#I don’t know if I explained it well in the goomba post

[dokupine]

I hope I didn’t bother u going thru and reblogging a bunch of your stuff 😅 💖

I wanted to say I absolutely LOVE your speculative biology mario work and all the effort you put into it!! I haven’t seen anything about Luigi from you yet, how’s he doing in this world?

he’s doing great!

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: “Goomba”

Debut: WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$!

We now return to our regularly-scheduled Weird Mario Enemy posting! And what better way to return to normal than with the most iconic Mario enemy of all, “Goomba”? Everyone knows “Goomba”! They waddle to and fro, and they get jumped upon. “That’s Goomba”!

You may be thinking “Well this does not look like a Goomba and Goombas debuted in Super Mario Bros. and not WarioWare, so this is very clearly incorrect, and you’ve got a lot of explaining to do, bub”. Lucky for you, I would love to do a lot of explaining! 

While Goomba is from Super Mario Bros., “Goomba” is from Super WARIO Bros.! The microgame in which Wario bounces around and must jump on all of the “Goombas”, because he hates them. Really! The description is “Flatten the Goombas! They're so ANNOYING! GAH!" These are not only apparently “true” Goombas, but also just annoying, and that is the only reason Wario has to jump on them. That’s not nice. Wario is not nice. But it’s ok, because he is not real and he is funny.

He is also a LIAR! He says he wants to flatten the “Goombas”, but when he jumps on them, they don’t become flat, but instead, sort of... melt into goop?For these poor “Goombas”, a bop on the head is all that keeps their solid form together!

“Goomba” is a little cutie, don’t you think? I love its eyebrows a lot. It also looks more chestnut-based than conventional Goombas! Almost more like a “Galoomba”! Perhaps the most fascinating thing about “Goomba”, though, is that it does not exist, even in universe. Side content in some WarioWare games establishes characters from some microgames being “real” in universe, but “Goomba” is pretty clearly just made up by Wario in his continuing efforts to show up Mario. And I think that’s a fascinating lens to examine it through!

If Wario designed “Goomba”, what was his thought process? He very well may not have remembered what a real Goomba looked like, and didn’t bother to research. Or maybe it was deliberate! Perhaps he intentionally made “Goomba” appear weaker and less threatening than Goomba, as if to scoff at the idea that Mario could possibly view these as true “enemies” and not just minor annoyances. Wario is immune to damage from weak Goomba-like enemies even when his games have a health system, after all! 

Super Wario Bros. returns in Gold, with somewhat of a redesign, and I quite like how it changes the background elements more while keeping the same color scheme, really feeling like a blatant ripoff of Super Mario Bros.! This is, like, The Great Giana Sisters or something. 

Finally, I would just like to point out how much I love that there IS a Super Mario Bros. microgame in this same game, with the SAME goal of jumping on every Goomba! Even in a game with Goomba, we still were allowed “Goomba”! And it also makes it feel like Wario ripped off not only Mario, but 9-Volt as well, for the idea of a Super Mario Bros.-style microgame. And yeah! That’s Wario!

[bookofmariokingofmaiami]

I've documented the important stuff of chapter 1 a will probably do a post about it tomorrow

However there's another thing I did

I went over our data on book of mario kingmof Miami and started looking at the war re.ated ones to gather more info about th greatest war

And here's what I found

1 according to bolivia (I think it was mentioned in other games too) there were children soldiers in the war [bolivia: yes, i may need time to explain forever, children were called soldiers] 

2 when bolivia was trapped she said that spreading bombs around may solve the problem, this may be a reference/flashback to something that happened in the war [bolivia: so, I think collecting bombs and spreading them will solve the problem!]

3 the great war may be ww2 since ww1 seems to have happened as bolivia tries (and fails) to quote a ww1 soldier [bolivia: words…..from world War 1, right?]

4 in another bolivia flashback, bolivia says to maria that they're supposed to present this soldier, maybe at some point a new soldier entered the group and their leader forgot to introduce them and bolivia was the one to tell the leader about that [bolivia: teaching. You have to present this soldier remember?] {Note, the soldier may be a goomba because she says this while fighting origami goombas}

5 bolivia says to use a book to clear out enemies and right after she says that it's good to explode, implying she once cleared out enemies using bombs disguised as books [bolivia:what's with the deal?, bring a book to clear enemies, but it's good to explode] {note: bolivia may be an explosive expert because of the high amounts of war explosive talk}

6 apparently a soldier comited sudoku in a jungle [bolivia: but despite that….. how could a soldier end his life in a jungle?] {Note:Maybe said soldier is a goomba because it was right after the goomba fight but it may be a stretch}

7 maybe somekind of disease appeared during the war and there were many infected soldiers [bolivia: unfortunately! Infected soldiers everywhere] {note: is it a stretch to say that said infection is the origami ? Since she says this during a battle against origami} 《note2: or she's talking about said origami that where fighting and that they're soldiers》

8 apparently she had problems with prisoners and that she couldn't take more prisoners [bolivia: I cannot deal with your prisoners]

9 apparently a group of people wich bolivia called "the brothers" were in charge of a prison camp and that they weren't able to capture everyone [bolivia:it seems that the brothers did not take everyone to a military base] {note:bolivia is either an explosive expert, or a military prison guard, or atleast she was a explosive expert that was friends with a military prison guard}

10 the yellow frog soldier in the sewer was going to a bar in the city when the whole origami invasion happened [bolivia's yellow frog soldier friend: my…...I came to the bar,  from the military] 

11 it seems that the invasion started 5 weeks ago, meaning that the origami danger was in the horizon, STILL THEY DID THE FUCKING ORIGAMI FESTIVAL, [unnamed koop: but he's gone, this country has been fighting for five weeks] {why did they do the origami festival even tho there's an origami army/virus attacking the country, like a origami festival is like a magnet for origami monsters}

12 it seems one (or more) of bolivia's war friends died while doing something as the skeleton holding the green/yellow orb* is the bones of said war friend [bolivia: that's the bones of koopers team! He must be trapped here,something wrong] {note:she says that it's koopers team, even tho there's only one skeleton}

13 apparently soldiers where painlessly killed by an explosive but she didn't see it [bolivia: unfortunately, it wasn't painful,  but I didn't see the soldiers explode] {note:the way she said it it seems like she wanted to see the explosion}

14 at some point she was in a train and somehow a snake got in, I don't know if it's related to the war but I'm putting it here anyway [bolivia:lets go to the blue sea. There was a snake in the train] 

15 I have no idea what this means [bolivia:this time you can't walk,let that scream of the paddle kill] (maybe they broke an enemy soldier's legs with a paddle in an interrogation???)

16 maybe bolivia knows about the fact that Maria killed God? [Bolivia: HOOORAY! I know you killed him]

17 Barbie had some time in the army as well (that's a weird quote) and apparently at some point they weren't able to support an well trained army, talking about war funding is important so he probably was somekind of high ranking war quartermaster? Or something like that [barbie:madam, we can't support this well trained army]

18 at some point some soldiers got drunk(probably) and comited a crime in a bar [enslaved narrarator:"the soldiers ran to the bar…….to commit a crime"]

19 according to bolivia,  barbie was sentenced to death in Porto oneehunga (I have no idea what that place is) , why how and where that happened is unknown [bolivia: you have been sentenced to death in Porto oneehunga! It seems difficult but…... I think I know] {how does bolivia knows this is unknown, maybe they were friends before and is why she knows}

20 when our "heroes" get to sogun studios bolivia briefly says that she killed here [bolivia:sometimes you have to breathe, I killed here, let's have fun!] 

21 apparently bolivia lived underground at some point, whether it was during the war or somewheen else is not especified [bolivia:I think it was high or low, or I lived underground, stupid words] {the "stupid words" bit may imply she has a hard time writing things}

22 the Boulder olly used to try to kill bolivia is from turkey, he went all the way to turkey, grabbed a Boulder, came back to wherever KoM takes place in and dropped it on bolivia, now that's dedication [olly: this is a Turkish item]

23 bolivia( or the army) caused 10 million coins worth of infrastructure damage [bolivia:the fine for the damage was 10 million,but now I'm back on the cable and losing my mind]

24 the famous line "mario will join Brazil" either implies that A:mario is betraying Persia and joining Brazil, or join means that the Persian empire is planning on taking over Brazil

25 the narrarator* says that the end of politics is near, this implies that society may collapse [narrarator???: the end of politics is near]

25.5 in a similar note, the hotel receptionist of the sniffet hotel (idk the name) says that there's no reason for peace, wich again implies shit is going on [hotel sniffet: there is no reason for peace]

26 when we find one of the frog shaped towers bolivia called it a prisoner, implying most people in the war prisons that she presumably worked in (or atleast close to) were frogs

Final notes

1: Belize is probably an explosives expert and probably was friends with Barbie before the events of the game (an explosive expert being friends with a living breating bomb, makes sense)

2: Belize probably was in browser's side due to the whole prison frogs and working with goombas thing

3:barbie was probably important 

4: the great war is probably ww2 since ww1 happened 

5: child soldiers where a thing

6: most war mentions seem to be flashbacks/ptsd memories wich probably means the war is over

<《{[(@boom-fanfic-a-latta )]}》>

[aion-rsa]

Are Resident Evil Village’s Vampires and Werewolves the Future of the Franchise?

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

A recent extended gameplay preview of Resident Evil Village strongly suggests that Lady Dimitrescu’s vampires and Heisenberg’s werewolves could sooner become the face of the franchise over the zombies that are so closely associated with the Resident Evil name.

At various points during the gameplay preview, we see Ethan do battle with werewolves (now formally referred to as “Lycans”) and a host of vampire-like creatures. Yes, we’ve seen those monsters before in previous trailers, but these recent previews confirm that those archetypes aren’t limited to the game’s major villains. There’s a small army of those monsters running around the village, and your battles against them will seemingly make up most of the game’s action.

In that sense, they basically function like the zombies in the original Resident Evil games, which is actually quite interesting when you consider that it’s been a little while since we’ve seen a zombie in a mainline Resident Evil game. They were practically the mascot of the series up until Resident Evil 4, which traded in zombies for zombie-like villagers and other monstrosities. Resident Evil 5 and 6 brought zombies back, but even the latter game clearly tried to mix things up a bit by introducing a greater variety of zombies (some of which even used guns) and limiting their appearance to certain scenarios.

Resident Evil 7 furthered the evolution of the zombie concept by utilizing “Molded” creatures who shared some zombie-like characteristics (humanoid figures, slow movements, and melee attacks) but were clearly not zombies as the game explained they were instead the unintended consequence of the E-Type bioweapon program that produced Eveline. They were close enough to zombies to give long-time series’ fans their “fix,” but they still left you with the feeling that the Resident Evil team was ready to move on from the Romero-style zombies that once seemed to be one of the essential parts of a Resident Evil game.

What we’ve seen of Village so far only supports that theory. In fact, there’s very little of the classic zombie archetype to be found in Village’s wolves and vampires. The footsoldier wolves seem to have the ability to summon nearby friends so that they can attack Ethan as a pack (they appear to function similar to RE4’s villagers in that respect), and some of them can even ride horses and wield weapons. Similarly, Lady Dimitrescu’s castle is populated by flying gargoyle/vampire-like creatures as well as Dimitrescu’s previously revealed “daughters” who utilize a series of almost supernatural abilities to hunt Ethan. Nearly every enemy we see in the game relies on some kind of skill that goes beyond snarling, shambling, biting, and…well, other zombie-like tactics.

In fact, the closest thing we’ve seen to a zombie thus far in Resident Evil Village are these hooded servants who again will undoubtedly again remind some of the villagers in Resident Evil 4. Even then, those servants have access to melee weapons and will sometimes even hide in pools of water and other areas in order to get the jump on Ethan, which suggests a level of intelligence we don’t typically associate with the average zombie in this series.

So are there zombies in Resident Evil Village? There’s always a chance there are some lurking around later in the game, but based on what we’ve seen so far, it appears the answer is “no.” To be honest, I’m starting to think that’s a good thing.

Resident Evil has always featured a variety of monsters, but for over 20 years, the shambling undead was the franchise’s default enemy type. Zombies remained relevant in horror culture throughout much of that time (increasingly so by the time the mid-2000s rolled around), so their presence usually went unquestioned. Actually, there was a time when the idea of having a Resident Evil game without a zombie was like having a Super Mario platformer without a Goomba. Sure, we can dispatch them rather easily, but it’s really about the ritual.

Now, though, I’m not so sure that the Resident Evil team should feel quite so obligated to bring zombies back into the fold. As we saw in the preview for Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead, which featured zombie war councils and hints at zombie love, the idea of the zombie has evolved quite a bit over the years. George Romero’s zombies walked so that 28 Days Later’s zombies could run so that modern zombies could be pretty much whatever their creators want them to be.

As basic enemies, though, zombies in Resident Evil games are starting to feel increasingly…well…basic. As we’ve seen by the reaction to Lady Dimitrescu, Resident Evil fans seem to be…thirsty for unique character designs, and the game’s creators seem to enjoy diving deeper into horror history to come up with those new designs. Sure, they could design zombies that are a little more modern and capable, but if you’re going to do that, then why not just throw zombies out entirely and pursue something that we maybe haven’t seen so much of before? Movies like One Cut of the Dead show that there are certainly unique zombie stories left to tell, and The Walking Dead‘s absurd popularity over the years seems to prove that those predictions of zombie burnout we’ve heard before haven’t come true quite yet. Maybe the Resident Evil franchise has one great zombie game left in it, but I feel like that game would need to be specifically designed to account for the unique opportunities presented by a zombie threat (such as needing to hold up in a fixed location surrounded by undead) rather than try to force zombies into the experience as the “default” enemy type.

More importantly, for a series that initially distinguished itself partially based on the novelty of being a horror game starring zombies at a time when that concept was still a novelty, maybe it’s time for all of us to realize that one of the core components of this franchise isn’t the undead; it’s the ability to look at classic archetypes in a new way and perhaps even come up with some new ones in the process.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

I’m not sure if Village’s werewolves and vampires will survive to see Resident Evil 9, but I do know that I’d like to see whatever comes next take more inspiration from their innovations rather than fallback on the idea that Resident Evil has to eventually return to zombies.

The post Are Resident Evil Village’s Vampires and Werewolves the Future of the Franchise? appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3sww4wN

[themacabrefantasy]

The Macabre Fantasy

First I clarify that my native language is Spanish, and this post is translated by Google, if any kind collaborator wishes to make a better translation at the end I will place it in its original language.

I'm going to start the point where I came up with this creepy video game idea, which I have a feeling that you will like it and will complete the idea more, and why not, maybe it will come true with some crowdfunding, but it is still too poor to be some serious project hehe...

I was on YouTube and I saw a video that I had not seen again for many years, it is called "Pokopokopikotan" from the account "nana825763", and as it happens in the video, I thought of something like a platform video game, very normal without suspicion that it is creepy, and that as in the Braid video game in its first level, time can be returned to correct something wrong that we have done, and if you did it in this game, it becomes a horror game and gore, and the backward movement of the character is not automatic as in Braid, but you are free to move but on the contrary, from the back, everything moves contrary to normal, and the music and elements that interact with the player are also reversed, The entire stage takes on a Silent Hill vibe when the siren sounds. Here I started playing with my imagination, because only this idea led to nothing, it seems only a Fran Bow style element (highly recommended Indie Videogame) but in reverse and a platformer game.

So I was adding elements to it until I had a clearer vision, objectives within the game and, above all, a true reference to the most famous creepypasta of video games, those referred to Nintendo games. In the following details, I will place in parentheses the Nintendo game that this video game idea refers to.

We are in a 3D platform game Mario Galaxy style and / or A Hat in Time (the latter I have not played, but I have seen some videos).

It all starts with a 12-year-old human protagonist (Pokémon) who arrives or wakes up on a planet (Mario Galaxy and Pikmin), which can be traversed the entire planet, but big enough to be the whole game, you have to do a lot for hours to go from end to end on the planet. The planet should be beautiful and colorful like any platform game and has 2 characteristics, one is that there are no more humans, there is only you and your desire is to find others like you, other humans. The next characteristic is that you see that there are many fruits in the environment with which you can interact, but you cannot collect them to collect (or yes, I still do not clarify in that part hehe) and you cannot destroy them. These fruits can be inside boxes or cages as well. Of course in the whole environment there are Mario-style enemies, goombas and others, of course, all invented, without taking anything directly from Nintendo, and if you keep traveling the planet, in addition to finding inaccessible places (Metroid), you will find final enemies, that can be 5 or 6 in total, and these have specific abilities, such as ice, fire, fight, etc. (Pokemon). If these final enemies manage to defeat them, one by one of course, they will apologize and help you in your quest to find other humans, and they will be part of your avatar so to speak, you call them when you need them, they would be like Yoshi from Mario World , and thus you could reach the places that were previously inaccessible and explore the planet more. These new friends give you to understand that, if you feed them with the fruits that are scattered all over the place, they will become stronger and make it easier for you to finish completing everything. But you have the possibility of never feeding them, but the game will become much more difficult and very frustrating.

Here we start the creepy part and it would be a spoiler for a game that does not exist hehe... In the journey of the planet there will be messages where it is suspected that there are humans asking for help, but without clarifying well, and that your new friends (the final bosses) They have a magic, which you do not see and does not appear to you, that among all of them can make things see different from what it really is and reverse time to correct it and return it to the way it was before. Everything would go very well until, at some point in your adventure, to reach a place you want, it seems that you must sacrifice your friend that you ride or accompany you (Pikachu, pikmins), as would be the example of Yoshi in several levels, that gives you an additional leap by dropping it into the void or into magma; If you do this and your friend actually dies, the world immediately transforms you into a video game, terrorizes you and extreme gore, and moves you backwards, being free to move as I explained above. This whole world of terror is wild, and you will see how the fruits transform into people like you, suffering terribly. In this mode you can run the game for a few minutes and from there the game crashes and you must restart it, appearing as it was before you sacrificed your friend, as if nothing had happened. There will be parts of the game where you can sacrifice 2 or more, but not all, and if you do, the amount of minutes increases to travel the nightmare world. In the world of nightmare the only thing to collect are some keys, they can be, for example, 6 keys, these keys when you take them they do nothing, they just disappear, there is no counter, and voila, even then I have to restart because irremediably the game is going to hang, that key does not appear again.

Almost at the end of the game there will be at some point on the planet, a mysterious door that does not open unless you have taken all the keys, this gives you access to a very dangerous place for your friends, and there you will find a way, which you must discover, in which you can sacrifice all your friends at the same time, and thus the world of terror does not hang and does not advance backwards, it advances normally in time, since the magic disappears.

What I imagined as a good ending is that in the world of terror, the game would be more linear, since you are inside the mysterious door, making the rest of the planet inaccessible, then you would advance to your final enemy, when entering the room of the final enemy turns out that the character looks in front of your screen, as if the enemy is you, and the attack form is pure 4th wall, screamers would come out as attacks on your person, phone sounds that confuse, touch sounds door, as if they came to visit you, bugs, the sound of the game, etc. Purely and exclusively 4th wall, there is no life bar or attacks in the game, and if you last a few minutes, the game crashes and you lose several saves, that is, you have been defeated and the game falls back a lot. To defeat the character, the 12-year-old boy, I don't have a clear idea hehe ... but it could be interactions outside the game, in the game installation folder you would get weapons, files that you must destroy, something like that, and this way there would be an end, I don't know what it would be haha...

Several elements of the game that are important:

Messages from humans asking for help are not read like clicking on the message and a window opens showing what it says. The main character turns his gaze as if only he read it, and to read it the player must place his first-person view and read, like the messages in the Portal video game that said that the cake (which was a final prize) is a lie.

The sacrifice of new friends is not so easy and so explicit in the game, in a certain way you must discover the way to make them die, that is, in the first instance, discover the way to get to that inaccessible place, since the player does not know that there is a world of terror.

The game would not contain vulgar language or explicit or implicit sex, exclusively horror and gore.

I think that friends should refer to the Nintendo characters who help and are sacrificed, like Yoshi, the pikmins, and a very cool one would be a mother penguin and her son, as in Mario 64 the poor penguin was thrown into the void.

And well, this is it, I wanted to share it, I know it is a dream to make something like that come true hehe ... But maybe it will inspire some professional video game developer. I do not develop video games.

Greetings to all! Comment if you like the idea and if you want to add more.

[ryanmeft]

Every Classic Mega Man Weapon Ranked, Part 2

To gamers who were young in the ancient 80's, game characters were iconic in a way that modern kids, with a veritable plethora of types of games to choose from, simply cannot fathom. We stomped on Goombas with the Super Mario Bros. We fought Ganon with our sword and our wits.  We plumbed the depths of alien planets with a hard-bitten bounty hunter. We even occasionally played things that weren't made by Nintendo, like that one really fast guy from that one company. What was his name? Was it Speedy? Oh yeah! Good 'ole Speedy the Hedgehog. Even with all these iconic characters, one stood out for letting you do something no one else did: taking your enemy's weapon, and ripping them a new asshole with it. Mario didn't do that. Link didn't do that. Speedy certainly didn't do that. Capcom seems to have forgotten about the Blue Bomber lately, but on Monday they're going to announce...some Mega Man thing. We don't know what yet. Hopefully it's cool. Anyway, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the original Mega Man, here's part two of my list ranking every Mega weapon in the classic series. You can find part 1 here: http://ryanmeft.tumblr.com/post/168077242247/every-classic-mega-man-weapon-ranked-part-1. And part 3 here: http://ryanmeft.tumblr.com/post/168173192902/every-classic-mega-man-weapon-ranked-part-3 And the last part: http://ryanmeft.tumblr.com/post/168197639092/every-classic-mega-man-weapon-ranked-part-4

53. Quick Boomerang (MM2) It's a boomerang. Just a boomerang. I used to like standing around firing them and watching them return to me, because I was 8, and stupid.

52. Flame Sword (MM8) It's exactly what it says it is. After years of shitting out seriously crappy melee weapons, this one...well, it wasn't especially useful, but it wasn't godawful, either. And wouldn't you know it? Just when Capcom seemed to be inching toward doing it right, they figured out it was kind of pointless to do at all. They could have tumbled to that back in 1990 and saved a lot of kids a lot of disappointment.

51. Yamato Spear (MM6) This one could be rapid fired, but it is otherwise just an arrowhead that you can shoot. "Yamato" is a word that means "Japan". Isn't it kind of really, really sad that this is the coolest thing a Japanese developer could think to give to a boss literally named Japan Man? 50. Concrete Shot (MM9) File this one under "cooler in theory than in practice". The ability to encase enemies in stone sounds cool (and slightly insane), but visually, all it really does is replace the enemy sprite with a rock.

49. Thunder Bolt (MM7) Almost every MM game has one or two weapons that are just filler---not offensively useless, but not odd enough to stand out, either. For Mega Man 7, this one filled that apparent need.

48. Bubble Lead (MM2) The original travel-along-the-floor weapon. How, exactly, does one make a bubble out of lead without breaking science? It was the only way to deal with lots of annoying ground enemies, though, so we'll forgive the bastardization of the laws of nature this once.

47. Wind Storm (MM6) Oh, sweet. We literally get to shoot a tornado and why is it tiny? Why is it just moving along the ground? Wind Storm is technically a tornado, but it's a little like the fact that a poodle is technically a dog; that still doesn't make it cool.

46. Needle Cannon (MM3) It fires big spikes. You can't get much more straight forward. Unless the enemy was weak against it, it wasn't very much fun, but it wasn't annoying, either.

45. Freeze Cracker (MM7) Seemingly unable to make an ice weapon that was actually cool, Dr. Wily settled for merely functional. This one is basically useful for shattering on walls to hit shielded enemies from behind, and you don't have to do that often enough for it to be awesome.

44. Blizzard Attack (MM6) Much like the Silver Tomahawk, this one has a rather incomprehensible flight path. It works fine if your aim is right, but it's just too easy for the odd pattern to miss.

43. Napalm Bomb (MM5) Imagine if some daycare mistook this for a bouncy toy.

42. Hornet Chaser (MM9) This one may make me think of a hive of bees nesting in Mega Man's chest, but it's still rather unfairly maligned. It isn't very powerful, but it's great for taking out small, annoying enemies, and sometimes it brings you presents. The only thing real hornets bring you is inexplicably dark endings to early 90's Macauley Culkin movies.

41. Flash Stopper (MM4) Capcom's to-date last experiment with halting the flow of time, and that's probably a good thing. This one allows Mega Man to still fire standard shots while time is stopped, but not to use any other weapons. That's an improvement, but the only way for this power to be as cool as it sounds is to allow you total freedom while it's active, and that's more power than any 'bot needs. Think of the children, or something.

40. Danger Wrap (MM7) Every now and then, Capcom comes up with something that is totally original, and so it was with this weapon, which wrapped up enemies in a bubble that then exploded. It was cool when it worked right, but it was so picky on which enemies would actually bubblesplode that it wasn't very useful.

39. Crystal Eye (MM5) Are you actually firing a robot's eye here? How does this work? Whatever. Ahem. This is basically the concept behind the Gemini Laser, but occasionally useful. It splits into four little ping pong balls, and chances are one of them will hit something.

38. Ring Boomerang (MM4) I'm not sure how a ring would return when thrown. I mean, it isn't special. It isn't the One Ring. It isn't even a diamond ring. It's just a hoop of gold. Maybe it's magnetized. Anyway, this one actually lays the smack down pretty hard when it hits. Short range, unfortunately, hampers its usefulness.

37. Shadow Blade (MM3) This was like Metal Blade, except you couldn't throw it in any direction, it had a limited range and it ate up more weapon energy. It was a Metal Blade that didn't work as well, which, you know, as pitches go, that's unique.

36. Knight Crusher (MM6) This is like the Rolling Cutter, but you can kind of aim it a little bit. Look, let's just call it what it is: Mega Man 6 really phoned it in. Most of the weapons weren't terrible, per se, but they were the textbook example of a developer who no longer cares. Sure, it's hard to blame them. The NES was basically dead by this point. It doesn't change the fact that "slightly better Rolling Cutter" is the best MM6 had to offer.

35. Leaf Shield (MM2) The original shield weapon was super useful, as long as you stood still. Somehow, though a shield made of flowers disappeared the moment someone farted in the general vicinity, one made of leaves did not. However, once you moved it flew away, and likely drifted harmlessly to the ground the moment it hit anything bigger than a politician's soul. Capcom would spend the rest of the series figuring out how to make a truly useful shield.

34. Search Snake (MM3) This one was nice for for getting those hard to reach enemies, but let's pause for a moment. Mega Man is shooting snakes out of his arm. Where are the snakes coming from? Is he generating them inside his gut? Is there a hatchery in there? To anyone about to explain to me that they are robot snakes I KNOW THAT IT IS CALLED HUMOR

33. Noise Crush (MM7) This one is powerful, but just...strange. Think on it. The technology to simply charge weapons directly is already in widespread use, and Wily decides it would be better if you had to do it via table tennis. Strange.

And that’s it for part 2 of the list, in which we went from the weapons that were just boring rather than actively useless to those that are fun to play around with but mostly too strange to hit your regular rotation. Next we’ll be dealing with the weapons that you actually go looking for in the pause screen, and in part 4 on Monday, the best weapons in Mega Man history!

[blazehedgehog]

It might be a good idea to remove Shadow from the cast but I believe that would be just barely scratching the surface of the issues with Sonic's "friends".While its fine that most of the cast appears in Forces because it's basically a massive fan service game,it would be best for the franchise's health if most the post-Adventure cast (Cream, Blaze, Rouge, Silver, Heroes Chaotix etc.) were retired from the mainline games going forward until ST can find a way to make hem serve a purpose. Thoughts?

By that I mean that the only characters that should appear in the “main” series games are Sonic, Eggman, Tails, Amy, Knuckles only when he fits into the plot, maybe Metal Sonic, and MAYBE Orbot and Cubot because they actually could contribute more to the series than just being “Sonic’s Obligatory Rival/Counterpart # 1216254215” or “We introduced this character in one game and now we don’t know what to do with them”.

It just feels like to me that Sonic Team doesn’t know what they want, or they’re trying to anticipate what their userbase wants and are getting it wrong. We’ve been getting games that are either super tiny casts with JUST about Sonic, Tails and Eggman, or games that try and cram a cast of 20+ characters down our throats. Lately, it feels more like the latter. They’ve accumulated this monster legacy and refuse to let it go.

Because, like, maybe I’ve said this on this blog before, but Mario? Mario actually has a bigger cast of characters than Sonic does, because in Mario, even bosses like Petey Piranha stick around and become “characters.” Basic enemies become characters. There are Mario games with named goombas that wear clothing. Koopa Troopas drive cars.

Outside of Scratch, Grounder and Coconuts (who haven’t been relative in 22 years outside cameos in the Archie comics), Sonic has never made an effort to personify a Buzzbomber or a Caterkiller as a “character.” It’s just a robot. Something mindless to be exploded.

But Mario doesn’t have this problem where it’s, you know, CONSTANTLY bringing up Prince Peasely back up. Birdo isn’t in every Mario game. Heck, there was a short stretch there where LUIGI wasn’t in every Mario game. A Mario game generally only has exactly the number of characters that are relevant. They don’t “sneak” Donkey Kong in somewhere for fan service.

How many Sonic games have featured Team Chaotix? Or Silver the Hedgehog? Or Eggman Nega? The answer: a few too many. I am absolutely certain that these characters have their fans (well, maybe not Eggman Nega) but does “this character have fans” equal “it has to show up in nearly every game”?

Mario rubs elbows with his extended cast all the time in spinoff games like Mario Kart, but when was the last time Mario and Wario met face to face in a “real” game? More than twenty years ago. Shadow the Hedgehog has been a major rival for Sonic in at least seven games. Shadow the Hedgehog has been in more “main line” Sonic games than Yoshi has in similar Mario titles.

There have been a few times over the years where I’ve heard Takashi Iizuka bends over backwards trying to please the Sonic fan base, and if that’s true, I think it really explains why they keep doing stuff like this – and it’s killing these games. One of the reasons Sonic Unleashed feels like such a breath of fresh air is because it doesn’t have the desperate “PLEASE LIKE ME!!! HERE’S ALL OF YOUR FAVORITE CHARACTERS!!!!” tone of voice to it.

We haven’t had a Sonic game that’s just been itself in 9 years. It’ll be 10 next year. This entire time Sonic Team’s been chasing someone else’s dreams.

Sonic 4 was a botched attempt to please Classic Sonic fans. Sonic Colors was an attempt to Mario-ify Sonic. Sonic Generations was a callback to ALL Sonic games. Sonic Lost World was version 2 of “Mario-ify Sonic.” And now we have Sonic Forces, which is another “callback to ALL Sonic games.” (I actually found a quote about this the other day where he specifically said he wanted to make another callback game a couple years ago, but I can’t find it again)

That’s why I think even their “best” games like Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations have this hollow feeling at their core. They spend so much energy trying to tell us they made our favorite food that they forget the recipe and don’t cook it long enough and half the people they ask want it cooked a differently anyway and let’s face it THEY AREN’T WRONG, UNLESS THEY ARE, OH NOOOO

[medium-difficulty-blog]

Why Ludwig Wittgenstein would love Super Mario 64

Super Mario 64 is the first game I ever played, so I suppose it is a fitting subject for my first post.  Despite having a visual aesthetic which has aged like store-bought strawberries, it remains one of my favorite games of all time because to this day, there is still much we can learn from it, and many games continue to do so.  I have a lot to say about this game, but I think what I’d like to talk most about is how and why it was so successful in making the shift to 3D and how it made its intricate control scheme so approachable.

Whenever a new technology goes mainstream in the game industry, there is a honeymoon period in which developers experiment with a wide variety of new ideas, learning what works and what doesn’t.  We saw it with touch screens, we saw it with motion controls and now we are seeing it with VR.  In the case of Super Mario 64, as a launch title for the Nintendo 64, it carried the monumental task of introducing a generation of gamers to polygonal 3D and analog controls.  If you are curious about how successful it was, you need only look at the controls and camera of every game with a third-person camera that has come out ever since because the pedigree of Mario 64′s formula is still going strong.  So how was Nintendo able to completely overhaul the design of their most popular franchise to date and completely nail it the first time?

Why 3D?

Let’s start by delving into the challenges of 3D game design compared to those of 2D game design.  One of the primary benefits of 2D game design is that the player’s options are much more limited, meaning player behavior is much more predictable.  I won’t bore you with yet another thorough Mario 1-1 deconstruction, but the opening to the original Super Mario Bros. is a quintessential example of using a player’s limited range of options to teach them the game’s mechanics.  The player can’t progress without learning to jump over the goomba.  With such a limited set of abilities and options, it is easy for the designer to know what the player knows at any given time, opening the game up to be more focused and more physically challenging.  This is why so many early games got away with being so hard.

As for 3D game design, the foremost benefit is that humans intuitively think in 3D because we live in it. Even 2D games make some concessions to fit a 3D mindset, such as implicitly being able to jump on top of a platform that is drawn behind the player’s sprite.  In 3D, you don’t have to teach a player that they will land on an object that’s directly below their character or that they won’t land on something that’s in the distance.  That’s just how our world works, so why wouldn’t we expect the same for this fake one?  The challenge with 3D, or at least Mario 64’s idea of it, is less one of the player’s intuition than one of the player’s information.  Once you give the player control over their field of view, you lose the ability to know what they are seeing and where they are going at any given time.  In 3D game design, teaching the player where to go becomes harder than teaching them how to get there.  That doesn’t even cover the new complexities that arise for the controls and spatial recognition.  How does the player control the camera and movement at the same time?  How can one judge distance without depth perception? And when all is said and done, this doesn’t even address the most important problem, which is the problem of engagement.  Why is this fun?  Why bother making a game in 3D if it has nothing to add beyond complications for the player and designer?    

To understand Nintendo’s answer to this question, simply compare the opening of Super Mario Bros. to the opening Super Mario 64.  The former is a funnel of challenges while the latter is a playground of options.  Off the bat, Mario 64 has no enemies, no bottomless pits, no time limits.  Just a big, wide open space.  Once the controls are handed to the player, this is the first screen they see:

In the opening, the player is instructed to head for the castle, which is visible directly in front of the player.  So right away the player has an idea of what their objective is.  But wait- the castle is obscured by the hill, yet the path seems to open up to the left.  Perhaps I should go that way?  Can I climb that tree?  What happens if I jump in that waterfall?

Rather than trying to solve or work around the challenges of 3D game design, Mario 64 embraces them as the foundation of its formula.  Rather than trying to make it work as a test of reflexes like its predecessors, Nintendo was not afraid to abandon all but the most fundamental characteristics of Mario in order to construct an experience where the player can learn about and engage with the world at their own pace.

Language Games and the Language of Games

In an interview, Shigeru Miyamoto explained that about halfway through the development of Mario 64, the game started to become boring.  Moving around lost that thrill it had in the game’s initial stages.  The cause was a subtle change in Mario’s turning speed, yet it made all the difference in the world to Miyamoto.  This is a phenomenon that is often referred to now as “game feel”, the visceral, qualitative enjoyment that comes from how the game responds, almost as if it were an extension of your own body.

Much of Super Mario 64’s development was focused on this “game feel.” The objective was to make simply moving Mario around the world enjoyable- all else was secondary or contributing to that end.  As an avatar for the player, Mario 64 had a substantially more nuanced catalog of actions than any other game he had appeared in previously.  Compared to his previous signature actions of running and jumping, Mario 64 added backflipping, wall jumping, long jumping, punching, diving, somersaulting and even crawling.

Many of these moves are superfluous, some are useless, but taking away even one makes Mario substantially less interesting to play as.  The brilliance of Mario 64’s control scheme is how holistic it is- how each command further ingrains the rest of the moves.  I’m going to explain this, but first I need to take a very hard ninety-degree turn here, so bear with me.

In discussing semantics, early 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein believed that many fundamental problems with communication arose because people used words in such a way that escape a single definition, becoming dependent on the context they are used to be properly understood.  For instance, it is difficult to find a useful, working definition of “game” which covers both Chess and Duck Duck Goose.  But if the speaker says “the children are playing games in the backyard”, it can be inferred that they are using a definition which encapsulates the latter.

In response, he proposed a theory of semantics where language is constructed as a game which he called, appropriately enough, “language-games.”  In the same way that playing cards take on different meanings when you are playing Poker or Hearts, Wittgenstein argues that words take their meaning from the common set of rules that participants in a conversation are operating on.  When two or more sets of rules are being used, that is when confusion starts to happen.

I believe that the reason Super Mario 64’s control scheme is so easy to internalize is because it treats the underlying mechanics much in the same way Wittgenstein defines a language.  It doesn’t ask the player to see the control scheme as a big predefined dictionary of moves, but rather it allows the moves (i.e. “meaning”) to emerge from how the input associates to the current context.  In other words, while each button has a variety of effects that depend on Mario’s situation, the utility is almost always the same.  There are many different ways to jump in the game, but all of them use the A button.  There are many ways to directly interact with objects and enemies, and all of them use the B button.  Not only does this reinforce the expected outcome of each action, but this means the player does not have to hesitate to press a button. Since they know the limited range of actions associated with it.  For instance, the C buttons and R button are reserved for camera controls, so the player does not have to worry about causing Mario to move if they want to adjust the camera.  On top of that, this mental model creates an intuitive chemistry that new, predictable actions can emerge from.  For instance, since Z makes Mario crouch to the ground and the control stick makes him move, using them together to make Mario crawl is a completely logical outcome. While crawling is rarely useful (and tedious even when it is), the existence of the move adds more meaning to both the Z and the control stick and reinforces their respective purposes in controlling Mario.

The Control Chemistry of Metal Gear Solid

As a contrasting example, let’s look at how this describes a game with a bad control scheme: Metal Gear Solid.  Both games were made in the same time period, yet only one of them can I go back to and immediately pick up and play as if I only just played it yesterday, and I’ll give you a hint: it’s not the one I just spent a dozen paragraphs talking about why it holds up so well.

In all fairness, Metal Gear Solid is a much more complicated game than Super Mario 64, with tactical thinking and inventory management, so the controls are attuned to work in a wider variety of contexts, such as navigating item menus and aiming weapons.  Having multiple interfaces can be useful for crafting a particular experience, but Metal Gear Solid struggles to make them work together intuitively.

For instance, holding the L1 and R1 buttons allows the player to scroll through their weapons and inventory respectively.  Unless they are in first person mode, in which case they let the player lean to the left or to the right.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t find First Person + Check Inventory = Step to the Right to slips into my brain quite as easily as Slide + Jump = Long Jump.  If I forget this little exception, Snake responds in a way that I don’t expect. When it comes to judging games on “game feel”, the character not responding to my input is bad enough, but doing something completely different from my immediate expectations is major points off.

That’s a small example, but even the general behavior of the game when switching between these control modes is very unsatisfying and undercuts the flow of play.  The game pauses when the player scrolls through their inventory.  Additionally, the third person camera is at a fixed angle while the first-person view is not, so switching between them can be very disorienting, as the player may forget which direction Snake is looking in.

I think most of these control issues stem from the fact that Metal Gear Solid’s creators weren’t so bold to do what Mario 64 did which was rework the design of its predecessor from the ground up to accommodate a new dimension.  The camera angle, menu design, movement controls and core mechanics come straight from the original Metal Gear games, but new features which benefit from the 3D environment such as the first-person mode appear to be design afterthoughts.  I would propose a better control scheme to illustrate how it could have been better, but I think Metal Gear Solid V already offers a much more actualized interpretation of Metal Gear Solid 1’s design.  By favoring experimentation and exploration over challenge, it is better adapted to the advantages and disadvantages of 3D game design.   Allowing the player to sort their favorite weapons and gadgets on a quick access wheel solves the flow-breaking menus.  Keeping the camera facing the same direction when entering the first person-view makes examining one’s surroundings much cleaner.  And above all, even despite the vast array of options, the interplay of the game’s mechanics has a much more meaningful chemistry.  For instance, Metal Gear Solid V adds the ability to stand up, move freely and even dive in your cardboard box.  It’s about as useful as Mario’s crawl in the grand scheme of things, but it adds greatly to the experience.  It makes the controls seem more responsive since they can be extrapolated into a larger set of contexts, and it makes the cardboard box more interesting because it gives the player an opportunity to experiment with more choices and actions. In other words, it extends the language of the game.

Conclusion

I think one of the measures of a great game is how fun it is to play when you aren’t actually trying to achieve anything.  While more recent games have improved on Super Mario 64’s design and controls, the fact that anyone can pick up and learn how to navigate the game world even if they haven’t played a game in their life makes it a timeless experience.

You could argue that there are some exceptions where unintuitive controls can benefit a game, like when the underlying challenge of the game is master them, like Octodad or QWOP, but in general, it helps to look at your game’s controls like a language for interfacing with it.  When presented with a large space of options, humans tend to think more abstractly than concretely, so the best interfaces are ones that are modular enough to work in an expected way in any feasible situation.  “Jump” or “Shoot” doesn’t always mean the exact same thing inside the game, but in the player’s head that makes little difference.  Ideally, a controller should feel like an organic extension of the body, creating as little friction as possible between the player and what they want to do in the game world.

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: Goomba (Yoshi’s Island)

Debut: Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island

Yes, I know the labeling here is confusing. I’ll explain it. I wanted to do something special for Mario Day, but since it was a Tuesday, I’m doing it now instead, on Marii day! And what better way than to write about the most iconic Marii enemy of all... Goomba (Yoshi’s Island)!

Goombas have been a hit from the beginning. They waddle and get jumped upon, and have a perfect design for it! They have feet for waddling, and look squishy enough to stomp easily. Super Mario Bros. came out, and we all know what happened! Orders for Goombas were through the roof! Nintendo had no choice but to start mass-producing them, leading to quite some environmental and ethical issues as is typical for cramped, large-scale farming, but we don’t need to get into that right now.

So we all know what happened! Over the millions of years since the release of Super Mario Bros., Goombas have adapted to their new environments and evolved into distinct subspecies. We all know darling Goombo, recognized as a distinct species, as it should be. But the Goombas of Yoshi’s Island still have biologists baffled, as they’re considered the same old species despite being arguably more different than Goombo!

You may be wondering how much different a Goomba could possibly be. And here it is! Just like a normal Goomba, these ones are flattened when stomped on. But unlike normal ones, they continue waddling when flat! They can be truly defeated using a ground pound, egg, or tongue, but a flattened Goomba here is fully capable of blomping right back up.

Though I wonder... is this necessarily different at all? Maybe this is what normally happens to Goombas, but just is normally left out for convenience! As the most basic enemy in Mario games, they just disappear when flattened, but maybe that’s just to streamline the gameplay. Since Yoshi’s Island is more animated, slow-paced, and atmospheric than the 2D Mario games, and since Goombas appear in only one level here, maybe they figured they might as well make them more realistic! So there you have it. Those “Mario jumps on a Goomba and it dies for real with blood” parodies are officially non canon!

This wasn’t what I always thought, though! As a child with both Mario Kart DS AND Super Smash Bros. Brawl, I was simply baffled. You bet your sweet bippie that I treasured the manuals and guidebooks for any game I had them for, and while Mario Kart considers Yoshi a light character, Smash makes him heavy! What’s the big idea? Which one is the truth? And how does this apply to Yoshi’s Island? If Yoshi is significantly lighter or heavier than Mario, is this the reason he interacts with Goombas differently? 

At this point in time, I don’t think so. Yoshi is playable in Super Mario Run, where, without the added weight of Mario, it is able to defeat Goombas in a single stomp as usual! Therefore, I declare that the curious case of the Goombas on Yoshi’s Island is either that they are a biologically distinct subspecies, or show more realistic depiction of a stomp’s aftermath.

I’m realizing now... this is a very special post! Like, 12 years ago, before I had any idea I would be doing this, or probably even what Tumblr was, I was overanalyzing pretend creatures and their ecology. Most of my life has led to this post!

I hope you have a lovely Marii Day!