#2000's video game based anime

[sl33py-g4m3r]

Shin Megami Tensei's Devil Children Anime Supposedly had a Planned Engli...

[tiffanys-aus-and-headcanons]

Appendix D: Some Pig/One More Final

The first three posts in this series are here.

Undertale was a slightly postmodern children's fantasy movie produced by Jim Henson's Creature Shop in the '80s. Noah Hathaway played the protagonist, Frisk, who went on a long quest to escape from a magical prison inside Mt. Ebott; Frisk's father had thrown them into the mountain, known to be full of monsters, in an attempt to kill them. However, it's suggested that as a human, Frisk is inherently more of a protagonist than a monster can be, and has a vague sort of magical power over them. Toriel's death, which Frisk accidentally causes early in the movie, is commonly listed as a Peak Sad Childhood Moment.

George Orwell wrote The Writing In The Web, a political fable about a cult started by a well-meaning spider. E. B. White wrote Snowball's Farm, a whimsical children's tale about a farm whose animals decide to take over.

Infamously, Emmanuel Goldstein's monologue fills dozens of pages, takes at least three hours to read aloud, and brings the plot of Ayn Rand's 1984 to a screeching halt.

Short story collections and anthologies often keep the same title, author, and spirit, it's just the stories that are swapped out. For example, classic episodes of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone include A Wonderful Life, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, Miracle On 34th Street, and The Sixth Sense. 1983's The Twilight Zone Movie includes segments based on classic episodes Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (directed by John Landis and given anti-war themes), Cocoon, The Poltergeist, and In Search of the Twelve Monkeys (the original starred a young William Shatner). Candle Cove is an episode of Black Mirror.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was a 1999 Ben Stiller comedy about a team of low-rent superheroes who theme themselves after public domain characters because they cannot afford licensing fees. The film was well-reviewed, but a box office bomb. It was actually the first film to use Smash Mouth's One Week - the One Week music video is actually cross promotion with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - and it would remain the film most associated with the song until Dreamworks' Happily N'Ever After hit theaters two years later.

The Amazing Digital Circus was a virtual pet game and toy line that struck when the iron was hot on that niche, before being bought out by Hasbro and rebooted a few times in different forms and mediums. Lauren Faust created a long-running television cartoon of it that was a huge smash hit with fandom culture despite the show's clearly very young target audience. The property's canon is all very light kiddie fare; the scariest thing about The Amazing Digital Circus is that for a brief and touchy stretch of time in the early 2000s, it was owned by the Peoples Temple, which was seriously considering turning it into a recruiting platform.

Your cringe unpublished works that you gave up on were almost certainly swapped around with other people's cringe unpublished works that they gave up on. There's lots of upwards and downwards mobility to the scramble, but not usually that much. Exceptions are very rare - like a beggar suddenly being made king, or a god being reincarnated into an ant - but they do occasionally happen. For example, what you know as the land of Oz exists only in the head of a young Milwaukee stoner, who suddenly came up with the idea for an epic graphic novel one day in the 2010s while sitting on the bus, and spent a couple of years absolutely convinced she would eventually make it. (She cannot draw.) Conversely, L. Frank Baum's children's fantasy series, Enormia, which has been adapted and reimagined many times, most notably as audiences' introduction to color film, exists in your world only as a different Milwaukee stoner's overly elaborate backstory for his jerkoff sessions. This kind of thing is much more the exception than the rule, and even such exceptions are almost always much smaller in scope - an obscure stillborn project getting swapped around with an obscure out-of-print novel, or an obscure direct-to-video z-movie.

The True Detectives forum and its many schismatic spinoffs, all of which are devoted to discussing mystery fiction, host literally thousands of Wind fanfics. Many of the writers - perhaps most of them - have never actually read Wind, just other fanfiction of it; next to none of the fics are worth reading. Most Wind fics reuse the original protagonist, Rorschach, but treat him as a generically relatable blank slate. The most common fic format by far is the "altdunnit", a form of what-if scenario in which the mystery that sets off Wind's plot is different in some way.

Rorschach is held by a substantial portion of the fandom to be an egg (a trans woman who has not realized it yet). Wildbow has never endorsed this interpretation, and it doesn't seem to be much on his radar. In recent years, the trans Rorschach portion of the fandom has grown; they don't tend to look especially kindly on Warn, much of which Wildbow wrote as a response to fans (like those on the True Detectives forum) he felt had been too inclined to take Rorschach's side in Wind. Flame wars over Warn's content were constant throughout its serial publication, and made it easily the rockiest experience of Wildbow's writing career.

Some noteworthy and relevant podcasts include Jonathan Sims' The Dresden Files, the Ranged Touch Network's Scott Pilgrim Made The World, Doof Media's Winding Down (later Warning Down), and the McElroy family's The Adventure Zone (an actual play podcast which has currently had three major campaigns, two anthology series, and various one-shots). Film Reroll is still an actual play podcast that runs the basic setups of movies (and occasionally other media) as short tabletop campaigns; occasionally, their version of a movie will be much closer to ours than it is to the version of the movie in their own universe.

Xenobuddy was an early childhood public access show, originally created for the BBC in the late 1990s but later aired internationally. The title character is a small alien puppet who lives on a futuristic spaceship staffed by children (who speak a vague conlang akin to a dollar store Esperanto). At the end of every episode, it gets lost and is found, usually by (harmlessly) bursting out of one of the children. It was very popular with its target audience and much loathed by parents. Edgy ironic fanart depicting the titular Xenobuddy as some kind of dangerous parasite abounds.

Static is a supernatural slasher franchise created by Wes Craven, with the first film, also simply titled Static, released in 1984. The movies concern a group of gibbering neotenous ogre-fae who wake up in the modern day after a long sleep, incorporate televisions into their bodies, and start eating people by sucking them into hellish pocket dimensions. The Screen-Guts collectively are probably in the top five antagonists most people think of when they think of slasher horror.

Toby Fox's ROSEQUARTZ is especially known for its meta take on video game morality systems. The game has a mission-based structure; throughout it, the player is encouraged to take on a pacifist playstyle, championed by the player character's late mother, the title character. However, the Crystal Gems give the player enough autonomy that you are entirely able to take a much more violent tack; doing so has a rippling effect on the game's writing in countless immersively-integrated ways. If the player goes out of their way to be as murderous as possible - the so-called "genocide route" - the differences from the main route grow much more extreme, and rather than gaining allies, you start to lose them, as the Crystal Gems realize what you're doing and one by one turn against you. If you manage to shatter Garnet - it's the hardest and most iconic fight in the game, Megalovania is playing, her Future Vision gets used for all it's worth - then you use your knife to slash at the cosmos, erasing Earth, Homeworld, and everything else. This, Toby Fox is saying, is apparently all you want out of a video game - another toy to break.

Warner Bros still did Space Jam with Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes, it's just that the Looney Tunes in question were Mickey Mouse and friends. They also still did a second one with LeBron James, which was, by God, somehow worse. They put Ms. Frizzle in it.

Walt Disney made his squeaky clean reputation on the back of adaptations of things like Rudyard Kipling's adventure novel The Call of Cthulhu, P. L. Travers' Thomas the Tank Engine, and Erich Kästner's feel-good coming-of-age kidnapping tale about the power of perseverance, Lolita, originally done with Hayley Mills and later remade with Lindsay Lohan.

Nabokov's extremely controversial literary classic that has defined the idea of the unreliable narrator is Father's Trap, from the perspective of a man who plots to obtain custody of both of his daughters for nefarious purposes. Most publishers ignored Nabokov's instructions not to depict the twins, Lisa and Lottie, on the cover. Stanley Kubrick and Adrian Lyne have directed mediocre film adaptations, and songwriting team Lerner and Loewe did a musical that was a legendary flop.

The Japanese fashion movement is Gothic Pollyanna, after an otherwise-forgotten series of penny dreadfuls about a cute, cheery, rules-minded young girl who is, despite appearances, an insane criminal. Minor character Bonesaw in Alan Moore's Worm Turns also clearly hearkens back to the Pollyanna stock character.

The DEA was a prime-time soap opera about the ongoing "war on drugs"; it ran for eleven seasons from 1982 to 1993. Its plot focused on federal agents working at the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and especially partners Hank Schrader and Steve Gomez and their families. It is mostly remembered today for its downer ending (in which the treachery of late-show villain Walter White, or "Heisenberg", gets the leads killed, and he escapes from justice), and for its far-more-acclaimed spinoff series Better Call Saul, which also ran for eleven seasons from 1993 to 2004, functioning as a prequel, midquel, and sequel to The DEA.

Between The DEA and Better Call Saul, Kelsey Grammer played crooked lawyer Saul Goodman for twenty consecutive years of primetime TV, first as featured comic relief and later as a leading man. (He also guest-starred on the mostly-forgotten Mall Cop, establishing that it, too, was set in the world of The DEA and Better Call Saul.) Better Call Saul won more than a dozen Primetime Emmys. Peri Gilpin received several of these for her performance as Kim Wexler.

St. Elsewhere was a film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan in the late 1990s; it was highly acclaimed and successful, and established Shyamalan in the public eye as a skilled auteur with an affinity for twist endings. The film's final scene reveals that its main setting, St. Eligius Hospital, exists entirely within the imagination of an autistic boy, Tommy Westphall, as he gazes into a snowglobe. The so-called "Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis", which posits that this same twist applies to most of fiction due to a network of crossovers, was invented by a Saturday Night Live sketch shortly postdating the film's release, in which an amnesiac Charles McGill (from Better Call Saul) wakes up in St. Eligius, attended to by a cast of characters who are more concerned with their own nonexistence.

After rising to prominence as a writer, storyboarder, and composer for Pendleton Ward's Science Time (where she established the Summer/Jessica relationship that would come to define later seasons), Rebecca Sugar got to make her own cartoon, Henry Ichor. Set in a recently post-apocalyptic but strangely cheerful world, Henry Ichor concerns a young teenage boy who is conscripted as a mech pilot due to his rare and innate ability to link to the powerful Evangelion mecha. (His preferred Evangelion is eventually revealed to be a form of his late mother, the reason he can do this in the first place.) Henry turns out to be a vital asset in protecting humanity from the monstrous "Angels" that frequently threaten it, and is surprisingly emotionally mature for his age. However, the adults around him (especially his father, Gennady) frequently push him too far, especially considering his generally noncombative and pacifistic nature. There is much interpersonal drama and much singing about it, with a very vocally trained cast. After several seasons of slow buildup, the show was forced to suddenly rush to its ending in only a few (infamous) episodes after an arc where Henry had a romance with an Angel in male human form. Henry Ichor The Movie and an ensuing miniseries, End Of Henry Ichor, helped bring the show to a more thematically satisfying conclusion.

Although he has played a creative or consultant role in many animated projects, Alex Hirsch is best known for the one he was actually the showrunner for, Disney Channel's smash hit Sunnydale. Focusing on a small California town constantly plagued by supernatural threats, Sunnydale generally followed a simple monster-of-the-week format, but kept audiences on the hook with teases at a deeper underlying mystery. The show almost didn't get a season two, as Hirsch found working with Disney very tiring, but he was eventually persuaded; season two ran through the rest of Hirsch's ideas at a faster pace, and concluded the show with the leads graduating from Sunnydale High.

For a brief historical moment, Daron Nefcy's show, Ender vs. the Space Bug Army, looked like it would become the successor to Sunnydale, keeping Disney Television Animation prestigious after Sunnydale ended. However, though Ender drew in a big crowd, and lasted almost twice as long as Sunnydale, it was not ultimately as well-received. EvtSBA is a children's space opera, wearing its Starship Troopers (Joss Whedon) inspiration on its sleeve, but also clearly copying some (superficial) notes from Philip Pullman. Set in a future where mankind has come into violent conflict with bug-like aliens, the show follows unbearably smug boy supergenius Ender as he is sent to military school to prepare for interstellar warfare. The show has an extremely cutesy and hyperactive tone; typical filler episodes include the one (generally taken as meta about fandom drama) in which Ender's siblings' futuristic internet arguments prove instrumental to the survival of the human race. Later seasons get a bit more serious, but focus heavily on shipping. The show is infamous for its ending, in which Ender, for his final exam, destroys the Formics' home planet and releases a psychic signal that eradicates the Formic race. Although the show explicitly notes that this includes many individual Formics who we have previously known as sympathetic characters, it is nonetheless played as a happy ending in which a hostile colonial power is defeated. Ender has ended the war; he has beaten the Space Bug Army.

"Meugh-Neigh. 'Meugh' like the cat, 'neigh' like the horse." "Does it mean something?" "No answer; none at all."

Orson Scott Card is an extremely prolific author of speculative fiction. Although it isn't as close to his heart as the Steel Gear series, in which he got to flex his military sci-fi muscles and allegorically retell stories from his faith, he is undoubtedly best known for Ishtar's Curse. Initially a short story and later expanded into a full novel, the plot concerns young Princess Ishtar, or Star, heir to the heathen fairy kingdom of Meugh-Neigh. (In later novels, she changes her name to Bethlehem Diaz, or Beth.) Spoiled and destructive but magically talented, Star is sent to twentieth century Earth so she can develop the wits and the strength of character to be a viable wartime leader for her people - or at least so she can be kept out of the way. After several years of personal growth and magical misadventures with companions she met on Earth, a more grounded Star devises a spell to erase the magic that makes up the bodies of most of her throne's enemies. This plan works, and merges Meugh-Neigh into the Earth as a small and ordinary European country. However, though her subjects are eager to celebrate her for this, Star is devastated when she realizes that she has killed trillions of innocent spirits, and, seeking to atone, she takes on the title of Speaker for the Dead (also the title of the book's first sequel). Although it's frequently ranked highly in lists of fantasy novels of the twentieth century, Ishtar's Curse has received some harsh criticism, with the standard line being that Star is an idealized fantasy of a repentant Hitler figure, and that the text presents excessive justifications for her actions. The story has also been called a reactionary response to Wilde's The Little Mermaid. After more than twenty years, a film adaptation of Ishtar's Curse was released in 2009, starring Dakota Fanning, to mixed reviews. The box office took a further hit due to a boycott campaign, after Card's views on homosexuality (and, relatedly, his membership in the LDS Church) became widely known. In the end, it lost the studio a lot of money.

Hideaki Anno is best known for the classic smash hit anime he made for Studio Gainax, Einstein Goliath Nestorian, a psychologically intense deconstruction of martial arts shonen like Yoshiyuki Tomino's Dragon Ball. Einstein Goliath Nestorian concerns a mystery man known only as Saitama, who finds that he has become dissatisfied with life and alienated from the world after only three years of training have enabled him to easily surpass any physical challenge. The original series is known for its sudden, surreal, and clearly budget-driven ending, although this was quickly alleviated with a similarly surreal but more definitive finale movie. Although many Western anime fans often think of Einstein Goliath Nestorian as pretentious and ultra niche, it was actually a huge mainstream hit in Japan, with a colossal franchise of adaptations, merch, and spinoffs (notably including a series of Retrain films, which began as extremely close shot-for-shot remakes of the original series but wound up spiraling into a very different updated timeline).

Previously most noteworthy for his 2003 visual novel Oreimo, Gen Urobuchi was tapped by Shaft for their extremely successful and acclaimed anime Ohayou Hana!, hailed as a deceptively dark deconstruction of the teen idol genre. The plot concerns a girl, Saionji Mayuri, who leads a double life, being of little note at school, out of costume, but spending much of her time as #1 idol Hana. Her mental stability begins to deteriorate as she realizes that the adults in her life - especially her father, himself a former idol - have groomed her to serve as a drugged and hypnotized propaganda mouthpiece for a shadowy conspiracy. She winds up in the worst of both worlds as her ensuing breakdown, and her handlers' response to it, destroys both of her lives and brings ruin to those she cares about. In addition to the popularity of the actual anime, many of its songs became decontextualized J-Pop hits. The idol anime genre would then receive a glut of edgy lesser imitators, like Love Live: School Idol Project, Cheetah Girls, and magical girl fusion Symphogear. Although the original Ohayou Hana! was a self-contained twelve-episode story, it received a sequel movie shortly thereafter, Ohayou Hana! Rebel!, which ended on a cliffhanger that has still not been resolved over a decade later. The upcoming Ohayou Hana! MK Ultra! is expected to get things back on track. An abridged series originating on 4chan, focusing on cropped screencaps from Ohayou Hana!, called the title character "Miss Ohio", producing the memetic tagline "being Ohio is suffering".

Zack Snyder first came up with the idea for Madoka around 2000, a long time before he'd actually get to make it; he put the project on hold in 2006 to make his adaptation of Worm Turns. He developed the idea with his wife Deborah and a cowriter, Steve Shibuya. Inspired by the Disney Princess phenomenon, as well as Naoko Takeuchi's Pretty Cure (one of the few anime that had already become a hit in the States), Snyder wanted to tell a coherent story about fights between magical girls who could make anything happen, who could make any fantastical world or visual appear. In Snyder's film, we follow Madoka Kaname, a teenager attending a Catholic school in Los Angeles. Madoka and her friends are approached by a strange young woman who goes only by "Mommy", and her animal companion (a CGI-ed up squirrel-cat thing), QB. They offer to make the teens into "magical girls", granting them one wish each in exchange for a life devoted to spiritual warfare. (Another mysterious new girl, Lilly, urges them not to take the deal in the strongest possible terms.) This turns out to be a scam; QB is pitting the magical girls against one another for his own reasons, and in the end, every magical girl and her wish gets corrupted. Despite much of the film's plot being a horrific bloodbath - the MPAA demanded a lot of cuts to get it down to a PG-13 rating - there is a happy ending; Madoka finally makes her own wish and uses it to topple QB's whole system. Madoka isn't often discussed nowadays but it was a major discourse bomb when it came out in 2010, alternately being called misogynistic Orientalist trash and a subversive feminist masterpiece. Snyder, for his part, often notes that QB is intended as an allegory for exploitative forces within the entertainment industry that treat young women as disposable resources with an expiration date; this is already clear to anyone who's watched the film, which is not exactly subtle in its symbolism. He also explains that the film sexualizes the girls in an effort to shame the audience, to get people to understand that they are objectifying the characters in the same way that QB does. The soundtrack's got a really cool ethereal cover of Nine Inch Nails' King Nothing on it, which is probably the most remembered part of the film today.

Selena Gomez became a star by playing Violet Parr on Disney Channel's superhero sitcom The Incredibles. While the show was initially a very throwaway villain-of-the-week affair whose leads had to keep their powers hidden from the public and their caped escapades secret from the government for self-explanatory comes-with-the-genre reasons, it would eventually unfold that the show was set in something of an X-Men-style dystopia where superheroism had been outlawed and supers oppressed by the government as a potential societal fifth column.

Brad Bird directed one of Pixar's most celebrated films, Wizards of Waverly Place; it was Pixar's first film with a predominantly human cast. Disney was hungry for a fantasy property after losing a bidding war for the Luz Noceda rights. It had strong populist anti-eugenic themes, with an elaborate wizarding hierarchy of antagonists who seek to remove the Russo family's magic as part of an effort to curb wizard overpopulation. The sequel came more than a decade later, and wasn't nearly as good.

In addition to Worm Turns, Alan Moore is notable for the heavily metafictional comic Pagemaster, about a boy, Richard, who finds a magical library that contains all stories that have ever been or could ever be told; he becomes lost and imperiled in assorted pieces of historically noteworthy literature (initially ones in the public domain, though later volumes would start using legally safe serial-numbers-filed-off versions of modern stories). The 2003 film, in which Sean Connery played the librarian in one of his last film roles, is widely regarded as a terrible, deeply-toned-down adaptation that didn't grasp the tone or themes of the original story at all; it only covered the first half of the first volume, in which Richard meets "genre spirits" who wish to sort all stories into rigid categories. In a later volume, Pagemaster Millennium, an aged Richard Tyler, who has since taken on the mantle of librarian himself, meets a teenage girl, heavily implied to be Luz Noceda, who has also become lost in the library. She has become corrupted by an eldritch book, or "Necronomicon", written by "the Wrong Author", heavily implied to be the devil (and/or Hugo Astley, an Aleister Crowley caricature from W. Somerset Maugham's The Winged Bull). Flushed with demonic power and enraged by what she's become, a monstrous Luz tears through the library in a blaze of hellfire, seeking to destroy all of literature and the world. It is only through the intervention of the Fat Controller - heavily implied to be God - that Luz is defeated; he mercifully erases her by hitting her with a train, and laments what she became.

[yettofindaname]

Playing Prince of Persia 2008

So last week i got COVID, and was out of work for a few days. I use a dual-booted computer with windows/linux at home - with linux as my main but Windows to use a few windows exclusive programs and to play games on steam. With a lot of time on my hands, but little willpower to do anything challenging, i booted the old copy of PoP 2008 on the steam library, created a new game and got into the hidden valley with the worst walking infrastructure the gaming world has to offer.

A bridge salesman would really clean up in this place. -The prince

Now everyone who played this game already talked gameplay: How the moving-around-part is cool and the single combat with combos is meh. So let's say something else.

In a review from 2021, the reviewer talks about how the game's stylized graphics keep it timeless, and there is a care on the design of every level such that it feels like looking at a painting someone carefully crafted. This is a hard agree. The stylized looks+ the no death mechanic feel very modern, in a way. In the 2008 market, there was this flow towards more realistic games, and also a expectation that Prince of Persia was meant to be challenging, and this game subverted both. In this aspect, the game would be more successful if it was released today than in it's original climate.

Nolan North is here as the Prince. This game came the year after Uncharted 1 came out and was a huge success, and Nolan is here to bring that sweet uncharted rizz to the game. And bring it he does! Does it fit well with the game? Well, I liked it - but it's more of Nolan redoing a wisecracking adventurer in a magic antiquity setting. This is maybe not just ubisoft copying naughty dog's homework, but a trend of the 2000s to have these very, well, very 2000s people around having adventures in other epochs. Reminds me of this post about how everyone in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is a 2000s hero except James Norrington (who suffers dearly for it), so while the game style and gameplay were ahead of it's time, this part really feels right were it belongs.

Elika - chosen one of the god Ormazd and last of the Ahura people, tasked to the keeping of the evil god Ahriman in his tree prision - plays more of an straight man role to the prince's joking and lamp-shading shenanigans. Her design is a very 2000's design: Where most video games hot girls are more about boobs-and-ass design-wise, she is all about that impossibly thin waist line. Overall a great character, and the banter with the prince is funny and fresh, she makes for a great part of the fun in the game.

Every creative endeavor is, for the lack of a better word, an aborted process. Animators would polish their animations forever if not for the cruel team leads to rip the file from their hands to give to the next guy on the pipeline. Planned features get scraped as the deadlines tighten, and so turns the world. PoP 2008 is no different.

- A central gameplay feature is the power plates: When the prince and Elika jump on them, the game's movement mechanics change, and a kind of minigame starts, based on the magic of the plates: The Green plates give the Breath of Ormazd, where the prince can run up, down and around walls like they are the floor, while avoiding bumps and obstacles on them. The Yellow plates give Elika a long term flight ability (Wings of Ormazd), the prince rides on her back and you use the arrow keys to avoid obstacles mid-air. The Red plates catapult you both to a next destination, and the true obstacles are the chain of conventional moves between the red plates. Aaaand the blue plates are the same as the red plates, but blue. We can see that the inspiration died after the red plates, if not with them. Every level has 45 light seeds (game 'currency', to trade for more plates), where 40 are accessible by normal routes, and 5 are accessible using a set of plates of a specific color hidden on the level. Many of these hidden plates are red (easy to place after the level was done) but almost none are blue, the most uninspired plate.

- The game has 4 main areas split into 4 sub-areas, each main area assigned to a boss. Each main area needs two power plates to complete - The Citadel, for example, needs the red and yellow plates. We can imagine there was space (there are literally unused closed gates in the corner of the areas) for 4 more areas, each for the unused combination of 2 of the plates, with 4 more associated bosses, that were removed from the scope pretty early in the project.

Speaking of bosses, the five bosses of the game incidentally make for a near perfect dark version of the heroic Five Man band. Its kind of sad they never interact or even acknowledge each other, but it's one of the limitations of the game onset from it's original design.

- The Mourning King is the Hero, a noble ruler who sold his soul for the somewhat noble - if selfish - motive of resurrecting his daughter.

- As his foil and Lancer, both in combat style and motivations, we have the Hunter, also a noble ruler who sold his soul for the cruel prize of hunting men .

- The Alchemist -> Brains, all mad scientist like.

- The Warrior -> Brawn, he literally cannot be damaged in combat.

- The Concubine -> The Chick, the Only Other Girl in the story. Does illusion magic stuff.

In the finale, Elika sacrifices herself to seal Ahriman back to the tree - and the ending is centered around you - the prince - redoing a bargain her father previously made and breaking the seals in exchange for Elika's life - undoing all your progress in the process. This is weird to me: While we see a growing relationship between Elika and the Prince - Story-wise they know each other for like, 8 hours tops. And there are few lines of dialogue that feel like a true romantic relationship developing. And it's also disrespectful of Elika's final wishes. But everyone bashes this ending, so I will do a first in gaming history: I will defend the ending of Prince of Persia 2008.

Why the Ending of PoP 2008 is Okay, actually:

First, the romance thing - two things come to mind: First - though there is little romance dialogue, there is much romance touching and physicality. Elika and the Prince are maybe one of video games more intimate couple in terms of physical interaction in gameplay. They move together, depend on one another. When they climb vines, Elika grabs herself onto the Prince's back, when they drop of a ledge onto the floor, the prince catches Elika and places her on the ground. They do a cute little spin together when changing places atop a wooden beam. This relationship is not mainly on the story, but is a core feature of the play of the game itself. Second: This is an 1001 nights themed story, where this kind of spontaneous, love at first-sight thing is a theme - this is echoed in the finale, where if you got every light seed in the map, the final seed that resurrects Elika is the 1001st light seed.

But outside of the romance, there are reasons grounded in friendship, and those hit harder for me: The Prince is a well traveled guy, and many of the dialogue lines with Elika revolve around this growing notion that Elika has spent her whole life trapped in this dwindling secret valley, desiring the amazing things of the outside world, but bound by her sense of duty even when all the other members of the kingdom shirked this duty and went away to the outside world. That the reward for her selflessness, her hard and unwavering faith in the god of light - that left her fighting for all of creation alone - was death. That would piss off our guy, damn - it pisses ME off. Elika fucking deserved to see the world, to enjoy herself! Damn this absent god that let her fight for the right to kill herself. I would want my friend to be free, and also we have the final point...

Ahriman's current prison (at the end of the game) is absolute dogshit - held together by strings, sticks, spit and a prayer. And the last magical maintenance staff is dead in your arms. Minutes later Ahriman is already fucking with your mind, and while you could get out and move on, the next wanderer to fall in the valley can be persuaded to cut the five flimsy-ass trees for as little as a bag of free candy. While a more cowardly person would want to get the fuck out and never come back you on the other hand want to see a chance of this business having a clear end to it. So you go back, get the magic power from the tree and resurrect the last of the Ahura, hoping to get her stronger, or to get a lead to finding more of the Ahura who went away, or even Ormazd himself.

The game would have everything lined up for a sequel along these lines (and it kinda has, in the DS spin-off game) but the whole franchise was cancelled and left for dead. It's so delusional to hope for a sequel even Nolan North himself said to a fan to go write some fanfic to scratch that itch.

And that's it for Prince of Persia 2008 for me. One thing that made me happy was that when I had just finished the game, and had the PoP 2008 content itch, i found the page @fuckyeahpop2008, that let me see some cool memes and content fans made of the game. The last big burst of activity in the page was 2014, so I'm indulging in the vintages, the 10 year old PoP memes. Thank you @fuckyeahpop2008 - your page, and your love for the game means a lot for me - and is really nice to indulge is this love, kept fresh in tumblrs servers for 10 years. Cheers for anyone playing the game, now or in the future.

[sivavakkiyar]

What do you think of video game jazz? I’m getting into jazz right now and it’s how I got it into it but it feels kind of cringe to admit that

Ahhh tbh this is one of those things I’d want to give a more in-depth answer to. By which I mean I fantasize about having the talent and ability to do a 4 hour Folding Ideas style video essay about the entirety of ‘video game music is real music’ as a phenomenon. The most relevant backdrop to this is that I think people forget that the early 2000’s, when this discourse (in the West) started picking up steam was reactionary, by which I also mean probably not inline with the aesthetics by which we love video game music now. I mean ‘it’s not just beeps and boops!’ was the rallying cry: Anamanaguchi and chip tune stuff, even the fetish for those old hardware sounds wasn’t particularly widespread. So they loved the melodies they grew up with in games, but also thought of them as being ‘hobbled’ by the hardware, as opposed to sounds in their own right. So they were arguing that the music was legitimate now—-by which they very explicitly meant ‘performed on real instruments, often the instruments of the Western Orchestra.’ And I’m not saying ‘Western’ as a kneejerk thing either: a lot of those early attempts are embarassing because they take music obviously based around Japanese timbres and apply them to Western instrumentation in a way no one would be happy with today. So we no longer share that aesthetic—-we recognize that the moon theme from Ducktales on the NES is gorgeous, not in a ‘imagine what it could be!’ way, but specifically in and of itself. The orchestrated version of Mother’s Fallin Love is somehow not as intensely moving as the NES original, etc, and even if tastes differ we can agree on the possibility of that.

So I’d argue that this is kind of an important backdrop to the cultural phenomenon of what ‘video game jazz’ is, and has a lasting influence on it’s appeal: a legitimization for melodies and pieces we love. Jazz traditionalists and gatekeepers might occasionally dismiss it as ‘not real jazz’, but that involves a whole host of other assumptions. It obviously is jazz—-but what kind? overwhelmingly, it’s either tightly performed big band medleys or smooth jazz—-closer to the infamously Kenny G.

And that, to be honest, is kind of the point! People attend video game jazz shows to hear those melodies, that’s the point—-they’re not interested in jazz as such. Normally the argument for it’s potential legitimacy is ‘jazz has always used popular music of the day’, and I agree! But that’s clearly not the singular draw of the stuff, and I’ll give this example:

Mahanthappa is objectively one of the major figures of contemporary jazz. This was his arrangement of the New Horizons theme, recorded shortly “after COVID” (you know what I mean, god save us). It was relevant, popular, and significant, and made no headways in the video game jazz scene. How is this possible? Because the assumptions are different, and a good amount of the video game jazz specific audience didn’t respond to it: this is Mahanthappa bringing that music into jazz, as opposed to what amounts to an arranged revue. And so in a weird way there’s actually something like mutual disinterest, and reason why people tend to think of them as like fundamentally different.

It is stupid though. I have an old OneUps CD.

Sorry that coulda been shorter lol

[fancoloredglasses]

Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown (who is running this camp?!), part 1

[All images are owned by Paramount and Peanuts Worldwide. Please don’t sue me or send me to this camp]

[All video clips are courtesy of Rotten Tomatoes]

With summer starting, parents need to figure out what to do with their kids since school is no longer an option. Popular options are…

Take time off of work to take family vacations (see the Nation Lampoon’s Vacation franchise for examples of how this could go horribly wrong)

If the kids are old enough, make them get summer jobs

If they’re too young to be employed, but old enough to be trusted alone, let them stay home

If parents want to see their kids, but don’t trust them to stay home, they could send them to a day camp and pick them up after work

Then there’s the subject of this review from the mid-70s: If the parents want the summer off from their kids, they could ship them off to summer camp.

We will assume that most of you are familiar with Peanuts (or at least the Charlie Brown holiday specials) At the very least I reviewed one based on a movie about burlesque dancing), but just in case…

Peanuts was a daily comic strip created by Charles Shultz in 1950 and ran until shortly before his death in 2000. Schultz always hated the title (he originally named it Li’l Folks, but that name was already copyrighted so the publisher came up with the name that endured), which is why none of the animated shows, specials, and movies didn’t use the title until after Schultz’s death (every single one before had the main character’s name in the title) While the core cast hasn’t changed much over the years, minor characters have come and gone. The characters important to this review are…

Charlie Brown is the epitome of the downtrodden. He is laughed at by those he thinks of as friends, gets no respect from most (including his dog), and almost never comes out on top. For whatever reason, he is always (with one notable exception) referred to by his full name, rather than just his first.

Charlie Brown’s little sister Sally has all the red flags of a Karen-in-Training. She constantly complains about how Life Isn’t Fair to get her way (she once whined her way into getting a grade raised)

Lucy van Pelt is best described as the sociopath of the group. She absolutely has to be the center of attention and delights in tormenting Charlie Brown (especially with Charlie Brown kicking a football, constantly pulling it away at the last second so Charlie Brown lands flat on his back (she once did so during a football game in which Charlie Brown’s kick meant the difference between winning and losing. Three guesses who got blamed for the loss))

Lucy’s little brother Linus is likely the wisest of the gang. He has a dependency on his baby blanket, carrying it everywhere. He is also the target of Sally’s crush, much to his chagrin (she often refers to Linus as her “Sweet Baboo”)

Schroeder is a musical prodigy who worships the works of Beethoven. He carries around a pint-sized grand piano that he can play virtually anything on from memory. Lucy had decided that he is the man she’ll marry, no matter what he says (I say she’ll wind up settling for Charlie Brown)

Snoopy is Charlie Brown’s pet beagle. He walks like a human, acts like a human, and does everything humans do except talk (because THAT was where Schultz drew the line)

Snoopy’s best friend is Woodstock (yes, he was named after what you think he was named after) Woodstock can barely fly straight, but is eternally cheerful.

Franklin is…look, there’s no easy way to put this. He’s the token black kid. He was added to the comic strip in response to Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Unfortunately, he’s generally not treated well in animation. If he’s not being outright ignored, he’s being stereotypically black (such as break dancing) or segregated (in A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, for example, he was the only kid on his side of the table while all of the white kids were on the other side)

Peppermint Patty is a tomboy and…well, she’s pretty much a Force of Nature. She pretty much gets everyone to do what she wants by not letting anyone get a word in edgewise. Fortunately, she’s (mostly) well-meaning, if a bit dense at times (she’s the only member of the gang who doesn’t realize Snoopy’s a dog) I’m not sure if she has a crush on Charlie Brown (or as she calls him, “Chuck”) or if she enjoys watching his squirm (interestingly, he doesn’t object despite clearly being uncomfortable about it)

Marcy is Peppermint Patty’s best friend and chief foil. Marcy is very soft-spoken, but is the first one to call Peppermint Patty on her strong-arm BS. For whatever reason, she refers to Peppermint Patty as “sir” (a large portion of the fans have a head canon that they’re in a relationship)

Now that we have the cast, on with the show! If you would like to watch the movie, it’s available behind your favorite paywall.

We open (in the credits) with the gang on a bus on their way to camp, with Snoopy not far behind on his “hawg” (that he’s never had before or since) I’m VERY curious what’s up with the landscape around the suburb they live in, they go through forest as the credits roll, then it immediately turns into desert.

As the credits end, the bus passes by a gas station with a pair of kids hanging out by the pump for some reason. Sally waves at them, but the girl blows a razzberry at her.

Sally gets her wish as the bus gets a blowout immediately after. The driver (that we don’t see; one thing about Peanuts is you never actually SEE the adults...and if you hear them, they say “MWAH WAH WAH WAH”) fixes the flat while Sally marches right up to the girl and…

…immediately backs down and slinks back onto the bus.

Later, the bus stops at another gas station to refuel (they couldn’t do so while fixing the flat?), so the gang takes the opportunity to stretch their legs. Charlie Brown gets distracted talking to Snoopy and…

What kind of bus driver doesn’t take a head count before leaving?!

Fortunately, Snoopy has room on his hawg and gives Charlie Brown a ride. Unfortunately, Snoopy decides to take a “short cut” through some of the roughest patches in the desert, making Charlie Brown close to getting sick by the time they arrive (behind the bus, so what was the point of all of that?)

…and suddenly we’re in the middle of the woods again.

While staggering around and desperately trying not to vomit, Charlie Brown accidentally bumps into three older kids (bullies) who immediately take a disliking to him.

Fortunately, the PA (with a kid at the mic. Are there no adults that are more qualified?) announces registration has begun so Charlie Brown can excuse himself before the bullies can feed him to their cat. Unfortunately, they run into him again when they cut the line and Sally tries to sic Charlie Brown on them.

(Yeah, like that would work)

Fortunately, Linus is there to Save The Day.

Later, as everyone fills out their registration forms (shouldn’t they have done that BEFORE they crossed a desert to come here?) Sally bitches about it, so Peppermint Patty waxes philosophical about the need to leave your comfort zone.

(…and people wonder why the fandom thinks Peppermint Patty and Marcie are a couple)

After filling out their forms, the gang heads for their tents (the boys in one, the girls in the other…

…and Snoopy in his own)

In the girls’ tent, Peppermint Patty suggests that they run things in a democratic fashion, including voting for a leader. Of course, Peppermint Patty has the election won, since we all know Marcie will vote for her.

So with everyone voting for themselves, Peppermint Patty decides she should cast the deciding vote…for herself (wait, there are more than four beds. Don’t the other girls in the tent get a say?)

That evening…

Nothing like roughing it, eh Snoopy?

The next morning…

PA kid has the campers out for morning calisthenics, followed by breakfast and morning activities (no, I’m not doing a montage. It’s as boring as it sounds) Then lunch happens.

Maybe Sally should complain to the manager.

After lunch…

The bullies are at it again.

…but they forgot about Linus.

PA Kid then announces that the Camp Games (pitting all of the tents against one another) will begin. Naturally…

…the bullies cheat. Where are the adults who are supposed to be keeping things fair?

WHO IS RUNNING THIS CAMP?!

As the gang sulks about losing to a bunch of cheaters, PA Kid announces the Main Event of the summer.

The other tents know they don’t stand a chance, meaning there are only four competitors: the boys (sporting a raft held afloat by four inner tubes), the girls (in an inflatable life raft), Snoopy and Woodstock (in a single inner tube) and the bullies, who are competing in this monstrosity…

…complete with radar, sonar, and an outboard motor. You know, if they can afford this contraption, why are they slumming it at Camp Remote?

The teams spend all afternoon inflating their rafts…

…only for the bullies to use that air to inflate theirs overnight. (I guess the electric air pump was a bit more than they could afford)

The next morning, the teams must once again inflate their rafts before the race begins and they all set out (if a bit winded)

[At this point, I would like to point out that the bullies act like every cartoon villain in every race ever: They have the means to get far ahead of the competition, and would likely win the race by several miles, but they need to take the time to cheat and “prove” their superiority]

That evening, the bullies manage to pry their raft out from under the dock and sneak past the other teams as they sleep until they come to…

They then flip the sign so it points in the opposite direction.

Wait, they scheduled an unsupervised race involving kids at a time when there’s blasting happening?!

WHO THE HELL IS RUNNING THIS CAMP?!

Later in the evening, it starts snowing (Hang on. It’s SNOWING in the middle of summer in a forest next to a fucking desert?!) The next morning Woodstock has some fun at Snoopy’s expense.

With that bit of levity out of the way the race continues, and they come to the bullies’ trap.

Despite being nearly pulverized by falling rocks, the channel proved to be a short cut as the gang emerges ahead of the bullies (no doubt sleeping in, knowing they no longer have any competition)

As the bullies rush to catch up…

…a massive storm hits, threatening to sink all of the rafts! (Wait, no one bothered to check the weather report before the race?)

In fact, Snoopy’s tube capsizes, sending both he an Woodstock into the river! Snoopy manages to swim back to his tube, but Woodstock is lost in the water!

WILL Woodstock survive? (I’m sure he’ll be fine. I mean, he was in specials and the comic strip that were published after this)

WHO will win the race?

WHO THE FUCK IS RUNNING THIS CAMP?!?!?!

These questions and more will be answered in the exciting conclusion!

[pineappleciders]

hihi!! could i ask an omori headcannon with an gn reader that loves videogames?? if you already do, could ya do with an reader that loves the stars?? SORRY IF I'M BROTHRJRGTIGN YOU SKDLVJSKL

MIKU DANCING BTW

RW OMORI gang with a reader who loves video games

includes: SUNNY, AUBREY, KEL, HERO, MARI, and BASIL

A/N: i have not done this so!!i also might do the stars request sometime :3 and you aren't bothering anyone i promise🫶 it has come to my attention after writing this that i mentioned wii's and controllers a lot. i grew up a console gamer and since omori kinda takes place in like the 2000's there isn't much pc stuff oops🤫

☆ ☆ ☆

SUNNY

i just KNOW he loves video games. he locks himself in his room and plays games on his puter for like 8 hours straight

his favorite games are RPGs and shooters!!! he really likes the old-school super mario bros games, and he likes smash bros sometimes but rages too hard at it

he can coach you in shooters so you absolutely DESTROY the competition. like he has a little mic in ur ear telling you what to do like you're playing sports

he also LOVES when you teach him game tactics, like his eyes are sparkling when you show him a sick combo in smash bros or an animation cancel. he thinks you're so cool for knowing that

he is always daydreaming about games and games actually affect a lot of stuff in headspace for him!!!! like a bunch of boss fights are based off of bosses in his fav childhood games

as a kid he always took his gameboy everywhere, and you always watch him play and cheer him on. and he lets you play with it too!!

AUBREY

video games are more of a nostalgic thing for her, like for her they're childhood memories of playing mario on kel's wii and getting super competitive with him

she likes to watch you play!! like if you're stuck in a certain part of a game she'll brainstorm and try to help you out. she's also very impressed that your brain can comprehend it all, for her it all just melts together

honestly i think she'd kinda suck at a lot of games but give her a controller on a FPS shooter and she's like. laughing maniacally and going on a killing spree

she definitely has some. errrr . rage issues. you might wanna take your controller back before she can throw it at the wall. she doesn't say ez or anything but if her teammates are trash-talking her she gets BRUTAL and bullies the shit out of them

she likes RPGs for awhile but when she gets stuck or lost she gets angry and gives up LMFAO. huffs and thanks you if you help her out but still might not play the game out of spite

KEL

he played more games in his childhood, but he's always been a tryhard!!!!

he doesn't rage, but he gets really competitive and tries REALLY hard. esp if he's against aubrey. he was more of a sore loser as a kid, now he's a better sport. still super sweaty though

lots of playing mario kart!!! the only other big game lover in the group is sunny so you three end up playing games on kel's wii together. kel prefers to play it himself but if you wanna take a turn he's all for watching you play!

he cheers you on and tells you to absolutely demolish the enemy team. like he's hovering over you and shouting like "HE's RIGHT THERE HE'S RIGHT THERE"

hero ends up telling u all to get outside and play when u end up sitting on the couch for hours. you groan but reluctantly comply

he appreciates it if you coach him in a game,, he's really great at fighting games like mortal kombat but he kinda sucks ass at FPS shooters. RPGs he just doesn't find entertaining and usually gets distracted

i can see him liking GTA but never being allowed to play it, so if you have it he'd play it at your house (u two giggle together when he enters the strip club) (and hero yells at you both for it)

HERO

hero never really played many games, only as a small child on his gameboy. sometimes he'd watch kel play games but other than that he isn't experienced

honestly. he goes into a game saying he doesn't know how to play and is gonna get his shit rocked and he sucks sooo bad and then he is GODLY at the game.

like he picks up the controller and his thumbs just start moving even if he has no idea what's going on. it kinda pisses u off LMFAO

he's great at gaming but doesn't find much interest in it, he'd love to watch you play though!! he thinks it's so cool how you understand everything that's going on on the screen

probably gets you an old-school gaming device like a gameboy or nintendo DS as a gift,, he thinks you'd appreciate it because it's 'vintage', and buys cartridges of games from his childhood so you can experience it with him!!

MARI

she doesn't game often (at all) but when she does she's AMAZING AT IT. like you introduce her to a game expecting to absolutely roll her and so ur about to go easy on her and you get DESTROYED

and she'll get all smug and act innocent about it too. like "oh haha i haven't played this in so long i'm surprised i'm still good at it!😊😊" all while literally wiping the floor with you

she claps for you and tells you she's proud of you if you beat a certain level or level up or something. she'll like make you a special treat too even if it's something small (she's very proud!!)

always insisting that you and sunny 1v1 or play together. she thinks it'd be so cute to have you to share something you both love!!!!

she never rages or anything, but i can see her getting really dirty sometimes with trash-talk. like if someones being mean to you in vc or match chat she's angrily typing the worst things imaginable and telling you not to look

BASIL

like aubrey, games are more nostalgic childhood things for him. like he remembers always watching sunny play on his gameboy and cheering on sunny and kel when they played games on saturdays

he's okay at gaming, like he's not bad but he's not good. he's okay at FPS games and shooters but he prefers RPGs and cute games like minecraft and stardew valley. indie games and games like OMORI r stuff i think he'd like too

loves to watch you play, and if you ask him if he wants to try he might hesitate but agrees and starts SHREDDING. idk i feel like he'd he really good at cod zombies even if he thinks he sucks. like he literally is so good at it it's annoying

very encouraging. he is your #1 cheerleader when playing

when he's in the store and sees like merch of games or figurines he always thinks of you like 'oh Y/N would like that!!' and if he can afford it then he gives it to you all casually

"yeah i saw this $300 figurine at the store, it made me think of you! ... do you not like it? i can bring it back !!!!"

[fearsmagazine]

ATTACK ON TITAN: THE MUSICAL, Live On Stage at New York City Center Oct 11-13, 2024.

ATTACK on TITAN: The Musical a new live 2.5D Musical entertainment based on the wildly popular manga (comic book) by Hajime Isayama and published by Kodansha, will play New York City Center (131 W. 55th Street) from October 11-13, 2024. Directed by breakdance world champion Go Ueki (HYPNOSISMIC -Division Rap Battle- Rule the Stage), ATTACK on TITAN: The Musical had its world premiere in Osaka and Tokyo in January, 2023 to great success. The New York City Center engagement marks the musical’s first international performance.

ATTACK on TITAN: The Musical has book by Masafumi Hata, music supervision by KEN THE 390, and lyrics by Kaori Miura, and combines conventional musical theatre techniques with state-of-the-art technology, performed by a cast of 35.

A century ago, the grotesque giants known as Titans appeared and consumed all but the last remnants of humanity. The survivors took refuge behind giant walls. Today, the threat of the Titans is a distant memory, and a boy named Eren Yeager yearns to explore the world beyond his current circumstances. What began as a childish dream, though, will become an all-too-real nightmare when the Titans return and humanity is once again on the brink of extinction.

The ATTACK on TITAN manga was serialized in Bessatsu Shonen Magazine by Kodansha from 2009-2021, winning numerous awards across Japan and the US including the Kodansha Manga Award and Harvey Award. The manga is comprised of 34 volumes, and there have been many adaptations including anime television series, video games, novels & more. ATTACK on TITAN has sold 140 million copies and has been translated into 18 languages and published in over 180 countries. Over the last three years, ATTACK on TITAN has won more than 10 awards from the Crunchyroll Anime Awards for the anime version, which celebrates the creators, performers, and musicians powering the global love of anime with more than 34 million votes cast by fans this past year.

In Japan, there are stage productions based on manga, anime, and video games, which started to be called 2.5 dimensional musicals by fans around 2000. Manga and animation are in 2D, and live theatre is in 3D. Therefore, they call performances based on manga and animations 2.5D.

Another 2.5 the musical made its US premiere in 2019, when “Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon” The Super Live played Washington DC at Warner Theatre and New York City at PlayStation Theater.

ATTACK on TITAN: The Musical will be performed in Japanese with English supertitles.

The cast of ATTACK on TITAN: The Musical includes: Kurumu Okamiya as Eren Yeager, Sara Takatsuki as Mikasa Ackerman, Eito Konishi as Armin Arlert, Ryo Matsuda as Levi, and Takuro Ohno as Erwin Smith. Also featured are: Shota Matsuda, Kazuaki Yasue, Yuuri Takahashi, Sena, Mitsu Murata, Takeshi Hayashino, Masanori Tomita, Mimi Maihane, Mitsuru Karahashi, Riona Tatemichi and more.

ATTACK on TITAN: The Musical is produced by Michiho Matsumoto (Nelke Planning), Rie Yoneda (S-SIZE) and New York Producer Kumiko Yoshii (Gorgeous Entertainment).

FOLLOW ATTACK on TITAN: The Musical ON TWITTER/X: https://twitter.com/shingekimusical ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/attackontitan_themusical ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@shingekimusical

ATTACK on TITAN: The Musical plays at New York City Center (131 W. 55th Street) on October 11 through 13. Performances are Friday, October 11 at 7:30PM, Saturday, October 12 at 2PM and 7:30PM, and October 13 at 2PM. Tickets are $55.00 - $185.00. For tickets, please visit www.nycitycenter.org or call 212-581-1212.

For more information, please visit: www.attackontitan-themusical.com.

Presale tickets go on sale for Crunchyroll, Kodansha, and Kinokuniya fans on Wednesday, May 29, 2024, at 11AM (EST) and members can purchase tickets before the general public through June 3, 2024, at 9AM (EST).

[notthewriteryourelookingfor]

Incloming rant and a thought about MattPatt, his theories, and 5 Nights At Freddy's:

I want to preface this by saying that I have nothing against MattPatt, he seems like a cool dude, a swell guy even, he obviously has fun, and a lot of his ideas are creative and entertaining.

I also want to point out that this is not being said "now that he's retired", I have come into the fandom very late (only really got into it due to wanting to go see the movie cuz the Jim Hensen company made the animatronics and I am an autistic slut for physical props and effects. If I'd been in the fandom earlier, this may have come up before his retirement.

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So MattPatt's first FNAF theory was that the game was referencing a real life shooting that happened at a Chuck E Cheese.

And I literally cannot let that go.

I realise that the internet in general was very different back then, it was more "edgy", I was like 20 at the time, so I was online and I know how the internet was. Im p sure I was on tumblr where shit like that was very common.

But it makes me see MattPatt's theories, all of them, in the light of "this is a man who played a jumpscare video game obviously based on Chuck E Cheese as a concept (tho I'm p sure in like the 70s-80s animatronic restaurants were a big thing and considering Scott's age it wouldn't be surprising if he'd gone to a few for fun/parties/family outings) and went "ah yes this is referencing a real life mass shooting."

Maybe it's cuz I'm not American, maybe y'all are a lil more comfortable with mass shootings than I am (im Australian, we've had maybe 3 since 2000) but that not only seems like a massive reach, it also feels really disrespectful.

I know that MattPatt was very "respectful" in the video and said he didn't want to make light of the event or joke about it but I feel like just making this video to begin with did that.

Videos aren't something that just appear out of the ether with no way to control what it says: he thought it up, sat down, wrote a script, filmed, ans edited it, and never once went "Oh wait I'm making light of an actual tragedy where people actually died maybe I shouldn't put this out"?

Like even if you have no other ideas, just say that? Just be like "wow this is a doozy, guys, let's break down the game play and maybe reference the event but not make a full video about it"?

But let's say that MattPatt was correct and that Scott was referencing a real mass murder that killed real people with jumpscare animatronics: that's a shitty game. That's a shitty idea for a game.

I mean I'm probably going to get people coming at me like "You're too sensetive" "you're reading too much into it" or "you never heard of true crime?" To which I answer, in order, "yes I am very sensitive it's unfortunately who I am as a person I spent too much of my childhood trying not to be and it really hurt me and decimated my mental health. So fuck off", "FNAF fandom is literally 'there is no limit to how deep you can read into it' that's why it's so popular and why there are so many ideas on what it's really about", and "yes I know about true crime, I also have an issue with some true crime, generally those who make light of horrible things and also my general rule of thumb is "if the parents/children/significant other of the victim(s) are still alive and could see your media, maybe don't make it." I mean an average of 50 years is about what I'm comfortable with if it's being used in the "true crime" space. But that does have exceptions based on why it's being talked about. But I think that's another rant."

What I'm trying to say is that I have trouble with MattPatt, and his theories in general, not because of "Gregory is a robot recreation of the Crying Child" (cuz that's fun and interesting and also is actually understandable if u look at the mimic???) But because he likened FNAF, which at the time was a silly lil indie game about animatronic animals (that are possessed by children but rarely actually talk about it) to a real murder spree.

He compared a digital bear, chicken, bunny, and fox, to real people who lost their lives.

And that makes me look at everything he does, even now when it's been like 9 years, and he's definitely grown and changed and maybe even apologised for that, in that lense.

He's like 37 now, meaning that he was 28 at the time. It's not like he was an edgy teen with no understanding of how his actions impact others.

I realise this looks like I hate him, that I'm holding his past mistakes against him, and I want to confirm: I don't hate him, he's entertaining to watch and I'm sad hes not doing theories any more,

But at the same time, I wish he'd not have made that one video and I can't not think about it with every theory he puts out. It's why I can't watch his other channels (also I looked at style theory & some of the ideas seemed lazy to me but that's my own bias) because it has poisoned his ideas slightly in my mind and I'm now very wary of what he's saying.

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I will add that I have a similar problem with a fair few theoriest were they're like "I've solved this" and then shill out for a very obvious scam company or a company like BetterHelp or HelloFresh months after we all found out they were trash so it's not like they had a few more contract obligations. It's like "I realise that you need to make money, but you're actively promoting harmful stuff in an Advert (at least it's labelled as that) and it makes me feel like I can't trust your judgement on things."

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Anyway, please don't hate on me, this is just something I've been struggling with for a few months now and I'm curious to see if anyone else thinks the same or had any helpful thoughts they would like to share.

Also if MattPatt has apologised for it, please let me know where I can watch/read it cuz part of me feels like if I see him acknowledge that it was probs not a great thing to do, it probs won't feel so weird about it anymore.

It's like our parents always said: we need to be careful of what we put online cuz it could follow us forever.

[theladyofrosewater]

What’s the buzzfeed trio’s favorite games?

So for all intents and purposes, I had intended to put the buzzfeed unsolved au in the late 90/early 2000s but I also know that you probably want the answer to what MODERN games they like so I'll do both( also I think I may have to change the date)

90s/EARLY 2000s GAMES

Charlie adores the 1996 original Resident Evil game and it's precursor Sweet Home but also things like American McGee's Alice and Silent Hill 1 or even Clock Tower. She's made a lot of friends to get overseas games. Horror games are her favorite but she has a soft spot for Final Fantasy (fun fact the first FF game came out in 1987 lol).

Michael got a Mortal Combat Cabinet into his house that he "borrowed" from Fredbear's that he custom painted the sides of, he will play it for hours at a time and Charlie and Jeremy don't get how he can stand for so long. he also loves those text-based adventure games and is totally a DnD nerd and he and Jeremy do one shots all the time with a group every two weeks.

Jeremy absolutely loves A Link to the Past and Link's Awakening but other than the DnD games he plays with Mike he's not really a game person otherwise but thinks making them would be cool so he's got a ton of folders filled with ideas.

MODERN GAMES

Charlie is a chronic speedrunner so anything where she can attempt to beat the game in less than two hours is fun to her but she will take the time to play any Resident Evil game slowly and carefully first before going into speedrunner mode because she likes that style of game. Michael and Jeremy once gifted her a copy of Haunting Ground and DinoCrisis 2 respectively and she legitimately cried and hugged them for about 10 minutes straight because people kept outbidding her on copies and she really wanted to play them.

Michael absolutely HATES having to sit still to play video games so anything like JustDance or DDR is his bread and butter. He also really likes VR games and has an awesome set up from guilt money from his parents and has passed almost every beat saber label at S+. DnD is the only thing he can sit down and play but to be honest he preferes LARPing because movement. Charlie also got him a Switch one year and he just plays it while walking around and somehow has not walked into anything yet however Jeremy has stolen it to play Animal Crossing several times.

Jeremy likes games like Minecraft or Terraria but only once he's modded the hell out of both games. He also like team based games like Dead By Daylight or Team Fortress 2 because he likes making friend's with randoms. He also secretly has 100% stardew valley over 4 times but doesn't want Michael or Charlie to know because then they'd want to play with him and he can not deal with Charlie's min/maxing and Michael's habit of stealing items and staying up until 2 AM literally ever night. He also really likes Pokemon Snap because my version of Jeremy is a big fan of photography!

Asks are open!

[bearpillowmonster]

I was having a brain fart last night where every decade's films had a sort of category about them. What defined that era most?

60's were Westerns. True Grit, Dollars, Magnificent Seven, Once Upon A Time in the West.

70's were Sci-Fi because of the Space Race and the Moon Landing. Alien, Star Wars, 2001 was close, Star Trek, Superman, Planet of the Apes.

80's had a lot of music going on, it was the MTV generation after all. Thriller, Footloose, Labyrinth, Little Mermaid.

90's were getting more advanced with computers and video games so there was a lot based around tech. This is the Matrix, Total Recall, Ghost in the Shell, Terminator 2, Pokemon!

2000's had a lot of sports because we had the X-Games in '99 but Remember the Titans, The Blind Side, Air Bud...(was 97 but hey), Greatest Game Ever Played. I also like to think of it as the 3D generation because it started getting popular eventually culminating to Avatar. As well as 2D animation getting less attention and 3D getting more. Shrek, Ice Age, and technology tests like Dinosaur, Final Fantasy and Beowulf.

2010's I had a hard time with because thinking of the big ones like Frozen and Despicable Me and Alice in Wonderland but in hind sight, it's the easiest one on here. The MCU made sure of that in order to make it about Superheroes and not just them but plenty of other entertainers DC with Man of Steel, Batman V Superman and Wonder Woman. Fox with X-Men, Deadpool, Chronicle and Kingsman.

A lot of these became influential for what came after or what might've not have been defined entirely in a single generation could've had seeds planted for later. As far as the 2020's, it's kind of hard to tell so far because we're in the age of streaming but I couldn't tell you what's different per say, it might take a minute to step back and look on the decade as a whole or we just haven't reached it yet.

[drachliebe]

soooo some theoretical " if they were video-game characters " ideas i had for fun :

bully would def be tblga's "sparx" as a mechanic . healthbar would be " luck " and can be replenished with honey comb . other 'healing items / powerups ' would be shamrocks , acorns , shells depending on the location . and a hidden jadestone in each location as a special find .

tblga's base abilities are , naturally , fire and flight . which could be updated to various kinds of firepower and dash abiliy , say lightening- breath and a dash mechanic . i was also think drinking lava could unlock a berserker mode but hold that thought .

lowkey basing lilli off the super princess peach game because i can and i should ( mainly following the premise of 'save your friends from being trapped in ice because pa's kind of a jerk' ) .

her abilities would of course , tie into the many forms of water-- ice , water , and steam . ice freezes , water , and steam allows floating . maybe after saving a friend , they give her a mask that helps her shift into their respected animal for a short bit , but again that's up in the air .

i'm going off the a platformer base because the vibe fits , but also consider : rhythm-based platformer . i mean , this series is a musical-- it's a given . also rhythm games are a lot of fun . maybe there's also a nod to fireboy and watergirl for puzzle portions early 2000's game gang rise up .

[ausi-is-furry]

I fucking love furries!!!

This blog is specifically for furry stuff! I will reblog sfw furry art and post my own here. Very few art may be mildly suggestive but nothing explicit. Suggestive art will be tagged as such. I have a tagging system for what species of animal(s) the character(s) in the art I reblog or post are. Sometimes I guess wrong though but the tags will be fixed once corrected. I also tag for what type of art medium is used (illustration, 3D model, animation, fursuit, etc.).

My art tag: my art

About Me

I have several names (cuz I am indecisive); Kaden, Ausi, Berry, Cycle/Cy, Chroma, Sharpie, and Caleb. But my main ones are Kaden, Ausi, and Cy! I have several fursonas to represent different aspects of myself (and each one has a name of mine). I love to draw despite being unmotivated often. I also love cartoons, webcomics, and some video games. So generally animation/illustration based media/stories. I also love all kinds of animals! I adore anthro characters ranging from overused species to uncommon species, from natural colors to sparklefurries, from real species to impossible hybrids, fictional species, original species, and mythological species. They’re all just lots of fun for me to draw or even just to look at and appreciate!

Other Blogs

@rose-fall - My oc blog! The characters in this story are all furries! I’m developing a webcomic for it! I might reblog from it at times :]

@nostalgic-ausi - Search the furry tag for 2000’s - early 2010’s style furry art on the blog, there is a lot there lol. I might rb some 2000’s - early 2010’s themed furry art here too but most of it will be reblogged there.

@ausilotus - main, just various reblogs I rarely post art here (really only when the art doesn’t relate to my other blogs, which is not often)

My Other Socials

Toyhouse

SheezyArt (currently new there so there’s not a lot atm)

Bluesky (currently new there so there’s not a lot atm)

YouTube (currently pretty empty but I got lots of animation ideas that will be made eventually, mainly animation memes)

[cloudshoregames]

Mech Construction Showcase: Megas XLR

Greetings, Dan here!

In the early 2000's I had the privilege of getting to watch Megas XLR, a two season, anime/video game/MTV inspired western animation show about a super robot sent back in time. Once there, this advanced technology came into the hands of Coop, and overweight, gamer and mechanic. He and his friend Jamie, naturally stoked to be gifted a giant robot from the heavens, set to work souping it up, not just into an advance war machine, but a flame painted, car headed, swiss army knife, of a ridiculous, over-the-top mech capable of smashing alien threats (and unfortunate surrounding cities) with wrestling moves, absurd amounts of guns, and really anything an extreme 90's kid could think to cram in there. For any who haven't seen it, it is a great little piece of mecha comedy from the period. Not everything will have aged well, but the rock-infused, excessive nature of action is great fun.

But for an ultra powerful super robot, especially one that pulls out a new set of weapons every episode, each trying to outdo the last in how outrageously cool they can be, how can any game system support a build for such a mech, especially one aiming for mid to light crunch? Well, that's the beauty of giving the players the freedom to skin the mechanics of the mech they build. For Megas, rather than trying to build as many as possible, we'll lean into the over-the-top nature of it's weapons, and aim for versatility instead.

(Art property of Cartoon Network.)

Once more for the mech parts, we'll aim for a "mid-tier" build that represents an experience pilot, but still with room to grow, expand, and tweak. To start, we'll equip Megas with a Blitz Tech Frame, giving it 24 AP. This will let the robot-car get in close for combat, and take some damage before going down. Megas was as fast as it needed to be in the show, but for the purposes of allocating resources elsewhere we'll stick with a Caballero Corp Booster for its Movement Rate of 1. (You don't have to run/fly far to bodyslam another mech/giant monster). We'll give the Megas a Blitz Tech CPU allowing for 2 Utilities. Lastly, to accommodate the super robot's absurd arsenal, we'll equip an Anodyne Labs Radiator, giving it a Heat Rating of 12.

For our two Utility Systems, we'll install a Aerial Frame, allowing Megas to pile drive opponents from the sky (or engage in chainsaw v sword fights in the air). We will also install a Heavy Weapons Mode Converter that will let us create a mode-specific weapon using the full HR value of the radiator equipped, as well as adding an additional damage dice to the damage tier. This will come at the cost of minus 2 MR, but we'll use a versatile weapon construction to compensate.

For the Megas XLR, the weapon systems are the most important feature given the mech's nature. So to get the feel of driving the mech from the show, we'll have to build it slightly differently from the previous showcases we've done so far. One that relies on the creativity of the player and the discretion of the Game Master. First, to account for the excessive power that Megas exhibit, we will be pouring all heat into a single weapon system, and installing mods. This weapon system will be called the Badass Melee. The stats will be set, but the physical description of the attack will be up to the player to describe with the GM determining if it fits the game the group agreed to. So if the player wants to attack with twin, superheated chainsaws, perform a lariat, or piston-fist their opponent in the faceplate, the mechanics will remain the same. For damage, we'll aim high with five heat raising the damage to 1s12. We will also apply the optimization to damage, giving it a +3 to final damage. For RoF, we'll stick with the base level of 1, but for Ammo, we'll spend four heat to raise the total ammunition to 10. As for the effective range, this is melee, so we'll spend two heat for Melee thru Close range.

Since we are only doing a single main weapon system, we'll install all mods on it. The first and most important will be the Mode Shift System, allowing us to build a second weapon kit off of this same system. (More on that in a moment). For our second mod, we'll install Explosive Ammo for flair so whenever the 1d12 for damage rolls a 12, the die is rolled a second time for additional damage. Lastly, we'll install an illuminator for the car headlights for further flair.

Now as for the second mode to our Badass Melee weapon system, we'll build the Kickass Ranged mode.  For this mode, we'll only spend two heat for a modest damage of 1d6, but for rate of fire, we will spend three heat to raise it to 3 attacks per turn. We will also apply the weapon optimization to raise it to 4 attacks. (Missiles, more missiles, all of the missiles) Since we'll be shooting an excessive amount, we'll want a high amount of ammo, so we will spend four heat to raise the ammunition total to 10. Our remaining three heat we will spend for Medium thru Sniping range.

With our basic variety attacks covered, we just need to build our mode specific, Heavy Weapon System. Much like our basic system, we want this to be able to take a variety of forms from a gigabeamsword to a kamehameha, so we'll call this the ULTRA FINISHER. For this weapon system we are going to spend six heat to max the level at 1d20, as well as apply the +3 dmg optimization. Since this is a Heavy Weapon System, an additional damage die will be added, bringing the total damage to 2d20+3+WS Bonus. For the Rate of Fire, we will only spend one heat for 1 attack. (It is a finishing move after all.) We will spend two heat for a total of 6 ammunition. Lastly, to ensure we have versatility in the attack descriptions, we'll purchase a variety of effective ranges. With our remaining heat, we'll pick up Melee, Medium, and Sniping ranges. 

With our absurd array of attacks taken care of, we'll finish up the build with a pair of Disposables. First, we'll equip the Megas with an Aquatic skid in case it needs to battle in the ocean (probably described as an epic-sized surf board), and a decoy drone purely for annoying the enemy in the middle of combat.

I had a lot of fun channeling the early 2000's extreme nature of Megas into this build, which even at mid-tier feels incredibly bombastic and powerful. For advancement from here, the player could increase other primary parts for better performance (Frame and Booster come to mind), or keep increasing their Heat Rating for further ridiculousness.

For next time, I'd like to tone down the power scale back to a starter mech, as well as take a look at a proper, organic biomech. While I'm sure some minds will snap to a certain purple mech, I'd actually like to stretch the mech descriptions a bit further, by looking at something unexpected. Next time, we'll take a look at building the Armored Titan from Attack on Titan.

Thank you again for your interest, and see you soon!

[fostersffff]

I am well and truly stumped by this extra feature included on Discotek's release of GaoGaiGar.

It's listed as "Opening Theme Karaoke", and the backing track is definitely the karaoke version of the opening theme, but the actual video appears to be video game renders, considering the number of two frame loops of a character talking on a solid color background. But there's a number of weird things about that:

As far as I can tell, there's only been one GaoGaiGar specific video game, which was for the PlayStation. In fact, on the BD menu, this is sandwiched between a promo video for and the fully animated cutscenes from that PSX game. But this can't possibly be for that game, because not only were these animations made digitally (judging by the total lack of film grain), it also appears to have been rendered in HD, which would have been criminally inefficient in the late 90's, and even early 2000's.

The next best guess would be that these were made for Super Robot Wars, but these portrait animations are not only too elaborate, but there are unique portrait frames based on faction (GGG frames versus Zonder frames versus SRW30's UI):

Anyone know what the hell these are actually from?

[new-employeeamillion]

Phineas and Ferb is coming back, here’s what I’m expecting.

When I woke up to this news, I had to drop everything I was doing to comment on it. My favourite childhood cartoon, Phineas and Ferb, heading back into production for one or more seasons is something that always seemed possible. Dan and Swampy had been hinting at it…basically as soon as the show ended, now that I think about it. And they spent a lot of their second show, Milo Murphy’s Law, planting clues that they weren’t done with the characters yet. Unfortunately, I never followed Milo that religiously, so I can’t comment on if it worked or not. And their third show, Hamster and Gretel, has been an improvement but still feels a bit niche. It’s clear their team’s style hasn’t changed much since 2012, it’s dependable but not innovative. However, that’s always been the case with PnF. It wasn’t a game changer for animation, just a really, really funny and polished show, and that’s great.

But now it’s back, and I’m a little worried. There’s a few things I really want them to do, and others I don’t, and I think they’re going to do both. Season 4 was a very special and event-oriented run, and that was great for a final season…but where do you go from there? Do you make more specials for Season 5 and 6? Less? Reel it in a bit and do more standard episodes again? There were a couple standard episodes in Season 4 that ended up feeling unremarkable, so I wouldn’t want the new run to carry that feeling over. Going back to Season 1’s mix of plenty of normal episodes, plus 5 or 6 longer adventures, would be the best way to go around it, I think.

Still on the topic of Season 4, it brought a few status quo changes that I can see them bringing up for the revival. Things like Doof having been an OWCA agent, Stacy knowing about Perry’s secret identity, confirming Phineas and Isabella won’t hook up until they go to college. Some have more potential than others, but others might be ignored or upstaged by new developments. It depends on how much they want to bend to the whim of the formulas, because those’ll probably be further tested.

In terms of which characters should be given more emphasis, I really want them to use Phineas more, explore what makes him so resourceful and optimistic. The crew are well aware that he could come off as a blank slate, so if they’re coming back, I hope they’re going to put some thought into fleshing out their title character. Another character I want to see them do more with is Jeremy, if just to see if they can give him a quirk. He was always sort of the everyman compared to Candace, who soaked up 99% of the energy in their shared scenes. Giving him more time to hang out with his band members could be cool too.

As for jokes, I expect their sense of humour to say the same- character based humour, subverting expectations, comedic song numbers and a few references here or there. Just because I’m expecting the sort of humour they’re doing doesn’t mean I’m tired of it. It would be more worrying if they did jokes uncharacteristic of the show. The one thing I bet they’re going to do that I’m concerned about is include more memes. That alien flossing in Candace Against the Universe might be a harbinger of “well, they referenced that”. It’s not like they’ve never been in touch with the internet, the 10th episode was about Phineas and Ferb making viral videos after all, but I don’t want them to bring memes and modern references into it if they’re gonna feel shallow.

That’s another thing, how will time flow this go around? Will it be set in the same summer as the original 4 seasons, or a year later? Could we possibly finally see what the rest of the year looks like, with the kids in school? That in particular is unlikely, but there has to be some debate internally over whether these new episodes will be set after The Last Day of Summer. Probably not, since Candace Against the Universe was confirmed not to be, but who knows. Will the timeline float though? The show started in the 2000s, and did its best to keep the technology timeless, only adding smartphones in Season 4. But will technology and culture change for Season 5? Is there a chance they’ll go back to flip phones and bulky TVs? The first 2 episodes are 16 this year, edging into the nostalgia cycle window, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they played into that nostalgia in some way. Maybe have a joke where Candace wonders why she still has her old flip phone laying around. “It’s older than me!”

These are just the questions and concerns at the top of my head, but I’m fairly optimistic that the show will still be good. There have been shorter breaks with rockier comebacks in animated shows. All it can take is 2 years sometimes. Now try 8! If it ends up being a tier or two lower than the original run, I won’t be shocked, but I will be happy that Disney still care about these characters at all. They’re currently the best at handling new IPs too, so I’m not even worried they could be relying on this show for the sake of nostalgia. It’s always going to be a new and popular show to kids, and long may this continue.

[rollingsunblog]

Indie Roleplaying in Japan

Independent RPGs are a vital, vibrant part of the Japan's tabletop scene, both a movement in their own right and a talent incubator for publishers on the prowl for the next big thing. That said, this prominence is a relatively recent shift: during the boom years of Japanese roleplaying, indie titles existed on the margins of the market, produced by die-hards for die-hards. It would take the near-death and resurrection of the tabletop industry - and several decades of persistence - for these creators to finally get their due. 

The Fandom Factor

Like most independent RPG scenes, Japan’s indie output is split into original and derivative works. This in itself isn’t especially noteworthy: after all, a good chunk of the global small-press market is dominated by third-party releases for existing systems, ranging from mainstream juggernauts like Dungeons & Dragons to cult faves like Mörk Börg or Mothership.

Such as 2022′s Nobunaga's Black Castle, Japan’s first venture into the realms of black metal fantasy. 

What is notewothy is how the Japanese RPG scene has dealt with derivative products - especially the unauthorized ones. 

In the West, piggybacking on an established system or property has always been fraught with a certain amount of legal peril. The ‘80s and '90s in particular saw an assortment of dust-ups between big-name publishers like TSR and Palladium Books and smaller creators - particularly fansites - over both actual and imagined IP violations. Things shifted significantly with the introduction of the D&D Open Game License (OGL) in 2000, which allowed third parties to produce D&D-related content without having to pay fees or royalties. However, these products still had to adhere to an explicit set of guidelines - one that could force an incautious company to pulp an entire print run of books. 

By contrast, Japan’s rights holders historically didn't fuss much over derivative works, even ones sold for money, unless the infringement was particularly egregious. This resulted in the creation of a massive gray market of for-profit fanworks that has grown to annual sales in the region of US$800M - a not-inconsiderable chunk of Japanese otaku spending. Semi-protected as “parodies” in the eyes of the Japanese law, these products take various popular or nostalgic IPs and spin them off into new directions - respectful, comedic, pornographic, and everything in between. 

While the overwhelming majority of for-profit fanworks are comics or comic-adjacent material like artbooks, RPGs also carved out a niche in this market through unofficial supplements, adventures, and even entire roleplaying systems. Largely unconstrained by legal worries, Japanese tabletop fans could produce IP-infringing double whammies like 1993′s Dark Kingdom: a thoroughly unlicensed sourcebook that imports the cast of pop culture evergreen Sailor Moon into TORG, West End Games’ RPG of fractured realities. 

Dark Kingdom was an early showcase for Jun'ichi Inoue (井上純一), who would later enjoy a fruitful career at FEAR creating notable titles like Tenra Bansho (天羅万象 ) and Alshard (アルシャード). [IMAGE: Dragoon_Shaytan via Twitter]

Over the years, other popular IPs inevitably also got the tabletop treatment, resulting in fan-made adaptations of everything from ’80s anime relic Dream Hunter Rem and classic shoot-’em-up R-Type to contemporary megahits like Fate/stay night and Bleach. Even today, it’s possible for a creator to knock out an RPG based on Dragon Quest - one of Japan’s largest and most prominent roleplaying franchises - and put it on a digital storefront for US$16 without immediate fear of a thermonuclear-level copyright strike. 

However, until around 2010, these sorts of derivative works were more of a sideshow than anything else. That changed once Call of Cthulhu established itself as Japan’s best-selling RPG, buoyed by a series of popular - and irreverent - actual play videos and the Mythos-Goes-Harem antics of the Nyaruko: Crawling with Love media franchise. Suddenly, freshly-baked Cthulhu fans were appearing at gaming conventions in increasing numbers, resulting in a corresponding boom in fan-made CoC adventures and supplements.

As Call of Cthulhu grew to dominate the local tabletop industry, its fanworks cast an equally long shadow over the indie scene, eventually accounting for an estimated 80 to 90% of all derivative products on the market. This extreme popularity would have repercussions: in 2021, facing pressure from the game’s creators, Chaosium, CoC licensees Arclight joined forces with Japan’s most prominent RPG companies to create the Small Publisher Limited License (SPLL) program, which set content guidelines and royalty fee requirements for any third party publishing material for an established system. This was an unusual arrangement by Japanese standards, though one that also gave new legitimacy to derivative works within the roleplaying community.

As was the case with D&D, Call of Cthulhu’s rules have been used as a springboard into other game styles and genres. For instance, the Magic Academy CoC (魔法学校CoC) series reworks Chaosium’s system to accommodate Harry Potter-ish adventures.

An Interlude on Doujin Culture

Derivative works are just one facet of Japan’s indie RPGs, but an important one to start with - in large part because the impact of the Japanese fanwork scene extends much further than just Sailor TORG. 

Thus far, when I’ve used the word “fanwork,” it’s been to refer to what the Japanese would formally call “doujinshi.” In the West, that term is intimately associated with fan comics, especially pornographic ones, but the word simply refers to any independently created and published print product - more specifically, one put out by a doujin (同人) or “circle” of like-minded individuals. 

The doujinshi concept dates back to the 19th century, but only truly gained traction in the 1980s - a point where more affordable, accessible printing options made it possible for enterprising hobbyists to produce and sell comics as a full-on side gig. As the number of indie creators grew, events emerged to give these artists and writers a venue to market their wares - chiefly Comic Market, which began as a modest volunteer-run show in 1975 but would eventually grow into the world’s largest comics event by a significant margin. 

As the doujinshi market grew in size and scope, a new generation of printing companies emerged to serve this subculture through cheap, high-quality digital printing and low minimum order quantities. This further reduced barriers to entry, giving even amateur artists access to professionally bound products at an manageable price.

This ecosystem of affordable production and dedicated sales events created a vital foundation for Japan’s indie roleplaying groups - and a sorely needed one, as up until the mid-‘90s, the cost and complication of producing RPG products kept independent releases relatively scarce. As a result, early offerings like Bläde & Wörd (ブレード アンド ワード), ITHA WEN Ua ( イサー・ウェン＝アー), and Small Still Voice (スモール・スティル・ボイス) played it safe by skewing toward orthodox Western-style fantasy - and largely sank in the market with scarcely a ripple. 

Thanks to its multifaceted magic system, 1991′s Bläde & Wörd enjoyed somewhat more longevity than its fellows, eventually spawning a second edition under the somewhat unlikely title of “Acoustic Leaf“ (ブレード アンド ワード) in 1995. 

The ability to source cheaper, better-looking books at lower order quantities arguably helped RPG creators shake loose some of this conservatism - perhaps best exemplified by 1996′s Karma Saturday Night Special, later known by the shorter, punchier alias “Satasupe” (サタスペ). Set in an alternate history where the United States did not enter World War II and a nuke-ravaged Japan found itself divvied up by various superpowers, this gangster RPG dunks its players into a gonzo stew of Soviet narcotics farmers, voodoo practitioners, Japanophile mercenaries, biking Crusaders, criminal animal handlers, UFO cultists, and more besides.

Satasupe’s creators, “Jail House,” started off as a loose-knit collective with almost a dozen credited members, building up their audience and reputation over several years before striking paydirt with 1999′s SATASUPE Remix99 (サタスペ・リミックス９９). Remix99 would prove popular enough to attract attention from the wider industry, and in 2003, a revised and expanded version called Satasupe REmix+ ( サタスペ・リミックス＋) earned a release through Hobby Base, the publishing arm of the game store chain Yellow Submarine.

To clean the game up for its commercial debut, Jail House partnered with Adventure Planning Service, one of Japan’s oldest RPG design companies. The collaboration proved so fruitful that Jail House was effectively absorbed by APS, and Satasupe’s lead designer, Toichiro Kawashima (河嶋陶一朗), would quickly become one of the company’s most important creators, spearheading future hits like Labyrinth Kingdom (迷宮キングダム) and the now-ubiquitous Saikoro Fiction line. 

The evolution - and professionalization - of Satasupe’s rulebooks doubles as a mini-history of Japanese indie roleplaying as a whole. 

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

On the whole, the early 2000s were a transformative time for independent roleplaying. In the West, the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons made its debut alongside the Open Game License, which unleashed a new generation of hobbyists and small publishers eager to capitalize on the excitement generated by D&D’s first major new edition in 11 years. Around the same time, independent RPG creators also began establishing their own distinctive culture and philosophy, driven by influential online discussion forums like The Forge. And behind the scenes, indie creators of all stripes benefitted from the growing availability of sophisticated desktop publishing software, which continuously narrowed the aesthetic quality gap between “amateur” and “professional” games.

In Japan, the OGL attracted significantly less direct interest, though it would eventually inspire comparable “open-source” systems like FEAR’s Standard RPG System (SRS) and Adventure Planning Bureau’s Saikoro Fiction. A more notable development was the introduction of FEAR’s Game Field Awards in 2000, which allowed aspiring designers to submit board, card, and roleplaying games to the company for potential commercial publication. This proved to be an important new outlet for independent creators, and helped birth notable titles like 2005′s TORG-inspired Chaos Flare (異界戦記カオスフレア) and 2001′s Double Cross (ダブルクロス), which is credited with helping to establish the more systematized approach used by modern Japanese RPGs. 

2000 also saw the debut of Game Market - or “Gema” for short - a twice-a-year event that positioned itself as a Comic Market equivalent for analog hobbies. Though Gema’s foot traffic was only a fraction of its role model’s, the show would gradually establish itself as a go-to for unveiling new RPGs, especially once stewardship of the event passed to Call of Cthulhu licensee Arclight in 2010.

2010, in fact, seems to be generally regarded as the true starting point for Japan’s modern indie RPG scene - thanks again to the CoC craze, which not only produced a mountain of derivative products, but dramatically changed the size and demographics of Japan’s roleplaying fandom by drawing in both younger gamers and female players. This expanded audience appears to have to encouraged a greater diversity in game design and themes - less anime-inspired power fantasy, more high-concept exercises like “what if the players were actors in a movie production scrambling to finish shooting with no script and no budget before the whole project implodes?”

2012′s Reading! Manga Lord (爆走！まんが道) and 2013′s Idol Box! (どるばこ！) exemplify the indie scene’s broader swing towards less traditional RPG topics after 2010.

Surprisingly, some of this mindset even spilled over to Japan’s two biggest RPG publishers, Kadokawa and Shinkigensha - as evidenced by the fact that Satasupe received a mass-market release through the latter in 2008, eventually followed by other oddballs like the youth band RPG Strato Shout (ストラトシャウト) and Mofumofu Stream (もふもふストリーム), a game about YouTubers fighting crime with their psychic pets.

A final notable development in the indie scene was the emergence of online storefronts for independent RPG releases. While digital publishing has slowly become more prominent in the Japanese tabletop market, physical copies still dominate the indie space and groups invariably end their events with unsold game stock that needs to be offloaded elsewhere. The launch of Cokage in 2014, followed by Conos in 2016, provided an important outlet for excess copies and doubled as a means of making small-press games accessible to fans in rural areas who wouldn’t normally be able to attend a sales event. 

Notable Creators

There’s an enormous quantity of indie circles currently active in the tabletop space, with more joining the fray on a monthly basis. A comprehensive list of every group is a bit beyond the scope of this post, but let’s take a quick look at a few of the longer-running ones: 

Draconian: Originally a partnership between system designer Fuyu Takisato (瀧里フユ) and worldbuilder Shio Botan (潮牡丹, AKA Darya Tide), Draconian began publishing in 2014, gradually taking on more members to become a five-person operation capable of releasing multiple games per year. In 2018, the group officially crossed over into mainstream publishing with Silver Sword: Stellar Knights (銀剣のステラナイツ), a two-player RPG distributed by Kadokawa. Since then, the circle has put out several more titles through both Kadokawa and Shinkigensha while continuing to self-publish its more experimental work.

Draconian’s titles tend to focus on questions of identity, reality, and relationships with others, typically in fantastical or post-apocalyptic settings. Its more combat-intensive games share a battle system known as Diaclock, which was made openly available for use by other creators in 2020. 

In recent years, Kadokawa have begun experimenting with promotional trailers for their RPG releases - in this case for Stellar Knights.

Phantasm Space:  Founded in 2014, Phantasm Space is responsible for the steampunk aerial exploration game Skynauts (歯車の塔の探空士<スカイノーツ>), the Porco Rosso-inspired Il Paradiso Celeste dei Cacciatori Extro (チェレステ色のパラディーゾ), pastoral fantasy title Floria: The Verdant Way (翠緑のフローリア), and the comedic Villain’s Quest (ヴィランズクエスト). All four games have a lighter tone and showcase unusual ideas and mechanics; Villain’s Quest, for instance, throws its anti-heroes into pitched strategy meetings where participants use cards to advance various proposals; eventually, things climax in an analog tower defense game as the players scramble to protect their evil master from being slain once more. 

The circle’s leader, Lord Phantasm, went pro in 2020 by joining Adventure Planning Service under the pen name Eisuke Nanashi (中西詠介). In 2021, Nanashi and APS published a revised version of Skynauts through Kadokawa. That same year, Floria also received an English-language translation courtesy of Silver Vine Publishing.

Another Kadokawa trailer, this time for the 2021 edition of Skynauts. 

Rommel Games:  Though Rommel Games began publishing RPGs in 2013, the group’s big breakthrough would come the following year with Galaco and the Tower of the Broken World (ガラコと破界の塔), a mecha dungeon crawler set on a distant planet. The game’s slick, commercial-level production values made an immediate splash in the RPG scene, and a number of indie creators readily credit Galaco as an influence on their own work.

In 2017, Kadokawa picked up the circle’s fast-paced superhero title Deadline Heroes (デッドラインヒーローズ), which was followed by a villain-focused version entitled Black Jacket (ブラックジャケット) in 2019. The line’s success may be attributed in part to the buzzy My Hero Academia franchise, which made its anime debut in 2016 and continues to enjoy a dedicated following in Japan.

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New Game Plus: This collective of young game designers has maintained a healthy and eclectic output since first appearing on the scene in 2018, with titles that include Night Butterfly ( ナイトバタフライ ), an RPG about male nightclub hosts, and the aforementioned Mofumofu Stream.

Calling NGP an indie circle may be a bit of a stretch - the majority of its titles have in fact been released through Shinkigensha - but the group does put out the occasional doujin game. Sadly, its founder, former Group SNE associate Rikizo (力造), passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2020. 

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Shiawase Training Ground: Formed by systems engineer Go Yamauchi (山内剛), Shiawase Training Ground has been actively releasing material since 2014, producing offbeat titles like the medieval peasant survival sim Hoshikuzu Village Story (ホシクズ村々物語) and restaurant-focused A La Cuisine (アーレ・キュイジーヌ). Yamauchi’s upcoming “travel and escape” RPG We Will Happiness! (ウィーウィル・ハピネス！) has reportedly ended up with Adventure Planning Service, suggesting his mainstream breakthrough may be just around the corner.