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daleisgreat · 3 years

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30 Years of Super Nintendo - Flashback Special

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) recently celebrated its 30th anniversary of the North American launch, so it seems the perfect time to post a Flashback Special honoring it! Suppose you have not perused a past Flashback Special of mine (all linked at the bottom of this entry). In that case, they are essentially my history with the platform over the years, with a little bit of history thrown in, and recounting all my favorite games, accessories, memories, and moments with the system.

Odds are for the average gaming enthusiast reading this, and you probably are familiar with the core details of the SNES launch stateside (if not, then I highly recommend CGQ’s video on it for a quick breakdown). The SNES launched in 1991 when I was eight. I did not have a subscription to any gaming magazines yet, so I most likely first found out about the system around that time from classmates at the time at school, the infamous Paul Rudd commercial, and the fourth season of Roseanne that transpired from 1991-92. I vividly remember the Roseanne episode with her son, DJ, pleading with his parents for the brand new SNES for his birthday gift and how his parents dreaded not being able to afford the system. I covered that episode when I did my Roseanne complete series re-watch here in the year leading up to the relaunch of the show several years ago. It brought back memories of how that was the story with my parents also denying me the much sought-after SNES, saying it cost too much and that I already have an NES to tide me over. ”But mommmmm, the SNES is 16-bits!!!!” Yeah….playing that angle got me nowhere. Kiosks & Friends The first couple of years for the SNES, I mostly remember playing at store kiosks. Super Mario World blew me away from the brief time I played it with it being such a leap from the NES installments. I always ate up the precious few minutes I could procure at a store kiosk if no one were playing Super Mario Kart. One last store kiosk memory was eye-gazing over the impressive WWF Royal Rumble. I loved WWF WrestleFest in the arcade, and for a couple of years, it was the only WWF game that offered up WWF’s marquee over-the-top rope elimination match, the Royal Rumble, and it was endlessly fun to play in the arcade. Fast-forward to playing it on console kiosks around its 1993 release, and I could not eat up enough of that game’s Royal Rumble mode either, and at the time, the graphics seemed like a huge step up from the wrestling games on NES. One of my favorite issues of Nintendo Power is the 50th issue that did a several-page spread on WWF Royal Rumble that I must have thoroughly re-read at least a dozen times.

I read this NP spread of WWF Royal Rumble many times, and it was one of my initially most desired SNES games! Around 1993/94, a couple of friends and classmates started to get the Super Nintendo. An early SNES memory that stuck with me all these years is my grade school friend, Jon-Paul, having me over for his birthday where he rented a SNES console and Street Fighter II: Turbo from the video store, and we played it for several hours straight. Another is spending a lot of 1994 at my neighborhood friend’s place, where we played countless sessions of NBA Jam and Mortal Kombat II. Both games were big on codes and secrets and perfect two-player games. I was just regularly getting into video game magazines at this time and ate up issues of Tips & Tricks, Game Players, and Electronic Gaming Monthly to see what kind of hidden character and other much-rumored codes were making the waves each month for both of these games. Mortal Kombat II especially dominated the code-fervor that season with trying to uncover how to face off against secret characters like Jade, Noob Saibot, and Smoke, and trying to memorize all the input sequences for the game’s infamous Fatalities. Fast forward to late 1995/early 1996, and I still did not have a SNES, but a new neighborhood friend, Rich, just got one and the next several months at his place introduced me to so many SNES games. Rich kind of got me somewhat into RPGs at the time, and while it may not sound fun on paper, there were many times I recall just kind of embracing the role of “armchair gamer.” I did this for games like EVO: Search for Eden, and Eye of the Beholder while keeping an eye out during gameplay to offer whatever suggestions seemed viable.

FFVI was eye-opening to me at the time of what video game narratives were capable of, and I devoured the latest secrets for FFVI discovered in the latest issue of my Game Players subscription that was delivered. The RPG I felt like that I contributed something to was the game that was originally released as Final Fantasy III. That game featured two-player support for battles only, so it was refreshing to help Rich with progressing through the game finally. My two favorite characters to use were Sabin and Cyan. That game especially blew me away with its larger-than-life story with two different game worlds, the momentous opera scene with Celes, the dazzling mode-seven graphics when traveling via airship or Chocobo, constantly getting irked at Shadow whenever he deserted the party, and so many other priceless moments. Over the years, I tried restarting the GBA version on a couple of occasions and regrettably have yet to finish it. Finally Owning a SNES….in 1996

Growing up with divorced parents put me in a unique childhood when it came to gaming. I lived with my mom, who provided for us as best as possible for the three siblings I grew up with, so we only had an NES for us for the longest time. However, when visiting my dad on weekends, he would always be big on hitting up as many garage sales and second-hand stores as possible and would acquire whatever he thought seemed like a bargain. Games-wise, this usually meant he lagged behind a generation because everyone was offloading their Atari VCS/2600s at garage sales for cheap when the NES was king, so I could have a great couple of years to become familiar with the pioneering-era of games on Atari. He then got into the NES scene when the SNES hit in 1991. Sure enough, the same month the N64 launched in America in September 1996 was when he bought a Super Nintendo for the family used at our local Premiere Video. The game we picked up with it was Street Fighter II: Turbo. My dad instantly remarked upon booting it up the noticeable jump in graphics. We played nothing but Capcom’s second Street Fighter game on SNES for a few weekends. I could only finish that game by button mashing into a victory against the final boss, M. Bison, once….with M. Bison. I still have a lot of love for this era of Street Fighter - whether it be for the roster, every character’s stage and theme music, and receiving Nintendo Power’s strategy guide for the game for Christmas and studying it regularly to improve.

After a few weeks, we realized we needed something else than a fighting game, and after another trip to Premiere Video, we came home with Super Mario All-Stars. It felt like the easy choice to go with 16-bit remakes of all four 8-bit versions of the core Mario Bros. games. Every game felt like a whole different game with all-new graphics and sound, and more importantly, being able to save progress midgame. This was a bigger hit with the entire family, and it provided many days of taking turns in its alternating two-player mode to see who could get the farthest in the four Mario games included.

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Make sure to have some tissues by your side as you witness FFIII/VI's infamous "opera" scene. Seriously, this was mind-blowing stuff to 13-year old Dale in 1996. 16-bit Sportsball Fun

After playing a lot of those first two SNES games, I went into this stretch for the next several years, where most of what I played was sports and wrestling games. I attribute this to many multiplayer sessions with Rich, my brother, Joe, and my dad. I know my dad was not all that into sports other than a passing interest in rooting on hometown Minnesota pro-sports teams. Still, I have to give him credit for spending as much time with us and taking the time to learn and become a pretty solid player at teaming up with me in many sports games. It is worth noting that I feel the 16-bit era is probably the last-gen where most of its library of sports games had a relatively simple pick-up-and-play feel that NES games had. That changed a little bit in the final SNES years, where it was usually EA’s games that started to incorporate more realism in their sports games and make use of most of the buttons of the SNES controller. For football, Madden NFL ‘97 was the one I played the most. I played plenty of the Genesis version at Rich's place, so much so that I noticed too many little differences with the SNES version to make it stand out on its own. For 16-bit sports nuts that want to know, the Genesis version had the better playing version, but the SNES had a better overall presentation and more popping audio and visuals. I was part of a small slice of sports gamers big into NES Play Action Football, and the 16-bit version played almost exactly like the NES version, but with a 16-bit upgrade and also has a nifty feature to play games at the high school, college, or NFL level.

NBA Jam and NBA Hangtime dominated my 16-bit sports lineup. The code scene for these games were so intense at the time I had to keep my own binder of notes on them all that I still have today as seen above! As I alluded to earlier, when it came to hoops, I played way too much NBA Jam the first year it was out at my friend’s place. However, the arcade hoops game I played the most on SNES was NBA Hangtime, which was developed by the same people who made Jam. I got that game new for Christmas in 1996 and must have played it regularly with Rich for nearly a year straight. I do not hear that game receive the same level of praise as Jam, but it added a few new fun layers to freshen up the gameplay, like being able to do co-op dunks and earn “Team Fire,” and being able to create players. For more simulation-focused hoops, I played a lot of NBA Live ’96 with my dad, in addition to Nintendo’s NCAA Basketball which appeared like a technical marvel to me that was ahead of its time with the mode-seven camera allowing constant 3D rotation whenever possession of the ball changed and foreshadowed what would become the go-to camera perspective for the next-gen of basketball games. Finally, I will cherish my time with Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball for it being the only hoops game I ever had to consult a guide to figure out how to shoot the damn ball….and for its surprisingly rocking soundtrack. Find out all about it when I broke that game down with the Your Parents Basement crew on their penultimate podcast.

Nintendo incorporated the same camera style into its hockey game, NHL Stanley Cup. Its graphics also impressed me, but it was rather challenging to score a goal, and I did not have as much fun with it. I played EA’s hockey games more on Genesis than SNES, but EA’s baseball game, MLBPA Baseball, was the hardball game I spent the most time with on Super Nintendo. Many years later, I picked up Nintendo’s Ken Griffey Jr. Presents: Major League Baseball, and had some fun with it, but already played the Game Boy version of it to death by the time I picked up the SNES version, and thus did not invest as much time with it as I did with EA’s game. Wanna Wrassle!?

I must have read through this review of WWF RAW countless times in my youth, and seeing how this essentially is a bigger and better version of Royal Rumble only increased my desire to one day own a SNES! The North American wrestling library was a significant step up from the bottom of the stairwell where most of the NES games hung out….but on the SNES, it only made it roughly halfway up the stairs. The aforementioned WWF Royal Rumble provided many hours of fun for its day, but it has not stood the test of time with the button-mashing grapple meter it featured that will obliterate thumbs on the normal difficulty level! Its sequel, WWF RAW, was noteworthy for having more match types available and being one of the first games to have a selectable female wrestler in Luna Vachon, but it too used that same ill-fated grapple meter that has not aged well. WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game is a fun little hybrid of Mortal Kombat and wrestling, but the SNES version is notorious for lacking two wrestlers compared to all other home versions.

For non-WWF games, WCW SuperBrawl Wrestling is rather unremarkable….except for its exceptional wrestler select screen.There were a few interesting unlicensed wrestling games in America. Natsume Championship Wrestling featured a solid wrestling engine but removed/altered the AJPW wrestlers from the Japanese version of the game. Hammerlock had a promising concept of having part of the screen dedicated to nonstop Tecmo-esque cinematics. In contrast, the other half of the screen featured 2D gameplay, but the cameras constantly flipped on screen, to which half was dedicated to cinematics or gameplay. It resulted in it being a jarring mess. Saturday Night Slam Masters is no such mess, however, and is a better hybrid of fighting game meets wrestling game, with this one done by Capcom. It features larger-than-life character sprites, full-on ring entrances with laser lights, and is a fun-playing combination of wrestling and Street Fighter. To top it off, Slam Masters has Final Fight’s Mike Haggar on the roster to boot!

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Joey Pink does a fine job detailing why Capcom's "Street Fighter" in a wrestling ring should not be missed! Ensuring RPGs are here to Stay Aside from watching Rich play some of the RPGs I listed above, and of course, playing Final Fantasy VI with him, I did get a chance to play a few other RPGs on the SNES over the years, and it was not until the last few years that I finally finished a couple of them. In the late 1990s I first started two RPGs that stood out to me at the time because they broke out of the medieval fantasy mold most other RPGs at the time took place in. Shadowrun on the SNES was drastically different from the Genesis version I first encountered at Rich’s. This one still had the same futuristic cyberpunk world setting and terminology, but there were many more dialog options with NPCs that were pivotal in asking the right questions to progress the story. Additionally, the hacking games played out differently and had more of a puzzle theme to them than the action-oriented ones in the Genesis version, and the combat had kind a PC interface where a cursor had to be dragged across the screen on which target to aim at. I still wound up being totally into it and became stuck in the back half of the game before my save data became corrupted. I thought that would end my days with Shadowrun…

SNES Shadowrun remains one of my all-time favorite RPGs as of this writing! The final gauntlet tower was an ordeal and a half to work through, only to face off against a dragon as the final boss! …until nearly two decades later in 2016. I mentioned on past flashback specials how I occasionally guest host on the Your Parents Basement podcast, where they cover a random retro game per episode. In 2016 they asked me if there were any games I had in mind to cover, and Shadowrun felt like worth revisiting and possibly knocking off the “must beat this game” bucket list. I progressed until about a little over halfway through by the time we all met to record and broke down the game, but by that point, I just started to make further progress than my last effort and was determined to see this one through! I was playing on actual SNES hardware and was surprised that the battery still held a save but ran into trouble in the final tower with a gauntlet of enemies on each floor to overcome before the final boss. I looked up a walkthrough and discovered an exploit to grind experience to beef up my character. Eventually, I managed to persevere and finally conquer the final boss, a fire-breathing dragon, to cross finishing Shadowrun off my bucket list! I had a riot podcasting with the YPB crew about it too, so please click or press here to give it a listen if you want to know more about this under-the-radar 16-bit RPG.

Fast forward three years later in 2019, and the awesome YPB hosts of Steve, Huell, and Todd helped me once again restart and finish another SNES RPG that I came close to finishing in the late 1990s before evil corrupt save data reared its ugly head again. This time the game of choice is the uber-expensive Earthbound. Like Shadowrun, that game stood out to me because its setting went against the grain of fantasy settings and instead took place in modern times as grade school kids. The opening levels felt like getting lost in your neighborhood and using childlike items as weapons like Yo-Yos and baseball bats. I do not own that ridiculously expensive game, but by 2019 I did own a SNES Mini (more on that in a bit) that I made sure to abuse the save state and the rewind functions it provided to overcome some troubling bosses in the back half of the game. That final act of the game certainly goes places with its sci-fi twists and feels like an entirely different game, but I still loved it all the same! It felt exhilarating to finally knock this one off my “to do” list as well, and I had just as much fun dissecting it to pieces with the YPB crew that you can check out by click or pressing here. Unfortunately, this is where my extensive hands-on time with SNES RPGs comes to an end. I played a lot of FFIII/VI, and finished Earthbound, and Shadowrun. Sure, I dabbled in several other games but did not put more than an hour or two into them. One of those games is the much-heralded, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and I have no excuse for never sticking with it because I loved the NES original. It was the GBA re-release I played, and I think I was spreading myself thin while playing and reviewing too many games simultaneously. Lufia and Breath of Fire II were another pair of RPGs I put a couple of hours into that both left me with promising first impressions, but there was a whole other reason why I did not go back to those again, and that is because then I was waist-deep at the time in….. Discovering Emulation Right around the time my family acquired its first computer in the fall of 1997 was when I found out about emulation. It seemed way too good to be true to easily download and play games right on the computer, especially when factoring in the SNES was at the tail end of its lifecycle, and there were still new games releasing for it. As an unemployed 9th grader at the time, I sampled countless 8- and 16-bit ROMs with the SNES games I was the most curious about. A few of the RPGs in the previous paragraph being prime examples of the ones I invested the most time into. It proved to be overwhelming with so many choices, but I took a long sabbatical after a year or so of taking in the emulation scene after the family computer crashed and I lost all the save data I had amassed in so many games.

It has been interesting to see how emulation has evolved over the years from programs like SNES9X and Retroarch to being incorporated into machines like the MISTer, RetroPi, and Retron 5. Nintendo has learned to embrace official, legal emulation over the years with purchasable digital classic games on systems such as the Wii, WiiU, and 3DS. Having a stable income as an adult now many years later, I feel guilty for embracing the emulation scene so hard in my teenage years, so much so that whenever Nintendo re-releases one of its classic hits several times over, I choose to purchase it again (well…usually at a sale price) to redeem myself. Keeping SNES Alive Today

Over the years, I find myself diving into retro games versus the latest and greatest coming out. I am a fan of the various SNES hardware updates/clones, both officially from Nintendo and unofficially from other companies, which has kept my SNES and other retro game fandom blood flowing over the decades. I am unsure if it feels right to lump it in here, but the Super Game Boy lead to me getting a lot of extra life out of my SNES. Playing Game Boy games on the big screen was a big deal to me back then, considering it was always a pain to make out what was happening on the non-backlit handheld. For some reason, those special border screens that would eventually have funny animations after being left idle for so long made an impression on me. Game Boy games with the “Super Game Boy Enhanced” logo on the front of the box usually have their own exclusive border and special color palette. I loved the Mole Mania and Donkey Kong Land borders the most! I thought it was rad that around 15-20 special enhanced Super Game Boy titles featured multiplayer support with two SNES controllers. They consisted almost entirely of Bomberman and fighting games, but it was still a cool feature nonetheless. The handheld Hyperkin SupaBoy is the unauthorized SNES take on the Sega Nomad by having a portable SNES. It is a bit on the bulky side, but it has a rechargeable battery, and its support has been flawless with my entire SNES library. Another Hyperkin product I got a lot of use out of is the Retron 5. I know that particular clone system is controversial with retro game enthusiasts based on the unauthorized emulators it implements. However, the user interface and emulation support made it possible for me to make record progress in many SNES games by taking advantage of save states and its optional Game Genie-esque cheats library. The SNES Classic Edition is an excellent official piece of hardware from Nintendo that has the pint-sized SNES pre-installed with 21 SNES games, one of which is previously unreleased Star Fox 2. It has an adorably intuitive interface and supports game rewinding and save states, which made it the way I was finally able to finish Earthbound. It was also surprisingly not-so-difficult to plug into a PC and import a bunch of SNES ROMs into. Other companies like 8bitdo made that system extra convenient by making their recommended wireless controllers compatible with it!

If you did not grow up with the SNES, then both of these options are great entry points for those looking to move on beyond emulators. The Analogue Super NT may have been pushing it too much price-wise. When it comes down to the nuts and bolts of emulation tech, I am not a wizard by any means, except that by all sources, it sounds like the Super NT offers the best hardware emulation with its FPGA technology. It makes SNES games appear as pristine as possible on an HD/4KTV without any or as minimal of the fuzziness that happens whenever I try plugging in the composite/RCA cables from a base SNES system into a 4K/HDTV. For those unfamiliar with the Super NT, this video from the My Life in Gaming crew does a thorough dissection of everything it has to offer. The list of options in there is intimidating to mess around with, but this sounds like the way to go if one wants to keep playing their cartridges……although I have to admit I am pretty satisfied currently with the Retron 5 and SNES Classic Edition.

Odds are some of you are quite a bit younger than me and grew up post-SNES lifecycle. Not interested in going down the pricey road of hunting down old cartridges and hardware, and do not want to dabble on the dark side of illegal emulation? Then a terrific alternative is if you have a Switch with Nintendo’s $20/year online service membership and taking advantage of the Nintendo Switch Online and Super Nintendo Switch Online digital game portals. It has unlimited access to the slate of games on there, along with save points as long as your membership remains active. The implementation of save states and the user interface has also improved noticeably over the emulation used for NES & SNES Classic Editions. More importantly, it adds the feature to play online with a friend. Last year I played online SNES games with my nephew, who was wrapping up 6th grade at the time, and this was his first time playing SNES games. He loves Mario Kart 8 on Switch, and so when the first game we played was the original Super Mario Kart, I could not help but crack up when he instantly remarked, “Dale, this looks old!” He eventually came around, and then we had some fun playing co-op , Joe & Mac . A couple of years ago, on my Genesis Flashback Special, I made sure to reminisce of my fond memories of the summer I spent playing nonstop Sega Channel. These NES/SNES Switch portals are essentially the Sega Channel, but far better because it does not cost $15 a month (in 1994 dollars which equals $27.63 today per Google), offers multiple save states, and ability to play online for only $20 a year!!! Kids, get your parents to hook you up now!!! Miscellaneous Quick Hits

SNES games were the most common denominator on six of the 13 episodes I guest hosted on the retro game podcast, Your Parents Basement. Check out their full archives by click or pressing here. -Turns out I did quite a few guest hosting spots on Your Parents Basement Podcast for SNES games. For those that are podcasting fiends and dug the three episodes I linked to already, then I will link you to three more SNES themed episodes I appeared on where I breathed in the Mode 7 skies of Pilotwings, embraced Capcom’s action-platformer prowess in X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse, and made sure not to miss any Gatorade and Wheaties health pick-ups in Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City.

-The SNES controller is my favorite pre-disc console era controller. It kept the similar button layout of the NES controller but rounded off the edges into its iconic “dog bone” feel so the controller no longer cramped in your hands! Throw in the two extra face buttons and two additional shoulder buttons, and it opened up all kinds of deeper gameplay possibilities! It made it perfect for most fighting games that used almost all the face and shoulder buttons. I found the shoulder buttons were also smartly implemented in NBA Jam/Hangtime for being assigned to use for turbo speed functionality. As far as other SNES controllers/peripherals go, since I loved the NES Zapper, I always wanted to try the Super Scope, but as a kiddo, its bazooka-sized proportions were kind of intimidating. It still kind of bums me out all these years I never got to experience it with epics like Yoshi’s Safari, T2: The Arcade Game, and Tin Star. I never had an opportunity to use the SNES mouse either, which I kind of regret all these years later after seeing all the marvelous creations from experts at Mario Paint, and it was cool to see some PC ports like Civilization, Doom, and Wolfenstein 3D take advantage of SNES Mouse compatibility.

-The 16-bit era was when fighting games exploded, and as you can tell above, I spent a lot of time with Street Fighter II: Turbo, and the first two Mortal Kombat games. Other than that, though, the only other fighting game on SNES I put significant time into was TMNT Tournament Fighters. It was released at the tail end of the TMNT-mania when the cartoon peaked at its popularity. The game itself was a surprisingly competent licensed fighting game from Konami, and tried its best to feel like a solid Street Fighter-clone. Speaking of them pesky turtles… -…TMNT IV: Turtles in Time was the only beat-em-up brawler I put considerable time into on the SNES. I have vague memories of trying others out once or twice like The Peace Keepers, and Super Double Dragon, but Turtles in Time was the one I frequently revisited over the years. It is a superb rendition of the arcade game, with SNES-exclusive levels like the Technodrome that had a fantastic first-person boss fight against Shredder, where lowly Foot Soldiers had to be chucked right at him to defeat Shredder. The soundtrack is one of my favorite SNES scores, so much so that I went all-in to get the for it! I have so many great memories of this game, with the highlight being my friend Matt and I revisiting this for complete runs of it once every year or two for about a dozen years.

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Turtles in Time and FFIII/VI are my favorite SNES soundtracks, but Turtles in Time I own on vinyl so I will embed it here in all its glory for you to enjoy as well!

-The SNES library had a quality slate of racing games. Super Mario Kart quickly rose to the top of the ranks and was always fun to bust through a GP with a friend. Street Racer was one of the first kart-clones to hit in 1994, and for some reason, that one always stuck with me. As did it being one of the few games to have four-player split-screen support with all four screens being horizontal! Rock ‘n Roll Racing is another killer arcade racer on SNES; think of a more beefed up RC Pro-AM, but with a good dose of heavy metal mixed in. This past year saw it re-released as part of the Blizzard Arcade Collection for everyone to experience it! I remember trying out F-Zero at a store kiosk around SNES launch, but was too young at eight years old at the time to fully grasp its style of futuristic racing (or that the name was a riff on F1 racing until a couple of years ago). I was more into a game similar to its style that was the trilogy of Top Gear titles. Uniracers was a quirky racer I enjoyed with its unique aesthetic and one-wheeled racers taking advantage of their nature in races filled with jumps and loop-de-loops….too bad about Pixar holding a grudge against Nintendo and legally forcing them to yank it off shelves. Nintendo’s other racer, Stunt Race FX, was ahead of its time with the polygonal FX-based graphics running pretty chunky on the SNES. Still, it is a commendable piece of 16-bit tech they were just barely able to keep running at a passable-enough framerate. Another FX-chip game that did not originally gel with me was…

-…the original Star Fox. Being 10 when it released in 1993, I thought those polygonal graphics looked blocky and horrendous and would have none of it! Many years later, I would revisit it and rightfully come around on it! -Another Nintendo-published game that received a lot of hype was Donkey Kong Country with its cutting-edge 3D models. They were plastered all over gaming mags at the time. I briefly recall trying out the first and second of the three Donkey Kong Country games on SNES. However, I did not put more time into them because I beat Donkey Kong Land on Game Boy before our family got a SNES, which was just a watered-down port with some remixed levels for the handheld. I enjoyed my time with it, but its disappointingly blunt “congratulations” ending left a bad impression on me, and I never felt like giving the other entries a serious go all these years.

-Some may be wondering why there has yet not been anything dedicated to the pair of Super Mario World titles and Super Mario RPG? Super Mario World was probably one of the first SNES games I tried when I visited my older brother at his first apartment in the early 90s. I think the heavy-duty graphics and trying to comprehend attacking with Yoshi proved to be too much for eight or nine-year-old me at the time. I played it a few other times in my 20s, hanging out with coworkers on retro game nights, and had fun with it, but I think since I was exposed to the NES trilogy more and played the hell out of All-Stars, that those were the versions I preferred more. I appreciated how Nintendo stepped up to Sega’s edgier marketing at the time with Nintendo’s “Play it Loud” marketing campaign. Unfortunately, I think their ad for Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island was a bit too extreme for 12-year old Dale at the time. That ad (click here for it if you are feeling daring)was forever planted in my subconscious and always crossed my mind and indirectly caused me to avoid Yoshi’s Island for all these years. I did pick up Super Mario RPG and it is on my “bucket list” of games to play as well. I am holding off on it all these years because I was hanging out with Matt one day, and he explained how he was having a tough time with the final boss, Smithy. Well, he wanted to give me a quick demo to show how unforgiving of a challenge the boss was….but for some reason his clutch gaming skills kicked in right then, and he beat Smithy and was exposed to the ending right then and there!

-As far as other tough SNES games go, the two most challenging for me are easily Contra III: The Alien Wars and Zombie Ate My Neighbors. Contra III is like the first two games on steroids. I love the boss battles and intense walk-n-shoot chaos, but do not love constantly dying in one shot! Zombies Ate My Neighbors is another fun action-platformer that is also equally tough to make it farther than a few levels in unless you seriously dedicate yourself to it. Hey, both of these games also saw re-releases this past year on current consoles with the Contra Anniversary Collection and Zombies Ate My Neighbors & Ghoul Patrol set for those wanting to experience 16-bit nail-biting difficulty (but with save state support!).

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I hope this excellent video review from the quintessential retro video game source, Jeremy Parish, suffices for my lack of any meaningful Super Mario World memories here. -In 1997, I was hyped for a late SNES release, the original Harvest Moon. The farm/life/dating-sim series is still around today from publisher Natsume (as well as the original developers parting ways with Natsume and delivering their own competing Story of Seasons series). During the SNES era, I spent several summers out on a farm. I appreciated rural life's solitude and free spirit lifestyle, and that first Harvest Moon game perfectly encapsulated that. Trying to determine the best way to spend the day tending to the fields, livestock and managing a social/family life was surprisingly fun and engaging! Harvest Moon remain one of two games that I submitted a blurry Polaroid photo to Nintendo Power’s “Arena” high score section. I cannot recall if my score got posted or not.

-The original Sim City port on SNES received a lot of love around the SNES launch window, with Nintendo giving it a unique makeover with bonus Nintendo characters in it and an exclusive tutor in the form of Dr. Wright to ease everyone into the simulation gameplay. I never played too much of that version, but one night at Rich’s, the game we decided to rent that night was Sim City 2000. That one was released way late into the SNES lifecycle and lacked any Nintendo extras the first SNES game had. Still, we stayed up all night playing it and looking at our daily news recap and mayor approval ratings and trying to figure out where to stop underwater pipe blockages! It ran slowwww on the SNES, but we tolerated it fine enough at the time because I had yet to play the PC version. Eventually, I would check out the PC version and came away surprised with so much I had to put up within the SNES game. -For those wanting to dare the Super Famicom scene, there are a plethora of great games that never made their way stateside, and better yet, a hearty chunk of them have received English fan translations. I am partial to the FirePro wrestling games that never made it here that are vastly superior to all the American wrestling games I broke down above, BS Out of Bounds Golf is an addicting take on miniature golf, the original Star Ocean, and the Back to the Future platformer that was not a five-star classic by any means, but blew away the poor NES and Genesis games that did release here. If you are not that familiar with the Super Famicom library, this top 50 list from RVG Fanatic is a great place to start your research and very much helped clueing me into a bunch of Super Famicom games I had little-to-no knowledge of. Conclusion

If you are around my age reading this, you may be wondering why I have not gone on about the fabled “16-bit Wars” by now. Rest assured, I experienced it in the lunchroom and at recess and in gaming magazines at the time. I devoured all the side-by-side screenshots in gaming mags of dual-platform releases to see if I could spot which version was better. I want to say back then, I sided with the SNES because I grew up with the NES, but that does not seem like a fair choice since I did not own a SNES until 1996. Reflecting on it, although I experienced a fair amount of RPGs and other games on SNES with Rich, I primarily played endless hours of Genesis games with him back at the time. So whenever I hung out with Rich, I considered myself a Genesis fan, and when I finally got a SNES and grew my SNES library, I considered myself a SNES fan and avoided a lot of the “console wars” trash talk. For younger readers here who want to learn more about the fervor of the 16-bit wars, the book, Console Wars, and its corresponding documentary (which is currently only available on Paramount+/CBS All Access sadly) are my recommended ways to absorb all that hoopla. I will cherish all of the past 30 years of SNES memories and hope you have enjoyed reminiscing with me for the last several thousand words. If you want to hear more of my SNES memories in podcast form, I have a few SNES-centric episodes of my old podcast I recently un-vaulted and have embedded below for your pleasure. They have some of the friends I repeatedly mentioned above as co-hosts that share their SNES experiences and memories, so please load up a random SNES “podcast game” and boot one of these podcasts up for fitting background noise….

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10 years ago I did a 20th anniversary SNES special with Matt!

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Here is the history of RPG series episode dedicated to the 16-bit era.

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Finally, here is Matt and I hosting the 16-bit installment of our history of comic book games series. Bonus Overtime

It would not be a Flashback Special without one random oddball bonus story to wrap it up with. The only Kirby game I ever finished receives that honor. One day, my brother and his friend Jake were over at my place. We were discussing SNES games at some point, and Jake mentioned how Kirby Super Star is his all-time favorite. I said how I never played it and did not think anything of it at the time, but the next time I met up with him and my brother, Jake had the copy of that game with him and insisted on borrowing it to me and said not to give it back until I finished it. I felt this sudden obligation to play through it as a priority, so I did not feel like I was keeping his game hostage. Luckily, Kirby Super Star is a damn fun game, which the front of the box labels as “8 Games in One!” Most of the games are abbreviated-length adventures of only a handful of missions in their unique theme of levels, and a few of the games are mini-games like a race against King DeDeDe. Regardless, almost every game provided that trademark Kirby lighthearted fun and was hard to put down! Kirby’s Dream Course is also a lot of fun on SNES, and is an interesting take of Kirby meets miniature golf! With that anecdote, I will wrap up yet another Flashback Special. Thank you for sticking with me this far, and If you dug reading about my trials and tribulations with Nintendo’s 16-bit machine, please take a look at the other Flashbacks I have linked below!

My Other Gaming Flashbacks Dreamcast 20th Anniversary GameBoy 30th Anniversary Genesis 30th Anniversary NES 35th Anniversary PSone 25th Anniversary PS2 20th Anniversary PSP 15th Anniversary and Neo-Geo 30th Anniversary Saturn and Virtual Boy 25th Anniversaries TurboGrafX-16 30th and 32-X 25th Anniversaries Xbox 360 15th Anniversary

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highwarlockkareena · 3 years

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From planning to posting, share your process for making creative content!

To continue supporting content makers, this tag game is meant to show the entire process of making creative content: this can be for any creation.

RULES: When your work is tagged, show the process of its creation from planning to posting, then tag 5 people with a specific link to one of their creative works you’d like to see the process of. Use the tag #showyourprocess so we can find yours!

Thank you ali for the tag on this collaboration with @nyx4, ali! @wendashanren

tagging: (I mostly talk about collaboration for this one but if you check #showyourprocess most people talk about how they made their creations or check my first post about giffing here!)

@elysean for this set @timothyolyphant for this set @sugardaddyahxu for this set @jun-hee for this set @bloominflowers for this art

I wanted to collaborate with Jackie on a set. We’d talked about it anyway, and thought about what we could work on. So when I saw this request on mdzsnet, i knew this was the one for us.

wei wuxian, black/red, cql, yp!wwx/sunshot campaign scenes/nightless city scenes, the lyrics from "the war" by syml

I knew Jackie loved Syml, so she’d want to make this request, so I put both our names down to claim it, then when Jackie was online checked if she’d prefer to do this one solo, or shared. She loved the idea of a collab, so we got to work.

First we listened to the song a couple of times, thinking about how it worked for wei wuxian. then we broke down which lyrics we wanted to use and the general scenes for them.

We split them out across a number of gifs (originally it was 4 but I don’t have a screenshot of that) with a general idea of scenes we’d work from for each. As you can see, I do plan but my notes tend to be sparse reminders rather than detailed. jackie wanted to dig the angst knife in deep and wanted the ‘my war is over’ to coincide with wei wuxian falling off the cliff, so we worked back from that for our scene choices.

Jackie:

Originally it was going to be 4 gifs, all of them with the lyrics that made it to the final set, but it would have been too much text on each gif so first we decided on a gif without text in the middle before deciding on spreading out the song a bit more which led to the 7 gif set.

We started making gifs 1 and 3. in my usual fashion i made about 10 gifs to pick which scenes i wanted to work with & jackie made 1 because she isn’t an idiot.

Jackie:

Kareena does make a ton of gifs just to choose one or two, which is both amusing and amazing. I have proof!

Luckily we’re both admins on WoHDaily, so we used the drafts in there to share a post we could both edit gifs in & out of.

I’d wanted to do a silhouette edit similar to one in @lan-xichens lovely overlay tutorial, but it wasn’t coming out the way i’d liked, so I had to keep trying different things until it worked as I’d envisioned.

I finished a touch before Jackie who had taken time to pick emotionally devastating scenes for her gif, so we used my red throughout both, but then tweaked each gif with feedback from each other.

Jackie:

When we first decided on the scenes, I waited for her to do the first gif so I could match her colors. Once she made the first one, I showed her this template I made so we could visualize how it’d look.

Then we moved on to the next gifs. This was harder, because we didn’t want to overload the set by making every single gif super fancy, so we tried out a variety of things to see what would hang together nicely.

Above is an example of one idea of mine that got discarded. I think i had 3 iterations before we got to the gif below.

Jackie:

I then moved on to gif #6 and I made a gif which Kareena completely shut down. She said, Jackie, this is really ugly. I accepted it, because she is the one with the skills here, and because she was right. (KAREENA: this is a lie - the gif is *gorgeous* but it just has a lot going on in an already busy gifset.)

There was too much going on in that gif and it didn’t really fit with the set we were making. The gif we ended up with fit much better and I’m glad she said something. For the last gif, I showed her a few shots and we both agreed on those two (wwx crying, walking backwards on the cliff). I made a couple of gifs that Kareena was nice enough to say were gorgeous, but I thought they sucked. Third one is what we ended up with.

For me, most of the work was in getting the scenes to fit the lyrics and to work with the color scheme that the requester gave us.

We continued to work this way, making ideas and sharing them, tweaking or discarding or remaking as necessary until we were both happy with the gifs. It wasn’t too hard to get them to work as a set, it was mostly about communication and honesty. jackie and i get on well enough to crit each others gifs without worry, so we both liked what was created. We pushed each other, Jackie knows I’m very lazy & she didn’t let me slack. I pushed her in other areas so that we both tried out new skills.

Once the seven gifs were made, it was time for typography! We spent a little time discussing our love of simple fonts, sharing a few examples, before I handed over to jackie as the typography queen.

Now, fonts:

Yup, I like simple fonts and for the typography not to take over the whole set. Luckily, Kareena feels the same way, so early on we decided on two fonts, one of them to highlight a word here or there. I showered her some fonts samples, we agreed on a style, and then I got to work.

The fonts used were:

Ostrich Sans https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/ostrich-sans

Memories https://www.dafont.com/memories-2.font

I kept it simple, just looking where the text would look best. I didn’t know how to wrap text around a shape before, which is what I wanted for gif #3. Turns out it’s very easy and people probably know this already but I’m a ps noob (lie). Still putting this here just in case anyone wants to know.

Using the Ellipse Tool/Custom Shape Tool, I made a circle 2px bigger than the bw gif i wanted to wrap the text around. I didn’t want the shape to be visible, so I chose Path there. (If you choose shape, the actual shape will be visible in whatever color you have chosen)

With the Type Tool, just hover over the line of the shape and a squiggly thing will appear. Click and start typing. I then dragged the text and fit it over the bw gif. I made the shape on the side so I could see it clearly, but you can make it over the actual shape you want the text to wrap around. Listen, this is the best I can describe it ✌

We discussed how to post the set. Since it was a group effort, should one of us post it or should we post it via the net? Since we’ve also got another request lined up to collaborate on, we decided that I would post this set & Jackie would post the next one.

TLDR:

It was fun, it was about communication and compromise. Pushing each other in our weak spots, nitpicking at each gif to make them the best we could, agreeing why one gif might not work in this set. It was about mixing two styles but still creating something we both liked! It was enough fun we have two more collaborations planned, just to keep having fun and to keep learning.

#showyourprocess #collaboration #my stuff #nyx4

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zuffer-weird-girl · 4 years

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Request: 'Can I pretty pretty please have that angel's quirk S/o angsty? Like, she has her wings cutted or-OH OH! When Shigaraki is going to get Chisaki's other arm and instead grabs her wing because she got in the way to save him? And when Kai just shouts she is like 'is alright hon... you didn't like them much anyway...' with that smile that even made Kai cry?'

Dammit! Dammit! DAMMIT-!

Why can't you fly faster?! The wind was even helping you for crying out loud!

The moment you heard the new recruits of the Shie Hassaikai, Toga and Twice, speakinv with that man that a few days ago Chisaki had overhauled his arm about some fucked up plan about revenge you had widen your eyes in terror and sneaked out form the mess of cops and heroes... you could get to the rest of the gang later, now you needed only one thing.

Prevent the leader of the league to take your boyfriend's arms away... it wasn't fair! They did threw the first move in some way!

You wiped your tears away with a scoff... you should have been there to calm down the other gang and your boyfriend before Magne, it was her name right? Attacked him... you could have prevented this with your quirk even!

But Kai would be so worried and angry... he insisted that he was making a "cure" for this world... but still he preferred taht you only used your quirk on emergencies.

Well. Fuck his arrogant ass. This IS an emergency.

You widened your eyes in horror when you spoted the van that your boyfriend was had just crashed with another and fell down.

"Kai!" You whimpered, your wings hurting from how much force you were using them to get there faster.

"... did you come to kill me?" He asked hoarsely when Shigaraki just kicked his bed out of the van... only getting back to his senses when that compress guy used his quirk to take one of his arms.

"Which one is the finished product? Oh well..." the blue haired man rasped out, taking the quirk erasing bullets for himself as Chisaki darkened his eyes.

"Give it back."

Shigaraki stared at him numbly before slowly returning back to talking.

"You wanna know something, Overhaul?" He raised his hand a bit, coming in the direction of his arm "Someone who despises quirks so much-"

"GET YOUR HANDS OFF FROM HIM!" He widened his eyes at recognizing the voice coming from above before you simply kicked Shigaraki on his chest from all of your strenght, the force and the impact from how fast you were flying helped you a bit.

"(Y/n)..." he spoke almost in disbelief. The thought of those heroes laying their hands on you was enough to leave him enraged, but you were there... howering over him like a animal would protect their partner or puppy, panting to a point he was even worried you were going to hyperventilate.

You turned a bit your head to look at him, that angry gaze dissapearing as only a worried and scary frow formed when you looked at him.

"Are you okay?" You asked and almost cried at seing that one of his arms were already cutted...

You weren't that late but you weren't so soon either...

"Well, looks like not only now I have to take down the king but the queen as well." Shigaraki rasped out and you widen your eyes at seing Mr. Compress threatening to lay his hands back on Chisaki.

He gritted his teeth before you conjured a celestial light on your hands and threw directly at the man merciless... Fighting for you was never right, but those people were trying to hurt your boyfriend... and even despite knowing all of that fucked up stuff he did, you couldn't help but still love him... after all, if everyone knew about his own past like you did, some people would even understand why he acted like this.

"(Y/n), get out form here-" Your boyfriend said in anger yet worry as you tried to unlock those handcuffs.

"I am not leaving you here Kai!" You shouted before getting back up again at sieng a raven haired man going to send blue flames towards you guys.

You flapped once your wings in such a strenght that it was enough to bring the flames to an end, the fire quirk ised even arching both eyebrows in amusement at your skills.

You did the same thing as you did with the other man, but this I guy dodged your attack just on the last second...

Chisaki was still trying to set his left arm free at least... hsi girlfriend was out there fighting for him even despite after all he did...

What kinda of a a man was he?!

Shigaraki got close and looked a bit at you before smirking sadistically down at Chisaki.

"That slot of yours got some guts."

"Shut the hell up Shigaraki." He growled as he squirmed violently on that bed, while the blue haired man only smiled even more wickedly.

"Huh... te me one thing Overhaul." He lifted his hand up again "Is that woman there valuable to you?"

Just on that moment you went to check up on Kai you saw the horrible scene in front of you. Your legs moved without thinking and you knew it that you wouldn't be able to reach your arm out to push Shigaraki Tomura from there... but your wings were faster and bigger.

"NO!" You shouted and jumped while opening your wings, one of them being touched accidentally by Shigaraki's all five fingers.

You and Kai widened your eyes in utter horror as you let out a painful sound through gritted teeth and fell on your knees besides Kai.

"(Y/N)! NO!" He ripped his arm out but his body was still caged by the straps.

Shigaraki lifted his hand up to look at it with false amusement before looking down at you without any signs of pity again.

"That was... unexpected."

Chisaki let out a angry shout before going to touch the grow with his bare hand before Shigaraki just yanked you by your left wing and brought the knife to cut it out the last remains of the one he touched.

You let out a pained and tortured cry at this as Chisaki immediately retreated his hand back.

"Huh. With this you at least learns how to think... interesting." He looked at you "Tell me honestly how can you had attures this dipshit?"

You wanted to scream and send curses to him that God would be ashamed of you... but the pain of having your wing taken off like that was just too hurtful.

"Let her go." Kai growled before he winced and slapped Compress arm out of him when he had injected something on his neck without noticing.

He suddenly started to feel drowsy... his vision getting blurred but getting better when Shigaraki brought you and him closer to Chisaki's eyes.

"Since we wanted out revenge, consider this as a little bonus!" He smiled widely at him before placing his last finger on your wings... cutting it off the moment he saw his quirk effect almost reaching your back. "Now look at this! Wasn't I generous? You still have your 'angel', a fallen and wingless one!"

You fell back in your knees... a hurtful and pathetic cry left your lips along with a sob as you reached behind your back only to wince at touching just close enough to your skin...

And before you could even blink Shigaraki and his commurates had gotten out of there as the sounds of sirens were heard form afar.

You opened your eyes again to see him, the effect of the drug completly gone as his pupils trembled even at the sign of the last remains of your wings, now merely dust, spread on the concrete like some dust...

"Angel... y-your- your-"

"That's alright..." you whispered with a sad smile, making his heart clench on a unforgivable way... he took notice that drops of blood were dripping down form your back and falling into the ground and the sign made him want to puke in horror and disgust.

"... you never liked them anyway, right? At least part of my quirk is gone now.." you smiled at him and closed your eyes in favor of stopping the tears form the pain you were feeling.... a failed attempt.

He widened his eyes even more at your words, guilt and sorrow finally hitting him like a damn train as you trembling hands undies the straps he had on his body.

The moment he got into a sitting position he couldn't help but let out a sob, the amount of events tht just happened being so much even for him to take... he muffled it with his remaking hand but he could feel his tears spilling like a waterfall from his eyes at the swing the pool of blood close to you. You furrowed your eyebrows before he pushed you against his chest.

He knew it that he couldn't use his quirk to get your wings back... they being cutted out and disintegrated gave him no possible choices of returning those huge, annoying and beautiful white wings back...

He let out a pathetic cry before burring his face in the crook of your neck, clinging on you but careful enough with his grip due to your possible pain.

#overhaul x reader #overhaul scenario #fanfic overhaul #overhaul #chisaki kai imagine scenario #kai chisaki x reader #chisaki kai x reader #chisaki kai #kai chisaki #bnha imagine #bnha characters #bnha villains #bnha #bnha x reader #my writing #zuffer writings

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cosmic-navel-gazin · 4 years

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This is something a bit different from me, but in light of the recent announcement from Ubisoft that there’s going to be a remake of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time coming out in January 2021, I thought I’d share some thoughts.

(This started out small but got outta hand so super long post incoming, no spoilers for the games)

So first off, a bit of my history with the original game.

I’m a big fan of the Prince of Persia (PoP) franchise, and I’ll fully admit that nostalgia plays a big part in it. You see, in many ways this 2003 classic was my real entryway drug into the world of videogames.

It wasn’t the first videogame I had ever played. My friends had consoles, there were some games on the school computers, but I didn’t own games as a kid. As far as my parents were concerned, these were all the spoils and soul damning devices of Lucifer himself. You know how it is, every generation goes through this thing of blaming all the world’s problems on a new artform: rock and roll, comic books and then videogames.

So yeah, a gaming console or buying games for the home computer was a BIG NO-NO!

But of course, the more an authority figure says you can’t have something, the more you want and crave it. It was only a matter of time until the opportunity presented itself to me.

And then the day finally came.

It was just me and a couple of friends, going to this new magazine store near the school. And there it was: the dvd case that came with a gaming mag for like 5 euros if I remember correctly, stupid cheap for such a great game.

There was doubt, there was fear, there was anxiety. I didn’t know much about the game, only the old 1989 DOS Prince of Persia:

This had the same name but looked different. I was seduced immediately.

The case stared longingly at me:

It’s not my fault, I was bewitched and I bought it.

My symbol of rebellion, my first big transgression, and my first real treasured posession that I bought with hard earned money.

PoP:The Sands of Time was my original sin so to say:

Accurate representation of what happened that day

I furiously installed the game as soon as my parents left the house. Played it for a couple of hours and stood in awe at the thing - the cinematics, the cool parkour moves, the arabian nights setting, the time manipulation to undo mistakes when platforming or in combat, the Prince breaking the fourth wall saying:”no no no, that’s not what happened, let me start over” whenever I died and got a game over…

You have not experienced true fear if at some point in your life you didn’t feel the cold sweat running down your back as you hear the very distinct sound of your parents’ car arriving when you’re doing something “prohibited”.

As soon as I heard that sound, I quickly quit the game, uninstaled it (I could not run the risk of them finding out I had tainted their machine with a videogame *gasp!*), and ran to my room to hide the game before opening the door for them.

Neetheless to say, I never made much progress since I had to start over every time after quitting and uninstalling the thing. I would just play those first couple of hours over and over, never knowing how the story progressed, but I was happy all the same. At one point I knew every line of dialogue, every music cue, every sound effect of that beginning part. It would be some years before I got my first laptop and finally managed to complete it.

All of this to say that the game means a lot to me. Not just as a product or piece of entertainment. This wasn’t casually playing on someone’s gameboy advance or PS2 to have a bit of fun and pass the time.

This was more intimate.

It was just me; the game; a dark room and a blanket; and a sincere and charming, simple but compelling story told seamlessly through mechanics that only enhanced it. This was me witnessing gameplay and storytelling going hand in hand in a way that even many of my other favourite games don’t do, or don’t do as well (there’s usually some disconnect where a game only manages to really excel at one but not the other).

Ok, so on the announcement and trailer:

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As a big fan you might think I was super hyped for this.

But I gotta say…no, not really.

I’m not super angry, but I’m not really excited either honestly. And I don’t think it’s just the rough and uncanny character models and animation that people are pointing out all over (although that doesn’t help).

I guess to talk a bit on that, I should stress out that my problem isn’t that it doesn’t look realistic enough. To be honest, and this is going to sound rich from a big Witcher 3 fan, I think that the gaming industry overall, moreso big tripple A titles, seem to have this unhealthy obsession with photorealism. Like, I don’t need to see the characters’s pores to care about these polygon people. Strong art direction is what I feel is more valuable. I just don’t think this arms race to photorealism is sustainable. Games are taking longer to make and fund, and I’d rather have dev teams spend more time polishing and refining the games’ mechanics and/or story if the trade-off is less “realistic” graphics.

It might just be personal preference, but I wish we were getting more stylized character and world design. Go look at some screenshots for Pathologic 2, a game that came out last year that hits that sweet spot between full-blown cartoony/caricature and realistic by today’s standards:

And I think that is somewhat what they were going for with this remake’s character models (or I hope it was). But it’s still not quite there, hopefully they’ll work on improving those so they can hit that sweet spot also.

(in defense of my hipocrisy and love of The Witcher 3, I think the more realistic look was appropriate for the world they were portraying, it benefits from it. However I don’t think I would love it any less if it had less detailed models and environments)

One last thing on the graphics.

I will say this though, at least from the footage we see in the new trailer the team seems to be capitalizing on colour. Big vibrant reds, blues, whites and yellows in the environment look great, and really captures the 1.001 nights/arabian nights feel that I absolutely love. I appreciate that since there’s always this tendency for remakes to suck all the colour and life from the original (in both games and movies), regardless if it fits the setting and tone or not.

Anyway, I think the reason I’m very much without a big reaction is that I believe the 2003 original is a true classic, a masterpiece even - I guess I should stress out that when I say masterpiece, I don’t mean it’s perfect. Just that the whole is bigger and better than the sum of its parts, that the things it does right, it does so right, that it completely overshadows the flaws.

The story, the art direction, the gameplay (the holy trinity of platforming, combat and puzzle solving), the brilliant introduction of the dagger of time as a gameplay and story mechanic (one of my favourite mechanics in all of gaming), the music, the charming duo that is the Prince and Farah, the tight pacing with the game being just the right length and not overstaying its welcome, the outstanding level design where you’re never stuck doing one thing for too long (the game is always juggling between combat, story, platforming and puzzles, mixing and matching)…

Looking at all these things, I just really don’t think we need a remake because I don’t think there’s that many glaring terrible flaws that could justify it.

Adding more scenes and content could be good, or it might backfire: bloat and ruin the game’s already excelent pacing and fluidity (which I think is the main keyword that better describes the original, everything flows superbly). The original was only 6-8 hours long and it is better for it. I’m not confident that adding dozens of hours of gameplay like the big tittles today would help at all.

The only real improvements I can see are:

tweeking and perfecting the combat (I’ve seen it mentioned that they’re implementing a targeting system which sounds good);

perhaps also better Farah’s A.I during combat when you have to help protect her from swarms of enemies;

Maybe throw in a couple more enemy types? The cut sand tigers for example?

usual things like adding the option of subtitles, add the ability to skip cutescenes;

But other than that…

I don’t even think the graphics of the original look bad. They’ve aged of course, with the game being 17 years old, but still. I installed it last night and played through the first hour to take some screenshots and I think they’re still good:

I can understand the MediEvil remaster, the Spyro remaster or the more recent FFVII remake in terms of wanting to update the graphics. I can understand that not everyone can easily go back to these low poly lads:

But this game? I know I’m influenced by nostalgia and all, but I don’t think it needs that makeover that badly, especially when compared to these other remakes and remasters. Funnily enough, I just noticed that these examples I just listed were all PS1 games. PoP: SoT was a PS2 , PC and Xbox game. PS2 era games have aged far better visually and don’t need that big a makeover in my most humble opinion.

It would be one thing if the original was out of print like a Rule of Rose scenario ,where you can’t find the game unless you go to ebay or something and it’s stupid expensive. Or if it was a pain to get running on modern systems like it was with Grim Fandango, until it got a remaster.

But no, you can find the Sands of Time trilogy and the PoP (2008) reboot on GOG and Steam (on Steam only there’s also the PoP:The Forgotten Sands midquel). So there isn’t the usual problem of the game no longer being accessible to people who want to play it, which helps justify the need for a remake.

The original still plays nice, sounds nice and looks nice, so I guess this all goes to show that at the end of the day, this remake just feels a bit unnecessary to me, at least from what little the trailer showed (I would love to have my bitter cynical ass proved wrong though!).

Maybe I just have a superhuman tolerance for older games and how they look, I really don’t have that big a problem if the game itself is good or interesting, so I don’t always think older games need remakes.

Maybe my falling out of love with Ubisoft in this last decade has curbed forever any hype I might have for their announcements, even when they pull out my son, my baby boy Prince of Persia out again.

Maybe I’m just burnt out and too pessimistic about remakes, remasters and adaptations (although game remakes usually do better than film ones).

And this makes me a bit sad because I don’t want to sh*t all over the first piece of “new” Prince of Persia content we’ve had since 2010??? Oof, it’s been a while.

Especially knowing that Yuri Lowenthal is coming back and excited to voice the Prince again. And I also don’t want to be too harsh since we’re looking at an alpha of the game. But so far I’m just very numb to this, I do seriously hope it turns out good and that they don’t rush it out the door. But I’m not convinced we need a remake in the first place. The original is a milestone, a game changer. I’d rather see a game that had great ideas and poor execution being remade than something people already love and consider a masterpiece.

Guess we’ll see how I feel once more news and footage come out.

Oh and feel free to share your own thoughts on this remake. I’m curious to know what both fans and newcomers alike think.

small edit: I can’t believe I was just watching this Sands of Time playthrough on youtube and at one point it is said: “Another game that is designed similarly to this is Soul Reaver actually.”

Of course! I didn’t even see it! All of my favourite things are connected!!! Maybe that detail was another thing that helped me getting really into Soul Reaver as I was first playing it.

#prince of persia #prince of persia: the sands of time #prince of persia remake #ubisoft #videogames #my ramblings #I can't seem to write a short post to save my life!

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schibi12 · 4 years

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Childhood Commentary: The Fox and The Hound

Another movie that i was suppose to see with my younger sibling but couldn't find in spanish sorry again.

So this movie i didn't see it a lot as a child but the few times i saw it i enjoyed it and cried like a baby so this might be interesting, i think i haven't seen this movie like in 8 or 9 years so i don't remember a lot about it but the emotional moments so yeah let start this!!

Oh and Spoiler Alert!

First i want to talk about the animation cause people tend to say that the Animation during the Dark age (70's and 80's) is bad and cheap but in this movie i think it's pretty good and with the forest watercolor backgrounds it still holds up like look a this scene its so pretty

Oh and that Opening no music, no song just the sound of nature and gunshots and then we see a little baby Tod with his mom and then she gets killed!?!?! Forget about Bambi's mom why is nobody talking about Tod's mom (Just kidding but why though). I think this scene really sets the tone of the movie

So the first half with Copper and Tod as well pups or children i guess? Was really good it establishes their relationship as friends and whats to come and how there dynamics with their respective owners work, Widow Tweed sees Tod as a companion although a pet she loves him deeply and with Amos Slade is more of a boss/worker relationship yeah he may love him but really he adopted him because he is a hound and those dog are great at hunting it really tells you how are the animals are gonna be raised, and i loved the few scenes of Copper and Tod just playing and being friends and with this scene i started to tear up.

And the first chase or hunt for Tod when Chief chases him although a bit comedic it was a nice introduction of whats to come.

There is like 5 songs in this movie in my opinion they should have only used Best of Friends and Goodbye May Seem Forever i think they have the more impact on the story than the rest but thats just my opinion feel free to disagree (no hate though).

So the second half we see our protagonist all grown up and i love how much Copper changed after his hunting trip and just sees his friendship with Tod as something childish but Tod still wants to keep that friendship but still Copper gives him a chance to escape and sadly it doesn't go that way Chief gets injured and Amos and Copper want revenge and then i was full on crying with this scene

So the forest scenes were nice i thought Vixey was ok i don't see her character that interesting but those hunting scenes with the traps, the fire and the bear i forgot all these scenes it was so suspenseful and thrilling and seeing Copper and Tod getting all feral and fighting shows how much they changed but not fully as well i would just you the scene and yes i was crying again.

And although nobody dies in the ending it still heartbreaking to see that they can't ever be friends and we hear the phrase one more time "Copper, you're my best friend. And you're mine too, Tod. And we'll always be friends forever. Won't we? Yeah, forever." And again dear reader i was crying i was an emotional wreck.

The voice actors where good especially the child actors and surprisingly Kurt Russell i didn't know he voiced Copper till i saw the credits but i think he did a great job and Mickey Rooney was good but his first scenes he sounded a bit awkward.

One complaint i have of is about Dinky and Boomer, i know the movie needed some comedy and comic relief but i felt like their scenes were a bit too long or unfunny sometimes.

Well the movie isn't perfect i think the plot with some changes it could have a bigger emotional impact like maybe have a montage through time of Copper and Tod being friends instead of having them spend like 3 days as friends, this might sound wrong but i think Chief should have died first form a big brother relationship with him and Copper so when he dies i think it deepens more the revenge of wanting Tod dead (for the live-action remake Disney).

But even with these complaints i still like it, i enjoyed it, felt tense in some scenes, laughed and cried a lot it does enter my top 10 of favorite Disney Movies it was definitely an emotional experience and if you haven't seen it i recommend you watch this!

Life Lesson from this Movie: True Friendship survives any obstacle or trial.

Well thanks for reading my long review/commentary.

See ya real soon!!

#disney #the fox and the hound #disney film #disney movie #review #childhood commentary

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writers-thoughts09 · 5 years

Text

A Dance of the Heart

Chapter 1 Part 1: The Cave Keeper

(Imagine it’s gold embedded into her skin that runs along her whole body & stops at the edges of her face. Kind of like whiskers?)

Word Count: a bit over 1400

(I wanted to write more but I wanted to get this out as quickly as possible. So I'm gonna break up each chapter into multiple parts. I promise Aladdin will be in the next part. SOrry if it’s bad!!!)

A/N: I haven’t done complete complete edits on this so there’s probably some errors. It’s my own little spin of Aladdin, and I am completely in love with the remake as of right now! Like that dance scene between Jasmine and Aladdin, UGH, perfection! Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy :)

———————————————————————

They were shimmering.

Shimmering in such a way that anyone who gazed gaped in awe; as if a being higher than human creation cast the mesmerizing glow upon them.

What were they?

The answer’s simple, they’re stars. No one can resist the attraction, the pull of those brilliant forms of gas. Though all of them were splattered purposefully across the canvas we call night -everyone knows once the sun shies away and the moon blooms in the shadows- the stars show their faces and people show their face toward the stars in return. Whether it be consciously or not.

Those numerous little beads of light...that pulse in its unique fashion appear to twinkle and beat like the drum of a baby’s heart.

But what significance do the stars have? What could they possibly cause?

Well...you shall see.

——————

It begins on a dark night, where a dark man waits, with a dark purpose.

On this night, like every other ordinary night, the sun sets upon the arid desert and the moon’s pale sheen casts its usual glow. The sand critters sleep, nocturnal lizards creep, everything was in place. The deserts of Agrabah were as it should be. However, one being is once again seized from their slumber, on the fourth moon this week.

Though this night is different from the rest. This one night sends shivers down her spine and raises prickles along her arms and legs when she sleeps, unlike the other nights when she’d sense an invasive presence.

On this night, every crevice and corner of her soul is rattled; jolting her as if lightning crackled and illuminated the dark cave, ricocheting off the walls, and shooting into the core of her body.

Golden eyes snap open and flicker around the Cave of Wonders as a loud ragged gasp echoes from her mouth; with a start The Cave Keeper shoots up from the spot she was previously laying on. She takes a few deep breaths and drags her scarred hands, embroidered with golden designs, down her face. Staring into the dark, towards the entrance of where the cave would be, her shackles rise at the prospect of fighting off any threat that may linger nearby. Until recognition flits through her eyes.

‘We are familiar with these infidels, Cave Keeper,’ the Spirit of the Cave rumbles.

‘Oh Allah...this is the fourth time they’ve come this week!’ She snaps back in irritation.

‘Silence, they will leave soon enough,’

‘How many are there?’

‘Four men,’

Shoulders slump, as does her initial alarm...as well as the expression on her face. Lips twisted into a bemused scowl. The Cave Keeper lazily rolls off her pile of jewels that she made for the night. Coins tinkle and clatter as she moves. Thought once once her marred, gold embedded feet touch the ground, silence encompasses the dank cave.

Inside this dark spacious cavern lies ancient relics, jewels, gold, and riches farther than the eye can see, and she lives amongst it by herself. Though she’s okay with it, the solitude grants her a peace of mind. And if she were being quite honest, the shimmering items that were strewn all over the tall jutted rocks, boulders, nooks, crannies and the cave’s passageways, it was all quite beautiful. The riches and rubies made this desolate place look beautiful, especially when she’d wander through the passageways. Gold seemed to be encrusted on all sides of the tunnels. It was as if she lived among her own little stars, though she’d never claim any of these riches as her own. For she knew the folly of greed’s consequences. So instead she only admired what she knew wasn’t hers.

‘Besides, I know my place. I am only a dweller inside this cave, nothing more nothing less...’

While playing with a green jewel from her sleep spot a moment passes where she stands and listens, extending her senses. With eyes closed, her mind travels along the cave’s winding passages, passing chambers of twinkling gems and pools of diamonds, until she’s past the caves opening. Now able to see the expanse outside the cave.

Though she sees they’re all standing outside motionless, ‘Probably discussing who’s to enter the cave,’ her thoughts chime, it’s a waiting game she’s all too familiar with. Especially after all her years of residing in this hauntingly enticing place.

The Cave Keeper knows how this’ll end. It’ll end in either two ways-

Her thoughts are cut off as the deep rumbling voice of the Cave’s Spirit speaks,

“Who disturbs my slumber...”

To her, it is as if she’s fallen into a routine with the amount of times men have come and gone from this cave, many unable to go past five feet within it.

“This group is more persistent than the last...and that was a long time ago,” she grumbles, shifting from one foot to another as she focuses her mind to look upon the men’s faces.

Two men dressed in what looks like military uniforms, ‘And pointy helmets,’ sit by four traveling camels. ‘The same guards I’ve seen before,’ she concludes, disregarding them. Then she moves on to the other shadowy figure closer to the mouth of the cave. This one, she observes is a young man she’s never seen nor heard of the other nights before. She skims over him the same way she did the guards before wondering ‘...why are you here...?” Then disregarding him all the same as well, ‘He’ll die too, just like the rest.’

The Cave Keeper moves along to the last person. This person is the one she’s come to recognize as ‘Jafar.’ And she does not trust him nor his desires. Desires that create small ripples of unease within her cursed soul. His presence always reminded her of the things she tried to escape. Always. Every time she senses Jafar bringing a new victim here in hopes of finding whatever it is he searches for, paranoia always manages to bubbles up. No matter how many times he fails, Jafar always comes back. Ambition.

However, she’s cut from her reverie when she hears Jafar’s voice ring out.

“The Cave of Wonders. When you enter, you will see more riches than you ever dreamed of. Gold, diamonds, and the lamp.”

Still focusing on the scene unfolding outside she moves away from her bed pile, which really comprised of lumpy trinkets, and silently creeps deeper into the cave where more piles of treasures lie. There she’d be able to choose a spot to hide in while doing what she’s been doing for years, keeping this cave of traps safe. Nimble feet jump over piles of rubies and ancient coins as she goes. Her body moves lithely like a cobra, slithering in between tall hills of jewelry and miscellaneous things, set on finding the right spot to hide and work her magic.

‘I hate my job-’ She begins.

“-Bring it to me and I will make you rich and free. But take no other treasure, no matter how sorely you are tempted. And you will be tempted.”

Like a spell, Jafar’s words stop her in her endeavor. With half her body sprawled on top of a rocky mound, a shiver runs down her spine. As the gravity of the situation that’s presented itself washes over her, the little bubble of paranoia that she always tried to quell, was beginning to grow a little bit bigger as her little bubble of safety began to shrink. A diamond in the rough, she’d always hear The Cave Spirit say. It’d always turn away many people. The weight of those words sat on her mind.

A diamond in the rough...

And just like that, the little bubble that’s kept her safe all these years, popped. Slipping and falling behind the mound of rock and ancient coins, her whole body went numb and her heart beat a little harder as her focus to see outside the cave snapped. Blinking rapidly from the abrupt disconnection, she frantically shut her eyes again, searching for the sensation that links her to the Cave Spirit. Desperation clawing at her chest.

‘Hey, hey Cave! Is this boy with a pet monkey really it? Did Jafar really find the diamond?’ She whisper-yells to the cave once her spirit and the Cave of Wonder’s Spirit intertwine.

‘I belief he has found the Diamond, yes. The young man’s heart does not appear to contain greed. Though his monkey does. Use your magic. If you choose to doubt me, test him,” the Cave of Wonders rumbles.

‘Way to have faith in me.’

‘You do hold doubt toward this boy…you will test him won’t you.’

‘That sounds more like a statement than a question. Don’t you trust me?’

The Cave only roared in response, shaking the ground beneath her feet so intensely she had to crouch low to the floor to avoid falling debris. In that moment, she knew this so-called Diamond in the Rough has made it into the Cave of Wonder’s, a feat few have been able to do.

‘Alright ignore me. And yes, I will test him my lord,’ the Cave Keeper sarcastically quips back, breaking the connection. The gold inscribed on her skin glows as her magic begins to ripple and flow.

#aladdin #disney #fanfic #mena massoud #naomi scott #will smith genie #jasmine #aladdin 2019 #aladdin x reader #aladdin x jasmine #aladdin genie #mena massoud fanfic #disney fanfiction #disney fanfic

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