increase the overall accessibility of the article. Moisejp (talk) 02:31, 27 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Development:

• "Ultimate did not circulate screenshots of the game in its press materials or cover art." I imagine this was a marketing ploy of some kind, but does the source give information about the specific reason?
• "The Amstrad version upgraded the monochromatic colouring to a two-colour setup[6] while the MSX release was released through Jaleco." Is there any way to avoid "release" - "released" in such close proximity? Does "was distributed by Jaleco" work? Or "put out by Jaleco". Or "the MSX software/game was released"? Moisejp (talk) 03:03, 27 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• "In 1986, the Famicom Disk System Knight Lore release by Jaleco[16] bore little resemblance to its namesake." If the information is available, it could be interesting to know some of the ways the Famicom version was different. (By the way, as a whole, "bore little resemblance to its namesake" could also be a difficult-ish turn of phrase for some readers. I'm not saying I'm necessarily requesting you to change this one, I'm just saying combined with the other difficult phrases, it contributes to the overall relative difficulty of the article.) Moisejp (talk) 03:12, 27 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Reception:

• (Minor comment) "Peter Sweasey of Home Computing Weekly was left speechless and predicted that Knight Lore would change the market." "Left speechless" is quite strong, and is a bit colloquial. The reader may wonder whether Carroll is quoting Sweasey, who said, "I was left speechless", or whether that was Carroll's possibly subjective interpretation, or possibly the Wikipedia article's author's interpretation. Probably the former scenario, I imagine, but you clarify this by saying something like "Martyn Carroll of Retro Gamer magazine quotes Home Computing Weekly's Peter Sweasey as having been left 'speechless'..." (or without the quotation marks if Carroll is paraphrasing Sweasey)—or something like that. Moisejp (talk) 04:35, 27 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Legacy:

• "While Ultimate's last two isometric games were of lesser quality, consumer interest in the genre endured." Was that Carroll's opinion that they were of lesser quality? It could be worthwhile to clarify who says this. Moisejp (talk) 06:17, 27 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think that is all of my comments. Moisejp (talk) 06:36, 27 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Moisejp, thanks so much! I think I got it all, if you'll take a look. I went to see about those rough vocab sections (particularly "crepuscular") and... thought it might be best the way it is. I don't want this to be tough reading, but I also would think that the vocab isn't too much of a stretch past New York Times-level for the WP:FACR's "brilliant prose" quota. Open to other opinions on this, though: @Indrian, Hahnchen, J Milburn, Jaguar, and David Fuchs. There's no straightforward explanation for why the company was cryptic, though I think there are guesses, but either way I imagine that would be likely out of the scope of this article. The Sweasey quote is, "words fail me when trying to describe it", so I thought "speechless" would be an apt paraphrase. Re: lesser quality—it is a statement of fact rather than opinion. czar 01:22, 28 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Czar, I don't really understand how you can say "lesser quality" is a fact rather than opinion. Couldn't there conceivably be some people out there who liked Ultimate's last two games best of all? Moisejp (talk) 02:31, 28 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Insofar as all quality assessments are subjective, Ultimate did not spend the time/resources/polish on the last two games—the source isn't saying that they're better/worse from a reviewer's point of view. I would rephrase to be as explicit as I just was, but it isn't said like that in the source. czar 19:39, 28 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Moisejp, thanks again for the review. Are there any outstanding points that keep you from supporting the nomination? czar 15:33, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm very close to supporting, just noting a few other little things in my re-read-through just now.
Reception:

• In the second paragraph, for the Crash review, you refer to "They... their reviewer... they". It struck me as odd, because on one hand this treats it as a collective review, but on the other it is attributed to a single reviewer.
• In the same paragraph, possibly consider reorganizing the points so that the two mentions of its particular difficulty (Crash's and Your Spectrum's) are together?
• In the fourth paragraph, if you switched the first and second sentences, possibly this would help the flow slightly in that it would be referring to Signor - Gillen - Gillen, instead of Gillen - Signor - Gillen? (I'm not totally sure either way—feel free to ignore this if you don't think so.)
• Do the first two sentences of the fourth paragraph belong in the first paragraph of the Legacy section? It's not clear to me what the distinction is between the praise in the "retrospective reviews" and the praise in the first paragraph of the Legacy section.
  

Legacy:

• Wiki-link Atari? For consistency with the other video game systems wiki-linked earlier in the article.
• "The developer of The Great Escape, another isometric game, considered Knight Lore... " Just confirming, the developer's name is not given in the source? Moisejp (talk) 05:29, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Since David Fuchs has already done a check of the sources, these are all of my comments. Thanks. Moisejp (talk) 05:33, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Czar: I finished my comments a while back but didn't ping you at the time. I wasn't sure if you were waiting for my ping and didn't see these. In any case, they are done whenever you have time to look at them. :-) Cheers, Moisejp (talk) 22:30, 10 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Moisejp, I must have missed it—thanks for the ping. I didn't combine the two difficulty comments because they were different in scope (some rooms vs. the whole game). I think Gillen - Signor - Gillen flows better with the ideas, even while the other way works better for keeping the subject. I think retrospective reviews often combine Reception and Legacy but I moved it to the latter in this case. Not sure offhand if the dev of The Great Escape was mentioned by name but I think the point is that their expertise was on the basis that they developed that game. (If the dev was independently notable by name, I would have used and wikilinked it.) czar 22:46, 10 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry it took me so long to come back to this. The article is well-written, and I anticipate supporting in short order. Just a few comments:

• "written by company founders Chris and Tim Stamper in their Sabreman series" - Reads a little awkwardly. Perhaps "as part of their Sabreman series"
• "which computers of the time did not naturally support" - I'm not up on the tech enough to know the answer to this one, but were there really no microcomputers that could support depth priority, or was it just the Speccy (and perhaps the other British micros) that could not support it?
• " Ultimate released the original Sabreman trilogy in quick succession in 1984 for the ZX Spectrum. Knight Lore was last, in November." - I think these sentences could be joined, something like " Ultimate released the original Sabreman trilogy in quick succession in 1984 for the ZX Spectrum, with Knight Lore coming last in November."
• I know we want to avoid game guide material, hence the short "Gameplay" section, but is there possibly a way to briefly convey what kind of puzzles the player has to solve?
• "The game does not support leaderboards" - This sentence seems unnecessary; I think it is best to stick with what features are in the game rather than those that are not.
• " infamously taciturn" - While I understand the sentiment, "infamously" seems a bit over the top for an encyclopedia article.
  • The use of "infamously" is still a problem. "Infamous" means being well known for a bad quality or deed. The press may not have liked the fact that Ultimate staff refused to talk with them, but that hardly makes them evil. It's over the top for an encyclopedia article.
• "a computing limitation wherein one sprite's colour bled into another" - Getting a little technical here, but the Spectrum did not support sprites even if characters in the game may have been referred to as such in the gaming press for convenience. Attribute clash in the Spectrum occurred because the bitmapped screen was divided into cells, each of which could only contain one foreground and one background color. Attribute clash occurred when an object moved between two cells that were set to display different colors.
  • Your change on attribute clash missed the point slightly: The colors of the objects do not bleed into each other; the color of objects changes when they move between cells on the screen. The "objects" are not sprites, so they do not have attributes like color defined separately from the portion of the screen they occupy.
• "Knight Lore was the best selling game in the United Kingdom that month" - All video game sales figures throughout the history of the medium have been compiled through estimates, as the publishers have never released complete internal sales figures for their games. Therefore, its important to give the source for such statements (e.g. "according to Crash, Knight Lore was the best selling game in the United Kingdom that month.")
  • Again, who's all-format charts? These charts are not based on direct reports from the companies selling the games, so its important to know which organization is claiming these sales since they are merely estimates.
• "brothers sought to enter the nascent console industry" - A little nitpicky, but consoles were nothing new in the mid-1980s even if they were never big in the UK until the early 1990s. "Nascent NES market" would work since the Famicom was just being released internationally at the time.
• "The developer of The Great Escape" - Is there a reason we are not addressing John Gibson by name when we have been naming all the other developers in the article?
  • Normally, I would not care either way except that it's really awkward to identify the quote as coming from "the developer of The Great Escape." Quotes should be attributed with specificity to avoid confusion.

That's it; these should be fairly straight forward to address. Indrian (talk) 21:06, 11 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Indrian, thanks for the review! I think I fixed everything, if you'll take a look. On the history of depth priority, I couldn't find a definitive source, but p. 22 of Carroll said that it was totally new to avoid clashing sprites in this way. Whether that was British or worldwide, I do not know, so I rephrased to refer to the singular computer rather than all. If you want to rephrase or find another source, let me know what you think. I like the "quick succession" better as two sentences so as not to overload the first, if that isn't a dealbreaker. "infamously taciturn" would be appropriate weight, no? It sets up most of the section's expectations. The quote on the charts is, "Knight Lore unsurprisingly topped the UK all-format charts in January 1985 ..."—wouldn't that indicate a kind of corroboration, rather than needing to be couched by the source? I've tried to only name developer names when the person is independently notable (otherwise I don't think it does the reader justice to track yet another entity). czar 16:50, 12 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Indrian, ping czar 00:11, 16 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Czar:Most of my concerns have been met, but there are still a couple of points, which I have annotated above. Indrian (talk) 19:21, 16 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Indrian, thanks! I included the quote on the all-format charts in my response above—the magazine did not specify the origins of the "UK all-format charts". I can send a copy if you'd like. I don't think the Great Escape quote is awkward (it's more awkward to name a non-notable person whose name won't come up again)—what's important is that this quote comes from this figure in their capacity of making a similar game. czar 22:21, 16 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Czar:Nearly there. I disagree on Gibson, but I am not going to withhold support over it. The sales figure thing is still a bit of an issue. I have the magazine in question. Retro Gamer is great for its interviews, but they get sloppy else wise sometimes. They really should have provided the source of that info (though they may have just assumed their core readership would not require an explanation). The magazines of the period (Crash, CVG, etc.) are largely available through the Internet Archive, so perhaps something can be unearthed there. If not, I suppose I will reluctantly accept the current source, but I would appreciate the effort to clarify. Indrian (talk) 00:03, 17 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Indrian, here's Crash for January and February—no sales charts, no dice. And here's the January CVG, but I don't see charts. I understand why you'd prefer the specificity, but I think that Retro Gamer is reputable enough that we can acclaim their claim without the caveat. czar 00:21, 17 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]