#especially 3d platforming. and also action games. especially 3d action games

[cassiesdevblog]

Mario 64's Perfect, Beautiful, Pure Control Scheme

(and how later Mario games gunk it all up)

Hello gunky gloopers! Let me take you on a journey. So, Mario 64's controls are like this:

Joystick: Run

A: Jump

Z: Crouch

B: Punch

But in my beautiful, perfect mind palace (and probably yours too, even if you never thought about it), they're actually more like this:

Joystick: Lateral

A: Up

Z: Down

B: Attack

And now, through abstraction, we are beginning to see the light

Part I: Utopia

Each of these main 4 inputs has a consistent association with one of these directions (or attacking). 64 understands that, while a 2D platformer could use just the stick or D-pad to cover both of its axes of movement, a 3D game's joystick is working full time controlling just one plane, so the orphaned up and down inputs were rehoused to A and Z

That's how Mario 64 builds out an intuitive moveset much wider than just 4 basic actions. In fact, essentially every combination of these main 4 inputs creates a logical outcome

Press down in the air and, predictably, Mario will go down via ground pound

Combine some lateral movement with both a down and up input and you get the long jump: a long, low jump that you can think of as resulting from the upward and downward forces cancelling out

Press attack while holding down to do... the crouching breakdancey low kick move thing. It's highly redundant, but it's a monument to Mario 64's dedication to this idea of a complete palette of moves intuitively resulting from combining these fundamental inputs

Even in particular contextual states like climbing poles or hanging on ledges, you can rely on these directional associations to control Mario without even thinking about it. Nobody ever told you you could press Z to drop down off a ledge or tree, but you might have done it anyway without being told

Now, these associations are stretched or broken in some contexts, like when flying or swimming, but I love the wing cap so much you'll never get me to slander it. Future Mario games, however...

Part II: Decay

While 64 flirted with impurity in specific contexts, future games would start to let impurities seep into Mario's core moveset

In Super Mario Sunshine, the L button centers the camera and makes Mario sidestep when on the ground... and it also makes him ground pound when in the air. I am currently doing deep breathing exercises

In Super Mario Odyssey, pressing ZL/ZR in the air and then Y leads to... a forward dive. Now, Y does have a relatively consistent association with forward movement in this game, but down and then forward resulting in a move that only pushes Mario forward is pretty tenuous, especially given how often players will use this move. And, while most of Odyssey Mario's moveset is consistent enough about using ZL/ZR as down buttons... you can't use them to drop off ledges. I try to every time, and every time absolutely nothing happens and a piece of my soul leaves my body to wander the cosmos forever

...well, at least the game is more diligent about keeping these directional associations alive when in the water than Mario 64 is...!

Part III: Change

Now, look. The loss of the purity of the control schemes in 3D Mario games is absolutely devastating and I still have not recovered. But... I do recognize that later games had particular goals with their movesets that couldn't so cleanly just be mashed into the standards of purity that SM64 set. Not without sacrificing some of what their movesets were all about

Sunshine needed a button to help with aiming FLUDD, which wouldn't have really been helpful in the air anyway, so it's understandable it was also used for the ground pound. Odyssey needed a way to disambiguate an aerial Y/"forward" input into either a cap throw or a dive so you could do cool fancy tricks and find those coins everyone lost their minds about on top of that underground building. And if they patched in the ability to drop off ledges with ZL/ZR, then the lost pieces of my soul would return to my body with a newfound wisdom gained from wandering the stars, and I would ascend out of my physical body to a new, heightened mode of existence and lose the ability to touch a controller, and then I'd never get to spend my evenings gleefully, repeatedly dropping off ledges with Z in Mario 64 again :(

(By the way, a game I worked on just came out! It's a tough 2D platformer with a surreal, haunting aesthetic and I'm honored I got to get into all the little crevices and polish them all up because it's such a cool project. It was spearheaded by my friend @zombielesbean. Go play it!!!)

[retronator]

I never played Karateka in the 80s, but as a big fan of Prince of Persia and Jordan Mechner's journals, I was stoked to hear that an interactive documentary about Jordan's prototypical cinematic platformer was in the works by Digital Eclipse.

Released this week, The Making of Karateka on the surface looks like any other game you buy through Steam ($20, Windows-only), GOG, or whichever favorite store or console you prefer (available also for Xbox, PS4/5, Switch). Once the thing loads though, you really get 3 things: a documentary, the original Karateka, and a new remaster.

The documentary part is an audio-visual slideshow retelling Jordan's development story starting with his teenage years pitching his earlier title Deathbounce to the publishing house Brøderbund. It's an interesting look into the iterative process, seen through correspondence letters, journal entries, and many playable builds at various stages of completion. After we reach the eventual rejection of that title, Jordan comes back with a prototype of a visual-narrative experience unseen on home computers. We get to follow Karateka's full life cycle from pre- to post-production, ending with the conception of its sequel (which eventually turned into Prince of Persia). It's a real treasure trove! Fellow pixel artists will appreciate the many graph-paper sketches and interactive overlays of final game sprites compared to rotoscoped outlines and filmed footage. There are also video segments, from a comprehensive breakdown of the music to interviews with other developers reflecting on the impact Jordan's games had on their careers. You'll even encounter a fan letter signed by the one and only "John Romero, Disciple of the Great Jordan and worshipper of the Magnificent Mechner!" (I kid you not, you can't make this stuff up).

Perhaps just as crucial for an interactive documentary like this, you can launch any of the floppy disks in the emulator, trying out various iterations and ports of Karateka.

The emulation is fantastic and lets you fiddle with display settings (monochrome or color display, scanlines, pixel perfect or zoomed) as well as enhance the frame rate. You can even rewind the many deaths you will face if you've never played the game before (like me). If you spend some more time obsessing over the weird artifacts of the Apple II hi-res graphics, you might even go down the rabbit hole of realizing that on the Apple II you didn't really paint colors as much as you used different monochrome dithering patterns that the graphics display would then turn into 4 different hues. A fascinating learning experience if you include some of your own research online!

Add to this the Commodore 64 and the Atari 8-bit versions to compare how the graphics got adapted across the earlier ports and you have a nice way to relieve the mid-80s with a bit of help from modern emulation (I did beat the C64 version without rewinding though!). I'd love to see more art from the other remakes, especially the 16-bit Atari ST port, but I understand their decision to omit playable versions of those due to the lower quality on the gameplay side of the translations.

This brings us to the final part of the package, the modern remaster. Unlike the 2012 complete reimagining of the game (with 3D graphics and all), Digital Eclipse approached the remake as the ultimate port of the original to an imaginary system along the lines of a 90s VGA PC.

It's well done. Some of the fully-redrawn scenes are a bit overpainted for my taste (I'd prefer a pixel art rendition of the castle than a blurry photographic collage, although there were many games in the 90s that did take this approach), but the in-game graphics are really in style, including the smooth animations that are like one would imagine granted a beefier CPU. It's also a sort of director's cut with previously unseen scenes added, in particular, the battle with the leopard as a clever action-puzzle in the middle. The AI is unfortunately even less challenging than Jordan's implementation. As great as the 6-move fighting system could have been, you yet again resort to simply kicking away opponents as they tirelessly crawl into your range. There isn't even the nuance from the original where you were the one who had to approach some enemies with skilled timing. On the other hand, you now have optional goals and achievements that make the repetitive/easy combat work in your favor (stringing various combos, beating opponents or the level under a time limit …). As the Digital Eclipse president Mike Mika admits at the end of the welcome commentary mode, they didn't manage to achieve their perfect port, but they did come close.

In conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed playing both the original as well as the remake and while the combat system lacks any sort of depth beneath its stunning animations, Karateka is instead a monumental experience for its presentation. Big characters with personality and realistic motion are displayed through cinematic camera cuts and story vignettes (3 years before Ron Gilbert came up with the word "cutscene"). There are details like animating the unfortunate falling off the cliff at the start of the game, or respectfully bowing to the first guard as they bow in return. Jordan's creative work is precious and worth the attention this release gifts it.

I highly recommend The Making of Karateka to all retro gamers and/or game developers for its immersive documentation which provides an experience that goes beyond the usual video documentaries. It's interactive—just like the subject it's talking about—something I want to see more in the future. And if the $20 by any chance seems high to you, consider that the original retailed at $35 (and that was in 1984 dollars).

[squwooshk]

I wrote this essay for another platform, but I want to share it here.

Capitalism is killing art, in every part of the process. From the creation, the consumption and finally the preservation. In this serious of essays, we'll be looking at the preservation in particular. Looking at the ending of the process, and working backwards, will help give us a stronger understanding of the concepts and powers at play in the production, for the preservation and consumption directly effect the creation. This first part of the series will look into the effects of capitalism, and private property, more specifically intellectual property, on the preservation of art and the methods of art preservation that are at odds with capitalism.

Emulation & Video-game Piracy

An important part of the process of preserving art is making sure that the art work can be experienced by as many people, for as long as possible. When it comes to video-games in particular, there's plenty of fans who are dedicated enough to the art for to make sure retro games are always playable for a more general audience, and with as much accuracy to the original experience as possible. These dedicated fans create emulators, software programs that are able to replicate the functions of older video-game consoles, in order to allow older games to be easily playable to modern gamers.

Emulators themselves, are fully allowed under the law[1], however we do encounter a problem. The data that emulators are designed to read, is often illegal to distribute on the internet. The spread of this software, the actual data of a particular video game, is considered digital piracy, a theft of intellectual property[2]. This is an argument often used by corporations like Nintendo to shutdown websites that host these data files[3]. However, these same corporations often give no good alternatives to emulation, and in extention this piracy.

Many of these companies do not re-release these games, at best they may remake them or occasionally offer a limited selection on their own emulators, which can often have errors or be tied to a subscription service, as is the case with Nintendo.[4],

The preservation of these games often come down to an effort from the fans, an effort that is in direct conflict with the intellectual property owners. Without emulation, many more obscure games, and a good number of games with complex licensing agreements, would be permanently lost to time.

I would like to take the time to look at two examples in particular, Metal Gear Solid (Game Boy Color, also known as Metal Gear Solid Ghost Babel in Japan) and Mother 3. These examples are far from being the only examples worth talking about, but I think they both greatly exemplify the ideas I wish to discuss.

Metal Gear Solid (Gameboy Color) which I will refer to as Ghost Babel for the rest of this essay, for simplicity and to avoid confusion with Metal Gear Solid (PlayStation) which is a completely different game, is a game released in 2000 by Konami for the Nintendo Gameboy Color. The game was a spin-off of the Metal Gear Solid series. The game has never been re-release.

This is primarily due to the lower sales of the release brought in compared to any mainline Metal Gear Solid game (all of which have been re-release and remastered many times) and the little market demand, especially in the AAA gaming world that Konami is a part of, for 2D stealth action games. There is little profit to be found in porting over Ghost Babel to more modern systems, so it just isn't done. Art that isn't profitable is cast aside by the capitalist.

The only way to play this game, and comply with the laws of a capitalist society, is to own a Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance or a DS (but not a DSI or 3DS) and an original physical copy of the game. All these items are no longer being produced, they are all in the second hand market, and as the supply will never rise, the prices can tend to get high pretty quickly.

Not only is pricing an issue, but these objects will not last forever. The cartridges used to store the data of Gameboy Color games have batteries that will one day die, preventing saved data from being written on them[5], and the electronic parts in these systems, and in the cartridges, will one day fail as any other machine will without constant maintenance. Preservation through the ownership of the original hardware is limited in scope, and is doomed for failure.

The only method of preservation that solves all these problems, the problem of limited supply, high prices and degradation of hardware, is digital emulation and piracy. This is however, in direct conflict with the intellectual property of the capitalist. The capitalist wishes to actively suppress these acts of preservation in the name of preserving their intellectual property[6]

Mother 3 is a video game created by Nintendo that has never been released outside of Japan. The reason for this is once again a profit one, Mother 2 (know simply as Earthbound outside of Japan) did not sell well at all when it first came out and Mother 1 was never released outside of Japan untill way later, where it got a digital release, do to the growth in a western Mother Fandom. The Mother series has a very particular style and humor, that doesn't always sell as well with western audiences, making localization a process that yealds little profit, thus the localization is never made.

For anyone who lives outside of Japan, the only way to play this game is illegally. You must rely on fan translation and emulation. No one other than Japanese people, or people who know Japanese, own a Japanese Game Boy Advanced, and have a copy of the game, can play it without going in direct violation of the interests of the capitalist and violating their intellectual property rights.

Music preservation and Intellectual Property

Video-games are far from the only art from that's preservation is at threat from capitalism. Music is another art form that has been plagued by intellectual property. From songs that quote passages of other songs, to song that uses samples with licensing issues, so much art has been altered, limited or destroyed by capitalism. I'll be looking at three different examples.

The Gun Song by Car Seat Headrest has two versions, the original version of the song, and the No Trigger Version. The differences between these two versions is pretty simple, the no trigger version is what you'll find on streaming services, and the original thay is only available on the Bandcamp version of the album. The reason for this is a lyric change due to copyright issues.

The original version of the song end with the lyrics "Down by the river, I shot my baby" sung with the same melody as the song Down by the River by Neil Young. Do to the shared melody and lyrics, this caused copyright issues. All releases of the song, other than the original independent release, have been altered to cut this part out. This song, as it was intended to be heard, has become difficult to access for most people.

The album Everything is a Lot by Will Wood and the Tapeworms was drastically altered when it was remastered, because all the samples used in the original ran into licensing issues. This lead to the more accessible version of the album (the only version getting physically releases) missing important parts of songs, in particular, the vocal send off on the track "Thermodynamic Lawyer" which originally opened with a sample from the movie Liar Liar, but now just opens immediately into the song, removing a lot of the punch of the original

The Faces mixtape by Mac Miller has faced a similar treatment to that of the Will Wood album, but on a more severe scale. The version of the album available on streaming has been gutted of many of it's samples (at least 9).

Intellectual Property & Profit Motive

Now, it's time to talk about how all these issues are an intrinsic part of capitalism. Capitalism as a system prioritizes one thing above all else, capital. Capital is itself a form of private property, and intellectual property is an idea or artistic expression turned into private property. The property holders will defend their right to profit off this property using the violence of the state, using the power of law to punish those who violate their property.

This become a problem for art when the profit motive gets involved. Profit is the driving factor behind all of these anti-preservation decisions we have discussed here today. With video-games, companies want to continue to indefinitely make a profit off of their old creations, but fail to offer an adequate way too, and often prioritizes only the cash cows. When the public tries to take this into their own hands, out of the love of art, they get punished. Their preservation is a threat, because they allow all games to be preserved and experienced freely, even the cash cows that corporations don't wish to abandon.

As for music, record labels (and in some of these cases film studios who own sound bites) want to profit off of royalties. When a song uses a sample, a good bit of the profit made on that song goes to the owners of royalty licenses, despite the fact that their intellectual property often makes up only a fraction of a truly transformational work. When they can't make their royalties, they leave the work to die.

Conclusion

Capitalism, primarily through the medium of intellectual property, a form of private property, actively disrupts the preservation of art. It seeks to destroy methods of preserving art that would eat into the profits of capitalist, without offering a viable alternative except when it seems financially beneficial to the capitalist.

Bibliography

1.https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/njtip/vol2/iss2/3/

2.https://www.howtogeek.com/262758/is-downloading-retro-video-game-roms-ever-legal/

3.https://kotaku.com/nintendo-orders-rom-site-to-destroy-all-its-games-or-1847487357

4.https://www.tomsguide.com/opinion/nintendo-switch-online-is-terrible-and-its-only-getting-worse

5.https://forums.atariage.com/topic/193374-battery-life-of-old-game-cartridges/

6.(to actually gain access to this you'll probably have to prepend it with 12ft.io/) https://www.scribd.com/document/709016504/Nintendo-of-America-Inc-v-Tropic-Haze-LLC-1-24-Cv-00082-No-1-D-R-I-Feb-26-2024

[amaiguri]

When you're a Writer and a Vtuber...

If you like storytelling, Vtubing, or both, this one's for you 🥰

You'd think there'd be more overlap of "People who want to be fantasy characters and hide their face" and "Writers" but there really aren't. I know like me and @moonfeatherblue and that's it for the writing/worldbuilding and Vtuber overlap lololol. I think there should be more of us!

So, let me convince you to become a storytelling/worldbuilding/writing Vtuber like me...

In addition to just loving all the cool things you can do with Live2D as a software (if like art and you don't just stare at rigging showcases on YouTube, you should. It's so cool!), I also love storytelling in a social media space. Like, how do you tell a story over time? How much information should you reveal and when? What colors, images, and sounds evoke the feelings you want? And what feelings will keep people coming back for more? Basically, Vtubers have made me fall in love with marketing because the best marketing is just storytelling with some sort of call-to-action at the end.

Am I GOOD at marketing? No, lol, but maybe YOU would be! KEEP READING to find out XD

On the flipside, so so many Vtubers are like "I'm the embodiment of sin and also a gamer and a singer" or "I'm a cottagecore whale who is also the collector of lost souls and I play video games" and it's like... clearly Vtuber audiences LIKE the fantasy aspects of this. Why is the Vtuber default just gaming? Why is there not waaaaay more whimsy and storytelling? (This isn't to say Gaming Bad TM. I'm literally a game dev. I NEED streamers to play my games. I love them.) There's just so much opportunity for cool storytelling with Vtubers!

If you wanna get into being a fictional character/having a kayfabe-like wrestling persona for your writing, you should 100% get into Vtubing. You don't even need to stream to be a Vtuber -- and honestly I'm not even sure you need to post videos necessarily lol -- GIFs and pictures could probably get you pretty far on the right platforms. You could start out using a PNG --there are so many good, free PNGtuber softwares and you could use Picrew images (with the right permissions!) for your PNGtuber to start. Or if you can draw, you can just DO THAT.

Or if you have like $50 USD, Raindrop Atelier has a FULLY rigged Vtuber "Picrew" with chibi models that are so high quality and cute! Or if you have like $300 USD, you could get one of the Picrew-like Vtubers from Charat Genesis. (Yes, that's a lot BUT most Vtuber models — 2D and 3D alike — run you from $2000 to $8000 sooooo $300 is a steal in comparison.)

And then, over time, you could post and reveal facts about yourself and tidbits of your lore! And you could give writing advice or talking about your worldbuilding in-character! I've had this idea to make a fantasy creature mockumentary for actually years now and I'm just trying to find a good scope for it...

On the downside, as with all "storytelling in real time", it can a little discouraging at the start when you don't have a big audience. And this specific niche is especially underdeveloped so it's definitely hard to find a foothold. BUT I find that, because it's all play -- it's all FANTASY -- I have a lot more energy for this kind of marketing than I would if I were promoting myself as "just a writer, trying to sell my writing." Getting people to like me is exhausting. Getting people to like my writing is part of the writing process!

Cuz like, aside from just "inhabiting a fictional character" and "reducing your face presence online while still giving your personal brand a face", being a Vtuber is also a fun way to tie into your work.

Like, my Vtuber model is Arlasaire and she's the protagonist of my (probably) upcoming RPG, Untitled Yssaia Game, (Not the final name, real name pending lol). She talks about cooking and music and geography over on my YouTube channel and it's all infused with cool fantasy music and sound effects. She speaks in and teaches you about conlangs in the world. And she goes on fantasy dates or fantasy vacations! So now, I'm getting people attached to this character and her world BEFORE I even get into her actual story. And all her merchandising and stuff is really just game merchandising and so on and so forth... and that's just good branding! Hopefully some day, this translates into more people playing the game and seeing more of my work!

But obviously, I'm very new to marketing or else this blog post would convince more writers to become Vtubers and more Vtubers to write lol.

Anyway, here's some Arlasaire art (art: LexiKoumori on IG, rig: Kanijam) AS WELL AS some of her earlier model sketches before I asked for her hair to be silkier and less feathery! And lastly, a short unedited video of me being cringe so you KNOW you could do better :DDDD

[splashink-games]

A Note On... Ann Ultra and the Cyber Neko+ Statues

ANNO: Mutationem is an action platformer by ThinkingStars! Explore a cyberpunk world while fighting the baddies in your way!

This game was a much-needed change from the games I've been recently playing (which were a bunch of management and strategy games). I needed a little action in my life, so to say.

I played the demo of this game way back when, during a Steam Next Fest. And I don't often play demos, but if I remember correctly, a friend had recommended it to me. It was immediately interesting with the style the dev team was going for—half side-scrolling, half 3D exploration.

The art is actually one of the best points of the game because of its unique 2D-3D thing. The cyberpunk world is really cool, especially with the bright lights in the city areas contrasting the derelict combat areas. The character design is awesome. Main/Named characters feel unique and recognizable. Plus all the shiny specials effects!

And everywhere feels rather "lived in", in that nowhere in the game does it feel they added a space without worldbuilding. It shows through the art as well as the documents and posters spread across the maps.

Speaking of documents, the narrative for this game is fairly straightforward. Very mcguffin-chasing, though it allows us to meet a variety of characters before delving into the hidden plotline that we get glimpses of throughout the game. Solid pacing and storytelling!

I also really like the supporting cast. Well, Ayane. Her banter and relationship with Ann very much fills the void in between main story points. It also helps that I found her love for her best friend (that goes as far as calling Ann, "darling") endearing.

Mechanics-wise, I really liked the upgrade systems in this game. The traditional "get skill points when defeating enemies to unlock stuff in your skill tree" is something I missed for a while. It also didn't give me enough to unlock the entire tree, which is surprising, but doesn't hurt the gameplay in any way.

I will say that the melee weapons are a bit unbalanced. Once you get the dual swords (fast weapon with a little less damage), the regular sword is pretty useless (it's slower, with middling damage) because it doesn't have enough upside. And then the two-handed sword is always good/useful because of its armour-breaking.

The ranged weapon, on the other hand, felt very extra because of the melee-focused, low item-usage way I played. Ended up with over 70 magazines of ammo for the small gun despite using it more often than the others. Plus, you don't unlock the last ranged weapon until way near the end. Ultimately, I probably would've had an easier time if I'd used them instead of hitting and running with melee.

Also super surprised that they added input combos for certain abilities in the game. Like left, left, X performed a lunging attack. Didn't expect it, but glad to have some variation in combat that would otherwise end up being button mashing (not that I dislike that sometimes).

Platforming in this game is smooth and you get new movement abilities at a good pace. There's no need to backtrack in this game, which is nice.

ANNO: Mutationem is an awesome platformer that combines 3D exploration with sidescrolling combat!

As always,

Enjoy gaming!

[prancingnougat]

(Cheery) Games for Combating the Post Final Fantasy XVI Blues

After beating FFXVI, I got super down - not because I disliked the game, quite the opposite. I loved it so much that now the experience was over, I felt that all-too-familiar void, and I suspect that I'm not alone in that.

So I went back to play some of the more recently released games that I bought (from the past 5 years or so), a few of which I never beat. As much as I loved and appreciate 16 for everything it is, I really wanted something lighter in terms of themes. I figure this could be a decent list for people who might want another RPG-like experience. These are very different, however - I'm focusing on games that are available for purchase right now, and games that are a little on the brighter side, thematically. Your mileage will totally vary, but some of these are fun games that appealed to me and they might appeal to you too!

Bravely Default 2

Play me if you like: job systems, rewarding level grinding, sidequests galore

The original Bravely Default 1+2 are Nintendo 3DS classics that absolutely stand the test of time, but can be a little expensive/hard to find. BD2, on the other hand, is available on the Nintendo eShop and for PC. It is great if you're looking to get back to basics in regard to story and RPG mechanics - but that's not to say the gameplay is lacking. Far from it, BD2 has one of the most fun job systems I've ever encountered. The cast of characters is charming, the graphics are lovely, and I've found it relaxing after the intensity of FFXVI. Plus, all the job outfits are outright adorable (especially Beastmaster, my beloved)

Harvestella

Play me if you like: unexpectedly good stories, loads of character depth, farming simulation, light-but-fun action RPGs

If you liked FFXVI for its story, I think you might appreciate Harvestella's strange but wonderful sci-fi fantasy narrative/world. While it's much lighter on the action, and its job system isn't quite as involved as the Bravely Default series, it's still a completely unique experience that blends light farming sim elements with classic RPG fun. It's similarly relaxing as BD2 in the sense that you're encouraged to take it at your own pace and focus on your own favored play style. It completely took me by surprise with it's story, and I tend to be pretty picky about that sort of thing. It's also available on Switch and PC!

Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin

Play me if you like: action sidescrollers, more in-depth farming elements, mythological settings

This is definitely one of the most unique games I've ever played, and while it's completely different from FFXVI, it can potentially serve as something of a palate cleanser after going through such a dark story. Sakuna has one of the most complex farming systems, one that is impacted by your exploration. It also helps determine your character's stats. You explore the wilderness as a little goddess who lives away from her celestial home, opting for the life of a common rice farmer. While the focus is on rice farming as opposed to many crops like other farming sims, it's a fun way of centering yourself in between your more wilder adventures. It's on Switch, PS4, and PC!

Rune Factory 4 Special

Play me if you like: much lighter humor, light crafting systems, loooong stories, farming and marriage mechanics

You can probably tell that I have a thing for action games with farming elements. RF4 is my favorite in the Rune Factory series, and though there's a newer title with RF5, I found myself consistently enjoying this one a lot more. It's a humorous story that knows when it hit the right beats with it's sincerity, all while being just the right amount of challenging in regards to the action, with its pacing also controlled by your own gameplay style. It's wildly different from FFXVI, but it's one of my go-to games for cheering myself up after something heavy. And now that it's available on multiple platforms, more people can enjoy it too!

Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age

Play me if you like: strong ensemble casts, FFXVI's hunts, flexible job systems, MMO-style combat, challenging sidequests and superbosses

While this is easily the "darkest" game on this list, I still find its story very hopeful while balancing more serious themes. It is the culmination of everything good about Final Fantasy from the PS2 era; a long and interesting story that remains engaging throughout, phenomenal monster hunts that will push you to really engage with the job system, and satisfying sidequests with lots of loot. Plus, it's another Final Fantasy! I could suggest just about any game in the series, but since this one is a redone version that is now available on a ton of platforms, it's easily my biggest recommendation for anyone who wants a longer game in a similar vein as FFXVI.

Those are just a few games out there that might help itch some very specific scratches you've still got after playing 16. While I absolutely LOVE FFXVI's story - heaviness and all - I know I needed a big break before going and replaying it. Hopefully they bring someone as much cheer as they've brought me!

[miloscat]

[Review] Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures 2 (3DS)

This puck has legs after all.

After Inti Creates phoned it in for the first 3DS companion game, Monkey Bar Games handled all versions of the sequel themselves. The result is a 3DS port with (I think) feature parity on the console version, albeit with graphical compromises and fewer enemies populating the levels. PMatGA2 is a pretty simple 3D platformer from a fixed perspective, with the occasional rail shooter/vehicle section/2D zone to mix things up, but the key difference from the first game on 3DS is that this actually feels good to play.

Pac is quick on his feet, has a double jump, and can chomp ghosts in rapid succession, so the action feels snappy. The transformations can slow things down at times but no one section really lasts long enough that it drags. This time, Pac's forms are given to you when necessary and he can only use one at a time, so levels are more often built around their abilities. You're usually jumping between platforming setpieces and mini-combat arenas where a bunch of ghosts spawn in, although these can often just be skipped if you would rather keep moving.

The forms include the returning fire (now with a cool gliding ability), ice, magnet, and chameleon, as well as the more limited rock ball, now joined by the rubber ball form. Also advertised are Pac-Zilla and Pac Kong but these are only used contextually for brief boss fights. The Pac-Zilla fight feels like the stilted Giant Battles in certain Mario & Luigi games, whereas the Kong one is a more engaging beat-down with a T-Rex. Some levels have you do a decent if basic rail shooter sequence, which is where Pac's off-the-rack friends get to have a playable appearance.

The gameplay doesn't change too much from world to world—from the city to an Atlantis take to space to prehistory to the underworld—but each one at least looks distinctive. The story has a little more focus than the perfunctory plot in Inti's effort; there's voice acting here along with interstitial cutscenes. From what I can tell there's a lot of rehashing stuff from the show, but the turncoat ghosts, who I consider to be the most interesting characters, don't have much of a role, sadly. I did learn from in-game bios that Pinky and Cyli, basically the only two female characters in the main cast, have a jealousy subplot over Pac's affections. So that sucks! Makes me all the more glad that the show was cancelled and this new standard for the Pac-Man series has been left in the dust.

I don't have too much more to say on this one. It's never very challenging which is just fine; in fact the game extravagantly throws extra lives at you, such that I was at the max of 99 in world 2 and never dipped below 95. It's just an easy, breezy 3D platformer which is a nice thing to have on a portable in particular. I would like to take this opportunity to have one final dig at the design of Pac himself, which is just so ugly, especially when he makes any kind of facial expression that's not the classic "wide open eyes and mouth". Rest in pieces, Ghostly Adventures.

[heloflor]

“Part two” of this post since I wanted to keep it positive but also have more things to say about comparing the 86 Anime and 2023 Movie:

In defense of the 86 Anime not being great and low-quality, the plot of the 2023 Movie is kind of a pacing mess too. Plus, I don’t care about the animation quality and, while I do enjoy good soundtracks, a bad one doesn’t really bother me that much. Those are “superficial” elements that, while making a movie more enjoyable and pleasant, aren’t that big of a deal for me.

For example, I actually find the soundtrack of the 2023 one to be one of the best things about the movie, and I can’t praise enough the work that went into researching and using the video-games ost while still keeping it fresh. My second favorite thing about this movie is how expressive Bowser is. You can tell when Nintendo plays around with his 3d model that they’re trying to make him expressive but struggle with it, so to see such an array of emotions from him is amazing. However, the fact that those are my two favorite things about the 2023 movie is not a good look.

I’m also not going to judge the voice acting bc for the 2023 Movie I don’t care about the og dub (watched it in french) and the 86 Anime is in Japanese which I don’t speak so I’m less focused on intonation and more on subtitles. Although I will say that when re-discovering the 86 Anime this year, the main thing I remembered from watching it as a kid is the way Peach says Mario’s name, and that’s not exactly a compliment.

Ultimately, I think the main difference between the two for me is that the 2023 Movie pisses me off due to how much wasted potential it was, while the 86 Anime is more of an odd relic from the past that’s definitely not great but still fun for what it offers.

And yes, I’m definitely being a lot harsher on the 2023 Movie than the 86 Anime. After all, the 2023 one was made decades after the franchise took off and is a high-budget project, while the 86 one is a small production made likely on time constrains and with little to work on. The 86 Anime was also made by a Japanese studio back in the 80s, meaning the comedy and story standards might not have been the same. For the comedy you can for example see it with the Mario Kun mangas having a completely different kind of humor than what you expect in the West. As a result, it’s much easier to forgive the 86 for its mistakes, while the 2023 is under more scrutiny.

For example, both suffer from a pacing problem, with 86 dragging on while 2023 goes too fast, on top of both feeling like the creators had a specific set of action scenes in mind but didn’t know what to put in-between hence the many montages and paper-thin story. The 86 Anime can be forgiven more easily since every level in Mario Bros 1 looks the same + there’s like 10 different enemies, so of course they’d end up forced to capitalize on those enemies, causing the travel to be rushed while the enemies encounters go on for too long.

For the 2023 Movie, it just feels like they got lazy, especially when the elements put to give the story more substance don’t get resolved/have no payoff (had Mario and Luigi fought a cat instead of a dog, it could’ve been great payoff with the cat power-up ; Peach is shown to be curious about the human world yet has no reaction when entering Brooklyn ; Toad is just kind of there ; most of the plot is about getting the Kong army who immediately gets kidnapped, meaning it was for nothing ; Mario is good at platforming in the intro yet his struggles with Peach’s course are written as if he’s never been good at it ; we’re never shown how does Bowser’s army gets all this intel on Mario and Peach ; since we see Mario eat a mini-mushroom and then getting bigger through a hit, it means all Bowser needs to do to escape at the end is punch himself ; the blue-shelled soldier never interacts with Mario yet is straight-up delighted about killing him, and there’s no mention of him doing it to get Bowser’s respect or a promotion so there’s no justification for him being this unhinged ; etc).

Now I could say from this list that the 2023 movie has more plot holes than the 86 Anime, especially when the 86 one does explain when they put those types of elements despite its overall weirdness (the Goombas following the brothers, the dog being sent with them because he’s Haru). But ultimately the 86 Anime has a lot less overall substance, so of course it’s going to have less plot holes since there’s less plot. Plus, the 86 Anime has a lot more instances of things happening "just because".

Another example would be 86 Luigi and 2023 Peach being OOC. In the first case, Luigi didn’t even have a personality back there, so he can’t exactly be out of character if there’s no character to begin with. Meanwhile in the second case this is a character that had been established for decades yet they couldn’t be bothered to even try, which feels incredibly insulting and it better not affect the games (you just know that had Peach kept her role as Mario’s guide/mentor while actually being written in character, we still would’ve gotten Wonder and Showtime. Hell had she been written properly we wouldn’t have had that worrisome box art change).

Finally, before people crucify me, know that I give the 2023 Movie an 8/10 as an adaptation and a 6/10 as an original movie. It’s a fantastic adaptation outside of the characters being more or less OOC and does an amazing job at bringing this world to life, on top of the references not just being for fanservice but also serving the story since the characters are in the Mario universe. But as a movie itself it’s really average and honestly deserves a lower score. Were it an original fantasy movie with no relations to Mario, you know people wouldn’t give it a second glance and praise the villain as the only good/interesting part. The reason why I’m not giving it lower than a 6 is because the movie doesn’t try to be anything special, it just tries to be fun, and it does deliver on being fun.

Ironically enough tho, despite thinking the 2023 Movie is a fantastic adaptation, I actually wouldn’t recommend it to someone who doesn’t know much about Mario and wants to learn its lore, as this movie takes a lot of liberties on that front (Toad Town isn’t a construction site, Peach’s castle is sometimes on a hill but not that high up, Cranky isn’t King of anything and is DK’s grandpa, while DK is incredibly important to Mario’s history hence him being in the movie he’s not present at all in the mainline games, Kamek isn’t a hype man but a sarcastic tired dad (granted this goes into the characters being OOC), Bowser doesn’t have a floating island but instead uses airships (which I’m genuinely surprised the movie didn’t use given they’re a staple of Bowser’s army, granted they probably wanted Bowser constantly on the move while still being in large rooms for the meeting and piano scene, both of which wouldn’t work on an airship), the Clown Car also tends to be used exclusively by Bowser and his children except for Bowser’s Neo City from Mario Kart, Peach isn’t the only human in this world since Daisy exists and we even see a desert that could be Sarasaland on the Toads’ map, the Penguin Kingdom was completely made up, Peach’s backstory was also made up, Foreman Spike is a one-off character from decades ago, The ToadTM and Captain Toad are two different Toads, things like that).

And while I’m at it: Mario: 8/10 original character, 6/10 adaptation ; Luigi: 5/10 character , 9/10 adaptation (literally the only reason why I like Movie Luigi is because I adore Games Luigi; but as an original character he’s completely absent past the Brooklyn scene so it would be hard to really care about him if the movie was an original piece) ; Peach: 7/10 character, 0/10 adaptation ; Bowser: 10/10 character, 6,5/10 adaptation ; I can explain these scores a bit more in a separate post if anybody asks.

[kitchfit]

Year in Review: Games Part 1

This is a series I've been wanting to do for a while. Whenever I finish a piece of media (books, games, movies, comics, maybe art and music in the future) I jot in down in a doc so I can look back on them at the end of the year. I wanted to write my thoughts on them as I finished them, but since you have to start somewhere, I'll be writing simple reviews in retrospect. This is just for fun, but I welcome any feedback.

Pokemon Scarlet

This game released with some controversy. It was an unfinished glitchy mess with graphics still not up to the standards of the Nintendo Switch six years into its lifespan, but tbh this game was fun as hell to complete. I loved most of all the new designs and managed for the first time in my Pokemon career to actually complete the Dex. I usually get worn down on that pretty quick.

The characters were also much more engaging than the previous generation, especially my best boy Arven. The environments were super fun to explore and I got a new favorite little guy (Slither Wings my beloved). Here's hoping the next game has an actual sane development cycle and we get this amount of creativity in a higher degree of quality with better paid developers.

Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations

If you thought I only played games that came out this year, sorry to disappoint. I don't manage to pick up even half of the blockbusters that pop up annually, and go after older games way more often. That being said, I see why AA fans hold this game up so high. I played the first and second Phoenix Wright games last year (which I won't review since that was too long ago now) and this is a nice cap to the original Trilogy.

You get Phoenix's background as a dorky bisexual art student, Mia's first case as a defense attorney, and an honestly heartbreaking quest for revenge through Godot while never stooping to melodrama. (I love his theme it sounds like the Mother 3 Magypsies). Also unlike the first two games, there were zero "filler" cases. Each one was thoroughly engaging and moved the plot forward in a meaningful way. Though, I don't begrudge the earlier cases that fuck around a lot more.

Pokemon White 2

When the OG Black and White came out, I was in the "everything new is lame" stage of adolescence, so when the sequels came out I didn't even bother. Turns out I was the lame one for doing so! In hindsight, Pokemon seemed to reach something of a peak with Gen 5 in terms of graphics and gameplay, and would seek to experiment with new artstyles and gimmicks for the next (looks at watch) 11 years damn.

With the first Black and White, it focused on remodeling classic Pokemon designs and gameplay into something new and modern, and these games add back in most of those classic Mons. The plot is also very action-packed and engaging, and gives a satisfying epilogue for a lot of the characters from the first games. You get to see how the region has changed after 3 years and even get to explore some new parts of Unova, similar to how the Gen 2 games handled Kanto. I hope Gamefreak does something like this again in the future.

Kingdom Hearts: Re:Coded

Prepare for a deluge of this series, and not in any conceivable order. Kingdom Hearts took over my heart, mind, and body Xehanort style for the better half of the year. This title is known for a fun variety of gameplay and an absolute dogshit story. I wouldn't really agree. The game switches up its playstyle pretty frequently, including side-scrolling platforming, railshooting, and turn-based combat but for the most part its classic hack-and-slash 3D platforming that feels kind of grindy, but there's multiple unlockable difficulty sliders that you can use to switch it up if you get bored.

Storywise, there's not a lot for newcomers and if you want to play through all the games as one overarching narrative, I wouldn't blame you for skipping this one. However, if you're already a fan of Sora and Riku's relationship, this has quite a bit for someone to dig their teeth into. The world's are all recycled from KH1, making this one of the two games where you can actually explore Destiny Islands, but they all feel pretty downgraded. The endgame gave me a headache.

Kingdom Hearts

Our best boy's first big boot step into adventure. I watched all of the KH cutscenes for all of the games during a particularly dry season of lockdown, so this was my first foray into the original. The story genuinely holds up to a surprising degree, leaning into the Disney elements more than its Squaresoft side for probably the last time in the series. Its really good groundwork for Sora's introduction as a hero, I especially love the assertion towards the end that it is Sora's choice to help others that makes him worthy of the Keyblade and not destiny. Its a theme that would be both muddied and compounded upon later in the series in a pretty interesting way.

I was almost astonished at how in-depth all of the worlds are, especially Traverse Town. There are a lot more little Disney references and sidequests, like the 101 Dalmation quest, that help the worlds all feel a bit more lively. Also NPCs, which later in the series would become a rare gift. I fucked up on the combat. Did not learn how to do spell shortcuts until midway through KH2. Despite that, it was still fun to wack Heartless with my keyblades six different ways, and it makes me excited to replay it at some point.

Kingdom Hearts II

This is the big boy that every KH fan loves to absolute death. Chain of Memories had already started the series tradition of experimental storytelling, but the mainline sequel takes it to an fascinating and well-executed degree. For the first three hours you are forced into playing a new protagonist with zero context and near zero Disney shit. Vivi is there though and we love him for that. Later on we would see this prologue as the tragic conclusion of another entry in the series, but its initial presence here is jarring in a way you have to piece together throughout the rest of the main game. It would also introduce many of the more headache-inducing plot aspects that are fun to dissect but a pain to explain, such as Nobodies. I see them as ghosts, and no one can tell me otherwise. I wrote a whole absurdist retelling about it.

The worlds are more quantity than quality, I'll be real. About half of them are made up of 4 or 5 flat maps with nothing to do except grind Heartless encounters, (e.g. Mulan.) The other half are a bit meatier but could have benefited from more sidequests and such. You revisit quite a few from KH1 to see how they changed and that's always fun. There's a theme to each of the Disney worlds that add to the narrative, in this title mainly being romance and identity. The identity aspect leans toward the relationship between Sora and Roxas, two separate people who are also one person, while the romance theme hints towards the relationship with Sora and Kairi. Oddly enough, both themes also seem to work towards Sora's quest for Riku, who is in the midst of his own identity crisis while Sora desperately tries to find him. Huh. Interesting.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep

This is my favorite Kingdom Hearts game. This was one of the few I was able to play as a teenager and even after all these years I still adore this game to death. It works without knowing anything else about Kingdom Hearts. You don't need to know about Ansems or Nobodies or Time Travel; none of that shit. This is the story of three friends that get torn apart by their own ignorance and one bitter old man on his quest to change the world. Its one story split among three perspectives, and each character you play through the game with you understand the grander narrative. You understand why Aqua's best friend snapped at her, why Terra's little brother is so ready to die. You also get to hear Leonard Nemoy yell "KEYBLADE" in the same cutscene three different times.

I love this game so so much dammit. The combat has a fun collection system where you earn action commands and combine them to make better attacks and healing moves. The worlds in the latter half of the game are also really creative and fun to explore, though you get a limited area to move around in for each character. If you have played previous KH entries, there's a lot of references to make you point at the screen and go "THAS AXEL THAS MY BOY HE'S A LIL GUY HERE." Anyway I'll shut up. Play this game.

Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance

Never ask me to explain the plot of this game. They added Inception to Kingdom Hearts and also Time Travel. And the story is mostly told through unlockable backstory cutscenes including the premise. Yes, the introduction to this game's story is an unlockable. Despite this, the story is pretty effective. This is Riku's second time in the spotlight since Reverse/Rebirth, though the game is once again split between him and Sora. It dissects Riku's character arc in a similar way to Re:Coded, except uhh this one isn't a computer simulation, he is a Dream. Completely different. It asserts his desire to continue as Sora's protector, and realizing this it is him who ultimately triumph's over Angst Teen Xehanort, saves Sora and passes the Key Test. He's no longer on his Way to the Dawn. He's in the light. It's sweet.

The worlds in this game are based around vertical movement. There's a new Parkour mechanic that lets you wall-step-flip around basically everywhere, and to compensate this the worlds are Huge. Since they're dreams, that also means they're pretty empty of anything to really do or explore. They are pretty at least. There's also a pokemon mechanic where you collect lil guys. I did not realize this mechanic also determines Riku and Sora's stats until the final boss, which caught me off guard. I see why this is a lot of people's fave KH game of all time, but its a little too busy for me.

The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages

This is an odd one. I first played this game two years ago at college alongside Oracle of Seasons in my spare time. Eventually my phone-I MEAN MY AUTHENTIC GAME BOY COLOR- broke and I thought I lost my save data for both. Turns out I did not and finished through the last few dungeons. This game makes solid use of the time travel mechanic, which is a mix of Ocarina's time travel and Alttp's world jumping. It's fun to jump sporadically between 1000s of years and see the world in different eras. That rock? Used to be slightly over to the left. Would you look at that.

The dungeons had a larger focus on puzzles in comparison with Season's love for combat, which is probably why this is the more beloved twin. Some of the dungeons had me waddling back and forth for too long until I figured out what to do. You can link these games up to get bonus items like the Biggoron's Sword which is fun to complete. After beating both games, you get an extra final boss against Ganon and a scene hinting towards the beginning of Link's Awakening, which is a nice touch. And then Nintendo declared them two separate Links, for some reason. Beh.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D

Oh hey. One of the most beloved games of all time. I have played through this games more times than I know. Probably around like. 6 times I used to boot this game up and play all the way up to the Forest Temple and then restart for some reason, I don't know how many times I actually got to the end.

Its a game that eases you into its idyllic fantasy world before dropping you headfirst into the apocalypse you inadvertently caused in your quest to destroy evil. Its never a melodramatic game though. Its about the loss of innocence. Maturity. Learning that the evil was always there, before the King of Thieves took over the world, before you were even born. It even came from the place you are trying to protect. But there was always goodness too, there was always light. There are always friends to be found in dark places. The style and presentation are peak. The dungeons are rich in aesthetics and well made puzzles. The time travel mechanic is honestly a bit undercooked. But this game is fantastic. Quintessential Zelda.

The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventure

I straight-up forgot I played this. Its fun though. Its a relatively short game, but compared to its predecessor, its a huge improvement. The game plays out in stages like the first Four Swords game, but usually in explorable environments, like towns and forests rather than generic volcano and cave themes. You control all Four Links at once, moving them into different formations to move rocks or put fires out. Or you can do it with friends controlling each Link. I did not. :(

I was mainly interested in this games story from a lore perspective. It features the return of Vaati, the Wind Creep who Lova Da Ladies, but with the addition of the Rise of Ganondorf. You are sent to stop him from a wise owl, Ganon allies himself with Deku Scrubs, attacks the Gorons, and is eventually turned into a monster by his own lust for power. It seems more and more like a retelling of Ocarina in a different light. Eh. Maybe I'll write about my Zelda timeline theories in a different post. Not here though

Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory

BACK TO KH BABY! This is a rhythm game, so I don't have too much to say. I've never really played any rhythm game before this, and I'm not sure if this one is on par with the more well-known rhythm titles out there, but I had a good time with it. Its great for people who like Kingdom Hearts music, lmao. You have a lot of unlockable character groups to play through the music with and level them up, but once I unlocked the Days trio I didn't really go for the others too much. Xion my beloved.

The story is hilariously shallow, almost insulted considering its Kairi's first solo outing, technically. She's on her quest to learn all the KH lore she missed out on, and eventually finds a repressed memory of a grown adult monologuing at a toddler for fifteen minutes. Also that her boyfriend is alive so that her boyfriend's boyfriend can go save him. Her boyfriend's boyfriend is also her boyfriend. Fight me.

Kingdom Hearts III

People were. So upset when this game came out. Acted like it was the biggest disappointment since the ill-fated economic crisis of '07. Sure, yea, that's a reference. Well this is the first time I've gone into it and I'm here to say this is probably among my favorite KH games of all time. Strong competitor with BBS. A lot of the criticisms of the story and gameplay weren't wrong per-say, but the issues with this game, such a goofy dialogue, bizarre pacing, and over complicated exposition dumps, are problems with the entire series that fans of the series, in my opinion, have come to see as endearing elements of Kingdom Hearts. Its funny to watch the big cloak guy point at Sora and say "Darkness Light Heart Darkness," and see Sora gasp in fear, while also realizing the importance of that dialogue to the story. It's a feature, not a bug.

The worlds in this game are its biggest asset. They are huge, heavily detailed, heavily explorable areas with tons to discover. Hell, the Pirates of the Caribbean world acts as a slightly smaller Wind Waker. The game adds in most of the mechanics from all the spin offs to give you a lot of toys to play with, such as parkour or sharpshooting, that are easy to forget but a treat to use when you actually remember them.

A central theme of each of the Disney worlds is happy endings. Hercules finally takes down Hades for good. Mike and Sully are able to visit Boo without risk to her safety. The dead Baymax from that one Disney movie gets a redemption arc. Frozen and Tangled play out exactly as their movie which is kind of boring. This correlates with the happy endings the rest of the supporting cast get to experience, including the initially tragedies of the BBS and Days trio in scenes that genuinely got tears out of me. But Sora doesn't get a happy ending. He sacrifices himself to strong-arm everyone else into their perfect circumstance. Literally breaks the rules of time and space to force the universe into saving his friends at the cost of his own life. And then Hell turns out to be Tokyo so its not all that bad. It makes you feel for the boy. This game also lets you play as Kairi in the DLC which makes me happy.

Alright ending this here. I've played way too many games this year this isn't even half. Also only including games I've finished, and games with definitive endings. I played Mario Kart 7 but that doesn't rlly end, ya know? Will try to write these weekly, even if no ones reading them. But if you do read them tell me what you think! Gonna switch over to books next week to even it out. I swear I don't just play games. This is the last Kingdom Hearts game on this list too I swear.

[atwas-meme-ing]

Ok, so, since the Wii U and 3ds shops are gonna close down soon, I'm on a mission to collect all the fun Wii U and 3ds games I can find. Here's a list of what I think are some of the best download-only Wii U and 3ds games that I've found. I think most of these may also be on Switch, Steam, or other platforms. And a lot of these are available on both 3ds and Wii U.

3ds

All of the Sonic Game Gear/Master system games that are on 3ds: Sonic 1 and 2, Sonic Blast, Sonic Labyrinth, Triple Trouble, and Tails Adventure. If you don't have the original machines to play them on, then this is the best way to play these. Works so much better than online emulators.

Pretty much anything by Circle and Skipmore. So, the Witch and Hero trilogy, Fairune, Drancia Saga, Ambition of the Slimes. I know I'm forgetting some, but just filter by publisher and look up Circle and Skipmore. All their games are just sooooo fun. Most of them are pretty simple, you can get through them in a few hours, but you really should clear a few hours out of a single day when you sit down to play one because they are highly addictive. Especially Witch and Hero.

Quell: Memento. This is a fun puzzle game with a bittersweet story about a crotchety, old, reclusive man. Your goal is to get him to open up about his life.

Steamworld. Get the whole series, if you can. They are mostly platformer, metroidvania, and/or puzzle styled games where you play as steam-powered robots.

Legend of Dark Witch. Multiple ways to play, side-scrolling platformer game with some magical shooter elements.

Kingdom's Item Shop. This is so cute- you run a shop for magical and heroic items, and you have to go out and fight monsters to get more ingredients. You also get to craft new items.

Alchemic Dungeons. Nothing but dungeons, and you craft what you need as you go along.

Alphadia. High fantasy RPG, but with bioengineering sci-fi story elements.

Severed. Action game with dungeons where you sever monsters' limbs to get upgrades. Not as gross as it sounds.

Excave. It's a trilogy. Dungeon crawler. Cuz, come on, how can you not love dungeon crawlers?

Cursed ex Castilla. Basically a Ghosts 'n Goblins clone, but with its own story. And you can save your place, so that alone makes it worth it XD

Adventure Labyrinth Story. Another dungeon crawler.

Kemco RPG's. There's a bunch of them, and they all have good stories: ASH, Infinite Dunamis, Justice Chronicles... like I said, there's a bunch. Each one puts its own spin on the battle mechanincs.

Ninja Usagimaru. A series of puzzle games where you have to push, pull, and throw blocks to rescue villagers and defeat the monsters. Reminds me of an old block-pushing puzzle game I played years ago and can't remember the name of. Anyway, Usagimaru is fun.

Wii U

1001 Spikes. I'm pretty sure there's more spikes than that in this game X'D. NES-inspired pixel art action game. Get the treasure and escape, but don't stand in one place for too long.

Alphadia Genesis. Prequal to Alphadia (which I mentioned above for 3ds).

More Steamworld games.

Axiom Verge. It honestly looks like a Metroid clone, but Axiom Verge is its own story and has its own rules of gameplay and mechanics. And it ain't easy, by any means.

Bit Dungeon. Dungeon crawler. Yup, that's it, just dungeons. Go ahead, go nuts.

Dragon Fantasy. Highly comedic high fantasy RPG where you play as a bald, middle-aged former hero. There's a whole series. Looks like it was inspired by Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Earthbound.

Defend Your Crypt. This game is backwards! So, usually, you would play as someone trying to break into a crypt to steal treasures, right? Well, in this game, you play as the ghost of a pharaoh who has to activate the traps to avoid getting his treasures stolen. Pixel-art.

Freedom Planet. Now, I know this game's on Steam and Switch, but if you have a little room on your Wii U and not on your Switch, you might want to try it. It's adorable, the characters are funny, the story is good, and it is so heavily inspired by Sega Genesis games.

Human Resource Machine. Stupid little game about the fundamentals of programming. Fun for anyone trying to learn computer science.

Master Reboot and Soul Axiom. These two are a set. They're somewhat minimalized first-person exploration/puzzle games set in one of those storylines where people have uploaded their consciousness into the cloud.

Space Hunted. As far as I know, this is ONLY on Wii U (and it may be the only game in my list that is only on Wii U). If you like the old NES sci-fi games, you HAVE to get this one! If it didn't have a copyright date of 2017, I would have sworn this was an original NES game. Not only are the music and the art true to the era, but it has a very simplistic menu style and it is just as hard as any NES sci-fi shootout I've ever tried.

NES Remix. You have the option to play missions and whole levels from the biggest NES hits (Mario, Kirby, Kid Icarus, Zelda, and more), but the real fun is the Remix levels. Some of them involve characters from one game ending up in another (so you have things like Mario's Boos chasing Kirby), while others have mixed-up versions of the original levels, like reversed or silhouetted levels. (The Kirby egg-eating level drove me nuts because the camera pans in closer and closer with every egg.) I do believe that NES Remix 1, 2, and Ultimate are only on 3ds and Wii U.

Nihilumbra. A spot of darkness escapes from the void and discovers beauty, life, and color, but he eventually develops an existential crisis as he realizes the void will destroy everything in its past as it attempts to reclaim him.

Xeodrifter. Hard. NES-inspired pixel art. Another game that reminds me of Metroid, but the art style is not cloned.

Swords and Soldiers. Strategy battle game, so stupid and hilarious and adorable. Pretty sure there's a whole series, I've only got the first one.

Pixel Slime U. Obviously developed by a true sadist. Pixel art, but there's no way you could confuse this with a retro NES game. Every level has a gimmick- some spin, some are upside-down, some switch from upside-down to right-side-up, and those are the easy ones. Only play if you're a glutton for punishment and you don't get motion sickness. I think it's only on Wii U, so get it while you can.

Olympia Rising. Play as the soul of a warrior trying to escape the rising ocean of acid in Hades. A bit tough.

Twisted Fusion. You've been transported to a world in the sky where all the monsters are allergic to water, so you use water guns to destroy them. And your character's phone has all these apps they can use to upgrade. Gameplay isn't too dynamic, but the setting of the game makes it enjoyable.

Castle Storm. Tower defense. Funny cutscenes, good graphics. Medieval knights vs. barbaric Vikings. But are the Vikings really that barbaric? And is it possible there's a traitor among Sir Gareth's men? Play to find out!

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams. The punk sister is stuck in the cutesy world and the cutesy sister is stuck in the punk world. Switch back and forth between them to escape back to reality.

Knytt Underground. Mountain-climbing game- you can climb walls like in Celeste, but there's no stamina limit (also no dash). Journey through the post-apocalyptic underground world as both a mute human and a bouncy ball to ring the 6 bells that will prevent the world from dying. I think Knytt might actually be a series, but this is the first one I've found.

And I'm actually still collecting and intend to get as many as I can right up until the shops close down. Will try to remember to update this list as I find more.

[discet]

I hope this fanfic creates a fandom ngl!

What games do you play (any type)?

That would be wild. Feels like that sometimes when I get fanart for it and stuff ^-^

I play a lot of games, table top included but Ill focus on video games here.

I really like platformers both 3d and 2d. Celeste, Hollow Knight, A Hat in Time, Tinykin, Rogue Legacy 2, and Shovel Knight are some of my most obsessively played games in the last few years. There is something so satisfying about a game with satisfying movement

I really enjoy roguelites such as Hades, Rogue Legacy 2, Into the Breech, and Binding of Issac have all been favs. Something about honing your skills and building up to overcome a great obsticle feels great. Clearing Heat 36 in Hades was one of my proudest moments as a gamer.

I also have enjoyed every Super Giant Game that has come out Bastion, Hades, and Pyre all being bangers. I also really enjoyed Transistor mechanically, even if I have some misgivings about its story.

Story focused games are hit or miss for me, but when they hit they hit hard. Night in the Woods and Beacon Pines were both delightful stories to explore.

The Return of Obra Din is in my top 10 absolutely, even though trying to categorize it is difficult. It's really its own thing.

I'm not big into Character Action games with the huge exception of the Soulslike games by Fromsoft. Sekiro is definitely my favorite among them, but I enjoyed all the Dark Souls and Elden Ring quite a lot. Haven't played much of Bloodborne tragically do to a lack of PS4.

I really loved Fallout 3 and especially New Vegas, but soured on Fallout 4. I also liked my playthroughs of Skyrim back in the day. RPG's that allow me to really immerse myself are my jam.

I also just love most of Valve's shooter catalogue. Half Life, Portal, and Team Fortress 2 were my top tier games in high school. Portal 2 remains one of my favorite games of all time. I liked the first 2 bioshocks for similar reasons (Infinity mostly pissed me off)

Oh I used to be huge into strategy games. Total War Series, Civilization, Fire Emblem, Advanced Wars, X-Com, Humankind. They used to be my obsession. I haven't played them as much lately, but they still hold a place in my heart.

...

Wow! I had a lot more to say than I thought. Thanks for this Ask Anon, it was fun thinking back on a hobby I've put so much time into.

[kieuecaprie]

KieueCaprie's List of Games Finished in 2023: Entry 10

tfw Tumblr still doesn't have spoiler tags because there's a bunch of games in this entry that I want to talk about in full.

#26: Etrian Odyssey 1 HD

Finished When? 11/7/23

What's Finished? Main Story

Platform? PC

I didn't get into the Etrian Odyssey franchise until the 3DS era with Etrian Odyssey 4, which was pretty good by the way. I enjoyed creating my own party of adventurers and going out into the world to slay monsters and solve the mysteries of Yggdrasil (or whatever World Tree they explore through).

Then I moved onto Etrian Odyssey Untold, which was a remake of EO1 with a more story-focused cast of characters but with an option to play the game in Classic Mode. I also liked the it.

And then I fell off. Not because I hated the series but because other things took my attention and it fell by the wayside.

Then cue Atlus saying they're porting Etrain Odyssey 1, 2, and 3 to PC and now it caught my interest again, especially due to the fact that there's a potential for modding in there! So I picked up the bundle and started playing with EO1HD.

I will say that it was fine, I was treading old ground so nothing was really new to me and while I still like it, I feel like it has parts where it overstays its welcome, especially towards the end, and, of course, the music was just the classic music, not Untold, which kinda sucks but whatever.

It's fine for what it is and I can now say I've completed a version of classic EO1.

Now, I just wish Picnic mode wasn't super heavy-handed in its changes to enemies because taking 20% damage from them seems too much. Atlus REALLY loves making their beginner modes SUPER easy for some reason and I don't know why they do this.

#27: My Friendly Neighborhood

Finished When? 19/7/23

What's Finished? Story

Platform? PC, Steam

This game was on my radar for quite a while ever since that one Steam Next Fest (I think?) had a demo for it, on top of seeing tweets (sorry, X-cretes) of it on my feed of the developer working on bits and pieces of it.

When it finally came out, I went to go pick it up and while the price was a little higher than I initially expected, I'm glad to have paid the price of admission for it! The characters are memorable (I mean, they are when you have to listen to them prattle on about the mail for the entire playthrough), the gameplay feels like I'm playing a Resident Evil (not the super action-packed ones) except with puppets and the fact that there are cheats in a game in 2023 is something that I never thought I'd see.

On top of that, I enjoyed how it essentially deconstructs the whole mascot horror formula and makes its own where the mascots in question aren't out to kill you, at least, it seems that way, and aren't trying to eat your pancreas or whatever.

This game is great and would definitely sit on my list of favorite games this year.

#28: Pikmin 4

Finished When? 22/7/23 (First completion), 24/7/23 (True 100%)

What's Finished? Game complete, True 100%

Pikmin is one of my favorite Nintendo franchises that I wished did not get shot in the head by a game that just feels tedious. Fortunately, Nintendo finally dug up the grave and brought it back to life (Now do it for Chibi-Robo, PLEASE.) for Pikmin 4, something that took 10 years to add a dog.

I played the demo and loved it, even went out of my way to not meet the 1500 sparklium limit just so I could experience all the caves, the controls feel great, Oatchi is baby and I love himb, and the levels you have to go through are quite beautiful to see on the Switch, all of this running on Unreal Engine too.

I have quite a bit more to say about this game so I'm gonna have to say that there's a Read More below that will spoil Pikmin 4 for you if you click on it. (EDIT: lmao nevermind, clicking expand on the post in the feed also expands the read more so now I have to make a separate post)

#29: Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

Finished When? 1/8/23

What's Finished? Normal Mode Story

Platform? PC, Steam

When I first heard this game was only coming to PS5, I unanimously decided to just.. not. Just not. This was because I could not get my hands on a PS5 and that it was terribly expensive and getting a console for one singular game these days feels like a waste, so I decided to just not talk about this game so as to avoid the algorithm.

This was so I wouldn't get spoiled on anything beyond what was shown in trailers and also so I wouldn't get an ALL BOSSES & ENDING (NO DAMAGE) video on my Youtube feed by some jerk who decided to plaster the face of the final boss in the middle circle and call it a day. Surprisingly, this actually worked and I never heard about this game again.

Then Sony decided to port it to PC and I jumped on it because now I can actually play it. Of course, I decided to wait until I was done with Pikmin 4 first before I moved on and I'm glad I did.

I'm really glad that I was lucky enough to have a PC that could just power through some of the issues the game had, although it still had a few issues such as geometry not loading in and the occasional time where I would clip through the ground and die for no good reason, but I was able to play through the game from start to finish.

Was it worth not spoiling myself for however many years? Probably. It was a short game but I got my money's worth. Rivet is cute, Ratchet is great as ever, and the fact that the game completely ignores the remaster of the first game is also great, mostly because that game kind of ruins Ratchet's character development that he went through.

Also, on my birthday, I was given a Dualsense controller (Lemme say that I didn't know what I wanted for my birthday, it's hard to do so these days...) and I must say the adaptive triggers did change up the gameplay quite a bit, priming a shot with a half-press and clicking it all the way in to fire. I initially thought it'd be overhyped as all hell but no, it felt pretty good to use, add to the fact that it has touchpads much like the Dualshock 4, which means that it'd be the perfect companion to my Steam Deck as well as enabling a much easier time of gyro gaming on PC (one of my issues with gyro gaming was simply not having an easy way to toggle the gyro on and off and I was not about to give up one of the face buttons for gyro-ratcheting).

All in all, game's great, was worth the wait, and I'm surprised at how well it ran and looked on the Steam Deck running at 30 FPS @ 800p. Perhaps I judged 30 FPS too harshly.

#30: Nerf Arena Blast

Finished When? 5/8/23

What's Finished? Single-player campaign

What prompted me to play this? Why did I choose to play this? Simple. Nostalgia, among other things.

This is probably one of the times where nostalgia really screwed me over.

The feel of the game is great, I loved the 90's aesthetic of there being some sort of nerf arena and playing as an up-and-coming team, the first few levels were pretty nice to play through too, but that's where everything kind of stops.

Also, this game is... well.. it's a game filled with slow-moving projectiles and bots that are dumb as bricks one minute and ultra try-hards the next is not my idea of fun. Not to mention that the game began to feel tedious as I kept pushing through the campaign.

Sure, I'm probably asking for a lot from a licensed kids game from the 90's/00's but Unreal Tournament had a lot more to offer than just deathmatch, ballhoopmatch, and speedrun, I wish they had done more than just those modes.

Speaking of the modes, I've found Ballblast to be extremely tedious to play through. It felt like it'd drag on and on and on and on and on and on until someone FINALLY finds the six dragon balls, shoots them through a hoop, and then collects the seventh one and shoots it through a hoop to FINALLY end the game. I have to ask, who the hell decided it would be a good idea to make it UNTIMED? There's a VERY good reason why objective gamemodes with the ability to disrupt those capturing has a timer, it's so that, at the end, the game can end and the winner be found.

But these games could drag on for ages, compounded by the fact that the bots, despite being masterful gods of leading projectiles, are stupid, somehow even dumber than Unreal Tournament's bots, and will take forever to go to the hoop and shoot balls into a hole.

BUT, I will give credit where credit is due, Pointblast, which is deathmatch but points, is a neat idea where you go around slaying people like normal BUT they drop points that you have to pick up BUT it can also be stolen meaning that you could get 1st place killed and steal the 1000 point drop from someone else. I like this idea, I like how it essentially changes the pace from sitting around camping to a more frantic slugfest, which I appreciate because when I played through Unreal Tournament, most of my problems could be solved with either a Flak Cannon to the face or pulling out the sniper rifle and just headshotting everyone from a safe place.

Speedblast is... interesting. I like the idea of running through the map, shooting others to stop them from capturing checkpoints, and finishing before everyone else. Maybe it's just me, really, because while I do like the idea of it, the execution was often less than stellar and the maps that had ways to disrupt without having to kill people were very few and that kind of makes me sad. Is it a stupid gamemode? Yes but I applaud the devs of the time for trying to make something new for a change.

All in all, this game is very flawed and somewhat poorly aged but it has some decent points to it and I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy my time with it at all. I really did have at least a bit of fun with it, even though I did not appreciate the game quitting on me after I finished the final level and it blasting my ears off with the ultra-loud video that plays.

And it also has a niche cult following that helpfully has a community patch that allows it to be played on modern systems, so clearly it has something going for it that I may not have found for myself. And that's okay, you know?

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[francostrider]

The Lost Culture of Handhelds

I got my Gameboy Color for my birthday in 1999. It was a bit late as far as that handheld went with the Game Boy Advance just a year or two away, but it was not an uneventful time. Pokemon Gold was coming out soon, Link’s Awakening DX was released the year prior, and Nintendo was riding high after notable titles, especially The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in ‘98. And as is often the case for a late comer, I had an extensive library to choose from for my Xmas and birthday lists, from Mega Man Xtreme 1 & 2 to Bionic Commando.

But even at the time I did not realize the impact that birthday gift would have in the years to come. I am the youngest of three brothers, and we were close in age. As a result, while I did still enjoy my console games, we were still dividing TV time between the three of us. So, when the TV was occupied, my gameboy was readily available. While the middle child also got a GBC, handhelds were always more my thing than anyone else in the household.

By its name, Game “Boy” has a rather diminutive connotation. This wasn’t for the big games, surely. This is the stuff on the side, while the bigger games were doing their bigger graphics and bigger presentations. Where there was Ocarina of Time, the handheld had the smaller Link’s Awakening.

In a manner of speaking, this was sort of true. There were a lot of side stories and spin offs on the hand helds. The aforementioned  Mega Man Xtreme 1 & 2 was typically forgotten in the main line Mega Man X games (except for X6, of all games), and Link’s Awakening was carrying on Zelda’s tradition of weird spin offs to their main event games (such as Majora’s Mask). And, of course, these games were made at lower costs than anything on consoles.

But this was not just the diet coke version of gaming. Pokemon was strictly a hand held title, save for some addons like Pokemon Stadium or spin offs like Snap!. Several series were exclusive and expected to be handheld. This was not the usual casual game you see on phones nowadays. The GBA would have Boktai, a game specifically designed to be carried outside in the sunlight as part of its core gameplay.

In fact, the Game Boy Advanced is where, for myself at least, things really got off the ground. This is where Castlevania continued its Metroidvania style games (and which introduced me to the series). A whole sequel series to Mega Man X, Mega Man Zero, was released on this platform. The west was more formally introduced to Fire Emblem through Eliwood’s game on here. There was Golden Sun, an RPG which mixed turn based combat and Zelda like puzzles, and even had a system to carry on levels, inventory and other information to its sequel, much like a Bioware game. Metroid’s main series was carried on through Fusion. And, because I would not forgive myself if I forgot, we had Ninja Five-O, a great game that was in stores for about two minutes before being pulled from shelves.

Besides Golden Sun and Ninja Five-O were these mainline games in their respective franchises? Well, that’s an interesting question. Two Castlevania games were released on the PS2, but are often considered inferior to their GBA counterparts. Mega Man X on the PS2 suffered a similar legacy, next to Zero and Battle Network. Fire Emblem would have Path of Radiance on the Gamecube, which was well received, but the series would continue to shine on handhelds, through the 3DS era and into Three Houses. Metroid Prime is often considered superior to Fusion, but Prime is also in a weird position of spin off/separate continuity.

But on the other side of the coin, the GBA would break a lot of traditions from the main line series. Only one of the three Castlevania games would star a Belmont, and none of them played like the original games. Mega Man Zero was an action platformer, but is far less defined by the classic tradition of stealing a boss’s powers. Fire Emblem on the GBA had nothing to do with Marth or the other areas around Archenea.

So, while it would be unfair to brush these handhelds as “side content”, they were often breaks from form. They were a lot more experimental within the already established franchises that were released on these platforms. And not just the established names either. The aforementioned Boktai did things only a handheld could do.

But it’s not just experimentation that defined this subculture of gaming. With the push to 3D in the PS1 to PS2 era, allowing for more cinematic presentations (such as Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid), the GBA was still using 2D gameplay and graphics. While the GBA was a graphical improvement over the GBC, they were still not where the biggest budget was going toward. So, with less time and effort toward cutscenes, the hand helds were very gameplay focused.

This is telling in Golden Sun. This game was meant to invoke the RPGs of the SNES, but it does not take long at all to get to the meat of the game, between its puzzles and its combat. Mega Man Zero basically throws you into the action after a very short cutscene. The Castlevania games take a precious few moments to exstablish setting and characters before your first enemy encounter. While Metal Gear Solid, Devil May Cry, and Final Fantasy were spending a lot of time with their cutscenes, the Game Boy Advance often cut to the chase.

The lower costs also led to a larger library and more frequent releases. Mega Man Zero had an overarching story across four games with yearly releases. Each of the three Castlevania games were released fairly close to each other and had their own twists on the formula, and three more would be released for DS. Across three handheld platforms (GBA, DS and 3DS), Fire Emblem had 8 releases. Fire Emblem Fates (that mess) had three whole game length scenarios and was released only a year before the much superior, more narratively consistent Fire Emblem Echoes. Meanwhile, the Switch only had one, and there is talk of the console being retired soon. And these are just the ones I was into. I haven’t even mentioned the many Mario, Yoshi and other properties that were released here. The turnover rate for quite a number of series’ was remarkably quick. 

This mix of lower costs, freedom to experiment, and immediacy granted handhelds their own culture in the gaming world. Before the indy-game market took flight, this was the place to find the smaller titles that were low on presentation but dedicated to their gameplay loops. While 3D graphics would be introduced a generation later, this culture carried on. The DS would introduce a touch screen, exploring more avenues for controls and options. Castlevania would carry on through this platform, and Mega Man Zero would get a sequel series in ZX. While the Wii had an overall mixed legacy, the DS was still carrying on what we loved about hand helds.

And then things started to change during the 3DS era. Now, let me start by saying that some of my favorite titles are on this platform. While I did get Eliwood’s game when it came out, it wasn’t until after playing Awakening did I go through the whole series and fell in love with it. Fates sullied that a bit, but Echoes redeemed that so fair’s fair. I loved Shinobi 3D, it introduced me to Monster Hunter, and this is where the series would get a lot of its success.

But here’s where things changed. The 3DS was also a major system for remakes and rereleases. Two Dragon Quest games were rereleased. We had the remakes of Fire Emblem Gaiden and Metroid II. Xenoblade Chronicles would get a release here after its Wii tenure. And there was also a very active Virtual Console (and the rerelease of many much older games) on this system through its store. A lot of ports, but not a lot of new exclusives. Castlevania really went downhill during this time, and Megaman basically imploded due to a lot of internal drama, resulting in the suddenly cancelled Megaman Legends 3. Those are two major forces that had made the handhelds fun with very little to show during this generation. There were the first party games, but the third party I fell in love with had little to show.

Now, I loved Dragon Quest VIII, the rereleases and so much about the 3DS. The immediacy was still there. But it was a point where things started to converge. Suddenly, there was very little limiting a handheld as graphical fidelity became more accessible on smaller systems. More and more gaming was digital only, and the divide was slowly melting away. I used to think that the DS was a transitional period, but, no, that honor went to the 3DS.

And then we had the release of the Switch, and the two worlds had truly met. There was no more divide between Nintendo’s main line and the experimental. The line is two blurred with the switch acting as both console and handheld. This begs the question: Has the culture truly been lost?

Before I try to answer this, I am trying not to be a nostalgia blinded downer. There are games I am looking forward to, of today and yesteryear and I don’t think the medium will ever truly die. It has its ups and downs, like all other mediums.

The immediacy has remained intact. Breath of the Wild is notable for cutting through console-Zelda’s endless tutorials and throwing you into the action. As did Metroid Dread. But Fire Emblem: Three Houses has added a lot of unnecessary fluff and I not would call it a step forward. But overall, I feel that the massive wad of tutorials and long intro cutscenes had been downsized in favor of more immersive, elegant ways of easing a player in.

With the indy game market now the way it is, the Switch does have a larger third party than a number of its predecessors. The Switch store is becoming like steam with the number of indy titles that come in. And, yes, they are gameplay focused, lower budget affairs.

But what really changed is what the major publishers are doing. And this does not just apply to hand helds. The major publishers are not as willing to do smaller projects as before. There are indy projects and major releases, but the middle class is basically gone.

Example: While Breath of the Wild has a sequel on the way, I do not see another Link’s Awakening, Link Between Worlds, Phantom Hourglass, Minish Cap or other small experimental game coming to the series anytime soon. Yes, Majora’s Mask was one of the more interesting Zelda titles, but there was still a difference between that and Link’s Awakening. Too much money goes into a release from a major publisher to indulge the weirder projects.

But it would be unfair to say that the current audience is deprived. It’s not so much that games of these sizes are gone. Instead, its more that the landscape has changed. The barrier to access for indies has basically diminished. Where you would need a major publisher before, all you need is knowledge and expertise to get something out there. It is a flooded market, granted and the meritocracy has its ups and downs. But search long enough for a given genre and you’ll find something you’re looking for. 

And while Nintendo might not be as interested in small projects, the middle ground budgets are not entirely vacant. Kickstarter has had a mixed history, but things like Bloodstained captured that era very well. While the times are fraught with looter shooters, skinner boxes, and the toxic side of gaming, there is still a demand for various other genres. So, no, the culture is not lost, just transformed. Like how the internet has dispersed cultural norms from what was being enforced by TV, it has done the same to gaming.

It is hard to describe in words why I feel the end of the classic hand helds when, objectively, access to games has never been easier. Yes, I will admit it is mostly nostalgia. But the point of this article is not to decry the downfall of gaming (even if I have my own gripes on the current state of things). Rather, it is to give a perspective on a specific subculture in gaming history. It is to give light upon a era that the youngest of us had never even seen. And, perhaps, give a little context for the path of how gaming got to this point now. I could go over the whys and hows, but those are subjects in and of themselves.

There’s probably a number of kids in the back of their parents’ cars, on a switch with a brand new game they got for Christmas. And they’re hopefully not going through it with the same stigma against them as my generation. And, honestly, good on em!

Thank you for indulging me on this nostalgia trip. Happy Holidays!

[nectarine-sketches]

an introduction

I'm nectarine-sketches, AKA jaye. I post my art (digital and paper), maybe my writing, and perhaps more sporadically some other stuff I'm interested in like my sims 4 builds, 3D models, or stuff I've handmade/crafted. I also like music, games and photography.

my pronouns are he/she and I'm 18. I'm also bi.

I'm currently interested in and am likely to post about -

five nights at freddy's, especially the aftons.

the last of us (games and hbo), especially ellie.

stranger things, especially will (expect some general s3/4 slander. boooooo 👎).

my OCs and WIPs. I'll make a post introducing them at some point

some more dormant hyperfixations and stuff maybe idk 💀 or, at the very least, fanart of my favourite characters from them for nostalgia's sake. we will see.

important:

if you dislike or are against any of the aforementioned then please don't follow. I just want to talk about and share stuff I think is cool, I'm not looking for arguments or hate.

please note that I do NOT condone any morally wrong actions or opinions of creators/other people associated with the above.

I may post/repost art featuring horror/blood/mild gore due to the nature of my fandoms. please don't follow if you're uncomfortable with this!

reblogs are much appreciated :) but do NOT repost, on tumblr on any other platforms. please ask me if you would like to use my posts for anything I've not mentioned.

don't follow if:

you are homophobic, lesbiphobic, transphobic, or generally anti-queer at all.

you are a "MAP". get the fuck out

you glorify self harm, eating disorder, suicide, etc.

I can't think of much else at the moment. dont be a creep, don't be a shitty person. yep. sounds quite reasonable

ok anyway thank you for reading!

[allsonicgames]

Sonic the Hedgehog 3D Action Game

Original Platform: Board Game

Original Release: 1994

Available to buy: No

I managed to track down a copy of this board game, so have been able to play the physical version – unfortunately, Tabletop Simulator isn’t built for games like this, so I’m not sure if it’s currently possible to “back up”, but I’ve taken photos to use as reference anyway.

While this game is very simple, it has the most “Sonic” feel to it, and even includes platforming. You have to make it through a stage then defeat a boss. Moving is simple, you spin the spinner and move that amount. You collect any rings you land on. If you land on an enemy space, you’ll lose all your rings. If you have no rings, you’ll lose an extra life.

Once you reach the bottom of the lower layer, you’ll reach the flipper. You need to get Sonic to the second level (where you land on the second level doesn’t matter, you’ll move to the first spot no matter what). Fail and you’ll have to try again. If you land in the river or outside the game box, you’ll also lose a life.

Once you make it to the second level, you’ll do a circle and then reach Dr Robotnik. On his area, if the spinner points as Sonic (on anyone’s turn), you lose a life. Get past and you’ll need to use the flipper again, aiming for the 3rd level to win.

It’s a very simple game and there’s not really any choices to make, but the tiered nature and the use of the flipper makes it somewhat fun, especially for kids.

[yourlocal3dexpert]

Why 3D Animation Services Are Essential for Modern Storytelling

In today's digital era, storytelling has evolved far beyond traditional methods. With the rise of technology, visual narratives now dominate, giving storytellers new tools to create more immersive and engaging stories. One such tool that has become indispensable is 3D animation. From blockbuster films to interactive advertisements, 3D animation has redefined how stories are told, capturing audiences' imaginations in ways never before possible.

The Evolution of Storytelling

Throughout history, storytelling has adapted to new mediums. What began as oral traditions transitioned into written texts, radio, television, and eventually, digital platforms. Today, the shift toward 3D animation services is the latest phase in this evolution, allowing for more complex, visually appealing narratives that appeal to modern audiences. Whether for entertainment, education, or advertising, the depth and engagement that 3D animation provides cannot be matched by traditional methods.

How 3D Animation Enhances Narrative Depth

A key advantage of 3D animation services is the ability to build entire worlds that feel real and alive. Unlike 2D animations or live-action, 3D animation gives creators full control over every detail, from lighting to the physics of how characters move. This depth allows for more intricate storytelling, making even the most fantastical stories feel authentic and relatable.

For example, Pixar and DreamWorks are masters of using 3D animation to create universes with their own rules, but at the same time, the emotions and experiences of the characters resonate with real-world experiences. Through 3D animation, characters can express emotions in a more exaggerated yet nuanced way, making it easier for audiences to connect with them on an emotional level.

3D Animation in Marketing and Advertising

It's not just films and video games that have benefited from the rise of 3D animation services. Marketers and advertisers have also recognized the power of animated storytelling in capturing consumers' attention. In a world where brands compete for attention, animation helps them stand out.

With 3D animation, businesses can explain complex products or services more effectively by visually demonstrating how they work. This method is especially beneficial in industries such as healthcare, technology, and engineering, where explaining intricate details is crucial. Explainer videos, product demos, and even promotional campaigns have all become more dynamic and engaging thanks to 3D animations.

The Role of 3D Animation in Education

Education has also embraced 3D animation services as an essential tool for modern storytelling. By incorporating animated visuals, educators can present complex topics in a way that’s easier to grasp, especially in subjects such as science, mathematics, and history. These animations allow students to visualize concepts that would otherwise be difficult to comprehend through text alone.

For example, 3D animations in medical schools are used to demonstrate surgical procedures or the inner workings of the human body, providing students with a clearer understanding of anatomy and medical processes. In science classrooms, animations of molecular structures or celestial movements make learning more interactive and enjoyable.

Creating Emotional Impact with 3D Animation

One of the reasons why 3D animation services are essential for modern storytelling is their ability to create a strong emotional impact. Animators can control every element of their scenes, from the color palette to the music, to evoke specific feelings in their audience. Whether it’s creating tension, joy, or sadness, the combination of visual and audio elements in 3D animation helps to amplify the emotional connection between the audience and the story.

This emotional resonance is crucial, especially in storytelling mediums like movies or advertisements. A well-crafted 3D animated story can make viewers feel deeply invested in the characters and their journey, leading to higher levels of engagement and emotional satisfaction.

Virtual Reality (VR) and 3D Animation: A Powerful Combination

As technology continues to advance, 3D animation services are increasingly integrated with virtual reality (VR), taking storytelling to an entirely new level. In VR environments, audiences are not just passive viewers but active participants in the story. They can walk around in a virtual world, interact with objects, and make decisions that affect the narrative's outcome.

This immersive experience is only possible because of the foundational work done by 3D animators who meticulously craft these virtual worlds. The future of storytelling lies in this blend of animation and interactivity, offering endless possibilities for how stories can be experienced.

The Role of 3D Animation in Video Games

Video games are arguably one of the biggest success stories for 3D animation services. The gaming industry has relied heavily on 3D animations to create immersive, lifelike environments that players can explore. From open-world adventures to narrative-driven games, 3D animation provides the realism and fluidity needed to create dynamic, engaging gameplay experiences.

The ability to create characters with realistic emotions and movements allows game developers to tell stories that go beyond simple objectives. Players are now able to connect with characters and plotlines in ways that were not possible with earlier game design technologies.

3D Animation Services in the Film Industry

The film industry has long been a major beneficiary of 3D animation services. With advancements in animation software, filmmakers can now create entire movies that are animated from start to finish. From superhero films to animated comedies, 3D animation has expanded the boundaries of what is possible in cinematic storytelling.

The flexibility of 3D animation also means that directors can blend animation with live-action footage to create visually stunning films. Movies like Avatar and The Lion King (2019) have demonstrated the power of using 3D animation to build realistic worlds and characters while maintaining the storytelling techniques of traditional filmmaking.

The Future of Storytelling with 3D Animation

The future of storytelling will undoubtedly be shaped by the continued evolution of 3D animation services. As technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality advance, 3D animators will have even more tools at their disposal to create groundbreaking narratives.

Imagine stories where characters evolve based on audience interactions, or virtual worlds that change dynamically in response to viewers’ choices. These possibilities are just the beginning of what 3D animation will bring to the future of storytelling.

Conclusion: The Power of 3D Animation in Modern Storytelling

In conclusion, 3D animation services have become essential for modern storytelling because they allow creators to push the boundaries of imagination. From marketing to education, video games to films, 3D animation enhances the narrative experience, making it more engaging, emotional, and immersive. As technology continues to advance, the role of 3D animation in storytelling will only grow, ensuring that audiences are captivated in ways we can’t yet imagine.