General Discussion

I think ImageMap templates need improvement in overall design. I feel they're a gaudier part of the site and I don't really like them.
 
It's basically Mystery Meat Navigation of templates. That's-that's not necessarily a good thing. I really think they're there solely because we can, rather than enhancing navigation (the navigation is only clear if you played the games that use the image maps)
 
I dislike image maps particularly I find it annoyingly difficult to even recognize what I'm trying to click. I've played Superstar Saga to death, but I've had so much trouble using the image map for it. I'm pretty sure this is an uphill battle, though: there are at least a couple of proposals supporting the idea that image maps should exist wherever a map exists.

Pi said:
Or, maybe you look at the page, see the image, and then go !!! cool, it's a weird-looking location, maybe I'll check that out !!!
Click to expand...
That argument holds more weight with the RPG's, if you can recognize one low-res blob from another, but there are (Template:WL4 Golden Pyramid Map) some (Template:LM Mansion Map) cases (Template:LM Lab Map) where not even that can be argued. At the very least, we need to get rid of at least a few of these maps.
 
I don't see what's so wrong about the Wario Land 4 map you linked. There are seven links, all of which are easily clicked.

On the general topic of image maps, they also help navigation if you don't know the name of a location, but know of its relative location in relation to other locations in the game. This hasn't happened to me, but if you are inexperienced with the Mario series, this is a great feature to have.
 
I feel like that hasn't happened for anyone, or it's happened for so few people, it really doesn't justify uglying up all these articles with obtuse templates, especially when the place could still be found with some poking around in promisingly-named places. Most games are pretty modular so relative position is arbitrary anyway, while most areas have nicely indicative names: if I wanna look up the lakeside area of M&L:BIS, am I gonna remember "oh yeah, it's below Toad Town" or am I gonna look at the nav template and be like "hmm, Blubble Lake sounds promising"? Even the Bowser's body map: it's useful for Bowser's body for matching the list of names to places, but if I'm hopping around the articles and looking for a different place, the names will be far more indicative than the vague positions of the circles, and it's much easier to skim through the names with a regular nav template, rather than having to wave the mouse around the picture. And what's wrong with the WL4 image is that it's completely redundant: if someone needs an annotated map to tell them that the giant golden pyramid in the middle of the hub is the Golden Pyramid, then they have problems.
 
Pi said:
Or, maybe you look at the page, see the image, and then go !!! cool, it's a weird-looking location, maybe I'll check that out !!!
Click to expand...
What makes this different from seeing the place names and clicking on those? And even in the RPGs, where you're more familiar with these maps, chances are, you already know the names of those locations, making the image maps even more pointless, and it doesn't remedy the issue for readers that have never played the games. I thought ImageMaps might be a good idea because I myself have trouble distinguishing street names without looking at the street's surroundings but ImageMaps haven't helped me at all.

I wanted the ImageMaps to be improved by having labels on the maps, but the maps themselves are so low-res that it wouldn't look good. And that's the core issue, we should rely on low-res thingamabobs for navigation. They also look very tacky on the pages they're in and they've mostly bothered me. If you recall my comments on this years ago, I wasn't too keen on the idea, but I thought it could have potential for the visual learners.

I wanted to nix ImageMaps, but I like to see if there is a good way of improving them because maybe they do have some merits. For now, they may have their use, but I find it trivial and at the cost of making our pages with ImageMaps look presentable. They're really just there because they look cool.
 
Probably going to set up a proposal for ImageMaps later since they're pretty big in this wiki, but setting this temporarily aside, I found out that some sprites in the Costume Mario page aren't taken directly from the game; they're potentially inaccurate fan-made renditions. That Bowser Jr.'s sprite was inaccurate set up a red flag for me, but my biggest concern is if their colors are accurate.

Yeah, we could always wait until a game-rip, especially this late in Super Mario Maker development, but I question why people do this.
 
They may as well just wait until the damn game is released, then take pics of it. It's a week from now, people need patience.