Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Reference library/Next Generation Magazine

Collection

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There is one NG collection which I think there is a link to every issue on the page, but there is another collection where not every issue is linked on the page: https://archive.org/details/nextgeneration I will try to link to them at some point in the future when I have the time. BOZ (talk) 22:05, 11 August 2018 (UTC)Reply

Awesome! I recently became aware of this secondary collection myself a week or two ago, but wasn't entirely sure how to proceed with that knowledge. This sounds like a great plan—thanks for all the hard work. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 22:43, 11 August 2018 (UTC)Reply
No problem - I don't mind starting a bunch of little stubs, they can always be expanded by people more interested than me. :) I actually have a little time, so I will add those links now. BOZ (talk) 01:08, 12 August 2018 (UTC)Reply

OK, I finally completed issues 1-16, at least insofar as making such that every link to every game review was pointing to a game. :) Issues #17-19 are the first of several which do not have links to archive.org yet, so if archived copies of those issues can be located I will pick up there next time I can work on this, otherwise I will just start with #20 and continue from there, and swing back in the future if archived copies are located later. BOZ (talk) 05:56, 27 August 2018 (UTC)Reply

I have fully gone through all of the games in the review sections for the first 16 issues of NG, and made sure that each link on this index points to the right game (hopefully) and that each such article has each review from each issue cited at least once. Many of them were already cited to NG, thanks to Martin IIIa, KGRAMR, and other people, but I have added quite a few of the reviews to the remaining articles; several games had three or more reviews from NG on different platforms! As part of doing that ever since this April, I have added dozens of new articles, in most cases creating stubs from scratch, but plenty of times also splitting articles from parent/series articles, building new articles from old redirects, and restoring deleted or redirected articles. Many of the articles I created cite (or at least indicate) reviews from other sources, and I am sure we will find sources for most of the rest of them before long. These are the (mostly) new articles I (re)created this year as part of this project:

If anyone ever finds links to NG issues #17-19 archived online, I would be happy to circle back around and work on those too! Meanwhile, failing that, sometime later this week I will pick back up at issue #20.  :) BOZ (talk) 02:11, 19 September 2018 (UTC)Reply

@BOZ: Ahem... :)

There'ya go man :D Also, can anybody try to expand this: WikiProject Video games/Reference library/GameFan as all the issues of GameFan are available online right now by searching this way at archive.org: GameFan Vol X (1-8) Do The Math (talk) 02:20, 19 September 2018 (UTC)Reply

Ah, sweet, thank you! :) I will start on those in the not-too-distant future! BOZ (talk) 04:19, 19 September 2018 (UTC)Reply
KGRAMR, thanks again, I have already started putting them to use. :) BOZ (talk) 03:28, 20 September 2018 (UTC)Reply

Got a few more articles out of those three issues, and I will pick back up on issue #20 after a short break. :) BOZ (talk) 18:29, 21 September 2018 (UTC)Reply

I did these back in September and forgot to include them here! BOZ (talk) 14:05, 16 November 2018 (UTC)Reply

Hey KGRAMR, thanks for finding those missing issues above. If you find some of the other gaps that I'm missing - issues #26, 31, 49, 53 - then I will be able to work on those as well. :) BOZ (talk) 05:52, 25 December 2018 (UTC)Reply

@BOZ:You speak and your words might be heard quicker than you think...Roberth Martinez (talk) 17:41, 1 January 2019 (UTC)Reply
Thank you kindly, hope you've had a happy New Year thus far, however many hours of it you've had. ;) BOZ (talk) 19:40, 1 January 2019 (UTC)Reply
KGRAMR, I put them to work right away and started a few new articles. :) BOZ (talk) 02:14, 2 January 2019 (UTC)Reply

Vol 2:

Vol 3:

Vol 4:

Vol 5:

  • 2): None

Format for review lists

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Having thus far gone through the first 16 issues, I must say that the lists of reviews are a bit of a mess. For one thing, take a look at how it was before I started - there was a lot of redlinks there that should have been pointing at existing articles, not to mention all the other links that I have fixed aside from those. That said, the current version is still a bit of a mess that lacks consistency. A few things I have noticed are that it can be hard (or impossible) to tell which game system was being reviewed in which issue, especially since several games had several reviews in several issues on several platforms. Often enough the name of the game on the list page was different from how it was listed in the magazine, and both were different from the actual name of the game in the article; I think we should link to the correct name, but give the name in the list the same way as it is presented in the magazine. Another thing is that games beginning with "the" are sometimes - but not always - listed alphabetically under "T" - I think they should never be listed alphabetically using the word "The". Now, take a look at the way issue #6 is listed, and notice how that is different than all the other issues. I haven't checked, but I think it may be listed with the reviews presented in the same order as they are in the magazine, and they are listed by system, just like in the magazine. I think this is how the whole list should be organized. If there are no objections, I would like to start reorganizing it this later this week. BOZ (talk) 03:20, 28 August 2018 (UTC)Reply

Hey! I feel like whatever you prefer will work, since most people will probably be CTRL-F searching the page or using the WPVG/RL search engine anyway. My only suggestion is that we make the page titles match Wikipedia's article names wherever possible, since people trying to find sources through the search engine risk getting thrown off by unusual formatting. Thanks for all the hard work! JimmyBlackwing (talk) 05:18, 28 August 2018 (UTC)Reply
How does the search engine work, and/or where would I find it? BOZ (talk) 11:31, 28 August 2018 (UTC)Reply
It's near the top of WP:VG/RL—this is always my first choice for digging through the RL, since it's so much faster than manually searching. Either way, hope the reorganization goes smoothly! JimmyBlackwing (talk) 18:17, 28 August 2018 (UTC)Reply
Reorganization looks great! It'll be much easier to find Next Gen's reviews of games' various SKUs now, which has been a recurring problem for me. Well done! JimmyBlackwing (talk) 01:12, 29 August 2018 (UTC)Reply
Thank you! Well, I did what I did not do on my initial run-through, and made sure that every article in the list had at least the stars and a brief bit from the review - and that took at lot longer than I expected, since most of them had nothing from the first issue! Wow, I doubt I will be trying to do that much in one sitting again any time soon, but glad I did that much. :) BOZ (talk) 03:50, 29 August 2018 (UTC)Reply

top videogames of all time lists

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Although Next Generation's top 100 videogames of all time from issue #21 was rightly deleted as an article, I think we can fairly include the bare list here on the talk page? Anyway, I am recreating it here for now, because I am going to go through it one by one to make sure we include it in each article as appropriate. :)

There was a similarly deleted Next Generation's top 50 videogames of all time list from the February 1999 issue that I will also have to go back and check on once I am done with these 100. :) I might just create some of these articles if necessary, but I suspect that the significant majority of them (if not all of them) already exist, so we'll see! BOZ (talk) 13:22, 23 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

top 100

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  1. Super Mario 64
  2. Tetris
  3. Super Bomberman 2
  4. Civilization series
  5. Mario series (presuming Super Mario 64 was excluded from that list)
  6. Virtua Fighter 2
  7. Street Fighter II series
  8. Lemmings
  9. Quake
  10. Warcraft II
  11. Virtua Racing
  12. Ms. Pac-Man
  13. Defender
  14. Elite
  15. Marble Madness
  16. Populous series
  17. Final Fantasy series
  18. Micro Machines
  19. Doom series
  20. Sonic the Hedgehog series
  21. Daytona USA
  22. Tekken 2
  23. X-Wing/TIE Fighter
  24. The Lurking Horror
  25. NiGHTS into Dreams...
  26. X-COM: UFO Defense
  27. Sam & Max Hit the Road
  28. NFL Gameday
  29. Syndicate
  30. Madden NFL series
  31. Herzog Zwei
  32. Wipeout XL
  33. SimCity 2000
  34. Nobunaga's Ambition
  35. Duke Nukem 3D
  36. Rescue Raiders (a.k.a. Armor Alley)
  37. Super Mario Kart
  38. Zork series
  39. Asteroids
  40. NHL Powerplay
  41. Snake
  42. EF2000
  43. Rolling Thunder
  44. Spectre VR
  45. Out Run
  46. Formula One Grand Prix 2
  47. Worldwide Soccer 2
  48. World Series Baseball
  49. Command & Conquer
  50. Donkey Kong
  51. Panzer General
  52. Spaceward, Ho!
  53. The Sentinel
  54. MechWarrior 2
  55. Ultima series
  56. Dragon Warrior series
  57. Sega Rally Championship
  58. Star Wars
  59. Super Sprint
  60. Wizardry series
  61. Ikari Warriors
  62. Bard's Tale series
  63. Robotron: 2084
  64. The Legend of Zelda series
  65. Bump 'n' Jump
  66. A Mind Forever Voyaging
  67. F/A-18 Hornet 2.0
  68. PONG
  69. Links
  70. Metroid series
  71. FIFA Soccer
  72. Phantasy Star series
  73. AH64-D Longbow
  74. Tempest
  75. Balance of Power
  76. NBA Live '96
  77. Shining Force series
  78. Track & Field series
  79. King's Quest series
  80. Falcon Gold
  81. River Raid
  82. Virtua Cop series
  83. Joust
  84. Centipede
  85. Leisure Suit Larry series
  86. Jumping Flash!
  87. Discs of Tron
  88. Knight Lore
  89. Summer Games, Winter Games and California Games
  90. Xevious
  91. Resident Evil
  92. Hard Hat Mack
  93. Burning Force
  94. Rave Racer
  95. Strike series
  96. Galaga
  97. Space Invaders
  98. R-Type
  99. NBA Jam series
  100. Trinity

I will copy the links to Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Reference library/Top video games lists/38 when I'm done. :) BOZ (talk) 14:37, 23 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

OK, got through the whole list! :) Most of these were already in the articles, but I did add it to several, and started articles for F/A-18 Hornet 2.0 and World Series Baseball (Saturn), and fixed all of the links above to point to the right articles. :) I will probably do the later top-50 list tomorrow. BOZ (talk) 16:19, 23 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

top 50

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I'm starting to go through the second list now. :) BOZ (talk) 12:49, 24 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

  1. The Legend of Zelda series
  2. Tetris
  3. Mario series (including Super Mario 64 that was listed separately at #1 in the previous list)
  4. Civilization (I & II)
  5. Quake II
  6. Metroid series
  7. Super Mario Kart
  8. Virtua Fighter series
  9. Street Fighter II series
  10. Goldeneye 007
  11. Ridge Racer series
  12. Tekken series
  13. Resident Evil series
  14. Half-Life
  15. Gran Turismo
  16. Final Fantasy series
  17. Galaga
  18. Ultima series
  19. Sega Rally Championship
  20. Wave Race 64
  21. Robotron: 2084
  22. Tomb Raider
  23. Defender
  24. Star Wars
  25. Doom series
  26. Grim Fandango
  27. Metal Gear Solid
  28. Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II
  29. Asteroids
  30. Super Bomberman 2
  31. Heroes of Might and Magic series
  32. Warcraft/StarCraft series (with StarCraft considered as a spiritual sequel to the Warcraft series)
  33. NFL Blitz '99
  34. PONG
  35. The Lurking Horror
  36. PaRappa the Rapper
  37. X-COM: UFO Defense
  38. Battlezone
  39. Herzog Zwei
  40. NHL '99
  41. Ms. Pac-Man
  42. Sonic the Hedgehog (I, II, & III)
  43. NFL Gameday series
  44. Populous
  45. Sam & Max Hit the Road
  46. Star Control II
  47. Grand Prix Legends
  48. Zork series
  49. Total Annihilation
  50. International Superstar Soccer '98

OK, finally done with this list! Unlike the other list where I created two new articles, on this one I brought NFL Blitz '99 back from the dead. The chief difference between these two lists is that I got through the first one relatively quickly because most of the entries had already been added to the articles. Conversely, with the top 50 list, most of them had not already been added, so it took a long time and several passes to finally get them all on. Glad that I did it, though! :) BOZ (talk) 17:50, 25 May 2020 (UTC)Reply