#the last of us (you and me) is in the videogame's part 1 soundtrack

[azertyrobaz]

Forsaken > You & Me

Throughout the season, Gustavo Santaolalla’s haunting theme “Forsaken” slowly morphs into “The Last of Us (You and Me)”, which becomes Joel & Ellie’s theme during their journey.

[italoniponic]

𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐲'𝐬 𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 - 𝐖𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭

| Notes: Hi, @diavolosbaby and dear readers~ This is the part finale of my Idia’s scenario, “Winter Melts Into Spring”, and our 50th and last request for the Cherry’s Harvesting event. As I said, this fic got so looong, that I had to split it into two parts.

Curiosity: the title of this fic is inspired by a track from Fruits Basket’s (2019) soundtrack, the original name being “Snow Melts Into Spring” and its alt and longer version, “Spring Will Come When the Snow Melts Away” (here so you can listen to if you’re curious). For those who don't know, the myth of Persephone and Hades is what explains the change of seasons and that’s why this theme is so heavily implied here, just as other videogame references (tho I’m not much of a gamer myself… ik Idia, shame on me).

Hope you like the part finale and I really hope I did justice to Idia’s character, I tried the best I could. I needed to condense most of the story or this would be a longfic and not a one-shot. And it’s already a hell of a long one-shot (for my normal amount of writing, at least). Now, grab a hot beverage, a blanket if its cold where you are (its here for me) and hope its a good read.

Thanks for the request <3 |

Idia Shroud x gender neutral reader / scenario / part 1 (here)- part 2 (3550k words) / mentions of breakup with Vil Schoenheit / angst, hurt and comfort, fluff / seasons and greek mythology references / minor chapter 6 mentions and references / use of “you” pronouns

Cherry’s Harvesting 🍒 Masterlist

Winter Melts Into Spring

{𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐈𝐈, “𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐡 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐬”}

        You quickly turned to him, waking up from your incessant thoughts. It was another game night and you were sitting side by side in his bed, cellphones in hand. As your game was over, you became a bit dispersed.

        “Have you listened to Euterpe-ram’s new playlist?,” Idia shyly showed you his phone, your surprised and intense gaze had taken him by surprise at that moment.

        Without paying much mind, you read the title, the number of songs and the cover image, things that made you sigh. Then, almost in auto mode, you said:

        “It took me a hell of a lot of work to find that image…”

        Panic hit your senses as you turned your gaze to Idia and he looked as painfully surprised as you. You tried to think of something to say but he quickly realized what was going on.

        “Are you Euterpe-ram?!,” Idia exclaimed. You see his brain cells going short-circuit. “W-when? Come again? Ah! What you said... about what I thought… the playlist…? You wanted my opinion? Is that why?! I had no idea!”

        Idia held back a little as he noticed that you had cringed in your place, a little shaky from the quick way he was speaking. You knew that Idia spoke like that when he was agitated and although you had been amused by this little quirk on other occasions, at that moment you felt as if you had dropped a bomb.

        Well, was it a secret worth hiding? Actually, everything that happened was just an omission of information. 

        As you regained your composure, Idia looked back at his phone and remembered the playlist he was listening to when you walked into his room that night. Songs to listen to when you're heartbroken but don’t want to admit it. 

        When he found that title, he thought it was a strange coincidence to find something that could express so well what he was feeling at the moment — and Idia already had a bad opinion about coincidences. 

        There are no such things. Everything happens for a reason. And he was right in part. Idia didn't have to ask why you had created that melancholic playlist about love. Given your situation, there was no other reason.

        Mindlessly, Idia went to Euterpe-ram’s profile — your profile — on magify and found the playlist he wanted to review with you. This one, with a completely different theme, was pretty much the opposite of its playlist-sister. A playlist of positive love songs and some hesitant, longing ones. Again, you two were in sync yet by pure coincidence. How was that possible?

        “This playlist... is cool,” Idia said suddenly. You nodded silently, not knowing what to say.

        He had noticed that you were slowly returning to your usual “you” along the weeks, going back to being the endearing spring that captivated him so much. The choice of those songs seemed a manifestation of that. 

        “Are you in love?,” this question slipped away unintentionally, and Idia’s heart failed for a second. “S-sorry! I shouldn't meddle in these things!”

        “Nice move, Idia! Go there, spoil these good times you have been having!” He wanted to hide somewhere, but he was already in his own room. There weren't many places to run at the moment.

        “It’s alright... I think that would be inevitable to talk about,” you replied. You were completely turned to him but your gaze was caught in the zipper of his coat, an easy point to stare at as you talked about these complicated feelings. “A fantastic thing happened to me…”

        Idia felt as if he had stepped into a bath with cold water, disappointment already taking over his heart. He already had an idea of what was going to happen. You’d say who you were in love with at this time, he would inevitably be the Protagonist’s Friend once again — an improved version, he tried to convince himself to be — and you two would have a long, awkward conversation about love.

        “What happened?,” he asked in a low tone, since you had paused the sentence in the middle.

        “You.”

        At that, you looked up and bravely, faced Idia’s eyes. You were like a mythological hero facing the depths of Hades, ready to throw yourself into an epic adventure of life and death with no regrets. On the other hand, Idia felt like you had slapped him.

        “W-wha-what?,” he didn't even know what to say. How to talk. How to put words together. How to form a coherent sentence. His hair seemed to fry his neurons again, pink crackling at the ends.

        “It's a long story... but at first, I was always curious about you. It's hard not to notice you, to be honest,” you tried to laugh a little to relieve tension. “The more I talked to you, this curiosity increased and I really wanted to be your friend. I have met many nice people all these months and you are all special to me... well, I admit that you and Vil have had a certain prominence.”

        You sighed, like a flower after a strong breeze shakes it in the field but doesn’t get taken from from its roots.

         “Perhaps I’m a very aesthetic person and never noticed it, but Vil’ beauty captivated me. Just like you. But in different ways. And at first, I thought my admiration for Vil had become strong enough to be a passion. Epic love like in the movies, you know? Two hours of film for a splendid and satisfying ending. But it was… not so. It wasn't love. It was something good, positive, full of empathy... but not love.”

        It was the first time Idia noticed a bit of winter in your eyes, as if a snowflake had landed on one of your petals. Your gaze had dropped a little, you were still playing with his coat’s zipper — you liked to stare at that little skull for some reason. 

        Idia bit his tongue, trying to stop himself from saying something, but he couldn't help but ask:

        “When you talked about your breakup with the Vil... well, it always bothered me a little,” having said that, your gaze returned directly to him. “There's something very vague, you know? Something you didn't say. What was it?”

        He felt a bit stupid asking that. Truth be told, he was afraid of this conversation and what could happen. Still, he wanted to understand the situation better. Vil and you seemed like the perfect couple — so, what went wrong? 

        You talked about incompatibility but it only seemed like half of the truth. Something that had happened, however, wasn't the main reason. Something you wanted to say but didn't. Part of Idia wanted to know what it was, meanwhile the other wanted to be consumed in flames and simply disappear from there. 

        For a moment, you hesitated about giving him an answer. Quick flashbacks of some of your conversations with Vil flashed through your mind. During the time you spent together, you talked about a lot of things — especially after his overblot. But most subjects ended up stopping at a specific topic.

        “When we broke up, we talked about some problems between us. Things that happened but we didn't know how to solve them. Vil said that I was talking a lot about you. More than anyone else,” you revealed, feeling your heart tremble for a second. It was as if something burned inside, taking away the cold from before.

        “Because of what happened to me...?,” Idia risked saying.

        “No,” your answer was immediate. “Before that. I asked what you were like, if you were always so reclusive, if there was a way I could talk to you, if you two were in the same class. A lot of stuff. I said, you make me very curious.”

        “And I don't know why.”

        It had been a grumble that Idia let slip and fastly, he covered his mouth, looking away from you. You already anticipated such a reaction from him and, contrary to what Idia thought was going to happen, you smiled at him.

        “You're more interesting than you think, Idia,” you giggled as you watched him try to hide inside his coat, but the pink ends of his hair didn’t lie. “You can deny it all you want but you are someone very intriguing. Your way of acting, of dealing with the world... I want to understand and know all this.”

         From the depths of Idia’s hood, his eyes began to stare at you as if you were the weird one there. You leaned more into your pillow, your head tilted and looking at him the way someone stares at their favorite packet of snacks they haven’t found on the shelf in months — and finally Sam had stocked up on them again. 

        Were you trying to kill Idia?! Was this your evil plan? Not you, the sweet deity of spring, being a character with a secret sadistic side underneath your gentle smile and gaze sweet as honey and ambrosia. 

        “Maybe I should have been honest with Vil from the beginning. Maybe if I had better understood what I was doing... my own feelings,” you sighed. 

        “Did you really talk about me that much?,” Idia asked, still incredulous. 

        To his great surprise, it was your turn to take an embarrassment hit with medium damage. It was a little dark inside his coat and the lights weren’t extremely bright — even if it managed to illuminate the room well — but even so, Idia had the strange impression that your face was tense and flustered. 

        “Maybe... enough to make Vil a little jealous…”

        “WHAT?!,” Idia exploded out of his hood. “In what universe is this possible?! What kind of scenario is this? Vil Schoenheit envy me? Under what circumstances? Does he have to act like a socially awkward guy who doesn't go out in the Sun and has dark circles under his eyes and he, at the must of perfectionism, hates the fact that his makeup doesn't give as realistic an impression as my appearance? Never!”

        Idia had heard of stories of a goddess of love being jealous of some very beautiful mortal women — but in those stories, there was the implication that she had a pretty good reason to envy them. Would anyone, under any circumstances, envy Idia Shroud? 

        “Idia, your hair!,” you warned him.

        The flames of his hair were in an interesting gradient of blue, orange and pink, mixing all his emotions at once. Idia took a deep breath and tapped his long locks back to its usual blue. Was he still angry? Yes. Embarrassed? Extremely. Confused? Even more every second.

        However, his agitation has yet to be overcome. In the heat of the moment, Idia held you by the shoulders for you to face him directly. His grip was firm but weak enough for you to let go of him if that were your desire. He felt like someone who hurriedly picked up a large handful of wheat in the field to run and protect it from the heavy rain.

        Your cellphones lie forgotten somewhere between the bedsheets, unaware of the emotion-filled moment between their owners that would make tragedy plays and shojo anime envious. 

        “Please, just explain to me why you are so obsessed with me,” Idia asked, desperate. He could no longer endure such uncertainty and confusion. “You’ve finally met me! There you go! Game over. It takes no more than a day to understand how I act, how I eat and my habitat. I’m the lamest kind of lab mouse there is! How can you have fun with me?! Either you’re too bored...!”

        “Idia, you don’t understand! What I feel for you isn’t an obsession.”

        “Hyperfixation?,” he tried to correct it.

        “It's love, Idia.”

        On the Isle of Lamentation, the only grasp of vegetation is a series of large shrubs around the entire island to keep oxygen levels regulated and healthy. Nevertheless, there weren’t many flowers — or anything Idia had ever been interested in planting and observing. But he wondered if the opening of a flower bud was equal to your eyes blinking in his direction.

        “Love?!,” Idia’s blood boiled and exploded again. His hair rose in a big, hot pink blaze.

        You weren't shaken by his reaction this time. On the contrary, his heart beat fast in continual captivation — and a certain amusement too. 

        Idia was this big papyrus that was easy to open, even if it was hard to read at times. But you could understand him perfectly. Maybe it was a gift, maybe you just were very similar to him or there was some other reason. What mattered, deep down, was that his mannerisms endeared you in a way that not even the fairest of them all could. 

        You didn’t bother to ask how this was possible. 

        You already entertained yourself with the possibilities of the Underworld by facing the place from afar. When Ortho — your petite Charon — took you there, a poor sorrowful soul, you let yourself be led like someone who had no choice. Dying is never a fully realized wish, there is always some sort of regret and fear. For you, for others.

        Yet, the lord of the dead received you in his realm even in your deplorable state and let you wander there, no longer as a soul but as an equal. Someone who could belong there and make your own pomegranate garden.

        “These last times have been the best. I’m grateful for your kindness and your patience with me. This whole time you have been acting like yourself around me,” you said. “While most people here are walking on eggshells about it and another part doesn’t really care, you managed to balance the two things perfectly.” 

        Your friends sought to avoid talking about Vil. Your more distant colleagues couldn’t be less shaken about any of this. Ortho wanted to cheer you up because he had the purest of youthful hearts. And Idia just stretched out a game control for you and listened to a playlist beside you — your own pain, whether spoken, whether chosen musically.

        He didn’t have a heart of stone. He cared about you and, in his own way, he made things easier. If it was someone else, you wouldn’t have recovered so quickly. This conditioning made you feel self-doubt about what you felt. 

        But doubts aren’t such a powerful titan that cannot be overcome sooner or later. 

        “To tell you the truth, getting to know you better has only made me realize that it is you who gives me the biggest comfort to be who I am. Here there are no worries, pressure, challenges. I'm just me... and you're just you. Every day, I discover something new about you, Idia, and it's valuable. Genuine. Feel right.” 

        The more layers you peeled off of Vil, you found that he covered himself with others. He didn't want to worry you beyond what was necessary. His heart was a castle with a trapdoor, dungeons and endless catacombs, things he didn’t want you to explore in any circumstance. He wasn’t ready yet.

        One day in the future, he would find someone who could understand him better and would have more persistence in uncovering the shadows and wrinkles he strove every day to disguise and get rid of. Someone who could convince him that this ugliness is natural and not a terrible punishment. A person who Vil would listen to. 

        That someone wasn’t you. Even as a friend, your words grew on him in a sufficiently deep and, at the same time, superficial way. Beautiful roses in the first days, dried and yellowed petals at the weekend — flowers that needed to be changed in the vase every week. 

        It wasn’t what Vil or you needed. You weren’t meant to be the Hercules of his story. Your fate was connected with someone else’s.

        “I won’t delude myself and think that I know everything about you. Or that you won’t have parts of yourself that you obviously won't want to show me. But...,” Idia’s figure, with his huge golden eyes, staring at you seemed to blur suddenly. “...I’m so glad to be with you. Every day, every night. Grim sometimes needs to come here to take me off, because otherwise I won't go back to Ramshackle. But it’s not because I want to avoid memories anymore!”

        There were tears that flowed down from your eyes, just like light rain in a field of daffodils. You stood up on top of the bed, arms outstretched gesticulating energetically to everything around you two. 

        “I love this place! This dorm, this room, these sweaty sheets, bright screens at midnight, opening a Goblin can with you and toast for one more victory, smell of snacks each week. I want to convince Grim to be here too because everything about this place is wonderful. Can’t you see? We are like the gods of this cosmos...!”

        Idia held your hand suddenly and you interrupted your stately monologue to look at him --- and also take a moment to wipe some tears from your face. Idia had his eyes fixed on you, the ends of his hair crackling the same hot pink as before. 

        Your words touched him deeply, making it seem for a moment that you were talking about Elysium and not Inferno. It didn't have to have such impressive glory. He was entirely satisfied with his humble piece of Underworld. Still, you filled that morbid, dark place with flowers and fruits, finding fertility in even the dustiest graves.

        Why were you like that? Why did it make his insides crawl with shame and embarrassment at the same intensity that his heart was pounding fast? Completely unfair! 

        “Damn it, you look like an anime protagonist talking. It gets on my nerves,” Idia lowered his head so you wouldn’t see his pale face heat with color. “Ah... I love you too much to bully you about these things…”

        If you were drinking something, you would have choked. Or spilled it. It would be more mess than what was already.

        “Idia?,” you knelt there, trying to make him face you again. “Do you love me?”

        “I-I’m not saying it again.”

        “Idia, with a thousand hydra heads, put something in your stove of a head!”

        In what he wanted to run away from his bed, you held his face and stood close enough that your noses crushed together.

        “I love you. Not out of pity, not out of simple curiosity. I want to know more about you just so I can love you more. The good, the bad, the neutral parts. Everything.”

        What was that sound in your head? Your heart? Epic music?

        “You’ll be that precious game that I will play infinitely because it’s my favorite and never fails to bring me a smile on my face!”

        “Please stop talking like that. You drive me crazy,” Idia also held your face, a little harder this time, and pulled you a little away from him.

        Idia’s hands were cold as mausoleum stones. His long, pale fingers gripping the entire outline of your face. Despite the cold hands, his face was warm. 

        Your words were like gasoline to him. He was only stopping you from going on because one more intense speech about how much you loved him — unbelievable, you really hit rock bottom, huh? — would have him have a heart attack right there.

        Idia would die of embarrassment in your arms. And, for Hades’s curved chin, you would have the audacity to mourn his death with more shameful oaths of love.

        Idia was determined to be strong. For about five minutes, at least. With you there, it was as if he could hold the whole universe in his hands. It was such a scary realization, but also amazing.

        “Briger of death. Ramshackle muse. Spring deity...,” he tried to list titles for you, beautiful words that could express what he felt. But he needed a serious backup for this. “Ugh, I wasn’t made for these types of dialogue! To be honest, you make me look so normal!”

        “Thanks.”

        “Consider that I am the basis of comparison. This is not a compliment.” 

        “It is. For me, it is.”

        You gave a big smile that almost broke Idia. You really had no compassion. At the end of the day, maybe you weren’t a perfect deity. You were just a weirdo like Idia, probably more. But he liked it — without realizing it, he smiled too. 

        In your romantic playlist, Idia had found a song to call his favorite. It had no lyrics, just a melody. “Snow that melts into spring”. It was how he felt with you right there in front of him. You two could really be who you were together. Both gods and mere mortals. 

        Idia wasn’t the Protagonist’s Friend. He was just Idia Shroud. In its pathos, in its awesomeness, in its card SSR level and in its simplicity of R card. And you loved him all despite this. 

        “You’re so weird...,” Idia brought your faces closer to each other again and like a key stuck on the keyboard, he continued. “...and I love this in you.”

        Winter might be over but you felt vividly what a kiss of snow was. Frosty, gently melting into warm lips of spring petals. Love can be so lively.

| Special notes: Euterpe is the name of the Muse of Music. "Ram" is the acronym for "random-access memory" (is a form of computer memory) + Ramshackle. I forgot to explain this when I posted in case someone didn't understood the whole thing behind Reader's magify username... yes, magify, I made it |

[vt-scribbles]

Y'know I know ask games are for people to, y'know, send in asks. But I don't see people often just. Fill it all out themselves. Fuck it I'll help out the shy people.

SO ASK GAME BELOW 'READMORE' LET'S GO

1. Art programs you have but don't use: MS Paint, Blender, I used to have WAY more like this one painting [like actual paint] program.

2. Is it easier to draw someone facing left or right (or forward even): Left is easiest, Right is in the middle, and forward is the hardest of those three for me.

3. What ideas come from when you were little: I was fascinated by G/T from like. 3 years old. I blame Super Mario Land 2 LMAO

4. Fav character/subject that's a bitch to draw: Handheld, perspective, monsters/creatures, and massive scale

5. Estimate of how much of your art you post online vs. the art you keep for yourself: Uhhh probably about 50/50? A lot of things I draw are spoilers, shitposts, and other study art I don't bother sharing.

6. Anything that might inspire you subconsciously (i.e. this horse wasn't supposed to look like the Last Unicorn but I see it): Not that I can think of? My art doesn't get analyzed super often. I think people think I study anime more than I do.

7. A medium of art you don't work in but appreciate: Charcoal, watercolors, sculpture, oil pastels, acrylic, copic markers

8. What's an old project idea that you've lost interest in: Originally I was going to make an AMV with my two characters, Nonny and Felicia, to the song 'shut up and dance with me'. These two aren't active OCs anymore, and the project was WAY too ambitious for my skill level 9 years ago lmao.

9. What are your file name conventions: 1: Name of song I listened to on loop while drawing. 2: An inside joke. 3: Literal rep of what's on the canvas like 'Hema doodles Aug 2023'.

10. Favorite piece of clothing to draw: Body suits, capes, scarves

11. Do you listen to anything while drawing? If so, what: TONS. My fave lyrical music, videogame soundtracks, sometimes just ambiance if I'm overwhelmed. Usually tho it's the same song on loop till I get the inspired piece out of my system.

12. Easiest part of body to draw: Eyes!

13. A creator who you admire but whose work isn't your thing: A lot of NSFW artists who I won't list here LMAO. I don't go to that school, but their art skills are top-notch.

14. Any favorite motifs: Mirrors, doppelgangers, leaving 1 eye absent for emotional effect, feathers/wings, falling, sinking into water, eyes, dark palettes with bright accents/light sources, glowing eyes, flowing hair, size difference/scale, fucked up version of self vs real version

15. *Where* do you draw (don't drop your ip address this just means do you doodle at a park or smth): Starbucks, home, parks if I'm feelin spicy, anywhere I take my tablet for the day.

16. Something you are good at but don't really have fun doing: A lot of my niche/kink stuff tends to get pretty dredge-y for me. I may be good at it, but it's not where my passion lies. That's in animation, fantasy, dramatic stuff, storytelling, etc.

17. Do you eat/drink when drawing? if so, what: Water or Snapple for the drink, milk if it's bedtime so I can settle down, and then usually the snacks are just whatever my lunch is for the day since we don't have a table.

18. An estimate of how much art supplies you've broken: Not many! Less than $100 I'd say. I'm very careful with my supplies, and I don't believe I've ever broken a tablet. The worst I've done was I busted 1 or 2 cheap tablet pens with stupidity.

19. Favorite inanimate objects to draw (food, nature, etc.): Definitely nature. Tree trunks and swirls therein, flowers, grass.

20. Something everyone else finds hard to draw but you enjoy: Humans! Not that it's an 'everyone' thing, I just run in some furry circles where human artists are a rarity. Eyes, too. Some people find expressions rly hard.

21. Art styles nothing like your own but you like anyways: Uhhh man damn, I don't follow a lot of art styles that aren't something I took inspo from? But I guess Wolf Walkers is my biggest one.

22. What physical exercises do you do before drawing, if any: Sooometimes I stretch, but I don't do it nearly often enough.

23. Do you use different layer modes: Yep! My most common ones are Multiply, Glow Dodge, Add, Add Glow, Overlay, Pin Light, and Color.

24. Do your references include stock images: Absolutely! Reference is important.

25. Something your art has been compared to that you were NOT inspired by: Not much! Most of my inspirations are pretty clear-cut and strong. Avatar, SU, Disney, Dreamworks, FMA, some Warner Brothers' movies, etc.

26. What's a piece that got a wildly different interpretation from what you intended: God, so, the G/T gif of mine that makes the rounds a lot? The one where VT finds someone small and it's their POV and he helps them and puts them in his shirt pocket??? Most people were completely normal about that post. But then there's one chuckle-head who was calling it pocket-vore, and I wanted to scream. I even chastised them like 'hey uh, no. That's not what this is.' and they argued back with 'well it's up to the eye of the beholder more than your opinion.' and I was like 'UH NO. I MADE THIS. MY OPINION IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOUR WEIRD ONE???' I've also RAAARELY had people call my characters underaged when they're all well over 21, so those are always gross/wild LMAO.

27. Do you warm up before getting to the good stuff? If so, what is it you draw to warm up with: Sometimes! I usually do an anatomy study, brush stroke warm-ups, or just doodle something personal first.

28. Any art events you have participated in the past (like zines): I think Multi Animator Projects [MAPS] would count here! I was part of Starclan's Chosen, Change Your Mind [Brambleclaw], Levitating, Family of Me [fallenleaves], Goosebumps Warriors MAP, Pay No Mind MEP, LA Devotee [never finished], White Rabbit, and Fear Garden! Among others :>

29. Media you love, but doesn't inspire you artistically: Not much! Pretty much everything I love inspires me artistically. I guess some anime styles?

30. What piece of yours do you think is underrated: Pretty much any of my animations. But I only feel that way cuz they take THE MOST dedication and work time. Also kiiiinda my writing? But a lot of people have trouble getting people to respond to literature, so.

[aaronoflive12]

102523 - Very serious personal opinion on the latest Mario Bros. game.

[clean language post]

After a great deal of thinking, I imposed a personal boycott on playing Super Mario Bros. Wonder for myself. I will watch it, but I do not care too much for it. Uh, the 'Cyberpunk 2077' effect. And I do not like that game either, regardless of the draw.

The truth is, well, I actually purchased the Suika Game on the same platform, and not via recommendations by Hololive members, other VTubers or the like, but through twitch.tv. Added, I barely watch any english-language streams/streamers, either. And as in most other sites from what I researched… yes, it did become an immense sleeper hit, and still is. Actual game is epic and simple, but with an arcade-style hardness to it, and is in my view, one of the most addictive of puzzle-genre videogames I have played under any platform, from another obscure development group. Yep, I even set a dedicated YT playlist just with that game.

Circumstantially, as a result of this, and this music project I'm building up since back in July, I simply could not bother to take the time to play Super Mario Bros. Wonder, given the game's ratings, and of my past experiences as well, on both NSMB Wii U and Odyssey.

The soundtrack to the game, though, I will give that a listen, even if I never have intentions to play the game with a differently voiced cast. Another cascading effect from 'that' SMB movie. Yes, I might like it better of course if I was younger and more oblivious with the series, and the social systems around myself. Well, moving along then…

I'm 31 now, and had been a moderate fan of the Super Mario Bros. series since both Super Mario World and Super Mario All-Stars, both on the SNES, and of games from the N64 era. Since the Gamecube era, I've liked some iterations (SM64, both Galaxy games, NSMB series, Super Smash Bros. Melee, SSB4, and SSB Ultimate), but disliked others (Sunshine, Odyssey post-completion, NSMB2, Smash Bros. 3 (Brawl)), most Mario Kart games, and many of it's spin-off/sports games, as well as the Mario Party series. A huge list, I assure you, and I do not want to write an essay on it. Uh, Super Mario Kart 99, 'if' it comes eventually… Maybe, to watch streams of it, but I am not purchasing an online account to play that, for reasons similar to the F-Zero 99 game. Not paying it, to simply play races of F-Zero 99 or other free content locked within a paywall.

And the worst part as a fan of the series… I am not personally supporting the further evolution of the SMB franchise from here, proper. But no matter this, I will not forget the legacy, particularly when the franchise used to be an epic, and at times, revolutionary product of the iconic red brand, with equally iconic red and green-colored mascots, and attitudes. And this first step of the next era of the franchise is in my opinion, the dawn of a new 'dark' phase, and had subsequently stopped following and supporting any future iterations of the franchise, like I already did from the release of the 2022 version of CoD:MW2, and with Formula 1 games since last year (also from 2022). And I did not like Odyssey that much, because the disturbing language from certain characters in the actual game, honestly, completely stopped me from continuing on after ending the first playthrough, and I barely touched that said game since that time.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder - personal opinion.

Yes, it is indeed an epic, and arguably, better and more creative/original videogame than the Sonic Superstars game, released days before this came out. But personally, Wonder is not as addictive, nor better, nor as iconic in the long-term as the Suika Game is, released internationally on the same date. Yes, I am still obsessed with their looks (the fruits) compared with the other games mentioned, as well as of course, it's very difficult, rewarding gameplay, simplicity and the overall aesthetic. Although personally, SMBW is one step, or 'stomp', forward, but too many steps backwards in the overall experience. Nor is it faster, as I do hate watching the loading screens, and the waiting times between the end of one stage and the start of another. And still I yet to see any stream where cutscenes or the like, can be skipped, especially on the first playthrough. And as a result, it's heart now is straight-up tarnished. Hated much of the commentary (better if it was forced off, or in a different, less disturbing language), talking flowers included, and a really absurd storyline.

Frankly and internally speaking, I am very glad that I 'did not' purchase this product, 'SMBW' (Super Mario Bros. Wonder). Far, more, annoying, than Odyssey, the Galaxy series, the 'New' series, or, most other mainline series iterations. Yeah, they did not rush on this but, the actual developers hid far too many secrets about the story in-game, that I really dislike a great deal, no offense. A sandbox approach would have been a far superior alternative than the one that was ultimately given to the public. I am serious on that, and I am not talking about Super Mario Maker or it's sequel. And the Devs kept the 'lives' system, which they should have never had implemented in this game, even I would claim it is 'obsolete' these days.

Just one particular homage though in relation to the Touhou series that I picked up, and I am serious here, don't flip, 10-year gap, and all that. Seija Kijin's pose, the one from her first appearance in Touhou 14… they nearly completely replicated that exact pose. This is shown in this game after the player(s) gets/picks up the 'drill' powerup, or the stamps showing this from in-game. Indeed, Shinmyoumaru's battles from DDC too were also replicated to an extent... in a Bowser Jr. battle (player shrinks, enemy grows, and also the other way around).

[dwnlnation379]

Sonic before the sequel sprites

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Sonic Before The Sequel Plus - Reviews | Sonic Fan Games HQ.

Sonic BTS Tails Running Sprite Sheet Sonic 2 - DeviantArt.

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Sonic Before The Sequel Sprites - distributionprogram.

Sonic Before The Sequel Sprites - rangfuse.

PC / Computer - Sonic Before the Sequel - The #1 source for video game sprites on the internet!... I think i might be able to rip tails' sprites ;) Tailsmonster12. Feb 10, 2019, 12:37 PM. Tails will soon go up. (Is what I would be saying if the sprites alpha channel wasn't black, LakeFepard why!). Search: Sonic Generations Infinite Mod. Aliens: Fireteam Elite Download and start your battle NOW! BATTLE TO WIN Run faster with on-track dash pads and grind rails Drive other players into obstacles and Badniks Attack with Mines To use these mods, you must first download and install the SADX Mod Loader If you've discovered a cheat you'd like to add to the page, or have a Phew, So its got a.

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Apr 13, 2017 · By. RedactedAccount. 14 Favourites. 13 Comments. 1K Views. Here Is The Sonic Before The Sequel Tails Running Sprite Sheet With The Sonic 2 Palette Color Hope You All Enjoy. Image details. Image size. 187x38px 2.29 KB. The graphics were outstanding, the music was praised, and the speed and action had players hooked The graphics were outstanding, the music was praised, and the speed and action had players hooked Sonic Adventure 2 Dreamcast Save (13) 11 But as for Xbox 360 and PS3, you can either choose to play it as Sonic Adventure or with the DX upgrade It is the updated version of the previous 2011 version.

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Featuring a fully original soundtrack and new sprites, Sonic Before The Sequel '12 has been released! Sonic Before The Sequel is a fangame by LakeFeperd. The game is designed to explain what happened between Sonic The Hedgehog and Sonic The Hedgehog 2, such as how Tails met Sonic, how the Death Egg was built, etc. Sonic Before The Sequel Free. Sonic Before The Sequel Aftermath. Featuring a fully original soundtrack and new sprites, Sonic Before The Sequel '12 has been released! Sonic Before The Sequel is a fangame by LakeFeperd. The game is designed to explain what happened between Sonic The Hedgehog and Sonic The Hedgehog 2, such as how Tails met Sonic, how the Death Egg was built, etc.

Sonic Before The Sequel Sprites.

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Sonic Before The Sequel Plus - Reviews | Sonic Fan Games HQ.

Aug 19, 2021 · Sonic 3 & Knuckles Remastered. Version: 0.1.0 10 months ago. Download. Sonic the hedgehog 3 & knuckles is a game from two parts sonic the hedgehog 3 and sonic & knuckles came out 1994 now this is a mobile Remarstred version by me. Powerd by pocket code.. Jun 17, 2022 · Some of the readers on this site will be too young to remember Sonic's glory days. Search: Sonic 1 Beta Sprites. this is a complete remake of the sonic 1 proto from tokyo toy show 1990,this will recreate old screenshots and everything sonic_2_beta_sprites_66137 Sonic The Hedgehog Hedgehog Movie Steam Pc Nintendo Ds Xbox One Free Sonic Playstation True To The Game Videogames - New Knuckles sprite appears when Sonic Nested among the graphics is an unused headline saying.

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Sonic- Before the Sequel. Sonic- Before the Sequel is a Sonic the Hedgehog fangame made by LakeFeperd in the Sonic Worlds engine. Originally released near the end of 2011, it got a update in the following year with a unique soundtrack by Falk Au Yeong, KgZ, Andy Tunstall and Funk Fiction. Sonic After the Sequel for Windows - Download it from. Mar 03, 2018 · Here Is Another Remake Of My Sonic Before The Sequel Super Sonic Sprite Sheet I Made Last Year I Hope You All Enjoy. Ps Credit Goes To Lake Feperd. And Credit Goes To My Friend Bonilla46 For Making The Custom Made Super Sonic Sign.

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Video Game /. Sonic: Before the Sequel. Sonic: Before the Sequel is a Sonic the Hedgehog fangame made by LakeFeperd in the Sonic Worlds engine. Originally released near the end of 2011, it got a update in the following year with a unique soundtrack by Falk Au Yeong, KgZ, Andy Tunstall and Funk Fiction.

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Download (264 MB) You Played Sonic Before The Sequel? Well I Brought To You Sonic Before The Sequel Plus! An Sonic Before The Sequel Remaster That Adds. The 2011 Soundtrack You Can Change Between The 2012 or 2011 Music. (The Soundtrack Its. It is part of the Sonic the Hedgehog series and the sequel to Sonic the Hedgehog 3 It acts as one large combined game and all the levels from Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles become available If you like these levels Sonic & Knuckles + Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (also called Sonic 3 and Knuckles) is a sequel to the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 for Sega Genesis. Search: Dark sonic in sonic 3. Fake emeralds are controlled by Classic Sonic | Dark Sonic in Sonic 3 & Knuckles Made by PotterAndMa dark sonic in sonic 3 Sonic the Hedgehog (born day 162, 3220)1 is a character that appears in the Sonic the Hedgehog comic book series and its spin-offs published by Archie Comics This code is notoriously hard to do, due to the weird frame windows, but if.

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Jun 24, 2022 · First update 1.2. 5d. Bugfix. B/ATS A.I.R. This mod makes sonics sprites look like the ones from sonic before/after the sequel! This took me a long time to make, islam jabrane (my friend) helped me with the sprites, i made the before the sequel ones, most of the sprites are from modgen classic sonic sprites, credits to the original owners, i.

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Dec 21, 2017 · Offline. 3,297 points Ranked 3,720th. 12 medals 1 rare. Kugawattan. 4y. Watch out, some sprites aren't properly aligned which makes Sonic twitch. Also, his wait animation is looping the wrong frames methinks. It could also have a shade of blue (or two) more, since the sprite is bigger. Overall though it was pretty rad. Latest version. Sonic After the Sequel is an unofficial sequel in the blue hedgehog's franchise that takes place somewhere between Sonic 2 and Sonic 3. The game comes with the saga's traditional gameplay, but adds a few more interesting elements. When you start the game, you'll see that you can choose, from the start, between Sonic and his. Sonic before the sequel DX devlog. by Blue_Tails_Gameplays_YT @Blue_Tails_Gameplays_YT. 37 Follow. Overview. Comments 10. Followers 37. You all know the story of before the sequel, a lot of peaople played it, but no one made a.

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In some way, it could be considered a G/MD port of Sonic & Knuckles Collection Sonic the Hedgehog returns at full speed in this fast-paced game 3만원이상 무료배송도움말 Giant Sonic the Hedgehog Mascot Costume Sonic Before The Sequel Lenovo Utility Ideapad Sonic Before The Sequel. 3 feet long The standard rings the player normally.

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X, better known as S (sometimes stylized as Sonic.EXE ), is the titular main antagonist of the Creepypasta of the same name and the main antagonist of its sequel Round 2.. He is an anomalous, interdimensional energy-based entity driven by an instinctive lust for destruction and pain. Becoming completely obsessed with enslaving the human race, X took the form of Sonic the. Sonic Before The Sequel Falling Sprites - A Mod for Sonic Mania. Sonic Before The Sequel Falling Sprites. Simple mod overriding the air walk sprites with Sonic Before The sequels Falling Sprites. Note: This mod is for sonic mania plus! You may want to rename the mod & page since people will come expecting the outta here animation from the game. #Sonic before the sequel sprites goku full; Later that month, Sonic the Hedgehog co-writer Pat Casey revealed that there had been talks about a sequel, though the film had not been greenlit by Paramount by that point. Later that month, Schwartz said that he felt it made sense for Paramount Pictures to not have announced a sequel by that point.

See also:

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[world-of-puppets]

Puppetry Lost Media

In honour of reaching 50 followers last week (now 55 followers, as of writing this) I decided to cover two subjects of great interest to me: puppetry (of course) and lost media.

Everybody online loves a good old bit of lost media. Whether it be being a part of the many searches for the media in question, or watching documentaries about them on sites like YouTube. I’ve been mildly addicted to the latter kind of content for a while. From what I’ve seen, though, there aren’t many videos or articles out there specifically covering lost puppetry. So, in no particular order, here are a couple of pieces of lost puppetry I found while scrolling through the lost media wiki.

銀河少年隊 - Ginga shounen-tai AKA Galaxy Boy Troop (1963 - 1965)

Osamu Tezuka is one of the most pioneering figures in Japanese art and animation. Starting as a manga artist in the 1940s inspired by the animated works of American studios such as Walt Disney and the Fliecer Brothers, he adapted and simplified many of the stylistic techniques of both artists to create his own signature style of big shiny eyes, physics defying hair and limited animation. A style that would go on to heavily influence the world of anime and manga as a whole.

But animation and graphic art were not the only mediums Tezuka would dabble in. Ginga Shounen-Tai, or Galaxy Boy Troop in english, was a television series that aired on the public broadcast channel NHK from April 7th, 1963 to April 1st, 1965. Running for 2 seasons with a total of 92 episodes.

The series was a mixture of marionette characters that utilised the Supermarionation marionette technique, popularised by Jerry Anderson’s Thunderbirds, and limited traditional animation. The story revolves around a child genius named Roy who leads a rag-tag group of heros around the galaxy in a rocket ship in order to revive the earth’s sun and later protect it from alien invaders.

Out of the 92 episodes that aired, only episode 67 still exists in its entirety with French subtitles, and the full episode can be found on YouTube with English subtitles uploaded by user Rare TezukaVids. According to user F-Man on the Tezuka in English forums, footage of episode 28 exists but with no audio, and episode 87’s animated segments exist without the marionette segments. F-Man also claims the reason for Galaxy Boy Troop’s disappearance is due to Tezuka not being proud of the series and having all episodes of it destroyed.

Personally, I think it’s a shame that pretty much all of this series is gone. From what I’ve seen in episode 67, it looks really charming. Tezuka’s signature character design style was adapted suprisingly well to marionettes, and the puppetry itself isn’t that bad either. I love the little face mechanisms like the blinking eyes, flapping mouths and others. It gives the puppets a lot of personality and charm. Like, just look at this old mans eyebrow mechanism and tell me you wouldn’t want to watch 92 episodes of this show;

Tinseltown (2007)

Tinseltown was a 15 minute sitcom pilot created by the Jim Henson company under thier Henson Alternative banner. The pilot was commissioned by the Logo Network and aired as part of the Alien Boot Camp programming block in 2007.

The pilot (and likely the series, had it been picked up by the logo network) features a cast of both puppets and live actors as characters. The premise revolves around Samson Kight, an anthropomorphic bull preformed by Brian Henson and drew Massey, and his partner Bobby Vegan, an anthropomorphic pig prefomed by Bill Barretta and Michelan Sisti, as they attempt to balance thier lives working in Hollywood with life as parents to thier sullen 12-year-old foster son, Foster, played by Paul Butcher. Other human characters included Mia Sara as Samson’s ex-wife Lena and Francesco Quinn as the family’s manservant Arturo.

The Tinseltown pilot used to be available on the Logo Network’s YouTube channel, but was later removed for unknown reason. Since then, the pilot has not been made available online. However the characters Samson and Bobby have made appearances in other Henson related works, such as the improv stage show Stuffed and Unstrung, where they played the role as the shows producers, and in a 2011 video on the Jim Henson Company YouTube channel celebrating Jim Hensons 75th birthday.

I find Tinseltown pretty interesting as I feel like it should be more noateable or known, considering that this is (as far as my knowledge goes) the first Jim Henson Company project featureing openly lgbtq characters as its leads, and would have been the first Henson show to do so had it been picked up. As someone who’s interested in lgbtq+ representation in creative media such as animation, I realised that there’s not many examples of canon lgbt characters in puppetry. The only ones aside from Samson and Bobby I could think off the top of my head would be Deet’s Dads from The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance and Rod from Avenue Q. Though, obviously, there could be more I’m not currently aware of. I don’t think the Tinseltown pilot was a masterpiece or anything. After all, there’s probably a couple of good reasons Logo didn’t pick it up for a full series. But I think it be cool if either Henson co. or Logo made this available online again, if just so we could appericate it as an interesting little footnote in the history of lgbtq rep in puppetry.

With that said, considering the pilot’s obscurity and the fact that it’s main couple haven’t been used in any Henson Related projects in almost ten years, as well as the possibility that there may be legalities preventing the Henson company from releasing it such as Logo still owning the rights, it’s unlikely we’ll see the Tinseltown pilot anytime soon.

Sonic Live in Sydney (1997 - 2000)

Sonic the Hedgehog is a fictional character no stranger to multiple interpretations of him and his universe across a diverse range of media. From the more light-hearted and comedic stylings of The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and Cartoon Networks Sonic Boom cartoon series, to more serious faire such as the Sonic SatAM cartoon and the Sonic Adventure videogame duology. One of the more obscure and stranger adaptations of the character came in the form of Sonic Live in Sydney, a one an a half hour live show hosted at the former Sega World Sydney amusement park in Darling Harbor, Sydney, Australia. Originally beginning as a live show with actors in meet-and-greet style costumes, the show eventually was replaced with a puppet show during its last two years.

The shows plot was set in an alternate timeline whos continuity was a mix of the SatAM cartoon and Sonic the Hedgehog 3, where Doctor Robotnik’s Death Egg crash lands in Sydney, Australia instead of Angel Island and attempts to take over before being foiled by sonic and friends. According to Phillip Einfeld of Phillip Einfeld Puppetoons, the company that made the puppets, Sega felt the costumed actor version of the show wasn’t dynamic enough, and wished to replace it with a version featuring live puppets with animatronics. Both versions of the shows plot are identical.

While Sonic Live in Sydney’s soundtrack is available on YouTube, and some photos of the show are available on the Lost Media Wiki, no footage of either the costumed actors version or the puppet show version have resurfaced. The show was closed down in 1999, possibly due to cost, shortly before the Sega World park as a whole in 2000. So unless there is someone out there who viseted the show between 1998 or 1999 who recorded the show via a handheld camera, footage of both incarnations of the show are likely forever lost to time.

On a personal note, I don’t have much to say on this one other than how gloriously peek gaudy 90s Sonic the set/puppet design is. I have no doubt finding footage of these puppets in action would truly be a silly delight to behold...

Legend of Mary (year unknown)

This one is a little different from the other entries on this list as while the film itself in its entiraty is available on YouTube for anyone to view, the information surrounding Legend of Mary, specifically its year of release, remains a mystery as of writing this.

I have mentioned the film before on this blog so I’ll keep it brief here: in summary, Legend of Mary is a short film retelling of the Nativity featuring the Rod puppets of Austrian puppeteer Richard Teschner. the video was uploaded to YouTube by user canada 150 archive. I looked up the people credited in the film and was able to find most of them, but didn’t find Legend of Mary listed in thier credits, and was unable to find the film on sites like IMDB, tMDB or Letterboxd. I reached out to Canada 150 archive asking if they had any info regarding the Legend of Mary’s release date, and after a coupe of months, they replied saying they didn’t know.

And that’s as far as I got on my search for answers, if anyone of you guys has any information regarding Legend of Mary, then it be of huge help in finding the release date.

Sam and friends (1955 - 1961)

Sam and friends was the very first puppetry television series created by Jim Henson alongside his colabarator and future wife Jane Nebel. filmed in Washington, D.C. and airing twice daily on WRC-TV and the NBC affiliate in Washington, D.C. from May 9, 1955, to December 15, Sam and Friends would mark the first apperence of Kermit (though not yet as a frog) and paved the way for Henson’s iconic and revered legacy in the realm of puppetry on film and television.

With the impact this show had in mind, it may come as a shock to some that almost half of Sam and Friends, specifically, 42 of the 86 episodes, are considered lost. With 16 existing, 8 documented, 9 known from memory, plus 8 existing Esskay commercials and 1 memory-known Esskay commercial. Some taped episodes have been shown at venues such as the museum of the moving image while others have been erased. It’s unknown if copies of these erased episodes still exist.

This post would become far to long if I were too list every episode missing from Sam and Freinds, but if your curious, the lost media wiki article has a comprehensive list of all lost episodes.

Annnd that about it for this post. This type of content is pretty different from the stuff I usually post. So I’m egar to see what you guys think about it. If you enjoyed this article, want to see more like it or have ideas for what puppetry-related topics I should cover in the future. And again, thank you all so much for helping me reach 55 followers. Your support really does mean a lot to me, and I hope you enjoyed this as a follower milestone gift.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed this dip into lost puppetry, and have a happy holiday season!

[ppnightshade]

My Top 5 favorite shows of the decade (2010-2020)

Since I was a child, I had seen a lot of shows, some of them a bit boring for me, and others really memorial

To start a freshly new year, and some big changes in my Tumblr, I decided to start making this top 5 as a special post (even though I should have done it days before, but I was lazy xD). Of course (and to clarify), it will be my personal opinion and perspective; and in addition, it will be for the shows I’ve been attracted the most  It will be short, and not that deep as a real review, but you know, I’m doing this for fun (yay) 

So Let’s Start!

5.- Aggretsuko (2018)

To start this top, I decided to put this anime. Some friends recommended this to me just after season 2 aired. At first, I thought it would have been a boring office show and by seeing how cute were the characters (because Sanrio), I was like: “is that an adult show?”

Boy, I was wrong

Even if the seasons were so short, these have really well made episodes. In contrast to the shorts, it actually had a really interesting plot and a more enjoyable time (11 min episodes instead of the normal 1 min shorts) 

The anime shows how Retsuko’s life relates on every adult’s life. Starting as a worker that see things so optimistic, but learn in the hard way that life is tough. Especially when working by just a bunch of money. But when night fells, things are a bit different...

If there is one thing that made Retsuko so special, it’s her way to release her anger. The way she rages it’s so special. It’s not the typical guy who destroys things. She releases her anger by doing what she like: singing in a karaoke

It has good comedy, has some adorable characters that finally got some personality (if we take in mind that the shorts just show them as randoms with no background history) and lovely songs. Also, the love topics it’s something that it’s well handled. The story of Retsuko with Haida and Tadano, both different, but really enjoyable and cute to see Still waiting to see what season 3 will bring to us, but sure enough, it will bring some more raging of our favorite red panda...

4.- Slugterra (2012)

Ok, this show may be a bit old, but believe me. This was my childhood. Basically, it was a show where a gang leaded by Eli Shane, have to defend the 99 caverns from Dr.Black and his evil men, with the help of Slugs, small creatures that are the main ammunition for everyone (it’s a short summarize I know)

As you guess, it’s the typical battle between the good and the evil

Well, this cartoon was a masterpiece for me. An attractive story that can catch you in just 3-4 episodes, an animation that it’s so vibrant and some incredible backgrounds to watch. Every cavern has it’s own look. Including the slugs

Talking about them, there are different kinds of slugs, each of them with an unique ability. I think that I can agree with everyone that Burpy is the main slug. The most representative of all the slugs in Slugterra. But aside from him, every slug has it’s own personality (even their own names). They are like pets for Eli, and it shows the connection he had with them. Catching them it’s like catching pokemons.

The characters are also a good point of this show. Eli, the young leader, an adventurer and a guy who follows always the good steps of his father; Trixie, the extrovert girl that it’s always there with her camera; Kord, the troll mechanic, but that deep inside, he is a cutiepie; and Pronto, that guy who always keeps exagerating his stories, but it’s always there to keep the team united. All of them are really memorable, and enjoyable to watch

All 5 seasons and their movies managed to filled all the plot holes the show had. The reasons of why Black became a villain, the legacy and mistery of the Shadow Clan, and more. In addition, it even had a game in the app store. Isn’t that amazing?

This was the show of my childhood, and deserved to be in this top 

3.- OK:KO Let’s be heroes (2017)

A really underrated show, OK:KO Let’s be Heroes is a show that got a lot of hate for no reason. But for me, this show was one of the best things CN had after a long time of bad reboots and shows

This cartoon is developed in a video game world, in the year 201X. Here we got the story of a small kid, KO, whose biggest dream is to become one of the greatest heroes of the plaza, just like the another guys out there. While having his adventures, he is always with the company of this two colleagues, Rad, a young alien, and Enid, a ninja witch

What to say about it? For me, it’s a show that got good over time. For example, you can compare the animation from the pilot and season 3 episodes, and you’ll see how much it improved from that point. In addition, it’s a really stylish animation that matches with the fights that the show have (and believe me, there is a lot) and some good soundtracks to enjoy the enviroment. And believe me, these are so good that you want to listen them again and again (Happened to me with Ernesto’s Jam)

It sure not have one of the best comedies, but it sure have some positive messages and plot lines. The path that KO follows to become a greater hero, shows a big example of resiliance and effort. And talking about plot lines, we got the stories of POINT and Professor Venemous. They started as simple characters and organizations that didn’t look like much, but as the story continued, it shows a big relation with KO’s past and some other heroes backstories

It’s sad that CN ended up killing this show, not promotioning it, and even not giving it so much time to air (you only found the show in a horrible time, like 1am in my country). Even if this cartoon managed to tied up some loose ends, it didn’t tie them all. It had the potential for more, but CN lost a great opportunity

But in the end, KO will live in our hearts, as our little hero...

2.- The Amazing World of Gumball (2011)

Oh man, this cartoon. The once called a “kids show” but ended up being something more. 

A cartoon that shows the crazy and incredible adventures of Gumball in the city of Elmore. A unique world, where everyone have a special design, or different animation. Examples are Alan, Clayton or Ocho

Here we have Gumball’s family, his brother Darwin, his sister Anais, and his parents, Nicole and Richard Watterson. A special family, that always get involved in crazy things, but in the end, there is good chemestry in all the members. 

What to say about it? Over it’s 6 seasons, it managed to gave us some good laughs. Most of the jokes are so clever (there are even hints of black humor) and in addition, there are episodes that made satire of some special topics (”The Copycats” and “The Shippening”). Also, it does not only gives us laughs, but also talk about real life; for example, the SJWs, the censorship of videogames, depression and even the reality of politics. This is the funny reason why we are always asking ourselves: “Is this a kids show?”

Also, remarking this one more time, the special thing about TAWOG is that it does not have one single animation. It includes, 2D, 3D, 8-bit, Stop Motion; in short, a variety of them to enjoy. A compilation of characters with a unique animation and personality, made all Elmore people so interesting and memorable. 

While it’s sad that TAWOG ended up in a cliffhanger, most of the fans are still waiting for a movie. Let’s be honest, this show deserved an opportunity to close the loose ends it had left. And what a better way to do it than a movie? (Not to mention that even Ben himself had made a Tweet about this)

We’ll see if time is our friend now...

1.- Penn Zero: Part Time Hero (2014)

And to end this personal top, this special show. Also known as the “AU show” for some fans; this was, in my opinion, the best show I’ve ever seen in the whole decade

First of all, a brief explanation of this masterpiece. It's basically a show where our protagonist, Penn Zero, works as a Part Time Hero, and everyday he goes to different dimesions with the objective of stopping the plans of the Part Time Villains, Rippen and Larry; with the help of his friends Sashi, the Part Time Sidekick and Boone, the Part Time Wiseman

What does Penn Zero got that attracked me the most? First of all, the worlds. There is always a special detail that made each world unique. Like, a world with dinosaurs and cowboys, or a prehistoric world where the heroes work as agents. Also, each world have a nice background, that really fits with the theme of the missions. For example, we got the cereal world, where the cliffs have the figure of milk boxes

Then, the dynamic each team follows. As you can guest, this is a good vs evil show, but with something unique. They are not exactly heroes and villains, it’s just a part-time job they take. And of course, they get payed (I think? xD). Well, the thing is, even though they love to destroy each other in their missions, in real life, they are just chill and normal people... well, kinda. We can see how Rippen always loves to give Penn bad scores as revenge for defeating him everyday. 

Even though the show only had 2 seasons, it managed to explain well all the plot planified. Showing the backstory of Rippen and his ambitions of becoming a full-time villain, and the story of Penn in an attempt to recover his parents from “The Most Dangerous World Imaginable” (his main objective) 

The animation is a really fluent, and even though it doesn’t have a lot of songs like the other shows I mentioned before, you can enjoy the few it had. Well developed characters, great humor; and best of all, you can imagine any AU you want, and it will fits with all the 5 main characters

It’s kinda sad that Penn Zero only got 2 seasons, this last one, aired in just 18 days (just imagine that the fandom waited 2 years for new episodes, and in few days, the show just dissapeared). Disney wasted a lot of potential on this, but believe me, this show was one truly underrated, but amazing in every aspect

And that’s it. I hope you enjoy this small top 5 I made. I’ll probably make another one, but, we’ll see. Thank you for reading until this part if you manage to get here c: 

[doshmanziari]

2019 Mega Drive Explorations [2]

A continuation of part 1. Click the link below the first entry to read more.

Alisia Dragoon (1992)

If there’s one strong commonality between my experiences of playing nearly all of these games, it’s that I really could do without most of the bosses (and fuck boss rushes). Less than two weeks since, I still have a bad taste in my mouth from how meanly Alisia Dragoon ratchets up its difficulty in its later levels, with enemy placement that, on an initial playthrough, half the time expects a supernatural level of anticipation, and a squad of bosses who just go on and on, requiring an absurd level of precision. I hate it! It’s a shame, because Alisia Dragoon has so much to (hesitantly) recommend it, maybe most of all its graphical splendors -- even the bejeweled HUD is fun to look at -- and topographically exciting level designs; the penultimate stage is alone memorable for being slanted at forty-five degree angles. Alisia herself is accompanied by four familiars who can be leveled up and have separate uses. It’s cute. Everybody wants to hang out with a dog-sized dragon. A minor detail I loved was venturing into seemingly empty nooks and crannies and finding that items did indeed reside there, waiting to manifest. I’d say that this is a Mega Drive title which anyone looking to explore the console’s library should give some time to, but I also understand if the same people give up on it. There’s no good reason to endure the last stage’s nightmares.

Cadash (1992)

Although it’s missing some stuff that’s present in the earlier arcade and TurboGrafx-16 releases -- notably the the priest and ninja classes -- Cadash on the Genesis remains the delightful, finely sized dungeon crawler it ever was. The game has a predictable structure of progression where you move from village to dungeon, find a key, access the next village, and so on. The most recognizable point of comparison might be The Adventure of Link. There are enough twists and bits of humor to make the game pop where it needs to, whether it’s shrinking in size to access the interiors of dwarf village, speaking to a dog who is lamenting their dead owner, or a bestiary that includes potbelly dragons and waddling heads made of rock. Happily, the music is no exception to Taito’s trend of having strange soundtracks for its 80s and 90s releases (Toshiko Tasaki is listed as the composer, but that’s in the capacity as an arranger for the Genesis version; the original composer remains uncredited), and it plays a big part in making the atmosphere feel a little more off-kilter than screenshots may suggest. Unlike the arcade version, the Genesis release has no timer -- an exclusion I don’t mind when it’s the sort of game where I just wanna bop around and level up. My dream is that this is re-released on the TurboGrafx-16 mini with online co-op functionality.

Mystic Defender (1989)

The truth is that all videogame development is “troubled.” Sometimes it’s just more obvious within the product itself, and I think that may be the case with Mystic Defender, which comes across as a game that was half-finished and suddenly needed to be stretched out to meet a quota for playtime and avoid going over budget. The first two stages, a forest and shrine with slight Japanese influences, look fine and excellent (respectively); the third goes the Giger-esque route, and while the tiles don’t quite fit together, and it’s a curious progression after stage one and two had a sort of continuity, the trope always has some gross-out appeal. Everything after this is either asset recycling or so vaguely themed that it’s impossible to care about what you’re seeing or know where you are. Any of ‘em could be the finale. The actual final stage gave me flashbacks of Tiertex’s Strider II, whose last stages have you walking around big boring mazes of flat long paths and hoping that the direction you’re going is the right one. Overall, promising and disappointing. Everyone reading this should, at minimum, check out the epilogue for the most hilariously formal congratulatory text I’ve ever seen in a videogame.

Mazin Saga: Mutant Fighter (1993)

Geez. If any Mega Drive title exemplifies boss-related bullshit, it’s Mazin Saga: Mutant Fighter. Adding onto the frustration is that there is a potentially stand-out beat ‘em up here. I think what will first strike most people is how good this game looks. There’s a fluidity to sprites’ animations that has to be seen to believed, palettes are used expertly for ambient effect, and the backgrounds usually make an effort to catch your attention, subtly or dramatically. Your person (or... suit of armor?), Mazinger Z, has a handful of attacks that are satisfying to use, like a flurry of sword strikes if you mash a button, or an aerial attack that’s done in tandem with horizontal jumps; and if the total type of opponents is limited, they’re at least behaviorally distinguished. What singlehandedly makes Mazin Sager miserable are its bosses, whether you’re preemptively contending with them as a human-sized figure (sometimes in sections where a single screw-up can cost you a life) or taking them head-on as a giant version of yourself. The latter are presented as a fighting game, and, early on, are easy and formally ambitious enough for you to forgive their clumsiness and mechanical simplicity; after all, not many beat ‘em ups switch their genre for bosses. Around stage three is likely where you will start to see the A.I. input-read and generally fuck you up. As a giant, you have a couple of moves that do damage greater than the other four or so, but the windup and spacing they require (not to mention complicity on the A.I.’s part) make them impractical, meaning that you are basically forced to do as much damage per hit as you can see in the second screenshot. Meanwhile, bosses deal way more damage, can do nonsense like interrupt your aerial attacks with lows, execute screen-wide dashes that have no frame disadvantage, and culminate in a boss rush which ends with a devil who gave me significant trouble even with the help of save states. Never again.

Two Crude Dudes (1992)

I was glad to have my baseless assumption about this being a one-note Meme Game be, well, baseless. Turns out, Two Crude Dudes is one of the better beat ‘em ups I’ve played. There are very few cheap shots, stages are brief and don’t wear out their welcome, you’re given a pretty fair amount of time to respond to oncoming opponents, and only a couple of bosses left me scratching my head about how to avoid taking damage. Also you can throw like EVERYTHING and it’s so fun. There was a stage two encounter where I was like, what the heck, when does this end, and then I realized that you could, and needed to, throw an aircraft that kept reappearing, and it was then that I knew that this was a good game. A similar epiphany happened much later on when I discovered that tanks are throwable if you mash the button. The soundtrack is kind of forgettable percussive- and bass-heavy funk-rock, but energizing in-game, and sometimes has a strong instrumental resemblance to the Genesis games that utilized Hitoshi Sakimoto’s Terpsichorean driver. A general criticism is that this is a pretty plain looking beat ‘em up, and the post-apocalyptic setting seems to have restrained rather than facilitated creativity.

[moonweav3r]

Hello love ✨ Weird asks -all multiples of 3. Sorry not sorry 🙈

Hey there✨ and it’s alright, you’re the one to read it all either way haha

3. bubblegum or cotton candy?: cotton candy, but my actual alternative to gum is hard candy mints💕

6. pastel, boho, tomboy, preppy, goth, grunge, formal or sportswear?: I think I answered this one before but: boho, grunge and formal

9. favorite smell in the summer?: the coconut/piña colada scent in candles and sunscreen and the smell of the sea

12. name of your favorite playlist?: latest favorites on spotify are: the “Killing Eve” and “All Life is Strange” soundtrack playlists and “90′s Rock Anthems”

15. favorite book you read as a school asignment?: probably “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel García Márquez

18. ideal weather?: around 16 °C more or less? lol

21. obsession from childhood?: (not in order) dancing, lizzie mcguire, drawing, playing videogames, twilight, paramore, mac and cheese 😂

24. favorite crystal?: I still have a lot to learn about crystals but so far I really like some of my sign’s crystals like amethysts, aquamarine, fluorite, labradorite

27. favorite activity to do in cold weather?: I’ve never been anywhere that cold, but I’d proably just have hot drinks, have sex and cuddles under a bunch of blankets and fall in the snow because ??? wtf is that witchcraft

30. places you find sacred?: my room

33. most used phrase in your phone?: probably curse words/expressions in spanish lol

39. lemon cake or lemon meringue pie?: no.

42. jacket pockets or pant pockets?: BOTH!

45. sci-fi, fantasy or superhero?: ugh I like all three but, I guess fantasy as #1

48. if you were a fruit, what kind would you be?: I have no idea 😂

51. current stresses?: most are related to the shitty government and money

54. what did you learn from your first job?: customer service and how to manage my income better?

57. three biggest struggles you’ve overcome?: I think I’m still learning from these things but, I kinda had to grow up early in certain aspects to be more helpful to my mom and myself when I was a teen and it helped me to be more patient/empathetic and overall to deal with my emotions and self-esteem in better ways, also to be more responsible and productive. And I’ve learned to be way more open about myself and my feelings bc I used to shut everyone off. I still do sometimes, but not as often or as bad as I did before for sure.

60. if you were a character in an anime, what kind of anime would you want it to be?. okay I’m probably gonna sound like a noob here but it’d be cool to be part of My Hero Academia or The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra (I know avatar isn’t an anime per se but still)

69. a fun fact you don’t know how you learned?: I tend to remember useless facts out of nowhere but now my mind is blank aaa

72. worst subject?: math

75. when did you lose your first tooth?: tbh I don’t remember 😂

78. coffee from a gas station or sushi from a grocery store?: coffee

81. fireflies or lightning bugs?: fireflies

84. barbie or polly pocket?: barbie

87. your greatest fear?: never accomplishing my goals and ending up alone

90. luckiest mistake?: not my mistake but, the time a friend of my brother and sister in law forgot their guitar in my house when I was 12 and after a whole day playing nonsense on it I decided I wanted to learn

93. nicknames?: some friends call me andrx bc I’ve had that username for years, but most people just call me Andrea I guess

98. favorite historical era?: (I’ll jump to this one bc I answered 96 before lol) history of ancient egypt, the classical age and the renaissance/age of enlightenment

[supersoldier-of-asgard]

Nodus Tollens (10/10)

•The realisation that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore•

Pairing : Bucky x HYDRA!reader (gender neutral) + Avengers

Summary : you’ve been practically raised by HYDRA and The Wintersoldier has been your idol, someone you looked up to. What happens when you’re send to kill him and get captured by the avengers? SLOWBURN

Warnings whole fic : language, detailed discription of fighting and blood, a whole load of torture, trauma and a lot of angst ( if you want me to add something then please message me!)

Warnings this part : detailed blood and torture, dead bodys description and revenge.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10

masterlist

Somewhere between the clouds

“How long do we still have?”

“Like an hour at most,” Clint answered from his place in the control seat, flying the helicarrier through the darkning clouds of the sky.

“Alright. Once we’re there, remember to stick to the plan and go in and out as quickly as possible,” Steve ordered,” no heroic antics, no lone walkers and no sacrifices.”

Tony couldn’t help but roll his eyes,” says you.”

“Okay, don’t. We know this is probably a trap, so please don’t fight,” Natasha chimed in,” Barnes needs us.”

The place of realisation

Dawn slowly crept into the sky, the rain that had clattered with the rapid beating of your heart now quiet and serene.

Your eyes drifted over the exposed chest of the dreaming man that had calmed the rain both inside you and outside, the peaceful air that hung around preventing you from fully standing up.

His prosthetic stirred and whispered through the quiet night air, the neutrally calm expression on his face a stark contrast to the usual stern look that pulled at his features.

As you traced the curve of his eyelashes, your mind flashed to the first night you had seen him, writhing in bed with those eyes tightly pulled together to drown out the demons they had sowed in through the nerves when they had connected his metal arm.

A fire ignited within you, pain and fury tugging at your feet to make contact with the cold tile floor as you stood up and covered yourself once more in the suit.

You were going to end it. Once and for all.

Somewhere once called home

At times like this you wish you had your music with you, the soft beating of the drum a faint background soundtrack to the movie-like crime you were about to commit.

Low humming took its place instead, a familiar melodie swirling around your mind and flowing between your lips to immerse in the howling wind.

The knives between your fingers scraped against eachother as you watched like an owl how the guards surrounded the place you once belonged.

Not anymore. Not since you found a new home, a home where blue and silver were the colors of the walls and black curtains hung around the windows you hadn’t had in your old home.

You emerged from the shadows and flung your knifes with precision, the pointy ends meeting eyes and heads as they dropped dead with a whiny groan of pain.

More of them came alert, but you swiftly took them down without a sweat, a gun in each of your hands as they charged at you.

One pair of brown eyes flashed with realisation as he took in your face, a single moment of hesitation giving you space to take him down and snatch his keys before he could comprehend who you truly were.

Clearing the entrance, you face the gates that you had walked through so many times, your determined legs stepping over the bodys littering the floor.

The screech of the metal bars sliding across the floor fueled the fire behind your eyes, blinding reason and the future as you flipped more knives in your hands with every intention to shed as much blood as possible.

You stood still infront of one of the big metal doors, a quick whiff enough to know there were armed soldiers standing on the other side. You smile devilishly as you continue humming, the empty space resonating the flowing sound loudly and spreading an eerie air behind the doors.

You slowly open the doors, your eyes meeting with at least twenty other pairs, looking all too familiar and... freightened.

This was your home after all. They knew what you were capable of. They had seen you do this before.

Somewhere Bucky regrets to be

The distinction of closed eyelids and the ever consuming night is small, Bucky’s heightened vision clearing up slowly as his mind tries to fling out every possible memory he could muster into the air.

The first thing he realises is that he’s not home, this is not his bed, and he certainly doesn’t remember ever sleeping this well.

He gasped and shot up straight, his eyes tracing every inch of the room for your face but comming empty. He glanced at the beside and felt disappointment swirl through him once again as he’s left in the dust for the hundredth time. How he kept falling into this is beyond him.

He didn’t waste time as he flung his naked body out of bed, yanked on his clothes and shook the locked door off its hinges to leave. He ignored the strange looks he was given and asked for a phone, dialing the only number he had space for in his contorted mind to memorize.

“Steve? It’s me- Buck-“

“Bucky?! Where the hell are you?!”, Steve’s voice screamed, both in relief and frantic panic.

“I, uh, I don’t know. Some weird place outside the city-“

“We’ll- we’ll get you once we’re done, okay? We’re heading to one of HYDRA’s secret bases. Thank god you’re okay. I thought they had kidnapped you.”

“Well someone actually did,” he mumbled, trying to figure out where you could’ve went for godssake.” I want to come. I think my imprisoner is there, too.”

A sigh and some mumbling was heard through the line, the person which he lended the phone from awkwardly smiling at him as they made eyecontact.

“We’re apparently almost over the city, if you can come to the tower I think we can pick you up.”

He sighed exasperatedly, giving the person a pleading smile as he asked his next question.” Can I borrow some money, too?”

The eerie halls of HYDRA

The aching feeling shooting up your arms and legs went completely ignored as you flung yourself from wall to wall, bullets raining on the men before you as blood spews on your face.

The low humming whispering through the air fought with the last breath of the last man standing, fighting for their place to live. The hollow pair of eyes remained staring into nothingness, seemingly peering right through you.

You wiped your sleeve over your face, staining the black leather red as you continued down many more halls with determination. With every drop of blood, your vision stained more crimison. With every grunt and every body dropping to the ground, your movements became more out of control.

The calculated swiftness was gone, a vicious bruteness taking its place as every sense of pain and victory vanished with every slicing of a throat. You lusted for blood, the adrenaline pumping through your veins so ethereal that all else was a blur. You didn’t have to think, to pay attention to what you were doing to bring down every man on your way.

Panting with a murderous smile on your face, you stood in front of the door at the end of your red rainbow. This was the end, the moment you had waited for and the only thing standing between you and happiness.

You timidly raised your bullet induced leg, kicking the door off its hinges with not even all your force. It crashed against the opposite wall as bullets immediately flew your direction. You hid behind a wall as a stern voice barked orders, the doorway too small for two men to enter thus giving you advantage as you took them down one by one like a videogame.

When silence had stretched the whole facility, the monster of your dreams hiding inside as you lingered out, you whistled the tune you had learned when you were still a kid.

A slow step inside, and then another, and another as you continued whistling the song that had been imbedded in your brain for what felt like centuries. The frantic beating of his heart filled your ears like music, the shudder that flowed through him like a wave boosting your adrenaline as you lifted your eyes to lock onto his.

He was holding a gun in one hand, a device with a bright red button on the other. He was trying to compose himself, although his heart already told its tale. Your blood smudged face broke into a smirk as he cocked the gun, a serious look on his rimpled features.

“If you take another step, I swear to god, I will blow us both up.”

The hellicarier

Wet grass made sucking sounds under his boots as Bucky nervously glanced at the facility they just landed a few good feet away from.

It was quiet, the darkness redering them from seeing too far.

“I’m flying closer. Move slowly and wait for my word,” Tony spoke, slowly flying away as Steve led the rest foreward.

His heart was booming in his chest, Tony’s voice crackling through the comms and right through his train of thoughts.

“The guards are down, and so seem to be the rest of the first line of defense,” he hummed, intrigued but still puzzled,” I’m going in.”

“Wait, Tony-“

It all seemed so surreal. None of it made any sense to him, no matter how much Bucky thought about it. As the facility started to clear, a shudder raked through him like a wildfire, memories of torture and imprisonment washing over him with a shaky sigh.

Steve was too busy rushing after Tony to notice, and Bucky was glad he didn’t. He wouldn’t be able to explain why he didn’t want to go inside, scared of the scene they were just about to encounter.

“Shit.”

An understatement, Bucky thought. A see of bodys littered the ground, knives plunged in painfully ruthless areas and surging vomit from within him. They had to step on them to pass, wincing and keeping eyes straight to not witness the blood seeping out eyes and mouths.

It seemed never ending. Every door they opened lead to another horrifying scene, each group murdered in a different and more ruthless way than the other. It was clear that whoever did this lost complete control.

They all could guess who it was, the knives sticking out of throats similar to the ones they had obtained from you a week ago. Motives were still unclear, although Bucky might have an idea.

He hoped and prayed you changed. That you murdering your fellow agents was a sign of your rebellion against them, and that you were on your way to kill the head of it all. Bucky didn´t know who the man was, and it hadn’t struck him before now that this must be the place that you grew up in. The same space he had been kept in for a short time considering his long life and many movings.

How had you not encountered eachother? If they knew how much you admired him, why not give you the opportunity to meet him or even see him?

“It’s here,” Natasha announced, causing all to stand still and look around the crimison walls.

“Uh.. can you be more specific?”, Clint piped up, scrunching his face as he heard crunching from under his feet. He stepped way, only to step on another body and earning him another echoing crushing sound.” fucking disgusting!”

“Shut up, Clint-“

“Found it,” Bucky sighed, eyes landing on the small musicdevice poking out of one of the pockets of the men that offered their lives to HYDRA. It was splattered with blood, but still in one piece.” What now?”

“..walk further,” Steve ordered, not flinching as the body beneath his feet moved from the pressure of his weight, the cracking sound awefully defined by the hollow walls of the filled room.

A couple hallways away

“Do it. I dare you.”

His wrinkled thumb lowerd slightly, but as it almost touched the button, he retreated it with a yell.

“I give you one last chance to leave, soldat! I swear on my grave that I will blow us to pieces!”

You chuckled, taking a step foreward. He pressed the trigger of the gun in shock of your movement, but it easily past by you by both his lack of aim and your swift step to the side.

“You care too much about your life to do this,” you coo’d,” oh, I know it all too well.”

“Get back!”, he screamed,” I fucking raised you! You have no right to-“

You cut him off by slamming your hands on the wooden desk, breaking it slightly as you leaned on it and got closer to his face.” I have every right to do what I’m doing. You ruined my life and his.”

He pressed the button, scrunching his face to a ball of prune, but snapped his eyes open as he heared your devilish laughter. “ You would never dare harm yourself. You would harm anyone— a little kid without a thought— but not yourself.”

You swatted both the gun and button out of his hands, gripping his collor and yanking him close to your face.” I was a kid. At most 10 years old, when I learned what it felt like to be burned alive. You don’t do that to a kid.”

“You had extraordinary talents for such a young age.”

“Brave for you to still talk this way when your life is in my blooded hands,” you whispered, releasing one hand to gently stroke his cheek, trailing a stripe of blood down his scruffy beard,” and when I’m so tempted to make you.. extraordinary, too.”

“Why now?” He hissed, seemingly swallowing his high squeek,” all those years of torture and not once did you fight back. Why now?”

Your eyebrows relaxed, millions of thoughts flooding your brain as you gave him a pat on the cheek.” I guess someone finally managed to break me the way you never could,” you whispered.

His eyes followed your every move as you pried in one of your pockets, revealing a small object and bringing it up to his face. A screw, small but long gleaming in the yellow light as his brows furrowed in anticipation.

“I found this in my suit yesterday. It was in my pocket, bloody and slightly crooked,” you continued whispering, eyes not leaving the screw as you twisted it in the light.” You know what this is?”

Before he could answer, you yanked him to the ground with all the force you had left. His head slammed next to his desk, a strangled gasp caught in his throat as he pushed out a groan.

You sat over him, the screw hovering between his eyes.” The forgotton screw. I found it in my back after my session. You wanna know how?”

He rapidly but barely shook his head in response, not being able to keep his eyes off the metal object between your fingers.” I tried to sleep after they had pulled out all fifteen they had hammered in my back to make me extraordinary, but in my moments of pain I must have not counted clearly. The moment my back hit the matress, it sunk so deep in my back that I couldn’t take it out.”

The pointy end lightly scraped over his head, a white line trailing up his nose.” I spend the whole night trying to pluck it out with my bare hands,” you whispered, putting a little pressure and elicting a yelp,” and I kept it. As a souvenir. I didn’t know why, back then, but now I’m glad I did.´´

With one quick motion, you lifted the screw into the air and plunged it in his eye, a gut wrenching scream heard through the whole facility, the dead even flinching in horror.

 All heads seemed to turn simultaneously, Steve the first to react as he sprinted over de bodys to the source of the scream. Bucky followed soon after, his hair whipping in his face as he tried to control his breathing.

He didn´t know if he was relieved that the scream didn´t belong to you, or that he was terrified of what you were doing that elicted such a yell. He knew they probably deserved this, but at what emotinal cost?

They didn´t have to kick the door open, as it was already shook off its hinges and thrown across the room. His eyes landed on the body first, once eyes now mere black holes as scarlett seeped from them like a waterfall, mouth ripped by the edges as it strechted like a grin. The most horrifying thing above all, was the ragged breathing pushing past the blood, eyesockets pleadingly staring at them from their hollow space and sending a chill through Bucky´s spine.

Then, when he could tear his eyes away from the sickning sight, he was met with eyes filled to the brim with plain craze. He impulsively leaped from his space, brushing past the rest as he pulled you up from over the man and fell to the ground in frantic sloppiness. He cradled your motionless figure as his eyes found the dying body again, memories flooding his mind of the identification of the eyeless puppet. He was one of the men that had tried to find Bucky´s weaknesses by torturing him, convinced it would make him stronger. It never did.

After a long-stretched silence, your arms twitched at your side and lifted to embrace his chest. He held on tighter, trying to compose himself as a sob begged to escape his lips and fill the awkward air.

You pressed yourself against the warmth, a smile starting to form your lips as you focused on the heartbeat of your home. The blinding rage was slowly dripping from the edge and fading away into the blood on the ground, the adrenaline that had drummed in your veins washing away to leave you exhausted and drained. 

´´Bucky,´´ Steve softly whispered, crouching down next to them as his brain wrecked havoc to make sense of the situation and the next. He didn´t answer, burrying your face into his shirt as the blood stained his fingers. He payed no attention, closing his eyes to hear the steady breathing that left your lungs to calm him down.

It was silent again, deafning and consuming, till you breathed out a melody, humming one of the only songs that brought happiness. Happiness, the only feeling you alowed yourself to feel at this moment. Happiness and longing, longing for the future. Longing for the man that rested his chin on your crown, shielding you with his arms as you took in the scent that lingered upon him.

The plot of your life finally made sense again.

THE END

-

A/N : wow. This was it, guys. the last chapter of my first series. It has been so much fun writing this and changing course every other chapter to the point I forgot to lead to the plot. If you have questions, please ask! 

What do you think about the ending? Is it a happy one?

did you notice I put Bucky´s trigger words in every chapter, but in reverse? It´s supposed to be symbolic for the readers journey where instead of turning bad like Bucky does when he hears them in the good order, she turns (arguably) good with the reverse of it, reversing the damage of the triggerwords :) 

tags

@mariana-cb  @unicornsxfandoms @marydragneell @alilblogger @alt-er-love-er-alt

[asterhowl]

for the videogames ask - 1, 7, 20

Oh my word my wordly wordington, thank you for asking!

1. A game that had a lasting impression on you.

This game was my whole world when I was 13. The scope and storyline just blew my tiny mind. I even recorded myself playing it on VHS to give to my friend who did not play video games so that I had someone to talk to about it. 

They did not watch it. 

2. 5 of your favourite OSTs

Links provided to my favourite track

My favourite track is probably “Terminal March”. And “Setting Sail, Coming Home” makes me cry every gods damned time. One of the most beautiful duets I’ve ever heard. Darren Korb guys. A fucking genius. 

The myth, the legend, Yasunori Mitsuda. I could have Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross up here but honestly guys, this album is just so fucking epic. The provided videos do not do it justice, it is terrible quality. As it should be. Buy the album. But it’s nice as a preview. 

Never played the Xenogears games. But after playing FFVII I went around downloading every OST from every video game I could find. In MIDI FORMAT GUYS. Remember those?? This music has so much meaning for me. I’ve never even played the damn game. 

Favourite tracks gotta be “My Village is Number One!”, “Flight”, “Singing of the Gentle Wind”, and the incredible choral arrangement of “Ship of Regret and Sleep” holy shit. If you listen to nothing else on this album please. Listen to that one. 

Naoki Kodaka comes to fucking play, motherfuckers. His compositions for the original NES Batman is what elevates this from just another movie tie in video game to a genuine fucking EXPERIENCE™. 

Every. Fucking. Stage. Actual eargasms. 

The linked video is to Mother Brain!’s metal cover arrangement and it is genuinely the most accurate recreation of the old 16bit beep borps that constituted video game music back in the day. 

I tried to post the video at the Stage 1 timestamp. So skip to about 1:45. You will not be disappointed. 

Back in the good ol’ days of the Play Station, I was still trying to convince my classical music trained parents that video game music was just as accomplished, technical, sophisticated and beautiful as Mozart, Bach and Beethoven. 

How best to convince them when, at the time, video game music was still very much beep borps. Enter Elemental Gearbolt, a two player co op first person shooter using the gun controller. One of the first games to have music recorded by a full fucking orchestra accompany you as you fly around as a giant ass warrior fairy shooting the shit outa hordes of monsters. 

"Echoes” is the first track you will hear, peaceful, lamenting, but hopeful. Then the opening level hits you with “The Scout” and you are on a fucking journey, son. “Forest” is one of those tracks that lures you in with a curious, subdued melody, and then suddenly...

But my favourite track has to be “Fortress”. This whole soundtrack is some of Kei Wakakusa’s best and most underrated, under appreciated work.

I could have linked to the PC version of the soundtrack. It is, technically, better quality in terms of sound. But screw that shit because the SNES version is superior in almost every other way. THE BEST BEEP BORPS!!

There are musical layers to the SNES midi version that the PC arrangements just do not capture. A travesty.

The music was composed by Michael Giacchino. This is beep borps at it’s most virtuosic. I will stand by that to my fucking grave. “Mojo Mansion” is a fucking bop. “The Ninja Training Grounds” is a masterpiece. “Muddrake Mayhem” will get your toes a tappin and your hands a clappin. “Sacrifice of Maui” is, hands down, the best fucking lava level track in existence. All other lava level tracks go home.

My favourite track, though - “Test of Duckhood”. But fuck the bungee part of that level. If you’ve never played Maui Mallard In Cold Shadow, do yourselves a favour, get your hands on an emulator and rom that bad boi. 

20. A game that truly scared the shit out of you.

Oh. Oh my dear followers. 

Why?

The sight of this thing genuinely made my heart hammer in my tiny chest. My brother and I used to take turns trying to get past it and we would both be screaming, actually screaming in terror when it showed up. Nothing. Nothing in video games will ever be as scary as this fucking fish.

[rugeon]

The level design of V&A Design/Play/Disrupt

Recently went to the V&A expo on videogames and thought it might be fun to try and think about it’s ‘level design’. I realise its silly to call it that and is more informed by planning an exhibition/ event planning and architecture, but w/e.

[pictured:  how do you Do it?, 2014 - Nina Freeman, Emmett Butler, Decky Coss, and Joni Kittaka]

This is mostly gonna be some simple thoughts on the experience of traversing the space of this exhibition, and how that space is used effectively to create different effects/ experiences, as well as notes on the smarter considerations on how the experience is paced/sequenced.

This warped/truncated/inaccurate/drawn from flawed memory map roughly shows the layout of the V&A expo:

The whole exhibition can be roughly broken up into four fairly distinct parts:

Exhibits of the design of different video games from differently sized studios ~2009 onwards. [blue]

Articles, talking points, video discussions and exhibits of games as part of our broader social context, concerned with violence, gender, sex, sexuality, race, language, protest etc. [orange]

A large video theatre showing some of the communities that form around games. [red]

An arcade showcasing several more experimental games and projects, that is open to free play. [yellow]

DESIGN

When you walk in you are greeted by a huge projector flashing between collages of the various exhibitions and the alternating titles DESIGN, PLAY, DISRUPT.

[pictured slides from Jenny Jiao Hsia’s talk on prototyping to make her game: ‘Consume Me’, 2016]

Seeing this is unavoidable when entering, and it serves as something of a banner to signal the transition into the formal exhibition space. YOU HAVE ENTERED THE WORLD OF THE VIDEO GAMES.

Mapping this first area of the 1. Design section of the exhibit we get something like this:

Note that these numbers are in an arbitrary order of roughly when I encountered them, and are not indicative of density, just general location of possibly several bits of each exhibit. Also this list is not exhaustive, nor is the map strictly accurate, I do not have an eidetic memory, but I do have a notebook and a smartphone.

Design/Play/DIsrupt screen

Large Print Text Binders

‘Journey’ gameplay montage projection

Notebooks, sketches, a headphone + video prototype demo, inspo photos/footage, graph and board of intended player journeys/narrative threads

‘Last of Us’ Dual screen demo showing gameplay and some of the work relevant to make that part of the game happen

Sketches, notebooks, board plotting out story events/setpieces in seasons, film made for atmosphere reference, blue sky concept art, colour scripts

Mocap footage +suit

Matt Lees @jam _sponge describing the anxious, excitable play of ‘Bloodborne’ between 3 screens.

Notebooks, sketches+concept art, level design docs, and SketchUp pics of early levels, headphones to listen to a recording of the soundtrack

Bunch of top designs for ‘Splatoon’

Early Prototype, creature sketches, fashion asset design

Playable prototypes from the making of Consume Me

Notebooks, corkboards, workplace ephemera, unity project demo, headphone + video 40 minute talk on prototypes

Music from ‘Kentucky Route Zero’ / KR0, visual representation of branching dialogue in twine, Margritte’s ‘Spring in the Forest’

Inspirations, typeface considerations, group wiki, twine showcase

Realtime Art Manifesto, Even more notebooks, with sketches and details of designing Tale of Tale’s ‘The Graveyard’

Playable demo of The Graveyard

Bench

Multi-screen montage of generated worlds in ‘No Man’s Sky’

Blueprint tool for spaceships, terrain debug tool, sci-fi inspirations

Visual inspirations

So what are some of the ways we can think about how this expo was laid out? 

For a start it’s fairly linear, there are no branching paths at Design/Play/Disrupt, it’d be a layout ill-suited to somewhere like this where there’s a strong desire for the audience to see all the content and assets (the exhibits) and not miss any pieces that time was spent curating. Thankfully unlike some videogames, this linearity is not gated. There are no attendants fiendishly running up behind you and closing doors as you move from one game to another, people might have missed something, or want to visit an earlier piece while friends are preoccupied with something for a little longer.

Exhibits are visited for the most part in a defined order, with some freedom in the Kentucky Route Zero/Graveyard room as well as the Splatoon/Consume Me room. You are encouraged to experience what is on display for each work and are being guided in a deliberate order, as opposed to set loose in an open hall with no boundaries where some attendees might skip or miss a part of the exhibition.

One thing tying sections you can explore or skip is their loose thematic / tonal linking:

To put it another way, there is a good reason that Bloodborne is next to The Last of Us. Both are triple-A big budget, rated 16+, 18+ action games for blood guts and all the cheery stuff. Consume Me and Splatoon work well next to eachother as the cute aesthetic and playable prototypes hanging from the ceiling work well across from Nintendo’s colourful and playful Splatoon. It would be a bit less natural to have the grotesque and rapacious sounds of Bloodborne echoing within the exact same room as Splatoon. I’m not saying any of these works don’t have some commonality beyond the arbitrary border I’ve drawn, but they fit better together. 

- Plus this open space invites an atmosphere of play after having just been cramped into two games rooms that feature horror elements

[Pictured: Splatoon’s section, as well as Consume Me minigame prototypes open to play, suspended from the ceiling]

This also showcases another thing about this event applicable to level design: the same space can be made appealing to different types of audiences. This is an exhibit about video games. I’ll admit this is just my gut but I’d be willing to bet that this exhibit is more likely to be attended by parents and their children than it would most other exhibits. I don’t know exactly what the V&A’s idea of the ideal attendant is, and that’s probably owed to the fact that this event catered to lots of different levels of assumed knowledge and engagement with videogames. 

Parent’s who might be a little out of touch with mainstream games, are quite likely to have been put off by bringing their kid to something that was entirely wall to wall Bloodborne, Dark Souls and other things as frightening (as much as I personally would have enjoyed that). Standing watching a parent pull their rapt child away from dulcet descriptions of how deadly mistakes are, in the big monster game, the success of the exhibition is apparent; the next room is a bit more targeted towards that kid’s age range (even though they did seem pretty into Bloodborne). 

[The concept art from Bloodborne is such a treat]

It’s no surprise as well that the first game is not The Last of Us, but Journey. More people are playing games now than ever but there remains a fair few people who still don���t really know what’s going on in games. As an exhibition that in part is attempting to show the breadth and depth of games being designed, it makes sense that the first introduction to what games are being made is a game without much in the way of traditional combative interaction. 

To wafflingly reiterate: the sequence of how things were placed matters: The accessibility options: 2. [Large Print Binders] are available at the start. Benches and places to sit are placed later throughout the exhibit (including rather wittily across from The Graveyard; a game where the entire goal is to make an old woman sit on a bench).

Reinforcing this point of how the same space can be made to cater to different people this event was extremely Multimedia. Explanations of parts each games design process written up, sketchbooks, and lots of different drawings, scrawled graphs, charts and plans. Concept art, drawings. Video of prototypes and animation, Sounds of ‘Long Journey Home’ echoing up the hall, and the omnipresent dread of Matt Lees echoing down, as well as headphones to listen to specific parts of the exhibition that might be less suited to how crowded the soundscape is or be for a more narrow audience (I wonder how many of the attendants listened to all ~40 Minutes of Jenny Jiao Hsia’s talk on prototyping. I did. It was good). Just in this section of the exhibit, there were so many different means of engagement, and they all felt very well matched to the story of each games development that they wanted to tell, while still offering different types of engagement. People can be looking at a video display showing how the layers of environmental concept art become important and manifest in The Last of Us, while someone else is poring over sketches of Ellie’s design. 

[Corkboard plotting out events + setpieces across the timeline of The Last of Us]

As an exhibition space, it is made with the fact that multiple people are occupying it at the same time in mind. If something is not available you can engage with something else. And if one type of engagement is not to your tastes there’s a good chance something else will be- not bothered about the wiki used to help the team of KR0 to communicate? Maybe you’ll be more interested in some of Ben Babbit’s sonic improvisations, or the visual inspirations involved in the creation of the game.

There’s more I could talk about wrt this first sections layout of how it winds you around instead of giving you a straightline to the exit, the choice of games playable being fundamentlly simple, an anecdotally sweet image of a child holding the obscenely big original xbox ‘duke controller’  on a pedestal and their dad cradling their hands. But I’ll just leave off this post here for now and maybe continue looking at V&A things and posting about it later.

To be continued..?

[myassbrokethefall]

All right, I just watched This for the third time, and the first time where I could really pause and rewind and have my attention undivided, since the first time through my brain was just a mess of AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH THIS IS SO GOOD THIS IS SO GOOD and the second time it was so I could follow along with Gillian’s tweets. (I may have learned what a taint was that day, but I did not get much detailed information about the plot.) (Just kidding, I already knew what a taint was, unlike Gillian Anderson who is clearly still enjoying the novelty of having recently found out about it.)

Here are my unedited (except for typos/some cleanup for clarity purposes) thoughts as I watched it, under a cut because anytime anyone says “lol here are my UNEDITED THOUGHTS” it should be under a cut, I feel like. Enjoy! Or don’t.

Phone: MULDER! MULDER! MULDER! MULDER! MULDER! MULDER!

Mulder: *sleeps*

Scully (very quietly): Mulder

Mulder: WHAT I'M UP I'M UP

I hope those assassins had to get out of the car and manually heave the gate out of the way like Scully did in IWTB.

Why is there an antler on the floor? Do Mulder and Scully just have...a single antler

"Accuse your enemies of that which you are guilty"?? I didn't even see that because apparently I didn’t look up either time while the themesong was playing. Also, in the grand tradition of "that with which he can't live without," this is grammatically incoherent. Good proofreading everyone

I look forward to someone less lazy than me examining every single frame of film in which the Unremarkable House appears and itemizing all of Mulder and Scully's possessions. I MAY have the same toaster oven as them?

Scully's badge number is XF072161?? What happened to JTTsomething? @startwreck did you know about this

227700 Wallis Road, Farrs Corner, VA. A real town. Google Map it, click Satellite, zoom out and note with pleasure (if you’re me) how in the exact bullseye middle of a bunch of empty green they are, far from civilization. That’s how I like my Unremarkable House. 

Simultaneous thoughts I had as the second wave of bad guys was attacking: How on earth did somebody get upstairs that fast? Did they parachute in? / Look at that beautiful porchlight

Crucial Plot Points That I Missed Entirely While In Raptures Over The Mulder And Scully Goodness Of This Episode, Part 1: Barbara Hershey’s character sent this Russian goon squad. Ah.

russian guy: (mockingly) “I want to believe”?

mulder: it’s not enough this dude is about to kill me, he has to make fun of my nerd poster? insult to injury

skinner: ugh just surrender to them! it's fine 

m&s: they tried to assassinate us two times

skinner: ohhhh lol sorry i didn't know they were going to do that MY bad

This order of presidents/32 32nd 34 35...stuff feels so unpolished and ad-libbed even though it's obviously plot-crucial (so I assume scripted), but it's like, they're just kinda bouncing around NEAR the lines, and I love it. And I love when Scully holds out her hand for him to supply the answer of which president FDR is and he has no idea so she supplies “32nd” and he's like “32 yeah I was totally about to say that yup” and then he forgets the number 33 exists, thus missing the clue. You're a mess, Mulder. Thank goodness for your smart wife.

Also it makes me wonder if "now you're just showing off, really" was an ad-lib of David’s because it feels like he interrupts her line; she has just said "FDR" and he says that and then she continues on with the FDR part again. scripted or duchovny? LEAVE MY JOKES IN GLEN

Them just figuring out this cemetery clue like Encyclopedia Brown GIVES ME LIFE

Skinner gave them a Leatherman? Handy/I’m surprised they didn’t trade it for more muffins

“it links to a video of the pet or person” lol

THIS SHOW IS LITERALLY SO DARK I HONESTLY CANNOT SEE WHAT IS HAPPENING; it went to commercial on a lingering shot of something and I don’t know what it was

So we kinda already knew this, but the "I'm gonna open an x-file on this bran muffin" line comes BEFORE the "I opened an x-file on this building in the '90s" line, leading me to believe that the bran muffin x-file line is also an ad-lib (in addition to Gillian’s “alien butt” line directly after, which she confirmed it was) because "opening an x-file” was on David's mind from doing the scene over and over. Scully's "An x-file?" line delivered like that's a new idea doesn't really mesh with her just having heard that term 20 seconds ago in re: bran muffins. DETECTIVE WORK

(also to be clear I’M FINE WITH THAT, leave in all their ad libs, they’re canon now, canon canon canon canon)

scully: walter we need your HELP 

skinner: kids, i literally already gave you all the money I have, jesus I am just trying to go to work, can you please handle your shit

scully: we used UP all that money on MUFFINS, and we ATE THEM ALL ok those muffins were GREAT but we are HUNGRY AGAIN we need your HELP GODDAMNIT even though we don’t TRUST YOU, why are you such a JERK, can’t you just go to the ATM? UNTRUSTWORTHY

"if you want to see the x-files you don't have to go to the office" me: I do spend quite a bit of time at the office seeing the x-files though (or at least various secondary references thereto)

Mulder, after two seconds of searching in the proprietary search bar: fuck this it doesn’t work I'll just google it #relatable

Crucial Plot Points That I Missed Entirely While In Raptures Over The Mulder And Scully Goodness Of This Episode, Part 2: that the spank bank thing was a deliberate secret message leading to the Langly's girlfriend lady. (also that they kept that from Skinner)

I also missed all this Sims talk with Langly’s girlfriend, on how they would know it was a simulation. "you wouldn't be able to click on the neighbor's house" "there would be a loading screen every time you went on vacation" "if you had the pets pack installed the same dog would come every day and dig a hole in your yard" "buy mode would be disabled if there was a burglar" "you would only be able to make macaroni and cheese until you had more cooking points" "if story progression was turned on sometimes you'd go to your neighbor's house and there would just be a random baby on the floor" "blurry boxes would appear on you every time you went to the bathroom" i got a million of ’em

Lollllllll at Mulder's awkward cough after “maybe he saw Mulder in his dreams” / “Who hasn't” / Scully’s look

What’s with all the fly imagery? Two acts have opened with closeup shots of insects.

This skanky bar scene...every moment of it is a cinematic masterpiece that I will treasure forever

Scully's hilarious face in reaction to the beer is another thing I didn't notice. like, this is what you ordered for me while I was asleep? gross dude

also I love her smile as she closes her eyes again like, mulder's yappin, all's right with the world, goodnight

Langly simulation: Are you...Fox...Mulder? Something about that name...is familiar to me...as if from another life...I feel compelled to contact you though I don't know why or what it means

Mulder: Yes, it's me, and Scully

Langly simulation: DANA SCULLY?! Omg how are you girl I miss you so much! omg I'm gonna cry I’m so glad to see you how the hell are you

We're digital slaves...they force us to make grilled cheese sandwiches over and over again and every time we try to play videogames they make us study the mechanical skill instead...sometimes they put us in a pool and take the ladder away just for their sick amusement...that's not even getting into the torment that comes from the move_objects on cheat...sure we may have rosebud!;!;!;!; levels of money and I may be the mayor but aging is turned off and I've already bought the fanciest TV and the most comfy bed and I've done all the tomb quests in World Adventures and I don't know what else there is here for me...plus the game lags every time I try to go on the subway...it's hell, Mulder, hell (sorry, done with the Sims jokes now)

Scully, they don't serve mimosas on the bus; believe me, I would know.

Do Gillian's kids get freaked out hearing her speak in an American accent? No more freaked out than seeing her in a red wig i guess

JACOB JARVITS FEDERAL BUILDING #neverforget

What is with the "looking moodily out at the New York skyline at night while sipping a martini in an ’80s movie" soundtrack in this "get us in the tunnel" scene

Mulder's eyebrow raise after "married to the Bureau" *drapes it all over my body*

the clearest and largest STAIRS sign in all of history; sure half the episode is so dark you can't make out what's happening but god forbid we not know that the door Mulder's gesturing to is the S T A I R S

literally why IS mulder yelling out numbers on the stairs at the top of his lungs? he's not even counting the floors, there are 29 floors and he's like 32 34 36 38...he's counting by twos...is he counting the stairs? Why? scripted or duchovny? "glen please leave in my inane stair counting, it's funny!" "david by gum you guys are magic. magic! ok ok, no problem buddy, just keep it flowing"

mulder and scully get in like 12 physical fights in this episode. AMAZING

Ok, now here’s where I really have to pay attention because i legit did not listen to a GODDAMN WORD of this Barbara Hershey scene the other two times.

Why are there SO MANY lamps in here and how is it still so dark

"You're still refusing to answer the question of your father" am I supposed to remember what that is? Show, you greatly overestimate me

Hold on, did Scully jump some guy with a flashlight and beat the shit out of him during this voiceover and I didn't even realize it? GO SCULLY (closed captioning: “blows landing, groaning”)

Crucial Plot Points That I Missed Entirely While In Raptures Over The Mulder And Scully Goodness Of This Episode, Part 3: the entire earth is about to burn down, whoops, did NOT catch that.

"my company advised killing you" okaayyyy

Did barbara hershey ask muldo to kill csm last episode and he said he wouldn't? why the hell not? do it dude do it

"we can upload a mind through any smartphone" sure until Apple releases a new OS and then it starts lagging

“We can take a piece of your mind anytime you make a call” oh good they’ll get like 3 pieces of my mind a year then. It would be much more efficient to take a piece of my mind every time I open Hay Day

Mulder has been handcuffed or fake-handcuffed A LOT this episode. He's going to need to process this through roleplay once he and Scully get home

Is Scully using the Leatherman as a physical key to switch off a top-secret high-security NSA federal computer system in lieu of the actual, presumably very specialized, key manufactured for that purpose? It really can do anything.

I can’t tell what we’re supposed to be seeing in this conference room to indicate that it was abandoned. Barbara Hershey is gone but was there other stuff in there? Like a sign that said “THE CONSPIRACY” or something? The LAMPS are still there, I guess they didn’t have time to pack those up

There's an orange on the floor in the UH. This is a step up, nutrition-wise, from the time Mulder had potato chips on the coffee table in IWTB. 

There is a basketball hoop DIRECTLY over a lamp. Really, Mulder?

Scully literally drops off to sleep in 3 seconds. all things continuity. 👏

So, destroy the backup? Does that mean there's a backup to the simulation and they’re just going to restore from it and nothing they did accomplished anything? Except for being the most delightful and satisfying episode of TXF ever filmed? Also what does the curly-haired guy being in there mean? I mean obviously he was uploaded after he died but is he in there like, tormenting Langly now? In the backup? How many backups are there? Can a Leatherman be used to defeat all of them?

I don’t care; Mulder and Scully are asleep on the couch and everything is perfect.

[schnuron]

Personal journal: How I got into Mass Effect series

It's a long explanation how I got into the fictitious creation of the video game called Mass Effect series.

At 2008, I was in Capital Federal, Argentina. When Mass Effect 1 was released for PC, I didn't notice it of the science fiction's stories and the alien stories that I didn't grow up reading those stories. Shamefully, I didn't play at that time. I was 15 years old. I used to play some random games like Need for Speed Undercover, Counter-Strike 1.6, CS Source, Penumbra, Half-Life 2 and so on. Cursing wasn't an issue for me. I grew up with the people I went to.

I couldn't see an original PC DVD product in a videogame store.

At December 2011, I managed to give it a try on PC. Even my PC desktop's system were running at low fps, I still could play that game. I was 18.

My first reaction was mindblowing. The player was a military commander soldier sent in space to discover further of what a group of people lies there.

I liked how I began to introduce the companions slowly and the alien characters that you may befriend them later on, which it was a new discovery in a video game to me.

The story was an interesting one that I didn't give a crap if people didn't like it.

I gues what drew my attention the most was the alien designs and how they behaved towards Commander Shepard.

I found that the alien designs were taking serious that I was in awed. I said to myself from Citadel "Gee, what's that pinky jellyfish thing floating over the floor? A Hanar?" "Oh, I've never knew an alien has a mask to breathe their own oxygen, maybe? Tali'zorah looks pretty, by the way."

The companions are great to get along with them. Especially when Wrex doubts in the middle of the scene with Shepard.

I also love how the dialogue system works between good (light blue color) and bad (red). The conversations on Shepard are great, serious and sometimes you can badmouth them.

Navigating through some planets and the plot finding a way to stop Saren and the Reapers were crazy and terrific. I have nothing new to say that I wasn't against them to being made.

The romance idea was also interesting in the game. I chose Liara to kiss her.

And the soundtrack was spectacular. The electronic synth and ambient music fitted very well on the game.

-------------------------------

I can't remember when it was the time I started to play Mass Effect 2 on PC. At 2012? I can't recall...

Around that year, that game story was an impossible one to believe that. You know, a corporation called Cerberus helped to resurrect Shepard for a second chance. I didn't believe he could make it out of space, but boy I was wrong. xP

During two years has passed, Shepard's companions went separate ways. But later on, when The Illusive Man has informed Shepard that an insectoid alien called the Collectors that they're a threat to humanity.

The ones who've already played it, maybe I shouldn't type it here no more, heh.

I enjoyed the hell out of the characters, the conversation moments and their personal side missions to be trusted in the suicidal mission. Plus the romance one, too.

I also really liked the OST of Mass Effect 2, too.

-------------------

Well, the third one was played sometime in 2013. I bought it on Origin platform.

I still love the game and how the story ends, not in a pleasant way, but painful one on how the Reapers is slowly taking over to Earth and the need the help of the other alien races to fight them.

I liked the plot, despise the players went disappointing at the end of the game. I can understand that. But I don't think that Mass Effect 3 was to please everybody.

The soundtrack was composed by various musicians and I liked it. Some songs that were played during such scenes are taking them back from Mass Effect 1 and 2, which is fine by me.

It was a real risk to do it for some players that they did love it and I wanna appreciate to Casey Hudson and the rest of the Bioware team for the Mass Effect 3.

----------------------

Okay, and the latest Mass Effect game is Mass Effect Andromeda by Bioware Montreal. I guess I bought it on Origin, too.

About the troubled and rushed development, it was a fine game with the Frostbite Engine (the ones who were made for Battlefield 3 and 4). But I can't tell if the devs got into mixed opinions without straight ideas on how the game will look like in the finished product.

So, skipping that part. I didn't feel any impact on Sara Ryder. Her brother Scott looked good. The dialogue wasn't my thing, made me wonder if the main character was supposed to be cold....naive or not. I don't get it, plus when Scott or Sara are talking to the other NPCs or his or her companions seemed off in some parts.

The alien companions were good to me. Vetra Nyx, Jaal, what was the Asari name.....Liara? No. Peebee. Her attitude was something I couldn't get into, but I didn't have trouble playing with her as being a companion. The rest of them have a common hobby of themselves. I enjoyed a lot when Liam invites every crew member to watch a movie in Ryder's bedroom. Hopefully, they can agree on this one for those who've played MEA.

The combat system was good, to be honest. The melee combat could have been used just like the ME3.

The exploration came back to use to scavenge resources for the again (last time it was used in Mass Effect 1).

I guess looking back when this upcoming Mass Effect project was announced, I was super excited what the hell was about. Oh, some group of people wants to travel to Andromeda Galaxy? Boy, that's a big risk to try it out.

The romance moment was alright. I picked up Vetra for it. The dialogue and the Ryder's expression could have been fucking better. I wish she could strip her clothes and see them kissing each other, but it was shown short to see it.

Anyway, I had my expectations for this next game could go well with me, but the things of MEA have been placed went 50% good and 50% not good to me.

The soundtrack was okay to me. There were a few songs that had synth but most of them are classical and inspired by Hans Zimmer, which is understandable. It's not my favorite, but I may listen to it just a few more times.

Looking at the video made by Crowbcat (5 years + 40M = Mass Effect Andromeda), he shared some small parts of it that the players have been encountered a lot of bugs, lack the facial animation, some funny unnecessary glitches and some other cringy moments, I find it disappointing to see the first (1.0) version of it. I can share the same experience that the video has shown when I was trying to finish the single-player story.

TL;DR

It could have been better, but Frostbite was a risky process to do it for an AAA company, EA (Electronic Arts).

I still play it for a few occasions, I also play it on multiplayer as well.

That is my long explanation of MEA, without spoiling so much of the story.

I just needed to write something here on how I got into that science fiction on befriending aliens as a military commander game in the first place.

P.S.

I haven't mentioned about the multiplayer of ME3 and MEA.

I'm not good at analyzing them how good the multiplayer system has been implanted, but all I can say is that Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer (coop mostly) was a lot of fun to play.

The Andromeda one was fun, too. I had some lags moments to play it, but overall I can still enjoy it if anyone wants to play with me. My Origin's nickname is Schnuron. Add me as a friend and see how we can play it or ME3 one, too.

[daleisgreat]

Dale’s Top 31 Gaming Experiences of 2020

Welcome to the 2021 installment for my ranking top gaming moments and experiences of the previous year, regardless of what year the game was released in! Besides ranking my the games themselves, This encompasses all videogame-adjacent experiences aside such as movies, board games, accessories and hardware related items and possibly more! This will be a lengthy read so I suggest right now inputting ‘Ctrl + D’ to bookmark this page, and/or make use of a handy ‘read later’ app like Pocket. This year’s recommended background reading music is a soundtrack I recently got clued into from the MojoMenace community in the form of the score for Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst you can check out by click or pressing here. If you somehow manage to want more of these behemoth reads, than I will point you to my previous year-end recaps here: 2019 - 2018 - 2017 - 2016 To assist with this read, here are some in-article page anchors to instantly jump around to bookmarks on the rankings! CHAPTERS Part 1 – Rankings 31 through 25 Part 2 – Rankings 24 through 18 Part 3 – Rankings 17 through 12 Part 4 – Rankings 11 through 7 Part 5 – Rankings 6 through 4 Part 6 – Rankings 3 through 1 PART 1 – Rankings 31 through 25 31) The Worst Wrestling Game of all Time! For a project I will detail later on I had to relive the abyss of wrestling games that is WCW Nitro on the N64. It is a port of the PSone version, and it was as awful as I remembered first experiencing it two decades prior. If you want to experience broken controls, insufferable slowdown, and a flatout painful experience of a game, then Nitro is where it is at. Instead of playing the games, I will instead opt to link you to this clip of the PSone version because it has these so-bad-it’s-good FMVs of the wrestlers trash talking on the character select screen.

30) The Remake Frothingly Demanded for Years….Delivered!

I was ecstatic to see the Final Fantasy VII fanbase finally get the modern-gen remake they have been craving for years. I only consider myself a mild fan because I started that game several times, and only progressed shortly past Midgar in my farthest attempt. Through Midgar is what the Remake covers though, and going by all the coverage I have seen, it looks like Square shocked the doubters and nailed it by expanding on that section of the original game with a ton of new content and storylines to flesh out that iconic setting and cast. I played the demo and loved the stunningly overhauled visuals and combat. One day I will play the full game, but for the time being I will be sufficed with my former podcast co-hosts’ cutouts of the cinematics for most of the game. 29) FMV-Camp Returns! A couple years back on a Game Informer stream they jokingly started playing a modern day Sega CD FMV-style choose your own adventure game, Late Shift. It was a throwback to those camply FMV games that dominated the SegaCD. However, this one actually had solid production values and all around acting for an indie release, and the Game Informer crew slowly got into it as it went along. Seeing them navigate through the first chunk of the game inspired me purchase it, and I finally got around to throwing it in this year and is it a breezy game to get through in under three hours. The storyline branches off in all kinds of directions based on your choices, so I played through it twice and got pretty different endings both times in this game that sees an overnight car park clerk getting forced into a heist job against his own will. The developers at Wales Interactive went on to make a couple more games in this FMV style like The Complex, The Shapeshifting Detective and The Bunker, and I feel they are on the right path with how much I got into Late Shift so I wound up putting all three of those other games on my radar!

28) Hey, Watch me Ollie!

The emotional nostalgia burst that poured down upon me within minutes of firing up Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 was insane. Almost instantly within loading up my first two minute run I could tell the game just felt like how I remembered the awesome PSone game I played to death. Having almost all the memorable songs from the soundtracks of the first two games also incredibly helps. I believe it was intentional on the developers to have the very first song to boot up when playing being “Superman.” This near perfect HD remake/update of the first two games erases the poor attempt done on the 360 and PS3 several years prior. This would have ranked much higher if I had a chance to put more time into this. 27) Unexpected Carnage Following up on last year’s entry where I made the retro purchase of the Jaguar, I had one more session with Atari’s “64-bit” feline with my friend Derek. One Jaguar game I was eager to get some two-player co-op in was with its version of Total Carnage. It was the “bigger and better” sequel to Smash TV, another arcade classic I cherished. Never playing the sequel though I was eager to start it up with Derek, but only upon a few minutes in we realized this was a grave mistake due to the Jaguar port being rough around the edges and only limited continues allowed which resulted in us making very little progress. Before Derek left I remembered I owned Midway Arcade Treasures on the 360, which had Total Carnage in its line-up. We popped that in, and mercifully that fun-yet-brutal version of the game allowed infinite continues and we absolutely capitalized on that option and proceeded to knock out a huge chunk of the game. It mixes up the room-style gameplay of Smash TV and opens it up into levels that scroll up like Ikari Warriors and Mercs, but with that same style of over-the-top action. 26) Unleashing Destruction in the Streets and Rings

At the beginning of the year longtime friend Steve and I had a fun night planned catching a minor league hockey game an hour out of town, but of course a blizzard spoiled that for us by closing the highways. Luckily we had a back-up plan of meeting up for a game night that included marching through the entire tag team championship mode of WWF WrestleFest and all of the arcade version of Final Fight. Steve also had the arcade follow-up to Saturday Night Slam Masters that never received a home release in North America in Ring of Destruction that we tore each other apart in. Finally, I demonstrated FirePro Wrestling World to Steve, and we busted out our vintage favorite football game, ESPN NFL 2K5. It was a hell of a game night, and thank goodness for back-up plans! 25) And the Keighley goes to….

The last few years I have been looking forward more and more to the end-of-the-year videogame award show Geoff Keighley puts on. His annual award showcase keeps improving each year, and has a far lower amount of compromises that the decade’s worth of VGAs on Spike had to endure. Each year Geoff keeps getting closer to that sweet balance of acceptance award speeches, game trailers/reviews and special live performances. He stepped up bigtime this year for not having a crowd in attendance, and I was dreading throughout the show for any one of this virtual award nominees to have an audio or video snafu at any moment, but luckily everything worked out. There were some impressive game reveals too with an intriguing teaser for a new Mass Effect game focusing on the original trilogy characters stealing the show. I have seen a notable contingent criticize Geoff for lack of focus on awards, but it seems almost right where it should be. He tried going all awards the first year he had control, but it was overkill and an insanely long show. Sure, there are spots that can use some tweaking, but for the most part The Game Awards I feel are a worthy end-of-year award show for the industry I have been enjoying for the past several years now. PART 2 – Rankings 24 through 18 24) Online Gaming Therapy The pandemic undeniably made 2020 a rut of a year for everyone. I miss meeting up indoors and hanging out with friends and family as much as the next person. I was able to do some alternate social distancing outdoor meet-ups with friends and family during the summer and fall, but North Dakota’s winter put a halt to that. What has significantly helped has been doing more online gaming than I usually do this year in general. I will cite a few more examples as you read on below, but I want to highlight this so I can be thankful to have a perfectly viable way to still game with friends and family during the pandemic. I have played a lot of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! online with my dad and brother this year. I love my game show videogame adaptations, but one quirk I want to point out in the Xbox One version of Jeopardy is that it does not have the option to traditionally input responses, and instead offers three multiple choice responses instead. I would call blasphemy on this, but there has been so many releases of Jeopardy! over the years that it was actually kind of a neat alternative way to play the classic game show……this time! 23) Love for Videogame Coffee Table Books This past year has seen a surge in videogame hardcover tomes that have been an indulgence of mine the past few years. It started with Pat Contri’s “Ultimate Nintendo” line dedicated to reviewing all the games on the NES & SNES. I have Kickstarted two similar anthology books this past year focused on the Dreamcast and Vita. The Dreamcast book is still in production, but I already received the Vita book in the mail, and a quick flip through of it already indicates it is an exhaustive look at the Vita’s library.

There have been a couple other books that are less all-encompassing and focus more on showcasing artwork based on the system with supplemental interviews with developers who worked on it. The two I have on those are based on Sega’s Genesis and Master System consoles. These are perfect coffee table books for friends and family to flip through, and a nice refresher on history to see how others have perceived and rated the games I grew up with. I also took advantage of the recent Humble Bundle charity offering that collected nearly 100 videogame-themed eBooks for around the suggested $35 donation. I need to one day get a viable tablet or eBook reader for all these. Any suggestions? When Pat Contri sent out a tweet last summer seeking additional writers to help with the upcoming N64 book of his Ultimate Nintendo line, I sent in a resume with my credentials and shortly after trading a few emails was welcomed onto the team! It has been a trip and a half revisiting N64 games I have not played in decades or had yet to discover until this project. As of this writing I have at least a couple hundred hours into the N64 games I am covering! That blurb for WCW Nitro to kick this year’s rankings off is just a teaser of what to expect to see in my full review of it in the book. So yeah, this project has been keeping me busy playing a lot of N64 this year, and I cannot wait to see the book in physical form! Be on the lookout on Pat Contri’s online storefront to order the forthcoming N64 book, and to also order the past NES & SNES books! 22) BOOK-SHAKA-LAKA! Reyan Ali’s book I had on pre-order for well over a year about NBA Jam and the creators from Midway did not disappoint. Here is my quick take on it from my Goodreads.com profile review….

NBA Jam by Reyan Ali My rating: 5 of 5 stars I had this book per-ordered for a while. Based on the amount of interviews conducted going into it and combined with it taking four years to compile I had high expectations going in. Ali did not disappoint with a quick, but thorough history on everything that lead up to NBA Jam, its breakthrough success in the arcades, at home and with the NBA players on the road and the many ups and downs with the franchise and publishers at Midway and Acclaim in the years that followed. Interviews from developers and NBA players are featured throughout the book that help paint a picture on every vital aspect of NBA Jam and why it became a hit in arcades and has a lasting impact to this day. The back third of the book touches on the other various iterations of NBA Jam and eventually the downfall of the original creators at Midway. Even being a fan of the game since it first debuted, I came out of this book learning plenty of new facts and insight from the creators and its many fans that I cannot help but give Ali's NBA Jam my highest recommendation. View all my reviews 21) Bite-Sized Gaming

I chose this spot to recognize the smaller indie Xbox One games I would warm up with for about 20-30 minutes before diving into a longer game with. Most, but not all of them were featured on Game Pass. Hyperdot was an intense little puzzler that I was really into until my reflexes were not fast enough for the later stages to keep the dot alive by avoiding all kind of spherical traffic before time expired. Ping Redux tested my billiards/geometry skills in order to get a pixel from one end of the level to the end. Clustertruck I once again put way too much time into this year, but THIS year I felt like I made legitimate progress on my truck platforming skills and have made it into final world of stages and cleared all the bonus winter and Halloween stages! It is addicting and frustrating in all the right ways! Definitely do not skip past this one on Game Pass!

Top Run is the first runner I invested serious time into since Jetpack Joyride. I would say it is still a few notches below that classic runner though because the grind for unlocks here is a bit much, but the neon pixel graphics and head-bopping 80s-synth score keeps me coming back! Finally, Night Call is a fascinating narrative mystery game where you are a taxi driver forced into undercover work to track down suspects for the police by using casual passenger chit-chat as a cover for interrogation. Very cool art style, and diverse range of quirky, deep, mysterious and alarming passengers had me revisiting more for the engaging dialogue and narration choices more than the mystery at large. 20) Hadoken 2020 Welcome to the fighting game section of the rankings, well save for but one other game I shall touch on later. As usual, I played a ton of online fighting games with my longtime online fighting buddy, Chris. We revisited a couple classics in 2020 that we ignored for far too long since our last go around in Tekken 7 and Soul Calibur VI, and it was a lot of fun trying out the season DLC passes for those games I completely forgot I purchased. Both Namco joints are a blast, and I regret not playing more of them during this generation. I got a chance to briefly dabble with a few SNK vintage re-releases in the King of Fighters and Samurai Shodown franchises courtesy of many physical releases from Limited Run Games. I need to make more time to come back to these gems!!! Retro Fighters is an online game accessory company I associate with their specialty retro fight pads, and I got a handful of them this past year-ish for Genesis, Dreamcast and Nintendo 64. I found myself a big fan of all three pads, especially the N64 pad now having a more traditional two-grip feel instead of its….unique…three grip setup from Nintendo. If you are unfamiliar with these guys, definitely give their website a perusal for some excellent retro controllers!

Finally, I want to shout out Street Fighter V receiving its last major update in 2020, the “Champion Edition” that launched its final season of DLC, and saved me a lot of time grinding for in-game currency to unlock all past and future DLC characters and stages! Only had a chance to go to SFV a handful of times in 2020, but they were memorable sessions, and caught on video too! I keep neglecting PS4’s share video and editing software and finally took advantage of it by uploading one of my battles with Chris on my YouTube channel you can check out by click or pressing here. Another night I got together with a bunch of the fine folks from the MojoMenace/SupertheHardest podcast community for an epic SFV night and even though there were a couple of well-tuned SFV vets on there that dominated, we all still had a blast that evening! 19) Driving Games 2020

2020 was a weaker year for variety of racing games played compared to previous years. There were a couple smaller indie games that were part of my rotation with the nearly graphically blinding Music Racer that turns driving into a musical rhythm game and I miraculously did not endure a seizure with. The awesome Outrun-homage, Horizon Chase Turbo, received continued scattered play from me throughout the year. Super Night Riders is a fun little tribute to Hang-On which I nearly 100% its small slate of courses with the exception of a final endurance track which combines all the tracks in one continuous run and if a few collisions are made it is thus impossible to recover from. I revisited that last race far too frequently before ultimately taking a break from it. Rock ‘n Racing DX was a game I repeatedly saw for sale nearly every week on digital stores, but I was weary with it looking like a watered down version of Super Off Road. After finally chancing it off a $2 sale I can now confirm it is a bad controlling version of Super Off Road everyone should avoid and its muted beats definitely do not rock. V-Rally 4 was a free Xbox Games for Gold in 2020 that I had a blast tearing up the virtual dirt tracks with in this rally-sim! Monster Truck racing games continued with the latest Monster Jam game, Steel Titans. Still not a five star driving game by any means, but nowhere near as buggy and a big step-up from Crush It, which I will give credit to experienced driving game developer, Rainbow Studios now being behind the series.

Retrowave on Steam hit all the guilty pleasure 80s neon visuals and synth-wave musical vibes I am a fan of, but its slot/timing based gameplay did not gel with me. I put a little time into Sega Ages branded update of Virtua Racing on Switch. This is easily the best Virtua Racing has ever played and looked, and M2 implemented a slew of quality-of-life features to make this the definitive version of the game. Hot Shots Racing I played a few times off Xbox Game Pass and it tries to capture the early polygonal look and feel of Virtua Racing. Very nice homage that all Virtua Racing fans should seek out! I also played many hours of six N64 racing games for the forthcoming Ultimate Nintendo book so be on the lookout for that with my reviews for both Top Gear Rally games, Top Gear Overdrive, Re-Volt, Rally Challenge 2000 and Big Mountain 2000.

Finally, the racing game I put the most time into in 2020 once again is Wreckfest. I continue to be impresses with developer Bugbear’s support for this title. In 2020 they launched a second season pass that they are still releasing new vehicle add-ons for as of this writing. They also introduced a new Tournament mode that has constantly updated Daily, Weekly and Monthly challenges that earn its own exclusive currency to be used for unlockable cars available across all modes with that accrued currency. The challenges have been fun and have a variety of wacky themes like winter season races going on right now, and options that have lawnmower vehicles launching killer snowballs. My brother and I have been regularly playing it online once or twice a month for the better part of 2020. A feature I find myself taking advantage more for racing games on Xbox One is using the Spotify app for custom soundtracks. I briefly dabbled with it before, but upon discovering the NFSsoundtracks website I have been using it a whole lot more. That website scours YouTube to recreate a plethora of past driving game soundtracks going back to the 8 and 16-bit eras. If a game has a licensed soundtrack, they will comprise a Spotify playlist of all the licensed songs that are available from that soundtrack on Spotify. So far I would say about 75% of each soundtrack is represented on Spotify, and it has helped exponentially reliving favorite scores from Road Rash, Demolition Racer and Burnout Revenge in modern racing games. 18) Retro Game Writing Frenzy

I doubled down on the amount of “Flashback Specials” I produced in 2020 where I celebrate systems on their milestone anniversaries by recapping my favorite games and memories of certain consoles. Some of them were mini-specials where I only had a limited experience with certain systems like the Saturn, PSP and Neo-Geo, while others were for systems I had well over a decade of hands-on experience with and thus many tales to recount which resulted in exhaustive pieces for the NES, PSone, PS2 and Xbox 360. That 360 piece especially did a number on me and went way longer than I anticipated…but I had a lot to say :D 2021 will see a lot of platforms having milestone anniversaries of their American launch, and I doubt I will have time to get to them all, at least with how I have been covering most of them in detail anyways. Part of the fun I have with these specials is busting out each retro system and hooking up and replaying several of my favorites to see if they stand the test of time like Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! and The Punisher on NES, or to spend some time on lost treasures I picked up and barely put anytime into like CastleVania: Rondo of Blood on PSP and both Rad Racer games on NES. Regardless, if you have been sticking with me through these endless pieces, than please accept my many thanks for indulging my memories and stories of my gaming past! PART 3 – Rankings 17 through 12 17) Shmuppreciation 2020

I was honored to curate the selection again for the annual “Shmuppreciation” celebration for the mojomenace.com community! Previous years saw me pick a different shmup each week to scorechase on for the NES and SNES, and for 2020 I thought I lined up things perfectly by picking five shmups (AKA shooters/space shooters) that were all going to be available on the TurboGrafX-Mini that was set to release in mid-March. Well, on March 11th the pandemic was officially declared, and it was already in full effect in Asia by that point where production of the TG16-Mini was scheduled so it was no surprise to see the announcement of a delay for a few months on the mini console. That did not deter the MojoMenace community however and we plugged away with our scheduled lineup. Some of the 2020 lineup I own and have an alright amount of experience with like Blazing Lazers. Others I had little to no experience with like Lords of Thunder, Super Star Solider and Soldier Blade. The surprise hit of the 2020 selections for me was Galaga ‘88/’90. I played my fair share of traditional Galaga over the years and always heard of the TG16 version, but never played it, and it amped up the traditional Galaga gameplay and graphics just enough to make it stand side-by-side with its equals of the day! It was gratifying to see it be a hit with the community and receive the most entries of all the 2020 lineup. 16) A Long Awaited Fourth Rage in the Streets

I have so much nostalgia of the original Streets of Rage trilogy. It was an unexpected surprise to find it available on Game Pass on its day one release. I put about four hours into that game over its first two days, and absolutely treasure those two days with it as I felt my skills organically improving as I picked up on combos and enemy hit patterns. The new graphic style felt like it capture the essence of its past while successfully evolving it to modern day 2D tech standards, and the same can be said for the all-new original soundtrack that lived up to the high pedigree established in the first two games, and then some! I wound up picking up the vinyl for it, and the soundtrack has been in heavy rotation in my playlists ever since. The only downside is after those first two days of playing it, I took a week off before revisiting and almost instantly found myself losing a few steps from where I last left off. It was then I realized if I desire to beat this game, I have to essentially dedicate a couple of days solely to it to where I can “get good” at it and plow through it in a sitting or two. I guess I can tone it down to easy, and if it was not a Streets of Rage game I probably would, but the thing is with how I am playing so far, yeah the game can get tough on the normal default difficulty, but it is a fair challenge, one that nails that delicate balance where I know dedicated practice will pay off in the long run. In the end, that is how I want my Streets of Rage 4 experience to be! 15) Ryo’s Rally Cry

Last year Shenmue III fulfilled my 18-year long anticipation for the latest adventures featuring Ryo Hazuki. In 2020, a series of three DLC packs were unleashed in the early months of the year. I was not expecting anything too extravagant because all three packs were bundled together for $9.99, and compared to season pass story based content in other games that typically go for double-to-triple that, I had a feeling it was going to be more mini-games than anything, and that is essentially what we got. The first DLC focused on Bailu Village with several treasure hunt mini-games hunting down tiny Bailu Chan collectibles, which was no fun at all, and after the first treasure hunt zone I referenced a YouTube video to blitz through the rest. They were worth going through because they unlocked stat boosts for Ryo to use in the several Battle Rally races that gave a final score based on time completed and number of enemies beaten throughout it. Those stat boosts made Ryo faster and stronger, so it was worthwhile to knockout more foes before the finish line, and that part of the DLC proved to be a fun type of challenge. The second DLC was a cruise ship full of casino-themed mini-games and a couple small story quests. To activate it was tricky because you needed to make about 15 minutes of progress in the second half of the game. Luckily, a new game can be started from the back half. The casino games are decent little distractions, and the only highlight of the ship was earning raffle tickets to use on a prize wheel used to unlock several extra slick costumes for Ryo.

The final DLC was a story DLC that is sprinkled throughout the back half of the game. It is a bit of a chore though, and nothing extraordinary. If you remember the Chan signs that use four tea cups arranged in certain patterns, then be prepared for a series of those quests that are only available after completing a few main story missions. It is mostly a lot of backtracking to find a rogue agent, and only leads to a couple simple fights, and the only interesting thing I got out of it was for one part of the several-part series of quests you go undercover on a dinner date with Shenhua with some intentionally campy lines. I would only recommend playing it if you were playing through Shenmue III for the first time and that way the quests seem like an organic series of side quests you stumbled across, because by the time the last part of this DLC was available, I already replayed my way through about 75% of the second half of the main quest that transpires in Niaowu. If you are wondering why Shenmue III is ranking a fair way into my rankings with my middling time with the DLC, well that is because of the astounding Shenmue III-themed releases I picked up from Limited Run Games in 2020. A few months back Limited Run had what felt like a Shenmue appreciation day and released a special edition of the game with all the lackluster DLC on the disc, in addition to bonus collectibles that I usually do not go for, but in this rare exception did. They also put out some absurdly priced vinyl options of the soundtrack. Shenmue III has a mammoth soundtrack, so big it took seven CDs and eight vinyls to cram it in. To get the complete vinyl set, it was for around $200-250, so I opted for the CD set for $50 and a special “best of” two record set for $40. Yeah….did not anticipate blowing nearly the price for a Switch on Shenmue merchandise in one day, but I managed to cut myself off before going too nuts. 14) Vinyl Love 2020 Speaking of that Shenmue III vinyl, this will be a good way to pivot to rank the videogame OST vinyls I procured over 2020. Data Disc released their curated Shenmue II record. It is like the one Data Disc put out for the first game in the series which is a hand-picked selection of songs on one LP. I recently listened to it, and at least Data Disc ensured to maximize their minutes with their selections. Data Disc also did a second printing of another Yu Suzuki classic with the OST for Outrun. Other highlights include a complete set of five records of the Tetris Effect OST from Limited Run Games. Many kudos to Limited Run for including an MP3 download code with their records, and it was much appreciated for that set, and as well for their Streets of Rage 4 score. I have heard mixed reception for the SoR4 OST living up to the lofty bar established from the first two games, but after listening to it many times on my record player and in my car, I can attest for it being a win in the series and is right up there with the first two games. I will give a couple last quick shout outs for the OSTs for The King of Fighters ‘98, Street Fighter III, Quake, Celeste B-Sides and Kentucky Route Zero comprising the remaining LPs I picked up throughout 2020. To this day I continue working out to DDP Yoga 3-4 times a week, and having one of the game vinyls on in the background is the ideal background jams for me while I stretch myself to pieces! 13) Pinball 2020 Longtime readers are familiar with ritual weekly habit of competing in the four table weekly high score challenges in Pinball FX3, and yes I am still continuing that tradition every Saturday morning where I will practice and rank up abilities on one of the four tables that is up in the weekly challenges, and then attempt to best the high score for each of the four tables. It never gets old, and it helps feed my pinball addictions. Props to Zen for their output of Williams tables, and I am about 50/50 for using their “remastered” versions with animated toys and additional graphics on the table, and appreciate the option to press a button to flip to the original design. I still popped in Pinball Arcade on PS4 several times throughout 2020 because I feel those are more accurate-feeling real life physics of those pinball tables, but Zen’s versions are a solid alternative. Plus they added one of my favorite tables, Champion Pub, to the PFX3 roster in 2020, now just give me No Good Gophers and I will rest happy!

In other pinball news, I also continue to throw in the rotation Demon’s Tilt, the awesome homage to Devil’s Crush/Dragon’s Revenge. I cannot get enough of those scintillating TG16 throwback visuals and its metal soundtrack! I only threw in the neon-infused visuals of Hyperspace Pinball off Steam a few times in 2020, and I just wish that game took off more and received some home console conversions. Love the bumpin’ soundtrack, trippy graphics and distinctive boss battles that keep me coming back to it. I need to one day dive into recent pinball/platformer hybrids Yoku’s Island Express and Creature in the Well. I briefly tried out the former, and yet to put time into the latter. Finally, in sad pinball news, the private pinball club I started going to I wrote about in last year’s recap, Fargo Pinball shut its doors last year after failing to sustain business a few months into the pandemic. The owners will still operate about a dozen machines they have on constant rotation at a local brewery however, so there is still somewhat of a local pinball presence to take in. For the two or three times I made it out to Fargo Pinball however, I was in pinball heaven. 12) Handheld Gaming 2020

Last year I wrote about in this section how I made serious headway into Mother 3 on the GBA by the end of 2019. So the first few months I spent wrapping up Mother 3 on my backlit-modded GBA. So that meant I beat it legit with no save states, and a lot of trial and error on boss battles. The only part I did not care for was an underwater maze to navigate through while keeping an eye on oxygen levels, but otherwise I very much enjoyed my time with Mother 3, and mad props to Fangamer’s companion guide for being the quintessential supplemental material to guide me through it. After finishing that, I put a couple hours into the Metroid-esque Scurge: Hive on GBA before throwing in another throwback in the form of GameBoy Color’s Turok 2: Seeds of Evil. A year or two back here I wrote how the first Turok on GameBoy was an old-school style action-platformer that won me over, and the sequel is more of the same, but with slightly more fleshed out levels, now color graphics, and a couple interesting shmup stages for variety! It had some old-school difficulty, so the Retron 5’s save states and cheats and I had to take advantage of in order to power through it!

Currently, I am ever-so-slowly working my way through a fan translated copy of Ace Attorney Investigations 2 on DS. I loved the first game in the series and how they mixed up the gameplay by taking it out of the courtroom and having visual avatars to control and visually maneuver around locations. I am currently on the third case of AAI2, and the translation successfully maintains the whimsical spirit of the Ace Attorney series and has an interesting twist where Miles is now having to side with defense attorneys against his will. I picked up two unique re-released retro handhelds this past year. Firstly, I picked up the Mario Game & Watch that was released to celebrate Super Mario Bros.’s 35th anniversary. Super Mario Bros. is the first game I ever played, and first game I ever finished so it goes without saying that game is quite special to me and having it in this unique handheld form is a saccharine treat! The second old school handheld I had to import from Japan in the form of the Game Gear Micro. For those unaware of this Japan-exclusive, it is a working Game Gear about 10% the proportion of the original model. Sega only made several versions of it in Japan, with each one having only a handful of exclusive games. I went with the one containing the Aleste collection that contains five Game Gear/Master System games in the acclaimed space shooter series, one of which is an all-new game designed with the Game Gear’s limitations in mind in GG Aleste 3. My cramped fingers were somewhat able to play the games on the Micro (make sure to get the magnifier accessory in order marginally make out the visuals), and it is a nice discussion piece, but I think I will put more time into these games in the future with the PS4 copy of Aleste Collection that came with the bundle I ordered from Play Asia. PART 4 – Rankings 11 through 7 11) Podcast Guest Hosting 2020 I guest hosted on three podcasts in 2020. I had what ended up being my final recurring guest slot on the penultimate episode of Your Parents Basement podcast. It was my 13th guest host appearance there, but I made sure to make it a clayyyysic one with our analysis for the dubious action-sports SNES title, Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball. I remember going into that episode initially tepid to start off our discussion for the game by admitting I could not figure out how to shoot the damn ball and had to look up a guide online how to figure it out, but was quickly relieved to hear all three YPB hosts had to do exactly the same! Also, there were some regular segments of the show where we all rate the game on a themed where entertaining shenanigans ensued. YPB has since posted one surprise end of year special since having their main series finale, and here is hoping to see them pop in again for more surprise episodes. I will be forever grateful to them for taking my suggestions at covering games I have been meaning to get out of my backlog for ages like Shadowrun, Metal Gear Solid, Crystalis and Earthbound. Click or press here to check out that YPB episode I guested on in 2020.

I was thrilled to guest host twice on the PSnation Podcast in 2020. While it is a Playstation themed podcast, host Glenn always specializes with healthy doses of retro gaming talk in each episode. In March I joined him in covering the FFVII Remake demo that just hit, and we of course had to inject a ton of retro gaming topics in the agenda too (click or press here to download). In November I came on again to anticipate the future by previewing the imminent launch of the PS5 and celebrate the past by dissecting 20 forgotten facts of the PS2 for its 20th anniversary (click or press here to download). While both podcasts were marathon recording sessions, I do not regret a minute of it as I always have a phenomenal time podcasting with Glenn! He recently announced they will be rebranding PSnation with news to come in the near future after a hell of a 14-year run, and I wish nothing but the best for him and his staff to see what they have in store! On a final note in podcasts, I have been continuing my occasional un-vaulting of select episodes from my long-deceased videogame podcast, On Tap. Throughout 2020, I uploaded about an episode a month to my YouTube channel, often having them coincide with a relevant anniversary or one of my flashback special articles. Some of the ones I uploaded this past year are all several parts of our history of comic book videogames episodes and most of our history of RPG videogames episodes. Also a couple of our movie review episodes where we analyze cult classics like The Wizard, FFVII: Advent Children Complete, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and both Tron films. I made a playlist of the 28 episodes I have un-vaulted as of this writing you can navigate to by click or pressing here. 10) Switching It Up

In early April of 2020, I had penned in a pretty epic vacation I was anticipating for quite some time, but as we all know, by April of 2020 we were a few weeks into the pandemic and those plans quickly went up in smoke along with everything else in the world. It may have been a good thing those plans got cancelled because that same weekend a water pipe burst at my home and that whole weekend was spent cleaning up the aftermath of it. It was a couple days after the fact of that ordeal and I was simply a mess, and needed some form of a pick-me-up. I was holding off on a Switch for three years by this point, and three years was about what I held off on purchasing a Wii U, PS4 and Xbox One, and so I convinced myself to get out of my slump by going out and buying a Switch. It helped big time! The first games I played on it were a couple of different SNES games I played online with my nephew Carter. We first played the original Super Mario Kart, and within seconds of starting a race he blurted out, “Dale this looks old!” He was not a happy camper, but we did manage to have a modicum of fun playing two player co-op in Brawl Brothers and Joe & Mac. Other notable Switch games I put some time into this year are Golf Story, Sega Ages Virtua Racing, Tetris 99 and Super Mario Bros. 35. I love battle royal Tetris and Super Mario Bros.! Golf Story is the ultimate spiritual successor to the beloved Mario Golf games on GBC and GBA. Also, I highly recommend playing with a pro controller in docked mode, and with Hori’s Split Pad Pro in undocked mode. Despite its bulk, I vaster prefer them more than the painfully tiny JoyCons. In 2021 I hope to invest significantly more time into my Switch! I have picked up many retro re-releases recently with their frequent sales that I must try out! 9) Wrestling Games 2020

2020 was a year like no other for me when it came to wrestling games. The first half of the year started off with me only playing FirePro Wrestling World, the first new wrestling game I put serious time into since WWE All-Stars. I played quite a bit of the PS2 and GBA FirePro games, but the thing that hooked me on the PS4 version was downloading hundreds of created wrestlers to replicate my all-era dream roster, and clearing all 50 scenario trials. I got up to the final trial where the goal is to win a match with a 100% fan approval rating. Thing is, in order to replicate, the opponent has to get in just as much offense and back-and-forth near-falls to make it as exciting as a televised match, and by doing that I put myself at great risk to lose…which happened every time. I vow to complete that final trial in 2021! Speaking of WWE All-Stars, I volunteered to review its spiritual successor follow-up, WWE 2K Battlegrounds for my friends over at PSnation. While it has some notable flaws holding it back from matching the fun arcade action of WWE All-Stars, 2K Battlegrounds still has a lot going for it and is at least worth checking out. Click or press here for my full review to get my complete breakdown of WWE 2K Battlegrounds. Finally, as I have mentioned earlier I have been covering a number of wrestling titles for the upcoming N64 book project. As you read above, it was a whole new definition of pain experiencing WCW Nitro all over again, but at least other games held up better than I thought they would. I finally was able to put major time into the four import N64 wrestling games and came out of those with a whole new appreciation of this era of wrestling games. Seriously, AKI’s six wrestling games on the N64 are arguably the best spread of wrestling games in videogame history, and I wish I can expand on it more, but you’ll have to check out the book once it is available for my final word! I promise if you bookmark this page I will edit this page with a link to its online store listing once it is available! 8) Breath of the Wild Progress 2020 Another year gone, and another year where I have yet to finish The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I have good reasons though! I was making headway steady play a couple times a month until about July. I finally conquered the fourth divine beast, and more importantly I finally reached all the towers and unlocked the complete map. I also moseyed around most areas of the map, even the barren Gerudo Desert, I spent a good chunk of this year in to ensure I did not skimp over any cool hidden areas, or Korok seeds…although I am sure I missed quite a few. A major nagging sidequest I put to bed in 2020 was completing the founding of Tarrey Town for Hudson after running countless fetch quests for Link’s former colleague.

The only major thing in the core storyline I need to do is finally make my way through Hyrule Castle to vanquish Ganon….but I have so many other side quests and DLC quests I desire to finish before properly completing the main quest! I made one attempt at completing the Master Sword Trials that have the beneficial reward of doubling the power and durability of the Master Sword, and while it was a brutal endeavor, the challenge felt fair and encouraging of me to put forth the effort to practice and become better like on Eventide Island! I would also like to unlock the Master Cycle Zero for Link, but that set of DLC missions is mammoth, and if I do get around to them, it would likely be after I finish the main quest. Anyways, I was making that routine headway and finishing BotW in 2020 seemed possible, but then I had to step back and put most of my spare game time onto my N64 assignments. I should wrap up my N64 work within the next few months, and plan on diving head-first to pick up where I left off in Breath of the Wild! That motorcycle shall be mine!!! 7) Year of the Mini Consoles I thought I was done buying the “mini” line of classic consoles with pre-programmed games by the end of 2019 after acquiring the Genesis Mini that went along with my NES and SNES Minis! That was not the case though as 2020 saw me add three more to my collection. The Neo-Geo Mini has been out for some time now, but Amazon had huge markdowns on them in 2020 with bundled controllers. For those unfamiliar with it, the unit is designed as a mini-arcade cabinet, but also has ability to plug into a TV via HDMI cable to play the pre-programmed 40 games that way too. It has all the many expected fighting games on there, plus a variety of other genre hits from SNK. I also picked up the Game Gear Micro, but you can see my thoughts on that a few rankings above where I go over my handheld gaming moments of the year.

Finally, I picked up the TurboGrafX Mini, which had to endure a last minute shipping delay by a few months since it was originally scheduled to ship in March right after the pandemic was declared. It is a hell of a collection, with a killer line up of American and Japanese games. Part of me was wishing there was an easter egg to unlock the English translated Sega CD version of Snatcher, but no luck! There is still an unbelievable lineup on here with two Bonk games, Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, several classic shmups like Blazing Lazers and Galaga ‘88/’90, one of the Crush pinball games, and so many more! There was a couple I wish would have made the cut like World Court Tennis and Final Lap Twin because of their charming RPG story modes, and at least one of the FirePro Wrestling games, but what is included is still a hell of a package, complete with probably the best UI of any of the mini-consoles that is overflowing with TurboGrafX/PCengine fan service! So many people in America missed out on the small-yet-mighty TG16 library in America, and this is the best way to be introduced to it to the public! CGQ did an awesome launch stream that has footage of most of the included games if you want to know more about the platform!

PART 5 – Rankings 6 through 4 6) The Year of Videogame Documentaries! If there was any upside to all the time spent locked down at home in 2020, it was that it helped everyone catch up on a lot of past and current shows on various streaming services or old school physical media. 2020 saw several videogame themed documentaries release, and not a single one disappointed which is why I am ranking this experience so high. Netflix released a six episode docu-series on pivotal moments in the early decades of videogames, titled High Score. It does not shed much new insights if you are up-to-speed on your videogame history, but if you only have a passing familiarity with the roots of videogames, or have younger members of the family who are curious than this is a good place to start because they have high production values, and fun animated sequences to keep your attention throughout. It does not cover the entire history of games in six episodes, but each episode serves as a nice refresher course on key moments like the rise and fall of Atari, Nintendo revitalizing videogames in America with the NES, the 16-bit Wars, popularity of fighting games in the early 90s, and id Software shaking up the gaming landscape with Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. Next up is videogame YouTuber (and heading up the N64 book I am contributing to) Pat Contri teaming up with Kevin J. James for the documentary, Not for Resale. It has an interesting theme about life as an independent videogame store owner and retro game collecting. It thoroughly covers a wide range of topics from this perspective of videogame retail, and I encourage you to check out my review of the documentary by click or pressing here. Another documentary I reviewed in 2020 for my blog actually first released in 2015, but I somehow never heard of it until 2020. I am talking about Nintendo Quest, and it is all about one man’s journey to collect the entire officially licensed American NES library in one month with only his own funds, and only by visiting stores and collectors in person with no online buying at all. It was quite the ambitious goal, and was a fun journey to watch to see if he could or could not pull it off. Click or press here for my full review.

Next up is Console Wars. I devoured Blake Harris’s novelization of the 16-bit SNES/Genesis rivalry, and was stoked to hear it was going to receive the big budget feature documentary treatment. It took a few years, but it finally released in 2020 as a CBS All Access streaming exclusive. There is no shortage of vintage photos, ads, clips and commercials inserted throughout the interviews and narration that transported me directly back to the early-to-mid 90s! They could not squeeze in everything from the book into 90 minutes, but they still managed to hit a lot of major and minor moments from the 16-bit wars. Despite this being well-documented territory, this was a terrific refresher, and recommended viewing considering the surplus of major and minor players from that era they tracked down to interview. Insert Coin is an exclusive on Alamo’s streaming service, and is the ultimate supplementary piece to Reyan Ali’s book on NBA Jam I mentioned earlier in this list. If you do not have time for the book, make sure to watch this because they track down most of the major players at Midway/Bally/Williams to chronicle the rise and fall of the company, and touch on so many of its arcade hits. Yes, even Revolution X gets an entertaining scene with previously unseen production footage of band members’ voiceover recording sessions. I loved Cruis ‘n USA, and was a little bummed to see the ho-hum treatment of it in the doc, but if you have killer memories of the NBA Jam, Mortal Kombat, Defender, NFL Blitz, Smash TV and so many other Midway arcade classics, then you definitely want to check out Insert Coin! Pretending I’m a Superman: The Tony Hawk Videogame Story is available to buy or rent off YouTube. I have heard many good things about this doc, but I have sadly been neglecting it for many months, which is not right since I was an avid fan of the Tony Hawk games from their heyday, but want to give it props here because I have good faith that it will not disappoint!

That is it for the traditional documentary features I have seen in 2020. For the past couple years I have provided a long list of YouTube links of my favorite gaming-related videos throughout the year. In place of that is a few documentaries I want to highlight here that hit in 2020 from a few YouTube creators. Norm Caruso, AKA The Videogame Historian did not disappoint in 2020 with several new docs/mini-docs, with the two that stood out the most to me being his exhaustive deep dive into Mario Paint and tracking down the original developer to interview for his look on the infamous MS-DOS versions of the early Mega Man games. I also am constantly amazed at the steady stream of shorter and lengthier documentaries No Clip releases on their YouTube channel, and the crapshoot that was 2020 did not slowdown their consistent output. I highly recommend their well-researched videos on the history of two prolific developers – Creative Assembly and Arkane Studios. EA received well earned high marks on their incredible remaster of Command & Conquer early in 2020, and No Clip released a coinciding video with many of the original and remaster developers on un-vaulting original material and digging deep to cram in as much unreleased or barely seen content in as possible.

If you were a child from the mid-80s to the mid-90s, then you undoubtedly remember spending countless hours in school trying to master the original “souls-like” game, Oregon Trail. MinnMax released a comprehensive look at this classroom favorite filled with interview clips from the original programmers on how it came to be, and even tracking down Steve Wozniak for his reflections on this iconic title. Finally, I want to shout out this awesome DIY-spirited documentary celebrating NHL ‘94 that came out in 2020 and went to great lengths to pay homage to that classic hockey game by tracking down the primary head programmer, going to great pains for a very brief interaction with Jaromir Jagr and chronicling the current eSports scene of NHL ‘94.

Sorry for the deluge of recommendations, but that should provide many hours of entertainment and videogame history to last you throughout 2021, and then some! 5) Acquiring my First Console Near Launch Since the Vita! The headline does not lie, the Xbox Series X marked the first console I purchased within the first couple months of a console launch since the Vita! After getting burned on launch window consoles malfunctioning on me with the PS2, 360 and PS3 I instilled a “wait three years after a console launch to buy it so the hardware is likely less faulty” self-imposed policy. I did exactly that with the WiiU, PS4, Xbox One and Switch. I was originally going to do that with the XSX/PS5 also, and I guess the thing that nudged me out of that edict was hearing multiple podcasts, website hardware reviews and YouTube content creators’ analysis of the system’s hardware, UI and overall performance in the opening weeks. The more I heard in the first couple weeks, the more the Xbox Series X sounded right for me. This is primarily because the UI/dashboard is nearly identical compared to the Xbox One, and that I can plug in my external hard drive I have been using for the Xbox One directly into the XSX after I complete my initial setup. After doing that it would be like I was playing on my Xbox One again, but with vastly superior hardware and faster loading times. I got a Samsung 55” Black Friday 4KTV special to finally upgrade into the 4K era and be properly ready for the 4K optimized games. My backlog was so huge that I did not mind the XSX did not have any major first or third party exclusives until two and half months later with the release of The Medium. Enjoying faster load times on games like Wreckfest and Borderlands 3 is more impressive than I thought it would be. I am also by this point well invested into the Xbox Game Pass ecosystem as I have elaborated on in previous year-end articles, and having all first party exclusives coming to Game Pass day one is another deciding factor on why I went with the Xbox Series X first. Now here is hoping this system does not brick on me or I am returning back to my self-enforced waiting policy! 4) Conquering the Lands that Border a Third Time!

Speaking of Borderlands 3, that was a terrific alternate method for me to hang out with my buddy Derek through these quarantine times. Several years back we gradually worked our way through Borderlands 2 over the course of a year, and we started up the third game around Halloween of 2019. It took a little over a year of playing only once or twice a month, but we finally finished the core campaign of Borderlands 3! Most of the gaming press bags on the Borderlands games for its style of humor, but to me it kind of rings familiar to Family Guy. Both franchises throw a lot of gags and jokes at you from all angles, and some of them hit, and some of them miss, and that is fine! Humor is subjective with about half of the jokes jiving with me, and that is A-OK because they all do not need to be LMAO zingers! The addicting co-op gameplay of Borderlands is what keeps me coming back, well that and the perpetual quest of finding all types of fun weaponry and loot I had equipped for far too long (rainbow-explosion grenades being my prime example here). I like the angle of Borderlands 3’s central hub being on a spaceship…even if its design is of the labyrinth nature that I frequently became lost in. The biofuel truck mission was an early favorite of mine and remained a running gag with Derek throughout 2020. The pair of primary antagonists here may not usurp the unforgettable villain that was Handsome Jack, but it was still a fun journey pursuing them and meeting their dad to detail their nature. Right now Derek and I are a good ways through one of the DLC packs for the game, Guns, Love, and Tentacles that is themed around saving the wedding of Wainwright & Hammerlock with the assistance of the mysterious bartender, Mancubus Bloodtooth! It features a refreshing twist on gameplay with longer levels, different vibe of scenery and a more challenging-but-fair difficulty. Needless to say, I am greatly looking forward to marching through the rest of the DLC packs throughout 2021! PART 6 – Rankings 3 through 1 3) Spooky Gaming 2020

You will see soon why my yearly installment for Spooky Gaming ranked so high this year. First off, I kept up my yearly tradition of playing the 360 launch game, Condemned: Criminal Origins on Halloween! I think that is at least three, maybe four Halloweens in a row now! Only made a little over an hour of progress though on a couple sessions due to not as much free time as I hoped and it took a bit more than I presumed to navigate through a couple tricky levels, but I pushed through a couple more chapters and one day promise to finish this! Two new spooky games released right around this past Halloween that were both must-buys for me, but regrettably have yet to start. Pumpkin Jack looked like a fun simple action-platformer with graphics and gameplay quality intentionally designed from the early PS2 days which looked like a fun early 2000s throwback from a couple streams I saw. The second game is the next installment in the “Dark Pictures” anthology, following 2019’s Man of Medan that received a rave recounting from my 2019 rankings! That game is called Little Hope and it has a similar structure to Man of Medan, where it follows a group of travelers stranded after a bus crash who stumble into a nearby mysterious/haunted small town that is full of secrets. I watched one stream of its opening scenes, and was delighted to see the narrative choice-based gameplay returns and will determine how many of the group members will remain alive by the end of the playthrough. I want to play this like I did Man of Medan in one sitting in an evening with Derek & Brooke in the midst of a thunderstorm! That will happen in 2021!!

Finally, the highlight of spooky gaming season was surprisingly returning to Xbox One’s Blair Witch Project. I wrote here last year that I loved its atmospheric setting of looking through the same haunted woods from the movies for a lost child, but I unfortunately got stuck about an hour or two in while searching through the woods for my next objective. The woods were too dark!!! So this past Halloween season I booted up Blair Witch Project with the mindset of not even looking to make any progress and to simply put on the gaming headphones and take in that appropriately dark atmosphere of exploring the spooky woods for about 10 minutes before moving onto Condemned.

Well, something unexpected happened during those 10 minutes and I accidentally stumbled onto my next objective and quickly got absorbed into the narrative and could not put the game down! I loved how the character Ellis gradually starts to get wrapped up into the eventual supernatural surroundings that gradually get implemented and do not ruin that awesome initial eerie setting. The way the camcorder was used for gameplay to solve some puzzles was creative, and using the late-90s Nokia-esque cell phone for storyline bits was an unexpected nostalgia trip. Yeah, some of the use of flashbacks/supernatural enemies can be a little hokey at points, but for the most part it keeps up the suspense and thrills, and it caught me jumping on several occasions while playing with the volume blasting on those headphones. The last level pulls out all the scary, mind-bending stops, and was a ride that I had no idea when it was going to end, and even though the ending was a little middling, the ride on the way to that final destination was awesome and had me gripped in throughout. Blair Witch Project is currently on Xbox Game Pass, and is some ideal late night/Halloween season gaming that I highly recommend to all! 2) FINISH HIM!! Usually I would lump this in with my yearly fighting games recap, but my time with Mortal Kombat 11 rose well above the rest of my time with other fighting games that it climbed out of that group and rose to my #2 gaming moment of the year! For the first half of 2021, I had semi-frequent online sessions with my aforementioned fighting game buddy, Chris! Whenever a new DLC character from the DLC pass released every several weeks, we would usually meet up one of the following weekends and experiment away with the new member of the roster. If I really dug a character, I would then do repeated playthroughs of that character in the Towers of Time in order to unlock more costumes and other gear for that character. That wound up happening with both Joker and Robocop, as I had a ton of fun with both of those characters’ moves and fighting styles.

The announcement of the Aftermath DLC halfway into 2020 totally caught me off guard. It was a new storyline expansion DLC that lasted only a few hours, but continues the same best-in-class production values of fighting game cutscenes that seamlessly transition between fights. Best of all, it brings the DLC characters into the narrative to freshen it up, and is highlighted by Shang Tsung being your uneasy ally/rival throughout which resulted in yet-another killer MK storyline to take in, even if it was a little shorter. Oh yeah, NetherRealm Studios inserted the likeness and voice of the same actor who perfectly portrayed Tsung in the first Mortal Kombat film, Cary Tagawa. My nostalgia for that 1995 movie knows no bounds, so it was a thrill to have Tagawa return to MK11 for the Aftermath storyline. Another movie related surprise was new costume DLC for Sonya, Raiden and Johnny Cage that use the likenesses and voiceovers from their 1995 movie cast counterparts with Bridgette Wilson, Christopher Lambert and Linden Ashby all returning. I am so thrilled to see the games fully embrace the fandom for the 1995 movie, and doubly thrilling is that the new Mortal Kombat film set to release later this year that legit looks kind of promising based on the trailer and general buzz in the movie/gaming press. Another surprise update to MK11 was the inclusion of cross-network play. So that meant I could finally play against my brother on Xbox One! I was skeptical trying it out when my brother and I lined up a day to play that it would be a laggy mess playing on different systems against each other, but we played for about an hour with no problems, and all my costume and gear unlocks carried forward too! Countless thanks for the developers adding this support, and also many props to Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo for making it so to see it start to become a little more common to other online games in general throughout 2020! So yeah, this all added up to me revisiting MK11 more frequently than I thought I would with the nonstop support from NetherRealm Studios in 2020, and thus it more than earned its #2 ranking on my list, and technically my #1 video-game ranking because…. 1) Global Board Game Domination!!

Once or twice a year, dating back nearly 15 years I have met with mostly the same group of friends for marathon sessions of my favorite board game, Risk. That game is notorious for taking anywhere from two-to-five hours to finish in order to take over the world via smart strategy and lucky dice rolls! Every time we play, we bust out pretzels, beers, Chuck Norris shots and end the night playing PS3 Tiger Woods PGA Tour ‘12 until we get sleepy! I always look forward to these nights, and they are kind of like a second Christmas to me because it only happens once or twice a year. As awesome as these are, my technical prowess in Risk strategy and luck in dice rolls leave a lot to be desired over the years, and I am almost always the first or second person eliminated. Regardless of that, I want to give props to Mike, Jim and Paul for the decade plus of priceless Risk memories and moments. A couple years ago Mike moved and my brother Joe has been filling that fourth chair! We have played a couple five player games over the years, but our 2020 night (which luckily emanated about a month before the pandemic hit), saw Jim’s nephew Matt join us for our first five player game in some time. This was Matt’s first game of Risk and thus a learning experience and I had to be the spoiler to ruin his first game and wound up eliminating him first from the game. From there though it was still relatively early as far as the army bonuses goes within an average game of Risk, but a domino effect happened and I was able to capitalize on eliminating Matt and gaining his territories and within about an hour eliminated everyone else on my own!!!! I was in disbelief, and as much as I hate to admit it had somewhat of a brief emotional moment upon winning that game because in our 15-ish years playing, I have only won once before early on and it had to of been at least 10 years since that and I was not use to things going my way, and in that fashion to boot.

The way that game played out resulted in an oddly short-ish two hour game, so we decided to get another round in that night. Now that Matt had his warm-up round in, he had a better grasp of the game and this was a more traditionally close, longer game of Risk where the excitement was in the mobilization of armies and territories in those early rounds and to see who would make the first big attack move in attempts of expanding their territory. Hell yeah, I was all-in on this five hour game of Risk!!! Now as this round unfolded this will be very hard to believe, but I swear I am telling the whole truth that against all odds the same exact thing happened and I eliminated everybody and won the second game as well!!! I am still dismayed thinking about how well that night went for me in Risk, and highly doubt it will happen again! So for me, predominant loser and usually first one out in a game, to full on run the board and eliminate everyone in two consecutive games happens you damn well bet that night is going to be my best gaming related moment of the year!! THANK YOU!!!! I somehow achieved a degree of brevity this year, as last year’s insane best-of list went around 18,000 words, but I was able to….kinda….tighten my word count this year by clocking it at roughly 12,000 words!! My endless thanks for sticking with me all the way through as I recap my favorite (and worst) gaming moments/experiences of the year. Now, to keep up with tradition, after all that perusing and me rambling on for way too long…are you ready for a chuckle or two? Well, then, let none other than John Cena take care of that for you with the following embedded video to close off another best-of list. See you all next year!!!

Previous Year’s Best of Recaps - 2019 - 2018 - 2017 - 2016

[sometipsygnostalgic]

Hiveswap  Review (Spoiler)

We’ve been waiting an awfully long time for the Homestuck Adventure Game. First kickstarted in 2012, it’s gone through a troubled development cycle between 3 studios and.... yeah, you get the drift. Even in its final form, Hiveswap has gone through numerous unexplained delays (most infamously the last minute January Launch Month delay), and the development team for it had been very tight-hush until the end of August when a final release date of September 14th was announced. 

Now that Hiveswap is out, we’re able to see for ourselves what the development team has been working on. Does it hold up to expectations? Does it make up for the hard delays and extremely concerning lack of communication? 

Those are answers you can only decide for yourselves. What I will say, however, is this: Hiveswap is a charming and visually stunning introduction to the Homestuck world, that combines only the best of Homestuck’s humor with a new calmer, more curious and coherent setting.

It’s a shame, then, that the content of Act 1 isn’t a little bit longer. However, the gimmick of combining any item with each other and getting a new description will draw out the length for any lore completionists.

Before I start gushing about my feelings on Hiveswap, I’d like to point out something that REALLY soured the game for me: The cutscenes have a processing power so high that most laptops - including my own -  aren’t able to handle them. I don’t understand this, because a 2.20ghz processor can handle the game like a breeze. I’ve had no trouble running Hiveswap. But as soon as a cutscene plays, it ends up taking a processing power that would burn a computer which can play Overwatch. What’s going on here? Why are cutscenes like this? Is it something to do with the Unity engine? Surely another user has figured out how to compress scenes without losing their quality!

So, I had to watch the game be played in its entirety by @neproxrezi, only returning to my own game to test out as many combinations as possible. 

To make this easier for myself, I’m going to split off Hiveswap into a few categories:

Story and Characters - Hiveswap Act 1 is extreeeemely short, like 27 minutes long if you do an ameteur speedrun. On the surface, not a lot happens, but it serves as a compelling introduction to the Hiveswap world. You start off as Joey Claire, a young dancer of multiple schools with a hatred for pogs, Bubsy, and her entire life circumstances. Joey works with her brother to hide from a bunch of monsters that have invaded their home. Shenanigans ensue, mostly pigeon-related, and using Jude’s cryptic advice Joey figures out how to retrieve the attic key. Once in the attic she uses a precious heirloom key, which looks suspiciously Cherub-like, to open a SNAKE PORTAL..... Joey is transported to the world of Alternia where she meets a self-loathing rustblood of the bottom rung of society called Xefros, and explores the house of his controlling and paranoid Revolutionary moirail Dammek. Then Joey gives Xefros some words of encouragement and saves him with the help of Dammek’s lusus, then they ride into the distance while dodgy heiress Trizza Tethis takes a selfie over the burning neighbourhood. It’s all pretty basic, but a natural stopping point and setup for act 2 that makes me devastated I can’t go and play it immediately.

When you dive deeper into the game, usually by clicking on everything you see and combining as many items as possible, you can learn a lot more about these 4 characters. Joey in particular gives the audience plenty to think about once you start messing around with her; combining the green Cherub key with items will often leave her reminiscing about her absent mother, and clicking on Jake’s items strewn all over the place will show how she resents his constant absence fom her and Jude’s lives. There’s plenty of information about Rose’s mom, too, who’s their drunken babysitter and.... even now, not the best stand-in for proper parenting. I’ll talk about these two more later but it makes me curious about their circumstances in Homestuck. Meanwhile Joey and her brother Jude aren’t as close as they could be. Joey’s alarmed by how cryptic and secretive Jude is, wrapped up in his conspiracy capers, and she has great difficulty undertstanding him or having a normal conversation. This is highlighted when she assumes he wouldn’t have any care for his mother’s heirlooms if they didn’t have anything to do with aliens, and when she unlocks the Cherub portal despite his warnings because he never told her of its dangers. Joey does think about this distance between her and Jude, especially when locked on the new world. 

Xefros, meanwhile... everything you click while in Alternia - whether as Joey or as Xefros - will usually have information about Dammek. Xefros is clearly used to being messed with by Dammek’s "tests” and revolutionary spiel , which seem to be a more extreme and warped version of Jude’s conspiracy capers.  Inspection of his house will paint a picture of Dammek as having a very cluttered mind, hyperfocused on his goal without seeing any of the world around him or understanding the needs of his puppydog moirail Xefros. Now, Xefros himself is extremely passive and will do whatever other people tell him, which is kinda Tavros-like but more extreme. He doesn’t have any care for what happens to himself so long as he’s impressed those around him, and it’s not until Joey tells him how cruddy this is that he gets slightly relaxed and more optimistic. It’s ironic to see how Dammek and the Alternian revolutionaries end up falling into the same heirarchy that they strongly oppose. It shows the Revolution might be a joke, one of many others the Highbloods have quashed before.

As for Jude..... I wonder what’s going through that boy’s head? We barely saw him and yet he made a strong impression of his personality.

Gameplay - Hiveswap doesn’t have any “gameplay” in the traditional sense, unless you count the snake game. Instead it has a series of puzzles. They aren’t very difficult, but it’s more the funny dialogue you can read while playing. I’m gonna talk more about the humor in a few seconds, but the way you can combine any item with any other item must have taken soooooo much time from the writers, especially Cohen Edenfield. I wonder if this was always going to be the case in the original game too? 

There’s not really any failstates for hiveswap. You can get eaten by monsters if you dick around on your way to the attic after the big fight, but you’ll just respawn where you were before. It’s not a game I’d choose to “play”, exactly. It’s more of a visual novel. 

Humor - Oh boy. This is where Hiveswap wanted to nail it so, so bad. And its effort was valient to say the least. Joey’s dancing was some visual feel-good humor, all the 90s gimmicks in her room (especially the not-so-subtle videogame posters) had me clicking on them with every item i could find in the house, xefros in his entirety was a well of dark humor that pushed the game’s atmosphere back to its homestuck roots, and Byers - so true, so brave - he is the best item in the game. The funniest scenes for me were the Pigeon sequence with Jude, and Joey’s acrobatic pirouhettes away from Dammek’s terrifying lusus :P

I do have some criticisms for the humor. While combining everything with everything is a lot of fun, it’s not necessarily... funny. Like I didn’t get a lot of laugh-out-loud moments with the combinations. Often I found jokes were either too long-winded beyond their expiration or the punchline was just very awkward. This is a small criticism considering no other games bother to do this, but considering hiveswap act 1 is just an hour long if you DON’T do this, the game’s padding could have been more entertaining to say the least. counting on this gimmick when the humor isnt the best in the world, it’s a veeery risky move. 

Graphics - okay, let’s put this out there: hiveswap without a doubt is one of the most visually stunning indie games out there. It recruited the help of many artists from the fandom itself, like adrienne garcia, angela sham, dammek the tumblr user, rah-bop, shelby cragg... For the most part the game looks great. The drawings on the short panel-based animations look wonky sometimes especially when compared to the beautiful opening animation, but it’s a small criticism. 

This has convinced me that the move from 3d to 2d has seriously benefitted Hiveswap. I mean, look at this:

then look at this: 

it’s a whole WORLD of difference. I seriously do not think Hiveswap would have made a good impression if it had released in the crappy-looking state the 3D studio had produced it in. The game would have not looked like homestuck, and not been able to pull off any of the animated feats in the final product. Why were they going with that art style in the first place??? It was a waste of time money and effort. I guess that the 2D team was slowly constructed over years of producing homestuck flashes and paradox space content? Many people key to the current team were in high school in 2012.

Music - Led by James Roach, he worked closely with Toby Fox to really nail Hiveswap’s soundtrack. It’s short and loops an awful lot but I never found it boring or annoying to hear. It’s quieter and more subtle than Homestuck’s loud, rambunctious music, but each character has their own theme and leitmotif. The music changes to create a good atmosphere for each room. It’s not the best work from either artist, but it’s very good as a videogame soundtrack.

Dedication to the source material - While Hiveswap has adapted away from Homestuck’s crude humor, I feel it keeps the best and throws away the worst. Hiveswap being E10 rated made some people suspicious because of how sweary and dark Homestuck is, but Hiveswap has already shown its guts and some very effective dark humor. I wonder if Act 2 will have the same rating?

While the atmosphere in Half-Harley Mansion isn’t the most Homestuck in the world, Joey’s introduction is a nice homage to how all homestuck characters are introduced.  And.... you can’t ignore the insight it gives into Jake and Roxy. More specifically, Grandpa and Mom. 

So, it’s revealed in Hiveswap that Jade’s Grandpa had a wife and two kids before encountering her. What does this say for Jude and Joey’s situation post-hiveswap? Did he lose his two kids, and decide to build a new life in the pacific with Jade? Did he see her as his second chance?   It sort of puts a damper on John’s comment that Jade’s ‘pa seemed happy living alone, and Dave’s comment that Jade’s ‘pa was a clearly loving father. As it turned out, ‘pa severely neglected his own kids after the death of his wife, probably because they reminded him of her. But maybe Jake lost his two children and decided not to make the same mistakes with Jade? That’s why he took her to the island with him instead of siccing her on Roxy again, although Roxy had her own hands full.  Yeah, talking of B1 Roxy, it’s quite interesting to see how she had changed between Hiveswap and Homestuck. Joey saw Roxy in a very different light to Rose; she saw Roxy as very kid-like and sincere, but extremely negligible due to her drinking. Most notable difference is how Roxy here obviously hates cleaning, but by the time she mothers Rose, she takes perfect care of their house. I wonder if this is another effect of Jude and Joey’s theoretical departure from the mansion? If, like Jake, she saw Rose as a sort of second chance? It’s a shame how that turned out.  Yknow, im gonna laugh and cry if it turned out Jude or Joey killed Ana Claire with guns as a baby, like Jade and Jake before them

As for Alternia it was chocablocked with references to Homestuck, from the hierarchy to the Condesce to Doc Scratch to FLARP. Yeah, this is when Hiveswap went from an adventure game to a Homestuck game. I haven’t got much else to say here other than that I’m excited to see how Alternia differs from our impressions of it, and how the infrastructure of the peter pan society works.

and, of course, it had the best possible refrance:

CONCLUSION: Hiveswap has shown its guts to the world, and made a positive impression. I’m disappointed by how short it is, but that’s only because I want more. 

Idk what’s going on with all the bugs such as the resolution glitch or the cutscene processing, especially cos Hiveswap went through an extra 9 months of “bug testing”.... wouldnt most people have gotten this bug the first time they launched the game??? wouldnt they have noticed the cutscene fuckery?  these glitches have resulted in  many people getting refunds. the only reason i didnt do the same is because i want to support this game, and i want to play it again in the future when the bugs are fixed or i have better hardware.

hopefully hiveswap act 2 won’t be followed around by the same issues, same lack of communication, same lengthy development that act 1 has suffered. if it comes swiftly, and if hiveswap act 2 makes as good an impression as act 1, then I feel we’ll have something truly special on our hands. 

Story and characters: 4 hats outta 5 - short but sweet

Gameplay: 2.5 hats outta 5 - glitchy and contentless with no fail state, but this isnt necessarily a bad thing Humor : 4 hats outta 5 - sometimes missed the mark but a great chuckle for any player, fan or noob Graphics: 5 hats outta 5 - e c s t a s y Music: 4 hats outta 5 - does the job, does it well Dedication to source material: 4 hats outta 5 - best of the old, best of the new. 

FINAL SCORE: 8/10. All it needs is to finish, then it’s already better than Homestuck...