Talk:RealSports Baseball

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:14, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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• ... that the Atari 2600 version of RealSports Baseball received a "certificate of merit" in the "Best Sports Videogame" category at the 1984 Arkie Awards, while the 5200 version received one at the 1985 Arkie Awards? 1984 award can be seen here a p.72, 1985 award can be seen here at p.28

• Comment: This is my first DYK nom, please be gentle!

Created by FOARP (talk). Self-nominated at 19:11, 28 February 2021 (UTC).

•  In progress I've read through and will submit a review.—Bagumba (talk) 03:30, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook eligibility:

• Cited:
• Interesting: - no

QPQ: None required.

Overall: Nice, nostalgic read. For the hook, there are more interesting options than a "certificate of merit", which appears to be the equivalent of an honorable mention. Suggestions include (but are not limited to) the game being a response to Intellivision or an upgarde to Home Run. —Bagumba (talk) 03:48, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

• ALT1:... that RealSports Baseball was a response to an aggressive Intellivision marketing campaign fronted by George Plimpton? See p.46 here and Intellivision advert here
• ALT2:... that RealSports Baseball was released with a number of bugs? See p.97 here
• ALT3:... that RealSports Baseball was an upgrade on Atari's "primitive" 1978 game Home Run? Weiss at p. 97 again
  • Thanks for the helpful feedback Bagumba, I've put three alternate hooks up - any of these hooky enough? FOARP (talk) 08:15, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

    @FOARP: ALT1 is promising. I'd suggest also expanding that hook to include (from the same source) that it won best sports game awards in 1983 and 1984. You will also need to update the article to reflect what's in the hook.—Bagumba (talk) 09:24, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

    • ALT1a:... that RealSports Baseball was a response to an aggressive Intellivision marketing campaign fronted by George Plimpton, and won Best Sports Game awards in 1983 from Video Game Update and in 1984 from Electronic Game Player? See p.46 here and Intellivision advert here

sufficiently hookified? FOARP (talk) 09:46, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

@FOARP: Almost there. There's a 200 character limit, so I'd suggest removing the specific publications from the hook (they still need to be added and sourced in the article). Atari should be in the hook (e.g. "that RealSports Baseball, Atari's response to ...) Remove "aggressive" from the hook (if not the article too). The Main Page draws more WP:NPOV / WP:OR scrutiny, and it would need more sources to meet WP:DUE.—Bagumba (talk) 10:32, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

* ALT1b:... that RealSports Baseball was Atari's response to an Intellivision marketing campaign fronted by George Plimpton, and won an award for best sports game awards in 1983? See p.46 here and Intellivision advert here

Hmm... having problems verifying that second best sports game award as it's not clear what magazine is being referred to, VGU renamed itself Computer Entertainer so it's already mentioned in the article. Better keep it to 1983. FOARP (talk) 14:06, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

@FOARP: From the source, it was an award for 1983 that was published in a 1984 issue. It's debatable for the hook to say it was won in 1983, "for 1983" seems more accurate. Also, the year is unclear in the current WP article prose. For hook 1b, "award" and "awards" is repetitive. Finally, the name of the publication from the source's first page is strangely "The Video Game Update includes Video Entertainer". On p.159, it reads "All awards are at the sole discretion of "THE VIDEO GAME UPDATE ..." Not directly related to the hook, but perhaps it was still more known as Video Game Update at the time of the award.—Bagumba (talk) 11:54, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Many thanks for the feedback and apologies for putting you through all these revisions. I'll update the article to note that CE was also known as VGU and clarify the year of award in the prose. Hook updated per your comments -

• ALT1c:... that RealSports Baseball was Atari's response to an Intellivision marketing campaign fronted by George Plimpton, and won a best sports game award for 1983? See p.46 here and Intellivision advert here

• ALT4 ... that RealSports Baseball, part of Atari's response to an Intellivision marketing campaign fronted by George Plimpton, won a best sports game award for 1983?

  @FOARP: I copyedited to ALT4. Baseball was just one game in the series, so I added "part". Also, the award seems to get lost as a compound sentence, so I changed it to a parenthetical. If there are any concerns, feel free to suggest another blurb.—Bagumba (talk) 15:53, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

@Bagumba: Looks great to me. Apologies over the number of revisions this has been through. FOARP (talk) 15:57, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Joseph Tung

Joseph Tung is credited on multiple websites (e.g., Moby Games) as the original designer of this game. However there is no reliable source for this. I see Joseph Tung is the author of a self-published book called "Cloning Jesus" that contains the claim that he designed RealSports Baseball. I think it quite likely that Tung himself is the source of the claim and that this claim has made it onto multiple websites through a form of citogenesis. Tung also claims to have developed Galaxian, which seems unlikely - this was a Namco game.

There is no record that I could find of a Joseph Tung having worked for Atari at the relevant time. There is a Joseph Tung who worked on Halo:Reach, but he appears too young to have been developing games in the early 1980s. There is also a Joseph Tung who worked at IBM and in 1981 went on to found Rotating Memory Systems, but this is obviously not the person who developed RealSports Baseball in 1982. Retro Gamer UK credits Keithen Hayenga as the progenitor of this game but the quote from him is unclear as to whether he actually designed the 2600 version or just finished the 5200 version.

TL;DR - there is no reliable source saying Tung designed this game and as such I'm striking this claim. Based on this interview it seems likely that Andreason probably designed the 2600 version but without a source explicitly saying so we'll have to leave this point open. FOARP (talk) 17:56, 3 March 2021 (UTC)