wizardofbits

[wizardofbits]

While I Wasn't Looking, The Law Of Attraction Somehow Got Even Stupider

So the headline for the internet that held just about everyone's attention is that Christian Weston Chandler, of Sonichu fame, was arrested for sexually assaulting his own mother, thus bringing a close to his online saga, a fertile vein of memes, trolling, and general craziness the likes of which we've never seen before, and may not again (unless Erik somehow gets wider recognition). And yet somehow, in the scheme of things, despite making himself a literal, actual motherfucker – and doing so while his mother was in a state of mental incapacity thus making it a form of rape – it's really not surprising. I get the feeling that the Chris Chan saga could have only ended this way, or some other way equally horrible.

But this isn't really about that. This is about the Law of Attraction, which has reared its ugly head again while we were distracted with things like Chris Chan. You know – The Secret? That dangerous memeplex that remains entangled with the scam of multi-level marketing? All about how the Universe will give you a meeleeon dollars if you just wish for it hard enough? I thought this had been largely discredited in the public consciousness. Not even Hollywood types take it seriously anymore. SNL and the Beetlejuice musical have openly mocked this ideology. I thought the Law of Attraction was forever going to be the province of aging karens who failed at life and are trying to recapture their golden years of youth and hotness, like Al Bundy reliving his football quarterback days.

But… I was wrong. Somehow, the youth have found the Law of Attraction… and they've made it even stupider. Teens and twentysomethings on TikTok are now trading on this idea that you can input "cheat codes for the universe" just like a video game, and it will enhance your ability to manifest goodies with the Law of Attraction. These "cheat codes" take the form of strings of numbers. Like 0118 999 88199 9119 725 3 can attract money or sex with sexy people or something. They are purportedly activated by speaking them, writing them in the air, or writing them on your body or on a piece of paper. (I am waiting for the deeply regretted number string tattoos and knife scars.) They are also called "Grabovoy codes", after an engineer turned scammer/cult leader from Kazakhstan named Grigory Grabovoy. Grabovoy has:

told people he is the second incarnation of Christ

promised bereaved parents he could resurrect their dead children for a fee

started a pyramid scheme (because OF COURSE!)

promised that his cheat code numbers could cure cancer, AIDS, and COVID

He's a real class act, this guy. He was sentenced to eleven years in prison in 2008 for fraud. Of course, he only served two of those (must've used a cheat code), so now he's back out in public, ripping people off with his stupid number codes and spreading them through social media.

And it's the young who are eating it up. The kids are not all right, and it looks like age and repeated exposure as scam and fraud won't make the Law of Attraction go away. We still must be vigilant.

What I find interesting, though, is that almost immediately after discovering Grabovoy codes, I came across on Hackernews a science fiction novel called Unsong, which is about corporations brute-forcing and then reselling the Qabbalistic names of God, the speaking of which holds tremendous power. Oh, and uh, fun fact: among all the other shitty things Grabovoy is, he's also an anti-Semite. As the novel says, none of this is a coincidence because nothing is a coincidence.

[wizardofbits]

For The First Time In Eleven Years, I'm Kind Of Excited About A Transformers Movie

So Bumblebee (2018) has a trailer out. And... honestly? Okay, from what I've seen it definitely recapitulates the whole "kid buys car, kid discovers car is a giant transforming robot, kid gets caught up in interplanetary war against evil giant transforming robots" plotline that Transformers (2007) had. But this time -- hard as it may be to believe -- there are a few encouraging signs that this might be... good, maybe?

Okay, so, first off, NO MICHAEL BAY. He's credited as a producer, but this movie is directed by Travis Knight, with a script by newcomer Christina Hodson. So already we're seeing a bit of fresh blood in this beleaguered film franchise. And no Michael Bay means no Michael Bay horseshit, so hopefully the silly, cringey off-color jokes, disrespectful plot twists (including ignominious killing off of beloved characters like Jazz and Ratchet), obnoxious characters, and gross creepy fetishization of underage girls will be kept to a minimum. In fact the main character of this is a teenage girl, and from some of the casting decisions it looks like she will go through Typical Teen Girl Struggles like bullying, etc. Which -- don't get me wrong -- can be trite if handled poorly, but is not necessarily a bad sign on its own.

Secondly, it takes place in the 1980s. There was even a joke in the trailer that had Bumblebee violently ejecting a cassette with "Never Gonna Give You Up" (thus showing that the studio is really in touch with dank maymays like those Millennial kids all love, you guys, they're totally hip and cool). Nevertheless, the 1980s setting puts the Transformers movie franchise more in touch with its historical roots, as the original series was set in the 1980s (at least at first) as well. Also, Bumblebee has his G1 car form -- a yellow OG VW Bug -- and there are brief glimpses of what appears to be Starscream, also rocking a classic look very much like his 1980s look. So it looks like -- maybe -- they're trying to stick a little closer to the source material than the past five movies did.

Thirdly, it seems that there are only three Decepticons in the movie. The number of Autobots is unknown, but given that the movie is literally titled Bumblebee, it's reasonable to guess that only one Autobot will get significant screen time. Peter Cullen is on board to play Prime in this movie, but I'm guessing it may be a cameo, towards the end or something. What this means is that the movie will be a smaller, focused story, and a change from the constant escalation of stakes and planet-ending threats that's come to characterize the first five movies. If I lived in the Bayformers universe, I'd be like "Another Decepticon plot to destroy all life on Planet Earth? Ho fucking hum." Sometimes a shift in stakes and tone to something smaller is needed, so you can tell a tighter story. Marvel recognizes this. They followed up the galaxy-spanning epic saga Avengers: Infinity War with the much more focused Ant-Man and the Wasp, and it was a refreshing change of pace.

So, I dunno. Bumblebee may be the thing that rescues the Transformers Cinematic Universe from the scrappy heap. I don't have my hopes up too high, but the limited info I've seen so far is cause for a small amount of hope. But honestly? The best Transformers media I've seen in a while has been in the form of video games. Transformers: War for Cybertron and Transformers: Fall of Cybertron tell a neat, detailed origin story of how the Autobots and Decepticons came to Earth, with lots of character development and shout-outs to fans of the toyline and animated series -- and they were highly respectful to the source material. Transformers: Devastation is basically a playable episode of the 1980s animated series, and even has that "1980s computer manual" aesthetic going for it. If they're going to keep making movies about these damn robots (and I hear a reboot of the entire franchise is planned), maybe taking plot, character, and aesthetic design tips from these games would be a good idea.

[wizardofbits]

Lydia: Where did you post that?

Shiori: What?

Lydia: What social networks did you post that photo on?

Shiori: All of them. Why?

Lydia: Oh, brilliant. Let me see that phone for a second.

Shiori: Hey, what gives?

Lydia: You left the bloody EXIF tags in. Of course. Now literally everyone knows where you are -- and, by extension, since you included me in the shot without my consent, where I am -- to within a few hundred metres.

Shiori: Why are you making such a big deal about this?

Lydia: Because our lives would be so much easier if you were not constantly announcing your whereabouts and activities to anyone who cares to know.

Shiori: I can handle myself. I’m not worried.

Lydia: You never know who’s watching. Now that you are associated with me, far more powerful and malevolent forces than even you can handle may take interest in you.

Shiori: Let’s just watch the fucking movie, okay? I don’t want to miss the previews this time.

Lydia: Phone off before you enter the cinema.

Shiori: I know.

[wizardofbits]

So Far, Mega Man 11 Looks Like Everything We Could Have Hoped For

Oh boy, it's-a Mega Man 11! This game is gonna be a legend. It looks pretty fucking good.

So we all know that Mighty No. 9 turned out to be the Daikatana of the 2010s. No, seriously, it had all the problems that plagued John Romero's infamous boondoggle: a big-name lead developer, hyped-up expectations, a confusing and offensive marketing message, and way, way too little game delivered for all this kerfuffle. So with Mega Man's lead gone from Capcom, his major, Not-Mega-Man project having fallen flat on its face, and Capcom not interested in reviving the series except in compilation games of past entries, for a little bit we wondered if a gaming legend had truly died once and for all.

But fear not, friends, for Capcom has just announced Mega Man 11 and it looks spectacular. In a break from the tradition they established with Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10, Capcom have opted not for sprite graphics but for full 3D models, while retaining the 2D platformer gameplay -- making this the second game in the main series to feature 3D polygonal graphics (the first being Mega Man Powered Up!.) There are bound to be new interesting features, such as Real Time Weapon Change via the right analog stick -- and the fact that Mega Man's entire body, not just his color scheme, changes when he equips a Robot Master's weapon. Like, bricks appear in his body when he equips Brickman's power. In your face, Mighty No. 9!

But what really impresses me is how I've heard the game was handled. Replacing Inafune on this game is director Koji Oda, and he is doing exactly the things I expect from someone who is entrusted with a beloved franchise. Remember when I wrote this about Sonic Forces:

If I were the head of Sonic Team, I would instruct my subordinates to do what the fans already did: go back to the original Genesis games. If I can't find the original source code, I'd have them disassemble and reverse-engineer the ROMs. (That is what the fans did!) Part of the problem with updating OG Sonic physics for today may be that the original games were 2D and pixel-accurate, and largely used integer math to calculate the game state, whereas a modern 3D world would be built from floating-point coordinates in 3D space. Nevertheless, I would try to map the integer constants of Sonic's 2D world into 3D space, fit acceleration curves to what's observable from the 2D games, etc. I would have a model of Green Hill Zone Act 1, or a part of it, built in the 3D engine, and if Sonic does not control exactly as he does in the original Sonic 1, I would order more refinements to be made. This can be checked both through play-testing and by running side-by-side versions of original Sonic 1 and the modern engine, sending them synthetic button events, and seeing whether they match up. Once they do match up, only then would I add modern features like the boost, homing attack, etc.

I would have the programmers take careful notes on the refinements they made, and instruct them to put these notes into a company- or team-wide wiki. I would have them bring in their sons, daughters, or little siblings to play-test it. I would reach out to Sonic fans and select candidates for a limited beta test from among their number.

I don't think Oda is going as far as to reverse-engineer the original ROMs or set up side-by-side test rigs with synthesized button presses. But he is having his staff play through the NES games, and take detailed notes on how the mechanics work and what makes them so fun, in an effort to create a brand new game that closely embodies the spirit of the originals. It's preserving the spirit that's the really important bit here. Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey are both vastly different games from their predecessors, but they both feel like a Zelda/Mario.

If Mega Man 11 is as good as I think it's going to be, Sega really needs to take notice of what Capcom got right here, and apply it to the beleaguered Sonic franchise.

[wizardofbits]

Sonic Forces. Hoo, boy.

Strap yourselves in, folks, this is gonna be a long one. I have numerous thoughts about Sonic Forces. The latest "modern Sonic" game from Sega to use the "Boost formula", Sonic Forces saw a multiplatform release on November 7, 2017. It features three playable characters: Modern Sonic, Classic Sonic, and a new character called the Avatar, as they work together to stop the evil Dr. Robotnik (fuck you, that's his name) who has already taken over the world, with help from the mysterious Infinite.

Ask a diehard Sonic fan and they might be hard-pressed to find anything good about this game. More likely, they'll probably say "Nothing about this is good, Vector. That's why it's called war." And then laugh at themselves for their oh-so-creative sense of humor, repeating memetic lines from the game. But the game is a good game, just not a great one. It's a step down from Generations and in that respect a bit of a disappointment, but it's not terrible. It's definitely not going to take Sonic soaring to new heights either. Still, I would much rather play Sonic Forces than play a long list of Sonic games. Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic Heroes, Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Adventure 2 (yeah I went there)... The real problems with the game break down as follows.

The Levels Are Too Fucking Short

The average Modern Sonic or Avatar level is about as long as Metal Harbor from Sonic Adventure 2. That was a... really short level, in a game that had too little Sonic-gameplay content as it was. But while that was just one level, the entire game is like this in the case of Sonic Forces. Classic Sonic levels are, maybe, about the size of an act from Sonic 1. The thing is, we're used to bigger stages than this. In Sonic Forces, you reach a point where you're finding a groove through a level and having a good time, and then whoops! It's over. The game makes up for it somewhat by packing in a lot of stages (30 to be precise), but I'd rather have 12 memorable stages than 30 forgettable ones.

The Level Assets R Bored ._.

One of the really remarkable things about early Sonic games is what vaporwave kids call A E S T H E T I C S. Early Sonic was aesthetic as FUCK, borrowing cues from the trends in the late 1980s and very early 1990s in graphic design, and especially, old-school CG. If you've ever seen the old Mind's Eye videos and things of that nature, you know exactly where those polygonal palm trees and Escher-esque birds and fish come from. This sort of eye for detail made the early games absolutely beautiful to look at, with the levels boasting streamlined curves and maze-like layouts, bursting with color and exhibiting harmonious balance that was pleasing to the eye. Even the backgrounds were gorgeous -- who could forget Green Hill's shimmering seaside, with mountainous islands and white puffy clouds in the background, or the steel industrial towers rising into the sky in Oil Ocean from Sonic 2, with a heat wave effect around the searing sun above?

What do we get in Sonic Forces? A bunch of boring, rectilinear bullshit, that's what. In fact, the Green Hill stages (way to come up with new locations, guys) just have different-sized checkerboard boxes in the background. Sure, there are some ramps and slopes in the level itself, but they're either straight or just use the same few curves over and over. It's not quite Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric bad, but it's not very good. Also, the same gimmicks are used over and over, level after level, and most of them were taken from Sonic Colors, the first game to feature all-Boost gameplay. Jesus Christ, there's a level called Chemical Plant but it doesn't use the Chemical Plant assets aside from some of the glass tube ramps carrying blue liquid. The elevators, in particular, are samey rectangles instead of the unique Chemical Plant lifts. It's not quite as bad as the bland, depressing, rushed aesthetics of, say, Shadow the Hedgehog, but Sonic Mania and Sonic Generations set our standards higher, with mind-blowingly creative takes on old and new locations.

And the level layout doesn't make any sense because it's not themed to the stage. It's just the same boring shit as every other level. Take Casino Forest, for example. If you remember Casino Night Zone from Sonic 2, you will recall that the entire level was laid out like a giant pinball machine. The slopes and curves seemed to funnel Sonic into the slots when he came across them. Sonic Forces, no such luck. It's pretty much "let's use the same rectilinear corridors and rooms we use for every other level, throw in a couple of ramps -- oh shit, this is a casino level isn't it? Well, we'll throw in some bumpers and slots here and there. Done!" Oh yeah, there's the fact that you can't steer Sonic into the slots very well because you don't have the same level of precision and control. Which brings us to...

The Physics Are Glitchy

Modern Sonic controls like ass. So does the Avatar. They either don't move when I want them to move, or shoot off in a direction I didn't want to go in. Their acceleration curves on the ground are janky as fuck, and when they jump you have to wrestle with the control stick to get them to go where you want them to go. And Classic Sonic isn't much better. He feels "sticky", like he doesn't really want to move when you hit a boost pad, spin dash, or roll. To be fair, none of these are too bad. They don't make the game play like Bubsy, or Sonic '06 or anything. It's just... when old-school Sonic physics is coded into your muscle memory, it can be hard to get used to these foibles in the game's physics and tune your stick and button responses to them.

My biggest complaint is that, particularly in one late-game level, the road curves ahead of you, and with no guardrails to keep you on track, if you aren't holding right hard as you dash along this stretch of track, you will crater to your death. But then there's another stretch of track where the game dynamically adjusts your trajectory to keep you on the track as long as you hold Up, so if you take what you've learned from the previous stretch of track and try to turn Sonic into the curve, you will again fall to your death. That's probably the biggest fuck-you in the game, but it's just in that one level as far as I can tell, and overall the game has a much lower cheap-death count than Adventure 2, Heroes, or Shadow -- let alone '06. (Fuck you, '06 and fuck the fans who say it's good or it can be made good. It's broken.)

The Boss Battles Suck

So Infinite, supposedly, is more powerful than Sonic. Shouldn't that be reflected in, you know, the boss fights against him? Instead we get two boring, relatively easy fights against him where all you have to do is dodge his straightforward attacks and mash the jump button when he's in range. Sonic games used to be known for neat boss fights. There was one at the end of each zone, and each one was based around Robotnik in his egg vehicle, but they all featured different weapons and upgrades to the vehicle, and thus different attack patterns and vulnerabilities. Later games would bring midbosses at the end of each zone's first act. This formula would be abandoned for the Sonic Adventure series, and I really wish it'd come back. But even then, Sonic Adventure 2 had a variety of interesting bosses, even if they weren't all Robotnik.

Things went really off the rails with Sonic Heroes, which had boring, samey bosses up until the last one or two, and this seems to be the pattern Sega feels comfortable in now. Which is fine, except no, it's not, it sucks actually. And it's particularly galling because this is the game where Robotnik finally takes over the world. It should be fraught with peril and danger for our heroes, and they should have to square off against terrifying robots and creations the likes of which the world has never seen before. But no, it's run down a corridor, hit the guy a few times, dodge his telegraphed attacks and fucking repeat until dead. This is even true of the final boss, which is just a ripoff of the final boss from Sonic Colors. That one was fun the first time, but come on. Even Sonic and the Secret Rings had an imaginative final boss.

Oh, another annoying thing: there are encounters which look like boss fights because they feature huge enemies that must be defeated, such as the giant snake from Luminous Forest or the giant crab thing from that one Avatar level with the giant crab thing in it. But you've been trolled because a couple of quick time events later and you fucking beat it. Jesus Christ, Sega.

So those are the bad points of this game. Here are some good points:

Your Name, the Hedgehog

I like the Avatar. More than I expected to. Full background: the Avatar is a custom character created using the in-game character creation facility. The character creation tool is very basic, allowing you to pick from among seven species, two genders, and a variety of head and eye shapes and base skin and fur colors, but that's it. Then again, it's still about as wide a range as the imagination of a typical Sonic fan can muster. Completing missions allows you to unlock accessories to decorate your OC with -- but aside from the Wispon (a gun powered by colored Wisp energy which grants one attack ability and one sub-ability) these do not affect gameplay at all. In fact the only variables that do affect gameplay are species (each species grants a different, specific perk; for example birds can double-jump and cats can hold onto one ring when they get hit) and equipped Wispon.

Adding the Avatar was a brilliant marketing move by Sega. They know what's up. They knew that diehard fans would piss themselves at being able to make their fursona canon in a Sonic game; and ironic hipsters would attempt to recreate Coldsteel or Sonichu in the character editor. Sega also resisted the temptation to decide for us that what we really need is another, vastly different, playstyle from the go-fast modern Sonic style we've gotten used to by now. Accordingly, Avatar levels are Boost levels with a different moveset. You can homing-attack enemies and swing from grapple points with your grappling hook, use your Wispon to clear out groups of enemies, or collect Wisps of the appropriate color to enable an otherwise inaccessible form of locomotion -- like launching yourself into the air with the Burst Wispon or doing a light-dash along rings with the Lightning Wispon. They're not as zippy as the Boost levels, but hey, there can only be one Sonic. Some levels let you play as Sonic and the Avatar together, successfully merging the gameplay of the two characters by putting Sonic in the lead when you press the Boost button and the Avatar in the lead when you attempt to grapple or use Wispon attacks. It's quite seamless, even less clunky than Sonic Heroes, and I love it. They could make a whole game out of this style of play. There are moments when Sonic and Avatar together do a "Double Boost", plowing through enemies and sweeping up rings at hyper speed, but these sections last about ten seconds apiece, in keeping with the game's general theme of frustrating shortness.

Finally, the Avatar is perfectly integrated into the game's cutscenes, giving them a critical role in the unfolding story.

Plot and Theming

So the plot goes like this: with the power of Infinite and the Phantom Ruby (that weird rock he dug up in Sonic Mania), Dr. Robotnik has succeeded in defeating Sonic and taking over the world. A band of rebels called the Resistance -- led by Knuckles and bearing quite a few parallels with Princess Sally's Freedom Fighters from Sonic the Hedgehog (TV series), aka "SatAM" -- seeks to track Sonic down, wherever he's being held, and retake the world. In Sonic's absence, a new hero (your Avatar), a survivor from one of Infinite's assaults on the population, steps in to help the resistance.

Meanwhile, "Tails", presumably wracked with guilt after Sonic's capture, re-connects with Classic Sonic (the version of him from Mania) and the two eventually lend their help to resisting Robotnik as well.

It's a fairly basic plot. It goes back to some dark themes -- like war and torture -- that we really haven't seen in a main-series Sonic game since Shadow. But there's no self-conscious attempt to be grimdark and edgy, no characters brooding about their past, no "damn fourth Chaos Emerald", and no human-hedgehog shipping. Everything is, still, pretty lighthearted and fun. Which gets pretty weird when you're told Sonic has been "tortured for months" aboard the Death Egg, and yet all he says to his torturers are the usual lighthearted, sarcastic quips. But what the hell. He's a blue cartoon hedgehog. This idea of cartoon animals in a war-torn world reminds me of nothing so much as the North Korean propaganda cartoon, Squirrel and Hedgehog, which even Western viewers admit has a sort of bizarre charm about it -- and that's where Sonic Forces is. Although not with the anti-Western propaganda of a repressive dictatorship.

I like how each of Sonic's friends has a specific role in the resistance: Knuckles is the leader, Silver the second in command, Amy the data analyst, Shadow and Rouge are the recon agents. "Tails" has gone underground to conduct his own search for Sonic. Sonic's cast has grown quite a bit in the past few years, and it's good that they found something for all these characters to do without burdening the story with needless exposition or a surfeit of unnecessary "gameplay styles".

Another thing I like is that they managed to keep Sonic's sarcastic "attitude" without making him a jerk. Looking back on 90s Sonic media, it's noteworthy how Sonic is an asshole even to his friends, and gets away with it because he's the hero. In "SatAM" and the Archie comics, for instance, he never passes up an opportunity to make fun of Antoine. In the British "Sonic the Comic", he's constantly mocking "Tails". In this game, Sonic manages to save his jokes at others' expense for his actual enemies and is quite charitable to his friends (especially "Tails" and the Avatar). At multiple points in the game, upon hearing a report of impending defeat from Resistance fighters, he says something like "You've done more than enough already. Good work, everyone! I'll handle it from here."

That's another thing: they actually found a use for in-game quips from the main character. Rather than Bubsying it up and having him say "there's a bounce pad!" or "I love rings!" every time some game event is triggered, Sonic Forces does a fair bit of story exposition with Star Fox-like radio chatter from the main characters before and during the game's stages, as well as cutscenes. The chatter can be turned off at the player's discretion, but I don't find it too distracting, and some of Sonic's lines are genuinely funny.

If there's anything wrong with the plot, it's that sometimes they seem to raise the stakes, but don't follow through and the situation is resolved in like a minute. Sonic is thought dead in the early game, but a couple of stages later, he's alive. Worse, there's a scene where Robotnik banishes Sonic and Avatar to "Null Space". Ten seconds later, they're back out on the street.

Boost Gameplay

The Boost levels are the most fun ones in the game. When you're barreling down the track at a zillion miles per hour, you don't notice the odd bit of minor physics glitch (except when it sends you clean off the track; I'm looking at you, Metropolitan Highway...). They didn't keep up the standards set by Generations, but they didn't kill all the fun in the game, especially the Boost bits, either.

But that just provokes the question: why didn't they keep up the standards set by Generations? I liked this game a fair bit, but I wanted to like it a lot more. Hell, I want to like every Sonic game as much as I like 2, 3, and & Knuckles. But this is where we are. Sonic has just gone from consistently good, to consistently bad, to just plain inconsistent. Why can't he just stay good?

The problem with Sonic is, I believe, a problem with Sega. It ties back into what I said about the franchise in the past: Sega just doesn't understand which values the Sonic brand represents, from a gameplay perspective. They use him as a media icon, but they have no vision of what the player should expect when they boot up a Sonic game. Hell, the players have a better idea than Sega does, which is why an effective fan game (Sonic Mania) got the highest praise the main series has seen in literally decades!

But here's the thing, Sonic fans: It's easy for you to say that a particular game is bad, and even -- as I've done here -- point out what's bad about it. It's much, much harder for a game developer to find and fix those bad things. Say "the physics are too glitchy", or "the jumps are too floaty" to a game dev, and you may was well say "tighten up the graphics on level 3". Take jumping for instance. There are quite a few variables that go into a game character's jump. A jump can be modelled as an impulse that sends a character's velocity upward followed by acceleration back downward due to gravity. But how big should the impulse be? How quickly should they accelerate back to earth? Do you want to have jump aftertouch (changing directions in midair)? How much aftertouch? What should happen when you jump off a slope? Should the impulse still be straight up, or should it be perpendicular to the slope? (Classic Sonic went with the latter; Sonic Rush went with the former. And now to this day I still can't take Sonic Rush seriously as a platformer in the classic vein.)

Getting games right is hard. Hell, getting slopes right is a test of mettle for any 2D game programmer. What needs to happen is the developers, once they have the basic engine put together, need to sit down and test and tweak, and test some more and tweak some more. Because that's what it takes to make a game "feel" right. And what they found out as they made these tweaks needs to be noted for future developers; it needs to become institutional knowledge.

The big difference between Nintendo and Sega is one of institutional knowledge. Quick, who do you think of when I say "Mario"? Well, Mario himself, but who in real life? Shigeru Miyamoto, right? Gaming's Walt Disney. What if I told you that Miyamoto, who had been producer or director on most Mario titles to date, only had a light touch on Super Mario Odyssey? And Super Mario Odyssey is the best damn Mario game to date! That's because the info on what makes a Mario game good and how to make a good Mario game has become institutional knowledge at Nintendo, passed from employee to employee and generation to generation. It is the ultimate mark of success of any genius that they eventually make themself obsolete, so that their successors can benefit from their knowledge without them when they die, retire, or quit. And Shigsy is coming up on retirement age...

Sega, er, didn't bother preserving that institutional knowledge from the first few Sonic games. And today, the end result is like they forgot it. It's like retrograde amnesia. While playing through Sonic Forces, I was reminded of nothing so much as early, 1980s Sega platformers, like Alex Kidd and the Wonder Boy series. In fact I have the modern remake of Wonder Boy III on my Switch, and the janky movement and floaty jumps from Forces all feel specifically familiar to what I remember from that game. But back in the 80s, you could sort of give them the benefit of the doubt. Nintendo basically invented the modern video-game-character jump with Super Mario Bros., and they weren't exactly forthcoming with that information back then because it was a competitive advantage for them, so other game houses had to either figure out on their own what made the Mario jumps so satisfying to use (Capcom), or else do without them and use a lesser mechanic (Konami, Sega).

But here's the thing: when Sega set about creating a better Mario in the early 90s, they succeeded. Sonic was everything Mario was at the time, and more. But in the early 90s, Sonic Team wasn't really a thing. It was just whoever had worked on Sonic 1. There wasn't a Miyamoto at the helm to set the standards and guide the trajectory for the series as a whole. Yuji Naka doesn't count, and neither does Naoto Ohshima. Later games would be passed from team to team, and while the basic engine remained the same, high-level knowledge of what went into that engine may have been lost along the way -- I'd say the best candidate for such a loss was the "Sonic Winter" of the late 90s, when Sega would go a whole console generation without developing a current-gen, native main-series Sonic title. (Sonic 3D Blast was a Genesis port, and the only other games in the franchise for the Saturn were Sonic R and Sonic Jam.) It was a time of tremendous upheaval for Sega, as they had to recover from the setbacks they suffered from the botched Sega CD and 32X launches, and the failure of the Saturn against the PlayStation and N64. This was also the time when Sonic fandom began to coalesce, and to be frank, the fandom which eventually formed couldn't give two shits about gameplay. So by the time the Adventure series appeared on the Dreamcast, already you could see a break in continuity of vision for where the series was going from a gameplay perspective. Bereft of the franchise's moorings, Sonic Team endlessly tried new things, wanted you to try new things, wanted you to like their experiments. But ultimately what they were trying to do was catch lightning in a bottle, and they failed at it. That's why I call the series "tryhard".

If I were the head of Sonic Team, I would instruct my subordinates to do what the fans already did: go back to the original Genesis games. If I can't find the original source code, I'd have them disassemble and reverse-engineer the ROMs. (That is what the fans did!) Part of the problem with updating OG Sonic physics for today may be that the original games were 2D and pixel-accurate, and largely used integer math to calculate the game state, whereas a modern 3D world would be built from floating-point coordinates in 3D space. Nevertheless, I would try to map the integer constants of Sonic's 2D world into 3D space, fit acceleration curves to what's observable from the 2D games, etc. I would have a model of Green Hill Zone Act 1, or a part of it, built in the 3D engine, and if Sonic does not control exactly as he does in the original Sonic 1, I would order more refinements to be made. This can be checked both through play-testing and by running side-by-side versions of original Sonic 1 and the modern engine, sending them synthetic button events, and seeing whether they match up. Once they do match up, only then would I add modern features like the boost, homing attack, etc.

I would have the programmers take careful notes on the refinements they made, and instruct them to put these notes into a company- or team-wide wiki. I would have them bring in their sons, daughters, or little siblings to play-test it. I would reach out to Sonic fans and select candidates for a limited beta test from among their number.

It's going to take effort and commitment for Sega to rescue Sonic from the scrappy heap. What Sonic Forces showed me is that Sega is not ready to make that commitment. It may be time for them to cut Sonic loose, to sell him to Nintendo or WayForward or somebody. I don't think they'll do that, though, because Sonic is the thing that's keeping their name in the limelight.

[wizardofbits]

Looks like Lydia decided to dress as someone truly scarry, spoopy, and creppy this year!

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More like “summer *was* crazy” now. Had this sitting around, thought I’d share. Hope I didn’t Ken Penders it up too much.

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I know. Old meme is old. This one is literally eleven years old. I still couldn’t help but think of it whenever I saw Tamatoa.

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Headcanon Time

Gladiolus has been in the joint.

That would explain the tattoos (which he didn’t have as a younger man) and the fondness for Cup Noodles. Seriously -- instant ramen is so desirable, expensive, and valuable in prison that it’s treated as a form of currency, even more so than the stereotypical cigarettes.

[wizardofbits]

Whenever I hear the word “senpai” I think of Sean Connery in Rising Sun explaining the senpai-kohai relationship to Snipes. And yes, he really did say SHENPAI.

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Ee-YAH! Eh!

Kirby SMASH!

[wizardofbits]

Indigo Fuck Yourself

Indigo children are purported New Age superbeings with incredible psychic powers who are supposed to usher in a new spiritual age of peace, love, and harmony or whatever. Chuckleheads and scammers who claim to be able to "see auras" say they see an indigo aura surrounding the person, hence the name. Indigo children were all born after a certain date (usually around 1975, but it could be as late as 1995 depending on which chucklehead you listen to). They are said to be clairvoyant and telepathic, and far more intelligent or wiser than their age would suggest.

According to this chucklehead, indigos are:

They are born feeling and knowing they are special and should be revered.

An indigo knows they belong here as they are and expect you to realize it as well.

These children are more confident and have a higher sense of self-worth.

Absolute authority, the kind with no choices, negotiation, or input from them does not sit well. The educational system is a good example.

Some of the rules we so carefully followed as children seem silly to them and they fight them.

Rigid ritualistic systems are considered archaic to an indigo child. They feel everything should be given creative thought.

They are insightful and often have a better idea of method then what has been in place for years. This makes them seem like "system busters."

Adults often view an indigo as anti-social unless they are with other indigos. Often they feel lost and misunderstood, which causes them to go within.

The old control methods like, "Wait till your father gets home," have no affect on these children.

The fulfillment of their personal needs is important to them, and they will let you know.

Many sources also attest a link between ADHD and indigoism -- that is to say, if someone from the Evil Big Pharma Psychology Industry diagnoses your kid with ADHD, what it actually means is they're an indigo and you should not seek help or treatment but rather help your kid cultivate their innate psychic powers.

I think I know what's happening here. When soft-hearted hippie parents are confronted with a child who is obstreperous and difficult to manage, they don't know what to do to raise the kid because they don't know how to set and enforce boundaries. When the kid hits school, the school system doesn't know what to do either. Overdiagnosis and overmedication of ADHD is an actual thing and this is why: it's an effective brute-force method to "manage" difficult children en masse (rather than fostering their development as a school should do). Then the chucklehead immune system kicks in, rejecting what little about child development we actually do know, and rewriting the child's struggles as being because they have the mutant X gene and incredible powers.

But if a child is "acting up", it means they have real problems. These can be mental problems or they can be environmental and social problems, and it's important to either get the kid into treatment or get them into a better environment. It's one thing to guide a person to self-acceptance, to assure them that they're okay, even with their unique set of strengths and difficulties. That's something everyone deserves. It's quite another to artificially inflate their self-esteem by convincing them they're a specialmazing snowflake with psychic superpowers and superintelligence.

And, yeah, about that -- Jenny McCarthy, skank model turned antivaccine idiot, is a self-proclaimed indigo. So much for indigo superintelligence.

The fact is that you are setting these kids (and adults now, too) up for misery by doing this because you are bringing them up in the belief that they will achieve big things. And when the rubber meets the road and they find out that life is hard, they have to put their pants on one leg at a time just like everyone else, and they have to work their asses off to take care of themselves and achieve anything just like everyone else, they will wonder what has become of their superpowers and why they aren't changing the world like they thought they were supposed to. And that is a recipe for depression and crippling self-doubt.

Also, look at the list of traits above. Profound sense of self-entitlement, thinking they know better on everything, a burning desire to "change things" without much regard for what we've learned in the past about the consequences of such changes... it sounds like a laundry list of things people complain about about the Millennials. Claiming that Millennial self-indulgence is because of their psychic superpowers and higher wisdom is like claiming that Erik honks and stuffs her face because she really is an autistic cat princess.

So if anyone comes up to you and tells you that you or your kid is an indigo, all they deserve is the middle finger, and to be told to indigo fuck themselves.

[wizardofbits]

I Hate Sonic 3's Blue Spheres Special Stages With The Fury Of A Thousand Suns

HA-HOO.

HA-HOO HA-HOO.

HA-HOO HA-HOO HA-HOO HA-HOO HA-HOO HA-HOO HA-HOO HA-HOO HA-HOO DING

VRWWWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Fuck.

[wizardofbits]

First DOSlevania and now this?! I’m turning up all sorts of old gems lately...

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OMF!!!

How dare anyone question General Pizza! *slapped*

A GENERAL PIZZA EASTER!!

Keep reading

[wizardofbits]

Slippy Toad, Beastmaster.

Finch teaching his pet a new trick!