Talk:Fangamer

Delete this article

This talk page proposal has already been settled. Please do not edit any of the sections in the proposal. If you wish to discuss the article, do so in a new header below the proposal.

keep 4-12
The only reason for this article's existence is mainly because Fangamer made merchandise for RareRacers, a brand inspired by Diddy Kong Racing. And... that's pretty much it. Nothing about the brand has any Donkey Kong or Super Mario branding whatsoever. Yes, Diddy Kong Racing was branded as a kart racer featuring Diddy Kong. However, this particular brand avoids any Donkey Kong references in favor of Rare's original characters who are now far removed from the original brand. We don't have articles for Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie, just because Tiptup appeared in those games. I do think it's worth mentioning in Diddy Kong Racing''s article, but that's about it.

Proposer: TheUndescribableGhost (talk)
Deadline: August 31, 2024, 23:59 GMT

Support

1. TheUndescribableGhost (talk) Per proposal
2. Super Mario RPG (talk) There's Diddy Kong then there's the Microsoft-owned cast of Diddy Kong Racing. Per proposer.
3. DrippingYellow (talk) Maybe I'm being a contrarian here, but given that the pins in question notably lack any direct mentions of Diddy Kong Racing itself (not to mention not being licensed by Nintendo to our knowledge, a crucial qualifier for something Mario-adjacent earning an article on here), I feel like this is enough to disqualify it from being considered official DKR merchandise per se. A good example of the wiki's already-established stance on these sorts of grey-area products is Kinoppe: despite originating from an official Mario manga, we don't cover her author-published, technically legal, spin-off manga in any capacity.
   So, to answer Arend's hypothetical in the comments: no, if there was a "Super RPG Pals" plush set with Mallow and Geno, and Nintendo didn't own the rights to those characters and weren't involved in licensing, then we wouldn't cover it. Rare Racers is to Diddy Kong Racing what Lara-Sue Chronicles is to the Archie Sonic comics.
4. SeanWheeler (talk) The only Diddy Kong Racing characters besides Banjo and Conker that I see on this page is Timber and Wizpig. It's a list with only five items, two of which are characters fully covered while the other three are just Banjo and Conker. I think Timber and Wizpig's Fangamer merchandise could be added to their pages.

Oppose

1. Hewer (talk) Articles for merchandise brands are valid, and the Diddy Kong Racing characters (besides Banjo and Conker) aren't really "far removed from the original brand". They were created for and used in Diddy Kong Racing, a game we fully cover, so it makes sense to cover its merchandise. EDIT: I'm also open to the idea of covering the Kinoppe manga brought up by DrippingYellow.
2. Pseudo (talk) Per Hewer.
3. Mario (talk) Per Hewer. The article is primarily focused on Diddy Kong Racing (not necessarily just Rare characters), a game we do extensively cover in the wiki so it's not too far off we cover brands that deal with Diddy Kong Racing merchandise.
4. Arend (talk) Per all, also see comments.
5. Camwoodstock (talk) Per Hewer. Diddy Kong Racing is under our coverage just fine, ergo, it makes sense to cover merchandise for it.
6. JanMisali (talk) Per all.
7. Ray Trace (talk) Per Hewer
8. Metalex123 (talk) I think we should keep the article. Sure the Diddy Kong Racing characters (minus Diddy and Krunch) are all fully-owned by Rare (and Microsoft), but it still gets full coverage on the wiki, since it is a game in the Donkey Kong franchise, using the name of a Nintendo-owned character in the title. "Rare Racers" is mostly just a marketing name used for that merch brand, since they can't really use "Diddy Kong Racing" for very obvious reasons. The merchandise was clearly inspired by Diddy Kong Racing. If these characters were to reappear in an actual "Rare Racers" reboot game, however, then it would be a different discussion, like how Tiptup, Banjo, and Conker all first appeared in Diddy Kong Racing, but only get full coverage on their appearance in Diddy Kong Racing, not full coverage on the Banjo-Kazooie and Conker series, since those are unrelated to the Donkey Kong/Mario franchises. Per all.
9. Sdman213 (talk) Per all.
10. Starluxe (talk) Per all.
11. ThePowerPlayer (talk) Per all; also, given the pose of the characters, the side perspective of the kart, and the art style of solid colors and black outlines, the pin designs are very likely to have been directly inspired by the stamps seen in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (compare this with this), which creates another connection to a racing game from the Super Mario franchise.
12. Pizza Master (talk) Per Hewer.

Comments

Okay, so imagine, if you will, Fangamer got the rights from Square-Enix to make, say, a Geno plush, maybe a Mallow one too. Both as part of a Square-Enix collection. And these are the only two plushes they make outside of other original Square-Enix-owned characters because they need the rights from Nintendo for the Mario characters in Super Mario RPG; they can do Geno and Mallow just fine because those are owned by Square-Enix. Would one still think this page needs to be deleted because Square-Enix owns the characters and are """far removed from the Mario brand""", or is the page allowed to stay because Super Mario RPG is basically the ONLY game these two appear in?
You see, I feel like the Diddy Kong Racing cast is in a similar boat. Sure, it started out as a Pro-Am kart racer but then has Diddy plopped in for marketing, so one could say it's generally less attached because of this origin, but at the same time, we don't see any of the characters in any other Rare game. Timber is pretty much exclusive to Diddy Kong Racing, and so is Pipsy, and Drumstick, and Taj, and Wizpig. Hell, Krunch became a Kremling due to the rebrand! I think Tiptup and maybe T.T. are the only ones that made a cameo outside of Diddy Kong Racing. Point is, we all associate these characters with Diddy Kong Racing the same way we associate Geno and Mallow with Super Mario RPG, because that's the only games they respectively appear in, despite the fact that Nintendo owns none of those characters. And that's why I suppose covering Fangamer would be fine. (To be honest though, I was actually kinda surprised at first that Fangamer was allowed to make merch of the DKR cast with only Rare's permission) rend (talk) (edits) 17:33, August 17, 2024 (EDT)

My reason for this proposal is mainly because I get the impression that modern Diddy Kong Racing is slowly phasing out the Donkey Kong elements. Like, if there is a successor that uses the same characters, I can imagine how it could get controversial in terms on coverage on this wiki. On that example for the hypothetical Geno and Mallow thing, Geno and Mallow (from my knowledge) have yet to appear outside of the Super Mario franchise, while this particular brand "reboots" it if you will. I guess we never considered that idea. TheUndescribableGhost (talk) 21:07, August 18, 2024 (EDT)

I don't think it really matters whether the characters are made for/associated with a Mario franchise game. If Nintendo loses the rights to them, and they are used in a context with all Mario references scrubbed out, without Nintendo's apparent involvement, then we don't give it an article, plain as that. Mention it in the characters' articles, sure, but how can we treat it as official merch for a game and give it full coverage when the branding of the game was actively replaced? DrippingYellow (talk) 13:47, August 19, 2024 (EDT)

@Metalex123 What, does the "marketing name" matter less than an "actual" name? How does it not contribute to the un-Diddyfication of this merch brand? We don't have articles for anything else featuring Diddy Kong Racing assets or characters when they're not Mario-related, including Jet Force Gemini, which has the full Greenwood Village track as a playable racing stage even in the Xbox rerelease, not to mention the multiple games that Tiptup has appeared/been referenced in.

@ThePowerPlayer How does the look of the artwork being a reference to Mario Kart make it any more "officially" Mario-related? I know a lot of bootleg merch that could get an article by this logic...

I'll die on this hill, by the way. This article simply seems too obvious of an inconsistency to have lying around. 10 people voting oppose and then immediately abandoning discussion won't sway my mind on that. DrippingYellow (talk) 17:03, August 26, 2024 (EDT)

Cool down. People "abandoned" the discussion because the main point against the proposal has already been voiced repeatedly: the Diddy Kong Racing IP is joint owned by Nintendo and Microsoft, and this Diddy Kong Racing-related merchandise was licensed by one of these companies, making it official and worth covering. -- KOOPA CON CARNE 10:19, August 27, 2024 (EDT)

It's not "joint owned", otherwise Nintendo would have been credited, and there wouldn't have been any need to avoid referring to Diddy Kong Racing by name. As I have voiced, Diddy Kong Racing is a mess of certain assets being owned by Nintendo and the majority of them being owned by Microsoft. The proposal already made it a point that Tiptup's Banjo appearances are not covered, despite Tiptup obstensibly being a DKR character, so I don't see how this is any different. And still nobody has commented on how this is a different case from Kinoppe-chan Forever, or if we should also be covering that as well. DrippingYellow (talk) 12:04, August 27, 2024 (EDT)

Nintendo Co., Ltd. (NCL) is literally credited in Diddy Kong Racing. Regardless of who owns what of this game, it and the resultant property are entirely within the wiki's breadth of coverage. Based on that fact, my and others' point is that merch licensed by Microsoft that represents their slice of this property is germane to this wiki.
Regarding Kinoppe, your comments inspired me to create this topic on the forums lol -- KOOPA CON CARNE 12:18, August 27, 2024 (EDT)

...Where in all of that did you get me claiming that Nintendo wasn't credited in the game? Of course Nintendo had full rights to the game then (if the back of the box is to be believed, they even owned Banjo at one point). And for DS, the box does indeed state that "certain characters are licensed by Rare". And regarding the wiki's breadth of coverage, I again point to Tiptup in Banjo not being present in any capacity on the wiki beyond a mention in the opening paragraph. Should we expand on that in the page? I'd like to get confirmation that the facts are being acknowledged before chalking up disagreement to a difference in MarioWiki philosophy. DrippingYellow (talk) 13:01, August 27, 2024 (EDT)

"It's not 'joint owned', otherwise Nintendo would have been credited"--this was your response to me saying that "the Diddy Kong Racing IP is joint owned by Nintendo and Microsoft". Tiptup's appearance in Banjo-Kazooie is not explained in detail on this wiki for the same reason the wiki doesn't describe Banjo or Link from the perspective of their series: he's a crossover character, in this case pertaining to the Banjo-Kazooie series, who just happened to debut in a Mario-related title. If you disagree with that idea and think Tiptup is a member of the Donkey Kong franchise proper who just happens to guest star in Banjo-Kazooie, feel free to open that discussion where appropriate, but given the wiki's current stance on that character I don't think your disagreement is a solid yardstick in this discussion. -- KOOPA CON CARNE 13:27, August 27, 2024 (EDT)

Ah, I see where the "joint-owned" confusion lies. You were referring to the game itself, and I thought you were referring to all the invidivual aspects of the game, like characters, tracks etc. Though, now that you mention Tiptup being a Banjo-Kazooie character originally, I looked into his development (because for some reason it's not mentioned on the wiki, so I assumed it just didn't have that kind of development history).
According to the old Rare website, a turtle called Tiptup was originally planned to appear in Dream, but that game got scrapped. However, later for Diddy Kong Racing, they had created another turtle character, and while trying to figure out names for the racers they eventually landed back on the turtle from Dream. From there, this new Tiptup went on to appear in Banjo-Kazooie and Tooie. So, my takeaway is that Tiptup was indeed made for Diddy Kong Racing, and is as much a Donkey Kong character as Pipsy or Drumstick (which is to say, more of a Pro-Am 64 character if you ask me). DrippingYellow (talk) 15:02, August 27, 2024 (EDT)

Oh, wow, that blog is insightful. Yeah, this development history should be noted on Tiptup's article and maybe some discussion should be kicked off about whether his status here as a crossover character is warranted. If consensus has it that the response in the Q&A is truthful and he's indeed a Donkey Kong character, then his appearances in the Banjo games should be presented in an "Other appearances" section on his article. -- KOOPA CON CARNE 15:22, August 27, 2024 (EDT)

We're gonna be real here, we can't imagine a world where this article gets taken down for "not being Mario related enough" that wouldn't involve a change in coverage that would inevitably cause collateral to other articles (when you start drawing a line of "not Mario related enough", where do you draw that line, anyways? Do we delete the various third-party cameo pages like Inspector Gadget? Do we wipe Blast Corps in Yoshis Knallkekse because it's a comic where the only Mario character is Yoshi? In an extreme case, do we pull entire games like Art Style: PiCTOBiTS or Densetsu no Starfy 3?), and given this is already such an edge-case already (as far as we can tell, no other merchandise company has made--or been willing to make, for that matter--a set of merch exclusively of spinoff side-characters with zero outright Mario characters in them.) we can't really imagine such a policy change being worth making over what is, if we're being real here, is a small article about--quite literally--equally small merchandise. ~Camwoodstock (talk) 14:47, August 27, 2024 (EDT)

The thing is, Diddy Kong Racing has a unique problem that no other Mario-related media has to my knowledge: it was rebranded from the otherwise unrelated Pro-Am 64, and quite late in development, too; Miyamoto pitched tacking Diddy Kong onto the game at E3 1997 (so, around June 19-21), and internal build dates show the final game was compiled on October 2, leaving a little less than three and a half months of development post-Diddy, by which point the game was quite far along. There are unused character select graphics for all the characters sans Diddy and T.T., and the internal SFX filename list shows even T.T. made it in before Diddy.
...The point being, there is a solid foundation for arguing that the Diddy Kong Racing cast aren't inherently Donkey Kong characters per se. Even if you don't agree with the conclusion, I feel like this warrants a more favorable vote ratio than 3-11. DrippingYellow (talk) 21:54, August 27, 2024 (EDT)

If the basis of the argument is "Because they come from a game that started development for a different series/initially released for a different series, before becoming a Mario title, there's a pretty obvious game to mention for that. Ignoring that, there's also VS. Wrecking Crew (the flyers suggest it was meant to feature generic construction workers and not Mario & Luigi), Yoshi's Cookie (originally was an alchemy-themed puzzle game called Hermetica, then later renamed Archimedes), Wario Blast: Featuring Bomberman! (started as just a Bomberman game, and is just a Bomberman game in Japan, but was made into a Wario crossover game for other regions), heck, even Super Mario Kart (early leaked assets suggest it started as just a generic kart racer--and we doubt anyone is about to argue Mario Kart doesn't count as a Mario game.) Diddy Kong Racing's start as Pro-Am 64 is no different than any other game changing out its character roster or series associations during development or re-releasing. ~Camwoodstock (talk) 22:11, August 27, 2024 (EDT)

Most of the examples here are irrelevant to the discussion. Yoshi's Cookie wasn't just rebranded, it was entirely reskinned, with no original assets remaining besides the gameplay; the characters and enemies in Wario Blast were made for the original Bomberman GB and not Wario Blast, so we obviously do not cover their merch or appearances beyond that game; the VS. Wrecking Crew characters didn't even make it to the final release of the game.
The closest thing to the Diddy Kong racers you mention here are the Doki Doki characters, but at least those have been thoroughly assimilated into the Mario series. The Diddy Kong Racing/Pro-Am 64 cast, on the other hand, has not appeared in anything Mario-related outside of DKR, but Tiptup went on to appear in the Banjo series, both Timber and Tricky were originally meant to appear in Dinosaur Planet, and even T.T. has made a sneaky cameo in screenshots of an early test build of Sea of Theives.
This is not as simple as "the game started development as part of a different series". While that certainly applies here, the fact that Rare has adopted them as their own and used them in other, very much not Donkey Kong-related projects, is crucial info that severely muddies their status as Mario franchise characters. They were not originally made for Diddy Kong, and they continued to not be used alongside Diddy Kong thereafter. DrippingYellow (talk) 23:38, August 27, 2024 (EDT)

@SeanWheeler: The Banjo and Conker merch covered here is obviously based on their appearance in Diddy Kong Racing, which we do fully cover. Hewer (talk · contributions · edit count) 20:26, August 30, 2024 (EDT)

To be fair, Conker is wearing the sky-blue hoodie from Conker's Bad Fur Day, when in Diddy Kong Racing, he wears that dark blue and yellow tank top from his "kid-friendly days"; so it's more of a mixture of the two. rend (talk) (edits) 15:41, August 31, 2024 (EDT)