#2.5d effect

[ghoulodont]

i was moving layers around and i accidentally made worm dew look directly into the camera so to speak and he looks so stupid

[quietwingsinthesky]

im not excited for pokemon z because i have zero faith in gamefreak, as we all should at this point, but i do hope it is good. i do hope it’s another chance for kalos to really wow people. i remember getting Y back when it came out, and it was. Fine. the most Fine pokemon game i’ve ever played, then and now. it had the unfortunate fate of being a follow up to black/white 2 (some of the best pokemon games ever made) and being the mainline transition to 3D (something they’re still struggling with tbh.) they suffer a lot from those growing pains, a lot of x/y feels underdeveloped or bland. but i really hope this game gives the region new life because all the pieces were there.

[banchie]

imo it couldve looked good with a) full liveaction, but keeping the gravity physics, or b) fully animated. no inbetween. i woulve liked to see it animated in a non-blocky style, that coulve been fun

what it is right now is the equivalent of making a dnd movie where you green screen the actors to make them tiny on a whiteboard-battlegrid and all the opponents are randomized minis and the nps are straight up disembodies voices. thats the amount of thought they put into it.

Chat they made Minecraft into a silly goofy cringe movie even through Minecraft is actually about life and earth and the universe and tearing meaning out of the ground and molding it with your hands into something that you can be proud of. They made the pink sheep look ugly and funny for a cheap laugh when it should’ve been a beautiful moment where you, age eleven, come across this rarity, this beautiful anomaly and you hold its face in your hands and stare into its chocolate brown eyes and you realize what the whole world is about. Chat they made it into a joke

[bishonenspit]

i have such a deep deep love for eroica stage....i have so much hope for it i really hope they do more....

[mythauragame]

Development Update - April 2025

Hello hello, folks!

Content development for what we'll have available at launch is well underway, utilizing all the tools that Koa and Sark have built for us—like a dialogue creator that powers all of our questlines and a map builder that's allowing us to build 2.5D levels for your characters to explore. It's full steam ahead for our team as we continue to prepare for Closed Beta next year.

Sark has built a fishing minigame for Mythaura, which we will explore in this update. We also have the results for the Spring Quarter Ko-fi Rewards, and would like to remind everyone interested in winning some Radiant Wolfwasps for their journey through Mythaura to enter our Wolfwasp Giveaway on Instagram by 11:59 AM on May 31!

Fishing

Mythaura is filled with all manner of bodies of water—lakes, rivers, streams, and oceans. In addition to being able to traverse water by swimming, Sark has created a way for players to explore them in another dynamic way: fishing.

The fishing minigame will be available at launch, with some post-launch additions planned as well.

Mechanics

After acquiring a fishing pole from the Grinning Gar, players will be able to fish along any body of water.

Players will have to keep their lure close to the fish in order to reel it in. The higher the rarity of the fish, the more difficult it will be to reel them in.

Rarer fish yield better effects when consumed and have a higher sales value with in-game vendors.

Fishing Rewards

Fishing does not exclusively yield consumables—there's also the chance to fish up certain Companions as well!

Pictured above are just some of the creatures that you can fish up from the rivers and streams around Talon's Rest.

The Grinning Gar

"Mind your fingers around the Ottergrebe. He's insatiable."

The Grinning Gar is an adventurer's destination for all things fishing-related. Its proprietor, Captain Hawthorne, is always quick with a recommendation and quicker yet with a fantastic tale about the epic battles he has waged with the fish in Lake Lacrima.

The shop was designed by our own lovely Sourdeer and Hawthorne's design was pulled from one of the NPC Design Contest that we held. Thank you for the design submission, Satyrn! 🎣✨

Ko-fi Spring Quarter 2025 Winners

Thank you to all the Ko-fi sponsors who voted for the Spring Quarter 2025 rewards. Next month we will show the finalized artwork for the Frilled Nester Companion and the Bumblebaby Ryu Glamour. Stay tuned!

Radiant Wolfwasp Giveaway

A reminder that entries for our Radiant Wolfwasp Giveaway will close on May 31, 2025 at 11:59am PST. We will use Wask to determine our winners, and will stream the award selection on our Discord on May 31, 2025 at 12:00pm PST.

Prizes

1st place: Wolfwasp Queen (Radiant), Wolfwasp King (Radiant)

2nd place: Wolfwasp Warrior Drone (Radiant) and Wolfwasp Worker Drone (Radiant)

3rd place: Corgbee (Radiant)

How to Enter

Users will just need to follow three steps:

Follow the @mythauragame Instagram account

Like the giveaway post

Tag a friend in the comments

Writing & Design Updates

2/8 bespoke levels created for intro quest

Dialogue trees begun for intro quest

Companion descriptions rewritten: 2/95

Item descriptions rewritten: 2/69

Wind's End landmarks named: 1/9

Talon's Rest primary businesses & landmarks named: 3/13

Map regions named: 1/12

Territories named: 1/32

Mythaura v0.37

Quest System Foundation: Players can now take on structured quests with objectives and rewards.

Lineage Data for Beasts: Lineage tracking has been added to beast profiles.

Repeatable Event Support: Events can now be repeated. For example, being able to harvest apple trees in Talon's Rest once a week.

Player Blocking System: Added functionality to block other players.

Buildings can be added to maps and entered: The player can enter and explore buildings with interiors.

Ability to talk to party: You can now interact with your party members to get context-specific dialogue.

New Game Pipeline: Starting a new game now initiates the first quest and generates a random second starter beast.

Map Editor Features: Dozens of new features were added and refined in the internal map tool.

Active Quest Tracking: The codex now shows your active and completed quests. One quest can be tracked as the main quest.

Dynamic Fishing Lighting: When fishing at night, the assets are darker.

Beast Contract Termination: Players are rewarded from a loot pool based on the tier of the terminated beast

Thank You!

Thanks for sticking through to the end of the post, we always look forward to sharing our month's work with all of you--thank you for taking the time to read. We'll see you around the Discord.

[doubleddenden]

Diving through the leaks from today (I have not slept yet) in regards to the cut gen 5, 4, and even 3 content has been such an adventure. I feel like I've discovered several more AUs in which 1 small decision could have had a ripple effect on the franchise for years to come.

Especially the gen 4 beta lore that was apparently dug up. Yall thought shit was religious now, they had a straight up PANTHEON planned. Not to mention it makes that church suddenly make sense- this wasn't just worshipping a Pokemon, this was literally a god with god like mythos. Like Arceus hatched from an egg in the middle of chaos at the beginning of time, his own egg shards became GIANTS that tried to kill him, and Arceus rapidly grew and beat them all. He made Dialga and Palkia to be his alter egos out of his own blood and to be God's of time and LIGHT, apparently, and Dialga and Palkia LOVED EACH OTHER- not hated and tried to kill each other, LOVED EACH OTHER. HAD CHILDREN. And assuming I read correctly, those two had the lake trio, who made the tree of life, destroyed it, and Rayquaza, Groudon, and Kyogre were born. In fact, Rayquaza may have been the shadow of ANOTHER POKEMON that became the pillar of the heavens?

It's pretty hardcore and confusing stuff. The giants stuff absolutely puts the Fighting Plate lore into perspective with its text "the power of giants fills this plate with power" or something.

I think it's pretty obvious why it was all cut or severely dumbed down, but it is actually very interesting to see that at some point, they were extremely dedicated to the world building of the franchise before they kinda said "fuck it it's whatever now."

On a mechanical end, it's also incredibly interesting. Gen 5 was almost the gen to introduce 3d models for players, apparently. I think it's pretty obvious why they went with an enhanced 2.5d approach, given the ds wasn't ready for much beyond ps1 graphics, but it's still incredible to think that was even a concept at the time.

And the lost beta Pokemon, oh my God. Gen 3 had a bunch that were eventually redesigned. Lickylicky in gen 4 almost made sense because it's body looked READY TO ROLL OUT! Archeops in gen 5 was almost cool af with some slightly different proportions. There's just a bunch that go completely unused.

And characters- yall, Team Galactic almost served cunt. Saturn almost was cool, and Mars and Jupiter would have DONE something to people. There's also in depth profiles on certain characters- Skyla was apparently modeled after Jennifer Lopez and was coded to be Hispanic. Each gen 5 gym leader had races assigned to each, and a real life inspiration behind each.

Even mechanics are talked about- a lot of scrapped ideas, such as one from Morimoto that was basically Pinkan Pokemon from Orange Islands but shifting your Pokemon's colors depending on the berries they ate. Masuda apparently had some reservations about following Pokemon- hence why it was so limited in DP and other games he directs.

It's information like this that really amazes me. So much of what could have been, so much info fans have theorized just kinda confirmed in some cases. I wish they'd talk about this stuff, because this is all genuinely interesting to see. Genuinely, I want to know the thought processes going on for some of these ideas and designs.

[brodorokihousuke]

here. a full version of this scrolling shot of Courtroom No. 4 from Dual Destinies.

Since there's a 2.5D effect, on top of the scrolling, this is only an approximation based off of the version shown in the artbook. There are supposed to be two minor pieces of rubble hanging down on each side too but I couldn't find said sprites (I cleaned up the image so the shadows are gone at least)

A note about the sprite sheet below the cut.

Along with everything I used for the above, the below sprites also existed in the file I had extracted.

At first I had assumed these were used somewhere in the long image, but looking at the image shown in the artbook, they clearly weren't. Were they cut?

It only took me looking at the opposite page to get my answer.

They were used in the creation of this image!

I can understand why they stored the sprites with the ones used for the long image, since they're related. Gives some interesting insight into how they make some of these images!

I'd love to say all of the sprites for the overview shot exist, but since it's a static file, I'm assuming they just flattened it before shipping the game.

[sorasumark]

testing out 3D movement (and 3D in general) in construct 2. not sure yet if i want to use this in the actual game but it's a nice peek into what's possible. maybe can work as 2.5D or as just a cool effect

(this has sound but i accidentally recorded it too low, oops. also please don't mind the nonsensical debug text lol i got tired)

[adachimoe]

Meeting Mitsuaki Madono

I went to Sabaku Con over Memorial Day weekend and met Mitsuaki Madono, Adachi's Japanese voice actor.

I came into his QA session late on the 1st day as I had just arrived in Albuquerque and he was answering questions about his anime work. I think he assumed most people visiting his panels were into Bleach as its more recent (he voices Kon) as he did reference Kon a bunch, but a few people in the audience mentioned Adachi and he quoted Adachi's popular line, "This world's gone straight to shit" (世の中クソだな). He mentioned he found it fun to portray characters like Adachi and he also enjoys scaring his coworkers lol.

For shits & giggles, I asked him about reprising his role as Adachi in the P4U2 stage play cause it was different than his usual voice work and there was absolutely no way anyone had asked that before me. He explained for the rest of the audience that in Japan they do "2.5d" stage plays where there's actors playing the characters on stage, but they also do effects and stuff (the Personas fighting) as a screen overlay. He had told his agency he was interested in portraying Adachi on stage cause he really enjoys the role.

He then went into an old man rant about getting into shape for the stage play. These 2.5d plays are usually all acted by 20-30 year olds, but he was in his 50s at the time. He just had a health scare prior to taking on the role, so he had pushed himself to do it - doing cardio and also learning sword fighting for the stage play so he could keep up with all of the youngins. (Honestly, I think Adachi would say the same shit at age 27-28.)

To my embarrassment, after asking that, him and his wife remembered me all weekend. 🤡 I got to chat with him in Japanese as well! And he nihongo jyozu'd me. Which is basically Kryptonite to anyone who has spent time trying to learn Japanese lmao.

It was neat to meet him and also get to chat with him as well! His visit to the southwest really caught me off guard. I didn't find out about it until after I had come back from Asia, and it seemed so out of the blue that he was at a smaller local con like this.

The item I got signed was my wall scroll from the Persona 4 Golden anime adaptation. Right is his kanji name signature, left is his first name in hiragana calligraphy. (I debated getting my Adachi perfume signed, but the box is tiny...)

[boredtechnologist]

In the early 1980s, personal computers were transitioning from text-based interfaces to more visually engaging environments. Sierra On-Line’s King’s Quest: Quest for the Crown, developed in 1984 for the IBM PCjr, was a landmark achievement in this evolution. It was not just another adventure game; it redefined the genre by leveraging the limited hardware capabilities of the time to create an immersive, interactive experience that felt years ahead of its contemporaries. Technical Innovations in King's Quest

1. The Birth of a 3D Adventure Game

At a time when most games were either text-based or limited to simple 2D visuals, King’s Quest introduced a pseudo-3D graphical environment. Players could guide the protagonist, Sir Graham, through a dynamic, scrolling landscape, where he could walk behind or in front of objects—an innovation known as "2.5D."

Pseudo-3D Effect: Achieved through creative use of layers, the AGI (Adventure Game Interpreter) engine divided the screen into foreground, background, and player layers. This gave the illusion of depth and interactivity.

Character Movement: The freedom to move in eight directions and interact with objects in a visually convincing space set a new standard for adventure games.

2. Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI) Engine

Sierra developed the AGI engine specifically for King’s Quest. This software framework was groundbreaking for its time, allowing:

Cross-Platform Compatibility: AGI was portable across different systems, from the IBM PCjr to later platforms like the Apple II and Tandy 1000.

Event-Driven Programming: AGI allowed designers to script events and interactions, decoupling game logic from graphical rendering—a novel approach in the early 80s.

3. Advanced Graphics for the IBM PCjr

The IBM PCjr was an ambitious but underpowered machine, featuring:

Intel 8088 Processor (4.77 MHz): A modest CPU that could struggle with heavy computations.

16-Color Graphics (CGA Palette): While most PCs supported only four colors in CGA mode, the PCjr's extended graphics capabilities allowed for richer visuals.

3-Voice Sound (TI SN76496 Chip): This was a significant improvement over the beeps of the PC speaker, enabling a more immersive auditory experience.

King’s Quest took full advantage of these features:

Rich Color Palette: By designing scenes with careful attention to the 16-color limit, Sierra created lush, vibrant environments that brought the fairytale world to life.

Smooth Animation: Despite hardware limitations, the game’s character animations and environment transitions were fluid and detailed.

4. Text Parser and Command System

While maintaining the classic adventure game tradition of text input, King’s Quest improved upon the interface:

Contextual Parsing: The text parser was more forgiving and sophisticated than previous games, interpreting a wider range of player inputs like "Take sword" or "Open door."

Visual Feedback: Unlike purely text-based games, the parser’s output was directly reflected in the graphical world, making the player’s actions feel meaningful and connected.

5. Disk Streaming and Memory Optimization

Given the IBM PCjr's limited 128 KB of RAM and floppy disk storage, Sierra engineers implemented innovative solutions to manage resources:

Dynamic Asset Loading: Only the necessary graphics, animations, and logic were loaded into memory at a time, minimizing RAM usage.

Compression Techniques: Graphics and animations were heavily compressed to fit on the game’s floppy disks, requiring clever algorithms to decompress assets on-the-fly.

The Impact of King’s Quest

The technical achievements of King’s Quest went beyond its hardware. It had a profound impact on the gaming industry and paved the way for future innovations.

Pushing Hardware to Its Limits: By making the most of the IBM PCjr’s unique capabilities, King’s Quest demonstrated what was possible with even modest computing power.

Setting a Standard for Interactive Storytelling: The game’s rich narrative, combined with its visuals and player agency, set the benchmark for future adventure games.

Expanding the Gaming Audience: The colorful, family-friendly design attracted a broader audience, including casual gamers and younger players.

Influencing Game Design: The AGI engine became the foundation for future Sierra titles, including Space Quest, Police Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry.

[sug01s3al]

How would Alice be translated to the art of musicals and puppetry? Her storyline was one of the most impactful parts of the game after all.

Again as far as official story goes I hadn't written a script so that would have to be something considered if it ever got to stage officially. Like I mentioned in the super long post a little ways back a big pitfall of 2.5D theatre is having to cut down stories so I would have to figure out an efficient way to intertwine all of the stories whilst allowing for time to 'rest' or 'linger' on poignant moments.

As far as puppets go, however, I have a more concrete answer:

Alice is such a warm and charming character, her quest line with the orchards is one of my favourites- I know its not super complex but it's just nice and cosy. she's a very comforting presence to have on the ship. And since she's an older lady I wanted to capture that charm in her designed as a puppet very similar to Giovanni and Astrid's puppets but taking an element from traditional wooden toys. Her internal design was supposed to be similar to a wooden toy, the type that you roll along the floor to make her paws move. But similar to Giovanni and Astrid she would have a secondary function where her upper half can be lifted up and moved by hand.

A big part of my puppet design was intertwined with the costume design of the puppeteer (my dissertation was basically based on this idea lol) so you really got to see the human element of the person as Stella knew them in life not just the fantasy of the puppet on stage. I know it might not be the most feasible but because of that I thought it would be nice to have Alice be puppeteered by an older actor too so accessibility was a very important to me in the design. Having her be easier to move and less complicated mechanically was the goal so it wouldn't be too taxing to control her. I relate to this too and fell a bit into this pit fall with Gwen- she was designed to be moved by a 5"6 dancer but neither of us were available to film in the studio for this so I had to film with her :') Turns out HEDS does not mix well with heavy puppets so my mom ended up having to step in for that (who is much shorter than either me or Chloe lol).

So going forwards, if I were to elaborate on these puppets and their designs I think it would be really important to take into account material weight and how that interacts with the design.

Two puppeteers I was looking at were Toby Olie (my favourite puppet designer :3 ) and Barnaby Dixon who mostly makes very small single hand puppets but I was fortunate enough to see a showing of The Book of Dust were he designed the Daemon puppets:

Ideally I would want to something like this but with material rather than paper, EVA makes quite an effective skeleton too so It would just be figuring out the mechanics with the chosen materials.

^ This is Toby Olie's stuff, he's done a lot more but his animal designs are my favourite.

[miloscat]

[Review] Sonic Superstars (PS5)

Classic style Sonic that’s not a one-off event, not a rehash… and not perfect.

After the success of Sonic Mania, Sega has greenlit more projects set in Sonic's "Classic" era (along with an annoying insistence on segregating certain characters and elements to either Classic or Modern), such as comics and this game. Sonic Superstars sees Sonic's original character designer Naoto Ohshima reunite with the series via his new company Arzest. Now Arzest (and their predecessor Artoon) are known for games popularly thought of as mediocre, including the recent Balan Wonderworld. Personally I'll defend Yoshi's Island DS and Hey Pikmin, but is Superstars their best game yet? Eh, maybe.

Unlike Mania which directly aped the Mega Drive games, Superstars is built in a 2.5D engine. The graphics are 3D models and high definition, and they're delightfully colourful and chunky. Also unlike Mania, the levels are all new and original, although several are takes on existing ideas. There's some great new concepts in here though, like an El Dorado-inspired stage, a neon cyberspace zone, or a time-reversing collapsing base. One stage even puts you into a brief but fully-fledged Fantasy Zone homage, with two shmup-style bosses!

The big new gimmick is up to four-player simultaneous co-op, expanding on the Sonic & Tails gameplay of Sonic 2, 3, and 4 Episode 2. Of course Knuckles is along for the ride, and unlike Mania, Amy is finally—finally—given her due as a full playable part of the core cast (I guess they added her to the classic games in a rerelease of Origins too). You can choose any of the four in story mode; Tails is recommended for beginners but his flight is a little stilted and requires mashing. Knuckles has the powerful climbing and gliding abilities but they also feel slow, with sluggish animations between states. Sonic has the drop dash and that's it, while Amy was far and away my favourite to play as with a snappy double jump that gives you some quick height without losing momentum, with the added benefit of her hammer bypassing some enemy protections. She's great, especially in this classic design... also there's no dialogue so there's no opportunity for them to ruin her character with poor writing choices.

The plot, such as it is, involves Robotnik searching a new archipelago for ancient power, bringing along Fang from off of Triple Trouble, Drift 2, and The Fighters in a long-awaited return. These nefarious nasties have drafted the clumsy armour-clad Trip, a local who turns out to be an adorable and good-hearted lizard who becomes playable in her own mode after you clear the main story. This functions as a hard mode with remixed versions of the same levels, while you make use of Trip's abilities: an Amy-like double jump, and a more powerful form of Knuckles' climbing.

Another feature with a lot of promise is Chaos Emerald powers; this time around, after nabbing one from a special stage (a 3D grapple-chase affair) they bestow activated abilities specific to each gem. Some are cool and widely useful for letting you gain height or cross gaps, like becoming an air-dashing fireball or growing a vine to climb. Others are narrowly context sensitive, like revealing hidden platforms or letting you swim in water. There is at least a prompt for when one is particularly suited to a situation; otherwise they're a bit fiddly to activate. On the whole I don't feel like these abilities live up to their potential, but I applaud the effort at introducing new mechanics, and making the Emeralds useful beyond unlocking a true ending.

You do get a super form of a sort when you have them all, but only Sonic goes truly Super. The others just glow a bit, a copout on the level of the spheres for Tails and Knuckles in Heroes. Trip on the other hand gets the coolest effect of all, turning into an invincible dragon who can fly freely! This really helps on some of her more difficult levels. When both stories are cleared, we get a Last Story much like Adventure or Rush, where Super Sonic alone has to fight a big dumb-looking dragon. It's fine.

Now that I've set up what the game is, time to tear into it a little. I found even on single player the screen feels scrunched in; you would think the benefit of this graphics engine would let them scale out a fast-paced game for better visibility but I guess not. Sometimes you jump into the background and it briefly feels much better, but these segments don't last long. The problem is even worse in co-op; I played a short local 2P session and we were both constantly leaving each other behind, and when a character goes off-screen they have to respawn next to the leader. At least this goes for deaths too, with your punishment only a short delay before you can pop back in. Also, no life system! Thank you Arzest!

In addition to special stages accessed through hidden giant rings, you get Sonic 1-style bonus rounds when you pass a checkpoint with 50 rings. They're ok I guess, but optional. Then there's similar-looking warp portals that appear sometimes for some reason, which take you through a brief autoscroller and plop you out somewhere else in the level. I wasn't sure why these existed frankly. On top of this, in stages you can sometimes get fruits that you can exchange for access to another minigame in the hub screen, an autoscrolling collect-em-up. All these sub-games and such can feel like they break the flow, unless you ignore them. Only you can't ignore the Emerald stages, in fact you have to remember which zones you already got an Emerald from if you're going for them all.

The reward for most minigames (and hidden in stages) is medals, which you can use in the shop to buy parts to customise a robot avatar. I was intrigued to see a Sonic game revisit Forces' dress-up system, but the medal costs are steep and the part selection limited, with unlocks trickling out slowly. At least Amy now has a metal counterpart like the boys, and one boss memorably takes on the form of your custom bot. But you can't play as them in story mode, only in the battle mode. Unlike the base game, this has online support and up to eight players, and you duke it out in randomly-selected competitive rounds. Against AI players it's a bit brain dead but may be fun with other people. Who knows? It wasn't super appealing to me, which made the whole medal and shop mechanic (and some of the DLC) feel a bit superfluous to my experience. [The DLC otherwise is just skins for story mode, and I didn't use them...]

While I liked the look of the game, especially the backgrounds which have a lot of depth, you do occasionally see some seams. Level geometry joined inelegantly together, curved boss arenas that don't display important active elements in their backgrounds, the occasional broken graphical effect. You can play the campaign going directly from one level to another, but the loading transition is very stuttery. Once the level music failed to start after a powerup theme ended, so I was playing in silence. The game leaves a sloppy impression at these times. I also found the soundtrack to be unmemorable, with some tracks like the hub theme being way too short a loop.

I've left it as late as I possibly can to talk about this: the bosses. These are universally slow and painfully boring. You're often just waiting for them to begin their designated vulnerability period, landing a single hit, and then waiting through the next long, long attack pattern. Sometimes Amy or Trip with their double jump—or a well chosen Emerald power—can get an extra or early hit on them, but it's not enough. You can sometimes spend as long in a boss fight as you do playing a level, and there's a lot of them. Some zones only have one act, and several act 1s in two-act zones also have a boss! Other acts have chase sequences, such as Fang following you on his hoverbike, and these are even worse.

And then there's the final boss of each story, the biggest offender of all, where each near-successful attempt took me nearly ten minutes and it's easy to die to various instant-kill attacks and hazards. The big dumb dragon is also boring, with the added stress of managing a very limited ring count lest you restart the whole fight again. The bosses are a common criticism for this game and it's easy to see why: the best of them is merely fine, while the worst are crimes against game design. They drag the whole experience down substantially. It’s a real shame.

Honestly I’m playing it up a little, they’re easily the worst part and the final boss literally took me hours of frustrating attempts, but because I was bracing from being warned just how noxious they are, I found them to be slightly more tolerable than what I expected. But that’s not saying much. They suck.

Now of course Superstars intentionally evokes Classic style design and game control. I find this heavy feel and high-inertia gameplay not to my taste, and it's no different here. But I managed to have a good enough time despite this, and despite the screen crunch and minor technical flaws, etc.; double jump really helps. Well, a good enough time apart from the boss fights, obviously. Woof. I’ll remember Superstars for some of its levels, for Amy and Trip, for the Emerald powers. But it’s still an Arzest game, a clumsy mixed bag. Oh well, I’m sure they’ll keep getting more chances. And so will Sonic.

[archoneddzs15]

Sega Saturn - Shinrei Jusatsushi Taromaru

Title: Shinrei Jusatsushi Taromaru / 心霊呪殺師 太郎丸

Developer/Publisher: Time Warner Interactive

Release date: 17 January 1997

Catalogue No.: T-4804G

Genre: Psychic Action

I'll start off by saying I find it VERY difficult to believe that Time Warner made this game since EVERY other game they have made is pretty bad. But it seems that they did make it. At first look, you'd think that Taromaru is just another beautiful drawn 2D ninja game. That is until the backgrounds suddenly move in 3D! Yes, Taromaru is what Shin Shinobi Den (Shinobi-X / Shinobi Legions) on the Saturn should have been. This is one hell of a beautiful game presented in 2.5D. Time Warner has pushed the Saturn into doing some very clean and atmospheric visuals with this release. The 3D is the most solid-looking I've ever seen on the Saturn, making stuff such as Clockwork Knight 2 look as if it's a 32X game. The 2D character sprites and pre-rendered sprites also look wonderful with great animation and style. Many of the levels are filled with this wonderfully looking mist which gives the game a very spooky feel as well as adding to the list of so-called “Saturn can't do this” special effects. Sound is another area in which Taromaru excels. The music and sound effects really add to that accent Japanese ninja feeling that the programmers have aimed so hard for.

It's really something to see such a beautiful-looking game in stills, still look beautiful when in motion. Taromaru sounds too good to be true but there are some drawbacks. It's as expensive as hell!! It can easily cost you 20,000 yen or over and that's if you can find it. Also, this game isn't that long but that's not its main problem. The main problem is that it's too hard!! Yes, even in easy mode it can be a challenge to finish it. This is mainly down to the sluggish pace of the game. It can be very frustrating at times with enemies coming from every possible angle and all you've got is one weapon and shield power. Still, I guess if it was too easy then I'd be complaining about that. At least this way the game will last quite a long time. I just wish that Time Warner had put more effort into the last level. After all, fighting a load of bosses for the last level is quite an outdated idea, don't you think? So, is Taromaru really worth buying? Well........I'd say yes. Even though it can be a tricky and frustrating bastard of a game it still provides a fun challenge as well as being a two-player simultaneously action-packed game.

Below you can see the beautiful color-printed CD and the sticker that comes with the game.

[6ad6ro]

so bloodstained rotn 2 is likely going to be announced this year. it should be something i'm really excited about, but conversely i have incredibly low expectations. because, over time, i've grown to lowkey hate rotn 1. here's why: i played the switch version first, which wasn't gonna help with my first impressions. but i've since played on pc with fixed framerate and better graphics? and it's still the ugliest castlevania i've ever played. i just wrote a long rant about 2d games being shoehorned into 3d, so i won't go back into that. but this game is such good proof of 2.5d consistently making 2d games worse. or that's the only sense i can make of one of the kings of beautiful 2d suddenly making one of the most hideous 2.5d games. i say that, but iga also made the 3d castlevania games on ps2. of all the problems with those games, the visuals weren't one of them. and then there's "dracula x chronicles", the 2.5d remake of rondo. even tho i was one of the many who mostly bought that game for the unlockable sotn and rondo PORTS (orig 2d rondo was much better), the remake wasn't horrible visually. the polygons and lighting didn't feel like clownvomit like it does in bs rotn. everything with rotn just feels amateur, low budget, and incompetent. the way enemies die by just fizzling out their polygons is so hideous. it feels like a budget mobile game from 2012. remember the weird occasional 3d that was in sotn? imagine an entire game made from that, but lacking any of the charm. to wrap it up in a bow, the graphics suck. but it isn't just the raw graphics, it's also the art direction. if i had one word to sum up the art, it'd be "uninspired". nothing feels like an artist made this, outside of a handful of moments. this is "paint by numbers castlevania" at it's worst. sure, games like cv cotm were a bit bland, and sometimes cv could feel somewhat formulaic? but rotn took mediocrity to a whole new level. do you like grey caves? do you like grey stone buildings? do you want your castlevania to look like the overworld in fallout 3? welcome to bloodstained ritual of the night! if i were avgn, i'd be like "bloodstained more like shitstained, everything looks like brown and grey ASS" idfk. maybe things would be better if they understood how to use lighting effects, but they don't so we'll never know. cover the already ugly visuals in shitoil and then... well my inner avgn has returned so i'll digress. the areas are all samey and boring, generally feeling like placeholders they never bothered to fix. the music sucks. it feels mostly generic and there's very little melody to be found in the tracks. it's hard to believe yamane had any involvement in this. except... when you go play bs curse of the moon, suddenly it makes sense. because there's melody hidden in the composition, but the execution is just bad. almost like the devs went to yamane and asked her to make things less melodic and more "atmospheric". idk what happened, maybe it was just rushed. but i've never known ANY castlevania to have unmemorable music. and yet rotn somehow pulls it off. i'm def biased, but a cv without good music isn't a castlevania at all.

the gameplay seems... fine? but it's just executed poorly. i've seen people complain about "sotn weapon variety plus aos ability variety is overwhelming", but actually that's one of the only things they did right. as i'm typing this hatepost, suddenly i'm finding myself "wanting to play" just to unlock all the fun abilities and gear. but no, then i remember how clumsy it all is. on top of that, the devs are morons and constantly added "balance patches", for a singleplayer game, that nerfed most of the fun things into the ground. finding broken or super powerful gear is part of what makes castlevania so fun, fuck these idiot bs devs. they don't understand why cv is good. not at all. before i forget, there's also way too much forced grinding and dumb sidemissions for basic unlocks. i don't need world of warcraft fetchquests in my castlevanias, sorry. lastly, there's kickstarter. i hate what kickstarter does to games. don't get me wrong, undertale was a kickstarter game, and that's one of the best games ever made. but undertale somehow finished development and met all its kickstarter goals in a bit over 2 years. even though it was developed by just one dude and an artist. undertale released in a finished form, too. bs, on the flipside, had a whole development studio, a fucking publisher, AND a whole lot more money (set crowdfunding records iiirc). but it only just recently finished delivering on it's development promises. that's like 10 years. and the promises were often barely fulfilled, like there are compromises everywhere. you have ks games like shovelknight, which take forever to finish releasing content (but all the content is really good, and feels like a full game at launch). then you have ks games like shenmue 3, which release "finished" but looks and feels like shit. bs rotn is the worst of both worlds. when i played bloodstained at launch, that was it's one chance. sorry, but if i go to a restaurant for the first time and the food is bland and the experience is bad? i'm not gonna go back. i have replayed every castlevania, even ones like cv cotm that i wasn't huge on. i have not replayed bs rotn and i don't see that changing any time soon. i tried somewhat recently, with most of the new content? still felt shit. lost interest in under an hour (and that was with the blodless content which was comparatively good).

adding on to the disaster which is bloodstained, we then have the "8bit game" goal. which resulted in bs cotm. which is, bizarrely, absolutely incredible. it's like a spiritual successor to akumajou densetsu (the good version of cv3). unlike rotn, almost every song is awesome and memorable. the gameplay is great. the areas are rad as fuck. it's legit amazing and the only truly good thing to come out of the whole series. cotm 2 isn't as good, but it still feels like magic compared to rotn. and guess what? both are 2d. can you believe it? iga makes a 2d game and it's incredible, right after making a 2.5d game that was dogshit. maybe he shouldn't fuck with 3d anymore? will he get a clue? probably not. it's frustrating to see one of my heroes of game development going in such a dumb direction. sorta reminding me of how aonuma "doesn't understand why people want pre-botw zelda elements back". or miyazaki "doesn't know why elden ring was so successful" and turns around and regresses the fuck out of the gameplay with the miserable tryhard dlc. i complain about zelda and elden, but i would still rather play totk or elden 100x over bloodstained rotn. even though iga seems to be remaining more "faithful" to his genre, his execution is somehow worse. in my heart, whether it's logical or not, i blame kickstarter. to me, bs rotn was a ks scam game. a soulless imitation of cv sotn, that held less value than a low effort fanmod of a real castlevania. and i TRIED to like it. i put up a lot of money for it's kickstarter, and was an apologist of all it's bullshit for years. but i can't do it anymore. it's a bad castlevania. maybe the worst. so am i excited for rotn 2? not really. there's a faint glimmer of hope knowing it won't be another kickstarter game, and that they're using all the money they made from the first one to make it (prob a significant sum, they certainly weren't using their profit to fix the orig game, the new content is budget/slow as hell). and they're gonna try and fix the art direction, which "couldn't get any worse" except they plan to make it more realistic "like final fantasy 7 remake". why? ok rant over. bs cotm sucked. i hope cotm 2 won't suck so bad. but i'm not holding my breath.

[autolenaphilia]

Duke Nukem 3D

Duke Nukem 3D, developed by 3D Realms is a showcase for Ken Silverman’s Build engine. It was not the only game to use the Build engine, nor even the first but it was the most popular and successful game to use it. It wasn’t even the first Duke Nukem game, but it’s success overshadowed the two platform games that preceded it.

At the core of Duke Nukem 3D is solid Doom-like “boomer shooter” action. It’s a game about shooting things, more than plot. The plot is, aliens have invaded and kidnapped Earth’s women, and now action hero Duke Nukem must stop them, it doesn’t go any deeper.

And the levels don’t deviate that far from the Doom formula either. Functionally it’s about exploring the often complex and maze-like levels, defeating the enemies, and finding key cards to unlock doors to progress and find the exit to the next level.Duke Nukem 3d also has the episodic structure of the original Doom, so the game is divided into sets of levels. The game originally shipped with three episodes in January 1996, but 3D Realms developed a fourth episode released first as an expansion pack and later bundled with the main game in december as Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition released in December 1996. That’s the version I bought and played for this review, using eduke32.

Duke Nukem 3D massively expanded on the Doom formula in ways that were very innovative for the time, and allowed it to compete successfully with ID Software’s own Quake, released that year, despite that game featuring actual 3D.

The Build engine wasn’t real 3D, in that it couldn’t do proper “room-over-room”, which is the hallmark of true 3D. Instead it was 2.5D, like the Doom engine that inspired it. In such an enginethe level designer can’t create a house with two floors, one floor over the other, or a platform that the player character can both walk on and walk under. Things can have different elevations, but the engine can’t actually handle all three dimensions fully.

Except the Build engine allowed the devs to fake room-over-room with various means. The basis o this trick is that two different sectors or rooms could overlap on the map, as long as they weren’t seen at the same time. Using portals to other sectors and seamless teleports of the player, including on stairs, it could fake 3D space. And this is used to great effect in Duke Nukem 3D. The level cans often feel like true 3D, and knowing that it really isn’t only makes the design more impressive.

The Build engine also allowed for basically all of its levels to be modified on-the-fly, which is also exploited very well in Duke Nukem 3D. Years before Red Faction, you could destroy parts of the environment to proceed, like blow a hole in the wall to create a new path (often marked by Zelda-esque cracks in the wall), or blow up entire buildings to proceed, both to find secrets and as part of required progression through the levels.

In addition, Duke Nukem 3D had a more realistic level design that earlier FPS games. Both Doom games were fairly abstract mazes, even when Doom II tried to depict cities on Earth it was more a suggestion than anything meaningfully detailed. Even Quake, which came out after Duke Nukem 3D and was actually 3D used a Doomesque abstract level design. But Duke Nukem 3D succeded at depicting realistic locations more so than anything that came before it. You get a cinema, a bookstore, a bank, a hotel and a subway station. Like they are not entirely realistic, but there are clear representations of real-life things and realistic enough to work. It does indulge in Doom-like space techbases in episode 2, but otherwise the settings are more realistic

Duke could do a lot more than most FPS protags bar maybe the System Shock hacker (who also had a true 3D engine to work with). You can put on scuba gear and go swimming (going from the surface to underwater is maybe one of the more obvious teleports, but still pretty seamless.). You can find a jetpack and fly around the level and find secrets. You find a shrinker weapon that can shrink even the toughest non-boss enemy to a harmless tiny creature that Duke just steps on with his boots. And you can be shrunk yourself and go through tiny crawlspaces. Also Duke could talk, and specific situations triggered situation-appropriate oneliners, impressive for 1996.

There are some problems. Gameplay-wise, the levels can be very maze-like, and it can be confusing and frustrating to find your way. There are also some really dumb switch puzzles which give you 3-4 on/off switches and it’s just inputting combinations, bruteforcing the puzzle, until you find the right one, a waste of time. But overall the level design holds up, how the levels twist in on themselves is sometimes really fun and engaging to find out.

Of course, maze-like level design and dumb puzzles isn’t the whole extent of Duke Nukem 3D’s problems. Let’s talk about the babes for a minute, the portrayal of women in this game.

Of course the traditional defense of Duke Nukem is that it’s all a joke. And yeah, Duke himself definitely is meant as a joke, a parody of 80s bodybuilder action heroes, complete with one-liners stolen from other movies. He’s an obvious example of 90s-era irony. And some of the humor works. My favorite joke in the game is that Duke leaves each level by finding and hitting the level’s self-destruct button. It’s bombastic on a literal level, but a subtle enough comment on the violent destruction of action movie heroism that it’s still funny. Way less subtle, but still fun is the fact that one of the most common enemies are pig cops, once human cops who have been turned into literal anthropomorphic pigs.

Still the joke doesn’t go far enough to truly subvert the macho misogyny of Duke. If Duke views women as sex objects, the game doesn’t contradict him on that point. Women in this game exist literally to be sexy décor scattered around the levels, and not much else. The sexy scantily clad women in this game are silly, but they are probably meant to also be unironically titillating.

Still, again it’s not too bad. Duke is played with enough self-aware humor to not be totally obnoxious, helped by Jon St. John’s charismatic and rightfully iconic voice acting. And the sexy ladies are so silly that it takes the edge out of the offensiveness. Strippers continuing their dancing oblivious while an alien invasion is literally going on around them are just too silly. The game overall is so light on plot that both the babes and Duke as a character only appear occasionally. It’s a game focused on the gameplay, and the gameplay is good.

Duke Nukem 3D is ultimately just fun to play. There is some great action here, with a nice weapon and enemy variety to keep you going. And it’s impressive how the game pushes against the technical limitations of its engine.

The best way to play Duke Nukem 3D is buying the Atomic Edition on the obscure but legit digital games store Zoom-Platform, which sells the game without drm and also includes pretty much everything officially released for Duke Nukem3D. This includes all four episodes made by 3D Realms and the official expansions made by other developers. And while you can play the original game by emulating MS-DOS via Dosbox, the best way is probably the eduke32 sourceport which allows you to play the game natively on modern systems.

[wereh0gz]

I have a Sonic spinoff game idea

Ok so. It's a turn-based rpg inspired by dnd, bc I have an itch to play rpgs and also I'm still mad abt them not doing anything with the dnd stuff the official social media posted abt months ago

The story is essentially a battles and badniks (dnd in sonic's world) campaign run by Orbot. Sonic and co. hear abt it somehow (possibly through an invitation?) and decide to check it out thinking it might be one of Eggman's schemes, but nah. It's just a straight game Orbot is running for funsies. Not exactly sure what the story of the campaign would be, but I know it involves Sonic being a villain bc he deserves to let loose. Also Eggman and Sage would be minor antagonists, basically like rivals to the party that they meet and fight at certain points. The main party could consist of Amy, Tails, Knuckles, and Shadow, with Amy possibly being the de-facto main character and with more characters joining the party later on

The game is divided into two types of gameplay- in-game segments that look like your typical high fantasy rpg, which take up most of your playtime, and out-of-game segments in a similar style to a visual novel, which are a lot shorter

The rpg segments play like a mixture of your typical turn-based game and ttrpg. The party is on a quest of some sort, exploring the world of their game, meeting people, visiting various villages and doing small side-quests along the way. The party can encounter enemies in areas between villages, which they battle in a similar manner to most games of the genre, by selecting the actions each character takes. BUT they have to roll their dice to determine how well they perform the selected action, which is the main gimmick of the game. They can also perform checks to lessen the effects of certain actions taken against the characters in battle or to determine how well certain actions are performed out of battle, which in some cases could affect how the story progresses so each playthrough is kind of unique. There's also an exp system, in which exp is gained by defeating enemies and performing side-quests

The out-of-game segments serve to give a bit of extra exposition to the player (like setting up the actual campaign and showing why each character is playing the role they are playing in it, stuff like that). There would be some moments in the rpg segments where the campaing is interrupted by these segments, mostly used for gags at first until later into the game where some interpersonal drama happens

Both segments would have different art styles, too. The rpg segments would have a 2.5d pixelart style while the visual novel segments would have a style similar to tmosth. Since this is a hypothetical game, I'd throw in voice acting too, but if it were real I wouldn't expect there to be any

Each characters' class would be the same as seen in this post, and they'd have different names and slightly different appearances to the "real-world" characters playing them. Of course their outfits are different to fit the roles they are playing, but their actual physical appearance and age could be different too, all depending on how they were made by the characters playing them. Amy's character specifically would essentially just be Paladin Amy from Sonic Dash and Speed Battle. Not really sure abt the others tho

The endgame would be to redeem Sonic's character, who as I said earlier is the main villain, and also figure out why Sonic would choose to play the villain in the first place (spoiler alert: he's stressed as fuck and wants to not be seen as a hero for once). They also gotta stop Eggman and Sage from causing trouble. Fun hijinks, dnd-based jokes, (possibly) some high fantasy horror, and plenty of character drama ensues