#circuit kirby

[kid-of-chaos]

“Just a Imitation.”

Clones are cannon fodder. Cheaply made.

Unable to dream like the original can.

Why bother being a Copy when everyone praises the real deal?

No matter what you create, it will never be as great as HE did it.

You’re NOTHING, Circuit. You will always be a copy of the Star Warrior himself.

[artseuki]

Heard it was a special little guy's anniversary today (10 min ago) so what better way to celebrate than to show off my most recent project haha

Behold! The Master Crown! Probably Not as cursed as the Real Thing, will Definitely not possess you and steal your free will or anything like that 🤗🤗🤗prommies🤗

[nevert-the-guy]

Thought I'd do one of these for the heck of it:

Part favorites, part impactful, part influential for when I actually learn how to gamedev.

Also I found this when I was adding Cave Story to the chart:

cave story sex rpg 2007? What?

[bios-hzrd]

I wrote this script for a video essay, but I'm worried that it sucks and frankly I have other shit to work on, so I'm gonna dump it here and maybe come back to it later if anybody thinks its actually worth being made into a video.

Flow, Speed’s Complement

Flow is your ability to play the game at an uninterrupted pace. If you touch an enemy, do you get back up and keep running, warp to the last checkpoint, or do you die, watch a small death cutscene, and get warped to the last checkpoint. This will be a breakdown/analysis thingamabob of points where the game intentionally breaks the flow for various reasons.

I’ve split flow breaks into two major types: extrinsic and intrinsic. It’s important to note that flow breaks are not something to hunt down and exterminate in the goal of making the perfect speed game. They are useful tools, but if you aren’t careful they get incredibly frustrating

Extrinsic flow breaks usually come into action when the player slips. They’re factors outside of the core gameplay loop that serve as punishments for failure such as getting knocked back when you get hit and dying when that happens too many times. 

They usually punish the player by wrenching control away and sending them back a bit. Sending the player back is usually considered a necessary evil, as while it does feel bad through cutting into the player's progression and harming the flow, it forces the player to redo and practice a section to prove their mastery which will make the game more fun in the long run. Most games design themselves around the player beating the level once, and as such want to make sure the player has done it properly by the end.

I find it pertinent to note however that other games like to design themselves around beating the game again to prove your mastery. Pizza Tower and Ultrakill come to mind. Both of these games have a ranking system, and are clearly designed around the player returning to their levels once they have beaten the game to get the best rank. As such PIzza Tower and Ultrakill are more lenient with allowing the player to stumble their way through a level. Pizza Tower even makes the player immortal for most of the game. This goes a long way to making these games both exhilarating unbroken thrill rides for the people who play through it once, and tough as nails tests of personal mastery for those who go back for a second round. The first run maximizes flow, while the second ramps up the challenge.

Getting back on topic, taking control away from the player on the other hand, is something that should generally be cut out as much as possible. In ye olden days, you die, and you have to wait for an entire animation to play, then you get warped back to the last checkpoint. That kind of waiting builds up and gets on the players nerves. Ultrakill pulls up this screen when you die. The great thing is, that the second it appears you can press the shoot button, you know, that thing your finger is already on, to immediately load state back to the last checkpoint. It’s fast, snappy, and intuitive. No waiting, no menuing, just get back in the game. If the player not being able to play isn’t a mechanic of your game, make them able to play as fast as you can.

Getting knocked back was originally used because games wanted to give enemies a sense of collision, discourage damage boosting, and clearly signify to the player that they’ve gotten hit, but you’ll want to consider if that’s something your game actually needs. For example, how lenient is your health system? Cuphead gives the player three hits per level, and that number only goes down. The player is already avoiding damage at all costs and knockback is unnecessary. In Pizza Tower you regularly break the sound barrier, knockback is an obvious signifier that the player has gotten hit, and a significant enough punishment on its own in a game about going fast that the game gives the player infinite HP. You’ll have to apply your own judgment.

You want to put consideration on what conditions trigger your extrinsic flow breaks. Putting some slack on the line allows the player to not be perfect, and still have an experience that flows well. Health, checkpoints, and lives are very common leniency systems that allow the player to screw up a few times before they get sent back. Personally, I love to play games that maximize flow to let you play fast and loose. Crash into shit, get up, and keep running. Precision platformers are not my jam. As such when health is implemented into games, I’ve usually preferred it when it is viewed as a resource to be managed, not an ever looming axe pendulum telling you to cut the pace and be careful.

Meta Knightmare has a fun example. The game is a rerun of the main campaign, except now you’re in speedrun mode. The games put a timer on your head and you need to bolt to the finish. When you kill enemies, you get MP or meta points. When you need to heal, you have two choices. You can either deviate from the main path a bit to grab a health pickup, still moving at the same speed but dropping your time, or burn some Meta Points, saving time but losing a resource that could be used on other stuff. It integrates itself into the systems in a fun and unique way.

I mentioned lives too though. They’re essentially a cap on the number of times you’re allowed to be sent back to the checkpoint before the game boots you out of the level to try again. As a mechanic they allow the player a few deaths, create tension when they’re low, and force the player to redo things they haven't mastered. Lives are most associated with the traditional Mario system, which I’m not especially fond of. Allowing the player to just stockpile the things over the course of the game gives a lot of inconsistency to when the player will be punished for repeated mistakes. At the final boss players could either have a thousand lives or two. The player can either stumble their way through tripping on every step, or smash their head into the wall until it breaks. I like Splatoons system much more, where the player is given 3 lives per level. It gives the lives system some proper consistency and lets its strengths shine.

—

Intrinsic flow breaks are mostly addressed in the speed games that I’m so fond of. The main idea in these games is keep going, keep going, never stop, and intrinsic flow breaks exist to give the player something to minimize through their gameplay.

For a simple example, In Gravity Circuit enemies are everywhere, and kinda gotta kill anyone in front of you. To do that you can either punch them a few times, or you can throw a dead guy at them. Punches slow you down, as you have to sorta stand there as they die, sometimes dancing around their attacks. The basic idea is that after a few fistings the enemy gets exhausted and you can pick them up and fucking yeet at the next guy, then pick that guy up and do it all over again. Throwing opponents is seamless and gives the game a nice flow.

You try to keep the chuck train rolling to avoid that intrinsic flow break of beating a man to death with your bare hands as much as you can. You have to sometimes, but do it as little as possible.

Now for the subtleties, I’ve found two factors you want to avoid: Stops and Slows. Stops are interrupts that make you physically stop in place. Gravity Circuits punches are a stop, so is Peppinos shotgun in Pizza Tower. It can be brief or a bit drawn out. Point is it kills your momentum. Slows are when you have to slow down, either you physically move slower, or you take a route that gets you to the place you want to be slower. For example earlier when I mentioned Meta Knight taking a slight detour to grab food, that was a slow. 

You press a button to throw a bomb, hold it and you charge up a bomb blast. This blast launches you forwards into the air, and you move faster. You can use a double jump to remain in the air, but once you land you’ll slow down to normal speed again. Interestingly, when you throw a bomb in the air, if you try to charge another blast, you’ll brake and lose all horizontal momentum, then fall to the ground. Midair bombs are a stop, landing and starting the blast charge on the ground is a slow. It’s preferable to land than brake. However your decision making is decided by your need to land. If you try to charge a blast in midair, you will land before you have a charge. You need to find safe spots, which drives your choices. You blast forwards, and you need to recognize whether you want to keep flying and let yourself land where you will,  or stop and take the immediate safe ground. Take the risky slow or the safe stop. All of this to avoid the extrinsic flow break of getting hit. These actually tie together quite nicely, as you can charge up a bomb blast while getting knocked back. You still don’t want to get hit, but if you do you can smoothly re-enter the game's flow state.

There's no defined way that it should be done. Games just come up with their own ways to implement them into their gameplay loop, by making the game about trying to optimize their usage. In Downwell you rack up combos by jumping on the heads of enemies. To do this you can press shift to fall more slowly, but you slow down by shooting bullets out of your boots, and the more you shoot unnecessarily, the more likely you kill the enemies and prevent yourself from landing on them.

Further, downwell has a multiplier mechanic called Gem High, where any gems you collect from bouncing on enemies are multiplied for a limited time, so you need to bounce on as many enemies as you can, as fast as you can. Timers work well with getting the player to cut down on slows.

Pizza Towers Gustavo and Brick brings in a very intriguing example of letting the player cancel a move that has an intrinsic flow break at the end of it by using level gimmicks. The double jump has the player crash into the ground, which stuns them for a bit, but there are these mushroom trampolines that cancel the animation.

Once again I don’t really have any clear cut standards to explain, just fascinating examples to potentially take inspiration from. Flow breaks are a very engaging element that help the player appreciate the flow state even more. Extrinsic ones exist to strongarm the player into playing the game properly, while intrinsic ones give games with a constant flow an interesting mechanic to play around. If there's any unmentioned games that you feel play around with or challenge these principles feel free to share.

[shinigami-striker]

GBA on Wii U | Friday, 03.03.2023

Did you guys by any chance buy and download any of these Game Boy Advance games down below, regardless of what region (t.e. Europe, Japan, or North America) through the Wii U eShop before March 27, 2023 ends soon?

[evilhorse]

Save the juice, Night Flyer!

(Captain America #214)

[theblackestofsuns]

“All The Hidden Circuits!”

Fantastic Four #19 (October 1963)

Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Dick Ayers and Stan Goldberg

Marvel Comics

[demifiendrsa]

Nintendo Switch Online - Game Boy & Game Boy Advance Announcement - Nintendo Direct 2.8.23

Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games are now available for Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscribers.

The following titles are available at launch:

Game Boy – Nintendo Switch Online (Nintendo eShop) – Requires Nintendo Switch Online membership

Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare

Game & Watch Gallery 3

Gargoyle’s Quest

Kirby’s Dream Land

Metroid II – Return of Samus

Super Mario Land 2 – 6 Golden Coins

Tetris

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX

Wario Land 3

Game Boy Advance – Nintendo Switch Online (Nintendo eShop) – Requires Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack membership

Kuru Kuru Kururin

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga

Mario Kart: Super Circuit

Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap

WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$

[loaflovesdoodling]

so I was just randomly re-reading my Dulciades oneshot, and..

neck?

what neck

[kid-of-chaos]

NEW MATTERBORN CREATED

Star Matterborn

Created from energy of Star-like Artifacts/the Nova Void.

Five-Point Circuit (Gizmo post Nova Void arc) went from a MockSoul Matterborn to a MockStar Matterborn (since he technically dies and was reborn thanks to the wishing star.)

Uhh their wings would be like

Like a Heart matterborn but really blocky and energy and uh-

They have these ^ wings

But like the bottom part is separate (I’m sorry for the horrible explanation)

But uh yeah go nuts with this

[of-dream-land]

i had a dream where taranza confessed to magolor …. time for me to draw it >:)

[5mind]

'Fivemind' would make a lovely name for a kirby penultimate boss

[theghostofwilburtheworm]

I love instaling gba roms on the school computer👍

[g4zdtechtv]

Cinematech's Trailer Park - Game Boy & Game Boy Advance for NSO

True Portable Power.

[painted-bees]

Margie's turn to be quickly sketched for the age meme..! She had a pretty...typical(?) small town Canadian weird girl upbringing. At 5 years old, she loved bugs and dinosaurs, and was always tracking mud and dirt everywhere. She quickly becomes known as the weird girl[derogatory] by her peers, which kind of forces her to find and value pastimes that do not require friends. As soon as she was allowed to get a gameboy, she became a fast nintendo fan. In particular, she loved Kirby and Donkey Kong. The music from those two franchises would be what initially gets her into making music herself, and by the time she's 13, she's learned how to play all her favorite songs on her new portasound keyboard. At 16 years old, she embraces cringe and gives up trying to win the approval of her peers. She also spends a ton of her time on LiveJournal and MySpace to learn about music--and goes down the circuit bending rabbit hole. After highschool, Magritte elects to moves out once her parents make it clear that they'll not let her just stay home and "focus on her musical career" all day. It turns out to be the right choice for her, and she travels until she finds a new place to call home; A place that nurtures her love of music and celebrates her eccentricities.

[istadris]

Super Mario AU where everything is the same, including the fact that the Mario Bros are the cutest and most shaped protagonists ever *.

Except the villains think it too.

For the Mushroom Kingdom and other countries, Mario and Luigi are the human equivalent of quokka or kitties in terms of rage-inducing cuteness. They’re not even trying, they’re seriously trying to stop evil schemes and half of the time they win because they’re distracting the bad guys with their gap moe :

Bowser grabs Mario during a battle and yells at him "how DARE you being so cute with your big blue eyes and your soft little cheeks !!"

King Boo stalks Luigi during a Mansion ghost hunt but everytime Luigis turns around, KB has to hide his face in his arms because "he's too freaking cute I can't take it aaaaaaargh!!"

"Count Bleck we captured this cute little man in a hat, can we keep him?” “He’s a good guy, we can’t afford that ris-” *gets a sleeping Luigi shoved in his face like Rafiki with Simba* “...Fine, just turn him into a villain and make sure he doesn’t make a mess”

Cackletta and Fawful let Luigi run around in the cute pink gown despite cornering him and pretended the ship’s canon didn’t work after he escaped from their ship because “HE’S USING THE DRESS AS A LITTLE PARACHUTE WE CAN’T SHOOT THAT DOWN”

Antasma spends the whole of Dream Team longing for that weird little green bean who has such delicious dreams and the moment Mario and Dreamy Luigi face him in his final boss fight, he immediately grabs Luigi and doesn’t want to let him go.

Bowser again, whenever he gets his hands on both brothers, they end up escaping because his brain short-circuits, he wants to pet the both of them but he only has two hands ??? Why can’t  he hold all these plumbers ?? (He’s a moron who could hold them both in one hand)

*Kirby doesn’t count, he’s entropy made flesh