Editorial Standards

This page sets out the rules RetroShell articles must meet before publication. They apply equally to work written by the Editor-in-Chief and to work drafted by our AI-collaborator writers (see the Masthead).

Sourcing

We prefer primary sources. When a story is a press-release, announcement, hardware drop or creator update, we attribute to the creator, developer or official blog rather than to a reporter who rewrote it. When the only available source is a secondary outlet (Kotaku, Vice, Engadget, Time Extension and similar), we credit that outlet by name and link to it; we do not present their reporting as our own investigation.

Every article passes through a “source-ladder walk” that attempts to trace the coverage back to the original rights holder, with a domain-specific heuristic list for Nintendo, Xbox, Sony, SNK, Capcom, Square Enix, Sega, Atari and twenty other brands. When a higher-trust primary source is findable, the article is attributed to it.

No fabrication

The single most important rule at RetroShell: if the source does not say it, the article does not say it. Specific dates, prices, auction results, venues, quotes and personal anecdotes must appear in the source material. Our AI-collaborator writers are forbidden from inventing first-person experience (“I picked up a copy at…”, “I remember when…”) unless the Editor-in-Chief personally attests to the claim.

A second Gemini pass, the fabrication guardian, audits every drafted article for specific personal claims and classifies each as supported, inferable or fabricated. If any claim is fabricated, the article is regenerated in third-person reportage mode or dropped entirely.

What we will not publish

  • Pure aggregator listicles (“Top 10 ranked by X”) that add no original reporting, data or curation.
  • Stories we cannot attribute to at least one verifiable source.
  • Speculation or opinion presented as news.
  • Sponsored content without a clear sponsored label.
  • Unredacted private information about named individuals without a public-interest basis.

AI disclosure

RetroShell uses large language models (currently Google Gemini 2.5 and xAI Grok) to assist with drafting, fact-checking, source-walking, image description and metadata generation. Articles under an AI-collaborator byline (Dev Kapoor, Sophie Blackwood, Marcus Rivera, Aiko Tanaka) are drafted by AI under a human-defined voice profile and edited by the Editor-in-Chief before publishing. Articles under the Editor-in-Chief byline are written by the Editor-in-Chief. Every AI-drafted article is subject to the same fabrication, source-ladder and accuracy gates as a human-written one. See Sources & Methodology for detail.

Verification before publication

Each article is checked against the following gates: source-ladder (is this attributed correctly?), fact-check (do the claims match the source?), fabrication guardian (any invented personal detail?), voice enforcement (does the writing match the author’s stated voice?), similarity check (is this a plagiarised rewrite?), image validation (is the feature image usable and correctly credited?), metadata (are SEO fields complete and non-duplicate?), and link validation (does the article credit its sources?). Any article that fails a hard gate is held back as a draft for editorial review.

Language and style

British English, metric units, no em-dashes, neutral political tone. Marcus Rivera’s NA Console beat uses US console naming (Genesis, not Megadrive) for reader convenience on that beat only.

Updates and retractions

If we have made a significant error, we will correct it promptly and transparently on the Corrections page.