#I’m so obsessed with pixel art that looks like it has texture

[squiddlysq]

Sun & Moon Throughout the Pizzaplex

I recently got ahold of Security Breach & played through it for the first time last night & was kind of obsessed with alot of the environmental details I was finding, specifically in relation to Sun & Moon.

I feel like in fic it’s always implied that the daycare is super closed off & there’s like no mention of the attendants anywhere else in the plex & that their merch is confined exclusively to their gift shop cause they’re sort of cringe or unpopular with older kids. HOWEVER their stupid little faces were basically everywhere I looked & I wanted to show both that and a couple of really cute unique props I found. I know there’s like basically no crossover between the sun & moon fandom and People Who Have Any Intention of Playing Security Breach so I wanted to just compile a bunch of the stuff they have around the Pizzaplex here for easy access by anyone who (understandably) doesn’t want to play the game. I’m putting under a readmore so I don’t clog the tag with a giant ass photo post but I think these things are cute as hell & some of them I’d literally never seen, in the tumblr fanbase OR in any of the playthrough’s I’ve watched through so take a peep if you wanna see Sun & Moon appreciation throughout the Pizzaplex.

First I just wanted to show that they’ve got multiple stands to themselves for merch in the main lobby gift shops ! Like as SOON as you enter the game proper you’re basically immediately hit with these guys;

And these cute little Sun shirts that are scattered throughout the plex giftshops;

These I think people are more likely to have seen but I still think the bathroom decals are so cute & I personally had only ever seen the Sun one in game footage so ! Here’s both;

Onto the more exciting stuff look at this ARCADE MACHINE !!! It’s looks like a regular clawgrab machine except it doesn’t have any prizes loaded into it, the design is so cute though;

Again I’m sure most people have seen this but I love Sun’s shit ‘BANNED >:(’ poster so much & it is ALL OVER kid’s cove;

This one is my absolute favourite I’ll be real, snooping around the backrooms of Roxy Raceway I found Sun & Moon themed go-karts and absolutely lost my mind;

At first I just found two tucked in a dirty corner and I was like ‘Welp guess homophobia strikes again’ BUT there were several of them scattered around with the other karts & several (^^^ in the pic) laid out ready to go on the track.

& just a couple other miscellaneous things, like this cute little logo I found in the backroom of the theatre that I don’t think I saw literally anywhere else;

& this tiny shit 3 pixel art of the boys on their section of the pizzaplex map lmao. I think they’re literally just in their poses from the daycare statue but it’s still a cute doodle;

There’s also these Moon faces up on the Faztheatre sign which I’d never seen before ! (Ignore me visibly wandering around taking screenshots of the environment when I’m supposed to be running for my life)

& lastly I just wanted to show these like, dedicated merch counters they seem to have in the prize counter room cause they’re cute as hell & Moon even has a collectible figurine on sale which. Canon confirmation of an adult nerd fanbase for the daycare animatronics in universe I guess;

It’s repeat textures so I won’t bother with pics but they’ve got posters and plushies and pictures literally ALL over the Pizzaplex it really sweet. Like they are not neglected in the plex marketing literally at all. I even found a Moon screen inside one of the arcade karaoke rooms for some reason. Bonus this note you can find made me heehee. Moon scaring the shit out of children like it’s his job;

#fnaf security breach #fnaf sb #fnaf sun #fnaf moon #fnaf daycare attendant #fnaf superstar daycare #fnaf #well I don't think theres much else I can tag this as #sorry if you followed for art I should be posting stuff soon but it may unfortunately be fnaf art so prepare yourselves #I got the game for christmas & i sat down to play last night w my fiance on call #and I was . like i did NOT feel like id been playing long #but hal just sent me a screencap of my discord activity like 'u good ?' bcos id been playing for 10 straight hours #it was 15 hours by the time i got off for the night #ushering in the new year CORRECTLY. by running screaming from endos #anyway sorry if this stuff is actually common knowledge or something but several of these things id never ever seen and i have watched peopl #COMB this game. cause i watch speedrunners & glitchhunters #but i guess theyre not looking at textures and props & design. whereas thats ALL im looking at #i loved finding the karts <333 #my fiance also laughing at me whenever i found a sun/moon collectible bcos i in game jumped for fuckin joy every time #squiddles #fic just made it seem like theyre the shame of the whole plex but they're EVERYWHERE it's so sweet

[joshfmpyeartwo]

N64 Game

My third board with the idea of making another N64/PS1 game like a couple of my previous projects. I started with adding a lot of images on the level design in Spyro (released on the PS1) because of the colour palette. I love the Skyboxes and the blend between cold and warm colours. From this, I started adding images from actual N64/PS1 games because I wanted some direct inspiration from the originals. A lot of the images I started to add at this point we're all combinations of both using a more nonsensical, vaporwave aesthetic. Through the majority of the middle, I began to add retro renders or pictures that used a lot of film grain and darker colours, as well as some beach settings that used bright contrasting colours and sharp layering to make some really strange artwork. The reason I added this was just because I began to realise what I wanted this game to look like, which was a modern, N64/PS1 style coastal vaporwave aesthetic. This eventually lead me into these retro games that already looked similar to what I was envisioning, such as the Kirby fountain of dreams. After this, I’d pinned my ideas down to the old animal crossing games, specifically those with a beach and sunset. I realised this is what I wanted for my game, in more of a openworld, 3rd person style to give myself and the players more freedom.

The main art style I’m looking at from this, is all of the pink, purple and orange, low poly renders, reminiscent of the PS1/N64 games. Off of this I also want to explore the coastal themes shown at the top just because I love the warmth and coziness that comes from it.

The themes for this mind map were: Gameplay, N64/Ps1, story and Aesthetic. Starting off with N64/PS1, which I chose because it is extremely important to get right if I want this game to feel as it should. The first thing to consider when making a game in this style is that it needs to look like it has limitations, because the older consoles would have. 64x64 res textures are a good way to achieve this, where you can pixelate a full res texture and use that instead. Aside from this, all of the models are going to have to be low poly to achieve the look, because rendering engines at that time were limited to a lower poly count. Chromatic aberration is the effect that refracts light around the edges of objects, although this effect would have been seen through the CRTV and not the game itself, It would mean a lot of unnecessary hassle to get this playing on one of those. The film grain adds noise to the screen, even just a subtle one can have a more retro or warming effect on a game. Similarly to the chromatic aberration, this would have originally been through the CRTV but can be replicated in the unreal engine post processing. What a lot of games look over when trying to replicate something like this is the fog. Older consoles needed to use fog on third party games so they rendered properly. Onto Aesthetic, which I used to try and gauge what type of atmosphere I wanted to set for my game. I picked vaporwave because I have been really obsessed with city pop and 80’s Japan recently, vaporwave is a more modernised take on that aesthetic. I was also looking into mario sunshine for one of the bigger inspirations, aesthetic wise, because it is based by the coast and looks extremely similar to what I’ve been picturing. I put down story because I haven’t been able to add much story to my previous games in this style because of my obsession with making it accurate. Because it's a island management game, there needs to be some context for how you get to be in that position of power, because of this i’ve put down animal crossing, they handle those introductions extremely well. SOmething like stardew valley would also be a good start to the game, inheriting the land through a late family member. I like the idea of it having sentimental value. I had a couple different ideas for the gameplay if the island management didn’t work out. I think a cafe or city management game would be an awesome idea. 

[avidrawsthings]

Let me tell ya’ll about the time I was once in the Homestuck fandom and a big fan. I still very much love the original despite its flaws, and no I don’t play any of the current games out (Hiveswap and FriendSim) nor will I be going into Homestuck 2. The story for me ended in Act 7.

I caved in and started reading it in late 2013 once I moved back home after graduating art school. I pretty much binge-read it as I had all the free time in the world during that time, and by December of the year that’s when I finally got to making some art for it. 

Long post ahead!

This is easily one of the biggest pieces I’ve done, and one I’m still so proud of. It’s pretty much the only other time I’ve tackled pixel-like work (the other being my lil sprite self above). One of my biggest inspirations earlier in the year was Wreck-It Ralph, mainly the Sugar Rush portion that I instantly fell in love with: Land of Candies and Racing (LOCAR) I can’t even begin to tell ya’ll how many layers this had...XD

This is pretty much what the planet itself would look like. To keep the summary as brief as possible, in Homestuck the characters play a game call SBURB which is far more realistic than they expected. Basically: in exchange for your own homeworld, you get to rule over the new universe you create. Each player gets their own planet once they complete the necessary requirements to enter their game. The above is my take, trying to copy it as close to the story visuals as possible. Looked up a lot of tutorials on it cuz I was just that dedicated back then LMAO

The landmass was from a random map generator, and I gave it a sugar texture to try and show it was a candy world. The rounded out clouds were done in photoshop with the spherize tool, and the tiny clouds on the edges were done by hand. I had an earlier version of this planet done completely by hand but I couldn’t find it in any of my old files.

As goofy as this is I still love it lol. Each planet has a consort, basically your in-game NPCs that live on your created planet. I picked honey birds to go along with the sugar theme.

This awesome vehicle is the mode of transportation on the planet, again tying back to Sugar Rush cuz it was my obsession at the time. I based this one after my favorite cake from my local supermarket Stop and Shop.

Oh hey it meeeee. I believe this was my first ever (kinda) pixel art.

Each player gets a Class and Aspect (shortened to Classpect) assigned to them. Mine is the Witch of Void. Several folks often said the Witch class is OP because they can break the rules of their Aspect without consequence. 

Here’s a better look at the outfit itself, drawn in my sad attempt of a cartoon style back then. This is the most recent of the three above on the last row, done around mid 2014. 

I know I also made a Trollsona, but I wasn’t able to find it either. 

And there you have it! Will I ever redraw these? No idea! I say I will and then I’ll forget.

#my art #homestuck #land of candies and racing #locar #witch of void #self insert

[teameight88888888]

YU JIANG’S BLOG

After the first week of discussion, we set the general direction as glitch art .I'm an interior design major, so this is the first time I've heard of glitch art.I did some research online on glitch art, a technique that USES digital or analog errors to express aesthetic purpose.Take temporary pixelation, interruption and failure and turn them into visually compelling pieces.It looks like there was an error in the video.

 The word "glitch" is already loaded with an aesthetic — highly saturated rainbow stripes and white noise chopping up an image, pixelated video streams in which the subjects' words don't match up with the audio, shimmering and twitching spots in video games (Roy, 2014).

 As people become more and more obsessed with technology, glitch art has begun to be valued by more and more people as an aesthetic with unique potential, not just by individual artists.

 Glitch art generally encounters the following categories of faults.

    using analog technology that malfunctions

    circuit-bending - re-wiring or altering the circuit within the device

    data bending - manipulating data files by opening a file of one type in a program designed to open another file (i.e. opening a jpeg in a text application, opening a video in audio processing software, etc.)

     using or creating apps that rely on an algorithm to automatically chop up and reproduce a file's foundation (i.e. Pixel Drifter)

     datamoshing - intentionally distorting media through loss of data during a file compression process (i.e. streaming a video that is slow and pixelated)

     z-fighting - weaving multiple competing visual layers together in a way that forms one layer (i.e. aflickering texture in a video game)(Roy, 2014)

The final effect of our video is more in line with the last one. In our video, we can clearly see the overlapping progression of different kinds of lines.

 Reference:

Roy, M.(2014). GLITCH IT GOOD: UNDERSTANDING THE GLITCH ART MOVEMENT. [online] The Periphery. Available at: http://www.theperipherymag.com/on-the-arts-glitch-it-good [Accessed 31 Jan.2020].

[dramallamadingdang]

I’m taking the night off from sky-making because I’m actually ahead of “schedule” and because I’m getting sort of disturbingly obsessed and playing my game for a bit instead, so while it loads, I write a bunch of replies. :)

These are for *deep breath* @penig, @holleyberry, @esotheria-sims, @acquiresimoleons, @kayleigh-83, @didilysims, @tamtam-go92, @dunne-ias, @strangetomato, and @eulaliasims. (Which doesn’t look like a long list, but there are multiple replies for pretty much all of the above, so....Yeah. :) )

penig replied to your photo “Dear Diary, Like wow! I got my first kiss and lost my virginity in...”

Bang it out...I see what you did there...

SOMEONE UNDERSTANDS ME! *heart* :)

holleyberry replied to your photo “And here’s the other one I really wanted: Just a grassy, flat horizon...”

Maxis neighborhood specific ones would be great too.

How do you mean? Like, made from panoramic pictures of specific neighborhoods? It’s an interesting idea, actually. I’d have to reinstall those neighborhoods to do it, though. Unless someone wants to volunteer to take pics for me. ;) Even so, I’m not sure I could get the scale right. Scale is a definite issue with these things. It will never be right, actually, but the most noticeably out-of-scale things on them are definitely buildings, when compared to the size of an actual, in-neighborhood building.

Speaking of Maxis, though... I’ve been fooling around with making some flat horizons to actually match the Maxis terrains, but it’s proving difficult. The scale issues are pretty bad. :\ I mean, like I said, these things are always going to be out of scale with the actual in-game houses and whatnot just because it’s the nature of the beast, but I’m trying to minimize that as much as I can. For some reason, it’s just not working very well with the Maxis terrain textures. I’m hoping to be able to make it work, but right now it’s not looking good. :\

esotheria-sims replied to your photo “Man, I’ve put a lot of work into this one. :) Like *checks time* about...”

Wow, just wow. This has got to be one of the coolest and most realistic skybox recolors I've seen around (though the 'realistic' part doesn't really come as a surprise, considering the source material :D) I'm extremely tempted to turn Strangetown into a miniature pseudo-Arizona town now.

:D That’s pretty much what I’m doing for retro-Strangetown. Because it amuses me to make the town Roswell-esque. Roswell’s in New Mexico, not Arizona, but the terrains in the two states are pretty similar. About the only difference, overall, is that (southern) Arizona has saguaro cacti and New Mexico doesn’t. I think NM is not quite as dry as AZ, but they’re both part of the same big desert, really, so...yeah. 

In any case, that sky is one specifically meant for retro-Strangetown, for my own purposes. I also separated the horizon from the sky and put the horizon-only version on a lower layer so that the horizon can be used with any sky. So, the place can have different skies at different times but always have the same surrounding terrain, for continuity’s sake.

acquiresimoleons replied to your photo “Sharon still had that flirt want, and I figure the only way she’s...”

I guess her time with the aliens was fun and she wanted to try it with an earthling

Hah! Yeah, maybe...although in my mind the alien thing isn’t sexual at all. Just a “bit” of genetic engineering. But it might’ve put crazy ideas in her head, nevertheless. :)

kayleigh-83 replied to your photoset “Will, attempting and failing at yoga.  But hey! At least he was doing...”

Like juggling, Sims have a remarkable natural aptitude for yoga!

That, and the fact that if you’re a Sim who’s really good at playing the piano, you can also paint like Picasso. Wish it was like that in real life because I’d really like to be able to paint. I mean, I can do all right with digital painting so long as I can use custom Photoshop brushes so that I can just “paint” a shape with a single click. But with actual physical art tools and supplies on an actual canvas or piece of paper? Completely hopeless. *sigh* Although I do plan to take some art classes at the local community college when we go home to CO. I’m hoping to be able to learn something. :)

didilysims replied to your post “I’m having a bit of a dilemma. Need some input. :)”

Some download sites have an option to have individual files in a folder and you can download the entire folder, so maybe that's an option? But honestly whatever's easiest for you is fine. I want 'em no matter what! :D

On SFS you can upload stuff in folders, and then downloaders can choose to download individual files from within the folder. That’s how Lowedeus uploaded his recent batch of skies. I’m thinking that might be better for folks with slower internet connections or those who know they don’t want every sky and want to pick and choose. I’m going to make a photo album on my Livejournal space with at least one pic of every sky, that such folks can reference in order to decide what they want. I’m thinking I’ll do a folder as well as a single file with everything in one, for people who just want everything and who have the internet bandwidth to download it all within a reasonable amount of time. That ought to cover all the bases, I think.

didilysims replied to your post  “You used to use a bite neck mod for vampires. Do you still use it?...”

Cool ideas! I definitely want to steal the no food for vamps plan! Part of me also wants to steal the turn/kill randomization too, but I know I would be so sad if someone had to die. :(

Yeah, I can understand that. I’m just not overly-sentimental about my pixel people. Actually, I get far more attached to the pets than I do to the human Sims. So, I don’t have problems with killing Sims when the random number generator says to kill them and/or to have them die of illness thanks to RealSickness. And sometimes...Well, sometimes a population just NEEDS culling, especially because I let Sims breed as they will. In such neighborhoods, when I’ve got vamp residents, I’ll usually bump up the chance of bitten Sims being killed as population control. BUT! If you wanted to try it out, you could say they can only bite/turn/kill townies that you don’t really care about. :)

tamtam-go92 replied to your photo “Will decided to skip class, so I sent him off to the park that I...”

Lol, I have a sim that has three bolts with a guy with the same face template too xD

There’s always that one gorilla-faced dormie! :D I actually don’t mind that template at all. If you breed ‘em with a Sim with the right features to sort of soften the gorilla-ness, the kids are actually pretty darn cute. Usually chubby-cheeked and full-lipped but not as extreme as the gorilla-face. I have a weakness for chubby cheeks, myself. :)

tamtam-go92 replied to your photo “As if spending most of his time yakking with dormies wasn’t enough...”

I LOVE the tiles!

Yeah, they’re pretty cool. Maxis, too, since those made-over Academie Le Tour buildings I use are all CC-free, and I see no reason to make them otherwise, for the (relatively) short time that Sims live there. I think those tiles came with Nightlife, IIRC...

penig replied to your photo “Alien pregnancy doesn’t stop Sharon from being a complete nerd. It...”

You say "complete nerd" like it's a bad thing.

Nah, not bad, per se. Just reminds me too much of me when I was young and way too serious and not-fun for my own good. Being a complete anything can be a bad thing, after all. There was so much I missed out on when I was young because I was so focused on being a superior student and then on my career. The former actually didn’t have that huge of a positive impact on the latter. And I sort of gave up the career path I’d planned on to focus on raising my kids -- which I hadn’t planned on having -- anyway. So, in the end, all that seriousness and nerdy and sort of arrogant scholasticism had no real net gain and, like I said, made me miss out on experiences that probably would’ve been greatly enriching both personally and professionally. So...moderation in all things is my philosophy now. Which isn’t to say that I’m not a nerd at all. I mean, an encyclopedic knowledge of Star Trek as well as a nerdy fascination with arthropods kind of clinches that. But I don’t strive to be a complete nerd anymore.

dunne-ias replied to your photoset “So. I made skies. Like, *cough* 30 of them. So far! Above is a...”

I find it hilarious that you "need to get your butt in bed now" when you live where you live compared to where I live and it's actually approaching MY bedtime.

:D Yeah, being nocturnal and living on the US west coast and going to bed around noonish my time does sort of put me on the same sleep schedule as normal diurnal people in especially the more eastern parts of Europe that are 9 or 10 hours or so ahead of where I am. Like you, for instance. :) 

penig replied to your photo “Oh God, not you, too, Will! Just sitting there, not playing chess,...”

Replace the chairs. They're too comfy.

See, that’s the thing. Those same chairs are used in other places in the dorm, not just at the chess table. Yet they choose the ones at the chess table, even if they have to walk past other iterations of the same chair to get to it. It’s weird. I can’t figure it out.

didilysims replied to your photo “The cow mascot was wandering around, doing her thing. Must hurt to get...”

Eh, they're just cheap plastic. Look at the tacky shine on 'em.

Well, yeah, but cheap plastic can still hurt if it pokes you hard enough!

...OK, that sounded vaguely dirty somehow. :)

kayleigh-83 replied to your photo “The cow mascot was wandering around, doing her thing. Must hurt to get...”

I love those mascots, such shit disturbers!

Y’know, I’m actually not a huge fan of the mascots in general. I find them more annoying than anything, same as I do Crumplebottom. Usually, I ban them with the Visitor Controller. For some reason I decided to let them torment dorms (they’re still banned in private on-campus residences, where it seems less appropriate for strangers to be barging in to do strange things) for now. I’m sure they will become annoying enough to ban them again, but for now...Yeah, they’re amusing me. And hey! The cow mascot’s sprinkler prank gives the germophobes something to do, with all the mopping. *eye roll*

strangetomato replied to your post “Later that night...”

I will never be tired of the silly date gifts.

It’s actually one of my favorite things about the whole dating thing. They make me laugh and/or they can sometimes be really useful. In fact, if they didn’t exist, I might not send any of my Sims on any actual, official timed dates at all. But since timed dates/outings are the only way to get the silly pressies, I do...

eulaliasims replied to your photo “Oh, God, it’s time to finish this thing. :P It’s campus housing, to...”

Apartment lots *are* a pain to furnish. Shift-key and dump identical bare necessities in each apartment is my method. At least the building looks gorgeous! I like the mix of windows. :D

Thank you! See, part of my problem with apartments is that I really can’t bear to furnish/decorate them identically. I really don’t know why. I mean, if I download an apartment lot with identically-furnished units, I’m perfectly OK with using them as-is. But, if I’m building the building, I just...can’t. I have to do them all differently. So, it’s like committing to decorating four (or more!) entire houses for one lot, and since furnishing/decorating is pretty much my least-favorite aspect of building...Yeah, apartment lots sort of intimidate me. Love building them. They’re fun to design/build. But the rest of it? Ugh, such a burden. :)

#penig #holleyberry #esotheria-sims #acquiresimoleons #kayleigh-83 #didilysims #tamtam-go92 #dunne-ias #strangetomato #eulaliasims

[everydayispurple]

Lust comes in many forms here in Hollywood, as well as out there beyond the Tinsel where it’s a tad more… normal? You’ve got your sexual lust, power lust, wanderlust, object lust, lust for intimacy, lust for that which dare not speak its name, follower lust, lost youth lust, future lust, pornographic lust, biblical lust, virtual lust. Anyway you skin it, though, lust is interestingly something wholly contained to our own psyche. It has no antecedent, no binary, only fractal likenesses spreading out over history, the now, and the speculative future. Sure, two lusters may collide between the sheets following a plastics convention in Islamabad, around a hearty bowl of moqueca de camarao in a Bahian resort, or a ’67 Porsche 911 in Pebble Beach. But what’s to say these individuals’ lust for the other’s body, the soup, the auto, is equivocal, let alone measurable? No, lust, in its rawest form, is something we must repress, exercise, weigh, or value entirely on our own.

Consider the new record from superstar, Lana Del Rey: Lust for Life. When considering, might we assume this particular “lust” to have some corrupted layer to it? Some sort of invasive, or melancholic, or alienating undertone? Something mysterious?* Why might we? Well, because those are the sort of insinuations we tend to foist upon the Lana Del Rey we’ve come to know, or presume we know, over the last near decade, be it through the multitudinous, oft-confounded media halo around her, or perhaps our own desire for her to personally fulfill on some of the themes bandied about her discography. Lana Del Rey is mentally unwell. Lana Del Rey is violence-obsessed. Lana Del Rey is lost in an abandoned era. Lana Del Rey is… happy? “I think I was feeling happy that I was present, and not afraid in a way that I couldn’t enjoy my everyday things,” the musician says of the new record’s title, sat in blue jeans, cross-legged on the floor of a Chateau Marmont hotel suite, enjoying French fries and a Diet Coke on a balmy, breezy Friday afternoon. “I’m the kind of person that really loves those things. Like when I drive, I love every road, and I can’t believe that I’m in L.A. I love the architecture, grabbing a coffee, striking up conversation with the people I encounter. And I hate when I can’t enjoy the little things because in the back of my head I have concerns or preoccupations. So for me, it was that sort of lust for life. It was kind of just about happiness.”

Are we ok with that? Can we appreciate a lust from Grammy-nominated Del Rey if it’s not tortured or muddied, glass eyed, drowning in itself? Can this fifth full-length follow previous efforts with titles like Born to Die (2012) or Ultraviolence (2014) with calm, with appreciation for the light and the trees and the way our foamy cappuccino looks so god damned beautiful? It doesn’t really matter, for we’ll never know this lust’s exactitude as I suggest above, and that’s ok. And anyway, nothing is more undefinable or elusive than happiness. What does matter is that the songs on the record possess an incredible richness in production, there’s some excellent and legendary guests on a few tracks, and from the artist’s point of view, a kind of carving down in scope, what I’ll venture to call a distinct maturation in her oeuvre. “The record has fewer dimensions,” she remarks. “But they’re more beautiful than in the past. I had no idea that would make it easier to talk about.” Has this ease with discussing the content perhaps coincided with a sort of softening, or openness toward her in the arenas of public or journalistic reception? “I feel that,” she says thoughtfully. “And it’s helped me be more open as well. Because it’s hard to talk about your innermost feelings if you feel the reception will be cold. And I hung back for a while. I did a handful of interviews, but not many in the last few years. But also I was writing and writing, and digging through stuff, and not writing things as easy to digest or discuss. It still comes from me, but as I’ve evened out as a person, I don’t have as much I don’t want to say. I feel comfortable.”

Comfortable could describe the carefree roost Del Rey and fellow pop success, The Weeknd, take atop the “H” of the iconic Hollywood sign in the title track music video for Lust for Life, which shares its name with a seminal record from another pop chameleon – Iggy Pop – and is released a few days before our sit down. The treatment is surreal and campy, almost goofy, in a manner that decadently rams home this happy sentiment, this appreciation for the minute to minute. The two sweetly croon about taking off one another’s clothes, but remain fully and stylishly swaddled, canonically perched up there above us all, as if a second set of lovers might be drifting on some paddle boat below through the “O,” only to be serenaded into an amorous spell before vanishing into the night. The video ends with Del Rey overtaking the frame, batting her signature lashes before a sort of cat-ate-the-canary-like smile spreads over her face and all succumbs to darkness.

An evening out as a person. Ironic then, and downright fun, that while this evening out of Del Rey’s personal temperament has found its sonic outlet – refined and leaner – the artist steps into the cosmically perverse, rehearsed, and beautiful universe of celebrated artist David LaChapelle. Here, instead of playing Lana Del Rey for her cover shoot, which we’ve chiefly only ever seen, she embodies everyone else. Their lust, their dreams, their encumbering. The singer enlivens her Instagram geotag “Hollyweird” with some proper role playing.

“Da-vid La-Chapelle. Whoa. Da-vid La-Chapelle,” Del Rey says breathily, demonstrably dropping her jaw, while recounting her 14 hour photo shoot with the art photographer. Yes, David LaChapelle: that scramble-slinging riot boy of the Wild West, whose pumped petrol from Pepsi cans, breast milk from dad bands, and inimitable flair from celebrity after celebrity, all of course while flooding museums and arming utopianistas, while whirling through fame and hurt and photo sets and inward plunges and friends and cities and applause. Da-vid La-Chapelle. And fittingly, one of the more influential molders of modern lust, and in particular Hollywood lust, all prismatic and decadent, of the last 50 years.

“I just couldn’t believe it,” Del Rey says. “Because I always make things really hard to work, because I don’t want to talk that much. So I had defiantly said to someone, ‘Don’t ask me unless David LaChapelle is shooting it.’ And then I get a call from Stephen Huvane [a partner in Slate PR], and he’s like ‘David LaChapelle is shooting it and you’re going to do it.’ So when I got to his studio, which is like a few blocks from my house, I was blown away. He’s amazing. And he thinks big picture, and different picture, and textures, and he doesn’t want to do a simple portrait right now because that’s not where he is in his life. And I’m the same way. I don’t want to make a pop record if I’m feeling more acoustic, for instance. And so he’s very true to his own space. There’s not that many people that I would follow into the unknown, so to speak, but with him, I would probably do most of what he suggested.”

I speak to LaChapelle over the phone. He’s just had lunch with his staff at his Hollywood studio, and no, he “doesn’t want to” discuss the process behind Del Rey’s photos technically, or even creatively – save to say that he’s happy with the images. When questioned why he determined to create the cover story, given he so rarely creates editorial images for magazines anymore in light of global exhibitions and museum showings, he remarks, “I have had a relationship with Flaunt for a long time. Lana’s a down-to-earth person. I like her writing. I saw her show at the Hollywood Bowl, and really liked the music, and that inspired the concept and ideas for the photos. Lana was interested in the artistic angle, not a promotional angle, which I really liked. Much more interested in creating art than promoting something.”

A couple weeks back, on set at LaChapelle’s studio, upon Del Rey’s arrival, he points to a handful of easels containing perhaps 15 vintage photographs, blown up large, the pixels swelling. These nostalgic, quotidian moments are today’s creative template. The content? There’s your requisite, slightly tilted living room snap where subjects stare stonily at a television, taken from an adjacent La-Z-Boy. There’s vacations to national parks. There’s weddings. There’s piss ups. There’s youth and death and that gray, cumbersome in-between period where we mutate as far as we can from either end, only to return fundamentally unaltered. It’s all very American, very pastoral, archetypes piled atop clichés, atop Heartland mores. At the bottom of the centered easel is an August haze-soaked summer camp scene of your requisite teepees, oak trees, and some white guy in profile sporting an American Indian-style headdress. Having this particular morning all witnessed Pepsi’s whitewashed plunge into the hellfire of failed advertising with their now retracted Kendall Jenner spot [which pretty inarguably suggested the Black Lives Matter or Women’s March movements viable plot points for Pepsi as Great Equalizer], concern is raised over cultural appropriation and the risks run. LaChapelle considers the concern, but shakes his head and supplies, “It’s not appropriation. You’re just playing a character.”

True. Playing a character is borrowing or homage, whereas appropriation could be said to mean taking and using without permission. And in the case of Pepsi: bastardization, insensitivity, myopia. In her videos, it could be said that Del Rey has stepped into a variety of self-representations, or roles, and this adventure into the unknown with Mr. LaChapelle certainly demonstrates her chameleon-like aptitude for character making on photo sets. Still, she shares the unfamiliarity and challenges for her in extending this to song.

Notably, there is a track on Lust for Life, recorded with Sean Lennon, a layered and playful number that explores, among other things, John Lennon and Yoko Ono – a canonical deity of lust and artistry if ever there was – that sees Del Rey refreshingly step outside her own paradigm. “I felt like it belonged to someone else,” she says of the single, “Tomorrow Never Came.” “And I never feel that, because I like to keep everything for myself. I thought it might be strange for Sean to sing a song about John and Yoko as well. But I think the fact that I sing, ‘Isn’t life crazy now that I’m singing with Sean.’ It points to the fact that we’re both aware. I didn’t want it to come out exploitative in any fashion. Not that it would. Still, I wanted to be as careful as possible. I wanted it to come across layered with this sort of meta narrative mixed in. In a way it’s a song about a song.”

I speak over the phone to Lennon, currently in New York, who originally received a very simple version of the song from Del Rey with only her vocals, guitar, and an organ. “To me,” he shares, “Ninety-nine percent of what is magical about that song was already contained in her original vocal performance. I felt like it was my job to simply highlight and accentuate what was already there in her voice and melody, and in her lyrics. Everything I played was merely ornamental, like tailoring a ballroom gown on an already stunning woman: the only way to mess up is if you take away from or disguise the beauty that is already there.”

Considering the lineage in the song and their first collaboration together, I ask Lennon what he learned from the experience. “She has exceptional taste,” he remarks. “I told her that working on her song was a valuable lesson since I often modulate and take unintuitive chordal and melodic twists and turns, and she reminded me that you can be perhaps even more compelling if the melodies and chords feel natural and intuitive, not contrived or disorienting as in my music. Anyway I’ll never forget when she called me after I sent her what I did and her first words were ‘It’s perfect!’ I almost cried with joy because I honestly don’t think anyone has ever said that to me about anything I’ve ever done. It was a very good feeling.”

Beyond the meta-awareness of the lyrics and rich instrumentation [Lennon added “acoustic six- and 12-string guitar, electric guitar, lap steel, upright bass, vibraphone, harpsichord, orchestra bells, drums, and Mellotron strings, and shaker”], a particularly resonant lyric repeats itself a handful of times: You weren’t in the spot you said to wait. I ask Del Rey if there are running themes of stasis or waiting elsewhere on the record. “I think that’s why I felt that of anything on the record, that wasn’t my song,” she considers. “I didn’t feel like I was waiting for anything. It’s really not about anything personally, except that I love the sonics of it; the filters. I try to be as careful as I can that I’ll want to sing stuff on stage that I write. And that song will be an easy one to do because it doesn’t pull at any heartstrings or anything. And I know it’s special to Sean as well, because he’s his dad’s biggest fan. And so I like that, in a small way, they had a moment, in whatever surreal way that could happen.”

And so with maturity, and the cool calm that Del Rey has amassed, five albums later, she’s able to play someone else, it seems, in song. But like she mentioned, that was a step outside the norm. And I’m not sure the world is all too ready for that anyway. Earlier, as Del Rey arrived in the lobby of the Chateau, we shared a hug and swapped some chit chat while her surprisingly young and surprisingly English manager, Ben Mawson, secured a suite for our interview. Mawson, returning, mentioned his ambitions to visit a mystic in Santa Barbara, smoothly coaxed Del Rey’s cars keys to do so from her reluctant hands (like any accomplished manager ought), and left us and his tab in a stylish puff of smoke as the singer and I strolled toward the elevators. We’re welcomed by a member of the Chateau’s attractive staff, who shares some familiar sweetness with Del Rey, and enters the elevator with us. After some run of the mill small talk regards Del Rey’s new L.A. home of which the staffer has some knowledge, the singer in turn asks how things have been at the Chateau, the Hollywood fixture for celeby notables, bolognese bowls, and rabbit holes. “Oh you know,” the woman remarks. “Things change out there in the world, but here, they stay the same.”

The change out there in the world has indeed been pretty seismic. Accordingly, you have my personal favorite track on the record, “God Bless America,” an unbridled spanker of a song that’s title refrain is followed by, “And all the beautiful women in it”—that’s instantly echoing through your melon and one in which Del Rey remarks, “Yeah, I went there.” She describes the song, of which Mawson shared earlier his reluctance to release as a single, given the tendency of Del Rey to net the mentioned public polarization, “It has some strong messaging,” she says nodding. “Some iconography, with Lady Liberty, fire escapes and the streets, and I do get a little New York feel when I listen back to it.” I tell her the song feels grandiose in production, anthemic in verse… very New York in fact, a sparkling pile of empire and accomplishment. And while New York (and its banks) have churned out the free world leader and a boys club not so concerned about everyone therein being blessed, moreover the “beautiful women in it”—reminding us that grandiosity has its pitfalls—“God Bless America” could easily ascend the ladder as a 2017 rally cry.

I ask her if she feels the appropriative nature of the song title may stir any pots of sorts.”Well, it’s the God word,” she says measuredly. “But the phrase has wider meaning. It’s more of a sentiment. When I wrote it I didn’t feel like it was confined to a traditional portrait of the Lord, as some sects might see it. It was more like, ‘Fucking God bless us all and let’s hope we make it through this.’ She further explains the genesis, “When all the Women’s Marches were happening, I had already written this song, because I had been hearing a lot of things online. And I have a sister, and a lot of girlfriends, who had a lot of concerns about things that were being said in the media by some of our leaders. And I saw an instant reaction from women, and I was like, ‘Wow. There is no confusing how women are feeling about the state of the nation.’ And so without really trying to, I felt compelled to just write a song and say we are all concerned. And it really made me think about my relationship with women. And I felt proud of myself, because I do love the women in my life. And I take care of them, and I ask them what they think about music, and guys, and problems, and I thought it was so cool that I’m really right there in the same boat with them. And sometimes I’m not. Sometimes I feel like I’ve got my finger right on the pulse of what’s going on, and then some of my music comes out and it’s like, ‘Fuck, that was a miss. Fuck, that’s not what people feel, at all. But with this, I was right there with everyone.”

Considering the caution from management around the track, I ask Del Rey if the potentiality for rib kicks, or what have you, is particular to her, not just someone famous. Does she feel she’s been on the receiving end of a sort of media lust? A presumptive, dutiful debunking of myths? “Perhaps,” Del Rey considers. “Or the journalists don’t have enough going on personally andthey feel like their contribution to current culture is myth building. It’s either one. It’s a broad mix. And I’ll definitely take accountability for how my energy has informed a lot of not true stories. But 50% of that has just been someone’s personal agenda.” Still, despite the pricks and pokes over time, Del Rey does feel the media is incredibly important and worth fighting for at the moment. “That’s why I do love journalists,” she says, “when they’re not assholes, because writers are critical thinkers. They’re people who think it’s important to have conversation, and conversation can lead to change.”

I’d agree: the fundamental purpose of media is to present the facts and propel conversation. That, of course, has been tossed into the bullshit blender of late; a corrupted election, orchestrated intel leaks, and in turn media’s brandishing “the enemy of the people” by the venal and orange President Trump, has the press in a pretty gobsmacked, beleaguered position. So ass over heels that even the governing party’s own Fox News mascot, Bill O’Reilly, has finally been ousted for sexually pawing and verbally gnawing on women whom his employers have considerably paid off over the years to keep hush. It’s a mess out there, right or left or between. “I feel like this election jolted almost everyone who was floating around, feeling weird, whatever… right into the current moment,” Del Rey says. “I know several people that had a sort of drifter mentality that are now in the thick of it, considering things, and considering their own contributions, and what matters. I’ve known what matters to me for a long time, so I was already kind of there, but I didn’t really see it going this negatively. I feel like we’re in a bit of a Hitchcockian experience, and you’re in a scenario, and every day you wake up and you can’t believe the things being said and done are real. And I think some people are questioning if this shit is actually happening, like especially with the North Korea issues, which are really the scariest because you’re talking about nuclear annihilation.”

The world is in an extraordinarily tenuous place. And while it could be said, certainly for the sake of this piece, the earliest seedlings of civilization were wrought with lust for power, we are, it seems, at somewhat of a tipping point. On the topic of the Women’s March, I share a video of the protests in Caracas, Venezuela, where some two million people were marching that morning against President Nicolás Maduro, dozens of whom were reported killed by police or government backing loyalists. I remark that the collectivist, community-making nature of protest could perhaps only be likened to the power of song. Is there anything on the record that explores this swell of community-making here and around the world at present? She considers. “Well, I have a song that’s quite aware about the collective worry, about whether this is the end of an era. It’s called “When the world was at war we kept dancing.” But I actually went back and forth about keeping it on the record, because I didn’t want it there if it would make people feel worse instead of better. It’s not apathetic. The tone of the production is very dark, and doesn’t lead to a fucking happy feeling. And the question it poses: Is this the end of America, of an era? Are we running out of time with this person at the helm of a ship? Will it crash? In my mind, the lyrics were a reminder not to shut down or shut off, or just don’t talk about things. It was more like stay vigilant and keep dancing. Stay awake.”

Given the pace and intensity of the environment in our surrounds of which the artist speaks, I point out that there are still moments on the record that feel lonely, or lost in expectancy, far from active. I cite a lyric: “We get all dressed up to go nowhere in particular.” Del Rey shares that she’d had a phone call with a friend earlier that day, about their personal lives, their music, and she states that he too raised that when talking about artistic stall as a demonstration of stasis. She disagreed with him. “It wasn’t about stasis. I meant that you don’t need to have anything to do to get dressed up and feel special.”

We live in a culture where pressure and precedent abound, one in which women are constantly challenged with not feeling special based on their body, their skin color, their age, their social position, their follower count. Does she agree? “It’s more like we just don’t have as much cultural practice at taking the time to appreciate ourselves for who we really are,” she says. “We spend a lot of time when the nation was founding building government, money, and then getting the education system down, so it’s not like some cultures where you take time to mediate, et cetera, on your own dreams, wishes, self worth. I think it’s not enough practice. It’s not like they teach you that in school. But I think that that’s changing too. That’s actually a lot of what the record is about. Even in “God Bless America”… ‘Take me as I am, don’t see me for what I’m not… Only you can save me tonight.’ It’s about seeing people: what they’re actually doing. Who they actually are.”

In that sense, Del Rey is championing the same values as her influential predecessors, few and far as they may be, or as bamboozled by the power systems in which they thrived. Consider “Beautiful People,” where she trades verses and coalesces on the chorus with the one and only Stevie Nicks, of whom I refer to as a bonafide badass. “I didn’t know what to except or that I could even ask her, Del Rey remarks. “When I went through ideas of women that could really add something to the record, she was the one we kept coming back to. ‘Bonafide badass’ is a great phrase for her. She’s really real. And she’s still fucking touring, which baffles me. There are so few women doing that. You’ve got Courtney Love, who works, sings, tours… there’s not that many women who were making music in the ’70s or ’80s who still make music. It really is pretty crazy.”

We’ve been speaking for a little over an hour. I return to a conversation we’d briefly shared on the photo shoot regards this, Flaunt’s music issue, and its theme (“heartbreak”), determined before we’d secured Del Rey as our cover subject. She’d been briefed on this by her publicity team and was admittedly wary about aligning. Again, that embodiment dilemma. Appropriation? Role playing? “Everything I’ve done in the last two years,” she says with confidence, “I would never say anything that wasn’t true. Even in the music. That’s why I was nervous about me being on the cover, and in big font “The Heartbreak Issue” because the thing is, I don’t feel heartbroken. So I didn’t want to continue a narrative that didn’t apply to me. Because the only person who truly cares about whether I continue that narrative, or any, is me. So I have to do my due diligence. And it doesn’t always work, but I’ll be damned if I don’t fucking try.”

Del Rey is indeed expected to carry her narratives, whether they’re isolated in meaning to her or not. It comes with the territory I suppose. Perhaps the reason the public has not allowed her persona the room it allots to certain other celebrities to role play is because it conversely feels her not a role player, but an appropriator. Not of cultural identities, or pivotal historic movements, ethnic/religious/nationalistic identities, but of emotions. Did Lana Del Rey, for instance, scoop up the proliferate sentiment of feeling forlorn when she broke out in 2008 while the economy was breaking down? Why if she sings about manipulation are we assumed she’s manipulating or manipulated? Why if she sings about getting dressed up for no reason but to feel special does one imagine her at home, dressed up, going nowhere? Does someone who writes and sings so pointedly and consistently about love defy its fundamentally inarticulable nature? Is this love borrowed or stolen? From us? From whom? How can we tell? Why can some musicians sing about all sorts of shit, and everyone grants them the concession to do so. Why does Lana have to be her music? Some would argue it’s this collision of singer/songwriter—of whom we expect to sing from the experiences of the heart—with that of pop queen, whom we expect to sing about and for us. Others might speculate that Del Rey’s aim is true, that her heart is her guiding light, that this is more than music. And finally, others might suggest that’s the responsibility of art; to cull from emotions everywhere, permission or non, and distill into something accessible. “I know a couple of people who love to write,” she says as we’re collecting ourselves to leave the hotel room, “and love to rhyme, love melodies, and I do too. But to me it’s so much more than that. It feels like a life’s work and it feels like it’s really important just to me, so I put a lot of time into it.”

A lust for life, and whatever you make of it. And what Del Rey is making of it is music; earned and owned up to, as the world continues to take from us and we from it. We walk to the balcony and open the French windows. A web of canopies drape the Chateau’s garden courtyard restaurant, bustling with late lunches and tea service. We remark that beneath these canopies, it can feel so glamorous, so suspended. From up here, though, you see it’s just industrial plastic, mildly in need of a good dirt rinse, the patrons beneath it smudged out like those who didn’t sign the waiver in a reality TV dance, playing a role, all but recognizable.

* Some adjectives describing Del Rey in recent international journalism include: a) “a confounding mystery” – Brian Hiatt. “18 Things You Learn After Two Long Days with Lana Del Rey,” Rolling Stone, June 24, 2014. b) “mysterious and much-debated.” – Sean Hennessy. “Ice Breaker,” GQ, October 6t, 2011. c) “Is this the mysterious Lana Del Rey? –  Natasha Stagg. “Lana Del Rey: Wild at Heart,” Dazed, April 17, 2017. d) “a paradox” – Barry Walters. “Darkness Comes Alive: The Paradox of Lana Del Rey,” NPR, June 20, 2014. e) “married her music to a mysterious image.” – Paul Harris. “The Strange Story of the Star Who Rewrote Her Past,” The Guardian, January 21, 2012. f) “weirdly shamanistic” – Bruce Wagner. “Lana Del Rey on Why Her Pop Stardom ‘Could Easily Not Have Happened’,” Billboard, October 22, 2015.

Written by Matthew Bedard Photographer: David LaChapelle. Stylist: Brett Alan Nelson for The Only Agency. Hair: Anna Cofone for The Wall Group. Makeup: Pamela Cochrane for Bridge Artists. Styling Assistants: Tony Devoney and Richie Garcia.

#lana del rey #flaunt magazine #flaunt #david lachapelle

[danielshae]

Chrono Trigger on Steam: Dang-o

Well It’s Not Exactly Pretty

By DANiEL SHAE

No driving thesis here, just some thoughts and observations of the port.

Like many of you, I’m a lifelong fan of this game. I still have my SNES (actually, I have four of them), and my original CT cart with a “got all the characters to ** and defeated Pink NU Spekkio” file on it. Even went so far as to get a NU tattooed on me. Because I am a sucker for this game.

As you’re probably aware, toward the beginning of 2018 SE granted us a “surprise release” of Chrono Trigger. Like so many others, I bought it immediately. Then? The backlash. Tremendous backlash. Mostly for the weirdly smoothed graphics that appeared to most like a “bad mobile port”. So, somewhat responsibly, six months later SE pushed an update attempting to appease the mobs of enraged fans by allowing the game to be viewed with graphics “similar to the original pixel art”. That description is straight from the in-game menu.

The release of the update was surrounding by a flood of articles purporting that “SE put the original graphics back in Chrono Trigger and now it looks WAY BETTER...” (I’m paraphrasing here). And to a degree, sure, it is certainly better than it was. But dang-o. Guys, this game is still pretty mangled. For a game whose original was so thoughtful, beautiful, and meticulous, this feels sloppy AF. And I know that some people likely worked their asses off, because I too work in the game industry and I understand how it goes. This isn’t just any game, though; it’s Chrono Trigger. I would think that, regarding a game which was completed 23 years ago and is considered by millions to be a masterpiece, people would be a thousand times more careful touching it now than even the original team who created it back then. That’s certainly the case with nearly any other art you’d find in a museum. But that’s not the case here. Square Enix has the resources to do it right, but this port is unfinished.

First 15 minutes of gameplay, I encountered some triggered events which caused me to become stuck inside another sprite and I had to reboot the game to continue (the specific one I remember is returning the girl’s lost kitty at the fair). Thank God for the “bookmark/resume” feature, which is actually a pretty cool addition to the game. Anyway, I’m now 20 hours in (Death Peak after a lot of grinding), and I’m glad to say that pattern has thankfully not persisted.

But there are other issues. Some minor. Some kinda hideous.

I won’t bore you with pixel uniformity (or the apparent lack thereof), but as you can see pictured above, there are some serious issues with mixed aesthetic. You may have to give it the ol’ “right click, view image” to better see what I’m talking about. Most of the assets are displayed in clearly defined “pixels”, but then there are bits like the Epoch, which appear more like, for my lack of real terminology, freaky blurred nonsense. Flying this bad boy around is a uh...well it’s a “trip”. I’m not one to easily embarrass, but between you and me I keep my head ducked and hope to God an NPC doesn’t walk out onto the world map to see my smeared-ass ride rippin’ across the sky to elevator jams. Also I tried switching between “Original” and “High resolution” graphics—Epoch appears to be the same in both. Maybe I’ve just unearthed a bug in my game, but then if so that’s still a problem.

There are lots of other graphical issues: Orphaned pixel noise that becomes painfully visible during effects like white screen flashes. Freaky solid black pixel chunks during the “cool parts” with the Ocean Palace and the Black Omen. The area around Giga Gaia’s face gets honorable mention for some extra weird shit going on when you slap him around (I was using Cube Toss/Iceberg Toss).

As they say: The list goes on.

I’m actually fine with how the battle menu and gauges look now, even if the gauges sometimes cover sprites a little crudely. I get it. Sacrifices must be made. However, the speech panels and game menu panels don’t look like they belong at all to the same game. They’re bizarrely clunky, a different resolution than the rest of the game assets, and frankly the texture on them looks as though somebody was just dicking around with the spray paint tool. Which might be fine if they were the same resolution as the other assets.

SIDE NOTES ON THE MENU: 1) “Settings” can be accessed from the title screen menu and from the in-game menu, and it offers completely different options depending on which you’re in. That’s what they call a UI/UX “no no”. 2) The behavior of the title menu is...weird. That’s as profound as I’m going to be on this bullet. 3) From the in-game menu, to find the “Quit” option, one first has to navigate to “Settings”.

How the hell is quitting a “game setting”?

The hit boxes, or colliders, or [whatever the hell they are] are unpolished as well. This version of the game feels much stickier in places than previous releases I’ve played (SNES, PS, DS). I’ve encountered several NPCs whose colliders are perhaps double their actual width/height, making it a real pain to traverse certain areas.

I can’t make up my mind about the anime cutscenes. I was super pumped at first when they added them to the PS release, but now I almost wish they were a separate thing from the gameplay. Watching those moments in anime, only to immediately see them again in the original 16 bits, ends up feeling a little disjointed. Plus, occasionally (specifically I’m thinking of Frog blowing open the cave to Magus’s keep), it causes the sound to break for a few moments when it comes back from the cutscene to the 16-bit animation. I dunno. Mixed feelings.

I’m still having a blast playing through it. It maintains maybe 85% of the original charm—and 85% of Chrono Trigger is still a hell of a party. I’m glad they added the DS content. I’m not overly pissed that they only opted to keep half of Woolsey’s localization (frog still charmingly speaks in Old English, just not when he’s having flashbacks to being a child/young adult for some reason) but modified parts of it to include some of the newer English dialects (featuring phrases like “nom nom nom”). OK. Cool I guess. We need the newer generations to “understand” our art.

OK, that’s more-or-less the end of my thoughts on this. It’s enjoyable, but extremely messy. I don’t recommend this version for first-timers to the game. If you can swing it, play the SNES cart. On a CRT. Play it with scanlines. Sweet, beautiful, hot, sexy scanlines. And if you can’t, get a DS copy.

Actually I’m not so obsessed with the “glory days” that I’d turn my nose up at a full-on remake of this game. Pls. I’d take a modern Chrono Trigger in a heartbeat.

EDIT: 49 hours. Beat the game. Multiple times. Got all 13 endings. The most noticeable of the graphical issues are: Epoch, beating Magus and warping to 65 Million BC, Ocean Palace appearing, Black Omen appearing, random buildings throughout the world maps, racing Johnny, scenes with the Gurus/Janus being warped away from Lavos, Black Omen after killing Mammon, and pretty much all of the endings. The Epoch and ending credits sequences are the worst. Still, tremendously fun—just not impressive looking compared to the product that was completed 23 years ago.

#chronotrigger #gamedev #videogames #16bit #snes #steam #port