#I should probably do more variations of the sprites too

[cerealforkart]

Dungeons and Daddies the Visual Novel

Back on my bullshit with the pretend DnDads video game screencaps! This time it's a visual novel where you play a new student of San Dimas High School (later renamed Teen High) and get to befriend other students as you try to make sense of all the strange things happening around your new school and the city at large, which all seems to be orbiting these four kids who keep going missing.

(Sprites under the cut!)

[claitea]

ok you want people to talk to you about pokémon right. well you’re in luck bc i wanted to talk to you

first question uuuuuhm. hm. how about you try to sell me on playing black/white. go wild and infodump about that green man etc

THANK YOU

hm. idk how much you know or want to know bc i dont want to end up spoiling the plot of the best piece of media ever created by human hands containing the absolute flawless amazing showstopping pinnacle of storytelling Natural "N" Harmonia Gropius. but also its an 11 year old game and i spoil it constantly anyway so lmao

bw itself in general? imo the Peak of pokemon all bias aside. the animated 2d sprites, the environments (going over the skyarrow bridge for the first time WOOOO), the music, the pokemon designs themselves, it still had mythical pokemon events like Victini's, pokemon musicals, Pokestar Studios in bw2, auugahhhh chewing on bw/bw2 like its a multivitamin gummy

the music is probably one of the best things about it! routes have slight variation depending on the season (bw has seasons btw its very pretty) which is super neat. village bridge is one of my favorite pokemon songs, it'll activate more instruments as you explore the bridge and talk to people with instruments and things. also Driftveil City. just driftveil its iconic

and now here's an entire no holds barred rant on Him

n. where do i start with him. i will be spoiling literally everything about him btw i just love explaining him

abandoned in a forest at like 5ish years old, he learned to talk with pokemon because he lived with them. ghetsis ends up finding him, claims he's his father, and whisks little n away to plasma castle and everything goes speeding downhill on a sled going over ice.

n's naturally Too Nice, so ghetsis is able to convince him that every human is pokemon-abusing scum by only letting n see pokemon that have been mistreated and isolating him from people other than ghetsis himself and n's foster sisters, anthea and concordia. he makes n think only he can change the world by joining with one of the twin dragons, becoming champion to prove his strength to the region, and from there he can force all people to separate from pokemon.

presumably the first time n's been let out of plasma castle is at 20 years old when bw takes place which on its own is just. insanely horrific. he's genuinely surprised that all the people he meets over the course of the game treat their pokemon well and their pokemon love them in return. unfortunately for n he is STUBBORN. up until the bitter end he keeps holding onto the belief that humans and pokemon should be separated despite all the evidence contrary to that because thats all he's known all his life. was he supposed to just throw away all he's been working towards for 15 years? drives me insane how deeply entrenched n was in his mindset that even when he had suspicions, he couldn't let himself waver from the path he chose. he literally runs away and disappears for TWO YEARS after you defeat him because he's so lost.

yknow how kieran tries to be the hero of ogerpon's story and gets furious when sv protag takes that away from him? thats kinda how n is, he thinks he's supposed to be the hero of unova but after clashing with you he realizes he is Not. "Is the world going to choose you, and not me?!" <- line that has driven me nuts for over a decade. n is literally designed like a classic mainline game protag: compatitively simple casual outfit (with the bright green hair to set him apart though), does the gym challenge and becomes champion, catches a box legendary, is fighting against a threat in order to save the region. the only difference being that threat was a lie, n was being used so ghetsis could take over the region.

speaking of ghetsis's atrocities. there's his infamous "freak without a human heart" line. there's the fact his final team is designed to counter and sweep n's final team, either he was planning for n to end up betraying him or just outright disposing of n no matter what he did once he outlived his usefulness. there's the fact he probably didn't even take much care of n and dumped the responsibility on anthea and concordia who probably aren't much older than n. there's the fact that in usum's rainbow rocket storyline, that timeline's ghetsis has one of the twin dragons, which i've seen interpretations of being that he's trapped n and taken the dragon or straight up Killed n because the dragon is supposed to choose its partner. fucked up stuff!

and throughout it all n still has some attachment to ghetsis! "It's hard to call you this, but… Father! Please understand."

ghetsis may have done All That but he's still almost all n had for so many years. n is also again, Too Nice, he still wants to see the best in ghetsis. pokemon masters had a storyline where ghetsis seems to be trying to make up and n makes the choice to trust him. ghetsis betrays them all of course but the fact n still chose to believe in him again is so. augh

enough about The Tragedy of N Harmonia though, he does turn his life around and seems so much happier in bw2. compare his first game encounter theme to his second. the first is creepy, stops jarringly, is literally named Prisoner to a Formula. his second reminds me of carnival music and i love it so so so much. also, i've had weird issues in the past where putting images under a readmore screws up the entire post's formatting and i dont want to retype THIS ENTIRE RANT but. in bw2 his battle sprite has a bigger smile than in bw1. he regained his whimsy :)

misc thing. he canonically talks so fast some people can't understand him. this is reflected in the game by his text printing faster than everyone else's, and if you set your text speed to Fast he talks at a unique EVEN FASTER speed which i think is really funny. they just Really wanted him to talk super fast they even bothered to make him his own text speed

[skyehigh15]

Fave Sprites in each AA Game: T&T

(Spoilers for Trials and Tribulations)

We're here at the third game! Hell yeah! Many people consider this to be their favourite ace attorney game, and honestly I have it pretty high up there in my rankings. I think this batch of animations was the hardest to choose from so far, because there's just so many good designs. I tried my best though, so let's check them out!

Animation 1:

Not only does this man's hair look like cinnamon rolls, he himself is one. You've probably noticed if you've seen my other posts in this series, but I ADORE leaned-in sprites so much. I hadn't really realized it before making these posts, but all of them have at least one sprite with the character leaning forward; it's just such a simple way to give the character more dimensionality and urgency without really changing the angle you're viewing them from that much. Now let's name the things I like in this sprite: I love the slightly angled shoulders, the sleeve cuffs he has on, the pleading look on his face, and his overall colour palette. Very good, Ron. You're doing great. <3

Animation 2:

I just had to put in another Ron sprite, and how could it be anything other than his iconic "hair springs". This sprite is just really cute; by making his eyes and (especially his) mouth larger, he has a more chibi look to him, which makes him look adorable. The actual animation in this sprite is pretty bland, I must admit. However I think that's balanced out with how clearly one can imagine the action happening. You really don't need too many sprites if the viewers understands what they're looking at. Also the way he bobs up and then down as he yells is amazing. I really do love this man a lot.

Animation 3:

Mia Fey marry me challenge. She's so fucking pretty and I love her young design just as much as I love her older look. The bangs are one of the biggest changes between the two variations and it's certainly a welcome addition. This hair flip is so smug (god i fucking lover her) and it's so great to see her pull out this animation after getting bullied for over half of the case. This sprite and many of her other younger ones make her death retroactively so much sadder.

Animation 4:

I actually like young Edgeworth's design much better than his original (at least when referring to the original trilogy; the Investigations game also changed his older design somewhat). I think a lot of his weird proportions have been fixed: the strangely (yaoi) large hands, the tired eyes, and the extremely wide shoulders. The main reason why this sprite fucking rules is the storytelling behind such a simple finger-wag. It's a very clear reference to Manfred Von Karma's almost identical courtroom animation. It's such a simple way to showcase his influence on Miles, but it's also extremely effective.

Animation 5:

I was debating whether I should use this sprite or the one where steam comes out of his mask. I ended up choosing this just because it caught me so off-guard when I first played Bridge To The Turnabout; I genuinely was not expecting Godot to be the culprit, and I was completely lost during this part of the trial. Then the lights turned off and I realized what was about to happen. This is probably one of the most minimalist "sprites" in the whole series, but it's also so so good. The flickering of the red lights make Godot appear monstrous or inhuman, which gives his goggles a more technological appearance that doesn't shine through as well with his other sprites. I think it's one of the scariest sprites in the series; overall a great climax for the case, game, and trilogy as a whole.

[imnobodyuknow]

Sorry, I couldn’t resist.  ; )

(Epilepsy Warning Ahead)

So, after completing CrossCode: A New Home a few months ago (which I meant to do a review of, but didn’t get around to it, sadly), I was thoroughly delighted by the continuation of the game’s story and the extra challenges included in it, both story-related and optional.  That being said, I still think even Masahiro Sakurai would start crying after attempting some of those puzzles.

But putting all that to the side, I especially loved the fact that Lea and her “people,” shall we say, now had their own place to live, work, play, and (ahem) talk with one another.  Searching for the hidden treasure chests in it was also a fun challenge -- one that turned out to be pretty easy after some exploration, in fact, which is one of my favorite things to find in any adventure game.

There was one thing I found strange about Lea’s new house, however.  On the second floor is a big screen TV with a game console and stereo system (a gamer’s dream, in other words):

When you interact with the TV, you’ll discover that it only has one available setting, which I like to call “Super Rave Mode,” with music blaring from the speakers and color-changing lights flashing everywhere.

I couldn’t help but wonder what the reason for this could be.  Is that how the stereo system was designed, is that just how Lea likes it, or is it something else?  We’ll probably never know, but...I do have a theory.

It’s at least a possibility, wouldn’t you say?  You know someone’s a true friend when they take the opportunity to punk you every now and then.  X D

You’ll probably notice a few artistic flaws if you’ve studied drawing (if not, feel free to skip this part).  For one thing, Lea appears to be much taller than the TV in the first two panels, so the next three panels make no sense unless her legs suddenly got a lot shorter.  For another, her head seems a bit smaller in the third panel than in the others.  Proportions are still not my strong suit, apparently, but hey, at least I was able to notice it, right?

The miniature panel inside the fourth panel a little hard to notice, too, but it was still worth doing anyway, I think.  I always love it when comic artists get creative with their panels instead of making them the same every time, so I thought I’d try it out.

And strangely enough, those are all the flaws I can think of at the moment.  How about that?  X )  The tree in the sixth panel might have looked a little better if I hadn’t tried to draw its texture with the colored pencils, but...eh, why sweat the details?

Speaking of the sixth panel, you may notice one of my OCs hidden in it if you look closely enough.

He looks like a bubble with eyes, for reference.

There were a lot of details to figure out for this drawing (especially that last panel, which took me a few days to finish), but I had fun trying to get all of them right.  I used the above snapshot of the second floor of Lea’s house for the first five panels, while Lea herself was made after the picture of her found on the game’s pause screen:

Her facial expression in the first panel came from her “awed” sprite,

the one in the third panel is a variation on her “happy” sprite,

and the on in the fifth panel is based on her “annoyed” sprite (which I’ve only seen when she talks to a very loud Shad).

I also used the picture of her seen on the file menu during the epilogue as a reference for her profile in the fourth panel.

And of course, good old Emilie was made after her “grinning” sprite, with a few wrinkles added to her forehead.

I just have to say, nobody grins like that girl.  It’s not as adorable as Natsuki’s grin, maybe, but it’s still quite lovely.

And finally, the sixth panel was based on the area outside Lea’s house.  Duplicating it was a pretty fun (if time-consuming) challenge.

I have since reached that silver chest on her roof in case you’re wondering.  After a lot of exploring around, that is.

One more thing I should add: Much as I enjoyed drawing this and so many other things with pencils and paper, I’ve lately been considering making a transition to digital art from now on.  It’s not that I’ve stopped enjoying traditional drawing (in fact, I’ll probably continue making it to some degree), but I’ve started noticing of how much time can be saved by choosing digital drawing instead -- no smudges, easily undoing mistakes, easy rotation, zooming, etc., so...I’m beginning to think that may just be the better option for me.  That’s not a final decision, though, so I guess we’ll see how it plays out.  If I can’t decide, maybe I’ll let you all take a vote on it.  You’re my audience, after all, so you may as well have a say in it.  ; ) 

In any case, farewell for now and thank you for indulging in my love and appreciation for CrossCode.  Or as Lea would say, “Bye!  Thanks!”  She’s very good at being succinct like that.  X )

[adobe-outdesign]

opinions on the florges line? i feel they don't get talked about enough :[

Flabébé (not typing those accent marks after this) is a pretty neat little thing that always stood out in my mind. First, the idea of a little sprite that floats around on a flower is just a neat concept, and fitting for our first new fairy-type. And secondly, these things are adorably tiny, standing at a total of 4" tall. Quite literally a pocket monster!

I also like this because, while probably not intentional, it helps solve the age-old question of how flowers in the Pokemon world get pollinated; Flabebe do it!

And in terms of the design, it's pretty well done. I love that it doesn't have a mouth, almost like it has a proboscis instead, and the way the flower stamen compliments the pollen crown is nice. Even the way the lower body mimics a flower stem is cute.

The Flabebe line also comes with different color variations, which isn't particularly important but is at least nice attention to detail. I'm not going to review them all separately, but I'll just say that the white and yellow flower versions are my favorites, as they carry the colors through the design the best.

Floette almost borders on being too similar to the rest of the line, but I think it just barely skims by because the placement of the flower is unique to this particular version, so it at least has one thing to make it stand out. Though with that said, I feel like there was a missed opportunity to give it a different kind/shape of flower, given that Florges doesn't keep the same shape anyway. Would help distinctify it that much more.

I also feel like there are one or two weird things going on with the design. Those green bits work with Florges because it has eyelids, but it just looks strange here. I'm not sure what's up with those two lines on the forehead either. And while not the end of the world, it's kind of a shame that it gets a mouth (side note, for some reason it's the only one of the line to not have a nose). So it's perfectly serviceable, but probably could've been a bit stronger.

Side note, that plot-relevant Floette from XY has its own unreleased form. I'm not sure why they didn't release it, given that it has dex info and everything. Guess it was supposed to be in the scrabbed Pokemon X?

Regardless, its design is fine. It's mostly a recolor, but the palette looks nice and the flower looks pretty cool. It kind of goes back to what I said earlier about giving it different-shaped petals to make it stand out more from Flabebe.

Before we get into Florges' design, I should point out that it's odd that the entire line is pure fairy-type. Don't get me wrong, it makes sense with Flabebe and Floette because they're just holding plants rather than having them integrated into their biology, but by the time we get to Florges it definitely feels like it should've become grass/fairy. (I've heard some people say it's just wrapping itself in plants, but I can't find anything canon indicating this.)

Regardless of typing, I like what's going on with the design here as a whole. The plant-mermaid look is pretty unique, and the way the flowers form around the head to make the entire Pokemon resemble a flower is clever conceptually. It looks elegant and feels like a satisfying final evo as a whole.

There are a few things that don't quite work design-wise though. To me, those flowers around the head are a bit much; there's like 20% more detail in that area than there is anywhere else on the body, which makes it look messy visually. Cutting out the hanging parts and the pink flowers would've helped, but part of me wants to see what it would look like with a simple Meganium-stype arrangement of petals there instead.

Secondly, the ass-out look always looked strange to me, partially because it never straightens up. It probably would've been too rigid if the body went straight up, but it feels like the entire body could've bent backwards in a C shape, mermaid-style. Floette's body is already more or less doing this, so I don't see any reason to not do it here. Alternatively, moving the two large leaves up to the hips might've helped it feel more natural as well.

And finally, that random grey patch on the chest doesn't quite fit the rest of the color scheme, given that the grey is only present on the eye (and head lines) otherwise. I would've either dropped it or integrated it elsewhere. Maybe on the bottom leaves, seeing as they have a dividing line there for no real reason.

Overall, while the flowers themselves could've used a bit of touch-up, this is a nice little line of flower fairies with some charming designs.

[kicktwine]

do you have more thoughts on keyblade fighting that you need to put somewhere, because i have two hands ready to catch Should The Need Arise

anon: hey I heard you mention you’d analysed the combat styles in KH and what you said in the tags was already alluding to really neat stuff, but I for one would love to hear more of what you came up with!! so if you ever wanted to share any of your analysis then the floor is yours

aHAH, MY EXCUSE!!

Okay, so first some words on “standardized wielding styles”. These are styles shared by Terra, Aqua, Vanitas, Riku, and Xehanort and every other scala and daybreak kid. I will make the argument that the red style is the fanciest standard style, while the purple is seen often to make it easier on the little chibi sprites. BUT, I cannot discredit Eraqus, who uses the purple variant in bbs, nor can I discredit half of the Foretellers (Gula and Ava, at least, use this. Invi and Aced use the first type). So, two standard styles. For simplicity, let’s say one for primary offense, one for primary defense. The standard offensive style really wasn’t popular before Scala-era society.

check this difference out, specifically between ava invi and gula:

then between eraqus, hermod, and xehanort, and eraqus and terra.

These two were likely popularized and standardized for education in Scala ad Caelum for their predominant lack of obvious weak spots.

After this, we have unique styles. Those include Sora Kairi and Xion’s (similar to standard defense, but more mobile at the expense of form — Kairi takes after Sora but less confident, she hasn’t been hit that heavily yet), Ven’s (backhand, heavy range and mobility), Roxas’ (modified for two keyblades, but takes after Sora), and Axel’s (taught himself, comfortable with chakrams).

So! Let’s go.

.

Standard (offensive)

All styles have sub-variations, of a sense. Different wielders can choose where their keyblade points, and how they hold it exactly, based on what makes them most comfortable. Terra and Aqua point theirs downward, while Vanitas and Riku hold theirs above their head. What is recognizeable to this style is a hand for the sword, and a hand for guarding/blocking/items/magic.

It’s incredibly efficient. With only one hand on the weapon, you not only free up a hand for other things, but increase your range of movement with said weapon. Test it out yourself! The keyblade hand is always your dominant hand, held behind you for increased power when attacking (since you lose a significant amount of it by choosing not to grip with both hands). This style also decreases the speed of the defense you have, but with that increased mobility and swing power, along with a hand free to brace against the keyblade (defense strength up!), it makes up for it. Many people who use this also have strong barrier spells — both a testament to their preference for coverage and an acknowledgement that any directional block will take a little longer and be weaker if they try it with one hand.

The pointy end, though. What difference does it actually make, the height it’s at?

I think it’s half a matter of attack style preference and half intention. Riku, Vanitas, and Xehanort stab quite a bit. Aqua and Terra slice more. Not that they don’t do both, but it’s the first instinct. Aqua and Terra are also likely taught to hold their keyblade neutrally, in a safe position, until someone starts attacking. It’s polite! Eraqus also holds his one-handed, neutrally, until he gets into position. Riku and Vanitas learned to fight assuming everyone was out to fight them. Invi and Aced may like this style because of range (i hc she’s blind and strikes very very quickly, and he’s already very powerful with just the one arm and wants better motion).

and on character specifics: Terra often switches to two-handed, to copy his dad and add extra power to his hits without always sacrificing the empty hand. Vanitas likely was forced to relearn how to fight, as instead of solely being trained to be better at withstanding, he was constantly being made to better his own attacks. The moves Xehanort uses would best be replicated in the same style. Vanitas is wild for holding the massive spiky x-blade like that.

Now, what‘s good on this style does not correlate to what’s bad in the other. The two standard styles simply have different ways of dealing with each con they create or taking advantage of each pro.

(Here’s an interesting side note — Gula uses standard defensive, but in this instance, swaps. One hand… likely to display confidence! Wrong move, but hey. He got cocky. He’s also doing it wrong, and swaps back to two-handed to take Aced’s attack.)

.

Standard (defensive)

The main detriment of this style is the lack of ease of long range movement. Hold a wrapping paper tube out in front of you with both hands, then run. It goes to the side, or tucks in to your stomach, right? Dodge. Your legs will get in the way unless you know where to move that sword. It requires, interestingly, a little more discipline. You’d think Aqua would like that, but no, she wants movement and practicality, and she loves magic, and remember that you must take a hand off this style to grab a potion. You’d think young Eraqus wouldn’t, but remember that he’s a fancy royal lad.

The main draw, though, is tankiness, readiness, and power. You don’t need to move as much if nothing dares hit you! Ava and Gula might be attracted to this style because they’re not as physically strong, but want protection in close-quarters fighting. Using this style when your muscles aren’t as big but you still want to Hit Things Good, or when you want to be a boy you can’t knock over with a pail of water (horse stance rules), is probably solid advice.

Traditionally, this is a lot less like fencing, and a lot more like a samurai sword or kendo. Your blade is held in front of you, giving you very easy access to blocks and frontal attack/defense. In losing some twirly spinniness, you gain power and minimize your opponent’s ability to parry and block.

you gotta dodge master Eraqus so mcuh

All styles will swap between one and two hands for different moves. Eraqus, notably, swaps to a stance very similar to Xehanort when channeling a metric ton of magic.

Both of these styles require a degree of upper body/core strength, as does all swordfighting. I would be interested to see someone whose keyblade style relies on leg strength.

.

Sora, Xion, and Kairi

please look at the difference between the foretellers’ or eraqus’ two-handed grip and Sora’s. Do this with your shoulders and a top-heavy object.

They’re both in a hard stance, but hon. What are you, a gremlin? Anyways, a traditionally taught master would have… better form, even if it’s harder to learn at first. It’s habitual. Sora nearly crouches, and holds his keyblade back-pointed with two hands, which makes it easier for him to dodge roll, push off his feet quickly, and pull off those spinning combos he loves. It‘s really gonna hurt his muscles, in the future, though, since he’s doing a squat for like…. hours. Pulling on those shoulderblades and neck. Xion, too. Replicas had better have correct muscle dynamics. Kairi is brand new, so… maybe Aqua can teach her how to hold a sword so it doesnt hurt you.

Okay, now look at the grip itself. Held in front versus held to the side-back. They’re really attempting to combine both standard styles subconsciously, giving themselves more attack power while really wanting to keep that hard defensive parry, wanting to prevent all attacks to the front while also wanting mobility. It’s working for them really well, they fight like an anime character, and manage to get the best of both, with a minor sacrifice of length range that they don’t care about. We’re flexible and full of magic, baby! Holding the blade like this makes it pretty easy to let go with one hand without sacrificing that crouched defense position.

Now, Sora, specifically, is very adaptive. He’s had two keyblades, claws, guns, yo-yos, and a giant shield, to name a couple. He retains a bit of that alert crouch no matter where he goes, but Sora knows how he wants to attack and how to balance that with the most effective way to use his current weapon. He’s a smart kid! Sora has the most ridiculous shotlocks, which are also probably due to not always wanting to go standard for it. He also prefers to keep his focus on the enemy, which is evident in his reprisals and lack of very many effective “escape” moves.

Xion is very similar to Sora, but she does have some moves that are all movement. She switches to one handed for strikes a lot — using two for defending, one for smacking. In her data battle I’d swear some of those heavy hits are claymore-like. But anyways, since we’re magic, Xion cares not for the laws of exhaustion, and will ping about as a ball of light everywhere. Short range? Up in your business. Mid-range? In your business with one hand. Long range? Throws a boomerang. Hit her? No you dont. Ball of light. She’s above you and wants to bash your head in. (Vanitas also does this! A lot. It’s an easy way to catch someone off-guard. I’ll argue that the soras are very tough and strong, but not tanky. they want to avoid being hit a lot)

Another interesting note about Kairi. I say “unconfident” not because she doesn’t hit hard, but because her stance is also often tilted back, ready to dodge. It’s two handed, but almost all her moves are one. She does love spinning and throwing the thing! It looks like she’s been taking notes from the wielders she knows. It would be easy to teach her a standard style, I think. See here, she lets go on the strike, and by trying to do both, actually ends up with an advantage (being confusing) and disadvantage (losing both the power of two handed and versatility of one handed).

A counter to Sora and Xion is difficult to pin down. Time? Probably. Lack of heating pads. Something that takes all their attention is about the only way to get a sneak attack in, and then you have to hit hard. A counter to Kairi would be anyone who can knock her off balance. She needs a sturdier stance. .

Roxas

Roxas is interesting. He takes after Sora for the one blade. Wielding two, however, nets him a totally different way of fighting. Roxas’ clavicle muscles n… deltoids and stuff must be Ironclad. Also, two handed means you are very fast and sharp all the time. He has the advantage of standard defense (horse stance), and the advantage of offense (range of one sword, but twice).

Roxas generally attacks in two ways — simultaneous hits, and follow-up hits. Either he hits with both at once, or hits hard with the first one, and adds the second one as a bonus smack. He can attack by hitting in opposite directions with the two, like a drum, but that will be a little awkward and leave him prone to being tangled. That established, the follow-up hit method means he spins a bunch. As do we all.

Roxas gets a little complicated because we are not in the real world. We have magic and turning into light and physics that let you become a circular saw. So, typically, disadvantages would include: being unable to let go of a weapon to grab something or use an item, having just a very big silhouette to attack on, having difficulty with close-range attacks because Oathkeeper and Oblivion are kinda long, and convenience. Roxas gets to dodge #1 (keyblades can be unsummoned) and #4 (keyblades can be unsummoned). Speaking of dodging, he also gets to skirt the difficulty of dodging and rolling with two swords because he turns into a beam of light. But he can’t dodge how difficult it is to use two swords effectively — he needs to concentrate on fighting, and nothing else, or he risks messing up. He has to be very, very coordinated, and undistracted. Luckily he’s pretty good at making his opponents shut up, most of the time. Blocking is another thing — theoretically his blocks could be strong, but Roxas has no real brace: crossing your blades and taking a hefty stab might smack one of them back into your face. He mostly uses reversals and dodges, because of this.

The takeaway to this is Roxas is built for speed and power, and he is very strong. He’s a mid- to far- range fighter who if you’re not careful can snap you in half if you’re too close (be SO careful of that cross blade scissor).

A perfect counter to Roxas would be a tank that can grapple, and also be very distracting. If you can take hits, be talkative, and get close enough to stop his blades, you have a chance.

.

Ventus

This is a bizarre choice, my guy, but I get it.

Backhanded weapons are very impractical for a lot of... attacking, mainly in mid-range combat, and Ven likes to either fight very close or throw the keyblade like a boomerang (and hey, backhand gives it a good whip for throwing). His attacks aren’t meant to one hit KO, but they do come with a bit of power to them, especially on the backslash. Like holding a knife for gouging. It’s for very close defense — pretty good when Wayward Wind and Missing Ache have hooks.

Backhand also, while retaining that empty hand for potions and guarding, gives you an extreme coverage boost. By which I mean Ven’s sword hand now has a nearly 270 degree sweep of “I see you, don’t touch me”, very quickly, based on just flicking his wrist. It sacrifices a ton of strength/sturdiness, but you don’t need that if you’re dodging. You also don’t really need to block, which is slower, but relatively sturdy when Ven does it, as he blocks with mostly the chunky hilt between crossed arms. He sacrifices (again) a bit of strength for coverage — an attack would hurt his arms, not his chest, if he were hit head-on.

His attacks often have him flip the blade around in his hand, too. Quick swaps between standard moves and backhand ones. Basically, Ventus is built for moving, protecting himself, and quick attacks that wear down the enemy, not outclass it. Likely because he’s good at fighting, but everyone he’s fought hits harder than he can! It doesn’t matter how he holds it, getting hit will hurt. So he just. Doesn’t. He’s not a buff little guy — but he is a persistent one. Ven very likely made this up on his own, in Daybreak, and it was too hard to fix his whole style, but it was enough to correct most of his form so he doesn’t hurt himself too much. He is going to have to really stretch that shoulder and wrist (maybe get a brace), though. At least his neck is ok. … not sure about his knees tho dang boy that crouch

A perfect counter to Ven would be someone big and fast, who hits hard mid-range. He’s already been sparring with Terra, though, so when in doubt, try scruffing him?

.

Axel

Theres not a ton to say about him — he‘s not a swordfighter. He uses his keyblade like it’s a frisbee. Because that’s what he’s used to! His neutral is behind his back on his shoulder, which is terrible for readiness, but okay for chucking the thing. It’s good it has a sort of… ripstik like… boomerang quality.

Axel’s fighting style is completely made up, like most of the self-taught wielders’. His strengths lie in some of the benefits of standard offensive style (one-handed), and some of the same coverage stuff as Ven, having a cocked wrist most of the time so no one can sneak up around him without risking getting whacked very quickly, and having an interesting range due to the pointy end being basically on a spinny swivel wherever his hand moves. He’s not going to be good at close-range and he knows it — his attacks are mostly distance. And the guy has ZERO defense, combined with zero coverage when idle, so it’s for the better.

Distance-wise, though, he rocks. Treating the blade like it’s a flaming throwing weapon means his idle is actually great for sudden flick-tossing and attention-guiding for sneakier attacks, and his stance itself (…nonexistent) serves a different purpose: bait. Basically a big "come hit me". Fun, when you have a lot of fire magic and two friends who are beasts and love to take advantage of a distracted enemy — distance on the blade, proximity on the burning.

A perfect counter to Axel would be someone pinging around very close <—> very far and circling him incessantly. Like, data Xion could wreck him, as he has to wait for the boomerang to come back -- he no longer has two spinny wheels. Also someone with water magic.

.

SO! In conclusion! Having a teacher who teaches you correct sword usage rather than instinct may detract from overspecific styles that benefit you most but leave weak spots, but your muscles and your oversights will thank you. Everyone is glad we have the power of the Mouse and anime on our side.

Keep in mind again that I have done cursory research, and have had minimal actual sword instruction, I am not an expert and this is all for fun anyways :]

[level247-table-tech]

here are the sprites on their own! not all of them, but there are way too many to fit up there. i’m leaving the rest under the cut.

others include significantly asymmetrical sprites, as well as a bonus set. 8)

these don’t really clarify their relative heights. they are not adjusted to the bottom pixel i actually drew for sure, that’s not how i aligned them. i actually have a guideline in the file, but. i can’t really show that.

above are the regular sprites. it took ages to figure out what i wanted to do with virgil’s plaid, but it turned out going simple with it was the best plan. also it looked very bad until i figured out to use values correctly.

also, while we’re at it, i can tell you some things i changed between projects! this is a remaster of my last attempt at pixelology, and i do  believe it’s an overall improvement.

virgil’s plaid, yeah, changed that, but also the colour of his hair, because the old one blended too much with his skin. glad that happened to virgil, because i was trying to keep the hair highlights the same for everyone, with differently-tinted shadows. i did give him a bat instead of the wings this time, because a, he seems like a bat kind of guy, and b, the wings sucked and i don’t think i could improve them. like, the best thing about those wings is that they were the ace flag colours, and since his general colour scheme is already like that, it’s not a spectacular saving grace. they also made the frame fit weird, but i don’t like drawing wings absurdly small, like why bother? i alos tried to be a bit more competent with the jacob lines in his shading. those are an indicator of fear so of course i wanted to keep them included, but last time i feel like i didn’t do great, and this time i think i improved. especially on the legs. it is kind of a pain how there are adjacent sections where the shadows are done in the same colour, but. that’s really who virgil is, let’s be real. wouldn’t be the same without the all-black clothes.

also, patton’s different skin tones were really bad, you could barely see the shadows, so i changed them. his overall shape also did not work, so this time i stylized it a bit more to fit with the pixels. also i gave him a different weapon. hopefully it’s still funny in its incongruity!

roman had very little change. like, i really like his original sprite! i did change some of the gold details, but the biggest thing is probably the pants. they’re white with a red stripe because, a, it looks very good, and b, it set up a parallel with remus.

and remus. most obviously in the first one, his different head angle super didn’t work. it was very bad! which, in his case doesn’t automatically rule it out, but this one looks way better next to the majority of these. i mentioned relative heights earlier and this one should actually be the same height as roman, you can align them by their chins. aside from that, i added a lot mor detail to his ruffles, i tried my best to maintain clarity on his torso, i got the sleeves just plain wrong, but it looks fine, and it happened to be very good art that led me astray on that, so whatever. i feel like his morningstar might have gotten worse between versions, but what can you do. maybe i accidentally put it at a slightly harder angle to make look nice. whatever.

logan! i don’t think i’m doing these in any real order, sorry. like patton, his shape has been changed to be more stylized to fit the pixel thing. like, a realistic taper on the legs, as it turns out, looks pretty bad! exaggerate it or make it just straight lines and it is better. i feel like i very much improved his hair, and i also added the belt that he wears which i forgot last time.

lastly, janus. well, lastly for now, but the next one won’t be a remaster of anything. i gave him his canon weapon instead of snakes, which, not sure what i was thinking gameplay-wise for those. [that’s a lie, i was thinking nothing about gameplay because i am no gamemaker. i’m not even an animator, much as i’d like to be.] when i made his last sprite, i forgot the lining of his cape is yellow. also last time i had not seen the magnificent longer cape from the game sections of svsr, which as i’ve mentioned elsewhere i am never letting go of, ever. so that features here. it kind of blends with the backgrounds i use for the vs character selection screens, but i don’t think that’s necessarily a downside. aside from that, i did remove some scales from his right hand because we have now seen it, and it’s proven bereft of those. as you’ll see in a second though, fortunately no such thing can be said of his legs. nor upper arm.

now for the bonus set. you may recognize this theme if you’ve followed this project awhile. 8)

some notes on these specifically:

-this is simply a complete set based on janus’ bonus sprite from the original project this is remastering.

-i tried to base the colours on their onesies. that proved harder than expected. remus and janus have no shown onesies, but

>i had janus’ previous sprite on hand, so that was him taken care of.

>virgil’s onesie didn’t really have multiple colours, so it’s just different shades of black, with some grey thrown in because white is already a base colour.

>logan’s, oh boy, i thought i remembered it having two colours, but i was wrong, it is just blue. and white, but again, that doesn’t work. so i gave him a couple of shades.

>patton’s, i didn’t really want to use grey as a colour, but it actually had two others, they were just in trace amounts. it was okay.

>remus. nghh. i wanted to use like, an inverted version of roman’s colours, but it turns out blue and yellow inverted is yellow and blue. so i used the orthogonal colours instead, and i’m not really sure it was a good look.

-aside from colour schemes, each of these has its own little variation, because i felt like having fun. aside from any kind of socks/leggings, because whatever, those are pretty variable anyway, each has one detail different. from most to least noticeable as i see it:

>patton has pants instead of a skirt. i just thought the look suited him better. the thing about patton is i always imagine him in Dad Fashion, which doesn’t have a ton of skirts in my mind. maybe that’s just my dad, but eh. i do think it’s a good look but i didn’t draw it very well.

>roman has a different crown. need i explain further? adding the others’ crowns was a bit of a pain considering how they interact with hair that isn’t drawn in anime style.

>virgil’s might not be too noticeable on its own, but the leggings kind of direct the eye there. he’s wearing his own boots instead of any variety of sailor scout ones. mostly because they are much, much cooler.

>logan has a different collar. closer to his usual polo than... whatever the sailor collar is actually called. he also might not have the same choker necklace as everyone else, but mostly you just can’t tell. still tied with a weird bow thing, though. how the hell do those bow accessories work?

>janus has a longer cape. again, need i explain further? he’s also the only one with a magical girl wand, because his colour scheme* was the most permitting and i really wanted to draw coily ribbons.

>remus is kind of like virgil with the leggings, but again, those don’t count, and with remus they draw attention away from his change. anyways, the different thing about his outfit is the sleeves. i only noticed long after i was out of the pixel stage that none of the sleeves are accurate, but his are even more not accurate, they do the poof thing. also his neckline’s a bit lower, but i mean, how could i not?

-i might assemble a full scene with these, if anybody asks. or nobody, i kinda just want to. it’s not too much trouble, but it won’t be animated this time, that took ages and i don’t think it even turned out well. i gotta find somewhere to actually get taught things about animation, though it also just does not gel with my medium.

-i can’t for most of these, but for janus i can talk about some improvements. his crown looks more visible, though that might just be compared to this side of his face. the skirt is not better and might be worse to be honest. also the bow on his chest. other than that it’s definitely better for the gloves actually being incorporated in this one.

*i do actually have set colour schemes for these. i tried to even limit the number of colours for each one. that said, most of them have exactly 17 instead of the nice power of two 16, and one of them couldn’t even fit that bill.

[benichi]

Collar X Malice - Unlimited - Spoiler Free Mini Review

- Unlimited - revisits the World and stories of Collar x Malice in varied ways. There are After Stories (also referred to as Epilogues) for the 5 Love Interests from the first game. Side stories that focus on (you guessed it) side characters plus the so called ADONIS mode which will give you the chance to find out more about the organizations members.

+ As with the first game both art and music are very nice. It's a blend between content from the previous entry, which gave a nice sense of nostalgia, and newly created sprites and music. I'll address the elephant in the room: considering the allegations against H*namarua M*i I did feel a little... odd looking at the art. But I'll have to take it at face value for now since there hasn't been any more news and the art - as we see it in game - looks good (aside from a few weird anatomy situations).

+ After Stories (Epilogue). These are probably what people have been looking forward to the most. It's nice to see these characters again and even more so to see how they act in a relationship. Personally I very much enjoy seeing how couples are once they're officially together (not just to the point until they get together) so I loved these. Obviously some stories more than others, we all have our favorites and so on. But overall I found all of them enjoyable and I think there's nice variation of fluff and drama between the stories. The only thing I'd like to remark is that there aren't a lot of puzzles, though I haven’t really made up my mind on how I feel about that. Because on one hand it’s nice they put more of a focus on the day to day lives, but on the other I do enjoy some good puzzles. So I’m kind of in the middle here and just wanted to point it out because the first game did have more.

+ Side Stories. There are 3 stories in total that consist of 2 parts each. I very much loved two of them, the third felt a little forced in my opinion (you’ll see which one I mean once you get there) but either way I think all of them are a nice addition for those that would have liked to spend some more time with certain side characters in the main game.

+ ADONIS. I'll be honest I loved this. Even if I do love me some sprakly butterfly Otome that Aksys seems to be against so much there’s definitely a big part of me loving dark and morally challenging stories. I don't even want to say too much but this mode was right up my alley and I hope people can get into it unspoiled. As I said in the beginning here’s where you’ll have the chance to find out more about each Adonis members, their motivations and stories. This obviously includes their leader (which a lot of people have always wanted to find out more about - me included). This mode may seem a little confusing at first but once you start playing it’s actually quite simple but still effective. The (true) ending was done well and I do think that ADONIS is a great way to say goodbye to the world of Collar x Malice.

- The limited edition feels like minimal effort. And not just for - Unlimited -, personally I find none of the LE Aksys puts out appealing. Compared to all of the content the Japanese version got we’re really getting the short end of the stick here. Again, this is how I feel about it. I’d love to buy some LE Otoge but not like this.

- The localization. I specifically chose “localization” because most people seem to be talking about translation which isn’t quite it in my opinion. Especially putting this game on Google Translate level. As someone who has played my fair share of Google Translate-esque Otome I can reassure you that C x M - Unlimited - is still far from that. I think to be on GT level it has to be at a point where you can’t even understand what’s going on at least half of the time, which is not the case here.

-- BUT there are some major problems. I’ve already talked about this previously so I’ll be keeping things a little more brief here...

My biggest issue is that the game often times feels unpleasant to read. Which is obviously a big problem for a visual novel. The game cuts sentences in a weird way that makes you wonder if part of it is missing - which is my main gripe cause this is a constant thing. There’s random numbers that shouldn’t even be there in the text, off wording and even coding issues (text outside the box or in places it shouldn’t be,...). So as I’ve said previously I do think that it’s difficult to put something with this much text out and do a completely flawless job. If there were some spelling mistakes here and there I wouldn’t mind it that much. In C x M - Unlimited - however there are times when it will be one mistake after the next in a consistent manner (Takeru’s AS is  w i l d), then things will be perfectly fine again for a little while only to jump back to paragraphs of odd words, text outside the box or just awkward wording. It kind of feels like some of the employees took their work seriously and tried to put a good product out while the other half slept on their keyboard.

Conclusion: should you buy this? If you’re a big fan of the original I do think so, yes. I don’t really like the idea of boycotting or anything like that, I don’t think that’ll get us anywhere. Especially if you liked the original you shouldn’t deprive yourself of this experience. But we do have to hold Aksys accountable for what they’ve done. Because even if the Otome fanbase is struggling to get releases we shouldn’t just be happy getting Otoge at all - we do want quality.

Again this game is still far from some of the other bad localizations we’ve had to deal with, you’ll always understand what’s going on. However, I do have to say that the price of 50€ for the game - as it is right now - is not acceptable. I wouldn’t mind paying that price for a VN with great localization, but as you can see currently this game has too many issues to call it that. So if you’d like to hold off that’s perfectly understandable. Aksys is aware of their displeased fans so now it’s on them to take action.

I do think that we are a well- and outspoken fandom, so if you haven’t yet consider writing Aksys a polite email about the issues with - Unlimited -. Especially so if you’re reluctant about buying the game in it’s current state.

In short: Great game, as of now not so great localization. Let’s hope they put out a patch and - even more importanlty - that they’ll do better next time. Piofiore’s release is not that far off after all.

[jaybug-jabbers]

Review: Pokemon Fusion Generation

If you are a fan of pokemon, it’s very likely you’ve visited the Pokemon Fusion Generator. This website became terribly popular because it can automatically ‘fuse’ any two pokemon that you select. The results are not always the most sophisticated fusions, but they are always wildly entertaining and occasionally come up with some truly cool-looking new creatures. There have been many artists inspired by these mash-ups, and people have drawn some truly gorgeous pokemon fusions. There is something almost endlessly entertaining about seeing these surprising variations on familiar faces.

Imagine my intrigue when I stumbled over a fan-made pokemon game titled “Pokemon Fusion Generation.” The screenshots I saw confirmed my suspicions. This was exactly what it said on the tin– a game filled with pokefusions that you could catch, collect, and battle with. I decided I had to download it and try it out.

But does “Pokemon Fusion Generation” live up to the hype? Was it just a gimmick that quickly grew dull, or was it a satisfying game? Read on to find out!

(Note: spoiler warnings for the plot of this game, but I try to be as spoiler-light as possible.)

This game is titled “Pokemon Fusion Generation” because it was intended as a fan-made sequel, a ‘generation’ that could be slotted in between gens 3 and 4. Made with RPG Game Maker and material from Pokemon’s Gen 3 as its base, the story takes place in the region of Kanto. In a lot of ways, the game feels like you are playing Pokemon Firered/Leafgreen, but there is a significant twist to the usual adventure we’ve all known since childhood.

The story begins with the protagonist, who is the current Champion of the Hoenn region. You have travelled to Kanto with the idea of trying out the gym challenge of that region, since you have already conqoured Hoenn’s challenges. Things begin rather typically, besides the fact you’re Hoenn’s Champion– you begin at Oak’s lab, meet with your rival (Brendan), grab a typical Kanto starter, pick up a new Pokedex and prepare for your new trip.

However, things quickly begin to change when we run into Bill just a little further up the path. There is a crowd and everyone is excited about one of Bill’s new inventions. He unveals it before the crowd, and announces the creation of pokemon fusions. The audience’s reaction varies. Some people are awed; some are incredibly excited and want some fusions of their own. However, one elder comments that the pokemon fusion is horrifying and an affront to nature. This causes Bill to hestitate and reconsider what it is that he’s created. He retreats to his house in Cerulean to think.

Once you pass through Viridian Forest and Pewter City and track Bill down again, it seems he’s had a change of heart. He decides it’s wrong to fuse pokemon, and he’s going to stop making and handing them out to people. Before he dismantles his machines, however, he decides to fuse one last pokemon to give to you. He offers to fuse your Kanto starter with an Eevee.

There’s someone sneaky afoot, however. A woman in disguise lures you and Bill out of Bill’s house, and that’s when their evil plan is hatched!

Bill’s entire house, fusion machines and all, is yanked from its foundations and carried off by a school of Zubats. It’s revealed that Team Magma and Team Aqua are behind these shenanigans, for reasons we have yet to learn. With the power of pokemon fusion creation in the hands of a nefarious team, we’re not simply going to be taking the Kanto gym challenge; we’ll be trying to track these hooligans down, too, and get to the bottom of things. As you travel throughout Kanto, you find that pokemon fusions have become quite the new craze, and you’re forced to contend with these strange new creatures.

That is the general set-up for this game. But is this a solid fan game worth playing?

The Fusions

Arguably, the heart and core of this game are the pokemon fusions, so it makes sense to judge those while trying to decide if this is a quality fan game.

The world of Kanto is not filled to the brim with fusions. You will not be encountering a new fusion every time you step into the tall grass or battle a trainer. Instead, these rare little prizes are only in the hands of a select few. The rest of Kanto’s population is quite normal. At first, I found this slightly disappointing, as I was expecting an overload of these freaks. However, I came to find that the rate at which you encountered fusion pokes was a nice balance. You didn’t run into them constantly, but you did see them– especially when encountering gym trainers, gym leaders, and team Aqua/Magma foes. It was always a nice surprise to see what new pokemon would pop up, and leaving the fusions to only special moments made the experience feel more exciting. Fusion pokemon were a fashionable trend, and anyone lucky enough to have one of the rare creatures was envied.

Among those lucky enough to own a fusion pokemon were the gym leaders. Each gym leader had added a new poke-fusion to their usual lineup, and one of the rewards for defeating the gym was that the gym leader would give their prized poke-fusion to you. In this way, you ended up slowly building an entire collection of the poke-fusions.

Now, you could not usally find these creatures in the wild. If you wanted to use a pokemon fusion on your team, generally your only choice was to make use of the prizes from your gym victories. Naturally, this leads to a very limited selection of pokemon to choose from. I can understand why some people would find this disappointing. If you happen to dislike the fusions you’re gifted, there’s not much you can do about it. It also severely injures the replayability of this game.

That said, I still enjoyed collecting my team of fusion pokemon. I won’t claim every single one was a fusion that I would have chosen, if I had a choice in the matter. But having that choice removed, I still found ways to appreciate the pokemon that I had. There is a certain satisfaction in figuring out how to use what you’ve been handed, a sort of Nuzlocke quality. Of course, I could have captured and used regular pokemon on my team, if I so desired, but I had decided from the start to use only fusion-pokes, as it was more interesting to me.

Also, I should mention your choices open up a little later into the game. In Fushia City, there are a handful of pokemon fusions who escape from Fushia’s Zoo, and scatter across the land. You can eventually track down and capture these special pokemon in the wild. Thus, you can eventually choose from a slightly wider selection.

What about the fusions themselves, though? Were they any good?

In terms of the sprites and the aesthetics of the pokemon, not all of them were particularly sophisticated merges. Sometimes it was little more than pasting the head and perhaps the tail of one pokemon onto another, with awkward results. If you are familiar with the Pokemon Fusion website, you’re probably rather acustomed to this sort of thing. That said, not all fusions were that way. In fact, the spriting for this game was very well done. Things usually looked clean and well-proportioned, and while some fusions were a little simplistic or awkward, most of them were thoughtfully created and were more complex mixtures. The choices of fusion were extremely off-the-wall, combinations that you would normally never dream of.

It seemed that the goal of these fusions, for the most part, was to make as wacky and silly a combination as possible. The stranger and wilder, the better. Many of them made me laugh and shake my head and wonder why anyone would choose to make that combination. However, occasionally I would run into a fusion that was a truly awesome-looking combination.

Take Girafiloom, for instance. This was a particularly lovely combination that I would love to own myself. Again, it’s kind of a shame we could not choose from a wider pool of fusion-pokes for our own use. However, it still was nice to see what everyone else had. The game has a very wide variety of fusions to encounter when entering into pokemon battles, and you keep encountering new ones at a very good clip. You’re never going to get bored meeting new ones, and the game kept me very amused and entertained with these creative combinations.

The pokemon’s movepools and typings were also fused, of course. In fact, a large part of the entertainment value of battling fusion pokemon was trying to decipher what sort of combination you were looking at, and thus what sort of moves and typing you could expect. It wasn’t always immediately apparant, especially when there were multiple ways to potentially fuse types. Sometimes, the choices this game made on typing confounded me. Why was my Suntank, a Sunflora/Miltank fusion, pure Grass instead of Grass/Normal? I’m not sure. But at any rate, these mixes made for an interesting battle, especially when the battle was a more dramatic one, such as the Elite Four.

The Plot

Now, if this game was nothing more than what I’ve described so far, it would already be a game worth playing. It has a very solid gimmick: collect and battle with pokemon fusions. If I just spent the whole time wandering Kanto and playing the same exact plot as FireRed/LeafGreen, but with fusion pokemon, it would have been enough to convince me to keep playing. It’s pretty charming.

However. This game has something else going for it besides the fusion pokemon. It has actual plot. Well written plot, at that. The story and all of the dialogue feel perfectly in-place in the Pokemon universe, which is something I deeply appreciate. The plot unfolds gradually with Team Aqua/Magma, with a pacing that also feels very much in-line with the official Pokemon games. It feeds you information a little bit at a time at just the right speed, keeping you interested in the story. As you travel and conquer gyms, you learn more about the fusion fad that’s sweeping Kanto and about the mysterious plans of your foes.

I don’t want to spoil too much of the story, but it includes teaming up with Janine to investigate some stolen zoo pokemon, a charming sidequest in Lavander Town’s catacombs that’s right up my alley, a mystery in Cinnabar Island that involves strange weather, and a very entertaining adventure on-board the Magnet Train. Perhaps my favorite part  is the story of Ellie, a Team Magma member who becomes involved in the adventure in a unique way.

The truth is that Pokemon Fusion Generation’s plot is beautifully and thoughtfully done, and it changes this from a decent fan game to an excellent one. While this game does not feature a new region or new locations to explore or new music, the combination of the always-entertaining pokemon fusions with a top-notch story makes the game well worth playing.

The final conclusion of the plot with Team Aqua/Magma was a fun surprise, and I enjoyed it, even if it did leave a few lingering questions about Aqua/Magma’s motivations in my mind. Anyone who’s played Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire is sure to enjoy the ending.

The Team

Herawoodo (Brick Break/Strength/Megahorn/Rock Slide) - Rock/Bug

The first fusion I received, from Brock. While I was very sad to lose STAB on all the fighting moves that this pokemon could learn, adding a Rock typing to Heracross was a rather welcome addition, neutralizing his weaknesses to some common types. Rumble’s Rock Slide really packed a punch and he did a lot of work on this team.

Chareon (Dragon Claw/Flamethrower/Quick Attack/Earthquake) - Fire/Flying

The creation of this pokemon was unique. I had already been using my Charmander, the starter I received from Oak, for a fair bit of time. It was only when I reached Cerulean City and spoke with Bill that he then offered to fuse my Charmeleon with one of his Eevees. Around mid-game, Charlie was having difficulty pulling his weight on the team, limping by with the weak Ember and not much else. But then sometimes happened– he evolved, something I was not sure was possible until it happened. I was thrilled and gladly welcomed the stats boost. In the late-game, Charlie was an incredibly powerful ally, mowing down fellow fire-types and using Quick Attack to pick off almost-dead pokemon surprisingly often.

Wurmlord (Bug Bite/Waterfall/Ice Beam/Surf) - Water/Bug

This pokemon was gifted to me from Misty (who noted the pokemon fusion kind of creeped her out, anyway). Blobby was definitely the weakest link of my team; there’s no need to beat around the bush about it. With poor defenses and poor speed, the Wurmlord crumpled to just about anything before she could even get a shot off. Perhaps it’s not so surprising, considering its Wurmple half. Even her healthy HP stat was of little to help save her. That said, even poor Blobby had her moments of glory. When fighting Lance, she survived a Wing Attack and got an Ice Beam off on a dragon, so who knows? Perhaps she was vital to our victory after all.

Suntank (Body Slam/Petal Dance/Milk Drink/Giga Drain) - Grass

This … abomination was given to me by Erika, who told me I needed to love and cherish it. While its appearance horrifies me, I have to admit the Suntank was extremely hardy, powerful, and useful. In more than one of my important battles, it was Suntank that let me scrape by into a win. The bulky pokemon had redundant health recovery and thus was hard for my foes to kill, and its magnificent Petal Dance was truly a force to be reckoned with. The Thick Fat was especially nice and made Suntank even bulkier, even when faced with super-effective moves.

Chantabuzz (Ice Beam/Softboiled/Light Screen/Thunderbolt) - Electric

Lt. Surge was able to part with this fusion and gave it to me, although I was a bit skeptical of it at first. An electric Chansey? I gradually adjusted to using Orb, and it filled an important slot on my team in terms of coverage. That said, I think I never quite got the hand of using Orb. I don’t normally use Chansey, so the fact that all of its defenses are in its special was something I continuosly forgot. That’s probably why poor Orb fainted an awful lot, despite its massive HP– I kept tossing it in the way of physical attacks. Despite that issue, Orb did a lot of work on my team.

Skarbok (Steel Wing/Fly/Poison Jab/Toxic) - Poison/Steel

Skarbok is one of the more absurd-looking pokemon fusions. Koga will hand you this creature when you defeat him in Fuchsia City. Its typing is unique, and no current real pokemon possesses it. The Steel/Poison pokemon is resistant or immune to a wide range of attacks, and its healthy defenses keep it quite safe. As such, Corkscrew was very often a vital defensive wall on my team, shrugging off Outrages, avoiding poison, eating up ice beams, and many others. His Achilles’ Heel was Ground, something he was four times weak to, but if I was careful I could avoid throwing him into the range of an Earthquake. In terms of attack, Corkscrew never had a move with really high BP and STAB, so he couldn’t always hit hard enough. However, his Toxic + stalling with Fly was a handy tactic, and he could often outstall the competition.

Conclusion

This game is a hidden gem. While it may lack replayability, it’s so very worth that first playthrough. I deeply enjoyed the entire playthrough, from start to finish. If you’re willing to re-visit the region of Kanto and are looking for a quirky, highly entertaining jaunt into the world of pokemon fusions, definitely give this a try.

[cloudravine]

I was tagged by @strawberrylight to answer a few questions that dig a little deeper, thank you ily dshfgs 😚💕🌻

1. Do you prefer writing with a black pen or a blue pen?

Mmm don’t have a particular preference for either

2. Would you prefer to live in the country or in the city?

An in-between? Big cities overwhelm me and the country bores me - for me the perfect balance would be a quiet location close to nature, either in or on the outskirts of a small-ish city ✨

3. If you could learn a new skill, what would it be?

It’s impossible to only pick one! Most of all I’d like to know even more languages and writing systems (including all the ones coined by Tolkien), become an expert at shooting the bow, get back to doing fencing, and learn to play the drums and the cello/double bass 😍🙏

4. do you drink your tea/coffee with sugar?

I only drink tea, and nope, never!

5. What was your favourite book as a child?

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which I read eight or nine times as a child sdgfs ⚡️

6. Do you prefer baths or showers?

I rarely ever take baths but find them more relaxing and satisfying than showers

7. If you could be a mythical creature, which one would you be?

How do you expect me to choose when I obv wanna be all of them??? 😩😭 In terms of what fits me best, maybe a wood fae/fairy/sprite - and if specific fantasy worlds are allowed, a hobbit in Middle-earth and a sea witch in the Continent 🍃

8. Paper or electronic books?

Paper books for sure!

9. What is your favourite item of clothing?

My black TPWK hoodie 🖤

10. Do you like your name? Would you like to change it?

I like it and defo wouldn’t change it 😊 It comes from Robin Hood and exists in some variation in many different languages, which I find brilliant :’)

11. Who is a mentor to you?

Mmmm probably my closest friends bc I look up to them and value their judgement so much 💞

12. Would you like to be famous? If so, what for?

Nope hahaha, too much stress and pressure 🙈

13. Are you a restless sleeper?

Unfortunately yes rip

14. Do you consider yourself to be a romantic person?

Omg I’m probably the most romantic, cheesy and extra person you’ll find out there shfgsd 😂

15. Which element best represents you?

Water 🌊

16. Who do you want to be closer to?

Physically - my friends who live abroad 😭 Metaphorically - it’s homophobic that I’m not besties with ot5 and Henry Cavill 💔

17. Do you miss someone at the moment?

My friends from Norway in particular, and yesterday night I dreamt about my German host mum so I’m missing her a lot today :(

18. Tell us about an early childhood memory.

I remember playing lava and recording radio shows/podcasts on cassettes with one of my sisters 🌸

19. What is the strangest thing you have eaten?

No idea haha

20. What are you most thankful for?

The love in my life, and the fact that I’ve been able to live my dream of travelling for the past ten years or so 💖💖

21. Do you like spicy food?

My nose starts running and I lowkey die when it’s very spicy sdhfs (typical weak white person behaviour lmao), but I do like when it’s just a little spicy 🙈

22. Have you ever met someone famous?

Quite a few, yes! Was VIP at a Tokio Hotel show, got autographs from Simple Plan and All-American Rejects, etc. Not sure it counts as ‘meeting,’ but I also passed some of the guys from Avenged Sevenfold on the street in Montréal once 😌

23. Do you keep a diary or journal?

I’ve tried many times but always end up giving up after a while bc it’s too time-consuming and I can’t be bothered rip

24. Do you prefer to use pen or pencil?

Mmm maybe pen?

25. What is your star sign?

Cancer ♋️

26. Do you like your cereal crunchy or soggy?

CRUNCHY OMG, pls take soggy cereal away from me 😳

27. What would you want your legacy to be?

Warmth, love and kindness 🌻

28. Do you like reading? What was the last book you read?

I studied literature for five years - does that answer the first question? haha 😅 Last book I read was Andrzej Sapkowski’s Sword of Destiny sdhfgs and it broke me so bad I haven’t been able to read anything else since sdgfs bye 

29. How do you show someone you love them?

I check up on them, send them stuff that reminds me of them, make time for them, share the stuff I’m interested in with them and create a good environment for them to do the same, etc. 💕

30. Do you like ice in your drinks?

Yes

31. What are you afraid of?

Pain and loneliness 

32. What is your favourite scent?

My cat’s smell 😭💗

33. Do you address older people by their name or surname?

Surname, unless we’re family / well acquainted (but I’m gonna have to change that habit when I live in Norway since practically everyone is on a first name basis there haha)

34. If money was not a factor, how would you live your life?

This is tricky bc I can’t imagine what it’d be like living life without having to think about money at all 🤔 But I think I’d travel a lot? Ideally I’d love to be working in something Tolkien-related (but not full-time sfgsdd), and I’d probs spend my free time with friends, out in nature and maybe doing some volunteering :)

35. Do you prefer swimming in pools or the ocean?

The ocean for sure! Or a lake ☀️

36. What would you do if you found $50 on the ground?

I’d keep it, except if I knew who it belongs to and how I can give the money back to them

37. Have you ever seen a shooting star? Did you make a wish?

Yes and yes, though I can’t remember what my wish was 💫

38. What is one thing you would want to teach your children?

That it’s okay to be whoever they are, and that they should accept others for who they are too and show tolerance and openness as much as they can 🌷

39. If you had to have a tattoo, what would it be and where would you get it?

I’ve been considering so many tattoo ideas but always end up changing my mind after a while... Would really like something Harry or 1D-related and also some more Tolkien tattoos - it’s just super hard to decide on what exactly 😭

40. What can you hear right now?

My step-dad’s coffee machine working + workers doing renovations outside

41. Where do you feel the safest?

Mmm that’s a hard one, maybe when I’m with people I trust? 

42. What is one thing you want to overcome/conquer?

It’s difficult to pick only one bc I’ve got quite a few issues I need to improve on (anxiety, bad self-esteem and insecurity to name only a few) 🙈

43. If you could travel back to any era, what would it be?

The Viking era hands down! ⚔️

44. What is your most used emoji?

All the pink hearts 💗💓💝💞💖💕

45. Describe yourself using one word.

Passionate

46. What do you regret the most?

I’m always most mortified to think back on instances where I accidentally hurt/upset someone in any way 💔

47. Last movie you saw?

Mudbound, which was very heavy but excellent!

48. Last tv show you watched?

Dear White People 🌈

49. Invent a word and its meaning

I feel like my cat Mia’s name sould become a verb that can be conjugated 💁

Tagging @amantisegreti @technicallysideacc @micshiefmanaged @gcralts @goldenfive @going-there-and-back-again @peachtimelord @feanarofinwion @daggryet @zenmalik - no pressure of course! 🌸💛

[thebestworstidea]

The irony of Remus from the Witch and the Green Knight wanting to protect LAOFT Remus is utterly and completely lost on him. 

If you can trust them, dancing with fae is lots of fun.

One person knew (TWATGK) Remus’s birthday. She didn’t even tell him. No one’s seen her for years. (Happy birthday) (Why did I think trying to draw a toddler was a good idea. It wasn’t)

Notes:

The main differences between how I approach fae than the dearest Vi:

There are seasons and there are courts. It’s exceptionally rare for a Winter to be Seelie, or a Summer to be Unseelie, but it’s not impossible. 

Eyrie is an unseelie Summer. Think highly destructive thunderstorms. Think choking on the humid hot air that drowns you.

Sprites/pixies come in a large variety, as many kinds as there are flowers and bugs. They sizes vary. 

Hills/Underhill vs fairyland- stylistic word choice. Underhill is what I called it when I was a kid, and it stuck. 

I think I use the idiom ‘neighbor’ and ‘good neighbor’ to describe the fae more. 

I feel this should be made clear- This is not the same Remus that Vi wrote about, non-canon, barely canon adjacent. I took the idea of ‘Remus the mace wielding yandere’ and bolted, giggling, rubbing my little gremlin ideas all over it. Remus is a fae who is unhealthily devoted to D and would gladly hit Roman over the head for attention. Remus and Roman don’t even look much alike in this au/au. They are both athletic, attractive young men with pretty green eyes. That’s about it. Remus is shorter than Roman, but wears heeled boots. He’s also shades darker than Roman at his tannest. Sort of funny though: his current automatic ‘human’ glamor looks more like Roman than he usually does.

So Remus isn’t a greenman in The Witch and the Green Knight;

Green Knights- Green Knights are an incredibly specialized offshoot of Green Men. They traded in most of the plant talking/growing umph for exceptionally high resistances to counter charms and offensive magic.  As a subset they were practically designed to combat mortals. Some hills regard them as an indication trouble is coming, but given the lifespan of a fae, it’s not a particularly effective omen. If one wanders into your hill from somewhere else, however, that probably means trouble is coming, even if they are oathless and just looking for a place to live. If they aren’t they're probably the trouble that’s coming.

Note: Some fae who care about this argue that they aren’t an offshoot of Green Men, but rather a lesser gentry that resemble them, a sort of place where wild meets Gentry. Generally the gentry don’t think much of this theory, though to be fair, most Green Knights are much more civilized than Remus. However, Fae scholars are annoying, let’s move on. 

Green Knights are named after the Arthurian Legends, so even without an oath they’re technically called ‘knights’, though they do tend to gravitate to serving as knights. They come in both genders, and fortunately are pretty rare compared to other types of human sized/shaped fae. (A good argument for them not being an offshoot of Green Men)

They can grow facial hair, but don’t always. Some Green Men can too, but that’s kind of regional variation. The Fae Scholars theorise it has to do with societal expectations of facial hair, as most Green Men don’t, but historically, they were likely to. (again, who are these assholes?)

Specialized Green Knight Magic: 

The oath of the Lord: considered similar to a knight's oath, it mostly secures fealty, granting the holder of the oath the right to command them to combat. And also to stop. Multiple people can hold this at once, though the oldest supersedes the rest, unless trust has been betrayed.

The oath of the Lady: lesser known, transfers a certain level of resistance to the holder; can only be given once. Some Green Knights avoid giving it; others are giant fucking romantics and fuck up their lives. Must be accepted to work.

The Oath of the challenge: Watch out for this shit, because their resistance makes reality go haywire, even for fae. Only one can be sustained at a time. 

Leaf Aegis: Enchanted leaf mantle/vest which offers armored protection. Almost always worn by the knight in question, though it has been gifted to other people. 

Rowan has what would best be described as vague species dysphoria. Sometimes when things get foggy she forgets she’s not a changeling. It flared up again when she started hanging around with Remus, which is why she can be touchy about pretending or joking about role reversal- it loosens her grip on reality. Remus knows this which is why he shut the ‘would you’ with the nymphs and was confused when Rowan brought it up herself

You know what depresses me? Rowan and Roman probably could have been friends. Witchy buddies. It would have been neat for Roman to know a different kind of witch.

Random Fae:

AElgeiz- Spring, female, careless, clumsy, unlucky. Associated with water and earth. Rocks that are prettier when wet. Moss on stones. Waterfalls, and those holes you find under them. Water that’s never still. Sharp like watercress. Seelie. I never actualy got her into the story; She’s a character from a splinter universe where Rowan was actually a changeling.

‘Eyrie’- Summer, male. Dark skin. Unseelie. Thunderstorms. The sound of falling trees and rushing wind. Kind of a bastard but not an unhonorable one. 6’ Had a wonderful time during Durant’s regency

Tiba- fall, Deer Woman, seelie, weak. The dance of fallen leaves (Remus’ mother, deceased.)

Jerry- very early autumn/late summer, male, seelie but an asshole. Bird down on the wind, empty shells, the scream of cicadas (beetle wings with a protective carapace) unusually large. 

[gosatsuvns]

Weekly Update Compilation

Just realized that I kinda neglected the weekly updates here on Tumblr (sorry about that!), so I'll compile the last few right here:

Weekly Update #328: CG & BGM Progress

This past week, I've focused on drawing the "dead body" CG for GENBA no Kizuna, which is quite an undertaking to say the least. I've made a lot of progress on it, but there's still some work left to be done. It took me quite a while to figure out the exact perspective and angle. Thankfully, being married has its perks, so I got Kuna to take a bunch of reference pictures of me while I was lying on the floor, pretending to be dead, haha. That definitely helped tremendously.

Still, the details are going to give me another headache for sure. We're talking about a guy who got eaten by a T-Rex after all, so there's a lot going on in terms of, well... damage.

Anyway, every now and then, I've also continued working on the outline for Withering Without Hope. And speaking of which, I have just released a new Patreon post, delving into the topic of how Broken Beyond Despair sets up and dictates the direction for its sequel.

If you're curious about the changes I felt were necessary in our recent anniversary update, be sure to check it out!

Next week, I'm planning to make another post talking about the time in between BBD and WWH and what exactly happens there. There is quite a gap between October 30 and December 23 after all...

Now, in other news, I've been working with Solo, our composer, on a new BGM track for GENBA. I've already received a first preview of it and it sounds amazing! Can't wait to hear the full version and share it. This time, we're tackling another investigation theme, specifically for the segments you will play as Rei.

That kinda wraps up this week's progress report. I'll get back to working on that CG now, so please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care! :3

Weekly Update #327: BGs, CGs, Sprites & WWH

After a bit more BG work, I have finally finished a variation for the 1st Floor Main Hall and one for the 2nd Floor Main Hall. That now only leaves one more variation of the 1st floor and all the necessary BGs for the first three chapters of GENBA are done! Hopefully, I can get to that soon, but first of all, I've decided to tackle the "dead body" CG instead, as it is kinda tied to that BG.

Basically, after recovering the body from the Rex jaws, it will be spread out in the main hall and you will be able to catch a glimpse of it on the missing variation of the 1st floor background. At least that's the plan, but I think drawing the CG first will better help me understand what exactly and how much needs to be visible on said BG.

The CG is kind of intimidating to think about, as it is going to be the most difficult to draw by far. As a result, I've been pushing it off for a while now, but I figured, if I get it out of the way now, that'll be a big relief, haha. I've actually started working on it a while ago, doing some initial sketches. You will see almost the entire body lying on the floor. It's going to be an interactive CG too, meaning that players will be able to click all over the body in order to examine it. As you can imagine, it's going to be a very crucial asset towards solving the mystery death at the Kaseki residence, so it will require a lot of attention to detail.

My goal is to finish it by the end of the month, so I have just about a week left, which will hopefully be enough!

Outside of finishing those BG variations and getting back into the body CG, I've been working on some more sprite variations for Keiichi and Amber. Unfortunately, I kinda suffered a setback of sorts by accidentally deleting one of Amber's new sprites "orz Thankfully, I still had the low quality preview I posted on Patreon, so I was able to restore it, even if that was kind of an annoying and rather frustrating occurrence...

I have to doublecheck with the script, but this might be it in terms of sprites for the first chapter, too. In the end, Keiichi only got one new one, depicting him with a somewhat worried expression:

Now, one other thing I've been working on is Withering Without Hope. With the Christmas season drawing near, I'm really getting into the mood for it, so I've been working on the outline for the first chapter. I'd like to continue working on this on the side and hopefully finish at least the entire first chapter outline before the end of the year. The goal here is to have the full script for the game done by the time GENBA will be released.

If you're a patron, you should keep your eyes open, as I'm also going to share some behind-the-scenes info for WWH soon! Been wanting to do that for a while now and just haven't gotten around to it...

Anyway, guess that about wraps it up for today so, please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care! :3

Weekly Update #326: GENBA Background Progress

Alright, after a bit more work, I have finally finished the background for the second floor of the main hall and, along with it, adjusted the other two main hall BGs. If you want to learn more about my struggles with these, be sure to check out last week's blog post where I talk a little about visual consistency. I've also made a post on my private Twitter, showcasing the differences between the old and the new version of the first floor main hall. As for the second floor, here's another preview for that one as well:

Now, what's left are the variations of these two BGs, which I've also worked on. One variation for each of them is almost done as well, just missing one last detail which I'll take care of tomorrow. That will leave only one more variation for the first floor background, which will display a couple more pieces of evidence. As mentioned last week, once these are done, we're gonna be good on backgrounds for a while. That's because the second chapter will not need any new BGs, as no new locations inside the residence will be visited. As for chapter 3, the mid-point case discussion... that one will take place entirely in the exhibition room featured at the end of our demo. So no new BGs for that one either!

Well, I did mention before that I'm playing with the idea of making one more simple BG for said exhibition room. Since the cast will spent quite a while there, discussing the mysteries (think of the dining hall in SHINRAI), it would probably be nice to get some visual variety. However, as I don't deem this to be an "essential background", it's a bit lower on my priority list. For now, I just want to focus on the assets that are absolutely necessary to tell the story. And when we talk about "essential" backgrounds, there are actually only four left now: the wash room, the back corridor, the backyard and one of the suspect rooms.

Before I get to any of those, I'm still aiming to finish all the assets for the first chapter, though. Which (BG variations aside) now only leaves a couple of sprite variations and two CGs. One of those is going to be very elaborate, though, so it will probably take me a while to get it done. I'll most likely work on it next month and, for the rest of November, take care of the sprites and script revisions.

Anyway, that about sums up the current progress. Time to get back to work, so please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care! :3

[artyrogue]

Blind Date Gaming: Konami GB Collection Vol. 3

Boy, I am WIPED after my date last night. It all started out as it usually does -- a quick visit to PRANG for an introduction to my next potential video game suitor. Who could have guessed that I would served up 4 dates! They all came together at once under the guise of Konami GB Collection Vol. 3.

I was greeted at first by an anime schoolgirl with a huge hand and quite possibly a contender for the weirdest hairstyles I've seen in a while. What is that, a grass-inspired mohawk laid over top a normal haircut?

Is this what the cows that make cowlicks eat?

What happened next was an eventful set of speed dates. This onslaught left me with no down time, thus the exhaustion. However, I did end up meeting some nice games. I'll speed through them each quick-like to keep this from being overly long. Luckily each of the games are pretty short (as expected from Game Boy games)!

First up is Gradius II! Now, I've never actually played a Gradius game, so I can't say if this is a port, some reconfigured version of Gradius II, or what. What I CAN say is that it has tight controls, beautiful graphics, interesting bosses, and some fun gameplay.

Looks like a rocky magic 8 ball

You start off hangin' out with what I assume are your dad and mom starships. Aww, family time! Soon, however, someone decks your old man and blasts your momma fulla lasers. Obviously disturbed, you fly forward and get chased by the perpetrator through a buncha rocks until you escape.

Good thing this guy doesn't feel like firing at me for whatever reason

...Except you kind of don't? You end up going through a bunch of planetary landscapes, shootin' dudes and grabbin' powerups that let you fire lasers and stuff. Pew pew! You eventually get captured, break out, and summarily fly through a ship, an asteroid belt, and I think some alien's guts? I'm not sure; I never went to med school for interplanetary digestive systems. Bosses fight you at every turn, and they are so sweet. Like, I don't always know what I'm attacking, but it just looks so cool that I really don't care!

Ever want to fight a kneeling, fanged alien stuck in a wall with detachable mouthy-brains? Yeah, well now you do, obviously!

In the end you find the enemy ship that assassinated your nuclear family with nuclear weapons, commit your own brand of galactic revenge, and I assume go on with your day in a half-arsed way, never addressing the journey you just went through for fear of sparking up some majorly weird PTSD.

Next up is some Castlevania game! It claims to be Castlevania II, but don't think it's Simon's Quest since it doesn't have slow-scrolling text boxes telling me that night is a poor time to explore the world when suffering from a magical adversary's angry sentiments. Instead, you just go about whippin' junk. Alright, I can be a lion tamer for the undead.

Why do cultists always gotta wear hoods? Can't they wear like a polo and some comfy slacks?

So in this installment, you can apparently shoot fireballs from a fully-upgraded whip, so it's instantly MUCH easier than most Castelvania games. The list of enemies is kind of lacking, but it was enough to feel competent. The level design was pretty spot-on, which is par for the course, though for some reason this game has a love affair with ropes? They're EVERYWHERE, but there's enough variation in the levels to give them pass. For example, some areas have auto-directional-pulling ropes, some ropes are spider webs made by enemies, some require quick sliding to avoid obstacles, etc.

You gotta wonder, does the guy living here have to go through all these traps every day just to get his mail? And how does he carry groceries back to his (probably rope-decorated) kitchen?

The boss fights were definitely memorable. Some of their designs were flat-out brilliant, and they were all pretty fun! Your sub-weapons weren't really that useful here, but that's fine. The bosses, too, were made a little easier with the projectile whip, but the designers struck a good balance between fun and hard.

These guys shoot out vertebrae in an arc, transferring them from one head to the other. I don't have a quip here, it was just a stupidly awesome designed boss that I wanted to gush about for a bit!

Well, perhaps I spoke too soon. The bosses were all fun except for the last 3 in the game. Allow me to whine and complain about them for a bit, if you will! The first was a tunneling snake on a forced scrolling screen that made you take damage unless you memorized where he was going to surface next (I HATE memorization-by-death gameplay). The next was a fellow Belmont who would relentlessly whip the crap outta you, throw swords all over the screen, and would probably be nigh impossible if I didn't have Holy Water. The final was Dracula, who I suppose gets a pass for being hard since he was the final boss...but he, too, was pretty much a memorization-by-death fight, too. The dude has 6 orbs revolving around him that spread out, essentially making 85% of the screen unsafe. Unless you know the specific spot to crouch down for the given position he's in, you get hurt, and you get hurt pretty badly. Oh, and you can really only hit him once per attack, so you'd better learn the safe spots for all 8 of his attack spots and hope you can hurt him and get into your safe position before taking damage.

ouch ouch ouch OUCH

In the end, it was overall a pretty fun time. Konami definitely knows how to make a good sidescrolling action game, which is probably why they're half of the name of the 'Metroidvania' genre. Go team Belmont!

Next up: Yie Ar Kung~Fu! What is this? I've never heard of it. It's a simple fighting game where you face off against 5 fighters, each with their own weapons and special moves. You play as a normal weaponless guy who can only kick and punch, because that's fair? Regardless, you must persevere through 4 rounds of these 5 fights, each time with your foes getting slightly harder.

Mmyep, this is fair.

My trademark fighting game strategy of sweeping seems to work for the most part, though as the difficulty ramps up, the other fighters move with ridiculous speed between attacks. Eventually, the game just becomes 100% about approaching a foe with more range than you, which obviously is the main focus of fighting games. What's that? Combos? Pffft, those are lame, just have the enemies fly across the ring like a sugar-high Jack Russel Terrier.

So this guy's power is to propel himself like a missile and look like an absolute goon while doing so

There's also a mini-game where you hit things thrown at you, but like they show up so quickly and your animation speed is so slow that it's impossible to do very well. It was an okay game overall, though, but I can sort of see why it isn't as well-known as Gradius or Castlevania.

Last game: Antarctic Adventure! It's a penguin-based racing game! I think? Does this count as a racing game? Well, you race against the clock, so sure. You gotta move at top speed through an icy wasteland, avoiding sea lions and holes in the ice.

I like how this sea lion looks after getting plastered in the face by a penguin moving at ~120 km/hr. Is he in shock? Is he alive? Should I notify his next of kin?

The lore is actually pretty deep in this game. The world has fallen into ruin due to global warming, and the glacier sheets on Antarctica are slowly melting away. As a penguin trained in espionage and terrorism, you must travel to the different embassies that many countries have propped up in an attempt to stake a claim in possibly the only livable area in the near future.

The french are planning to build replicas of their famous landmarks here, like the Ice-full Tower and Arctic de Triomphe.

You're not exactly racing as much as you are keeping ahead of the authorities pursuing you for planting bombs in the embassies. If you successfully plant your payloads in all of the embassies across all of Antarctica, you destroy their chances of bringing cultural imperialism to the local wildlife. Your customs are at stake! You must cast your empathy aside for the greater good of penguin-kind!

Also, you can sometimes turn into a helicopter? Not sure what that was about.

Okay, okay, yeah, I may have embellished a bit there. No, it's not as cool as that. You just run from one place to the next and heck if I'll ever find out why miscellaneous countries happen to have little castles in a barren arctic wasteland. People's taxes at work, I guess!

Oh right, there's also a fifth option on the main menu. It's Ms. O.C. Anime Girl explaining things about the games to you. I can't read anything she's saying, though, so I can only imagine the shady koala statue in the back has some relevance to her dialogue.

So that ends an exhausting series of dates. Whew! Glad you toughed it out with me. As I've completed all of the games this time, I didn't think another date was warranted. However, Gradius and Castlevania were fun enough to say that sure, I guess, it's worth going on another date in the future. Maybe it'd be better to find the original games, though, instead of this particular port. I can only assume the extra screen real estate, better sound effects, and greater ROM size would only enhance their experiences. And speaking of experiences, grab a Sprite of Passage from the jar over there on your way out! It's mint-flavored and can double as a water purification tab if you're ever stuck somewhere in the wilderness!

Man, I would kill to watch a skeleton ballet

[dsknsk]

My 10 least favorite Magia Record Card art and Designs

This is the second part; my most favorite card and design art is below this one.

Ao Kasane

I don’t think anyone has mentioned her yet in these posts? I guess this one’s the first, then, but to preface things - if you remove the strange-ass ear flaps and whatever the boots are supposed to be, it’s just a normal summer outfit for the beach. Also, her Soul Gem hanging there seems a little bit dangerous to me - you have barely any way to look at it to check if it’s still okay when transformed, and I can imagine that you have to be extra careful when moving your head quickly. 

Hanna Sarasa

Okay, I can now see her arms a bit better in her five star art than in her four star art, but that does not take away a lot of issues I have with this outfit. I need to focus a lot if I want to make out what’s what in her five star art, I think that we’re looking at her sideways, according to the positioning of the arms and the corset. But...how are the legs positioned? The shape directly to the right of her arm closest to you is clearly supposed to be her hip, but...then, there’s a dent and, going lower, a curve implying that either her upper leg is very low, or it straight up doesn’t exist. Seeing the rim of her shoes really does imply that’s her leg. But hey, it’s Mura Kuroe, shouldn’t have expected a lot of good anatomy here.

Lapin

Ideally, I would feature both Lapin and Minou here, but Minou doesn’t have card art yet. Lapin’s outfit is just a normal dress with some fluffy parts attached to it that looks like it’s put in here to ‘oh wait she’s got a rabbit aesthetic’. The Soul Gem’s just...kinda there I suppose. Her card art makes me think that that position’s a bit uncomfortable perhaps. Same goes for Minou, although her case is even lesser the cat aesthetic; if you remove her mask a stranger would need to guess what animal she is. (also how is her neck upholding all of that??)

Shizuka Sakuya

Her outfit is so bland and filled with pointless stuff. The big eyes look creepy and even more so in her five star art, which shoves us in that she’s a track runner. When you need to have the narrative and the later stages of the art to show what they are, you know that it’s probably not a good design.

Reira Ibuki

I don’t think I need to say anything about Reira’s design. I didn’t feature the card art because the four star art is more or less the same as her sprite, and I actually like the five-star art.

Arisa Narumi

I dislike a lot of GAN’s drawings (you shouldn’t check his Twitter to see what he’s done too), the card arts are acceptible but it would be better if her design was changed. The targets are obvious, but what aesthetic is this looking for? The lines make me think this is supposed to be something futuristic, along with the floating belt. Also, why is her doppel named after a fox of the folklore of our country? Arisa’s all about being stronger, and that is something Renard lacked and did not look for.

Natsuki Utsuho

That is not how the chest works, and it just looks like she’s going down a water slide. The random bits of yellow and green should be cut out, the floating belt needs to have something to attach to, and the hair and the eyes should not be colored that way. Combined with the drab red school uniform, it doesn’t color well either.

Shizuku Hozumi

She’s doing a strange twist in her four star art, and unlike Nanaka’s, I don’t find it executed tastefully. The midriff seems just like a tube here. It’s clearly meant to emphasize her chest and butt, as she’s higher up than the camera. Her outfit and base colors could do with a little bit more variation in the pallette.

Chisato Shion

I am kind of cheating here since I am featuring GAN twice, but I really felt like they both need to be in here. I’m disliking all the skin shown, it seems to be attached too flimsy at places. Both of her card arts are doing the same kind of twist as Shizuku’s there, except not floating. Furthermore, I just discovered today that GAN’s tweets imply she’s embarassed by her outfit. And that’s not a good thing. In this series, magical girls get costumes based on what they think is cool. Like, if you picture yourself as a hero, that is the exact outfit you would get as a magical person. You should absolutely not be embarassed by the result.

Sudachi Suwa

She doesn’t have card art either, but these colors are so atrocious I had to feature her in here. The duck yellow and bright pink do not work with the red and the black, I’m unsure where the Soul Gem is, and her hair looks oversaturated. The strange ears are supposed to be (like the rest, apparently) reminiscent of a bat. Sigh.

[betweengenesisfrogs]

Homestuck is My Favorite Sprite Comic

Yes, you read that right.

Homestuck is my favorite sprite comic.

Those of you who remember the earlier days of the internet are probably looking at this post in disbelief right about now. Others of you might be scratching your heads, not knowing what I’m talking about.

But here’s my pitch: Homestuck is the culmination of an entire genre of internet art, and the tools that make it so powerful are the very tools that made that genre once so reviled.

Homestuck is the greatest and most successful sprite comic of all time.

And honestly, I’ve wanted to talk about that for ages, so let’s do it.

WHAT SPRITE COMICS WERE

Many of my readers are probably too young to remember the era of sprite comics. So: what were sprite comics?

Sprite comics were a genre of webcomics made entirely by taking pixel art from video games – especially character art, called “sprites,” but also backgrounds and other images—and placing them into panels to tell a story. They were near-ubiquitous on the internet in the early 2000s, emerging right as webcomics in general were seeking to establish themselves as an art form.

They were not, shall we say, known for their quality. The low bar to access meant that art skill was not an obstacle to starting one. The folks behind the huge swell of them tended to be young people, kids and early teenagers recreating the plots of their favorite video games with new OCs—not the most advanced writers or artists. They were the early 2000s’ quintessential example of ephemeral, childish art. Unfortunately, they look even worse today—blown-up pixels don’t hold up well when displayed on higher-resolution monitors.

Today, they’re mostly forgotten, remembered only as a weird, strange moment in the youth of the internet. Someone who evoked them today, such as a blogger who compared them to one of the most successful webcomics of all time, would be inviting good-natured teasing at the very least.

It would be unfair to dismiss them entirely, though. In this low-stakes environment, comics where the author could bring more skill—engaging writing, legitimately funny jokes, or especially, a real ability to work with pixel art—really stood out. (Unsurprisingly, these authors tended to skew a bit older.)

The obvious one to mention is Bob and George. Bob and George wasn’t the first sprite comic, but it was the most influential. Conceived initially as Mega Man-themed filler for a hand-drawn comic about superheroes, it quickly became a merging of the two concepts, with the original characters made into Mega Man-style sprites, full of running gags, humorous retellings of the Mega Man games, elaborate storylines about time travel, and robots eating ice cream. It was generally agreed, even among sprite comic haters, that Bob and George was a pretty good comic. Worth mentioning also are 8-Bit Theater, which turned the plot of the first Final Fantasy into a spectacular and hilarious farce, and of course Kid Radd, my second favorite sprite comic. (More on that later.)

But even if you weren’t looking for greatness—there was something just damn fun about them. The passion of sprite comic authors was clear, even if their ideas didn’t always cohere. To this day, I think the sprite comic scene has the same appeal pulp art does—it’s crude and rough, full of garbage to sift through, but every so often, something deeply sincere and bizarre shines through, and the culture of its authors is a fascinating object of study in itself.

Okay, full disclosure: I was one of the people who made a sprite comic. I’ve written about my experiences with that in more depth elsewhere, but yeah, I was on the inside of this scene, rather than a disinterested observer, and from the inside, maybe it’s a lot easier to see the appeal.

Still, let me make this claim: even with all their flaws, sprite comics were doing some incredibly interesting things, and Homestuck is heir to their legacy.

TAKE ME DOWN TO RECOLOR CITY

One of the problems people always had with sprite comics was the sprites themselves. They’re the most repetitive thing in the world. You just keep copying and pasting the same images over and over again, maybe with a few tweaks. That’s not really being an artist, is it? It’s so lazy. Re-drawing things from different angles keeps things dynamic, develops your skill, and makes your work better in general. Right?

I’m mostly in agreement. Certainly I think it’s fair to rag on the Control-Alt-Delete guy, along with other early bad webcomics, for copy-pasting their characters while dropping in new expressions and mass-producing tepid strips. And to be fair, digging through bad sprite comics often felt like an exercise in seeing the same slightly-edited recolors of Mega Man characters over and over again. You got really tired of that same body with its blobby feet and hands.

(It should be noted, though, that there were folks in the sprite comic scene who could pixel art the quills off a porcupine. I salute you, brave pixel art masters of 2006. I hope you all got into your chosen art school.)

All this said, I think the repetitive and simplistic nature of sprite comics was often their biggest strength.

THE POWER OF ABSTRACTION

In his classic work Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud makes an observation about cartooning that has stayed with me to this day.

McCloud notes that simple, abstract drawings, like faces that are only few lines and dots on a page, resonate with us more strongly than more detailed drawings. This is because our minds fill in what’s missing on the page. We ascribe human depth to simple gestures and expressions based on our own emotions and experiences – and this makes us feel closer to these characters as readers. Secretly, simple cartoons can be one of the most powerful forms of storytelling. If you want your readers to fall in love with your characters, draw them simply, and let them fill them in.

Video game sprites work very well in this regard. They have that same simplicity that cartoons do. In fact, I’d be willing to bet a huge part of the success of SNES-era RPGs was simple, almost childlike character sprites drawing people in. I think sprites did the same for sprite comics.

Here’s the weird thing: Bob and George worked. Despite four different characters being variations on the same friggin’ Mega Man sprite in different colors, they immediately began to seem like different people with distinct personalities. For me, George’s befuddled, helpless dismay immediately comes to mind whenever I picture his face, while with Mega Man himself it’s usually a wide-eyed, childlike glee. I would never confuse them. This, despite the fact that the only actual difference between their faces is that George is blonde. It’s pretty clear what happened. The personalities the author established for them through dialogue and storytelling shone through, and my brain did the rest.

Sprites, in short, were a canvas upon which the mind could project any story the author wanted to tell. Even the most minute differences in pixel art came to stand, in the best sprite comics, for wide divergences in personality and ideals, once the reader spent enough time with them to adapt to their style of representation.

Wait a minute, haven’t we seen this somewhere before? Character designs that focus on variations on a theme, with subtle differences that nonetheless render them instantly recognizable?

Oh, right.

Look at what greets us on the very first page of Homestuck. An absurdly simple cartoon boy, abstracted to a ridiculous degree—he doesn’t even have arms!—followed a whole bunch of characters that follow suit. Though many other representations of the characters emerge, these little figures never quite go away, do they? Why is that?

Simple: they’re very easy to manipulate. They’re modular—you can give John arms or not, depending on whether it’s useful. You can put him in a whole variety of poses and save them to a template. You can change out his facial expressions with copy and paste. You can give him a new haircut and call him Jake. It’s all very quick and easy.

Sprite comics proliferated because they were very easy to mass-produce. Andrew Hussie’s original conception of Homestuck was very similar: something he could put out very quickly and easily, where even the most elaborate ideas could rely on existing assets to be sped smoothly along. We all know the result: an incredible production machine, churning out unfathomable amounts of content from 2009-2012. I’d say it was a good call.

But it goes way deeper than that. The modular nature of sprites always suggested a kind of modularity to the sprite comic premise. George and Mega Man were different people, true, but also two variations on a theme. Was there something underlying them that they had in common? Perhaps their similarity says something like: We exist in a world which has a certain set of rules? One of my favorite conceits from Bob and George was that when characters visited the past, they were represented by NES-era Mega Man sprites, while in the present, they were SNES sprites, and in the future, the author used elaborate splicing to render them as 32-bit Mega Man 8 sprites or similar.

Suppose there was a skilled cartoonist thinking about his next big project, who wanted to tell a story centered around this kind of modularity, a narrative that was built out of iterative, swappable pieces by its very design. He might very well create a sprite comic named Homestuck.

Homestuck is a story about a game that creates a hyperflexible mythology for its players, where the villains, challenges, and setting change depending upon what players bring to the experience, yet which all share underlying goals and assumptions. What more perfect opportunity to create a modular story as well? Different groups of kids and trolls have motifs that get swapped around to produce new characters, whether that’s through ectobiology, the Scratch, or the eerie parallels between the kids and trolls’ sessions. And yet each character can be analyzed as an individual.

This is an incredible way to build a huge emotional investment from your readers. Not only does this kind of characterization invite analysis, the abstractions draw readers in to generate their own headcanons and interpretations. A deep commitment to pluralism is at the heart of Hussie’s character design. Then, too, it encourages readers to build their own new designs from these models. Kidswaps, bloodswaps, fantrolls—these have long been the heart of Homestuck’s fandom. And what are bloodswaps if not sprite recolors for a new generation? With the added bonus that now a change in color carries narrative weight, evoking new moods and identities for these characters in ways that early sprite comics could only dream of.

In Hussie’s hands, even the dreaded copy-and-paste takes on heroic depth of meaning. Even when Hussie moves away from sprites to his own loose art style, he continues to remix what we’ve previously see. Indeed, Hussie talks about how he would go out of his way to edit his own art into new images even when it would take more time than drawing something new. Why? Because he wanted to evoke that very feeling of having seen this before—the visual callback to go along with the many conceptual and verbal callbacks that echo throughout Homestuck. This is at the heart of what Doc Scratch (speaking for Hussie) called “circumstantial simultaneity:” we are invited to compare two moments or two characters, to see what they have in common, or how they contrast. Everything in Paradox Space is deeply linked with everything else. And Hussie establishes this in our minds using nothing less than the tool sprite comics were so deeply reviled for: the “lazy” repetition of an image.

(It’s fitting that some of the most jaw-droppingly gorgeous images in Homestuck—dream bubble scenery and the like—are the result of Hussie taking things he’s made before and combining them into fantastic dreamscapes.)

But it all started with the hyperflexible, adaptable character images Hussie created at the very beginning of Homestuck.

And if you need more proof that Homestuck is a sprite comic, I think we need look no further than what Hussie, and the rest of the Homestuck community call these images.

We call them sprites.

THE FIRST GENRE-BENDERS

Was Andrew Hussie influenced by sprite comics in the development of Homestuck? It’s hard to say, but as a webcomic artist in the first decade of the 2000s, he was surely aware of them. It’s likely that he quickly realized that his quick, adaptable images served the same purposes as a sprite in a video game or a sprite comic, and chose to call them that.

One purpose I haven’t mentioned up until now: sprites lend themselves very well to animations. In fact, in their original context of video games, that’s exactly what they’re for: frames of art that can be used to show a character running, jumping, posing, moving across a screen. It’s not surprising, then, that sprite comic makers quickly saw the utility in that.

Homestuck was, in fact, not the first webcomic to make Flash animations part of its story. There were experiments with various gifs and such in other comics, but I think sprite comics were among the most successful at becoming the multi-media creations that would come to be known as hypercomics..

Take a look at this animation from Bob and George. It represents a climactic final confrontation against a long-standing villain, using special effects to make everything dramatic, but ultimately, like many a Homestuck animation, leads to kind of a pyscheout. The drama and the humor of the moment are clear, though. This relies in large part on the music—which is taken directly from the game Chrono Trigger. This makes total sense. Interestingly, it also contains voice acting, which is something Homestuck never tried—probably because it would run contrary to its ideals of pluralism. What I find fascinating is that in sprite comics, animations like these served a very similar purpose to Homestuck’s big flashes: elevating a big moment into something larger-than-life. Another good example is this sequence from Crash and Bass. Seriously, it seems like every sprite comic maker wanted to try their hand at Flash animation.

(By the way, it’s a lot harder than it looks!! I envy Hussie his vectorized sprites. Pixel art is a PAIN to work with in the already buggy program that is Flash.)

The result: because of the sprites themselves, sprite comics were among the first works to play around with the border between comics and other media in the way that would come to be thought of as quintessentially Homestuck.

What it also meant was that another genre emerged in parallel with sprite comics: the sprite animation. Frequently these would retell the story of a particular game, offer a spectacular animated battle sequence, parody the source material, or all three. Great examples include this animation for Mega Man Zero, and this frankly preposterous crossover battle sequence. Chris Niosi’s TOME also found its earliest roots as an animation series of this kind. You also found plenty of sprite-based flash games, in which players could manipulate game characters in a way that was totally outside the context of the original works.

The website the vast majority of these games and animations were hosted on?

Newgrounds, best known to Homestuck fans as the website Hussie crashed in 2011 while trying to upload Cascade.

What’s less talked about is that Hussie was friends, or at least on conversational terms with, the owner of the site, hence the idea to host his huge animation there in the first place, and other flashes, like the first Alterniabound, were initially hosted there as well.

It’s hard to believe that Hussie wasn’t at least a little familiar with the Newgrounds scene. I suspect that he largely conceived of Homestuck as part of the world of “Flash animation—” which in 2009 meant the wide variety of things that were hosted on Newgrounds, including sprite animations.

The freedom and fluidity sprite comics had to change into games and animations and back into comics again was one of their most fascinating traits. Homestuck’s commitment to media-bending needs, at this point, no introduction. But what’s less known is that sprite comics were exploring that territory first—that Homestuck, in short, is the kind of thing they wanted to grow up to be.

PUT ME IN THE GAME

I would be a fool not to mention another big thing Homestuck and sprite comics have in common: a character who is literally the author in cartoon form, running around doing goofy things and messing with the story. This was an incredibly common cliché in sprite comics, no doubt because of Bob and George, who did it early on and never looked back. You might have noticed that the animation I linked above concerns a showdown between Bob and George’s author, David Anez—depicted, delightfully, as another Mega Man recolor—and a mysterious alternate author named Helmut—who is like Mega Man plus Sepiroth I think? It’s all very strange. I could ramble for hours about the relationship between Hussie and the alt-author villains of Homestuck and what it all means, but I’m not sure I can nail anything down with certainty for these two. Maybe Bob and George was never quite that metaphysical.

But yes, bringing the author into the story in some form was already a cliché by the time Homestuck started up. Indeed, I think that’s why Hussie’s character refers to it as “a bad idea” to break the fourth wall—he’s recognizing that people will have seen this before, and are already tired of this sort of shit. And then he goes and does it anyway and makes it somehow brilliant, because he’s Andrew Hussie.

Homestuck breathes life into the cliché by taking it in a metaphysical/metafictional direction. I don’t think that was really the motivation for most sprite comic authors, though. Let’s see if we can dig a little deeper.

I think the cliché kept happening because sprite comic authors were writing about a subject that very closely concerned themselves: video games. I’m only kind of joking. The thing about video games is that even though they’re made for everyone, playing through one yourself feels like an intensely personal experience. You develop an emotional relationship to a world, to its characters, that feels distinctly your own. Now, suddenly, thanks to the magic of sprites, you have an opportunity to tell stories about that world for others to read. Of course you’re going to want to put yourself in the story in some form.

When it wasn’t author characters in sprite comics, it was OCs. You know Dr. Wily? Well here’s my own original villain, Dr. Vindictus. You know Mega Man? Here’s my new character, Super Cool Man. He hangs out with Mega Man and they beat the bad guys together. Stuff like that. Most sprite comics retold the story of a game, or multiple games in a big crossover format, with original elements added in. There was quite a lot of “Link and Sonic and Mega Man are all friends with my OC and they hang out at his house.”

What’s interesting, though, is that because these sprite comics were very aware that they were about video games, this was where they sometimes got very meta. It started with humorous observation—hey, isn’t it funny that Link goes around breaking into people’s houses and smashing their pots? But sometimes, it grew into more serious commentary. Is Mega Man trapped in a never-ending cycle, doomed to fight the same fight against the same mad scientist until the end of time? Is it worth it, being a video game hero?

Enter Homestuck. What I’ve been dancing around this whole time is:

Homestuck is a sprite comic…because Homestuck is a video game.

Or more specifically, Homestuck’s a comic about a video game called SBURB, where the lines between the game and the comic about the game blur as characters wrestle with the narratives around them, both those encoded into the game and those encoded into our expectations.

Homestuck presents the fantasy of many a sprite comic maker: I get to go on heroic quests, I get to change the world and become a god. I get to be part of the video game. And then it asks the same question certain sprite comics were beginning to ask:

Is it worth it, to be that hero?

I want to tell you about my second favorite sprite comic, a comic called Kid Radd.

Kid Radd distinguished itself from other sprite comics of the time by being a completely original production. Its sprites looked like they could be from a variety of NES and SNES-era video games, but they were all done from scratch, and the games they purported to represent were all fictional. Kid Radd used animations with original music, and sometimes interactive, clickable games, to tell its story. It also used all sorts of neat programming tricks to make it load faster on the internet of the early 2000s, which was great—unfortunately, these same techniques made it break as web technology evolved, something Homestuck fans in 2019 can definitely relate to. The good news is, fans have maintained a dedicated and reformatted archive where the comics can still be seen and downloaded.

Kid Radd’s premise is that video game characters themselves are conscious and alive—more specifically, their sprites. Sprites developed consciousness as human beings projected personality and identity onto them, remaining aware of their status as video game constructs while also seeking to be something more. The story follows the titular Kid Radd, at first in the context of his own game, commenting on the choices the player controlling him. He must endure every death, every strange decision along the way to save his girlfriend Sheena. Then the story expands into a larger context as Radd, Sheena, and many other video game characters are released onto the internet as data. They try to find their own identities and build a society for themselves, but struggle with the tendency toward violence that games have programmed into them. The story culminates in an honestly moving moment where Radd confronts the all-powerful creators of their reality—human beings.

It’s a very good comic.

The first sprite comic authors wanted to fuse real life with video games. Later sprite comic authors decided to ask: what would that really mean? Would it be painful? Would you suffer? Would you find a way to make your life meaningful all the same? Despite the limitations of sprite comics, these ideas had incredible potential, and in works like Kid Radd, they flourished.

Homestuck is heir to that legacy.

It takes the questions Kid Radd was asking, and asks them in new ways. It tries to understand, on an even deeper level, how the rules of video games shape our own minds and give us ways to understand ourselves.

At its heart, Homestuck is a sprite comic, and it might just be the greatest of them all.

EPILOGUE

I’ve seen a lot of good discussion recently on how Homestuck preserves a certain era of the internet like a time capsule: its culture, its technology, its assumptions, its memes.

I think sprite comics, too, are part of the culture that created Homestuck. Do I think Hussie spent the early 2000s recoloring Mega Man sprites? No, probably not. But what I do know is that sprite comics were part of his world. The first webcomic cartoonists came of age alongside an odd companion, the weird, overly sincere, dorky little sibling that was sprite comics. Like them or hate them, you couldn’t escape them. They were there.

And maybe a certain cartoonist saw a kind of potential in them, in the same way he summoned Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff from the depths of bad gamer culture.

Or maybe he just knew, as some sprite comic authors did, that the time was right for their kind of story.

On a personal level—Homestuck came along right when I needed it.

Around 2009, the bubble that was sprite comics finally burst. People were getting tired of them, or growing out of them, and blown-up sprites no longer looked so good on modern monitors.

I was more than a little heartbroken. I’d enjoyed Bob and George, read my fill of Mega Man generica, and fallen utterly in love with Kid Radd. I’d been working on my own sprite comic for a long time out of a sense that there was huge potential in them that we were only scratching the surface of. I’d dreamed of maybe someday doing something as amazing as the best of them did. But I was watching that world disappear. I had to admit to myself that my work wasn’t going to continue to find an audience. That I could live with. But it was painful to think that the potential I sensed, the feats of storytelling I wanted to see in the world, would never be realized.

And then, in the fall of 2010, a friend linked me to a comic that broke all the rules, that mixed animation, games, music, images and chatlogs. A comic that crafted its own sprites, just as Kid Radd did, and remixed its images into an ever-expanding web of associations and meanings. A comic that took on the idea of living inside a video game with relish and turned it into a gorgeous meditation on escaping the ideas and systems that control us.

That this comic would exist, let alone that it would succeed. That it would become one of the most popular creations of all time, that it would surpass other webcomics and break out into anime conventions and the real world, that it would become such a cultural juggernaut, to the point where it’s impossible to imagine an internet without Homestuck—

I can’t even put into words how happy that makes me. It’s the reason I’m still writing essays about Homestuck nearly eight years after I found it.

And it’s why Homestuck will always be my favorite sprite comic.

-Ari

[Notes: The image of the kids came from the ever-useful MSPA Wiki—please support and aid in their efforts to provide a good source of info about Homestuck! They need more support these days than ever.

For more on Homestuck’s place as a continuation of the zeitgeist of early 2000s experimental webcomics, this article by Sam Keeper at Storming the Ivory Tower is excellent and insightful.

Thanks for reading, y’all.]

[queenofnohr]

The Charming Empire - Otome Review (Soshi Amazaki Route)

I was going to hold off on doing this because 1. I wanted to play more routes to have a more comprehensive look at the game and 2. I don’t really have free time yet. Promptly ignored the above logic mostly to get this out of my system.

Before we begin, a disclaimer - While I do have pretty extensive knowledge about the otome genre in both longer “proper” VNs as well as the shorter, bite sized mobile VNs, I’m able to derive enjoyment from most anything (I feel the need to point this out because I see a lot of reviews that get hung up on stuff I can easily brush off even if I do understand where they’re coming from).

This is going to be a spoiler-free review based on Soshi Amazaki’s route alone.

Firstly, I must note that this is a mobile otome game. If you’re looking for something as long and substantial as, say, Hakuouki, Alice in the Country of Hearts, Dandelion, etc. this is probably not the game for you.

Now that that’s out of the way, I’ll be rating it based on usual points with a more... comprehensive and personal look at the end (feel free to skip to that if you know our tastes align and/or just want to see me losing my mind).

Prologue - 1/10

Normally I wouldn’t separate prologue from story. However, as this game started as a mobile game, there is no general route in which one gains points toward a love interest as is standard in full-length otome games. However, even by mobile game standards this game’s prologue fails in that it you meet exactly 0 love interests. Indeed, the prologue is the bare-bones introduction of the setting. This flaw is further complicated by the fact that, because it started as a mobile game, routes are bought individually. This means that there is no way to gauge the love interests except by the game’s straightforward summary on the buy screen. Luckily for me, I was sold at “Kenjiro Tsuda voices a love interest who is both a big brother and a lord” so this wasn’t as knee-capping as it could’ve been, but normally you’d have to simply take a leap of faith because if a love interest doesn’t actually end up being your type, you’re out of luck since you’ve already paid for the route.

This is an aside, but translation for the prologue is... questionable. It isn’t unreadable, like some translations I’ve had the misfortune of reading, but it does create some confusion regarding the MC’s family situation which I can’t help but clear up here. MC is the daughter of the previous lord whose mother moved with her out to the countryside. Her mother is died of illness, and MC now lives with an elderly couple. It’s simply when I say it here, but in game the family situation isn’t actually explained until well into the route and the narration refers to the couple as the “old man” and “old woman,” while the MC calls them “Grandpa” and “Grandma” (ojii-san, obaa-san in Japanese, which is a literal translation of what someone would call any older folk with the degree of familiarity MC has with them) while they call her “princess” (literally, hime-sama). The closeness of referring to them as grandparents vs the distance of the narrative’s “old man/woman” + calling the MC princess in a literal sense (vs. a nickname) is jarring especially because, again, they do not clearly explain the MC’s family situation.

Story - 7/10

Soshi holds the most powerful seat in all the empire. Only trusting himself, he rejects the opinions of others as he continues his dictatorship agenda -- breeding animosity amongst the people. He’s a cold man who sees even his own sister as a political tool.

This is the official description for Soshi’s route. Unfortunately(?) for some this... doesn’t really hold true for most of the route and I find it an odd way to bill it.

The initial conflict/relationship growth in the game stems from the MC wanting to be closer to Soshi - not necessarily in a romantic sense - and his distance due to his position. If you’re expecting a more haughty/sneering/pragmatic Kenjiro Tsuda more along the lines of his role as Kazama Chikage and/or a villain archetype who treats MC as a tool (no judgment, we all got our otome types) he’s by and large not that. Things get more complicated around the 10th chapter, but that’s 2/3 of the game in.

The writing is competent. Again, if you’re looking for complex worldbuilding and something deep, you will not find it here. But, while it isn’t poetry in motion, there was at least no point where I actively cringed or asked myself why I was playing it (this is compared to my experience with Voltage Games and Playchoices).

The MC is tolerable. There’s nothing special about her, but she avoids being a literal faceless protagonist with zero presence while also not having such a strong personality as to be polarizing. She shows more competence and restraint than I expected of her (the bar was nearly floor level, but still).

The pacing is... odd. I get the distinct feeling that it’s a longer otome shoved inside a mobile otome, if that makes sense. I’ve seen other reviews call it rushed, but that isn’t necessarily the feeling I get. For a game to feel “rushed” to me, it has to show a lack of care and attention to detail; scenes are had just to have them and either don’t contribute to the overall plot/theme/feeling of the game. I feel like this game does take care, especially in it’s early bits, but some developments happen later on which don’t get the development time they necessarily need. Which leads me to-

The plot kind of goes off the rails around chapter 10 or 11. It returns to form in chapter 14ish. This... plot twist, shall we say, is predicated on hiding obfuscating knowledge from the reader that should be apparent due to being from the MC’s PoV. Whether or not this is a dealbreaker will depend largely on the person. Personally, I was loopy off resisting sleep medication while reading this part so I just sort of accepted it and the return to form/explanation in later chapters made it worth it, but your mileage will definitely vary. I have Thoughts on this, but this is all I can really say while still maintaining a spoiler free review.

Playtime if ardently listening to the voices is ~3 hours. Playtime can be cut down significantly if you’re a fast reader and don’t overly care about the voice acting.

I haven’t tried all alternate options, but there doesn’t seem like huge variations regarding the choices. The 16th chapter, however, will change based on whether you get the Normal or Happy End.

Art - 7/10

The art isn’t anything special nor is it terrible. It’s much less stiff and has more style to it that most mobile otome’s I’ve played, but is lacking when compared to, again, full length otome games.

The MC has a face, which gets points from me (I dislike faceless MCs a lot especially when included in CGs). The fact no one but love interests even get sprites is somewhat jarring.

As far as CGs go, they’re standard fare and about the number you’d expect for the length of a route. The game isn’t raunchy like... at all so don’t expect anything too scandalous.

Voice Acting - 10/10

What can I say? It’s Kenjiro Tsuda.

To elaborate, however-

Kenjiro Tsuda does an excellent job. I’m not sure if I’d call it his best work, but even if it is voiced, I think there’s some expectation for a mobile otome’s voicework to be phoned in. This is not the case and Tsuda’s acting gives a lot of life to the character and scenarios. I’ll, uh, save my gushing for my line-by-line dissertation, and leave it at that.

What was unexpected was, despite not having sprites, minor characters do get voices! They also have some rather nice performances, and there was no VA I disliked listening to or whose performance was noticeably lacking compared to the others (the actual sound quality was consistent overall as well).

Overall - 8/10

Aside from the prologue, this is a solid performance from a mobile otome game. Compared to full-length otome games it’s lacking, but it’s still one of the better mobile otomes I’ve played. For the $6 you can get individual routes for on the mobile app, it’s a fun, quick romp that was perhaps not necessarily what was advertised (regarding the actual summary), but instead met the expectations I dared to dream of. While I can’t vouch for the game in its entirety, I can, at the very least, vouch for this route.

Comprehensive Overlook + Personal Rating - 10/10

Okay, I’ve been objective as possible despite this being a very subjective topic and now it’s time for me to shill my little heart out.

Writing a standard fare review for this game was really really hard for me because against all odds, logic, and my own taste preferring shit like Hakuouki, I’m in love with this game. Obsessed with it. Half the reason why I’m doing this is because it is a totally unremarkable (though, again, fun) otome game so of course it doesn’t have, like, a community, but I need to fucking gush about it somewhere.

Why?

Because Soshi Amazaki literally hits every single husband trait I so dearly love. This route is the equivalent of if someone took my taste buds and analyzed each and every one of them, then cooked a meal precisely on my most loved things. It isn’t necessarily fine dining, but it feels like it was scientifically engineered to appeal directly to me. It’s like I was possessed and ghostwrote it. It’s like someone peered into my heart and teased out the essence of everything I’ve ever wanted, then told me to eat shit because the shell it’s rammed into is that of a bite sized otome game. I have never had such a feast before me. I’ve never been served such an exquisite palette of flavors. I have never been so thoroughly outraged that this is the form my heart takes.

And yet, I’m... pretty much satisfied, despite its flaws and shortness, with my only real outrage stemming from the fact there is literally nobody I can talk about this with (the morning after I binged the entire route I made my boyfriend play it just so I could rave like a lunatic to someone about it) as well as my shame for being so enamored with what is essentially a mediocre otome game.

I talked about how the story kind of went off the rails 2/3rds of the way through, but honestly? I didn’t care because the payoff was incredible. Was I scared the game wasn’t going to end up where I wanted it to while it was happening? Was I prepared to be immensely disappointed because I felt, briefly, like I was baited and that of course nothing would never let me have my cake and eat it too? Yep. But you know what? I don’t know or care if it’s because I set the bar so low or what, but my expectations were thoroughly blown out of the water.

I’m still committed to making even this part of the review spoiler free, so I won’t be going into depth about what I loved (I’ll save that for another post because this is long enough as it is), but I’ll add this apart from just character archetype and themes being what I loved.

That is, shockingly enough and even considering the pacing and, ahem, weirdness - this is a route where everything seems to serve a function. Again, the story isn’t necessarily deep, and while perhaps I would’ve gone about certain things a different way (and had there been space allotted for greater development), there are many, many, many things that are called back to or that seem insignificant, but serve as thematic backbone and create delicious implications.

As a big brother connoisseur, I give this route 3 Michelin Stars.

If you followed me for/like Fire Emblem’s Marx/Xander, I highly recommend this route.