(WARNING: Venting article again)
So I just learned that Ziff Davis, the guys who own IGN, are shutting down subdivisories Gamespy, 1up and UGO.
Worried about the potential for a lot of old internet articles to vanish forever, I decided to try seeing what I could archive.
Unfortunately for me I decided to try searching “Satellaview” first. I ended up with An early example of stupid erronous internet journalism on the Satellaview.
There’s loads of people who now mis-attribute the Satellaview to Bandai, and while it’s one thing in the early era of ROMs with a bunch of kids on the internet trying to understand a new alien concept for them, the fact that IGN and it’s kin allowed this stuff to be published on their sites without fact checks makes this, well, simply inexcusable.
Among other examples of really sloppy journalism in Satellaview research in the early days included:
1) Blindly using GoodSNES naming schemes on official, professional publications, thus blatently exposing yourself as a ROM kiddy. This is frequent in IGN searches and GameFAQs, although since the latter’s not meant to be a journalism site it’s kind of excused. The worst example of this is the frequent use of “Kodai no Sekiban”, a term for “Inishie no Sekiban” that was used before actual Soundlink audio was distributed on the internet. Again, while it’s understandable for common internet folks, I would like to remind everyone that I’m commenting on the behaviours of people who are supposed to be professional, paid journalists, basically being unable to fact-check this sort of stuff.
2) Hyperbolic, unrealistic ideas of what was released on the device, such as Donkey Kong Country, a game that’s too large for a 8M Pack. Unfortunately this started even before the Satellaview was actually released in various print magazines, so I can’t blame the internet for that.
3) Not really grasping the whole “Soundlink” concept – the NicoNicoDouga videos were basically the first anyone outside of Japan even saw it. There’s loads of old BS Zelda articles, but few of them went into detail about it. It’s strange, since it was such a key feature of the program.
4) Nintendo Power’s ffff-ing false hype for GamePak versions of key Satellaview games. Ok, sorry, I’m just venting here.
5) Touting screenshots from ROM hacks and presenting them as the originals. Loads of BS Zelda articles are guilty of this.
6) Somehow grossly getting St.GIGA’s name wrong.
Hopefully I don’t have to dig up more of that.
It’s kinda sad when you consider that sometimes these same sites also have kinda useful, slightly more professional press articles. What’s up with that?
Ahh, my e-head is spinning…
