#i might also redesign the boss designs??? possibly??? maybe???

[mauesartetc]

Redesigning Helluva Beelzebub

Hoo boy, roll up the sleeves for this one.

The Original

In my review of Helluva Boss 108, I mentioned that Beelzebub's character design put me in mind of how some DeviantArt kid's fursona might look. And... Yeah I stand by that statement. The most likely reason I can figure Viv Medrano wanted her to be dog-like was to make a reference to her Die Young music video, which featured an anthro wolf singing a Kesha song (for context, Kesha herself voiced Beelzebub and co-wrote a song for this episode).

But for those who are unaware, Beelzebub's traditional depiction looks nothing like this.

Really the only visual similarities the Helluva version shares with the Infernal Dictionary version are the insect wings, six limbs, and the crown thingy over the head. (At least I think that's a crown-? Kinda hard to tell on both counts.)

Bee's eyes get somewhat more insectoid later in the episode, but that feels like a cop-out. Wow, her eyes and colors changed. Totally a bug demon, right?

They had the same problem in Hazbin Hotel with Katie Killjoy, who's allegedly supposed to be a praying mantis but barely resembles one, even after her transformation.

I understand the desire for fresh takes on old figures, and taking creative liberties so the new interpretation doesn't feel generic. But the changes should at least make sense. By now it's pretty clear Viv couldn't care less about representing Ars Goetia demons faithfully, as demonstrated with Paimon, Andrealphus, and now Beelzebub. You could slap completely different names on these characters and it wouldn't change a thing. I posted this meme a while back but it's never been more relevant:

On top of that, what reason could there possibly be for the design to be this damn complex? Why did she need so many markings on her face? Why did she need so many layers of hair? Why did she need flowing goo for her hair, tail, and body, each requiring dedicated effects animation?

When it comes to a hand-drawn production, less is more. Any superfluous details on a character just make unnecessary work for the animators.

Anyway, here's what Viv has to say about it.

Alright, I'll admit: The lava lamp bit is a little clever. Basically it works as a regular stomach does, but on demonic steroids. But it wouldn't look so much like Viv's making this up as she goes if we'd seen Bee's stomach performing its intended function in the episode. Let her chow down on a giant piece of food (maybe that cotton candy she's been handing out-?) and swallow it, and let Loona (and the audience) see it dissolving in her transparent belly. As a general rule, if it's not shown or explained in the work itself, it's not canon. Like I've said before, Viv: Elaborate on the nuances in the story you're telling, not on social media.

Also, "Her ears are designed after beehives"? Wh...Wha? Ma'am have you ever seen a beehive.

(Hell, even if you told me the ears were inspired by the generic cartoon beehive we're all familiar with, I wouldn't have guessed. There's a difference between being subtle and being vague.)

I can kinda see it in the overall shape, but that's a very specific design inspiration that wasn't clear at all in the design itself. Same with the "animal trainer" thing: I never would have picked up on that if Viv hadn't pointed it out. If a character design doesn't visually convey all the necessary information, it's not a successful design. Show, don't tell. There's a communication breakdown between what Viv's telling us and what Bee's design shows us.

(It's possible she actually meant "Her ears are designed after honeycombs", but even then, each compartment has a specific pentagonal shape that's not coming across at all here.)

I also find it interesting that Bee and Loona have almost the exact same body type. Of course Viv's pretty infamous for samebody syndrome, but it's actually unnerving how similar these two are.

Might this be a reference to Vortex's "type"? Is this foreshadowing a relationship with Loona? Am I overthinking this? Yeah, probably. Viv's demonstrated a clear preference for tall, skinny body types over the years, so it's safer to assume that's the explanation. It's all aesthetics. It ain't that deep. Occam's Razor and all that.

Finally, Bee how the hell does your shirt work.

The Concept

So at this point it seems most logical to lean into the "bee" thing for the redesign, and scrap all the canine elements. As for the blobby hair and tail... yeeeah let's nix those too. We're going for a streamlined version that's easier to animate. And because I ignored the ringmaster look for my redesign of Asmodeus, it only makes sense to do the same for Bee's animal trainer vibe (what little there is) for the sake of consistency. I know this version of Hell has a circus theme with its highest-ranking demons, but there's never been an in-universe explanation for why that is.

Let's look at actual bees, then. A quick peek at Google has informed me that certain insect species have smaller, "simple" eyes (also known as ocelli), in addition to their compound eyes. In bees, this manifests as a triangular grouping of three beady eyes on top of the head.

In her Helluva Boss episode, Bee's full demon form has three eyes, which could be a reference to this triangular arrangement, plus her regular form has two spots on her forehead in addition to the third eye. So it's possible Viv actually did research for something. Pleasantly surprised on that front.

Next, the body. I've noticed that some folks find Bee's skinny body type refreshing, as the sin of gluttony is too often personified with fatness. And that's fair. That's valid. But consider this:

Imagine any Vivziepop character saying that about a chubby person. Imagine the series sending the message that fat people can be sexy too, and that they have worth outside of their appearance, enough for at least one character to consider them girlfriend material. That they're valued and appreciated regardless of this culture's beauty standards (which we know nothing about since the worldbuilding is as thin and flimsy as tissue paper, but whatever). Imagine if this show finally had a fat female character who wasn't relegated to the background. Don't know about y'all, but that would be refreshing to me. And when you take into account all the fat-shaming of a character who isn't even fat, portraying a fat character as attractive would be a nice change of pace for this show.

Now let's talk about clothing. In the episode, Bee's clothes show off a lot of her body, with a cutout crop top and short shorts. We can take a similar approach for the redesign (something that still shows off her chest, belly, and limbs, in keeping with the extroverted "party girl" persona), but that perhaps includes more queenly elements.

The Redesign

Because this is a redesign, many elements were already in place, but I still had to figure out how this character would look as a bee. Here's where the preliminary sketches came in. Lots of trial and error in this process.

Wrestling with this character's face got a lot easier once I realized I could mold it into a pentagonal shape akin to a honeycomb compartment. It took a few tries, but at last, I had a final sketch.

All that was left to do was test out some color combinations.

I tried a few different approaches, but in the end, this is the version I felt worked best.

I used many of the colors from the original, but pushed the orange much harder since orange is the symbolic color of gluttony as a sin. And overall it gives Bee a nice honey-ish look rather than the generic black and yellow we already see on so many bees in cartoons. I thought the colored outlines on her clothing would add a soft, feminine touch, as well.

And just for kicks, here's a quick sketch of her giant form, inspired by the Infernal Dictionary drawing of Beelzebub.

Conclusion

The canon version of this character exists in the form she does for no reason than to stroke her creator's ego. "Hey guys, remember when I animated that Kesha fan video? Remember how cool that was? Wanna see me foist this unnecessarily-complex character design on other animators while I take a victory lap?" I wouldn't mind so much if Viv animated any of this herself, but she didn't. I could almost excuse this if she had no animation experience and didn't know how much work it requires, but she does. The self-aggrandizing entitlement is just off the charts. But a nonsensical design is leagues better than a stolen one, so... brownie points for that, I guess.

#character design #redesign #helluva boss #helluva critical #helluva beelzebub #vivziepop critical #body positivity #long post

[maraschinotopped]

me, holding both the jumping jack powerup and bubble blower powerup: ..these... these do the same thing. which one do i scrap.

#as a professional moron; i have decided to rewrite balan wonderworld because i just really like the concept of it /j #(i decided to remake/redesign the powerups as if i was making balan wonderworld c: ) #its a good design practice ig #ive redesigned chapter 1-3's powerups; and i redesigned the ones we saw for chapter 4 and 6 #i might also redesign the boss designs??? possibly??? maybe??? #for the powerups themselves: #tornado wolf and fire dragon have been merged into one; and pounding pig might be aswell??? #(i cant decide... bc its like yeah its a powerup but also literally every platformer has a groundpound in their normal moveset..) #the plant powerup? gone. threw it out the window (theres no real reason for it to be there anyway. jumping jack does basically the same) #jumping jack and bubble blower do basically the same thing but i have no idea which one i want to scrap.... #like jumping jack is apart of the first level so if i get rid of it id have to rework the level itself #but bubble blower does the same thing but slightly better.. #merging them might make their designs clash... so i have no idea if i want to merge or scrap one of them #the sheep and jackal powerups are merged; the pumpkin and cog powerups are merged too.. i like the way i designed the sheep merge #dynamic dolphin has been given the diving rights. the jellyfish has gotten their diving rights revoked #i think ill merge the jellyfish and teleport powerups together. so no more diving but electric and teleportation will still be there #web wrangler is still here! but with a massive redesign. the lamp powerup got merged into one move bc its just pointless #butterfly got a redesign but their power is still the same basically. but for sickle slinger??? i have no idea. #i designed them but i have no idea if i should merge them or leave em be.... i think ill leave em be. #i aim for having 2-3 powerups per level; as the fact that there are 80 powerups total is just like. why. most of these are pointless #thats all ive gotten for now as the playthrough im watching has only gotten up to chapter 3... h #[free therapy baby!!!]

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: Podoboo

Debut: Super Mario Bros.

Before I start this post, I’d like to clear something up. Podoboo? Yes, Podoboo! I’m well aware these enemies are often called Lava Bubbles and that’s the name Nintendo has been trying to make standardised these days, but you know what? You can’t make me! Podoboo is a lot cuter, plus its the name I grew up with and changes in society scare me and cause me to lash out! Maybe Lava Bubble is closer to the Japanese name of just “Bubble”, but since when has that been a factor in any of the localised names? Do you really want to refer as Lakitu as “Jugemu”, huh? I’ll have you know one of my civil rights as a citizen of Wet Dry World is to refer to Mario enemies with whichever official name I please. Like it or leave it!

So this is a post about Podoboo. Do you like Podoboo? I certainly Podo-do! They are perhaps the most generic design you could give to a Mario enemy, a visibly Dangerous Thing with two eyes, but they have always charmed me! It’s the little things, like their distinct shape and the fact their pupils are somewhat wider than most obstacles like this. They bring me comfort in dire times. No matter what happens, I know Podoboo will be there, jumping at a set height in a particular spot of lava! Without them I would be nothing! 

So simple is their design, isn’t it weird to think they started off as even simpler? The Podoboos in the first SMB game are completely blind, and with no eyes they may as well not be creatures at all! Of course, I’m very glad they are creatures, and their iconic behaviour was there from the start! They love to jump, of course! There is nothing they would rather be doing!

Awaken! As of Super Mario World, they have been gifted sight and are no longer blind to the sins of this world! Hurray! What do you think they see as they jump up and down? I’m surprised it doesn’t make them dizzy!

You’ll be glad to hear Podoboos have had an expansive career ever since, now with their new trademark eyes! After all, they are THE lava enemy! Anywhere you’ve got that tasty hot fire juice, these guys are soon to follow! Here they are in Super Mario RPG, called Sparkies here because they couldn’t make up their minds on a localized name and probably because they confused them with Li’l Sparkies. In Yoshi’s Story they even called them Spark Spooks! Geez, I’ll even take the name Lava Bubble over this! But doesn’t this render look nice and juicy?

Though any great career has its flops, and I have to say... I am usually the first to campaign for the unique designs from the first three Paper Marios, but I do not really like this Lava Bubble! This takes away from their distinct Mario-y charm and makes them look like a Fire Enemy you could find in any other game! Though in the RPGs they are able to float around without needing any lava, the ones in Super Paper Mario act just like the platformer ones, jumping around despite not looking like they should be doing that! Ok!

The Podoboo from New Super Mario Bros. DS just wasn’t trying very hard at all. Come on! They could’ve it a bit more justice than this! 

Ah, there we go! The Podoboos in New Super Mario Bros. Wii decided to finally stop messing about and go back to what everyone loved from them in Super Mario World. I encourage experimenting with your identity, of course, but it’s good to be back, and now they are more mortal than ever! A single shot from an Ice Flower is enough to instantly vaporize a Podoboo in a puff of smoke, which is a bit scary! Are they really just pure fireballs that can be put out just like that? What a frightening life to live!

And in Super Mario Galaxy 2, they... hey, wait!! You took away their eyes again! Now you are just being inconsiderate. This outraged me as a kid! One of my most vivid memories of playing this game with my brother involved chanting “Podoboo rights! They deserve eyes!” because this upset me so much. Maybe my past as an activist is why I am so passionate about Mario enemies these days... I think I was 100 percent correct in hindsight, and now you know some of my backstory, too!

What relief it gave me to find out they were back to their usual selves in 3D Land! And they have been ever since, of course getting redesigned for the modern Paper Mario games and everything. 

What’s this? Blue Podoboos! Podo-blues, even...! They show up in 3D World, in its incredibly cool-looking blue lava levels! It’s a well known fact that blue fire is objectively cooler than red fire, and it seems even the Podoboos wanted in on the action! Blue Lava is an actual phenomenon I’ve just learnt, though it’s a sulfuric fire rather than lava. Could it be that Podoboos, being made entirely of lava, adapt to their environment? I’m not sure...

As an aside, the blue Lava Bubbles aren’t to be confused with Lava Bubble (Blue), which are from Mario Galaxy and show up during King Kaliente’s fight! They hop around on the ground and have square-ish eyes, which is enough to make them different I guess!

The Podoboo’s next big appearance, in Super Mario Odyssey, was in Soup! Yes you heard me- Soup! Some delightfully pepto-bismol pink coloured soup, no less. This is why I wasn’t too sure about Podoboo’s being able to adapt to their environment earlier- the Luncheon Kingdom is a big soup volcano after all, but the fact these Lava Bubbles are able to live in it is very interesting!

There is simply no way I would talk about Odyssey here without talking about possibly its greatest achievement, the best game design decision ever made! After decades of begging from fans, they finally did the impossible- they made Podoboo playable! Now it is Podo-you! It is quite unlike the other captures in the game, since it keeps the Podoboo’s simple-looking eyes and simply adds onto it a nose and a mustache! You may very well be the world’s first Podoboo with a sense of smell! I wonder if that is a benefit or not. The constant smell of soup might be a bit overpowering. 

Not only is this delightful, but it gives us more insight into the life of the humble Podoboo. First of all is the fact that they can swim around in lava, not just jump in one spot! Do you think they do this when we aren’t looking? I really hope so! Imagine a school of Podoboos swimming through molten lava in a castle’s moat. How delightful! 

The Luncheon Kingdom is also home to a number of Lava cannons, marked with a Podoboo’s lovely face. These are cannons for only for Podoboos to launch themselves across the kingdom, from one body of lava to another! My question is whether this was technology made by Podoboos themselves or whether it was made by some generous Podoboo lovers as some lava equivalent to the Fish Tube. I think I would take either explanation! 

And last I have a Podoboo appearance that even I, the world’s biggest Podoboo fan, didn’t know about! Paper Mario Color Splash has a Big Lava Bubble boss which speaks with you through a Shy Guy translator! It is quite upset that you barged into its volcano and decided to change the temperature. Mario, of course, kills it anyway, and also the Shy Guy translator without a second thought.

Still, just take a look at this sprite sheet! How cute! A little disappointing that they thinned out the eyes, but wow! They more than make up for it with this range of expressions! An angry Podoboo! A sad Podoboo! And my personal favorite is of course the shocked Podoboo with its assymetrical dot eyes, which might be one of the best things I’ve ever seen. 

To be honest, I could talk about Podoboo forever! If you didn’t stop me, I would go on all day about their every appearance, but I kind of had to limit myself to some of the most relevant ones. I just think they’re neat! And cute! And silly! Besides, I’m Mod F Boy, so I’m basically obliged to talk about fireballs with eyes! But for now I must bid you Pod-adieu! 

...Not! What, did you really believe me? Well you clicked the Keep Reading button, so you only have yourself to blame for this. Here I am talking about more Lava Bubbles from all over, because Lava Bubble’s career has taken it BEYOND the Mario series! Wow!

Podoboo’s had quite a few appearance in the Zelda series, appearing in Link’s Awakening, both the Oracle games, and even Cadence of Hyrule! Their Zelda wiki page is still called Podoboo instead of Lava Bubble, which means those Zelda fans have it better than we do. But wow, this is a pretty angry looking Podoboo! I wouldn’t mess with them! 

Both the Oracle games even had a Podoboo Tower! Amazing! They look quite a lot like a Fire Snake, but they are simply a tower of Podoboos! Why don’t they do this more often?

Hm... The Cadence of Hyrule one doesn’t have any eyes. Come on guys! It’s 2019! Podoboos having eyes should be standard! Though they still made the conscious decision to call them “Podoboos” in 2019, so I can’t be too mad. 

And they have even spread to Minecraft! In the Mario Mash-up Pack, they replace the Magma Cube enemies, and really there was no better choice for this. And now we have a Podoboo Cube! What more could possibly be left for Podoboo?

The answer is obvious- Podoboo in real life! Thanks to a certain Lego Mario set, Podoboo is now real and can be in your home for the small price of 19,99 US dollars. Please give a Podoboo a home today! Just make sure you don’t own anything flammable. 

#mario #mario enemies #podoboo #lava bubble #mod f boy

[biolizardboils]

my super-specific Sonic Adventure 1&2 remake wishlist!

welcome back to another episode of me blasting out Sonic drafts I was too scared to post years ago! rev up those light speed shoes cus this is gonna be a long one!

first off shit I’d want in general

retranslated dialogue thats truer to the Japanese originals' tone and keeps the intended subtext

but with the most iconic English lines left in ("Get a load of THIS", "I'll slam dunk it in there"). The Faker scene can stay unchanged, interruption and all

small additions to cutscenes to help explain Little Things people have debated for decades (like whether G.U.N. framed Sonic to cover up Shadow's existence or if that’s just a legitimate plot hole)

all the MIDI cutscene songs redone with real instruments and/or an orchestra! all the other songs are already perfect and Should Not Be Touched

make the Emerald radar beep in time to the level music so it’s less annoying

okay, time for a spicy one: voice acting. hoo boy

Getting the entire original cast probably isn’t possible (for studio and contract reasons, not just Tails’s growing up and Eggman’s dying), and I feel the series’ current cast is just so different in tone and direction that they’d clash with the Adventure era. (will make an exception for Mike Pollock tho, he’s said some iconic Adventure lines already and I loved his take on them!)

So my preference? A compromise: a separate voice cast comprised of whichever OG’s are still game and soundalikes for the rest, complete with an actual kid as Tails. Too good to be true? Probably, but whatever it’s my wishlist

lighting and other subtle effects based on the Dreamcast originals (long story short a lot of these got broken from the GameCube ports onward, there’s video comparisons)

textures remade from scratch cus as much as i love that they used their field trip photos, it probably wouldnt fly today lol

new character models based on Adventure-era promotional artwork! after these games, the characters' proportions shifted over time, giving the impression that they've grown up a little since. it's a very subtle difference, but its enough that just using the now-standard Modern Sonic models would look kinda off

said models shouldn't change between games. like if youre playing SA1 and switch to SA2, the only thing that should change about Sonic is his shoes (before upgrades of course)

speaking of upgrades, an option to remove them visually would be nice, they can get kinda distracting during cutscenes

Unleashed-style redesigns of all the humans!! my heart yearns for it!!!

an option to turn off the Ball of Light/Omochao

the SA2B multiplayer mode but with the SA1-exclusive characters added maybe?

every DLC thing ever reinstated! the extra Kart Races and special Chao as unlockables, maybe the holiday stuff can show up at wintertime NiGHTS style? the Nike one might not be possible tho

Super Sonic/Shadow in normal levels as an unlockable like the Lord intended

Very Important: the game must be revealed with Eggman “hacking” the screens at a public Sega presentation, followed by a trailer that starts with this scene in modern CGI. It’s the hypest way I can think of to do it, and also people could slap A Certain Meme onto it as soon as humanly possible

absolute balls-off-the-walls ad campaign that targets the following demographics: 20-smthns who grew up with a Dreamcast/GameCube, ska enthusiasts, & the entire state of California. more on that here

SA1

fix Big’s fishing. idk how, i haven’t played enough fishing games to know what constitutes a good one, but there’s gotta be something they can do

replace the A-B-C level goals with the 5-missions-each system from SA2 cus it allows for more variety

use the ranking system from SA2 too cus it got used in every game made since anyway

use Generations’s Perfect Chaos design since that’s how he was meant to look in the first place

maybe go the extra mile and add hints of the dark blue armor to his earlier forms too?

finish the unused Sky Chase Dragon and make it a bonus boss maybe??

have Tails look away if Sonic uses the shower in Casinopolis, I know it’s a tiny thing but it always bothered me

make the CD flashback actually look more like CD cus i had no clue that's what it was when i first played it lmao

also make Tails' flashback to when he met Sonic more obviously set in Sonic 2, like Emerald Hill or smthn. this cutscene means a lot to me but its so obvious they just used Mystic Ruins as the bg hfbfv

just. make it more obvious that the Classic games happened? cus that's kinda important to understanding these ones

just generally do better visual storytelling now that the original game's limited animation engine isn't an issue lol

SA2

nerf the Artificial Chaos pretty fcking please

an option to turn off certain upgrades functionally as well as visually? ngl this is for the Magic Hands. to the one person who actually uses them: i’m so sorry but they’re just not popular

either replace the beeping noise Tails/Eggman’s mech makes while targeting with something more subtle or just remove it altogether

get rid of that stream that can sweep you away in the Biolizard fight, like good god it’s hard enough without it

remove that... unfortunate hand motion Sonic and Shadow make when they go Super. you know the one

make an achievement/trophy for waiting till the last minute to beat Finalhazard, so more people can hear that one Shadow line. like that shit should be required reading but i didn't know about it for a criminally long time

this as an unlockable, it’s truly criminal that it never left Japan

redo the Green Hill remix so it actually fits the rest of the game lmfao? something like this

Chao stuff gets its own segment because of course it does

all six Chao Gardens connected by a single Chao World lobby that's accessible from both games!

new unique themes for the SA1 gardens? there’s nothing wrong with the original, but it’d be weird if they all shared a song and the SA2 ones didn’t. the old one can go to the Station Square one

add the Chao Key to the SA1 levels for quicker access like in SA2

new behaviors for Chao to learn, new hats and accessories, new toys, new race courses, maybe new breeds?? new Chao stuff in general!!

make it so animals don’t walk into the garden entrances!! you don't know true pain if you've never tried picking one up, accidentally left the garden, went back in, and the animal was gone

swap out SA1′s racing mechanics with SA2′s. keep the “alternate paths based on stats” thing tho

imagine if you will.... an 8-player online Chao race. imagine the chaos (pun completely intended)

a brand new minigame to join the legendary likes of Racing and Karate! personally id love one based on Chao In Space. like your Chao has to beat the others in a dogfight and its stats determine its ship's stats and weapons

an optional mobile app that combines the VMU’s Chao Adventures and the GBA’s Tiny Chao Garden! maybe with some extra Pokemon Go-ish features??

that’s all i got.... Good God i love these two games. of course they’re not spotless, i just made a long list of issues i have with them. but they’re still important cornerstones of the series in many ways, and it’d be nice to see them remade so people can remember why :’)

months-later edit: added more ideas

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic adventure #sonic adventure 2 #sonic adventure dx #sonic adventure 2 battle #sonic adventure 2: battle #sth #me talking #long #sa1 #sa2 #sonic adventure remakes

[fermented-writers-block]

Why I think the actual Angel is Noelle Holiday

After nine months of research, procrastination, and working out the kinks, here’s a little theory of mine that’s been floating around in my head ever since the end of last November about Noelle Holiday and her potential role in the future of the series. It’s a bit of a long read, but I hope you’ll be willing to indulge me and give this crazy theory a chance.

As a forewarning, the following points I will be bringing up are simply too hefty to make a TLDR for, and it’s quite a long read, but trust me, you’re going to want to read through all of it for it to make sense in the end

Part 1: The Possible Evolution of the Delta Rune

First off, I’d like to look at the Delta Rune itself and a few easily overlooked key lines Gerson says about it:

That emblem actually predates written history.

The original meaning has been lost to time…

All we know is that the triangles symbolize us monsters below, and the winged circle above symbolizes…

Somethin' else.

The meaning and design of symbols can change over time, and it’s likely the same has happened to the way the Delta Rune is currently interpreted compared to when it first came into existence. For example, take a look at these variations of the Delta Rune:

Of these variations of the Delta Rune, these may be some of the oldest or closest iterations of the symbol to the original design, especially the ones from the intro cutscene and Gerson’s shop. The former is presumably from long before the Human-Monster War and thus the oldest version, and with Gerson’s apparent age and how he implies that he studies history, it is likely that the variation in his shop is also as close as can be to the original.

As for how these particular iterations of the Delta Rune fit into my theory, look at the design and positioning of the wings in these probably older iterations compared to likely more modern interpretations:

On the more recent interpretations, the base of the wings are placed around the same level as the center of the circle, and the wings themselves are mostly realistically designed. However, on the older interpretations, the wings are more simplified and stylized with more of an explicit arc to them, and the ‘feathers’ are more blocky with visible and sometimes significant spaces in between. Now keep that in mind when looking at these pictures:

Taking this into account, I think it is possible that - through the help of time and redesigns becoming successively more stylized - what was originally supposed to be a reindeer with antlers slowly got distorted and misremembered as a ‘winged circle.”

And maybe, something like this might even apply to Deltarune’s version of the Delta Rune as well given how several of the depictions of the Angel throughout the game look like the transition point between the older and newer designs, what with the ‘feathers’ being much rounder and closer together while still on an arc-based stylized design instead of a realistic wing-like design:

Part 2: The Origins of Modern Christmas

Now, with that established, let’s take a closer look at Noelle and her family.

Besides the obvious exception of Lancer, she has the most dialogue of all the NPCs, gets two entire scenes to herself in the hospital with her dad and outside her house to flesh out her character and crush on Susie compared to several other NPCs getting only a few lines of dialogue at most, and it is absolutely required to talk to her at the beginning of the game in order to even progress and end up in the Dark World. 

As many other posts than mine have demonstrated, this suspicious level of detail has led a lot of people to theorize that Noelle will be an important character and that she might even be playable later on, a theory which has certainly been helped by Toby Fox’s original concept art of “THE FUN GANG” showing that her character has been in development for a LONG time - perhaps even from when work on Deltarune was just beginning - and that she may have been designed as a main character from the start.

However, much like how the potential origins of Undertale’s Delta Rune point towards the importance of reindeer in the series, I believe the deeper origins behind the names of the Holiday family similarly point towards Noelle’s true role in Deltarune. 

Obviously, the name Rudy is a clear reference to the famous Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and Dess is most likely a reference to how Christmas is celebrated in the month of December. However, as Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer was created in 1939 for the Montgomery Ward department store chain, he is actually a relatively new addition to the list of Santa’s reindeer, whom in of themselves are early 19th Century additions to the image of Santa Claus - a figure tracing back to the 4th Century Christian bishop Saint Nicholas.

And on Jesus’ birth being on the 25th of December for Dess’ name, from what I’ve gathered with my google-fu, the event may have actually taken place less on December 25 and more during the fall or spring due to mentions of shepherds tending to their sheep in the scripture as well as from several attempts to connect the Star of Bethlehem with recorded astronomical events.

In fact, it seems likely that - in the 4th Century - the church might have actually chosen the date either because of coming to the conclusion that Jesus’ conception took place on the spring solstice - aka March 25, nine months before December 25 - or because they wanted to increase the popularity of Christianity through adopting and appropriating pagan winter solstice festivals like the Yule and Saturnalia holidays around the same time of year.

On the flipside, Noelle is a name that has a particularly distinct connection to Christmas; specifically, to the one for whom the holiday is named for in the first place rather than a recent secular addition or the general time in which said holiday is celebrated.

From what I’ve seen, Noelle as a name traces back to the French word ‘noel,’ which - alongside referring to Christmas carols - is a variant form of the word ‘Nael.’ This form comes from the noun use of the Latin adjective natalis, meaning of, or belonging to, one’s birth. The noun use (from natalis dies, day of birth) denoted a birthday, an anniversary, a commemorative festival, hence in ecclesiastical Latin the festival of the nativity of Christ, Christmas.

Basically, out of all the names of the Holiday family, Noelle’s is the one that most directly ties into the actual origins of Christmas in how the name’s origins heavily revolve around the birth of Jesus Christ, a major religious figure who was to be a sacrifice for humanity’s sins and to provide a way into heaven.

Considering Toby Fox’s attention to hidden details and deeper meanings and how angels are heavily associated with and are depicted in Christianity - particularly in relation to Jesus - there may be further significance to Toby picking a name that’s typically given to girls born around or on Christmas day. After all, even if it may or may not be the actual day of Jesus’ birth, it is widely celebrated and recognized as such.

However, as you’ll see at the end, I think there’s even another layer of meaning to Noelle Holiday’s name than just this one. 

Part 3: Reindeer in Undertale

On a slightly different topic, while it’s hard to ignore how more prominently featured Christmas iconography and figures in the foreground of the series - what with the introduction of the Holiday family as well as several jokes about “Krismas” and Santa Claus in Deltarune, I believe it may also be important to pay attention to Undertale’s fair share of Christmas-themed details.

Namely, in how a significant amount of them owe their existence to one specific minor character; aka the rather unusually designed Gyftrot.

In contrast to the handful of implications that Asgore is the Underground’s Santa only being implicitly hinted at through extended dialogue and checking his bureau, Snowdin’s tradition of putting presents under decorated trees is blatantly and conspicuously out in the open. 

And as Gift Bear explains if you talk to them, said tradition originated not with wherever Asgore’s Santa outfit and apparent moonlighting came from, but rather came about in the first place as a way to make Gyftrot feel better after some teens decorated his horns.

As to why I am calling Gyftrot unusually designed, it is because of his rounded head and sideways mouth - a trait only seen elsewhere in the DT Extraction Machine, Photoshop Flowey, and Sans’ Gaster Blasters.

Of all the conversations and theories I’ve seen about this strange detail, most people were only able to come up with the explanation that Toby simply liked the design and reused it for Gyftrot just for fun without any deeper meaning to it, or that Toby unintentionally gave it to Gyftrot while making Undertale.

However, a third explanation I found is that Gyftrot’s design may actually be foreshadowing for what Photoshop Flowey’s appearance looks like, what with how Gyftrot actually seems to have a second pair of eyes at the base of his antlers, and how one of the decorations he spawns with is a picture between his four eyes in a very similar position to the television screen on Photoshop Flowey.

To my knowledge, this explanation and comparison has only been made in conjunction by two people, with user u/Peridotthepie providing the explanation and and user u/pleasespellicup providing the following picture in the linked post.

While I can’t see any other possible parallels between the two to fully call this foreshadowing - especially with how the picture decoration isn’t guaranteed to show up on every playthrough and how obscure it is - I’d like to propose the idea that the DT Extraction Machine (and perhaps the Gaster Blasters by extension) may very well be based on Gyftrot or a relative with a similar design in-universe.

After all, not even boss monsters leave behind anything more than a pile of dust when they die, not even a goat-like skull that could be used as a reference, whereas Gyftrot is a living, walking example of such a design, complete with what even seems to be a SOUL-shaped hole in his mouth.

Not only that, but given how attentive to detail and deeper meanings Toby has shown himself to be as well as the increased prominence and importance of reindeer/Christmas themes in general for Deltarune, I find it incredibly unlikely that this design choice was made just for fun or as an accident.

On a bit of a side note, it is interesting that we first learned of the name “Rudy” in a post from September 17, 2017 on Undertale’s 2nd anniversary and alarm clock app.

Considering the apparent parallels between Undertale and Deltarune - for example, the potential connection between Susie and the ‘Suzy’ character mentioned by Clam Girl, who appears to have ties to Gaster - and the implications of the dialogue in that post, it’s likely that Undertale Rudy is also a reindeer just like his counterpart, and I would not be surprised if he was also related to Gyftrot as well.

As for what the exact deeper meaning or in-universe explanation behind Gyftrot could be, it’s too early to tell, but I have the feeling that it likely ties heavily into Noelle’s circumstances in Deltarune and some of the effects of the DT Extraction Machine on Undertale’s plot as detailed below.

Part 4: Determining Other Connections

To explain what I’m talking about, let’s take a closer look at a few key lab entries by Alphys, starting with this one:

ENTRY NUMBER 5: I've done it. Using the blueprints, I've extracted it from the human SOULs. I believe this is what gives their SOULs the strength to persist after death. The will to keep living... The resolve to change fate. Let's call this power... "Determination."*

While not explicitly confirmed, from the name and surrounding context, it is likely that the blueprints Alphys used were for the DT Extraction Machine and that DT stands for Determination, though it is unknown whether Alphys built the machine from the blueprints or if it was already constructed and she merely used the blueprints to operate it.

Either way, as we all know, things went horribly wrong from there. Alphys had accidentally turned those who had “fallen down” into the Amalgamates, created Flowey from the flower whose seeds Asriel had brought from the surface, and fell into a nervous downward spiral while wracked with guilt.

Now, I want to focus on just how the Amalgamates had been created, particularly with these entries:

ENTRY NUMBER 6: ASGORE asked everyone outside the city for monsters that had "fallen down." Their bodies came in today. They're still comatose... And soon, they'll all turn into dust. But what happens if I inject "determination" into them? If their SOULS persist after they perish, then... Freedom might be closer than we all thought.

ENTRY NUMBER 12: nothing is happening. i don't know what to do. i'll just keep injecting everything with "determination." i want this to work.

ENTRY NUMBER 17: monsters' physical forms can't handle "determination" like humans can. with too much determination, our bodies begin to break down. everyone's melted together…

Here, I’d like to draw your attention to a few things. Given the surrounding context, “falling down” seems to be a condition - one that potentially originates from age, injury, or some kind of illness - involving or causes monsters to enter a comatose state and eventually die. 

And in Entry 17, there is the interesting wording of the line “with too much determination, our bodies begin to break down.” From how it’s phrased, it seems that, instead of melting from any amount of Determination in their systems whatsoever, monsters can handle Determination without having to fear of their bodies breaking down, though obviously there’s a cap to how much they are able to handle.

As for why I’m making this particular distinction, it’s because of Noelle’s situation with her father and how it may proceed beyond Chapter 1 in the future.

With the implication that Undertale Rudy had passed away a while ago, Deltarune Rudy’s conversations with and about Noelle, and Deltarune’s apparent theme of choices not mattering - or at least, not in the long run - it seems pretty likely that DR Rudy is suffering from a case of the foreboding coughs of death and that he may even “fall down” later on.

As such, it wouldn’t be surprising if his condition keeps worsening all the way until he ends up on his deathbed/in a coma/legitimately dead no matter what the doctors or Noelle and such do to help, and neither would it be surprising for her to be seriously affected and react in a severe way as a result.

I mean, Rudy openly talks about how everything scares her, even ironically Santa Claus, and as the classroom scene demonstrates, she has trouble mustering up the courage and confidence to assert herself to the point where even Alphys asks her to speak up.

Considering that her father openly talks about how defenseless she is and how he worries about not being able to protect her from his hospital bed, his death/apparently inevitable upcoming death would no doubt drastically impact her, especially if she attempted as much as she could to stop it to no avail. 

Sometimes, one can be driven to desperation to do crazy things as a result of love and worry, and Noelle may very well do the same out of love for her father. If at least some of Undertale’s rules about SOULS and monsters also apply to the world of Deltarune, then there may only be one way - or at the very least, what she feels might be the only option left - in the end for Noelle to potentially give her father the strength to persist and the will to keep living, perhaps even after death.

Or in other words, potentially through extracting enough Determination from a human SOUL to inject into and potentially save her father/bring him back to life. 

If the SOUL we the players control is or is close enough to a human SOUL to work, no other human characters/SOULS pop up later, and Noelle somehow finds out about the power of Determination and becomes resolved to use it, then there may be few - if any - things we will be able to do to dissuade her from going after Kris/wherever the SOUL we control goes.

Now, this is where what I think could be the second meaning behind Noelle’s name points would come into play, and in quite an important way.

For those that don’t know, if you enter Susie, Kris, or Noelle as the creator’s name in Deltarune’s introduction, you get the interesting following response:

“YOU ARE ABOUT TO MEET SOMEONE VERY, VERY WONDERFUL.”

With how anagrams appear to be a major theme of Deltarune in both a naming and worldbuilding sense, it's rather curious that of these three names, only two make any actually sensible anagrams. Kris and Susie can be turned into "risk" and "issue,” but Noelle oddly appears to buck the trend. 

However, I think the answer for this ties back to Lab Entry 17. You see, in toxicology research terms, Alphys had injected more than “the highest dose at which there was not an observed toxic or adverse effect.”

Interestingly, this level of dosage is known as the No Observable Adverse Effect Level, or the term NOAEL for short. And sometimes, when describing and looking for an effect in general than just specifically adverse ones, the term used in toxicology reports is the No Observable Effect Level, or NOEL.

Basically, if Noelle hopes to save her father, she needs to make sure to not inject too much or too little Determination. Otherwise, she’d go below the NOEL, where Ruby would simply not have enough strength to keep living, or above the NOAEL, where Rudy would seem to be fine for a while at first before inevitably melting down. 

And with that, Noelle’s strangely un-anagramable name can be reconciled with Kris and Susie’s, all three names relating to terms often used to describe something problematic in a scientific way.

In fact, one could even say that the terms their names correspond to sound like they would fit very well in a lab or experiment report, perhaps one involving interesting increases in darkness, like an imbalance in Dark Fountains…

Part 5: Conclusions

Of course, I do realize that that last bit is quite a stretch to suggest, even in comparison to the rest of my theory and particularly the latter half of the above section. As of now, there’s no real way of telling how these details actually connect in this way or if they really even connect to each other in the first place, let alone if they even operate on similar enough rules like my theory presumes. 

Heck, with the shortage of clear definitive details about W.D. Gaster, the apparent differences between the worlds of Deltarune and Undertale, and how things may change or have already changed in development in between games and chapters, it’s entirely possible that the series will take a very different direction than the one laid out here.

Perhaps we haven’t even heard of the character who is the actual Angel and everything we’ve seen so far are just red herrings. Maybe Ralsei’s legend will be revealed to have been falsified and he and/or Asriel will turn out to be the Angel like commonly theorized. For all we know, the world of Deltarune might not even precede OR succeed Undertale’s, and it’ll turn out that both worlds are derived from a third, unaltered world/timeline.

But whatever it may be, at the point we currently are at now, I find that my most likely candidate for the Angel is Noelle Holiday. On their own, the details supporting my theory would be easy to disregard and aur tenuous at best when taken by themselves, but when taken together as a whole, it’s hard to deny that they VERY much look like they start to frame a pretty concerning picture about the exact role of reindeer across the entire series. 

I mean, even if stuff like Determination turn out to not exist - or at least, don’t work the same way they do in Undertale at all - in Deltarune, the following general sequence of events seem likely to happen for me; that Rudy might get worse to the point of almost dying/actually dying, that Noelle might turn to something just as equally rather dangerous or desperate as extracting Determination in order to save/bring back her father, and that what she does may involve/cause her to somehow become the Angel.

Besides, like we can see from the introduction to Deltarune Chapter 1, it would be much like Toby to play with our expectations from Undertale and set us up to suspect that Ralsei or Asriel may be the Angel while he sets up the real Angel elsewhere.

After all, just about every good magic trick and literature twist relies on the art of misdirection at least in some part, subtly distracting the audience while the real clues are being built up in plain sight.

Like, for example, using the power of fluffy boys to deflect attention from the reindeer in the background.

#deltarune #undertale #deltarune theory #deltarune noelle #noelle holiday #delta rune #the angel #aka: toby’s bamboozled us again folks

[morshtalon]

Digital Devil Monogatari: Megami Tensei

Possibly part 1 of a series of posts on the whole series, maybe?

So, the first game in the popular MegaTen franchise is, wouldn't you know it, kind of weird. It was actually a video game sequel to a series of two novels starring a sort of villainous protagonist and the (government-mandated to exist ubiquitously through japanese media) high school exchange student as they become indirectly related to the summoning of ancient bad dudes Loki and Set through the magic of 80's computer programming, go into historic japanese landmarks to resurrect shinto goddesses, witness horrific, gruesome, sometimes sexual actions from the demons, go to space, fight using gods that turn into swords, and generally have a good time.

Naturally, considering the, um... Notorious source material, it's only logical that the videogame adaptation would, then, turn the sort of dark, villainous, intelligent programmer guy into a blank slate warrior with no personality, the girl into a standard RPG magic user, and drop them into a big dungeon crawl with almost no plot, nonsensical NPCs and a connection with the novels so tenuous they might as well have just taken some inspiration from it and opted to create a more original IP instead (I dunno, maybe put a "shin" in front of the title or something). Thus is born the antiquated experience that is Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei.

While Japanese gamers did at the time have the original version of Dragon Quest - with the sprites that always faced down and the lack of a save system - ushering in a new style of role-playing gameplay into the mainstream, I suppose the mindset of RPG development was still rooted in the design philosophies of the western games from throughout the decade that were distilled into DQ. Games that, like Megami Tensei, typically featured a simplistic first-person view and a party of six characters, following the rough guidelines of the most recent version of D&D, and had generally no plot development, consisting instead of a hardcore, punishing trek through a few 20x20 grid mazes full of traps and gimmicks.

Furthermore, this type of experience, from what I heard, was huge in Japan, so it's no wonder Atlus chose to capitalize on that market instead of streamlining it and risk losing fans of the genre that were looking for an experience similar to what they had witnessed from RPGs so far. Less cynically, it's also entirely possible the developers themselves were huge fans of the first person dungeon crawler and wanted to replicate their positive experiences in a passionate love letter to the genre. Also, for what it's worth, they did add uniqueness in party management and customization, as you surely already know, but we'll get to that later.

I guess we'll never know the true context behind the original MegaTen's creation, but the point is, this is a very old-school game. I don't think it's nearly as brutal as the ones that inspired it, but it is also definitely far from holding your hand. At no point in the game is it entirely obvious exactly where items you're supposed to collect are located, so you mostly have no choice but to comb the entire dungeon yourself until you stumble upon the stuff you need to progress. Furthermore, sometimes the very NPCs that tell you there's even something to look for at all are slightly out of your way, so there's always the mental pressure of maybe having left something behind and having to backtrack and go to all sorts of places trying to find it when you run into the next dead-end.

By itself, this isn't really a bad thing. As an exploration-based dungeon crawl, it's expected that the player will have some agency over what they're doing, and it's refreshing to see a game where you have so much ground to cover, but with hardly any setpiece to spice up the crawling in terms of context, the job of entertaining the player falls squarely upon the gameplay's shoulders.

To that end, the gameplay is definitely more boring than stimulating. This is where I have to admit, I beat the Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei remake version of it. I have played the original, though, and I am aware of the differences between versions. I have also played future games in the franchise with the same issues, so there's no evidence that the original is much different in this regard. Anyway, apart from an intense earlygame where you're at risk of death from a stray Zan spell cast by a gnome if you're unlucky, the rest of the game's fights are uneventful, once you level up enough and have an array of serviceable demons at your side. There's only ever one group of enemy demons per fight. There can be up to eight of them, but all eight are the same type of demon, and the graphics will only show the one until the entire group is dead. It's kind of like every fight is against only one demon but the demon can attack several times and has an erratic, huge HP pool. Furthermore, targeting is completely random for all moves, and you'd think this would add a fake layer of frustration, but the game gives you an auto-battle option. It simply makes the entire party use their regular attack for as many rounds as you want and prevents text from popping up on screen to slow down the monster-slaying, but for the most part, this is more than enough to get you through whatever part of the dungeon you find yourself in, with only the occasional, very rare exceptions of either:

-A demon that has a dangerous ability, therefore making it so that you want to kill them as quickly as possible;

-A boss;

-A battle that you got yourself into without noticing your HP is getting low, so you have to get yourself back to good conditions before proceeding.

It's definitely more of a preparations game than a reactions game. Preparation is fine, but there's never any need for you to deploy clever strategies. The game is ALL about having a good arsenal of choices up your sleeve and, when you do, you're good to go, and then you need to be either very callous or purposefully challenging yourself while playing in order to get into a situation that requires mental resourcefulness and wit. I will admit, I checked some of the mechanical differences between the original and remake versions, and it seems like they reduced the HP of enemies and bosses quite a bit, and generally went to great lengths to streamline the gameplay and make it more in tune with the next few games in the series (as far I could tell from the party itself, Kyuuyaku seems to have taken the inner workings from Megami Tensei II and applied it retroactively to the first game as well to make it more consistent, but I'm not 100% sure). Maybe this means that the original is more nerve-wracking and you need to level up much more, but I doubt it really becomes more strategy-based and oriented towards exploiting the mechanics, like the style future franchise titles would strive to achieve. As far as I can tell, the abilities remain the same, only the stats change, so it's likely more of a formula redesign than any major gameplay departure. If it is though, I apologize, and rectify my statements regarding battle mechanics boredom as far as the original version is concerned.

But hey, regardless of version, the whole demon system is pretty cool. I don't remember the characters doing it much in the books, I believe Nakajima only had Cerberus and that was it, so there's a nice, original expansion of the novels'... mechanics (?) on display here. I don't think the demon conversation, recruitment and fusion systems need any introduction, but I will say that up until Shin Megami Tensei II, the seventh overall game in the franchise, for some odd reason all demons were limited to three abilities/spells (later three spells and a few abilities), so they were not very versatile. Furthermore, magic and abilities generally sucked for the most part in early MegaTen, and in this game, outside of Hanmahan, group healing and the occasional kaja spell, all you really want is a good punching bag to take the heat off of Nakajima and Yumiko.

Also, maybe it's just in the remake, but there are quite a few demons that are exclusive to the player through demon fusion. This begins happening from pretty much the start of the game, making them sort of unique all the way through and making it sort of cool for the player to go around with these demons that you can't see anywhere else and who are usually more powerful than the enemy demons in the area. Still, however, the limited abilities and limited usefulness of said abilities make things a bit boring and makes the demons sort of interchangeable for the most part, especially considering you can't even see them in battle. But hey, in 1987 I'm sure the vast array of options alone would have been pretty impressive and, considering the plethora of real-life inspiration that was put into the demons' designs, it's kind of still impressive today, really.

Enemies do have a few tricks of their own up their sleeve, too, though, and they usually fall into the "early RPG unfairness" spectrum quite nicely, such as being able to cast death spells when the game's programming is such that you get a game over if the 2 (out of 6) human party members die, even if all your demons are still alive (naturally the final boss can use a pretty accurate version of this move), or the loathsome "smiles and laughs" attack that permanently drains an experience level from a human party member if it hits, making you have to work your way back up again without even the mercy of having the enemy that sucked your level give a massive hoard of EXP when defeated. Or the mercy of adjusting the experience table (if you're level 41 and get a level sucked from you, now you're level 40 but you still need enough experience for level 42 to get back to level 41). It's basically a reset button.

The original version also had some major frustration in the fact that there was, like DQ and so many others of its time, no save feature. You had to visit a guy near the start of the game to get a password or use a late game spell from the girl. There was also no auto-mapping feature (though the mapper/mappara spell did exist, in the old MegaTen-style 3x5 grid), so you just had to create maps yourself, I guess, which is kind of like wizardry and bard's tale and such, and kind of interesting. Though, for a game that isn't all that stimulating otherwise, it's good that in the remake you don't also have to go get a sheet of graph paper to keep track of where you've been. I'm torn on whether the original's extra doses of hardcore game design are better or worse than the remake's streamlining, but it seems to me like the hardcoreness, probably caused by memory limitations and such, served more like an arbitrary layer of confusion placed over a game that didn't really have a juicy core, while the remake's alleviation of it brought about the black spots a bit more into the limelight... It's hard to make up my mind.

The more standard things to talk about in a review are usually average-to-enjoyable here. The environment graphics are pretty good for their time in the original version, and the remake has some good stuff in the late-game, but has a tendency to make the ground a fake-looking gradient that feels artificial and standoffish. Demon designs are always a treat in MegaTen and I wouldn't say this game is an exception, but I think the original designs look kind of goofy for the most part, while the remake uses the scaled-down style of SMT II and SMT If... instead of the better-looking, more detailed style of SMT I, so that's somewhat disappointing. The music is alright, nothing special, but it starts with really cheery, upbeat tunes that go against the ambiance, especially in the remake where they added a dark-ish prologue with more fitting, atmospheric music. The sheer length of each individual section of the dungeon means the tracks will start to get repetitive at some point, and they have a repetitive nature on their own, but they're not bad. I like the bass in Valhalla Corridor. I also like the last two areas' music. Bien's track sucks, though.

Either way, it surely isn't a great game. Nor does it have to be one, honestly. It's a 1987, sort of experimental game that toyed around with the concept of a dungeon crawler in a very japanese setting coming from a very risqué source. It has its merits in creativity, sorely marred by technical limitations and overly emphasizing on its subpar dungeon crawling gameplay, extending it to the point where it overstays its welcome quite a bit. The devs were wise in keeping the plot connections to its immediate sequel small (and it is fascinating, how different it is from all others in the franchise) because Megami Tensei 1 doesn't stand the test of time.

But again, such a thing shouldn't be expected from a late eighties, obscure weird little game, and for what it's worth, like I said about Dragon Quest, it served as a base, though in my opinion a rockier one, with which to found gameplay mechanics that would be expanded upon and embellished in future titles. I'd give it a 4 out of 10, perhaps an honorary extra half-point if the original version's gameplay is a tad more stimulating, but really it's hard to even give games like this a score. They're a product of the times, and they appeal to sensibilities of the times. Gamer mentalities, even within the genre, have moved past it, but it stays here as a testament to the growth of the series. Going into it, you're likely very aware of its shortcomings already, and whether you'd like it or not is, I think, even more independent of whatever mess of words I'd be able to string together like this than usual.

#megaten #megami tensei #review #criticism

[scratchface]

Episode 80

Duel went about as expected. Kusanagi struggling between knowing they have to defeat Lightning but also knowing they have to attack Jin to do it was a nice touch.

Aoi, now that she’s a commentator on duels, has apparently forgotten how monster effects and counters work. Go figure. Also, while I do still like the Blue Maiden design over all, that weird, giant teardrop necklace thing continues to look really bad. I’m starting to think Blue Girl looked better, but what really bothers me is Blue Girl appeared so little and for such a short time, and yet it’s that design we see in the opening. Maybe there was meddling on the production team and Blue Girl was deemed not “feminine” enough, forcing the new, new redesign into Blue Maiden without any prepared animation for her. That would explain a lot...

I do hope they avoid bringing in this many observers to duels in the future. I know it is franchise tradition, but I preferred when, if duels were observed at all, it was just by the relatively quiet and unobtrusive Playmaker. Adding more of the cast to the mix just makes things seem kind of cluttered, honestly. I think Ema would have been enough for this one, which would have also made the situation much more emotional. 

Blood Shep’s “death” was very... not-dramatic, for Vrains. Considering all the screaming and dramatic shots previous “deaths” have gotten, this one felt very abrupt. Not even a focus shot of him vanishing. He still found the chance to maintain his protective older brother schtick, without the usual condescension and everything. 

Lightning’s deck continues to be be really cool; being Roman inspired in a series heavily-laden with Greek imagery has some ominous implications! 

I’m looking forward to Go vs Playmaker! These two haven’t had a match since episode 4/5, and they’ve both changed since then. Of course, there’s zero chance Playmaker is going to lose, and I doubt they’ll tie. At most, it might be interrupted. More importantly, will Yusaku be able to reach Go and wake him up from this downward spiral? 

I miss when Go was beefy and cute!

Lightning’s final “You’re next!”...who, exactly was that driected towards? Playmaker and Ai, or the group as a whole? The group and Hanoi? It was left unclear, but he did say before he was starting with the “weakest”. Considering everyone’s duel histories, Ema was actually the weakest, and the Aoi (Ema lost to BS, and Aoi lost to Takeru, who “tied” with BS). But Lightning targeted Blood Shepherd first instead. Maybe the weakest comment was just to rile BS up, or maybe Lightning doesn’t even consider Aoi and Ema as threats at all. The latter seems likely, since up until this point they’ve barely been involved. 

Now that BS “died”, he’ll becoming back brainwashed. Will Ema get a chance to fight him, or will he have a rematch with Takeru or Yusaku instead? 

It’s hard to predict who will be dueling who in the future. I suppose it all depends on who is going to be the final boss of the season: Lightning, or the combined Ignis/Bohman? If we start seeing Ignis get absorbed, it’ll probably be the latter. Otherwise, then the framing of this scene from a while back:

seems to suggest a match-up I hadn’t considered before: Bohman vs Revolver (and possibly Takeru), while Yusaku takes on Lightning and possessed Jin. Just a possibility, but it would be interesting to see if Revolver could beat an AI opponent based on his rival/arch-nemesis/destiny. 

And that’s about it!

#ygo #vrains #yugioh vrains #vrainalysis

[megatentious]

My lengthy defense of the most hated Persona game

Here’s my grand defense for the most hated game in the series: Persona 1, AKA Revelations: Persona. I know it’s too late to try and rehabilitate the game’s reputation on the internet, but I’m hoping that by rambling in modestly structured form for a bit, at least some folks might be able to look at Persona with a fresh perspective. It would be cool if everyone could try to understand what the game did so well and why it resonated so strongly with me and 2 or so other people. If you are the kind of person that thinks games age and become archaic, then I probably don’t have any hope of reaching you, but still, try to put yourself in the right mindset and approach the game on its own terms, and maybe you’ll discover something quite special.

So, Persona. Persona does very interesting things with choice. As the first Megaten rpg released in America, the negotiation system was a revelation (har har), providing the choice to talk your way out of battles and into rewards is a natural D&D element that never got a foothold in countless videogame conversions of the game, and in the first Persona these elements are at their peak. With every demon having four moods, four series of animation and four sets of voiced sound effects, the expanded options really let you get into the headspace of the demons you’re conversing with, unlike traditional SMT’s more spare binary system. Getting into the thick of things with complex sets of reactions (Joy + Interest, that’s what’s up) makes for a fun simulation.

The theme of choice is also really built into the game’s fabric, it’s the reason why in old usenet postings, Persona was recommended to folks who were fans of Gold Box games, during a time when RPG labels were more porous and that sneaky “J” hadn’t yet latched itself omnipresently to the term. Choice here also extends to the fifth character in your party, a friendly way to promote replay value without new game plus, and certain choices locking you out of giant chunks of the game, an unfriendly way of getting you through the game again. In a world though where developers are desperate to ensure that gamers experience all content (so many buzzwords!), the chutzpah of Persona being willing to lock you out of huge swathes of the game is something I actually admire.

It’s easy to underestimate the impact of the modern day setting in a post Persona 3/TWEWY/Alpha Protocol world, but dungeons that were hospitals and police stations and high school students snarling “EAT THIS” with MIGs in pitched street battles felt revelatory. Exploring the comically low-rent polygonal city (is this another reference to the abstracted icons of SMT1 and 2 world maps?) was actually fun, as ridiculous as waiting for traffic to pass might seem. There are also many complaints about the first person perspective dungeons, even though the rest of the game is third person, but the setting variety is nice and many of the wall patterns are quite evocative (Deva Yuga looks like Persepolis!)

The game also does PSX-era philosophizing in a tasteful and generally thoughtful way, while contemporaries were drawing from Evangelion, Persona looked to Zhuangzi and Jung. Not very high-falutin, true, but at least middle brow enough such that my 14 year old Sophie’s World reading self was entranced. The game has something neat to say about loneliness and identity and the way we construct the world around ourselves (all hinted at in the moody intro. The story is very nice and very Kaneko, even if he’s overestimating the literary quality in this interview, I’m very fond of it and it is my franchise favorite.

Here’s where I alienate the remaining people who might have been on board with me so far: if you ignore the loss of the Snow Queen Quest, a 20 hour alternate version of the story that takes place in a series of SMT:If... like towers, Revelations: Persona is actually the superior game. “Lunarvale,” a hodgepodge of America and Japan cobbled together by localizers attempting to mask the game’s origins, is actually more weird and interesting than the Mikage-cho that appears in Persona PSP. This bizarre mashup, combined with a nonsense translation attempt, somehow manages to better fit the lurid dreamscape vibe the original developers were going for. I can’t undersell how one-of-a-kind and wonderfully unsettling the game’s atmosphere is in the PSX version, and this is helped along of course by the sound.

Here are excerpts from some things I wrote on the music in this game:

Revelations: Persona has the best soundtrack in the franchise, possibly the best soundtrack ever made. In raw quantitative terms it's ridiculous, 113 songs and 3 hours of music without being looped, and all without doing Persona 2's trick of repeated (but still awesome!) remixes. Two majorly sweet leitmotifs for the two major quests, employed creatively and thoughtfully, four fantastic composers on four discs, cohesive and thematically coherent when by all rights it should feel disjointed as fuck, this is a generous OST!

Hidehito Aoki (R.I.P.) composed the dungeon music, which is exquisite. Lengthy songs that are moody, elegant, just plain beautiful and get you PUMPED! The iconic Deva Yuga Monochrome: School Revisited Dream-like, synthy, catchy, beautiful, quintessential Persona sound. Pandora's Den (Deepmost Area): The climax at 1:12! Ice Castle/Black Snow The twists and turns in this one, so effing good. Sebek Music, Karma Palace 90's music is the best!!! Misaki Okibe's range is ridiculous, she composed some of the most memorable, interesting tracks in the whole game. Reverse Dream World: You think you have this song figured out in the first few seconds, but stick around to see where it suddenly veers off to around :30, hilarious and awesome. Theme of Nemurin's Love: The intro! The power of a simple lovely melody, a little Uematsu-esque. Augustia's Wood: The save music, so memorable, I love the grumbling. City 2 Accident: Do you remember wandering the streets in the town, disoriented, listening to this gorgeousness, thinking about how Lunarvale suddenly seemed so scary, like an unsettling dream? Bar Attacked by Harem Queen: A bit of jazzy beauty. And most important of all of course, Misaki Okibe is the composer of the Pharmacy Music, featuring vocals by one Hidehito Aoki of all people. Satomi Tadashi Drugstore Song In our heads forever, teaching us about item use since 1996. 

More alienating for readers who have gotten this far: the “whitewashing” character designs were all improvements, Kazuma Kaneko redrew everything himself and it’s easy to tell that a lot of thought was put into the redesigns. Finally, Mark is also >>>> Masao, everyone’s always yelling about the jive-talking but to me he came across as quite smart and savvy. I dunno, maybe this is just a Flavor of Love/Outsourced minorities just wanna see themselves effect operating here, leave me alone you guys! So yes, the franchise’s current fanbase might not be fond of them, but the cast is comprised of characters that are meant to be iconic and not friends you wish you had in real life, a cast that, FFVI-like, is meant to evoke broader themes and not follow the typical arcs of many RPGs these days. Check out the classiness of Yuki’s design, and allow me to quote some more stuff on how Tsuchiya, master of the character theme, nails it for each party member.

The sign of a good character theme is when you can extrapolate from instrument choice and melody to personality. Here Tsuchiya is the man, no one does it better this side of Uematsu. I hear these songs and I've got a perfect picture in my mind of each cast member. It's what I think of when I think of "videogame music" ha, here are my personal favorites, I could listen to these endlessly. Mary/Maki: Cheerful, just a hint of melancholy in the notes, love that slap bass. Yuki: Starts a bit slow, but soon we learn that Yuki's cool but determined. Alana: The song tells me she's brassy, energetic, fun. Chris/Reiji: Dangerous, exciting, a bad-ass delinquent. Ellen/Elly: Classy, elegant, confident.

Some also rag on the dungeon design, but it seems unfair to expect centerpiece labyrinths along the lines of Strange Journey or Etrian Odyssey in a game going for something completely different. Nevertheless, you’ve got tricky mazes with dead ends that test resource allocation skills and provide a sense of accomplishment. Encounters are tough and require thought, careful consideration of when to flee and negotiate is imperative for dungeon survival. This is something that gets lost a bit in the PSP remake as the encounter rate is increased but battles are a bit easier. Exploiting elemental weaknesses isn’t as elegant as in later games, but with a ludicrously high 14 damage types breadth supersedes depth. And there’s even a positioning system to consider that the developers decided to drop from later games rather than refine. In the end, surviving the dungeon and beating the boss is an RPG staple that just plain works, although yes you will probably grit your teeth at some of the loading times.

And finally, you don’t have to take my random word for it. Parish really liked it too! How’s that for an appeal to authority?

For series buffs, it’s fun to trace this game’s historical lineage, as one of the earlier spinoffs of Shin Megami Tensei, it's easy to spot the mainline series influence: the occultism of the opening ritual, the hospital as first dungeon, the first person perspective for dungeon travel, BLUE POINTER MAN, and the omnipresent danger of demons in town and dungeon alike. Revelations: Persona is drawing from a rich and storied history, but manages to recast SMT traditions in interesting new directions. Again, the atmosphere is really unbelievable and something I haven’t come across in other games. It’s more than a simple curiosity and it doesn’t deserve dumb dismissal or sneering derision for its flaws. Revelations: Persona is a real marvel, modern games ought to draw more inspiration from its lessons, and the game belongs in the RPG canon, there I said it!

#persona #revelations persona #persona 1 #unjustly maligned

[whatdoesthejstandfor]

Cool Smash Possibilities #3: Captain Toad

Welcome to another edition of this cute Tumblr series I’m writing! While personally, I would love to play as both Funky and Alm, I don’t actually think they’ll even be logically considered for Smash. But for today’s entry, I actually have a little bit of hope for this little fungi. Not only being one of the more prominent WiiU Mario spinoffs, but also being featured in quite a number of Mario games himself, there’s no better time to include Captain Toad into the Smash Brothers roster.

The Origin:

Toad’s been a pretty reoccurring character/species since the start of Mario’s Mushroom Kingdom adventures in 1985. They usually assume a minor role in the series, while also appearing in literally every spinoff game as a playable character. They even appear in Smash, though the use of Peach’s Neutral B special. I believe this makes sense, as Toad joining the Smash roster would be equal to a random Goomba or Koopa Troopa joining. Yoshi’s a special case, as the dino is sort of one of many, but he’s also starred in numerous games and has a much larger presence in both the Mario and Nintendo world. Plus, the Mario franchise sure does have a lot of playable characters as is, so having the Toad character as a special move tied to Princess Peach makes sense. So, you may be ask, what makes Captain Toad so different? Well, here’s some more backstory. During 2008′s Super Mario Galaxy on Nintendo Wii, Mario will sometimes encounter a wandering group of Toads, assisting the plumber thoughout the level. Sometimes they will give him the power stars he seeks, others they just sort of whimsically commented on the galaxies they explored. Regardless, the red Toad of this brigade wore a light on his head, and is essentially the prototype Captain Toad. They appear again in 2010′s Super Mario Galaxy 2. This exact group of Toads appear again in the next big console Mario Game, 2013′s Super Mario 3D World, with a major redesign. Not only do they show up during some stages, but you take control of the leader (now officially dubbed “Captain Toad”) of this brigade during special challenge levels. These levels have you control the Captain though diorama like obstacle courses, using the gamepad to control the camera. Captain Toad cannot jump, so he can only run to avoid obstacles in order to collect the 5 Green Stars and complete the challenge. These levels were ridiculously popular on the Miiverse Social Media community, and thus, the developers ended up using these as base for their next game. Thus, comes 2014′s Captain Toad Treasure Tracker! Captain Toad’s very own game that feature a comfy collection of diorama levels to complete, including even boss levels. Captain Toad is of course joined by Captain Toadette and the rest of the Toad Brigade, on their quest to find lots of treasure. It was announced like a month ago that it’s getting an updated port on Nintendo Switch, including levels featured in 2017′s Super Mario Odyssey... Which Captain Toad was also featured in! Hidden in the many Kingdoms, Captain Toad will give Mario a single Power Moon when found and talked to. Mario can also find Captain Toadette residing in Peach’s Castle after the game is completed, and gives Mario a Power Moon for every achievement he completes.

Smash Statistics:

So okay, before I start this, I want Toadette as an alternate skin for Captain Toad. I don’t think this should be a problem, as Corrin, Robin, and the Wii Fit Trainer have both sexes as Alternate Costumes. Now that that’s out of the way, Captain Toad should be similar to Little Mac in ways. He doesn’t have the jumping power that other Mario series characters have, but he should be very fast on the ground. That doesn’t mean he CAN’T jump, because that would cripple him severely in a game like this, but he has a hard time lifting off the ground. Captain Toad’s basic attacks would mostly involve him using his head and his feet, as they both have prominent size. Captain Toad’s Neutral Special would be a variation of Peach’s Neutral B, though while Peach’s spores shoot in front of her, Toad’s would cover his entire body. I guess it’d be similar to Corrin’s stupid Dragon counter, but not nearly as much knockback. I’d make his Forward Special a powerful Back Pack Swing. Not only would Toad use this to propel horizontally in the air, but also as a hard hitting swing attack with pretty decent range. I’m bringing back the Propeller Block from Mario 3D Land to be his Up Special, giving him a predictable recovery that causes slice damage from the propellers. Finally, his Down Special would be Turnip Pluck. While Peach’s turnips have different faces and gimmicks, Captain Toad would pull out a predictable turnip. He’d do it much faster than Peach, just to toss in a cute little nod to Super Mario Bros. 2. When Captain Toad gets the Smash Ball, he pulls from the ground his mighty Super Pickax! This cute little item is actually based off of the Hammer in Donkey Kong, and therefor will give Captain Toad all the benefits of said item, as well as invulnerability. The Pickax disappears after a while, so score your KOs!

Home Stage:

I feel like fighting on top of one of those Diorama stages would be really cute. I don’t really know which one, though. Maybe something with cute shy guys in the background, as well as the rest of the Toad Brigade hidden somewhere. Maybe the stage will change as it’s rotated around, meaning you have to adapt to new hazards you might’ve seen in the background, like those said Shy Guys. That, or toss Captain Toad’s stage into New Donk City or an Odyssey themed stage. IDK, I’ve never designed a video game before.

Reasons For!

-Captain Toad perfectly aligns within that timeframe between Smash 4 and the new Smash, and Sakurai heavily drew from that timeframe for the last game. -I feel like Captain Toad just appeals to everyone. Old School fans would love to see Toad in this game, newer fans get the major Captain Toad fanservice. Guys would find his hard hitting fast playstyle hilarious, gals would think he’s hella adorable. I can imagine all the memes just sprouting up like shrooms including this little guy. -I don’t think Captain Toad has much competition from other Mario franchise characters. Like, Pauline MAYBE, but Waluigi and Daisy haven’t appeared in as many mainline Mario games as Captain Toad has. Plus, Toad has been in the spinoffs since Super Mario Kart, I think he deserves a little more priority than those two.

Reasons Against!

-Sakurai’s usually super adamant on his choices in Smash. Toad has been Peach’s Neutral Special since Melee, and it’s unclear if Captain Toad will be enough to change his mind. -Toads have always walked that line between an Actual Character and Generic Series of Characters. I think Captain Toad is an Actual Character, but y’never know what the developers think. -Mario as a franchise has six characters and a clone already, while also semi encompassing the Donkey Kong, Yoshi, and Wario franchises. The Mario franchise has a lot of characters in Smash as is. Maybe after Rosalina and Bowser Jr., Sakurai would want to simmer down on those Mushroom Emblemed guys?

Overall, I think Captain Toad has potential. He could be really fun, if added! It just depends if Sakurai is willing to give the fungi the 12 Part Video Game franchise + Anime Adaptation he deserves. Anyway, my next Cool Smash Possibilities will be out on Sunday, but I’m going to provide an interesting twist: you guys can vote for the next Cool Smash Possibility. If you guys have any characters you’re dying to see, feel free to DM me, and the most popular one will be done on Sunday! I’m familiar with most Nintendo franchises, the 3rd Party characters I might have to do a bit of research but I mean y’know, that’s it. See ya Sunday!

#super smash bros #nintendo switch #super mario #captain toad #toad #captain toad treasure tracker

[attract-mode-collective]

Ready To Wear, Ready To Play

As previously noted, there’s been yet another change in direction for the Attract Mode blog… which I have dubbed Version 2.8 Final CE EX Λ Core Plus Alpha. BTW/FYI. But yeah, been posting on Twitter, a lot. So much so that you may have missed something, so here’s a recap!

Note: was originally going to cover everything tweeted throughout the month, but because there’s so much to cover (and February’s short)… am guessing bi-weekly might be the way to go. Am also going to present things mostly in order.

K, enough chatter: at the very top is another fine example of a Famicom being the ultimate in fashion accessory (via nintendu). And here we have, not designer threads but designer plastic (via gamefreaksnz)...

Speaking of plastic, Sega (or someone who got Sega’s blessing, or maybe not even) made Super Monkey Ball figures? Guess so (via magimacaque)...

I was under the belief that, if I truly wanted to make an impact with the relaunch of the Attract Mode Twitter, I couldn’t just post one single piece of Klonoa fan art, but two... 

And I only have one example of Cuphead fan art, but it’s the one that counts (via jothelion)...

It was Kyle who helped kick the Attract Mode Twitter’s rebirth into high gear, with the reveal of his Nintendo Power covers. So to help replay the favor, I must insistent that everyone purchase the hard copy of RPG_Friends (which I first mentioned here)...

Nothing makes me happier than seeing such a dense assortment of Japanese game stuffs (via peazy86)...

... Yet that being said, I also believe less can be more, plus a nice breeze while playing Secret of Mana is... well... nice (via sixteen-bit.tumblr)

These gamer chairs perfectly embody Japanese sensibilities when it comes to furniture, plus are a total 180 to the junk they peddle in the US (via shmups)...

Time for another excellent toco toco vid, this one features your fave old school Capcom illustrator, and mine, Akiman…

There's so much I love about this interview with the creator of Hong Kong 1997, whose goal was "to make the worst game possible”. Though this picture of the guy is near the top of my list... 

I love these kooky kids, thinking they could possibly get away with  stealing an entire Final Fight arcade cab (via videogamead)...

Yeah, I feel the same way kid (via tvgame)...

"This is Jesus. He lives inside my Neo Geo MVS cabinet. He was there when I got it. He is glorious." (via arcadephile)...

The pathos that is Sub Zero at the bat, in four modded screenshots(via lanceboyles)...

The pathos that is the Kachō interacting with kids, in just three YouTube screengrabs (via gaijira)...

And the pathos that is Splatoon 2, via two screengrabs and the piece of fan art that resulted (via lunaticobscurity)...

Though in addition to pathos, Splatoon is also filled to the brim with intensity (via thewaragainstgiygas)...

Welcome to VIOLENT CITY (via shmups)...

Also, STAY CHILL (via paperbeatsscissors)...

Not that any band in which music is performed via guitars hooked up to Famicoms is all that typical to being with, but this one is most definitely not typical (via miki800.com)...

This "what the hell is going on exactly" illustration has motivated me to finally Wario Land a spin at long last (via it8bit)...

Remember Absolutely Rose Street, the Beverly Hills 90210 meets Degrassi meets Wayne’s World-esque show that was actually an infomercial for the Sega 32X in disguise that I wrote about a little whiles ago? Well here's ad for it (via oldgamemags)...

I'm a total sucker for old Japanese video game mags, primarily ones featuring models/statues on the cover (via miki800)...

Another cover to an old Japanese game rag, this one featuring the very first Metal Gear; I wonder if this slightly cutesy take helped to inspire the Metal Gear we meet in Snatcher (via mendelpalace)...

Here we have a page from an 11 page comic, done in a single sitting, for an event that celebrates various pairings of Solid Snake/Otacon, one that's called Snot Week for whatever reason (via millionfish)...

I want this woman to be my mom (via cyberfights)...

Am obsessed with this image of a man playing Xevious in the middle of a desert that's clearly fabricated and clearly from the 80s (via shmups)...

mendelpalace sez: "This picture gives me anxiety" and I feel exactly the same...

This is comparable to my own morning commute, except for the lack of floating cherry blossom petals and various other differences (via tightenupthe)...

Spring is almost here, which means it's time for a new wardrobe, which really means it's time to get new PaRappa attire (via miki800.com)...

If a glitched Nintendo logo when booting up a Game Boy looks fashionable to you, you're in luck (via gameandgraphics)...

Tho if a glitched Game Boy Advance start up is more your style (via corruptionasart)...

Has anyone received this Mega Drive/Genesis chiptune album on a cart (described as a "16-bit VMU") yet? (via catskullelectronics)

Ever wonder what a 3 part symphony, one performed via 5 different Nintendo DSs and 5 different copies of Electroplankton, sounds like? Well wonder no more (via mendelpalace)...

And ever wonder what an Italian-based, US-born R&B, blues and disco singer (which is how Wikipedia describes Ronnie Jones) thought of video games in the year 1980? Again, wonder no more (via aestheticoftheday)...

The new DDR, which will record your performance and also add snazzy video effects, is my early contender for GOTY 2018 (via @Sega_AM2)...

I will never grow tired or bored of watching this run cycle, ever (via shmups)...

What appears to be a Nier motion study (via sixteen-bit)...

Sakura-ha (via rosscountertv)..

To commemorate the discontinuation of the Kinect sensor (via prostheticknowledge)...

Google Translate took the original Korean & translated it as: "Ittsumi! Maria", which @NotLikeFreddy re-translated as: "It's-a me, Mary-o"...

The medium of video games most certainly has many mountains to overcome yet, but there's little denying that we've made some progress nonetheless (via videofame)...

"I have to go now. My planet needs me.” (via sixteen-bit)...

Cuz it's been a while since I shared a gif from Sin & Punishment (via n64thstreet)...

The SNES & Genesis had cool accessories and all, yet I often wonder what it would have been like if 3D printers & Etsy were around back then...

Pretty much the cutest lil thing you'll see all day is this Genesis CDX hooked up to a 5″ Sony PVM (via decideweapons)...

“'Club Sega during the Snow' is a top-tier aesthetic, I think." (via pr0jectneedlemouse)

I love old VG sound team photos, especially when they double as old band photos, like Capcom's Alph Lyra here (via videogamesdensetsu)...

You all have no idea how happy I am to finally see a decent sized version of the flyer for Deadly Sport... again, no idea (via melvanainchains)...

Here's an illustration of Terry Bogard eating a hot dog (with the rest of his Fatal Fury posse chowing down as well)...

... Turns out, Terry's affinity for hot dogs is somewhat of a thing (via busterwolf)....

... Or, perhaps SNK as a whole are simply huge fans of hot dogs? (via meldowiseau)

I absolutely love this familiar, yet thoroughly refreshing take on Samus (via lady--peaches)...

And nothing new to report, as it pertains to @deimosremus's Metroid redesign, so am just going to continue staring at this some more...

Love Hultén is mostly known for their handheld creations, like the Pixel Vision, though I mostly dig their full-sized cabinet, the Kabin 1...

"Damn Tecmo never let Microsoft live that design down" (via sixteen-bit)...

Cuz I recently began replaying Breath of the Wild...got the Switch version for the gf on her birthday... some fan art (via it8bit)...

I've seen my fair share of comics with Sonic & Tails, but never one that addresses the debug mode from the original Genesis games (via vg-libary)...

Here we have two cats, from the game Jingle Cats, occupied with the fridge (via obscurevideogames)...

And here we have just one cat, from the Sailor Moon anime, occupied with an arcade game that I am unable to identify (via sailormoonreblogs)...

Can you believe the music video for @MissyElliott's Sock It 2 Me is over 20 years old? Crazy, I know...

Speaking of Mega Man, I guess I need to finally check out Mega Man Zero, cuz apparently X goes through some kind of religious conversion or something (via omnilunary)...

And here we have Cut Man, the one we all know (and love) from Mega Man meeting his Captain N doppelganger (via mewymarsher)...

I absolutely need this on a shirt or jacket (via @buzz_clik)...

It's always a thrill, seeing a fighting stick made out of tupperware in the wild for the very first time, isn't it? (via @silva_hime)

Yes. Fighting Layer is that game in which you jump off a folding chair to smash another one on the head of a gigantic falcon (via lordmo)...

Tonight’s episode: PINBALL ALCHEMIST (via tonights-episode)...

Here we have a Tumblr thread giving suggestions on how to access a seemingly inaccessible area of a hotel lobby; my fave, for perhaps obvious reasons, is the ring path/light speed dash combo from Sonic Adventure...

Am kinda hungry atm and feel like slicing & dicing some celery & onions, plus making some Julienne Fries; anyone got a copy of Sonic 2 handy? (via sonicthehedgeblog)

A. thanks to this fan art, I now know you can also play OutRun in Hokuto no Ken PS4! & B. great piece & all, but...still a shame that Alex Kidd is missing (via inspiredfatty)...

I've legit been staring at these rotating NES and SNES gifs all day long (via 3d-bear)...

These photos from the Dreamcast Mobile Assault Tour, circa the late 90s, right before the system's launch are very... and I mean VERY... 90s (via posthumanwanderings)...

"What will your next dream be?" (via 081594)

You know that UK/US reality show Undercover Boss, in which a billionaire CEO disguises himself as the new mailroom guy? Well there's apparently a version in Japan, with an episode starring the president of Taito (via @MMCafe_Prof)...

On Valentine's Day I came across a horror movies blog that presented various horror movie Valentines, including one for Jason Voorhees that references Friday The 13th for NES (via cameraviscera.com)...

Also, for Valentine's, my girlfriend made me pixelated chocolate; the pic does the blue hearts in particular zero justice, which look like plastic toys, but most assuredly are made of milk chocolate...

... And that’s it for now! The rest of February coming up in a few!

[cassolotl]

Habitica, self-care, and ableism

Or, how productivity apps (even the ones disguised as games) encourage burn-out.

~

On Habitica, you do self-assigned daily tasks and one-off to-dos in order to get points and treasure and item drops. You can use your treasure to award yourself treats once you’ve done tasks. If you fail to do your tasks you take damage, and if you fail to do tasks during battles your team-mates also take damage.

To put it another way:

You can’t have/do something nice for yourself if you’re not functional enough to do tasks.

If you’re not functional enough to do tasks you run the risk of taking damage, losing all your treasure, and even letting down other people who are relying on you.

Right when you’re feeling terrible because your health or functioning are bad, you take ADDITIONAL damage, can’t do nice things, and also hurt your friends.

If you need to do tasks in order to accept self-care, you will burn out.

(Sure, there’s the Inn. When you rest in the Inn you don’t take damage. That requires you to be functional enough to remember to do that, have the energy to do that, etc. The default is Not In The Inn, which makes things really hard for some people. If I recall correctly, and I might be wrong here, the Inn was added as an afterthought when it turned out that the system was disadvantaging disabled people, and it feels to me very much like a bodge. Support for disabled people was not designed into the system from the start.)

~

WHAT’S THIS ABOUT?

Habitica markets itself as helping people with conditions like depression and ADHD, and that is probably true for some people. But it’s also very heavily based on success-reward-failure-punishment. It fails to take into account that I am a human being with varying needs and deserving of good things whether I do my tasks or not, as opposed to a puppy being trained. Punishing kids (by hurting them or depriving them of kindness) for not achieving, and making kids associate their value as a person with their academic or professional success, is often considered abusive. Habitica can reinforce bad self-care lessons that we learned when we were younger from people we trusted.

Failure-punishment-success-reward assumes that you are able, but lazy. Lazy means unwilling. It is really hard for disabled people to unlearn the usually-false idea that we are unwilling and lazy, when in reality we are unable.

For a lot of people with disabilities, we are constantly talked to as though we are lazy. I don’t mean that people tell us directly that we are lazy, it’s more subtle than that. When we say we can’t do something or haven’t done something, people make motivational suggestions that would help a lazy person - implying that disability is in some way like laziness. A good faith insight into this is that they think we have a sort of involuntary laziness - we can’t stop being lazy. Maybe our disability has a symptom of laziness? So they think that solutions that help them when they are feeling lazy will help us with our disabilities.

We internalise (from people who mean well but don’t understand the nature of disability) that we are lazy. So we feel guilty when we can’t do things, because we feel like we are bad people who can’t get over this negative personality trait. We feel like frauds when we ask for practical or financial assistance.

~

SO WHAT DO WE DO INSTEAD?

A friend told me about the way they reward themself when they fail to do their “tasks”. For example, if they’ve not eaten properly for a few days, that means things are bad and they should take some time and energy to properly prepare and eat their favourite comfort food.

When you take care of yourself, you feel safe and comfortable enough to take risks and do hard things, because you know that you are venturing out of your comfort zone - and after your task you go back to your comfort zone. I think a lot of us can benefit from reversing how we think about productivity when we’re disabled.

I think perhaps I could redesign Habitica to be more helpfully realistic and representative. Because we are not lazy, we want to do the difficult things and make our lives better!

How it is currently:

Lose health when you fail.

Earn treasure and mana by doing hard and boring tasks.

Breaks and treats and nice things must be bought with treasure. Treasure is also spent on aesthetic things for your avatar.

Spend mana on casting spells on your avatar and your friend’s avatars.

BATTLES: Doing tasks damages the monster, and failing to do tasks hurts you and your friends. Incentive: Wild scrabble to do as many tasks as possible to not let down your friends, while taking no notice of your own AFK wellbeing.

How I’d like it to be:

Lose health when you don’t do your daily self-care tasks.

When your health bar is full, mana points start accumulating.

Earn mana and health by doing comforting things and nice treats.

Spend mana on difficult tasks.

Doing difficult tasks gives you treasure, and XP to level up.

Treasure can be spent on costumes, armour, weapons, and if you’re a subscriber you can convert treasure to gems so you can buy quests and unlock exclusive aesthetic stuff.

BATTLES: You are damaged an arbitrary amount by the monster daily. Doing comforting things and nice treats heals you and your party, and doing tasks damages the monster. If you lose all your health you leave the battle and can’t help your friends defeat the monster. Incentive: To take care of yourself extra well for the duration of the quest, and use your extra spoons from that to do tasks that need doing.

So in order to complete a task you first have to make sure you have enough mana from doing self-care. That means you’ll make sure you have enough personal resources pre-task, and you’ll make sure you rest and take care of yourself post-task.

During battles, you get resilience from self-care and breaks, and you do damage to the monster by doing tasks. Realistic, huh?

~

WHAT DOES THIS LOOK LIKE?

Okay, it’s time for a mock-up. :D See it bigger here.

Earn mana by doing Anytime, Daily and One-off mana tasks.

If you miss Daily mana tasks, you take damage.

When you take damage, mana goes down to top up your health bar.

Until your health bar is full, all your mana goes into replenishing your health.

If you run out of mana, spells use up your health instead.

Habits --> Anytime mana

Earn mana anytime by doing your good habits. Drinking water, getting enough sleep, etc.

Dailies --> Daily mana

Doing these things every day keeps your health and mana up. Skipping them hurts you. Streaks get you a treasure bonus. Getting some fresh air, watching your favourite TV show, taking your meds, etc.

To-do --> One-off mana

For things that are awesome, but you only want to do once! Doing them gets you mana. Going to see a movie or a concert, reading a favourite book, going on a trip/holiday, etc.

Rewards --> Spells & Mana

Spells - Real-world things you can do to make your life better in the long run, but that are hard work. They cost mana, but get you treasure and XP. Stuff that makes you go “uggggh” because they seem like big, daunting tasks. If you do something that costs more mana than you have in the bank, you take damage.

Market - Use your treasure to buy cool armour, weapons and outfits for your avatar. If you subscribe, you can also buy gems with your treasure - gems are currently spent on buying quests for your party.

What happens when you die?

You die when you have no health left, which means you also have no mana. You drop out of any quests that may be happening, so you stop getting hurt by the boss but you also can’t help your friends defeat the bad guy until your health is high enough for you to opt back into the quest again. You have to focus on self-care to build up your health, until you can do spells (tasks).

You can keep doing spells (tasks) while you’re dead, and I’m not sure what the difference would be. Maybe you earn treasure but you’re not allowed to spend it until you have full health?

~

WHAT IF I’M NOT DISABLED?

The amount of mana you get from a self-care is up to you. The amount of mana you need to complete a difficult spell/task is also up to you.

So maybe for me I need to watch three episodes of my favourite TV show to do one phone call. 10 mana gained per episode, 30 mana expended for a phone call. But maybe for you a phone call takes 5 mana and an episode gives you 30 mana! And that’s okay too. :)

~

SUMMARY

Less focus on productivity and avoiding laziness! Less assuming disabled people are just unwilling to take steps to improve their lives!

More encouragement of self-care, self-nourishment, and putting yourself first! Use self-care to earn mana to complete important but difficult tasks.

~

NB:

I know my proposed modifications to Habitica are not really going to work! I was more hoping to show people what a self-care-first gamification productivity site could look like, and to demonstrate the (accidental) bias against disabled people in sites and apps like this.

#original posts #my words #ableism #disability #habitica

[kinsie]

So, I'm going to kick out an update for MetaDoom in a couple of days. This makes a few sizeable changes under the hood, but most of it (barring some nice cosmetic tweaks and one or two balance changes) should be invisible to players outside of maybe running a little better. Now I have to start thinking seriously about what the future holds, both for MetaDoom and for my Doom modding in general.

Nevander's about to kick out his Doom 64 conversion, so odds are I'll take a little time off from MetaDoom to "vanilla-fy" it and make it gameplay mod-compliant, like I did with PSX Doom TC a while back. After that, though, there are a few things I want to tackle with MetaDoom in the future:

THE BFG: On the surface, if you only play in single-player, the BFG is fine. That's a pretty big if, however - while GZDoom's netcode situation could be politely described as "butt", it very likely won't stay that way forever. And in multiplayer, the BFG is a mess - the beams don't shoot out at hostile players, and the points rewarded by the beam attacks killing monsters are only rewarded to player one. A lot of the code for this attack was "borrowed" from Xaser's Argent mod before it underwent its ZScript-ification, so if I want to get to the root of the problem, I'll have to rewrite - and rethink - large swathes of it.

Also, the altfire is kind of crap, too, but that's all on me. I can handle that.

THE SPIDER DEMON: The Spider Demon is a difficult monster to work with and design for. I have a design written up for new moves and abilities intended to make it more appropriate as a final boss, and a big pile of sounds taken from Doom 4 and ready for additional manipulation... but this leaves a big, art-shaped hole in my plans. The Spider Demon doesn't have a lot of good alternate sprite sets out there, partly due to it not appearing in as many games as the other bosses, but mostly because of it being so fucking enormous, and that size makes it difficult to hit up artists to help me with a new sprite set. In addition, the new moves I have planned will require new frames, increasing the load.

There are a number of ways to go ahead with this, and few of them are ideal. Currently I'm leaning towards cutting down my plans and working with what I have, focusing on delivering the core of the idea using some loose-n-crappy modifications of the default Doom sprites... it'd be a bit disappointing, but I can extend and improve it further later.

Alternatively, I could poorly resize and recolour the Doom 64 Arachnotron and glue a skull to its face... ehhh, actually, nevermind.

TRITES: Trites are an interesting challenge. They're iconic to the Doom 3 experience, but they don't really fit well into Doom 2's bestiary anywhere, and their Headcrab-esque gameplay design is a trope that I've personally never been huge on. I'd like to redesign their gameplay to use the ceiling-walking trick from Strife's spider-bot, which will be a lot easier now that ZScript is a thing! As to what they'd replace, I'm learning towards making them weak and having a Spectre spawn generate 3-4, which will have its own problems with spawning inside walls etc. that will need to be dealt with.

I might also make them togglable, just for the arachnophobia peeps out there. I mean, why not, right?

MORE MONSTER VARIANTS: Clearly, my job here is not finished. I'd like to address a couple that have been on my mind recently...

Arch-Vile: Obviously, the key "get" here is the Doom 4 Summoner. I have a gameplay design hashed out for this guy, involving the Imp Lord's teleportation trick and summoning hordes of weak melee Zombies, but I've yet to piece together sprites for it. I have a very clear idea in my head of what I want to do, I just haven't gotten around to properly executing it yet.

Mancubus: There are two key variants I want to do here - the Doom 64 Manc (which I will probably name the Druj after one of the Doom 2 RPG variants) and the Doom 4 Cyber-Manc. These two monsters have the polar opposite problems - the Druj has sprites but no gameplay design, and the Cyber has gameplay design but no sprites. I'll have to talk to people and see what I can figure out.

PLAYER GENDER: This is something a friend of mine has requested, and with the presence of Crash in Q3A and Major Morgan from Doom 2 RPG, it's totally canon. I have some ideas on how to do this, at least as far as player sounds and HUD face (which may or may not take some inventory item hackery depending on what Graf's ZScript status bars can do). Changing anything else would probably require Gross Hacks™, or at least, way more art editing than I'm prepared to do.

If I do this though, I'd at least like to also accommodate the "other" gender option in player info, just for consistency's sake. Quake 2 (and parts of the ZDoom source code) accommodate this with a bulky-ass cyborg option - a HUD face for this mode would be tricky, but sound effects will be cake. As to what resources to use, I'll probably try and get permission to use Xaser's female hud face from Psychic (sans shades, of course), since it's in the same visual style as the standard Doomguy face and would require minimal massaging to look right. For the cyborg HUD face... I dunno, Hayden's head from Doom 4, maybe?

THE FUTURE: At least on the surface, at a noise-being-made level, MetaDoom is probably one of the less successful of my Big Mods, as you could probably tell by my complete failure to hide how disgruntled I am about it. I think, ultimately, it's due to the mod being comparatively straight-faced and adhering to the standard Doom gameplay in comparison to Reelism's arcade crazytown. Releasing in the wake of the D4D juggernaut probably didn't help much, either.

This isn't to say I'm disappointed with the mod - far from it, I'm super-proud of what I've accomplished - but as a creature that thrives off feedback, it's kind of difficult to shake the feeling of shouting into the void. And with that feeling comes thoughts of veering off and working on a different mod concept I've been massaging for a while. Something akin to a modern take on Cory Whittle's community-defining work blended with the casual insanity of the BUILD engine's games. However, while an attitude and feel is clearly present, the entire rest of the mod concept is still very nebulous, and ultimately all I have to show for it right now is a catchy name and an elevator pitch that changes every other week.

GZDoom has changed dramatically since MetaDoom was first announced last July, and it's continuing to evolve and expand and grow hair in gross places. Ultimately, I'm going to keep The Next Thing on hold as the next generation engine feature set formulates, and continue to work on MetaDoom, using it as something of an R&D lab for new features of possible relevance. We're entering a strange new world, and I want to make sure I'm well-equipped for it. Or at least, so I know just how fucked I am without actual programmers backing my illiterate ass up. Either/Or, really.

#gaming #doom #modding #gzdoom #metadoom

[ecoamerica]

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

#ACLA24 #ACLA24Leaders #youtube #youtube video #climate leaders #climate solutions #climate action #climate and environment #climate #climate change #climate and health #climate blog #climate justice #climate news #weather and climate #environmental news #environment #environmental awareness #environment and health #environmental #environmental issues #environmental justice #environment protection #environmental health #Youtube

[murasaki-murasame]

I was planning to make a whole post anyway about my hopes and predictions for Gala Leif if he ends up happening next month, but there’s also a whole lotta other stuff to talk about now with the FEH rerun, the Ciella fight teaser, and our first gala dragon, so I guess I’ll take the chance to just talk about everything all at once, lol.

I feel like I went through every possible human emotion in the span of like ten seconds when I saw the gala banner announcement a day or two ago and then saw what it was actually about. That sure was a roller-coaster.

I honestly don’t really care about Mars that much [mainly because I’m always just more interested in adventurers than dragons], but I’m really curious about the precedent this is setting, with this being our first gala dragon, and this also happening only one month after the last gala banner.

They’ll probably talk about it in the next This Month post in a week or so, but I’m gonna just assume for now that we’re gonna get gala banners on a monthly basis from now on, rather than every two months. Which is a little bit scary to think about since it gives us less time between each gala to save up for each one, but we’ll just see how it goes.

Everyone’s predicting that we’re gonna alternate between gala dragons and gala adventurers, but I’m not sure it’ll be strictly scheduled out like that. I feel like we’re just switching to a monthly schedule and we just happened to get a gala dragon as the start of the schedule shift. I think it’s more likely that we’re going to start seeing reruns of old gala units between entirely new gala characters. I mean, it’s pretty obvious how much revenue it’d get them if they ever decided to rerun Gala Cleo or Gala Alex, lol.

Mostly I just can’t even think of that many options for what they could release in terms of gala dragon alts. We might get some of the other dragons that the royal siblings have pacts with, but we only know of like two other ones.

Mars’ introduction is bringing up the whole hot button issue of powercreep in the fandom, but honestly I don’t think Mars being really powerful is that big of a deal. He’s not exactly essential for any content, and tbh at the end of the day I just think it’d be weird if our first gala dragon WASN’T notably powerful. People already complain about dragon banners as it is because they have such low value. I can only imagine how many complaints there’d be if we got our first gala dragon and it only ended up being a sidegrade to the existing options. From what I’ve seen of how Mars changes up things on the DPS sim, I think they struck a good balance of making him powerful without him being super gamebreaking. I honestly think that Marth’s mana spiral is a much more blatant example of powercreep, and has had more of an impact on the flame meta than Mars alone.

Anyway, on the note of Marth and co, the FEH rerun has finally begun, and I kinda have to agree with everyone that the defense gamemode just doesn’t really feel good to play at all when it’s locked to solo, lol. It’s so obviously designed for co-op instead. It’s not really that big of a deal, but it does feel like more of a slog than it should, especially since you have to do it like 45 times for the event endeavors, and since there’s so many valor rewards. I’m curious to see how it pans out when this becomes a regular gamemode for future events, though. Hopefully they get better at balancing it and making it fun to play.

Even though I still don’t have any interest in pulling on any of the FEH banners since I just want to save for Gala Leif, I did decide to 70MC Alfonse, because haha bad decision machine go brr :) But I honestly do like him a lot, and I’m excited to get Sharena from the upcoming event. I hope she’s a light lance since I don’t have H-Elly or H-Vanessa, but we’ll see how it goes.

We also got some more teasers of the new FEH event and how it’ll play out. It looks like it’ll be a wave-based arena mode of sorts where you fight lots of enemies, which apparently include boss versions of different gacha characters. I think they mentioned a while ago that they’ll be introducing a new event type to the event rotation along with defense battles, and I assume this’ll be the first example of it. If they do, I hope they keep the part with you fighting boss versions of gacha characters, since that’s a neat idea that makes them feel different from the other events we get and the bosses we fight.

They haven’t really said anything about what the new FEH units will be like aside from Sharena, and I can’t really make any guesses since I’m not a Fire Emblem fan to begin with, but I’m already bracing myself for the inevitability of us getting a two-part banner for the new units, lol.

We’re also getting Ciella’s fight at around the start of next week, and they posted a preview video of the standard difficulty version of it. It seems like she inflicts a unique debuff called Vulnerability, so I’m really curious to see if I end up being correct with my previous theory about certain wind units getting debuff cleanse mechanics added via mana spiral upgrades. I think there’s at least one part in the video where Lowen heals the team and it doesn’t cleanse Vulnerability like it does with Plague, and it’d be a bit weird if you’re just meant to deal with having the debuff until it eventually wears off, so it’d be neat if they do introduce a new debuff cleanse mechanic.

Though tbh I can’t actually tell exactly what Vulnerability is meant to even do, since I don’t think it seemed to have a big impact on how much damage characters took, even though it definitely sounds like it’s meant to be a defense debuff or something. Either way, it’s probably going to be the central mechanic of Ciella’s fight, so hopefully we get tools to deal with it.

They only showed off the standard version of her fight so things will probably get more complex in expert, but it looks like her fight’s going to be built around making you move around a lot to dodge attacks. She seems to have various purple attacks, as well as homing attacks, and one move that seems to fire projectiles that bounce around the map. I don’t know how much this will really impact things, but it at least seems different to how relatively little you have to move around in Kai Yan.

It also looks like she might have unavoidable freeze-inflicting attacks, which might be interesting. They probably want you to use at least one freeze-res character. Which might not really diversify the meta much from where it is now, since Hawk has freeze res, but we’ll see how it goes.

We haven’t heard anything about us getting more wind mana spirals, but I’d be kinda surprised if we don’t get any more for this. In general wind is in a bit of an awkward spot, and if we don’t get more mana spirals for it soon, I feel like the Ciella meta is just going to be Tobias + Hawk [and maybe Lin You] again, if only just due to a lack of good options.

I’m also still really interested to see what the wind Agito weapon buffs end up being, and how much they might benefit certain characters. I think that a crit rate buff might be pretty nice, at least for characters like Ku Hai, but that sort of a buff probably wouldn’t help people like Lin You or DY-Xainfried much since they have crit rate buffs in their kits already. A crit damage buff could be interesting, but unless you’re playing as Lin You or have a DY-Xainfried on the team, it might not be as good as a crit rate buff.

Either way, I’m slowly getting a 0UB wind CT2 of each type just so I have all my options available to me, but I feel like the first wind Agito weapon I get will probably be a blade or wand, since I’ll probably end up using either Tobias, Noelle, or DY-Xainfried against Ciella most of the time. I do have a 70MC Lin You, though, so I might get an axe too.

We’ll see how it goes when the fight comes out, but I’m gonna assume that Ciella will probably be about as difficult as Kai Yan. Though since she doesn’t seem to have the same ‘you deal twice as much damage to the boss as you normally would for some reason’ mechanic as Kai Yan, and since wind is way less broken as an element than shadow as a whole, it’ll probably take a bit longer to clear. Though tbh I’m still like 100% expecting people to be able to clear it notably faster with full shadow teams than wind teams, so there’s that to consider, lol.

Anyway the main thing I’ve been thinking about recently is Gala Leif, who I’m still hoping against hope will come out at the end of next month.

It’s not like we know for sure he’s gonna ever be released at all, but with chapter 13 he’s officially joined Euden full-time, and he got a whole new redesign and 3D model to commemorate it, which really seems like blatant set-up for him getting a gala alt. Like how Sarisse has her NPC design, and a 3D model based on it for Melsa’s event, but then she got a new outfit and 3D model for her gala alt. Even Mym technically got her design tweaked a bit for her gala alt compared to her regular NPC artwork.

I wasn’t even sure at first if Leif got a new outfit for chapter 13 or if it was just a different pose, but it’s definitely a different outfit. Or, more accurately, it’s basically his old outfit but tweaked and redesigned to be more ornate and fancy and detailed, which is pretty telling. And I’m pretty sure his 3D model from the Void Poseidon fight was a new one based on his new outfit, which is also just even more additional design work to put into someone who’s currently just an NPC.

I heard that in chapter 9 he was basically given the same sort of internal coding as Albert [like how NPC Zethia in chapter 1 was apparently based on Hildegarde’s data], but I don’t really think he’s going to be a light unit, at least if he does end up as a gala unit. We already have Gala Euden as a gala light sword adventurer, and I don’t think they want to double up on that. I also feel like one way or another Leif is going to be fairly support-based, which would make him overlap with Gala Euden even more if he were a light sword. So I’m just hoping that doesn’t happen.

In the long run I think that his role in combat will be more relevant to the question of which units he’d overlap with, rather than his element/weapon combo. I mean, we could have a purely offensive gala light sword and they wouldn’t actually conflict too much with Gala Euden because they’d do different things. The various changes we’ve gotten to how co-abilities work, and the introduction of unique co-abilities, means it’s not really a big deal to have two units with the same weapon type in a team together so long as they do different things.

Which is also why I don’t want him to be a wind or water element sword unit, either. Gala Ranzal is [kind of] defense-oriented already, and also he just doesn’t deserve to get directly overshadowed by a hypothetical new gala wind sword, lol. And even though Gala Elly is a different weapon type, Leif would definitely conflict with her in practice if he was a support-oriented water unit.

Funnily enough I think him being a shadow element gala sword built around team buffs could work fine, and he wouldn’t really overlap with anyone aside from maybe Patia, but realistically I doubt we’ll get another gala shadow sword so soon after Gala Alex, no matter how different they might be in practice, lol.

So basically due to process of elimination I think I’d want him to be a gala flame sword. On the one hand the idea of a gala flame sword doesn’t really interest me at all, but honestly I think he could be surprisingly interesting and really shake things up if he’s support-oriented. Nearly all of the flame swords we have are pretty much entirely offensive, and nobody uses Karl even though he can technically be used as a support-based flame sword with the right set-up. So I honestly think that Leif could have his own relatively unique niche in the flame meta even if he ends up with such a common element/weapon combo.

There’s also the fact that Volk seems like it’s going to end up being the hardest Agito fight by a substantial degree, so I think it’d make sense to start introducing more flame units designed to let people break into that fight. And from what I know of the Volk meta [from having never actually played eVolk myself, lol], it seems pretty obvious that the big hole in the flame meta at the moment is how H-Lowen is basically the only accepted support unit, and he’s an entirely support-focused unit who does next to nothing to contribute to the team’s DPS. If eVolk and HMS didn’t have unavoidable damage and high difficulty in general, he’d probably lose his place in the meta, which I feel like is kinda already happening as a result of Hawk and Marth’s mana spirals. So I feel like what flame really needs right now, rather than more good DPS units or more good healers, is a support unit who can also contribute to team DPS.

So basically what I want is for Gala Leif to be like a mix of Tobias, Gala Elly, and T-Hope. If he wants to be an alternative/replacement to H-Lowen, he’s going to need at least SOME healing, on top of offensive/defensive buffs. I wouldn’t actually want him to have enough healing to straight up replace H-Lowen as a healer, but if he wants to be an alternative to him then he at least needs enough to deal with stuff like cleansing plague.

In general my basic idea of how I think his kit could work in order to fulfill that role is that he could have an S1 that has a big strength boost and a smaller defense boost [so like a reverse of Patia’s S1], and an ability/chain co-ability that gives Team Healing Doublebuff. Preferably on the level of 5% HP per tick instead of 1% HP per tick like with T-Hope. I think that’d basically be all that he needs to be able to work as a team support unit who can contribute to team DPS while also providing enough healing to deal with plague and recover people from unavoidable damage, even though he wouldn’t be as good of a generalist healer as H-Lowen.

For both Volk and HMS there’s also the issue of interfering with melee baiters, and needing to do ranged baiting for certain moves, so in spite of him being a sword unit, maybe they could give Gala Leif an S2 that gives him a ranged attack stance like Tobias, so he can let the melee units do their thing.

This is all just more or less baseless speculation, but this is just what I’m thinking they could do to address the fact that Volk is the hardest Agito fight, that the support role is the most exclusive and difficult role in that fight, that H-Lowen is basically dead weight DPS-wise who seems to slowly be losing his relevance in the face of 4DPS team comps, and that Emma has basically never been meta for Volk and has become way less important for HMS with how co-abilities work now. So introducing a new gala unit who provides fairly substantial team DPS buffs along with adequate healing seems like it’s exactly what the flame element needs right now. And considering that Gala Alex has poison and buff dispel it’s not exactly impossible that we could get a gala unit designed to work against Volk. It might make more sense for us to get a wind gala unit next to go against Ciella, but I still think that Ciella won’t be as hard as Volk, and wind also already has more in the way of viable support units than flame does at the moment.

The fact that our first gala dragon is also a flame one designed for DPS units, along with Marth getting a super powerful mana spiral, also just makes me think that they’re still trying to address the Volk meta and give people more options for it, so I think it’s reasonable to assume our next gala unit might be designed to address the support/defense part of the flame meta.

It’s worth noting, though, that I’m pretty sure Leif had some sort of team defense buff when he showed up in chapter 9, which is basically the main reason why I’m assuming he’d be a support/defense-based unit rather than an offensive one. Patia also ended up being a team support unit so it’d just make sense if he ended up being kinda similar, lol.

Anyway this was way too many words to just say that I want my boi to finally come home :v

#murasaki rambles #dragalia lost #TL;DR: please just let Gala Leif exist and be worth getting :( I've been waiting like eight months for this bastard to be playable

[dorothydelgadillo]

68 Blogging Prompts to Help You Get Over Writer's Block

Here's the deal -- we all know blogging works, in terms of driving growth for businesses in the digital age. That's why I'm not going bore you by reciting all of the statistics we should know by heart by now. 

Even with all of those glowing, happy, pro-blogging numbers, however, we also know that creating content can be really hard, and writer's block is no joke. (Heck, writing is my job, and I still am mocked on the regular by a blank Word document and a sassy blinking cursor.)

To help you out, I'm going to table my usual long-winded musings and get down to the good stuff -- a ton of blogging prompts (68, to be exact!) for you to use to help you out of your next business blogging jam. 

First of All, Have You Covered the Big 5?

...wait, you know what the "Big 5" is, right? 

The "Big 5" are the top five blog topics that drive the most website traffic, inbound leads, and -- woohoo! -- sales for your business. They are topics having to do with cost, problems, reviews, "best of" lists, and comparisons. (Want to learn more? Check out this great Big 5 overview from Marcus Sheridan.) 

But what should you cover in each of those categories?

Cost

"Why does X cost so much?" This is a great topic if a high cost is a common objection. Set the expectation why your product or service is (generally speaking) an investment.

"What factors influence the cost of X?" This is a variation on the theme of #1, but this is a more specific prompt you can use for complex products and services with lots of moving pieces. For example, website redesigns can end up costing much more than people expect due to a variety of factors -- copywriting, strategy, technology requirements, etc.

"How much is too much and why?" 

"How little is too little to pay and why?"

"Should you ever pay for X?"

"X reasons Y isn't worth the cost."

"X reasons Y is worth the cost."

Problems

The most common (and unexpected) problems someone inexperienced or a "rookie" may experience and how to avoid them. 

"The top X problems with Y."

"The X problems with Y you're likely to miss."

"Why is X not working and what can I do about it?"

If you provide a lot of different products, provide honest assessments around the problems with each product type. 

If you provide more B2b or consulting services, where there is onboarding, write about the most common issues or problems a new client might experience in onboarding with a firm like yours. For example, "X Common Marketing Agency Onboarding Challenges & How to Avoid Them." 

"The X Reasons Why Y Fails." Works for both products and service-based relationships.

"X Reasons Why Y Isn't the Right Choice for You." Don't be afraid to write this from the perspective of yourself and who isn't right for you or your services. This kind of honesty will only help you weed out bad-fit prospects without wasting man hours on your sales team.

Why you don't do something a specific way for your clients that's common. For example, certain challenges with WordPress have led us to prefer building websites for businesses on HubSpot's Website Builder.

Why you don't like something -- seriously, rant about it. Jessie-Lee did a great job with her rant about WIX, and it's an article that's been a traffic driver for years.

The top problems with the "best advice" everyone is always preaching in your industry about solving a specific issue.

Reviews

Honest reviews of your product.

Honest reviews of your competitors. 

Honest reviews of a new feature. (For example, we might want to write about HubSpot's new HubSpot Video service, powered by Vidyard.)

Reviews of related tools and applications that are relevant to your audience. 

Reviews of important, discussion-worthy industry books.

Reviews of awesome industry-specific podcasts worth listening to. 

Best

Tools to help someone do their job better. For example, here are the best apps I recommend for folks who want to become content rockstars.

Solutions to solve a particular problem. 

Unexpected ways or strategies to solve a problem. This is a fun little variation on #2, especially if you've discussed #2 in the past. 

"Best X Products to Solve for Y." They don't have to be your products, or they could be related to someone's job, even if you don't necessarily provide those products. Going back to my content apps example, we don't make or sell those apps, but they're relevant to our audience and establishes expertise in content strategy and creation.

"Best Y Products/Apps/Tools to Help You X." Again, you don't always need to write about yourself here.

Best questions to ask a prospective vendor type and what answers to look for.

Best answers to provide in a particular situation -- interview, meeting, sales call, etc. 

"The X Best [Your Company Type]" You may think it's a bad idea to write about and potentially drive people to your competitors, but people are searching for "best [your company type]" when solving for their problems. So, get in there and provide honest advice that attracts best-fit customers and allows bad-fit prospects to self-identify and go elsewhere.

Best ways to produce better reports for your bosses, industry specific. 

Best tips for being more productive, industry or job role-specific. 

Comparisons

Comparisons of common platforms used within your industry. For example, Vidyard vs. Wistia or HubSpot vs. Marketo for inbound marketing.

Comparisons of different types of solutions to the same problem. 

Compare different types of service providers in your space. For instance, an inbound agency, a web design agency, and advertising agency can all build websites, but each type is the right choice for different client types and situations.

Compare new versions of products, platforms, services, tools, and applications to an older version -- it's almost like a review. 

Yesterday vs. today #1, "What solutions worked X years/decades ago but don't work today? What changed?"

Yesterday vs. today #2, "What problems were problems X years/decades ago but aren't anymore? Why?"

Correct Misconceptions & Faulty Assumptions

Being the best educator in your space means taking the time to help your audience look at what's in front of them in a different way -- whether you're making an out-of-reach solution seem possible or nudging them back on the right path. 

Of course, you don't want to be a jerk when telling someone they're wrong or encouraging them to view something in a new light, so always be helpful and never be condescending when tackling any of the following prompts.

An easy way to make sure you don't stray from educator into jerk territory is to always dedicate a portion of your blog article to validate why they may view things the way they do right now. Maybe it's a perfectly logical assumption they've made, even if it's a correct one. 

What's the one thing that someone gets wrong about what you do for your job?

What's the one thing people or businesses often wrong when trying to diagnose the real problem that you help other solve?

What's one thing someone could do better right now to immediately improve their own results or output that they never considered?

What are the worst solutions someone could consider for a particular problem?

What's the worst advice people are always giving about a specific problem, and what's better advice you'd recommend instead?

What questions shouldn't a team or business be asking themselves before they embark on a particular project type?

What are some super sexy sales promises a vendor should never offer you before they really get to know you and your business?

Has something big changed in your industry or with what you do? Awesome, are there a lot of "hot takes" out there that are well-meaning, but still misguided? Great. Take them on one-by-one or in a single article (depending on how much you have to say) and explain what's wrong with those "hot takes."

"Why X Is Not a Good Choice/Solution for Y, No Matter What Anyone Says"

"When It's Not the Right Time to X"

Data, Trends, & Predictions

We're coming up on the end of the year, which means we're about to pull into prediction and advice station. Yes, you see those roundups and annual trend reports everywhere, but there's a reason why -- when done well, they're helpful and inform future decisions for your target audience. 

"X 2018 Trends in Y We're Ready to Send off to the Great Beyond"

"X 2018 Trends in Y We Want to See More of in 2019"

"X Things Your 2019 Y Strategies Must Include"

"X Tools You Need to Be Using in 2019"

"X Predictions We're Making for Y in 2019"

"Is X Dead in 2019?"

"X Mind-Blowing Y Statistics to Know for 2019"

"X Statistics to Convince Your Boss of Y in 2019"

"X Books/Podcasts You Need to Read Before 2019"

"X Best Y Books/Podcasts of 2018"

"X Apps You Must Download to Win in 2019"

"X Surprises in 2018 & What They Tell Us About 2019"

"X Must-Read Articles from Our 2018 Archives on Y" You can do multiple posts across different topic areas.

"X Most Important Lessons We Learned in 2019 About Y"

"X Most Important News Stories About Y in 2018"

Do the Opposite

This isn't a specific prompt, but rather it's one of my favorite tips when I'm looking for something to write about. I look at the titles of all of the articles we've written, and I look for opposite opportunities.

Meaning, did I write a "best" post but never wrote a "worst" post around the same topic? Hooray, there's something for me to write about! 

Show a Few Examples

When we teach people best practices or how to deploy a particular type of strategy, our education is often rooted solely in theory, without showing what the final product might look like. One of the easiest -- and never-ending -- sources of blogging inspiration is (again) reviewing all of the titles you've written and looking for opportunities to showcase examples. 

For instance, what if you wrote about how to design an effective homepage or the most important elements every homepage should have? You could then do a round-up post of your favorite examples of homepages that nail those best practices. 

Or, if there's only one stunning, out-of-this-world example of something, do a deep-dive blog article on why that one thing/brand/person is such a rockstar at that thing. 

Here are a few examples (ha!) to inspire you.

Finally, Talk to Sales

If you're struggling for blogging fodder, go talk to my favorite people -- your sales team. Seriously, gather a few of them in a room for an hour and ask them, "What questions are prospects asking you?"

To keep order, you can go product-by-product or service-by-service. Also, don't forget to distinguish between personas -- different buyer personas will more than likely have different priorities and questions about the same products and services. 

Happy blogging!

from Web Developers World https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/68-blogging-prompts-to-help-you-get-over-writers-block

[albinohare]

Volvo Ocean Race confirm next race will be held in IMOCA 60s – but opinions are divided among crews

Volvo Ocean Race organisers have confirmed that the 2021 edition will be held in IMOCA 60 designs. We spoke to sailors and team organisers about what a change of class might mean for the race:

After months of speculation – Yachting World broke the story than the IMOCA 60 class were in the final stages of negotiation with the Volvo Ocean Race back in April – organisers have confirmed that the next edition of the crewed multi-stage round the world race will take place in IMOCA 60 class yachts.

In the very final days of the race, a confidential Educational Session for interested parties was held around the IMOCA Class Rules in The Hague last week. The announcement was only publically confirmed on July 2, after the prizegivings for the 2017-18 event had been held and the Volvo Ocean Race teams and sponsors dispersed.

At the session, sailors and team managers from the most recent Volvo Ocean Race and IMOCA events, along with yacht designers currently involved in construction of new IMOCA Class boats such as Guillaume Verdier and Juan Kouyoumdjian, discussed the changes.

Co-President of the Volvo Ocean Race, Johan Salen, presenting at the IMOCA 60 partnership information session in The Hague, 28th June 2018.

“This is a first step of many in preparing for the next edition of the race in 2021,” said Johan Salén , co-President of the race. “There is an ongoing co-operation process to put in place the elements we need to make the next race a success from a sporting and business point of view.

“This is a complex matter with many perspectives, and we are respectfully welcoming continuous input from all key stakeholders, from World Sailing to individual sailors, teams and partners. We are confident that this is the right way forward.”

Organisers are certainly likely to receive plenty of input – during my visit to the last stage of the Volvo Ocean Race, before the announcement was made, I spoke to numerous sailors about the possible choices of boat for future editions of the race and found almost no consensus.

Team Brunel skipper and eight-time race expert Bouwe Bekking was a big proponent of the IMOCA 60 plan. Peter Burling, helmsman on Brunel, speculated: “I’m not sure if the exact IMOCA rule would work well for the Volvo, maybe a variant of that rule. For me it’s just got to be fast and modern, and I think they’ve got to make the race shorter as well.”

David Witt, skipper of Sun Hung Kai Scallywag, told me: “I think the IMOCA 60 would be a mistake. I have a feeling their [organisers’] motive is to try and get the Hugo Bosses and big corporates to come in from the Vendée Globe.” Witt was concerned the move might make the Volvo Ocean Race a second-tier event in the IMOCA calendar to the single-handed Vendée Globe.

Chris Nicholson, watch captain on Team AkzoNobel and a veteran of six Whitbread/Volvo races, supported using the one-design 65s again [Ed note: it was announced in a second announcement in late July that the 65s will be also return as a second class for the next race]. He was among those that raised concerns about the robustness of the existing IMOCA design.

“A current IMOCA boat won’t handle a crew of four or five, so that has to be a complete structural redesign,” Nicholson said. “I wouldn’t sail around the world in an IMOCA boat with five of us Volvo-type sailors. If you had a race like we’ve just had, I don’t believe it would handle it.”

Bruno Dubois, team manager for winners Dongfeng Race Team, felt that the race needed to modernise: “I think if we go with a boat with no foils we are in the Stone Age,” he said.

“We have to be at the forefront of what’s going on. I think IMOCA are strong boats, they would have to be modified to sail with crew, but it is a way to go to get development.” Dubois also suggested using the 65s as a ‘B’ fleet, restricted by a gender, age or nationality rule – at the time the future of the Volvo 65s hadn’t been announced, but organisers have since said that the class will have a strong focus on youth.

The current crop of IMOCA 60s more usually race single- or double-handed. ‘Fully crewed racing’, with four or five crew, is limited to a few events such as the Rolex Fastnet Race are. Photo Carlo Borlenghi/Rolex

Organisers say a joint committee is being formed to draft a specific section of the IMOCA class rules for a crewed IMOCA 60, “respecting the spirit and intent of the partnership, which includes cost control, security and sporting fairness”.

The committee will have to consider factors such as whether any more components are made one-design to reduce costs, and any necessary structural modifications to ensure the boats’ reliability – many have speculated that the race could once again be dominated by rig failures, after just two rig breakages in 14 circumnavigations by the robustly over-built 65s across the last two editions of the race.

Critically, the rule relating to crew numbers on board the IMOCA class is still to be determined and among the items under consideration. Organisers say they have “the goal of retaining an On Board Reporter role”.

One issue with the IMOCA 60 plan is that it is likely to greatly reduce the number of crew racing at any one time – although sailors may be rotated in a squad. This could put one of the biggest legacies of this race, the gender crew rule that saw 23 women sailors racing in mixed crews, in jeopardy, although organisers have said it is a trend they hope to continue.

“Moving the race into foiling monohulls under the IMOCA class will motivate more sailors, teams and the wider marine industry to prepare for the next edition,” Salén commented in the press release. “Partnering with the existing IMOCA infrastructure means the professional offshore sailing calendar becomes more unified and efficient, this helps the sport as a whole and helps to build a sustainable business model for teams and sailors.”

Tough audience? IMOCA designer Guillaume Verdier talks to sailors and team managers in The Hague.

Part of this plan is likely to involve extending the calendar of events beyond a single round the world race every three or four years. “It has been quite difficult, and also not sustainable, to build a boat that is not very well adapted to use for other events,” Salén told me by phone before the announcement.

“So we are trying to get more continuity for the teams. To achieve that the IMOCA class is a very attractive option because there is so much in place already. The teams can go to a sponsor with an agenda with events every year and a four-year cycle, much more continuity and a much better resale value for the boats.”

Salén says they are considering options that include a round Europe race to cover key sponsorship markets, as well as ocean courses, such as a transatlantic, but the current IMOCA calendar is governed by the next Vendée Globe, starting in November 2020.

Winning skipper Charles Caudrelier of Dongfeng Race Team has competed in the IMOCA class previously. “This change is very exciting,” Caudrelier said in the event press release. “The Open 60s are just amazing boats. I really enjoy sailing on these boats and I think when people see it, they will enjoy it. If the two best offshore races in the world are going to join the same class, to me it’s good news.”

“I think as a sailor, this is very exciting,” said Bekking. “For the younger generation of sailors, they’re all about foiling and surfing and going fast and you have to get the best sailors involved in the race. With the Open 60s, they’ve nailed it, because this is what the sailors want.”

“We’re trying to make a boat for the future that is capable of doing both short-handed and fully-crewed races,” said the highly successful IMOCA designer Guillaume Verdier. “My opinion is that it is doable with a bit of compromise from both worlds to meet in the middle.”

Nick Bice, who has been running The Boatyard shared maintenance department for the Volvo 65s, is leading the development of the new rule.

“The process is just starting,” said Nick Bice, who is leading the project to develop the Open 60 rule for the next race. “We’ll forward everyone’s input to the joint committee and get started on developing the rules that will be used for Open 60s to participate in the next race. Our goal is to have this ready to go by the end of the year.”

We look at more of the questions surrounding the future of the race, including opportunities for female crew and possible future routes, in the August issue of Yachting World, out on Thursday 5thJuly. We also have a personal account from Dongfeng Race Team’s skipper Charles Caudrelier and shoreside navigator Marcel Van Triest of how the final leg and overall race was won.

The post Volvo Ocean Race confirm next race will be held in IMOCA 60s – but opinions are divided among crews appeared first on Yachting World.

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from WordPress http://www.amansions.com/volvo-ocean-race-confirm-next-race-will-be-held-in-imoca-60s-but-opinions-are-divided-among-crews/

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[rnrmarineservices-blog]

Volvo Ocean Race confirm next race will be held in IMOCA 60s – but opinions are divided among crews

Volvo Ocean Race organisers have confirmed that the 2021 edition will be held in IMOCA 60 designs. We spoke to sailors and team organisers about what a change of class might mean for the race:

After months of speculation – Yachting World broke the story than the IMOCA 60 class were in the final stages of negotiation with the Volvo Ocean Race back in April – organisers have confirmed that the next edition of the crewed multi-stage round the world race will take place in IMOCA 60 class yachts.

In the very final days of the race, a confidential Educational Session for interested parties was held around the IMOCA Class Rules in The Hague last week. The announcement was only publically confirmed yesterday, after the prizegivings for the 2017-18 event had been held and the Volvo Ocean Race teams and sponsors dispersed.

At the session, sailors and team managers from the most recent Volvo Ocean Race and IMOCA events, along with yacht designers currently involved in construction of new IMOCA Class boats such as Guillaume Verdier and Juan Kouyoumdjian, discussed the changes.

Co-President of the Volvo Ocean Race, Johan Salen, presenting at the IMOCA 60 partnership information session in The Hague, 28th June 2018.

“This is a first step of many in preparing for the next edition of the race in 2021,” said Johan Salén , co-President of the race. “There is an ongoing co-operation process to put in place the elements we need to make the next race a success from a sporting and business point of view.

“This is a complex matter with many perspectives, and we are respectfully welcoming continuous input from all key stakeholders, from World Sailing to individual sailors, teams and partners. We are confident that this is the right way forward.”

Organisers are certainly likely to receive plenty of input – during my visit to the last stage of the Volvo Ocean Race, before the announcement was made, I spoke to numerous sailors about the possible choices of boat for future editions of the race and found almost no consensus.

Team Brunel skipper and eight-time race expert Bouwe Bekking was a big proponent of the IMOCA 60 plan. Peter Burling, helmsman on Brunel, speculated: “I'm not sure if the exact IMOCA rule would work well for the Volvo, maybe a variant of that rule. For me it's just got to be fast and modern, and I think they've got to make the race shorter as well.”

David Witt, skipper of Sun Hung Kai Scallywag, told me: “I think the IMOCA 60 would be a mistake. I have a feeling their [organisers'] motive is to try and get the Hugo Bosses and big corporates to come in from the Vendée Globe.” Witt was concerned the move might make the Volvo Ocean Race a second-tier event in the IMOCA calendar to the single-handed Vendée Globe.

Chris Nicholson, watch captain on Team AkzoNobel and a veteran of six Whitbread/Volvo races, supported using the one-design 65s again. He was among those that raised concerns about the robustness of the existing IMOCA design.

“A current IMOCA boat won't handle a crew of four or five, so that has to be a complete structural redesign,” Nicholson said. “I wouldn't sail around the world in an IMOCA boat with five of us Volvo-type sailors. If you had a race like we've just had, I don't believe it would handle it.”

Bruno Dubois, team manager for winners Dongfeng Race Team, felt that the race needed to modernise: “I think if we go with a boat with no foils we are in the Stone Age,” he said.

“We have to be at the forefront of what's going on. I think IMOCA are strong boats, they would have to be modified to sail with crew, but it is a way to go to get development.” Dubois also suggested using the 65s as a 'B' fleet, restricted by a gender, age or nationality rule. The future of the Volvo 65s is yet to be announced.

The current crop of IMOCA 60s more usually race single- or double-handed. 'Fully crewed racing', with four or five crew, is limited to a few events such as the Rolex Fastnet Race are. Photo Carlo Borlenghi/Rolex

In yesterday's press release, organisers say a joint committee is being formed to draft a specific section of the IMOCA class rules for a crewed IMOCA 60, “respecting the spirit and intent of the partnership, which includes cost control, security and sporting fairness”.

The committee will have to consider factors such as whether any more components are made one-design to reduce costs, and any necessary structural modifications to ensure the boats' reliability – many have speculated that the race could once again be dominated by rig failures, after just two rig breakages in 14 circumnavigations by the robustly over-built 65s across the last two editions of the race.

Critically, the rule relating to crew numbers on board the IMOCA class is still to be determined and among the items under consideration. Organisers say they have “the goal of retaining an On Board Reporter role”.

One issue with the IMOCA 60 plan is that it is likely to greatly reduce the number of crew racing at any one time – although sailors may be rotated in a squad. This could put one of the biggest legacies of this race, the gender crew rule that saw 23 women sailors racing in mixed crews, in jeopardy, although organisers have said it is a trend they hope to continue.

“Moving the race into foiling monohulls under the IMOCA class will motivate more sailors, teams and the wider marine industry to prepare for the next edition,” Salén commented in the press release. “Partnering with the existing IMOCA infrastructure means the professional offshore sailing calendar becomes more unified and efficient, this helps the sport as a whole and helps to build a sustainable business model for teams and sailors.”

Tough audience? IMOCA designer Guillaume Verdier talks to sailors and team managers in The Hague.

Part of this plan is likely to involve extending the calendar of events beyond a single round the world race every three or four years. “It has been quite difficult, and also not sustainable, to build a boat that is not very well adapted to use for other events,” Salén told me by phone before the announcement.

“So we are trying to get more continuity for the teams. To achieve that the IMOCA class is a very attractive option because there is so much in place already. The teams can go to a sponsor with an agenda with events every year and a four-year cycle, much more continuity and a much better resale value for the boats.”

Salén says they are considering options that include a round Europe race to cover key sponsorship markets, as well as ocean courses, such as a transatlantic, but the current IMOCA calendar is governed by the next Vendée Globe, starting in November 2020.

Winning skipper Charles Caudrelier of Dongfeng Race Team has competed in the IMOCA class previously. “This change is very exciting,” Caudrelier said in the event press release. “The Open 60s are just amazing boats. I really enjoy sailing on these boats and I think when people see it, they will enjoy it. If the two best offshore races in the world are going to join the same class, to me it's good news.”

“I think as a sailor, this is very exciting,” said Bekking. “For the younger generation of sailors, they're all about foiling and surfing and going fast and you have to get the best sailors involved in the race. With the Open 60s, they've nailed it, because this is what the sailors want.”

“We're trying to make a boat for the future that is capable of doing both short-handed and fully-crewed races,” said the highly successful IMOCA designer Guillaume Verdier. “My opinion is that it is doable with a bit of compromise from both worlds to meet in the middle.”

Nick Bice, who has been running The Boatyard shared maintenance department for the Volvo 65s, is leading the development of the new rule.

“The process is just starting,” said Nick Bice, who is leading the project to develop the Open 60 rule for the next race. “We'll forward everyone's input to the joint committee and get started on developing the rules that will be used for Open 60s to participate in the next race. Our goal is to have this ready to go by the end of the year.”

We look at more of the questions surrounding the future of the race, including opportunities for female crew and possible future routes, in the August issue of Yachting World, out on Thursday 5thJuly. We also have a personal account from Dongfeng Race Team's skipper Charles Caudrelier and shoreside navigator Marcel Van Triest of how the final leg and overall race was won.

The post Volvo Ocean Race confirm next race will be held in IMOCA 60s – but opinions are divided among crews appeared first on Yachting World.

[ecoamerica]

Watch the 2024 American Climate Leadership Awards for High School Students now: https://youtu.be/5C-bb9PoRLc

The recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by student climate leaders! Join Aishah-Nyeta Brown & Jerome Foster II and be inspired by student climate leaders as we recognize the High School Student finalists. Watch now to find out which student received the $25,000 grand prize and top recognition!

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