Talk:Magical Vacation

When was Magical Vacation announced? (Plus other questions.)
(This concerns both the article for the first game and the one for the series as a whole, but for simplicity’s sake it will go on the talk page for the game.)

So it seems like there’s some fuzzy details behind Magical Vacation’s development period. Something that caught me off guard was on the series article states that Magical Vacation was the first ever GBA game announced in September 2000. This sentence was actually what prompted me to join the wiki.

Now, “MV was the first GBA game announced” and “MV was first announced [to the public] in September 2000” are two individual claims that can be questioned later. However, when put together, the claim is contradictory and completely wrong.

Confusingly, it seems like the first announcement of the GBA itself and the first announcement of games for the system took place separately. Wikipedia cites this article as when the GBA was first announced. Note how I said announced and not unveiled. The showcase of the actual system would not be until much later it seems. Another IGN article was also cited. This one is from a few days earlier and it seems like the GBA was teased a few days before its official announcement, at Spaceworld ‘99.

Speaking of SpaceWorld, this is what is going to help us answer a lot of questions. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to find documentation about the 2001 event. The 2000 event was better preserved, though.

Spaceworld 2000 took place August 24 through 26 2000. This was when the GBA was officially unveiled, with its design showcased as well as a selection of games. (Linked is another IGN article cited on the GBA Wikipedia article.) (NOTE: Due to time zones, it could be said that the unveiling was on the 23rd rather than 24th. Note the IGN article date.) Due to when Spaceworld 2000 took place and the reveals of several GBA games there (more details on that momentarily), if Magical Vacation was the first announced GBA game, it had to have been before Spaceworld 2000, meaning that the September 2000 claim is incorrect. But where did the September part come from? On the series article, yet another IGN article is cited. I think the confusion came from the date of the article, which indeed was published towards the end of September 2000. Assuming the claim came from something logical and wasn’t a massive messup from the IGN writer, the “first announced” mention appears to be in retrospect, and happened way before the article was written.

Now, Spaceworld 2000. What games were shown there?

Luckily for us, someone on Archive uploaded the guidebooks for Spaceworld ‘99, 2000, and 2001. They can be found here. (To see them in better, non-artifacted quality, here are some quick links.)

First off, I want to mention that, yes, Magical Vacation was shown at the 2001 show! The 2001 guidebook has a page (labeled as page 26, in actuality page 24) dedicated to the game with artwork of the protagonists and some screenshots shown, and it also confirms that the finalized release date was shown at Spaceworld 2001 as well.

Now we must ask, “Was Magical Vacation shown or mentioned at Spaceworld 2000?”

Well, in terms of the guidebook, coverage of the GBA begins on page 28. Games given their own page or half of a page include Mario Kart Advance (Mario Kart: Super Circuit), Ōgon no Taiyō (Golden Sun), Kuru Kuru Kururin, and Napoleon (the latter two share a page). On page 47 and 48, ten GBA games are shown, the aforementioned four plus six others. None of these appear to be MV, and Brownie Brown’s name does not appear in the copyright notices at the bottom of the pages.

One last thing. On page 29 there is a huge gathering of tiny screenshots of future GBA games. I don’t think any of these are MV, but perhaps I’m mistaken. Anyone is allowed to check.

Now, just because MV wasn’t in the guidebook, doesn’t mean it wasn’t at Spaceworld 2000 at all. The September 2000 IGN article mentions that the game was talked about there. So it‘s probably safe to assume it was there in some form. But it’s something that more research would have to be conducted on. There’s a few Spaceworld 2000 related videos on YouTube that might help (but maybe not).

Now, I want to bring up a different but related question. When was Brownie Brown founded? Both the Wikipedia article and the article on here (Kovopedia) say June 30, 2000, but there is no citation for this.

I believe this is another instance of confusion and misinterpretating an articles words. This article is used as a citation on the Magical Vacation article for something completely unrelated (the Mobile Adaptor GB thing), but it opens with this sentence…

''On June 30th, Brownie Brown, a team consisting largely of former Square employees, announced their first title, which is in development for the Game Boy Advance. This game, Magical Vacation, was…''

Someone assumed (probably many, many years ago on Wikipedia or something) this meant Brownie Brown was founded on June 30, 2000, which I doubt is the case.

But, guess what? This article gives an exact date for when Magical Vacation was announced. June 30. (Or possibly June 29 or July 1 due to time zone confusion.) Now, this is only one article, and it was made in November 2000, after Spaceworld took place. It would be our best interest to find more articles backing up the June 30 (or 29 or July 1 as previously mentioned) date. Also, even if this date is correct, it does not confirm that MV was the first ever GBA game announced. Still, it’s a start, and process of elimination is key here.

Finally, here is a potentially great resource: Brownie Brown’s old website, specifically the home page. Unfortunately, the Japanese text of the original Japanese version is completely broken (but not the links embedded, and any Latin Alphabet text and numbers are fine). The English site is intact though. The Japanese and English sites appear to differ in content in some spots so the Japanese site is still worth looking through. The What’s New pages state the site opened on September 8, 2000. This lines up with the September 29 2000 IGN article which promotes Brownie Brown’s site.

BONUS: This page featuring Magical Vacation info (added to Brownie Brown’s website on January 23 2001 according to the Japanese version of the What’s New section) states that Magical Vacation (styled as MAGICALVACATION on the page) was a tentative (working) title. As we all know, they ended up sticking with it for the final release, which makes me wonder about the ‘Magic Summer Vacation’ claim in the MV article that lacks a citation.

Also, notice how the release date on the page (at least on the English version) is TBA. Magical Vacation’s possible delays is another topic I want to do research on at some point. The September 2000 IGN article states a Spring 2001 release window, and the RPGamer article from just a little over a month later says Summer 2001.

That is all. Sorry for this talk page being formatted all wrong. What Magicwindsock told me made me believe the talk page would be created properly on its own. Anyways, this took over two hours to type up, so I hope it’s helpful! MarsAdept (talk) 08:15, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
 * There's a lot to respond to, and those lines should definitely have specific citations. 1-Up Studio's website says that they were created on that date, just need to have that cited. As for MV, that article is good enough if there is nothing to contradict it. You could try digging through Brownie Brown's old website on archive, although no guarantees as to the mileage of that.  Kovopedia Icon.png  Rman41  ( talk ) 09:03, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Good news. I cracked the mystery, at least mostly. I looked through a large amount of IGN articles. There were so many that I’m only going to link the ones particularly crucial to the questions I was trying to answer.


 * Was MV the first GBA game announced?
 * When was MV announced?
 * When was Brownie Brown founded?
 * Was MV shown at Spaceworld 2000?

First off, the first public screenshots of GBA games popped up roughly two weeks before Spaceworld. See them here. Also, the signature four Spaceworld 2000 GBA games (Mario Kart, Golden Sun, Kururin, Napoleon) were all mentioned by name in this July 27 2000 article, although Golden Sun is mistitled. I don’t know why that is, but the August articles have it with the correct title.

Anyways, I’m glad I kept going further back in 2000 after I disappointedly couldn’t find anything from around June 30. Because I found this.

This article is dated June 7 2000. It is about the founding of Brownie Brown. There is a lot of great info here, but the main points are:


 * Brownie Brown’s founding was announced ahead of time. In addition, this confirms the June 30 date.
 * This was the day Magical Vacation was first announced. Mentions of the title being tentative, the network-compatibility, and the Spring 2001 release window are all here too.

So two questions have been answered. Brownie Brown was founded on June 30 2000, and Magical Vacation was announced on June 7.

But that still doesn’t answer if Magical Vacation was the first GBA game announced. And unfortunately I wasn’t able to find clear cut answers but evidence points to no.

Here are articles from March 21 and May 25 2000 respectively discussing a new RPG title for the GBA. These both were definitely referring to Golden Sun, which was developed by CAMELOT, the team mentioned in both articles. The March article states the game will have a ‘3D feel’ - Golden Sun has pre-rendered 3D graphics.

This predates Magical Vacation’s announcement. However, the September 2000 IGN article states that MV was the first GBA game to be officially  announced.

We can never figure out for certain what they meant by this. My assumption is that they meant announced with a title attached.

Notice how the two articles about CAMELOT’s GBA RPG don’t give the game a name. In fact, the May 2000 article suggests that they have a title but couldn’t say it yet due to NDAs. The July 2000 article gives a title for the game plus three others. They were all shown in depth at Spaceworld just under a month later.

So Magical Vacation wasn’t the first GBA game announced, but it’s possible it was the first announced by name . Do what you want with this info. I personally find it confusing and just think MV shouldn’t be considered the first announced GBA game.

As for the last question, game development takes a long time so it almost definitely wasn’t shown at Spaceworld 2000. However, I believe there’s a good chance it was still talked about  at the event. It would be a lot harder to find info on that than games that had screenshots and footage at the event, though.

In conclusion, I believe the June 7 2000 article could be a good citation to use on both the Brownie Brown and Magical Vacation (game) articles. But one book doesn’t contain all the answers, so I wish to find more websites I could use as sources. Unfortunately, my attempts with Gamespot were a bust, and I’m stumped as where else to look. But I’ll keep trying! This took me a long time to type up again, but only about an hour this time. At least I found some answers! MarsAdept (talk) 05:15, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Good work. We definitely should be using that citation, so I'm glad you found it. I agree that this all seems to dispute the idea that Magical Vacation was the first Game Boy Advance game announced, however I think it is also clear that IGN *had* to mean something when saying it was. I am inclined to believe it would not be speculatory to say that Magical Vacation *was* the first Game Boy Advance game to be announced with a title, that has to be what they meant. And that makes sense, because usually tentative games that didn't have titles were not considered "announced" back then, I recall that anomaly when digging through Nintendo Power of that time. We should probably change it to that.  Kovopedia Icon.png  Rman41  ( talk ) 05:29, 22 January 2023 (UTC)


 * I was looking at the articles for both the game and series and I’m not sure how I’d reword the article while both adding the new source and maintaining the preexisting one (AKA not removing it) so I’d appreciate help on that. I think I’ll get to including the article on the Brownie Brown page right away though since that’s simpler.


 * Also, I’m glad you mentioned Nintendo Power because that reminds me that we could also look through old magazines as potential sources. MarsAdept (talk) 05:51, 22 January 2023 (UTC)