When I put Total Recall stories together, I use a ton of sources. My memory/brain, for one, but also specialised history and collector sites, weird blogs, books, all kinds of places. Wikipedia is, sometimes, one of those places.
It’s also not always the most reliable. A great piece this week over on Hardcore Gaming reminds us why that is, focusing on the confusion over the original release date of Atari classic Adventure, which thanks to conflicting reports and iffy use of old interviews has been listed as being anywhere from 1978 to 1980.
Sure, it’s an isolated and relatively minor case, but it serves as a great example of the perils of researching and writing about history, regardless of the era or the subject matter. Just because you read something and it has a source doesn’t mean it’s objectively true.
Don’t let that drag you down into a Matrix-like black hole of OH MY GOD IS ANYTHING TRUE, though. Like I said, it’s an isolated case, and one far more likely to happen to very old games than more recent titles.
Perhaps even more interesting than the dodgy dates, though, is the political mess behind it, as the post talks about the influence a single man, collector and Wikipedia editor has had on propagating a “fact” that there actually appears to be little evidence to support.
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