#I need to replay this game now that I'm an adult I haven't played it since high school.

[cosmitasia]

Thinking pre-timeskip tazmily was some quaint utopia tainted by Porky/capitalism flattens the story quite a bit. In my opinion, the point was since the Tazmilians chose to forget history instead of learn from it, they were susceptible to the same downfalls as before, Porky just accelerated it.

Tazmily likely would have lasted much longer without his involvement, but their ignorance made them easy to persuade into speedrunning inhumane industrialization and consumerism, so they may have made the same mistakes more gradually without his interference.

[misc-obeyme]

your post about the human au with beel as a farmer has me giggling and kicking my feet!! and now i can't stop imagining the brothers on their own little farm (writing this even though i know nothing about farming)

lucifer and satan mainly handle the finances, making sure they have the best equipment and techniques to produce good crops. the goats and sheep seem to take a liking to lucifer, especially the baby ones, who love chewing on his clothes. satan stays away from them bc they keep thinking his blond hair is food, choosing instead to coo over the farm cats

mammon and levi are the unofficial handlers and bully victims of the birds. mammon gets pecked by the chickens as he goes to collect their eggs, and he says one day, he'll cook them all up as revenge!! (everyone knows he's lying). levi spends more time with the ducks, where they quack at him on the farm and when he's fishing at the local ponds. (one time, a group of baby ducks imprinted on him and followed him home. it took forever for him to get them back to their mama)

asmo does a lot of advertising for the farm, with both his social media and charming personality at the farmers' market. he designs the cutest packaging and sews any holes that end up in his brothers' clothes with lovely little patches. his favorite animals on the farm (a couple piglets and bunnies) are marked with pink bows, but you could tell by how he squeals whenever he sees them

you already went over beel, but i imagine him still having his super strength and can easily carry adult sheep with ease. he also has gained a lot of (kissable) freckles from being in the sun all the time

belphie is a straight up cow whisperer, which may be caused by his habit of cuddling with the cows on their pasture to skip out on chores. but he's great at milking and can instantly tell if something's wrong with the cows, to the point that other farmers go to him in need of help. he's a lazybones hero!

aaaaaa the sillies - 🎠

Honestly, I'm surprised that little post of mine got so much attention lol! I was definitely thinking about it more in terms of what I think the boys would do if they were humans, rather than how it would be if they all worked on the same farm. But I saw a couple tags suggesting a Stardew Valley crossover, which could be all of them on the same farm or all of them with separate farms. I haven't played Stardew in a long time, but I am so obsessed with farming sims it's ridiculous. My favorite is Story of Seasons Trio of Towns, I've played it so many times and I still replay it from time to time because I loved it so much lol.

ANYWAY that's all to say that my farming experience comes almost entirely from video games. I took a class about plants and agriculture in high school, but otherwise it's all vibes and cozy gaming!

But I think you've nailed it with these. I keep seeing Satan falling asleep in a pile of hay, just completely covered in barn cats. Cute lil Asmo all decked out like a farmer but only for the aesthetic 'cause he's running that farmer's market booth like nobody's business. Cow whisperer Belphie, please I love it so much.

Also freckled, sun-kissed Beel... human!Beel would have so many freckles if he spent any time outside at all. I love this because I'm extremely freckled myself and it'd be really cute if MC had freckles to match his.

Though I actually hadn't even thought about MC's role in a human au. Since they're already human. Would it be reversed? MC is the demon in this scenario? Or just MC is their same human self but they meet the others in a different way? I think both options could be interesting. I was initially going with the idea of there being no magic and no realms though.

I was trying to think of what the characters would do with their lives based on their interests and Beel just screamed farmer to me. Like yeah he probably still works out a bunch, but he really loves food. So I thought it would be interesting to consider that as his primary motivation for wanting to become a farmer. He just wants to feed everybody.

Anyway, I love this, I'm thoroughly enjoying imagining the boys on their farm. Though Mammon threatening to cook the chickens is hilarious. Like I can just hear him saying that to a bunch of indifferent hens, too. It reminds me of a story my mom used to tell me about my great-grandmother getting so annoyed at my uncle's pet rooster for getting his beak tangled in her yarn that she straight up made soup out of him. I dunno how true that story is, but it's one my mom & her siblings have told me numerous times lol.

[asleepinawell]

i'm in some sort of Mood about finishing the kh series (for a given value of finished) since I've been playing it since kh1 on ps2 a million years ago but instead of dealing with that i'm going to write my mini retrospective of the titles based on my replay

rest below the line

kh1

story - 7/10. it wasn't the most interesting but it was the first and laid the groundwork for the series. maleficent had a lot of screentime which is always a big plus. love her evil ass. it's also the start of the 'kairi never gets to do anything ever and gets kidnapped every time she tries' persisting problem in the whole series

gameplay - 6/10. feels a bit clunky now in comparison to some of the newer ones. it was harder than some later ones, but mostly because of wonky control issues and not great boss fights. but it's very playable and fun still. mushrooms do a little dance and shake their butt at you. i will never not feel nostalgic about traverse town music. THANK GOD YOU CAN SKIP THE PRE FIGHT CUTSCENES ON RETRIES NOW OH MY GOD YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THE ONE BEFORE THE DARK RIKU FIGHT WAS LIKE TEN MINUTES AND BACK IN THE DAY YOU HAD TO REWATCH IT EVERY TIME AAHHHHJHHH *i am tranquilized and removed from the room*

re: chain of memories

story - 8/10. i love the focus on the organization 13 internal drama. bitches are running around bad mouthing and killing each other. larxene is a constant joy. marluxia is pretty and goes swish swish and makes flowers. axel was an instant fave. zexion is a shitty twink and i do so love shitty twinks. there was some disney stuff too i guess

gameplay - 2/10. the first time i played it my brother was crashing at my apartment and watching me play and got very into making cool deck combos. so i had him do that for me and i did the combat and the fun sibling shenanigans got me through it. this time i quit after thirty minutes and watched the cutscenes on youtube. it's just so repetitive and meh

358/2 days

story - 7/10. that's too many soras! put some back! story was a bit slow at times but i did enjoy seeing the daily life of the organization and axel/saïx handling their divorce so so well. needed more demyx

gameplay - it's packaged as a movie now so i did not replay the game and can't fairly rate it. i remember it being not the best combat but not terrible for a ds game

kh2

story - 8/10. it would get higher but the fact the beginning is incomprehensible if you haven't played com and 358 loses it some points....i had not played com when i got kh2 and boy howdy. it made more sense on the replay of course and yeah it's a good story. obsessed with how maleficent remains one of the main recurring characters in this series and just Does Shit from time to time because why not. god forbid women do anything etc. also the gay divorce continues to go terribly. saïx is handling this so well i say as he goes into berserk mode again. needed more riku screentime tho

gameplay - 9/10. huge upgrade from previous titles. it was very fun and fluid. the form shifts were a great addition. there were a lot of options but it didn't feel overwhelming or like it disrupted combat. my only real complaint was it felt a bit too on rails at some parts... like cutscene, battle, walk three steps repeat. oh and i hated the gummi missions but i am a gummi hater in general. oh also antiform was amazing. sora can turn into a feral creature... as a treat

birth by sleep

story - 10/10. fuck i love birth by sleep. aqua my beloved daughter who is the most terrifying keyblade master ever. terra my troubled son who got fucked over by shitty adults on an hourly basis. ven the thousand year old little kid who has never caught a break once. also hey it's xehanort and he also has ex husband drama. only note is that aqua should get to say fuck

gameplay - 10/10. the command deck was right up my alley and command forms were the best form gameplay they've done. i loved how all three kids had a unique style and abilities. i loved melding cards and gems to make new cards. i enjoyed playing monopoly. i thought it was the best game in the series when i first played it and that remains true

re:coded

story - 6/10. it was okay? it was largely a rehash but did add a few things. my friend and i kept saying welcome back alvis whenever data riku used a computer so that was fun

gameplay - this was also presented as a movie in the bundle so i won't score it. i don't even remember how it was from way back when i played it

dream drop distance

story- 9/10. the games that switch between multiple perspectives seem to be my favorites and i think it's partly that it makes the story more interesting. the time traveling norts were a bit wtf but that's just an inescapable part of the series. inspired me to get twewy which i will be playing next. MEOW WOW!!!!!

gameplay - 9/10. flowmotion was really neat and fit the style well. i loved the pokemon aspect so much you have no idea. i was a little sad you couldn't meld command cards but it would have been Too Much with all the other stuff going on. a few fights near the end had some really dumb mechanics (the type where when you look up a guide it just says good luck) but there were also some excellent ones. i do think it lost a little something in the port because the stylus on 3ds was important. however there is nothing is quite as satisfying as seeing meow wow hit xehanort with giant bouncy orbs so I'm willing to forgive it a lot

union x/back cover/dark road

story - 9/10. i was shocked how much i enjoyed the story of these. i got very invested and i was only watching the cutscenes, not playing. really interesting world building and the master of masters was an instant fave. one of the only kh titles that passes (barely) the bechdel somehow. also could be retitled as kh: dead kids, because boy did a lot of kids die! extra points for maleficent managing to set major events in motion twice and being very eh whatever about it. love her for that. and the backstory of the xehanort/eraqus divorce, of course. i love a good divorce

gameplay - didn't play this one, just watched ELEVEN HOURS of cutscenes. no longer available which is hilarious considering how much important lore is in it that is referenced in kh3. hopefully they make it into a single player offline game someday with better gameplay

fragmentary passage

story - 8/10. very short but filled in some gaps. i love aqua so i was predisposed to love this one

gameplay - 8/10. it felt like a rough draft for kh3 and that meant it didn't have all the annoying extra crap kh3 added in and played pretty smoothly. i liked the little puzzles. it was a unique game and i enjoyed it more than i expected

kh3

story - 6/10. the fact i had to sit through entire disney movies worth of cutscenes brings the score way down. we did not need to see 3 musical numbers in frozen. if i wanted that I'd watch the movie. i just wanted to play the damn game. the majority of the game is sora got benched and has to get his groove back which was very disappointing for the climatic finale to the series. once i got into the end game though it was much better (i would rate the later game stuff way above a 6 which just makes my frustration with earlier stuff worse). re:mind added in the bits i felt were missing and i came away satisfied overall with the wrap up. axel/saïx had divorce arc three and then got back together finally 🏳️‍🌈🥂🎉. xehanort/eraqus also got back together as they fucked off to be gay in the afterlife. finally we are free of the norts (OR ARE WE???) and the master and the foretellers are slated to come back next from the looks of things. maleficent continues to hang out in the wings waiting for opportunities to #girlboss and I'm excited too see what cataclysmic events she sets off next

so that's it. i did watch the brief melody of a memory scenes but there wasn't too much new there. i may watch the cs from the missing link beta at some point. otherwise it's back to my life long journey of waiting for the next title to drop

gameplay - 5/10. ugh. i bought the game when it came out but between the full length disney movies and the over saturated gameplay gimmicks i didn't get far. this time i powered through and by the end i was enjoying it for the most part because I'd figured out what things to ignore and how to avoid them. attractions were the worst addition to gameplay ever. everything was too flashy. way too many instances of being locked in a "cool" transition animation instead of actually doing combat which broke up the flow of things. i missed the command deck and how much it let you customize your play style. i didn't like the keys being locked to command forms as much as the bbs forms since it meant if you had a keyblade with better stats but hated the special on it you were kinda fucked. this became less of a problem as the game went but was still annoying. overall felt like a step back from the others. they tried to do too much. oh also why were there ten thousand instances of having to learn new controls for some new mini game in every area??? just let me hit things i am begging you. it really felt like they went for cool spectacles over satisfying gameplay

general notes on all of them: i enjoyed the story much more this time due to being able to play them in order. the fact they all released on different platforms originally made the complicated story even more confusing since i couldn't afford to buy a new system every time a new one came out. i really hope they veer away from that practice in the future but i kinda doubt it especially since they've got another mobile game lined up already. while the disney stories were fun early on it felt like the story outgrew them (except for the characters who were in the main story as well like mickey and maleficent) and they were kinda a drag by 3. i doubt they can move away from those since they're the whole gimmick of the series but it would be better imo. deeply worried they'll start bringing in newer disney acquisitions.

one of my biggest complaints about the series has always been how few female characters there are and how little many of them are used. it got slightly better later in the series but overall was still not great, especially for kairi. i kept wondering if they added stuff for her in re:mind due to complaints about this.... the dlc felt like an apology for several things tbh. aqua was great but she shouldn't be the only one and even she got upstaged in kh3 when she's supposed to be the third most powerful keyblade master. weirdly enough maleficent was probably the best written female character. really wild how much she wove into the plot and affected events so much without even trying to (especially in union x). she should fire pete though (i think she should hire demyx)

I'd like to see them let you play as characters other than sora more often since that was always really neat (he's had a billion games to himself now). I'd love a kairi and aqua game but i can imagine square and disney both clutching their pearls over female protagonists

something i noticed was that playing them when i was older i liked sora much better. when i started the series as a teenager i found him annoying. as an adult i have more sympathy and tolerance for teenaged boys who are Going Through It. growth or something

[selenityshiroi]

FFXVI several hours later:

I have no idea how far I am through the plot. 3/5 xxxxxxxxxxxxxx down?

Kupka played the 'I have your wife' trope and that was my secret OTP trap card

I'm now a basic bitch who ships Clive and Jill like burning

They were 'I like them...they healthily communicate and share their trauma instead of dwelling in it and are super supportive of each other'

Now I'm like 'ahddksklkfhdksk!'

But when does the choice of fabric in that one side quest kick in and I get to Jill in a new outfit? I know what a bonus content choice is, SE

Speaking of bonus content choices...Otto or Gav scene and Jill or Tarja scene

I chose Otto for the first because he hadn't joined me before but I'm curious about the latter. With the girls I was already in 'ahdksjsgaldhdj' OTP zone so obviously I took my wife, even though I'm also curious about the Tarja scene. That is was chapter replay is for, I guess. I did see that was a thing but haven't looked at it.

As soon as Mid turned up I was like 'yeap...that sure is Cid's daughter'. I'm actually surprised Vivian isn't her mother. I thought, when Vivian first showed up, that it might have been what connected her to the crew.

If this was an older game the hideaway would become an airship in late game. But looks like the Enterprise is in a different castle. And may or may not end up an airship.

I have suspicions about the mystery plot. Based on all the FFXIII Trilogy repackaging that this game has.

Also hello Prince and his lover

Happy pride month

(SE you still have time to confirm Vanille and Fang are also lovers this pride month)

(Not that they need much confirmation)

I'm sad that Joshua is probably not making it out of this story alive. At least that is the vibe I have. But I am believing Clive and Jill both will. Her ill health was giving me concern but some of the story elements give me hope.

But trying to remain spoiler free is soo hard. I want to see people's opinions and reactions to stuff.

But I know once I take just a peek of fandom I will either see something I shouldn't or dive in too deep

So spoilerfree and ignorant of others I remain!

(Also if the multishippers aren't shipping Clive and Gav then that is discrimination against himbos. I'm already in basic bitch Clive×Jill OTP mode but I have faith in the multishippers without looking at the fandom)

I have no idea how much game still remains, either

I'm guessing at least another 20 hours based on just story stuff

Oh, and the most important plot point happened

As soon as he turned blue and leapt out to save Jill I shouted out loud 'wait...MY DOG IS FENRIR?!?'

Turns out he's technically my wife's dog

Peak married

So it didn't even matter that the UI spoiled the fenrir bit on the attribute screen before Tomes could lay down the lore. Because my FF fan ass knew on sight lol

Oh yeah...about Clive and Jill. I was on the fence about whether or not they had been banging the entire time during the 5 year timeskip. Because everyone else sure as hell believes they are and its a small hideaway...but they are still doing the whole pining/almost kiss/long stare thing. And either it's just to bait the audience or they really have been doing that the entire time.

Like...babes...please...you are, in a rare case for FF during the main game for the main protaganists...grown adults.

One last thing...I got a massive amount of satisfaction over beating the entire Titan boss thing. I didn't die, I learned the boss patterns pretty well and managed the phases pretty quickly...but during the fight's stages I kept thinking 'nooooo...stop...not another stage....no...come on...don't power back up :(((('

Like...I'm managing the battle system and I get a lot of satisfaction over beating things. But it is still the thing I have to do to experience the story. Rather than me doing it for the gameplay. So a win, really, since this isn't my choice of gameplay.

I would have probably preferred story mode but I'm invested now lol

[sibyl-of-space]

I will possibly (if asked or if I remember) post more details on the logistics behind this later, but for now all you guys need to know is I did something needlessly complicated to play 3DS games and have the main screen also displayed on my CRT TV. This was 99% just to fuck around and find out, but after experiencing Adult Castle Town like this, I actually need to fucking stop everything and talk about it.

I have not seen Adult Castle Town look or feel like this in at least 10 years. The game I remember playing as a kid has reappeared before my eyes. I almost cried.

Background: growing up my family had a CRT TV, because um, HDTVs hadn't been invented yet. I played Ocarina of Time on it because I loved Ocarina of Time and this was, you know, the hardware that existed and that the game was made for. The super blocky early-early-3D models were a bit hard to look past even as a kid, and especially after Melee came out I wished Link and Zelda looked like they did in Melee. Alas. But that was OoT and I loved it all the same.

Flash forward a good chunk of time: I am graduating from high school and moving out, losing access to home consoles for a while. The 3DS has just come out with OoT3D as a launch title. I play it and enjoy it but I'm not super into handheld gaming. Over the next .. uh .. 10 years (yikes), I play OoT on a combination of PC emulator and 3DS, and eventually fall in love with the 3DS version as definitive for me. It's not exactly the game I remember but it's a game I love all the same.

Flash forward some more to right now: in a fit of mad scientist curiosity, I rig up a bullshit way to get my CRT TV (that I bought off Craigslist a couple years ago for Tales of Symphonia speedruns lol) to display my 3DS footage so I can play my favorite version of OoT on the big screen like the old days. It's a bit emotional, because I fell in love with this game on the big screen, and now with the updated visuals it just LOOKS like I always FELT IT SHOULD. But I didn't realize the full impact until I emerged from the Temple of Time as Adult Link for the first time.

I know this is a CRT evangelist cliche, but I cannot stress enough how true this is: I HAVE NOT SEEN ADULT CASTLE TOWN LOOK LIKE THIS FOR OVER A DECADE. It has been so long since I played OoT on a CRT TV that my memories of how Castle Town looks so murky and shadowy and foreboding were just dismissed as "I was a kid and it seemed scarier then." I thought OoT and MM 3D just churned up the brightness in the game itself.

I didn't realize it was the screen I was playing it on. Literally just displaying OoT3D, a port designed for the 3DS, on a CRT TV... suddenly it looks like OoT again. I haven't truly SEEN this game in so long. I'm... actually extremely emotional about this.

When I recently went to replay MM3D, I couldn't get past how it just lacked that dark, murky underbelly that contrasted its colorful setting so successfully. I think if I played it on this setup I might actually cry, I think it would finally be the game I miss so much from my memories.

All along it wasn't the port but the screen.

Wow.

[riastarthe]

KLONOA: Door to Phantomile

PS1, Namco, 1999

a couple minutes that i recorded of myself starting a new game of Klonoa, because some friends haven't seen it before. i have a longer video here, of clearing Vision 1-1 and 1-2.

sorry if i'm a little slow/clunky, i've never done this kind of thing so for the short segment above i first used some shitty freeware that unfortunately only recorded in like 5-min intervals, and for my second try i used different software that required more finessing but i used it to record up to the 2nd boss fight. maybe sometime i can do a proper run with a hot mic so you can really hear my dark nights of the soul with this children's game.

it gets even better than this!

i do have favourite games, but the truth is more that i have "games i've played" (and those are my favourites) and "games" (all other games. there's gotta be at least a hundred by now!) i'm not very good at them lol so i guess what happened is that if i'm going to sink hours and hours into something i end up enjoying it. but Klonoa is pretty breezy (haha.)

most of the games i played as a kid were distinctly of their time: strange, empty, experimental expanses full of 90s patterns and colours, with corners creatively cut. vast, sisyphean 3D platformers like Croc or Glover, all of the Myst games, virtual pets like Petz (dogz, catz) but also the Creatures series starting in 1996, and even more importantly, 1996's Fin-Fin-- produced by Osamu Tezuka's son, and while the company Fujitsu went under, Fin-Fin survives almost entirely due to a German fan site. fin-fin is genuinely perfect though, i mean look, look at this

fin-fin makes a bitch out of james cameron

meanwhile, Glover (1998)

Pokemon G/S/C were instantly and still are my favourite Pokemon installment for how much bigger and more mysterious they felt--and how much bigger they are literally! they're pretty huge games especially relative to the Pokemon games before and after. bigger still is how little is explained and how much room is left for a kid's imagination to build an experience from more simple pixels. it's a place to live in. coupled with the Pokemon 1999/2000 film featuring Lugia (my all-time fave) and my complete lack of access to any press about new Pokemon, the sense of mystery lasted quite a long time. the surprises, the entire soft but vibrant colour palette, the history and legends permeating the countryside, the simple but immersive integration of day/night and events throughout the week, and a soundtrack of top to bottom heaters... it felt personal, intimate.

compared to the newer series which i just find too stacked with convoluted elements. as of X/Y, they really began to feel like homework to me. i barely remember the plotlines after Black/White. i welcomed Heart Gold and Soul Silver, too, because it was incredible to see these beloved environments come into what was then HD focus. i replayed Crystal last summer (?) on my GBA and seamlessly remembered the way i imagined all those original environments and events. the limitations on these games make for infinite interpretation, and for me, contentment.

i don't tackle all my favourite media with the problem-solving/"what if" approach that i do with other properties... in fact it's pretty rare. games especially are a full sensory experience. Metal Gear Solid is another favourite series, special in that it's one of the few games i've repeatedly played just for the hell of it. Ace Attorney, which i was obsessed with as a young adult, i made almost 0 "content" for. i just didn't feel that impulse but still liked it all the same. versus something like JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, which fucked my ass up; that was a world i wanted to not only explore, but explore by creating my own ideas bound to it. the fact that JJBA has continued for so long, incorporates many genres and tones, and has been adapted into multiple formats, means it's accessible to more people and i. (i need to save all that for its own post ha ha.)

Klonoa really is dreamy though, and that's essential to the story. it starts immediately following a luscious, ominous opening, and you're rushing off with little preamble. Klonoa himself is guileless and accepting of the logic presented, while his orb friend Huepow prompts him to question meanings and intentions. but why should he question it? why should you? it's his home, and just look at it! gorgeous.

the pan flute-heavy soundtrack rips. the characters speak in individual conlangs based on Japanese, sort of like the Sims. those little enemies i'm grabbing in the video are called Moos and there are different variants-- flying moos that look like parrots, moos that hop around on what looks like an inner tube with a spring, ghost moos, armoured moos (these run fast) and giant moos (which you can blow up to receive a handful of stones, or inflate to use them as a platform.)

this is from the beach volleyball game. the guy with the heart on his head is the king of all moos.

i rented Klonoa from my small town's video store so many times that finally my parents begged them to sell it to us, and that's what happened. it's such a charming game, the colours and music and whimsical winding 2.5D tracks are cleverly and lusciously laid out. it makes no sense that this is contemporary with big time uggos Crash Bandicoot and Spyro. i loved Spyro too, because he was a little dragon and i was pretty confidently a little dragon, too. pwho doesn't love a melted ice cream-y world and a million sparkly sound effects! the closest i come to ASMR is the soft crunch of crashing through baskets of gems.

i'm grateful kids might experience a new and improved Spyro. those remakes don't rekindle excitement in me as much, only because i think i pretty much got what i wanted out of them when i was younger. and omfg Crash is something else entirely. i don't know much about those games because i was bad at them, but i played Crash Team Racing repeatedly until i sold it (and Ape Escape, a game i remember feeling genuine rage toward) to an old woman at a flea market lol. i learned last month that i'd never played story mode, didn't register that it was there at all, and it's so weird to discover a whole other aspect to this game. weird too because, like Crash proper, it's frankly a bit too racist!

now. need to talk about Klonoa more.

at the time, critics thought the games were "too cute" and "too easy", but now it seems like a lot of reviewers have gone back and adjusted their response-- the sequel is considered one of the greatest PS2 games iirc? even from the time, there are equal reviews remarking on seeming randomness of the difficulty level and, especially, toward the end, ramps up sharply. this game has some hard shit in it! especially when it comes to timing and building up momentum. lots of heights-based challenges that make me flinch and kick reflexively.

these came to me at a time with barely any internet, so games were just random items that appeared in my house or were available at the video store, not things i knew how to find or should consider finding on my own. i didn't know there was a sequel until i thought to punch "klonoa" into a search in my Netscape browser, something i could've done at any point (during my allotted 20-30min computer time) like an early human inventing fire lol. it was one of the first things i ever bought online and it came to me during a part of summer while my parents were away, and this hushed sense of freedom coloured my experience.

there are 2 Klonoa GBA games and a silly beach volleyball offshoot game as well, featuring characters from Lunatea's Veil onward. i played one of the GBA ones as a kid, Empire of Dreams, but i don't think i finished it. at the time, shrinking Klonoa into a gameboy just wasn't what i wanted-- i liked how odd and big the PS games felt, the structures receding into a darkness i simultaneously filled in and was thrilled by in its own right. and i was gutted by the story and wanted to follow it on the platform i loved most. but Empire of Dreams and Dream Championship both look so natural and very pretty, and i think these play basically like a Mario. i should try it again.

There are technically 3 handheld Klonoa games-- Moonlight Museum was only for the WonderSwan, but it can now be played as a translated rom, available here! i'm pretty sure it's intended to take place before(?) Door to Phantomile.

Empire of Dreams takes place in an indeterminate time after(?) Door to Phantomile. Dream Championship takes place after the Playstation 2 sequel, Lunatea's Veil, the direct continuation of Door to Phantomile and utilises the same foundation/mechanics.

from replaying them recently, i found out Klonoa 1-2 are being remastered for the nintendo switch. i don't have a switch so i can't compare, and i hope they retain all the same qualities. i played the Wii version of Klonoa many times and i did like it, but there is something that gets lost in each rework. even the colours and light of the switch version feel... yes, more "realistic" in some ways, but they're not as cohesive or as saturated, not as lively, a little faded. the UI isn't as unique either. i hope my impressions are wrong though and that regardless, it's still just as fun (and sad, haha.)

i'll have to show a bit of Lunatea's Veil, at least just one of my favourite locations... La-Lakoosha. i can run through it in my sleep.

[tumblunni]

Hi, I'm the anon who sent the messages about Rotom-Cyrus to TWJ. I wanted to explain myself. There are two books in Rotom's Room: one written by Charon where he says he found out about Rotom "by pure chance." So Charon is involved with Rotom (prob why he has that card) but he isn't the one who met Rotom as a kid. I don't want to spoil exactly what happens in USUM incase you haven't reached that part but it does basically confirm Cyrus is the one who wrote that account.

aaaa that suuuuuckscos literally its fuckin a book signed by charon how was i meant to know that oh the other book right next to it isnt by charon alsoand the trading card has no meaning whatsoeverand we’re just giving more sad backstory to a guy who already had a sad backstory and nope charon has no backstory whatsoever and was just super evil and everyone was right for all these years telling me i’m a jerk for liking this characterand right when basically the same thing just happened with faba seriouslyharmless comedic villain in sun and moon, is shown apparantly redeemed in the postgame, but NOPE now its retconned and he was The Most Evil One and something something lusamine isn’t bad anymore and everything she ever did is now being done by faba in the animecos hey yknow thats what i get for giving the benefit of the doubt to ~ugly people~seriously fuckin everyone hated faba right from when he was first revealed, you had people predicting his ENTIRE PLOT based on just one picture of him and his name and no information whatsoever on his personality. we all just fucking knew what was going to happen because he’s a science man with an ‘ugly’ face and he’s ~flambouyant~and then charon fuckin literally existed to be the ~worse man~ who was added to make cyrus more redeemablethats how he was treated in both mangas. he was made more evil just so cyrus could be redeemed, which was POINTLESS because we all already believed he could be redeemed! and fuck we even all already thought he had cute moments with his pokemon as a kid, geez! there’s a hundred fanarts of that same scenario but with murkrow or zubat or magikarp or houndour or sneasel...just fuckin the pokespe manga wrote a personalityless charon who murdered a child and was outright shown not being friends with rotom and actually hating rotom and getting his ass kicked by rotomand then in DPA we get not only More Evil Charon Who Kills People but also he’s drawn really stupidly over the top scary while everyone else is big eyed shoujo dorks. and our protagonist believes that everyone is redeemable except charon. lets show cyrus committing far more evil acts than charon ever did in the game, lets show him being ooc as fuck and talking about murdering pokemon while surrounded by graves. but THAT IS OKAY and our hero will insist on saying he’s redeemable but NOOOPE charon just fuckin steals some money and has an ugly grandpa face and he gets no such sympathy. he just exists to make you forget that moment of cyrus being ooc double evil. cos we literally retconned that charon was responsible for all cyrus’s evil acts last arc, even though he wasnt even in the fuckin story yetand like now my only damn consolation here is that the character i connected with when i first played the game is AT LEAST NOT THAT EVIL. but all the potential signs of headcanoning him as not evil were all false and i just should have known it. and apparantly its a better and more worthwhile plot to just give sad childhood man another pokemon he knew in his sad childhood, and the thing i thought was Really Cool And Interesting Writing didn’t actually exist. like seriously i was fuckin literally suffering from the same abusive childhood cyrus has in his backstory back when i played dppt and i DO NOT KNOW WHY but i ended up connecting with this stupid grandpa more than him and it saved me in a dark time more than him. back then i was a stupid fuck and i hated cyrus cos i saw myself in him, like i didnt want to admit that i was in an abusive family and i wanted to hate him for daring to want to take revenge against the world that fucked him over. i felt he didnt have the right, like I didnt have the right..so yeah i didnt even fully realise cyrus’s backstory until i replayed the game as an adult, but the one thing that did hit me back then was how unexpected and cool it was to turn our opinion of this jerk grandpa on its head. like i mean whoa! i didnt hate him like everyone else did, i found him pretty funny, but still i wasnt a big fan or anything until i saw that diary entry. like charon does LITERALLY NOTHING in the plot there is no reason they should have added him in a third version, he has no reason to exist unless he was meant to be the guy who introduces rotom’s new forms also added in the game. and it was such a mind blown moment! it doesnt even make him less evil! like “whoa this evil guy used to be a good kid once” could still work even if it WASNT a sign of him having potential redeemability, like it makes him so much more personally evil and horrible if he abandoned his best friend or something. I was so dissappointed you don’t get a boss battle with him, cos i went and caught that rotom and was hyped to defeat him with the pokemon he once betrayed and like there’s NONE OF THAT ANGLE if it was cyrus. it doesnt make rotom any different than any of his other pokemon that he owns right now and we know he already cares about, cos he has a crobat.and it JUST DOESNT MAKE SENSEbecause the journal SOUNDS like charon!they both talk all smart guy style but it felt more formal like how charon talksand like how charon boasts a lot, but the journal has him boasting about his friend instead. it sounds too enthusiastic to be cyrus...and like we already know where cyrus grew up as a kid and it wasnt eterna city. and he doesnt have a secret lab in galactic hq also in eterna city, like charon does. and also he’s not like friggin fifty years old so why would his childhood poke-friend be in a wrecked abandoned house if it was just ten years ago or something. and also why would they give charon this trading card where they draw the 100% evil guy having a vaguely genuine smile on his face and not looking like rotom hates him and he’s got it caged up or anything and also why would the card’s effect be all about friendship and why would they define him as The Rotom Guy and why would they even bother to give a trading card to charon if charon is a pointless character who never did anything important and had no actual relevance to this rotom wifi event except apparantly stealing a bunch of diaries from some other guy who was really responsible for it all. and why would they bother to point out that someone signed the diary if it wasnt the guy who wrote the diary, and also we are not going to sign the diary by the guy who actually wrote it. like if it was meant to be cyrus whey didnt they make it clearer?? nobody could be expected to have figured that out!also why does charon have a second rotom room in silph co in HGSS which timeline wise means he would have had it before DPPT and he’s talking about finding a rotom by chance before he ever found this diary that doesnt really belong to him. like why would he build an entire lab of form machines if he didnt own a rotom yet? how would he know enough to make them actually work for rotom if he never owned a rotom yet?why did nintendo decide to do all this if i wasnt supposed to reach the conclusion that charon had ANYTHING to do with rotom???why didnt they make it fucking clearer. why couldnt i have been saved years of clinging to this stupid ass headcanon and basing a lot of my taste in stories on the whole concept of ‘wow that was so fucking cool how they took a one dimensional looking villain and then turned it on our head with a cool reveal and made me super eager to see future stories with him’ and hey we’re not ever gonna get those and also everyone else was right and i should just give up and agree that ugly looking granddads will always be eviland why the fuck did i somehow link my self worth to such a random ass headcanon for a random ass character like seriously could someone have properly explained cyrus’s plot to me as a kid so i could have had him stop me from committing suicide instead. like seriously if they’d just made cyrus’s grandpa less hard to find and explained the plot more clearly and explained that he was the rotom kid AAAAAAAAARGHand i really didnt fucking need this, usum, right after also people started telling me that lusamine is ~really good~ and her whole child abuse plot is gone now like ha ha ha ha fucking ha lets crush bunni on two damn levelsand what is my fucking luck that this happened to happen right on the same day when i got some stupid ass anon hate and also had a horrible nightmare about my abusive fatherlike seriously dude who sent me this ask im really sorry ive had such an incoherant babbling reply to it, its just been a really bad day for me and like.. im not freaking out because of this minor headcanon being proven wrong, its just like i was already freaking out and having some random irrelevant headcanon bullshit happen right now is REALLY bad timing to push me off the edgehopefully i can calm down and come back and give a more coherant response of like.. why i headcanoned the different thing and why I’m sad its not true, even though i’m happy for you that your personal headcanon did become true instead.but like it sucks to be told ‘nope you’re not allowed to have your favourite character, his one and only personality trait was just a misconception you had’ during such a really bad timing of such an already bad daynintendo could u give us like a sassy science villain gramps who DOES have a redemption plot? or at least a plot that isnt ‘exists to be worse than the main villain’? like seriously why did it happen twice. i was happy at original sun and moon cos it felt like faba as charon but better written but then NOOOOPEjust...god...what.what sort of fuckface up in heaven decided to throw all the bad shit at me today and not at least spread it out across the rest of the week?