#spaceworld demo run

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

The psychics of Kanto and the big bad Empire

[26th of June, 2018]

{Haji:}

Well this one came up pretty recently, but Kelcyus mentioned that the Gold / Silver beta map showed that it was originally going to be ALL of Poke-Japan and not just regions of it, and in my timeline, all of the regions were once part of the greater (Ranseian?) Nation i.e. why they all have the National Dex, but after The Great War that predates TPP:Red, all the regions broke off and function as smaller independent countries even though they still call themselves "regions" since despite having all their independent governments, they still share a sort of cultural identity that hasn't gone away.

This new bit of info, if true (I need to look over a play session) would potentially place the G/S Beta BEFORE Red and take place during said war with our short-lived Hosts being part of the Empire's shady experimentation with Psychics and the potential of Psychic energy as a means to manipulate matter (Satoshi, I think that was his name? was prone to levitation iirc.)

Said experiments come up in canon what with the study of Mewtwo's creation being in the process before Giovanni would have taken over (if going by the movie canon, he still took advantage of the work later) and little things like with the Kadabra Boy (from it's dex entry) and Sabrina's Gen I outfits reflecting a sort of Rocket heritage even though she brings up she hates battling and is held in the center of a long maze, possibly because her powers were considered too dangerous but they did a "test run" with her utter annihilation of the former Saffron Gym.

{Jukebox108 | JukeBiscuit:}

hmmm, experimentation on hosts is an idea that i haven't gotten too into, but i like that it could be a distinction between hosts and lost hosts 😄

{Haji:}

well it may have actually been the other way around, where the kids were experimented on and accidentally attracted the Voices. Which is when the researchers' hold on them went askew cause we took off with them for parts unknown MingLee

[thebabycup]

WELCOME BACK TO THE THUNDERDOME

Hello. It's that time of year again, the event you've all been waiting for: THE BABY CUP. The time has once again come to decide on the best Baby Pokemon, and I am here to incite some baby on baby violence. 37 babies will enter, but only one will leave here alive.

Our challengers in this most grisly of tournaments include every official Baby Pokemon (x), every cut Baby Pokémon from the Spaceworld 1997 demo (x), as well as one honorary baby (Phione). There will be six rounds in the primary bracket, with each lasting one week. A separate loser's bracket will also be held. The final round of the entire tournament will run from April 6th to April 13th, so mark your calendars!

Cast your votes for your favorite baby, and let's get this show on the road!!

Masterpost of links for each round can be found here (x).

[kanto-jhoto]

I've been in a pokemon mood lately. So I'm dipping my toes into romhack territory with Pokemon Pure RGB. It's a major overhaul Gen 1 but it's more for Gen 1 purists so it doesn't introduce new pokemon or new types.

But it also has more quality of life changes and enhancements than you can shake a stick at. I never had an issue with gen 1's speed but running shoes are there. Some of the animations seem to be faster. You can also toggle between the gameboy color pallet, the pokemon yellow pallet, or the pokemon RB Super Gameboy pallet which in my opinion is the superior pallet. The back sprites are also more high definition, taken from the Spaceworld demo, but it can actually by toggled off. In fact a lot of the changes seem to be able to be toggled off.

Other changes I've noted, many more wild pokemon available early game... I almost always play pokemon gen 1 with a similar team because there's so few pokemon available early on, and I get attached to a lot of the pokemon I have, but now i'm seeing things really early like Doduo and Exeggcute and Vulpix and thinking "oh... maybe I want to use that this time??" Also there's an overhaul to the move pool, I think the author wants every pokemon to be viable for single player? Some type changes that make me raise an eyebrow, but I can ignore. New moves as well... and you can't accidentally delete the wrong move because you have to delete a move with start instead of A.

I'm pretty early in this hack and already impressed.

I have mentioned a long time ago that me and pokemon romhacks don't really mix, because I feel like pokemon are too personal to play artifically, if I cant use a pokemon in pokemon stadium or transfer them to the modern games with pokemon bank, then it doesn't feel as personal anymore.. But obviously, i'm not worrying much about that these days and i'm trying to learn how to just enjoy a casual playthrough and not stress about if i'm going to get to keep my pokemon forever and ever.

This is still just gen 1 though. I do think I want to maybe check out other romhacks that are total conversions later on. But I think before I do that, I'll finish the run of Crystal I started a few years ago, and maybe finish up that living dex I started in gen 1.

All this to say is if you want to play some gen 1, but better, and you don't really care about Stadium compatibility or the ability to transfer to other games, then this is worth checking out. I'm just barely scratching the improvements here.

[nullset2]

Pikmin 4 - An In-Depth Critique and Review

Take a shot every time you hear "Pikmin".

I mentioned previously that Miyamoto was a taskmaster because this is what he truly is. From urban legends that he "upends the tea table" on projects at Nintendo to the nature of Pikmin itself, it's clear that his personality shines best as a manager, even though nerds worldwide regard him as some sort of Santa-like figure that shits rainbows and farts sugar and happiness. Even though Miyamoto's input is important from a seniority point of view, since he's someone who will drive and provide vision (and, I guess, back in the day... he also provided illustrations for things), he's not the literal code monkey that's slaving away at punching in the code for your bing-bing-wahoo at the shitty Nintendo thinkpads.

Pikmin 4 is the 2023 entry into the Pikmin series... I guess the Pikmin series only gets an entry a decade, right? Given that Pikmin 3 released in 2013; Pikmin 3 was my entry point to the series in Wii U, a damaged, UV degraded boxart copy of which I bought in rare leisure, in clearance, in a shitty dilapidated Blockbuster location in Mexico, back in 2015 or so --I saw it for sale for like 400 pesos or something and I figured why the fuck not, since Wii U games are usually around 1200 pesos or so.

My experience playing Pikmin 3 was very pleasant because I wasn't really expecting anything, but I walked away from it massively enriched: from its engaging, split-responsibility, time-management gameplay, to its luscious visuals (I still drool every time I look at the fruits in the Wii U version), I heard around that if Pikmin 3 is the ultimate version of Pikmin, Pikmin 4 is the ultimate version of Pikmin 2.

Pikmin is the passion project of Miyamoto, the creator of Mario, the Quintessential video game franchise; Mr. Video Game himself, a Character known to every single person in the World. Even though you could argue that the actual creator of Mario is Takashi Tezuka, because he did the nuts and bolts, Miyamoto is generally credited as the mastermind. Serves better for PR purposes: makes the Universal Studios attraction more profitable.

I guess his seniority at the company and his desire to transcend led him to come up with Pikmin, which is obviously his brainchild on a very personal level, and let me tell you that he loves the little Pikmin (Pikmen?) guys, from the abundance of merchandising in Nintendo stores worldwide, to the surreptitious injecting of Pikmin-related easter eggs in any other thing he does, this man is in love with his own franchise.

Why wouldn't he be? Pikmin is very appealing. It does suffer of a certain problem: it is a game that's too cozy and cute for hardcore gamers to enjoy, and it's too gruesome and stressful for casual Wii Sports playing casual scum to enjoy. I guess that just leaves the Nintendo ultrafan retards as the target audience --but then again, those kinds of kids (as they used to call me at Amazon derisively, because I was some sort of inferior, impressionable DEI hire that they had to put up with) are not people who are in tune with the intricacies of nature and animism, aspects of which Pikmin (and Shinto) heavily rely on. What do those “kids” know, anyway, right?: they've never spent a day in nature, nor they've tended to a garden, nor they touch grass, nor they've seen the bugs at work, nor they've planted flowers, what good are they?

It is commonly quoted that Pikmin is the product of Miyamoto's observations of bugs during his time spent gardening, which apparently is his hobby. Pikmin proclivity for working right out after birth, carrying stuff and fighting stem both from his careful observation of ants, beetles and grasshoppers, et. al., in his gardens, and the Asian collectivist Work Ethic.

It is historically known that the Pikmin series comes from the Super Mario 128 tech demo at Spaceworld 2000, which demonstrated the (as of then upcoming) Dolphin console (the Gamecube) as being capable of running massive amounts of tasks and render a huge amount of independent characters at the same time through the showcasing of a scene with 128 little Marios operating independently.

Miyamoto guessed something correctly: that the video game tech arms race was coming to an end soon, that Moore's Law in microprocessors would be coming to an end, too, and that the only obvious path forward in video game tech came in the form of concurrency and parallelism, through more effective usage of computational resources. That the video game industry had entered an era of diminishing returns in terms of clock speeds, and that novel experiences in video gaming necessarily had to come from an intimate, strong understanding of parallelism and other tech, and I must declare his observations to be right. That's why in the 2000s, if you remember, progress in processors came only in the form of Intel and their fetishism for MOAR cores, core 2 duo, core quad... etc.

So then, this whole artistic prospect of Pikmin... what even is it? Why is it worth my time?

Part 1 - Dandori as fuck, mothafucka

Pikmin 4 is a game which revolves around a single concept --Dandori.

Given that apparently, interleaving Japanese vocabulary in English is now seen as chic (I would never dare do it in the 2000s, by the way), I can now confidently state that Pikmin 4 is about understanding and practicing Dandori. Dandori translates to "delegation", but the game presents it as "the ability to order your tasks in the optimal manner for progression".

The story is pretty barebones as always: Olimar has crashed on Earth (again), like in Pikmin 1, but now we're responding to the SOS signal as the rescue corps. Alas! The rescue corps also crash-land on Earth while rescuing Olimar themselves. So, you rescue Olimar by venturing through a certain garden on Earth, playing a little bit with the concept of scale: the Pikmin people are diminute and they cannot breathe Oxygen, so they must wear spacesuits to explore our World, and things which seem mundane to us are insurmountable obstacles to them so that which seems as a single living room or a yard is a massive, sprawling piece of land to them.

Will the rescue corps rescue Olimar in the end?

オリマ (O RI MA) is マリオ (MA RI O) backward by the way.

The main gameplay loop trascends through gathering Pikmin, of which there are several kinds: red (who are strong to fire), blue (who can swim and can go in the water), yellow (who are resistant to electricity and are optimal diggers), ice (a new type, who can freeze enemies and bodies of water to change the layout of the land temporarily, and can float on water), purple (who have massive carrying and attack power, but are slower and heavier), flying (who can fly and are more efficient at carrying but are generally weaker), rock (who can withstand stomping and can break certain surfaces, being rock-hard), and white (who are poisonous and resistant to poison). Pikmin spawn from something known as an Onion; Pikmin you gather form your current squad, which starts at 10, and increases to your maximum possible squad come from gathering of flarlics in the game world, which reinforce the Onion by 10 more Pikmin. Pellets which grow every day from flowers can generate more Pikmin of the kind that carried the pellet to the Onion, and will yield as many Pikmin as the number they're labeled with. If the current amount of Pikmin in the overworld are less than the max amount of possible Pikmin in the squad, seedlings will burst from the onion, which can be plucked from the ground to allow Pikmin to reproduce. Bears mentioning that collected carcasses from enemies will also work like pellets.

Only three kinds of Pikmin can be out in the overworld at any given time, so since priorities can change, it is possible to withdraw and deposit Pikmin from and to the Onion, which will ensure that the same pre-selected amount of Pikmin of each kind exist in the overworld at any given time. And of course, there's also your cutie patootie new friend, Oatchi, your dog. He functions like a second captain that you can switch back and forth from, with special abilities, such as Jumping (which allows you to take different routes which were previously impossible in the series), digging, swallowing huge treasures, charging against enemies and barriers, sniffing targets, carrying Pikmin on his back, and attacking by bite. Oatchi accumulates XP through the game, which can be used to level up his skills. Olimar also has a dog called Moss, both of which pretty much steal the show.

Remember that era in gaming around 2015 or so where every single game had to had a heckin' cute pupper doggo?

The max squad size and the Pikmin type limits do not apply to the Caves, though. Being the main mechanism for content in the game, Caves function as this game's Zelda dungeons, where a series of challenges is presented linearly and concluded in a boss (one of which, the Unexistent Entity, will be an incredible surprise if you played 3: you're thrown into its lair with the wrong Pikmin type and you have to play stealth to avoid decimation by it until you can counterattack). Comprised of multiple sub-levels, caves have a completion rate influenced by collection of treasure. In contrast to 3, the game does no longer have a time limit, as in, a fixed amount of days that you have to finish your mission in (it is possible to unlock a postgame mode, Olimar's Shipwreck tale, which returns to the original three Red, Blue and Yellow Pikmin 1 types and 30 day limit). Even though an in-game day lasts 15 minutes in real life, time flows half as fast during the cave sections, to incite playing them like a Zelda dungeon again.

Treasure collecting serves as the main method of progress in the game. After the rescue corps get stranded on Earth, they have to rehabilitate their spaceship through the collection of Sparklium, which is their fuel, and is obtained from shiny artifacts they find on earth, which Pikmin 4, in traditionally whimsical fashion, determines to be common household items and Nintendo paraphernalia, named in an oblivious manner, much like an alien unfamiliar with life on Earth would name things, and that's how a delicious and plump Peach becomes a "Mock Bottom". I would like to commend the Pikmin team over how perfectly and deliciously they model the treasures' in-game models. However, the treasures coaexist with perils, obstacles and beasts, which will attack your squad if you're not careful.

The game tries to make interesting things with their locales to test your ability to explore them and Dandori around. Of note, there's a beach stage where the tide goes down after noon, completely shifting the configuration of the level and effectively giving you a second level to maneuver around. The game also adds an in-door locale, a new to the series, presented very cozily. The Pikmin 4 house is just so cute (not to mention that I still hunger for those tomatoes in the kitchen, and I consider it a huge flex in the better way that Nintendo keeps showing off their HD graphics prowess... Mario Party Steak, anyone?)

Finally, it is also possible to develop your gear, skills and abilities. You can even go and punch enemies yourself alongside the Pikmin! I am particularly a fan of a new addition which allows you to summon benched Pikmin back to your location, and the superspicy sprays which give you a temporary boost.

Special consideration must be given therefore to the order of operations; to what tasks are taken and in what order and which have or can be done in parallel or not, and which should be done by a certain kind of Pikmin or not, and how to do them efficiently, administering your resources well (since some tasks like building, consume resources which have to be mined); which tasks represent risks or not, and which risks to take and which ones to avoid to protect your Pikmin; which fights to engage in and in what order and how to exploit enemy weakpoints and with which troops, or even which fights to completely avoid; when to save a Pikmin or even when to sacrifice them and leave them for dead or use them as bait or as a distraction (and in a game like this, losses are going to be inevitable); which routes to take in the overworld and how, and which shortcuts to take, and under what abilities, every little single thing is important when fighting the clock and aiming to complete tasks, as you are in this game. There's no time limit, but the number of ellapsed days is counted.

Part 2 - Dandori Battles, Night Expeditions, Dandori Challenges and the Sage Gauntlet, oh my!

The thing that surprised me the most about the game is the massive amount of content, a rare thing for nowadays Nintendo. First of all, a new Tower Defense mode has been added in the form of the "Night Expeditions". Series veterans will know that you only get to explore and work in a level until sundown, at which point any Pikmin forsaken in the Overworld will get eaten by the beasts. Special night expeditions are provided for a spin, where a new Pikmin type, the Glow Pikmin, is presented. Glow Pikmin do not need to be plucked, immediately return to you after they reach the Onion, and can Glowmob enemies by amalgamating into a big fireball. Night expeditions are performed to gather medicine to heal characters infected by the "leafling" infection, who have become Pikminified and can no longer think about anything but Dandori, becoming obsessed with it. and it eventually is revealed that Olimar... has been infected too.

Leaflings will constantly challenge you to Dandori battles, the Multiplayer mode in Pikmin 4, where there's a single type of Pikmin and a dog for both teams, competing Mario Kart style, with powerups and all, to gather a certain amount or kind of treasure in the minimum time possible.

There's also special Dandori challenges, where you must retrieve every single treasure in a level under certain conditions, sidequests to make you sick, and a final gauntlet with the Leafling master, a mysterious character who will "teach you to master the art of Delegation", and who will actually make you sweat with his challenges. I really loved the Gauntlet part of it.

If you make a mistake, a Checkpoint system is available to ease the pain on the player, different to previous entries in the series. It is possible to "rewind time" if you want to an auto-save to try again or undo a mistake and this comes to no penalty to the player.

But in another regard, I hated the controls, and I'm burned even more coming off of 3 and its Wii Remote controls. To be accesible to newcomers to the series , they decided to implement an auto-aim system for the Pikmin you throw. This usually works fine enough, but completely craps out when there's several multiple targets in tight quarters and you want to make an specific decision as to what to attack or carry. It is impressive that they decided to release the game in this form and not provide us with a different control scheme or some kind of option.

Pikmin is Miyamoto's passion project and the culmination of the series so far. I can appreciate his dedication to the series and that he wears his heart on his sleeve about it. It is a game that will fascinate you and inspire your love of nature; Shintoism is the main cultural framework of Japan, and I dare not and will NOT disrespect it or misunderstand it, but from what I understand it revolves around animism: the idea that everything in the World is God. That the forest is alive, that every single tree, every single leaf, every single bug has an spirit of its own to be revered, and that everything is constantly in movement and active, in vibration. That's where Pikmin borrows its inspiration for its luscious locales and creatures, underpinned by the classic, almost stereotypical Japanese obsession for productivity, time management and optimization. It shines best when you feel very effective and when you see all of your little creatures going about it, fighting monsters in mobs, and coordinating to carry their carcasses or a heavy object --not to mention that Oatchi both opens up the game thematically and for mechanical innovation.

Pikmin 4 was great. See you in 2035.

[vimbry-moved]

there’s something I’ve always really liked about oot epona’s model idk why she’s just a good shape and I like her colour scheme. it’s what I strongly associate with the look of that game. horse :)

[greatscaleuproar]

Hard Rain (Spaceworld 1999 Trailer)

A powerful scene in the game. During the search for the family, Flint & the villagers of Tazmily run into a dead end in the form of fallen tree & a cliff. As Flint proceeds to leave, Boney notices something on top of the cliff, and lets out a howl. The song playing in this part of the game is “Hard Rain”, which uses the Pigmask leitmotif subtly in the background, and is most likely named after not only the fact its raining, but also because of the contrast between a similarly named song, “Gentle Rain”.

The N64 scene shows of just how cinematic they wanted even the simplest of scenes to be. The dynamic shots, the way the lightning & rained are handled, and the close-up of Flint’s side-profile really adds to the scene in ways GBA couldn’t. This scene was one of the cutscenes viewable at Earthbound 64′s playable demo at SpaceWorld 1999, and as confirmed by reports of the demo, Lucas & Claus were present in the scene, showing that they were found earlier & Hinawa is still missing. Not only that, but the top of the cliff was never shown, leaving suspense.

[csolarstorm]

The Season of Sinnoh: Reflecting on Diamond and Pearl

Tomorrow a lot of us get to play BrilliantDiamond and ShiningPearl, which kicks off a fun few months where we play our faithfully recreated ILCA renditions of Diamond and Pearl as we wait just mere months for GameFreak's love letter to Sinnoh, Legends: Arceus.

The Sinnoh games are special in more ways than one. They are the culmination of the Japan-based Pokemon games, sort of a capstone to an era before Black and White started the tradition of exploring the globe.

Arguably, Diamond and Pearl are the realization/completion of the region that encompassed all Japan from the 1998 Spaceworld Gold demo; after all in the demo there are several early concepts of later evolutions like Tangrowth, Lickylicky, Leafeon, and Mime Jr.. The demo also had the “Heart Stone” and the “Poison Stone”, which I theorize might be inspirations for the later Shiny Stone and Dusk Stone, mainly because Dark type Pokemon like Umbreon originally started out as more Poison types.

In the long run, HeartGold and Soul Silver cemented the connection between Johto and Sinnoh canonically.

Paradoxically, Pokemon Pearl is both a really important game for me, and kind of a forgotten one. I was a Freshman in college when Pokemon Pearl came out, and it was perfect timing because I was studying historical symbolism and religious texts. At the time it came out in the west, my class was studying depictions of Hell, so I named my Empleon “Styx”. (It's a body of water, after all.) It...actually wasn't a great year for me. I was suffering depression from health problems, and as you can probably guess, Pokemon Pearl was a refuge for me. It's a tale as old as Pokemon.

That’s why I regret not doing the game more justice. I made the mistake of trading away my Palkia for a shiny Ponyta that my former best friend chained. I had never encountered a shiny before, and I loved blue Pokemon. But even though she was already going to release it, she would only only trade it for my Palkia. And to add insult to injury, she asked me change Palkia's name to “Charlie” after that old YouTube series Charlie the Unicorn. Our, um, friendship wasn't doing too good.

With my Pokemon transferred to Pokemon Black, I eventually sold Pearl, and that too was a really bad idea in retrospect. It was a different time. So ironically I’m kind of glad to have a “faithful remake” so I can have another chance to play Pearl. Back then I was so busy training older Pokemon from LeafGreen that I didn’t even train a lot of Sinnoh Pokemon besides Styx. There are so many Sinnoh and Hisui natives that I can’t wait to give attention to now.

It’s no secret that BrilliantDiamond and ShiningPearl struggle in the shadow of Legends: Arceus. Heck, BDSP weren’t even finished until the patch about a week ago. Even though we’re hyped for Legends: Arceus, it is technically a risky move for the Pokemon Company. It’s not the straightforward Sinnoh remake the older fans have been clamoring for, and a lot of the younger fans haven’t played Diamond and Pearl, so they don’t know the context for the prequel.

So as insurance, the Pokemon Company went to ILCA, the developer of Pokemon HOME, and hired them to develop a very safe, relatively cheaper Diamond and Pearl remake using the free Unity engine. In short: BrilliantDiamond and ShiningPearl probably wouldn't be around if the Pokemon Company didn't need safe alternatives to Legends: Arceus. If you’re disappointed with BDSP playing it safe, wait for the full experience of both games.

Regardless of why, it’s pretty cool that The Pokemon Company is celebrating Sinnoh with both a prequel AND a remake. It’s clear that Diamond and Pearl were important Pokemon games not just for us, but for GameFreak too. They close out the foundational first four generations of the Pokemon games, fulfill the promises that earlier Pokemon games couldn’t yet achieve, and brought fans across the world together with WiFi for the first time.

The Season of Sinnoh has started. Let’s have fun with our faithful remakes while we count down to a trip back in time, to the old region of Hisui.

[jaybug-jabbers]

Location Dex for Pokemon Gold Spaceworld Demo/Beta

Should I be packing? Yes.

Am I searching each grass patch in the routes in the Gold beta instead? Also yes.

Guide to all species locations in the beta ROM behind the cut!

An important note to start with:

This exploration is from the Pokémon Gold Spaceworld 1997 Demo leaked ROM, the debugger version, specifically. You’ll need the debugger in order to explore the entire world, mainly so you can make use of its walk-through-walls function.

Collision is broken for most of the locations in the beta. (This means most grass patches will not work either. These grass patches/water are all programmed with pokemon encounter data, but with collision not working, you can’t encounter them.)

There is a workaround, however:

1.) Begin in an area where collision works. The demo areas, routes 15 and 18 all have proper collision. You can use the debugger to warp to these areas.

2.) Use the walk-through-walls feature (hold b) to walk to another location– but do not cross over loading zones. An easy way to do this is to avoid entering gates; walk through walls beside them instead. Also, don’t enter any buildings.

3.) Now that you’re in a new location you have ‘brought’ correct collision with you and it should work here. Save a state. Once you encounter a pokemon in the grass and the encounter ends, the collision will go back to ‘broken’ and you’ll need to repeat the steps again. (Or, reload the save state until you encounter the pokemon you desire.)

4.) Keep in mind if you want to encounter pokemon, you cannot be holding ‘b’ (walking through walls). Also keep in mind if you want to encounter pokemon on the water, you need to be surfing on Lapras (which you can do from the debugger menu).

That’s about it! On to the species locations.

Route 15 - Collision Works Correctly Here

Drowzee, Hypno, Hoothoot, Pidgeotto, Vulpix, Lefmew (Beta Hoppip)

Tentacool, Tentacruel, Anchorage

Vulpix, Sandslash, Trifox (baby Vulpix), Hoothoot, Lefmew, Snubbull

Is there grass here?? I can’t seem to find any.

Route 18 -  Collision works correctly here

Vulpix, Drowzee, Hypno, Wolfman, Ledyba, Pidgeotto

Mankey, Poliwag, Ledyba, Poliwhirl, Primeape

Tentacool, Tentacruel

Mankey, Poliwag, Ledyba, Poliwhirl, Primeape

Skarmory, Rhydon, Marowak, Cubone

Raticate, Meowth, Gloom, Pikachu, Oddish, Arbok, Hoothoot, Smeargle, Ekans

Demo Area 1 By Silent Hill - Collision works here (so do trainer battles)

Lefmew, Girafarig, Rattata, Pidgey

Demo Area 2 By Silent Hill (doesn’t seem to show up on the map)

Caterpie, Lefmew, Ledyba, Rattata, Metapod, Wolfman (very rare)

Demo Area 3 - Collision works here

Ekans, Lefmew, Pidgey, Rattata, Skarmory, Pikachu (rare)

Hoothoot, Rattata, Oddish, Pidgey, Caterpie

Drowzee, Duduo, Spearow, Ditto

Rattata, Drowzee, Spearow

Tentacool, Tentacruel, Rayleep

Tentacool, Tentacruel, Rayleep

Tentacool, Tentacruel, Rayleep

Tentacool, Tentacruel, Rayleep

Tentacool, Tentacruel, Rayleep

Geodude, Ekans, Spearow, Eggsecute (rare)

I think I covered everything? Not sure. I’ll do some double-checking a bit later. Give me a shout if you run into something on one of these routes I didn’t list!

This is a repost on a new blog. The original post was on Jun 1, 2018.

[rpgmgames]

November’s Featured Game: Shooty and the Catfish

DEVELOPER(S): Daniel ENGINE: RPGMaker MV GENRE: Adventure, RPG WARNINGS: Course Language, Gore SUMMARY: Shooty and the Zaat are a dynamic duo solving monstrous mysteries!

Play the demo here!

Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! Sure! So my name is Daniel, I guess technically I am an animator. I started out making flash cartoons around 2000 just for fun and became a professional animator in the advertising space around 2007. I have been working in media ever since, both in studios and as a contractor working under the Visitors From Dreams label which is also the label I use for my game development. I started dabbling with RPG Maker in around 2002 but I never got very far. Once I got into the media industry I wanted to pick it up again but with Mac being what almost all my work was done on, at home and in studio I didnt get the chance to actually get into it properly again until MV released, infact I was so excited that I purchased MV the day it dropped and immediately begun development on my first title Flatwoods. Ironically Shooty and the Catfish was developed on a PC, but I digress.

What is your project about? What inspired you to create your game initially? *Daniel: Shooty and the Catfish is set up pretty simply. The 2 lead characters, Shooty and Zaat run a sort of monster investigation unit out of their home. They get calls to different desitinations to deal with different monster problems. I really wanted it to feel like it was set up in a similar way to a lot of cartoons from the 80s, where every episode had a pretty similar but still managed to feel like a little self contained adventure. I have thrown in some little elements of an larger narrative but they are light until the final episode. Originally the series was pitched to Frederator for Cartoon Hangover, it got a little ways into early development but then Youtube changed its algorythm and animation on the platform became a struggle and the project was dropped. I didnt want to waste all the work I had done on the concepts and so I eventually tried to find a way to work them into a game, its taken me quite a few years to get as far as I have with development, but I would be even further back if I had tried to animate it all alone. I created Flatwoods to try and get a small project out, you know, to get some experience with the engine, little did I know how much more I had to learn!

How long have you been working on your project? *Daniel: I pitched Shooty and the Catfish back in 2013 from memory, but it didn't start to take shape as the project you currently see until the last 12 months. In that sense I am incredibly happy with how quickly the game has come together.

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *Daniel: So many things have influenced my work its not funny... Where do I even start? Shooty and Zaat have a bit of a Finn and Jake thing going since when the project was originally pitched to Frederator and thats what they were looking for at the time. Resident Evil 4 (the closest any game has ever come to perfection imo) was the inspiration for the games ammo based combat system. Demons Souls originally derailed the project when I tried to emulate its non linear hub based design (you will notice the demo takes place on a single island instead), that created all kinds of balancing issues though so thats all been stripped back and is what lead to the decision to make the game episodic instead. One element from Demons Souls that remains in the game is a diverse mix of linear and looping level designs when it comes to mapping. The game also features towns that have layouts based on unused maps from the Pokemon GS 97 Spaceworld demo since they never made it into any of the actual games in the series. Pokemon GS also influenced the games visuals. I'm not a big RPG guy, but I played a hell of a lot of Pokemon growing up and Gen 2 is still my favorite. Trying to get MV to emulate the limitations of the Game Boy Color was quite the hurdle, I still cant believe I got it working as well as it is. I also have a lot of cameos from other peoples RPGM games, so there's that. Its a big ol' mixing pot of ideas and inspirations.

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them? *Daniel: Countless, the biggest challenge is always scope though. I originally wanted the game to be like 3 hours long tops, now its well in excess of that and that's before I have even put in meaningful NPC interactions. That's why I have decided to break the game up into episodes, each one should be around an hour which is much more my jam. I don't have a lot of free time so I tend to gravitate towards games that are tight and short, I think that's why I am so determined to keep this game in nice manageable chunks. Now that the game is shorter I don't need levelling so I am starting to tone down the RPG elements. One change always leads to another, but episode one is getting damn close to completion. I say this before I have even had the chance to announce the game's going to be episode on my own blog, ha ha. Episode 1 January, The Great Spore Chore! Keep your eyes out for it!

Have any aspects of your project changed over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *Daniel: As mentioned above a lot has changed, I feel the biggest change was when I tried to move the game from being episodic into one adventure after playing through a bunch of other RPGM games for ideas, it all started to feel a bit aimless and the storytelling techniques I had planned when it was episodic weren't translating well as the game progressed. So I guess now the game is episodic again we have come full circle! So many ideas seemed good on paper but ended up not really being fun or adding anything in practice. Oh yeah, and the transition from Game Boy green to color was a big one based on feedback from the demo. Some people were finding it hard to tell what elements were interactable, doors in particular, I hope that color has helped minimize that issue. Key items will also have an animation on them so they are hard to miss. I'm not a fan of hunting for items in big maps, it's certainly not something I want to subject people too in my own projects.

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *Daniel: This project has had a few key people involved. Outside of myself I have worked with 2 musicians. One is an old school friend who did music for my animations back in the early 2000's. He has contributed a bunch of really cool EDM which makes up most of the games OST. On top of that there is also a number of optional bosses (one per episode) that have music composed by Secret Agent Ape who worked on Soma Spirits and a bunch of other upcoming games. I have been really lucky to get to work with such rad dudes.

What is the best part of developing the game? *Daniel: I love designing enemy battlers, my process usually involves me drawing a weird shape, sticking some eyes and a big goofy nose on it and trying to come up with a stupid pun to use for a name while listening to bands like Yes or Klaatu. It's bliss. I have a lot of people ask me why I have limited myself in terms of resolution and color palette, and it comes down to one of the important things I told myself when I got into game making as a hobby was that I would stop if it ever started to feel like work. I spend my days doing heavy visual effects and compositing, sometimes doing complex character animation. I want to keep that stuff as far away from my game development as possible. Ironically working within the incredibly restrictive limitations of the Game Boy has ended up being incredibly liberating and keeps things feeling fun as opposed to feeling like more of what I do all day to pay the bills.

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *Daniel: I always enjoy checking out demo's of upcoming games. Both Heartbeat and Virgo and the Zodiac's demos blew me away from a technical standpoint on the MV front. I still find it hard to believe those demos were made with the same engine I'm using. I guess it really shows what can be done when the engine is in capable hands. I wish I had more time to play actual full releases, I mean Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass just came out and I have no idea when, if ever I will have the free time to play it because its such a commitment. I feel like I am missing out on some great stuff.

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *Daniel: I guess I relate to different characters in different ways. Slim Grim is the one who hands out assignments to Shooty and Zaat, he is pretty much done with life, over people and the world itself, I think thats something we all have a bit of inside of us. Shooty is a very positive individual, his solutions to most problems is a bullet with a smile, and I think theres a bit of that in all of us as well. Zaats a bit of a cheeky smart arse, so I guess in a lot of ways I am most like her as a person. One of the episodes also features Gerkinman who is and has been a sort of self insert in my work since 2001 so I guess technically I relate to him most... ha ha, but thats cheating!

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *Daniel: I wish I had done a better job keeping the project focused. I feel like a good few months were spent making the game bigger in ways it didnt need to be.

Once you finish your project, do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *Daniel: All of my games are loosely connected, taking place in the same world. None of them tie directly into each other, im not big on the cinematic universe concept that seems so popular right now, but events in my previous 2 releases and the 5 planned episodes of Shooty and the Catfish are loosely connected in ways people who take the time to look can find. They are also tied into around 17 years worth of animated shorts I have released. I have no plans on stopping now!

What do you look most forward to upon/after release? *Daniel: Well, theres quite a few things... Mapping for all 5 episodes (outside of towns) is complete, so when Episode 1 is done I will be immediately rolling into Episode 2. I am aiming to have an episode out every 2 months which should be doable with so much of the game already finished. I also have a couple of short films I am looking forward to being able to invest some time into, things have slowed down in recent months due to freelance but I am eager to get to animate some of my own work again. I am also eager to see the comments sections on Lets Plays. Both Flatwoods and Hazmat got a bit of Lets Play action and a couple of those have some pretty substantial comment sections. The amount of theories people try to put together for these projects is staggering. I could never write something as entertaining as what the speculations in these comment sections contain in terms of what my games mean, it cracks me up and I find it quite flattering that random people have put more thought into elements of my stories then I have. Makes me want to keep things deliberately vague just to encourage more of it. Lastly I will be releasing all the build files for the project so if anyone wants to make fangames or whatever they have direct access to all of the core files used to build the games. Im a big fan of the concept of a mod community, and while RPGM doesnt exactly allow for that, id love to see people do similar things to my work as whats been done with a lot of LISA fan games.

Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *Daniel: I don't know about being afraid exactly. I am curious about how my business model for the episodic releases will go over. I was planning on releasing them at $1 an episode and $4 for the bundle when it's all complete. I know some people think thats still charging too much, but some people have also told me im not charging enough and that it lowers price standards accross the board for RPGM content. The way I see it if I can cover the costs of Steam and the music I commissioned then I've done alright since this project was for fun, but that's just me.

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *Daniel: Just keep at it and set yourself small goals. If your working on a big project break it up into manageable sections. Take things one map at a time, ya know what I mean?

Question from last month's featured dev @overcast-rpg: If you could choose an RPG Maker gamedev to release another game; which one would you choose and why? *Daniel: Oh that's an easy one, The Catamites. I love Space Funeral, it's easily my favorite game made in the engine, and while The Catamites has developed countless games since its release, they have all been in other engines. It would be fun to see them return to the engine after all they have learned about game design since Space Funeral's release and to see what they would do.

We mods would like to thank Daniel for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out Shooty and the Catfish if you haven’t already! See you next month! 

- Mods Gold & Platinum

[krizste]

NAME/ え / E. Sugimori TPP run host/ spaceworld gold beta demo

by the power of the Su brothers combined- he has executive function.

[index]

[pokemon-spaceworld-gold]

Pokemon Spaceworld Gold/Silver fun fact:

•In the debug mode, you can get a npc to follow you

•Day and Night cycles were set in the Spaceworld demo!

•In the debug mode, you can actually have “running shoes”! If this was a feature planned for the game, i’m not quite sure, but the feature works the same!

(Source)

[thebabycup]

WELCOME BACK TO THE THUNDERDOME

Hello. It's that time of year again, the event you've all been waiting for: THE BABY CUP. The time has once again come to decide on the best Baby Pokemon, and I am here to incite some baby on baby violence. 37 babies will enter, but only one will leave here alive.

Our challengers in this most grisly of tournaments include every official Baby Pokemon (x), every cut Baby Pokémon from the Spaceworld 1997 demo (x), as well as one honorary baby (Phione). There will be six rounds in the primary bracket, with each lasting one week. A separate loser's bracket will also be held. The final round of the entire tournament will run from April 7th to April 14th, so mark your calendars!

Cast your votes for your favorite baby, and let's get this show on the road!!

Masterpost of links for each round can be found here (x).

[tumblunni]

Okay it seems we don’t actually have a full res pic of all the pokedex and that pic actually was compressed to the point of unviewability even on desktop tumblr?? And clicking through the link it seems it’s really hard to run this supposed rom file of the beta, and there’s debates about its authenticity cos the file claims it’s the ‘spaceworld demo’ yet we have limited pics of that demo and the titlescreen was different. So it seems weird that this would be labelled as that very specific demo, unless it’s a.. beta of a demo, i guess? That could be possible cos people are saying it literally just crashes when the world map runs out, instead of having your usual ‘thanks for playing this is where the demo stops’ message. So AAAA I wish I was smart enough to understand all this technical talk, and to do the hex editing stuff to actually play the rom myself! But for now I guess I’ll just wait with baited breath and hope there’s more updates as people pick it aprt.

it would REALLY suck if it turned out to be a fake rom hack or something, tho. i hope that’s false and the confusion is just cos it was a fragmented rom or a demo for a different event than people think it is, or something. But tbh it would be a prime time to release a fake demo hack, since we recently had the first new slice of beta info on the early generations that we’ve had in decades. it would be a good time to ride the hype on the speculation about ‘gorochu’. BUT then it doesn’t seem like a rom hack because wouldn’t it actually be a straight up rom, then? like actually playable without a bunch of editing and datamining and running through five emulators at once? i would think it would be harder to fake a non functioning rom that’s still rescue-able, yknow? and why would they even do that, nobody would even be expecting a non-functioning rom so it wouldn’t add more authenticity. We haven’t ever got ahold of any beta roms for the gameboy games so we don’t have any preconceptions about what file type nintendo stored them as. But then on the other hand it seems really unlikely that we’d suddenly get a burst of new info on stuff that was never even remotely mentioned before by nintendo. But then again nintendo itself just did that with gorochu! And TCRF is a really credible source, and they actually dug up that screenshot of beta girafarig SO MANY YEARS after we first heard nintendo talk about the concept, and it matched perfectly with what we were expecting. And it just dropped out of NOWHERE overnight and left zero signs of where the user managed to find it, yet was still proven to be legit...

Also like seriously half of the gold and silver beta art looks completely non-legit, its all in a wildly different art style! I don’t know if anyone’s ever found out why that is? Like does it just mean they had multiple artists at the time and were still experimenting before they settled on sugimori as the main one? But gen 1 had already had a full set of sugimori art by then. but then again later interviews had nintendo revealing that ‘half of gen 2′ were actually designed in the process of making red and green, and they just got cut out because of cartridge space. (So basically, beta stantler + 30 others were what became missingno.) So it could be entirely plausable that these gen 2 mons were designed BEFORE some of the gen 1 ones, and thus had different art...? Though there’s also the theory I had which i haven’t seen anyone else talking about. Considering how the Spaceworld Beta has been super shrouded in myth and we only have first hand accounts of what the pokemon vaguely looked like, maybe these ‘beta artworks’ are actually fan art someone made while attending the convention? like not fake betas or anything, i mean someone was trying to quickly jot down the mons while the demo reel played, cos they couldnt take pictures. And then all the confusion of passing info between japanese and english fandoms in the early days of the internet could mean this stuff was archived as ‘early official art’ and not ‘artist’s recreation of unreleased promotional material’. I just started thinking about this because the screenshot of beta girafarig ended up being EXACTLY the same pose as that artwork of it. And it’s very rare that sprites exactly mimic the official art, especially back in the gameboy era where the sprites were rudimentary and inconsistant between versions. So it seems more plausable that this maybe proves the art was drawn by someone seeing that sprite?

Further potential proof- the ‘beta art’ of Silver:

Now that’s not only a wildly different art style but he’s drawn with super big cutesy eyes and cheek blush. I mean that could indicate his personality was completely different back then, or it could indicate this was someone drawing their own interpretation of a different official art, who didnt know what role this character would have in the actual game. Also we’ve heard people saying that Silver’s gender was unknown at the time of this first beta appearance, so that could potentially mean this fan artist draw him shoujo-style cos they headcanoned the new rival would be a girl? or just that the androgenous style of his appearance would equal a personality that was typical of an androgenous anime character- i.e a cutesy shy boy or a rowdy tomboy girl, etc. Tho tbh that whole line of theory confused me because this beta silver seems to have similar short hair to his redesign way later. I don’t think this design would be remotely perceived as ‘androgenous’ if the art style wasn’t drawn cutesy like this. So maybe this was indeed the early art style? And man, who knows, maybe the inconsistancy of sugimori already existing just means that they weren’t gonna keep sugimori in the second game? The very sketchy nature of these artworks could make sense if it was an attempt to completely redesign a new style for the sequel, so every generation would look different. I wonder what genre of anime every other region would have looked like! I’m imagining some sort of mysterious Clamp-esque style for sinnoh maybe, since its the ‘relic region’? And maybe unova would have even been american cartoon style!

Anyway in summary bunni is very confused and also bunni really fuckin misses silver’s old long haired design and will NEVER FUCKING UNDERSTAND why they gave him the exact same hair as roark and mars in the same generation they introduced roark and mars. (I dunno why people don’t include roark in the family headcanons. Mayb just cos his without-hat look is only seen briefly in anime?)

[gamex2020]

Cancelled N64 Games

7 Cancelled N64 Games We Wish We Got

When it comes to cancelled games, the N64 is an unparalleled console. The hardware was difficult to develop for, and Nintendo is notoriously difficult to work with when it comes to negotiating special agreements. There were plenty of great games for the system, but there is a wealth of games that never saw the light of day.

Some got stuck in development hell, some fell through due to business negotiations, and some were completely repurposed into different projects. All of them, though, are pieces of gaming history–the ones that were successfully documented, at least.

Here are seven Cancelled N64 Games we wish we had.

Super Mario 64 2

The Nintendo 64 Disk Drive was an expansion for the N64, planned to expand its processing power and graphics capabilities. It never came to the US, and was a commercial failure in Japan. Despite this, Nintendo did a lot of work on games for the semi-system, including “Super Mario 64 2.”

In short, the real reason fans were excited for this game was because it promised a playable Luigi and a rideable Yoshi. Luigi in Super Mario 64 was always a rumor that never came to fruition, much like Mew under the truck in Pokemon. The rideable Yoshi was a rumor too, but at least that had some more basis; at least Yoshi was actually there, with a 3D model and everything.

In an interview with Nintendo Power, Shigeru Miyamoto said that they had a demo working with Mario and Luigi on-screen at the same time. Given that Super Mario 64 was originally intended to have multiplayer, it seems that SM64-2 would have accomplished all of the things that the original couldn’t. The addition of new features would have been welcome, given that the platform gameplay in the first installment was some of the best of the era.

It’s unknown if elements from SM64-2 were brought to future Mario games, like Sunshine and the DS port of 64. It would make sense, though, especially for the DS version. That port added multiplayer modes, extra playable characters, and graphical updates.

Cabbage

Let’s lay out a hypothetical. Try to imagine the juggernauts behind all of the best Nintendo games coming together to make a game in the late 90s. Shigeru Miyamoto created Mario and Zelda, so let’s put him on the team. Shigesato Itoi created the Mother series, known as Earthbound in the West, so let’s get him in the mix. Let’s add Tsunekazu Ishihara, too; he’s one of the producers of Pokemon.

What do you think they would make?

If you guessed “a platforming game,” you’d be wrong. If you guessed an old-school RPG, or an adventure game, you’d be wrong too. These three titans of gaming were working on a pet breeding and raising simulator for the Nintendo 64 Disk Drive. This game was named Cabbage, and that wasn’t a prototype name. It was just a silly word a developer blurted out and it happened to stick.

It was meant to use all available features of the N64DD, including the internal clock and the ability to link the game to the Game Boy and take your creature on the go. Players would have also been able to visit other players’ worlds.

They had planned for a trial of the game at SpaceWorld 2000, but the developers got busy and weren’t able to finish the project. It seems that some of the elements from the game were repurposed for other series, including Animal Crossing (on the N64DD) and later Nintendogs, Nintendo’s flagship “pet” series. It’s great for gamers everywhere that these titans of game development didn’t lose all of their ideas to a development quagmire.

Doom Absolution

Doom Absolution was intended to be a sequel to Doom 64, and it was colloquially named “Doom 64 2.” At least they had a less clunky name for it than Super Mario 64 2.

The first Doom 64 didn’t have multiplayer or any deathmatch mode. According to an interview with Aaron Seeler, the lead programmer on the project, they were deathmatch purists (based on the original PC version) and didn’t see it fit to have a multiplayer where you can look at the other players’ screen. He also lamented getting crushed by 007: GoldenEye during the N64 deathmatch craze.

It was only in development for a short period, and was actually cancelled the same year that Doom 64 came out. There isn’t a lot of information out there about what the game would have looked like, but it seems it was abandoned due to the dated nature of the Doom engine. It seems that the development team were moved to the Quake 64 port, which was a fully 3D FPS with some more features.

According to Midway designer Tim Heydelaar, they had finished a significant amount of levels that were completely playable for the multiplayer mode. What a shame for Doom fans; some still hold out hope that they can get access to those levels for PC mods.

Monster Dunk

The N64 and PS1 gen was a great era for sports games. There were plenty of serious games like Madden picking up steam and becoming all-time console staples. There were plenty of silly or cartoony games, like Mario Tennis and NFL Blitz. And, of course, we had the golden era of wrestling games with WWF No Mercy.

Let’s rewind a bit, though, from before the N64 came out — back when it was called “Project Ultra.”

Part of Nintendo’s strategy for the release of their new console would be to build a “dream team.” The Nintendo Dream Team was a collection of developers and publishers that would work closely with Nintendo to make a great lineup of exclusive games for the console’s launch. With a proper lineup, the N64 would get a great initial customer base and run away with the competition.

However, one of the companies in the dream team was Mindscape. Mindscape didn’t have any major hits, but they were going to work on a game called Monster Dunk for the N64. You can probably guess what the game was like; it was a basketball game featuring classic monster mascots playing 2-on-2 games just like NBA Jam. Magazines reporting on the game’s development also mentioned that there would be stage hazards and special moves for individual characters.

Unfortunately, this game never saw the light of day, and as far as anyone knows, there’s no prototype or design documents available. It’s unknown how far this game got into development, but it’s interesting to see what Nintendo’s “dream team” was up to. Monster Dunk, a goofy little concept, could have been a Nintendo hit that represented the N64 for years to come.

Anyone else want Frankenstein in Smash now?

Earthbound 64

Mother and Mother 2 were critically acclaimed RPGs on the NES and SNES respectively. Mother 2, which was released as Earthbound in the West, quickly became a cult classic and is widely regarded as one of Nintendo’s best RPGs ever. Its main character, Ness, is a staple of the Smash Bros. franchise as well, going as far back as the first game.

After the success of Mother 2, they set to work on Mother 3, which was to be called Earthbound 64 overseas. Development started on the N64 but was shifted to the N64DD. The game had solid 3D graphics with a cartoony style, and functionality with the Rumble Pak and other features, including the ability to draw faces for characters.

Development was announced in 1996, and continued strong for years with picture updates and trailers. In 1999, there was a demo available at the SpaceWorld convention. The scope was too great for the developers, though, due to their lack of familiarity with 3D graphics and N64 hardware. HAL had also told the developers to rein in their expectations for the game, in the hopes they could finalize a product for release.

After the N64DD’s commercial failure, Itoi decided to publicly announce the game’s cancellation on August 21, 2000. According to Miyamoto, the game was 60% complete; according to Itoi, its director, it was 30% complete. Many pictures still exist for fans to gawk at.

Fortunately for fans, Mother 3 found a home as a completely separate game on the Gameboy Advance. The scope was smaller, due to the tech restrictions to 2D graphics, but according to what we saw from the trailer and teasers, the developers retained plenty of the original story.

The GBA version of Mother 3 was released in 2006, but there has yet to be an official English version. Many fans opt to play it with a fanmade translation patch instead.

Glover 2

Glover was a solid game that never reached the “escape velocity” that system sellers like Smash Bros. and Mario Kart do. It came to multiple platforms, including PC, and sold decently. Glover 2 was planned for a release on the same platforms, but it never came out.

In 2010, the site NESWorld got their hands on a playable beta of the game. It’s unfinished, but it shows that Glover 2 was very far along in development. It wouldn’t have taken that much more time or money to get the game out the door and on shelves. If it was this close to being complete, why didn’t it come out?

The story behind this is a little unusual. In early 2015, one of the former employees of Interactive Studios wrote a blog post on the subject. To cut a long story short, a Hasbro executive ordered literally double the cartridges from Nintendo for Glover 1’s print run.

Normally, a game like Glover that sells decently would have a print run of around 150,000 copies. Nintendo apparently had a sale on N64 cartridges for developers at the time, so someone at Hasbro ordered 300,000 for Glover.

Fast forward after release, and Glover sold around 150,000 copies. That would be totally fine, if Hasbro didn’t have 150,000 more copies that nobody wanted. Glover had reached its market cap, and no other players wanted a copy; Hasbro started to shift the blame onto the brand (and possibly the developers) during the production of Glover 2, which eventually led to its cancellation.

Project Dream

When games get stuck in development hell, the focus shifts. Sometimes, especially when games are developed near the end of one console’s life cycle and the start of another, every part of the initial project gets changed. Graphics, genre, aesthetic, and story are all subject to massive change the longer development goes on.

That’s exactly what happened to “Project Dream,” a project developed by Rare for the SNES (and later the N64). The game was originally going to be an adventure-RPG about a boy named Edson that fought against pirates. Footage of this version of the game exists, showing an isometric perspective. It also had sprites based on pre-rendered 3D models, much like Rare’s own Donkey Kong Country. Edson also had a pet dog and parrot, named Dinger and Billy.

Rare wasn’t able to complete the game on the SNES, so when development transitioned to the N64, the game also transitioned to full 3D graphics and became a larger scale RPG. They also decided to incorporate the pirates more into the story and theme. However, the game started going through some radical changes.

Edson was replaced by a rabbit protagonist, after the development team was inspired by Conker’s Bad Fur Day. Around this time, they also decided to change the game from an adventure RPG into a 3D platformer.

Here’s the twist, though — this game isn’t technically cancelled, just so far from its original prototype (which you can find video of today) that it’s a completely different game. It eventually came out as Banjo Kazooie, the N64 classic series.

The original vision of Project Dream was halted far into development, but out of that game something beautiful was born in its place. It’s a linear 3D platformer instead of an adventure RPG with pirates (and a human protagonist), but clearly the development turned out alright. Banjo Kazooie and it’s sequel, Banjo Tooie, hold 9s and 10s across nearly every review outlet.

[ladyjenise]

Breath of the Wild non-spoiler gameplay update:

I’ve logged about 30 hours into the game so far, and I’m nowhere near done. And believe me I haven’t just been running around looking at stuff. A lot of that has been actual activity towards progressing through both skills/stats and the storyline. There’s just THAT much to do.

Onto actual spoilery stuff:

Ok, gameplay spoilery stuff:

-Who the fuck are the Yiga clan and why do they want to kill Link? If there’s one thing that’s driving me in this game, it’s finding out who these a-holes are and why they started Hyrule ISIS just to assassinate Link, because they don’t seem affiliated with Ganon. Seriously, fuck these guys. Also: they fight with sickles. Who fights with a sickle? Honestly. Commie bastards.

-I got a house! I found it by accident. There is a house in Hateno village behind those cubey IKEA homes, just across a small bridge. The guys there are tearing it down, explaining that it was abandoned and the village had thus voted to tear it down. But then you can jokingly offer to buy it. Well, fuck that. I was dead serious. I wanted to see how far I could go. Even the 30,000 initial rupee price didn’t deter me (I’ve played Animal Crossing, motherfucker! No mortgage scares me now!) You talk them down to only 3k rupees, which is easy to do if you’re finding gems (blow up black shiny rocks) and doing shrines (find the extra hidden chests in them. There’s always usually one extra one besides the one easy-to-find one, and sometimes you can find silver rupees in them that are worth 100). Diamonds are not super rare (I’ve found like 3 so far) and are worth 500 rupees.

-I LOVE that rupees can actually buy you dope shit finally. Not buy you some shit potion you can get for free, or a heart. Like, Nintendo FINALLY listened and got down to developing a proper small scale economy.

-The blood moon is cool af and a great way to repopulate the world so there’s no end of weapons and stuff. This is especially important because I’ve heard there is a quest to get some super hype armor sets that you can only get through collecting monster shit, so respawning for farming was going to be a requirement for that alone.

-Amiibos:

1) If you tap the Ganondorf amiibo, you get a version of his really cool ass big sword from that Spaceworld 2000 demo. I love cleaving enemies to death with that thing. Best part is, if it breaks, I know I can get another one eventually.

2) Sheik drops sheikah stuff

3) Zelda (original smash bros) gives fruit and gems

4) Link (original smash bros) dropped EPONA. And her stats are amazing. Fast as hell, always obeys commands, etc. Dopest horse in the game so far.

5) 30th anniversary Link dropped a bunch of items that I can’t remember now.

And I haven’t scanned my Ocarina of Time Link because he’s at my desk at my office. I’ll have to bring him home and try him. It’s totally worth doing the Amiibo shit. I really want to get that Wolf Link one now just to get that. DAMN YOU EXPLOITING CAPITALISM, NINTENDO

Storyline spoilery stuff:

-I feel like I have made the least progression on the story. Of the 18 memories, I got 3 so far. I’m pretty sure after 30 hours I was done Ocarina of Time and all the other games after it and had the whole story by now. This fucking game? NOPE.

-I have memories 1, 3, and... whatever the one is with Mipha where she’s healing Link (aww). I thought Zelda’s voice actress was not a good choice at first, but she has grown on me. Mostly through the two memories I have seen so far. I thought it cute when she’s telling Link she’s “trying to be more empathetic”. The idea that Zelda isn’t some perfect being intrigues me, and from what I’ve seen so far they’ve built her as a very imperfect girl who tries to project the opposite.

-HE WAS DEAD ALL ALONG. So I was wrong. The old man wasn’t Ganondorf. He was actually the king. OH WELL. I like his Japanese voice better than his English one (in before WEEABOO)

-Everyone wants to get into Link’s pants, as is tradition.

-I like talking to Impa’s granddaughter in my underwear. Her reaction is great.

-I love that the gerudo have their own words for stuff. Though they are hella big. I keep waiting for them to demand snoo snoo from Link. So many crushed pelvises...

-I saw a review that said there were too many borderline creepy dude characters in the game. Their argument seemed to imply it was demeaning to women. I met all the ones they were talking about and, to be fair I think the stereotype is demeaning to men, but it’s also a staple trope in anime. I don’t really want to make excuses to anyone for Nintendo, though. They’re a big company. People should be free to criticize. I just don’t see it as much of a problem as other trends I’ve seen in gaming. Basically, there are bigger fish to fry.

-Did I mention that the gerudo are cool as hell?

-Probably more of a gameplay spoiler but the race-created weapons are also everything I ever wanted.

[impyhobgoblin-blog]

Ok, so to run my Pokémon Gold 1997 Spaceworld demo, I need to do this, but I don't know what this means. Someone please explain?