Wikipedia:Main Page history/2016 November 25

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From today's featured article

Killer Instinct Gold is a fighting video game based on the arcade game Killer Instinct 2. It was developed by Rare and initially released on November 25, 1996, by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64 video game console. As in other series entries, players press buttons to punch and kick their opponent in chains of successive hits, known as combos. Large combo chains lead to stronger attacks and brutal, stylistic finisher moves. Characters—including a gargoyle, a ninja, and a femme fatale—fight in settings including a jungle and a spaceship. The Gold release lacks the arcade version's full-motion video sequences, but adds a training mode, new camera views, and improved audiovisuals. It was later included in Rare's 2015 Xbox One retrospective compilation, Rare Replay. Reviewers appreciated the game's sound and environment backdrops, but felt that its graphical upgrades and memorization-based combo gameplay were insufficient when compared to fighting games like Tekken 2 and Virtua Fighter 2. Gold ultimately did not replicate the success of its Super NES predecessor, and the series remained dormant through its 2002 acquisition by Microsoft until its 2013 reboot. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Smog in New York

... that three days of smog in New York City 50 years ago today increased public awareness of air pollution (pictured) and led to the passage of the 1967 Air Quality Act?
... that W.Z. Ahmed's film Roohi was the first to be banned in Pakistan?
... that "gold thread and iron wire" Ge ware has two sets of cracks in the glaze, accentuated by staining in different colours?
... that in her Gloria, Hyo-Won Woo combines elements from Korean music and Western contemporary composition techniques?
... that the Swaziland national cricket team was disqualified from the 2016 ICC Africa Twenty20 Division Two after they fielded ineligible players in 2014?
... that when Barbara Berman and Mary Keating Croce took office in 1978, they became the first pair of women to represent a single legislative district in the New Jersey General Assembly?
... that quarrying at West End in Penistone Hill Country Park once involved using a bar to make the cliff face collapse whilst the workers ran away?
... that everyone eligible to receive the Commemorative Medal for Participants of the Barricades of 1991 from Latvia has already received one?

In the news

Jimmie Johnson

Jimmie Johnson (pictured) wins the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship, equaling the record of seven titles held by Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt.
A train derailment near Kanpur, India, kills more than 140 people.
An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 strikes near Kaikoura, north of Christchurch, New Zealand, triggering tsunami warnings, causing widespread damage, and killing at least two people.
Canadian singer, songwriter, and poet Leonard Cohen dies at the age of 82.
A tram derails on the Tramlink in Croydon, London, killing seven people and injuring more than fifty others.

On this day...

November 25: Evacuation Day in New York (1783)

Yukio Mishima

1120 – William Adelin, the only legitimate son of King Henry I of England, drowned in the White Ship disaster, leading to 18 years of civil war, a period later known as the Anarchy.
1491 – Reconquista: The Granada War was effectively brought to an end with the signing of the Treaty of Granada between Castile-Aragon and the Emirate of Granada.
1795 – Stanisław August Poniatowski, the last King of Poland, was forced to abdicate after the Third Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
1936 – Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, agreeing that if the Soviet Union attacked one of them, they would consult each other on what measures to take "to safeguard their common interests".
1970 – Failing to instigate a military coup to restore the powers of the Emperor of Japan, author Yukio Mishima (pictured) publicly committed the ritual suicide seppuku.

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From today's featured list

The science fiction media franchise Mass Effect, developed by the Canadian company BioWare, is composed of multi-platform video games and associated media. The core of the franchise is an eponymous trilogy of action role-playing third-person shooter video games, which follow Commander Shepard's mission to save the galaxy from a race of mechanical beings known as the Reapers. The Mass Effect franchise also includes three mobile games, each with a different gameplay style; four novels, written by Drew Karpyshyn and William C. Dietz; two art books; ten comic book series or mini-comics and their anthologies; an animated film; and eleven soundtrack albums or singles. The video games have had high sales, with the last major game, Mass Effect 3, shipping over 3.5 million copies in its first week of release. Reception of other media in the franchise has been mixed: the comics, such as Mass Effect: Redemption, have been praised for their writing, and novels such as Mass Effect: Revelation have been recommended to fans of the games, but Mass Effect: Deception was derided as inconsistent with the main trilogy. A fourth main series game, Mass Effect: Andromeda, is currently in development and planned for release in 2017, along with an associated novelization by N. K. Jemisin, an art book, and a coloring book. (Full list...)

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Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded by Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer to Elizabeth I, in 1584 on the site of a Dominican friary. Since 1998, Emmanuel has consistently been among the top five colleges in the Tompkins Table. It is one of the wealthier colleges at Cambridge, with a financial endowment of approximately £105m and net assets of £150m in 2012.

Photograph: David Iliff

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