#Swing City is an in universe pokemon game series and it's been a ton a ton of fun to write about

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Pokemon Swing City

Swing City is a video game series consisting most famously of isometric side scrolling beat em ups. The games are usually set in or heavily feature the eponymous Swing City, a large city in the Ferrum region. They are mostly made by Endeavor Studios though spin off games have been done by other developers. 

The People

The first game, released in 1986 is simply called Swing City. It was made to compete with other Beat Em Ups at the time and included only pokemon, helping the game stand out visually. 

The all pokemon concept is credited to the game’s artist and lead designer, Tsuburaya Oda who had long had a fascination with a world in which pokemon developed their own societies. Many of the stage backgrounds for Swing City take inspiration from drawings he did in his free time of buildings he thought pokemon would make to accommodate their needs. Oda had been pitching an all pokemon game to the Endeavor studio bosses for several years and being assigned to lead designer made him see his opportunity.

To make the game feel like pokemon battles, Oda helped assign two programers, Blaze Albright and “Professor” Olive to the project. Blaze was a former professional battle trainer who went to victory road in two regions. Olive was a former grad student in pokebiozoology who dropped out to pursue the flourishing field of computer science.

Both men had invaluable expertise, according to Oda and helped turn the game from a generic Dragon Dance Fury clone into a game that spawned a well loved series. 

The final team member added to this small crew was Irene Carpenter. Irene came from a theater background, performing ballet and movement opera. She provided the music and sound effects as well as another essential piece: according to Blaze, her martial arts background and bold, confident attitude was the inspiration for Blaziken, the game’s main and mascot character. 

The Characters

The main playable characters are Blaziken, Machamp, Lucario, and Gardevoir.

Blaziken is the face of the game and *the* all-rounder. Her special command is Taunt which when she doesn't have a full Special Bar, raises her special and when it's full, makes enemies target her. Her Super attack is Blaze Kick, a jumping kick that damages all enemies in a line.

Machamp is a close range high damage tank, good against bosses. His special command is Throw and his Super attack is Mooncrush Suplex, a German Suplex that sends his opponent into the ground, dealing them high damage, dazed, and deals damage to all enemies in a radius around the impact. 

Lucario is another all-rounder with a little more heath and speed and a little less damage dealing then Blaziken. His special command is Aura Sphere, a single target high damage ranged attack. His Super Attack is Meteor Mash, a large radius AoE ranged attack. 

Gardevoir is a committed ranged combatant, with low health and low but long range damage. Her special command is Dazzling Gleam which has a shorter range but hits in a wave pattern. Her Super Attack is Draining Kiss which is a single target medium damage move that also heals her.

The Game

The story of the first game is very simple: Tyranitar, a crime boss plots with his underlings to “take over the world”. From there, the game is a progression from stage to stage, starting in the forests outside Swing City, to its streets, to its literal underbelly, to the volcanic lair of Tyranitar. After defeating Tyranitar, the player with the highest score receives a short slide show ending for their character: Lucario and Blaziken train together, Machamp wrestles a Charizard, and Gardevoir meditates in a forest.

Bosses were Incineroar , Haunter (couldn't be hit by melee attacks, had to have items thrown at him), and Crabominable with Sawk and Throh being a combo mini boss before being introduced as elite enemies. 

The main enemies are Scraggy and Pawniards with Scrafty and Bisharps acting as more powerful mooks later in the game. Tauros is a rush across the screen type obstacle enemy. 

Gym Mode

Starting with the first game, each game includes a bonus fighting mode called Gym Mode. Originally included because of talks the four would have about Black Belt Fighting, a hobby they all shared, Gym Mode quickly became an integral part of the series’s success and identity.

Gym Mode featured all four playable characters as well as Incineroar, Haunter, Crabominable, and Sawk and Troh, all with slight modifications to make them more balanced. 

Gym mode stood out from other fighting games at the time by taking place on isometric battlefields similar to the base game instead of traditional 2d environments. In addition, skills from the base game transferred well to gym mode, making playing both modes feel valuable.

The Release

After Swing City was released it became a modest success for several months until the school year ended. During the summer, many arcades had long lines to play the games and more orders for cabinets flooded Endeavor Studios.

Both game modes proved extremely popular and both received separate ports to the NES, changing both from 4 player games to 2 and simplifying many of the graphics and sounds. Still, these home releases proved popular enough to encourage Endeavor to make a sequel game: Swing City 2: World Tour.

[greasygrimoire]

Gonna use this post to write about Xenosaga 1 and 2 (somehow I managed to play BOTH last year). This will be the last write up for now! It's already February and I have tons of other things I should be doing. Spoilers for all Xeno games up ahead!

Xenosaga has always been one of those mysterious series to me. I first heard of it back on G4TV's XPlay. The hosts were making fun of it for some reason or another (given that it was 2004 or so, probably for being a JRPG). At the time I my only real RPG exposure was Pokemon, so this game with a long, involved storyline front and center was really something new to me. I didn't realize video games could do that! Despite the hosts saying what a bad game it was, I wanted to give it a go, but never had the chance as a kid (playing these now, that was for the best). A few years later we got a PS2 but I was quickly distracted by Kingdom Hearts, meatspace stuff, and some things that led to me dropping video games for a while.

Eventually, I picked up Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and from there played the other games aside from XS. With XBC3's DLC somehow involving XS (maybe, I haven't read anything on it to avoid spoiling XS or the DLC itself) I decided it was finally time to play these entries. Starting it after playing the XB games is a bit weird, there are so many concepts and references the Blade games pull from Saga and Gears. I was almost constantly excitedly telling the friend who let me borrow their copies about the "Xenoblade references" I was finding. This was from Gears, but I fucking screamed when the cross pendant flashed on the screen, limply swinging, dragging me back to some nightmarish shit experienced in another game on another console I played years ago. The way these images, themes and references are all blended and remixed through Monolith's games is really something unique!

The setting and graphics in XS1 are really beautiful. I wasn't expecting this PS2 game to look so good. Environments include sterile, medical corridors leading to oily mech bays full of chunky AGWS (basically small mech suits), cramped 'cities' that are basically airports, the guts of an extra dimensional thing that ate an entire planet, and a surprisingly bright each floating throughout the universe. Everything, even the cleanest, most corporate locations, has this layer of grime and filth on it. I don't think the effect is specific to the PS2, XS episode 2 didn't feel the same to me. The second game changes up some character models and general aesthetics, it's a much more 'refined' or clean look. A lot of the locations aren't quite as memorable, and places from the first game don't feel as lived in. The gnosis, mecha, and characters all look great through both episodes (aside from some of XS2's new models). In particular, the extra dimensional gnosis monsters have wild designs that look like things that shouldn't function as creatures, but somehow do.

Both games feature soundtracks that perfectly compliment the futuristic settings. Lots of synthesizers from clean and cheery, to grimey and mysterious, artificial sounding drum machines, all great stuff. Unfortunately some tracks are very short, and loop too quickly. The second Miltia tune is fun but it gets a bit grating when you're in the city so long.

Despite beating it I'm still not sure how XS1's combat is supposed to work. It just didn't click for me, there are so many points and skills and spells and attacks to manage, level, and build. XS2's combat however is much more straightforward and fun. A lot of players hate the "build resources them spend them all in a big attack" pattern that both XS2 and XBC2 use, but I love em. This style does frankly suck in random encounters, where the random non-boss enemies will die long before you can finish setting up your combo. I definitely get why this isn't for everyone.

The story and characters so far have all been great fun. This may be my favorite overall party in the meta series! Shion and KOS-MOS have an almost mom and daughter relationship that evolves over time, Ziggy and MOMO both have very different and interesting views of what being a human is, and Jr, chaos, and Jin are all fun characters. I'm assuming chaos gets more development in XS3, he's been very passive and almost more of a supporting character so far. Surprisingly, the antagonistic Albedo is my favorite character. His development in XS2 adds so much, I was fairly neutral on him in the first game but the story does an excellent job showing how he turned into the bastard he becomes. All of the voice actors fit the characters and their performances run from ok to great, but Crispin Freeman steals the show whenever Albedo is allowed on screen.

I'm going to take a break before starting XS 3 but I'm very much looking forward to seeing the series' conclusion. I hope these posts haven't been to rambley, if anyone is even reading. I don't write much and I've never been good at expressing things, but I'm trying!

Xenoscribbles Episode 2! I really enjoyed this entry, maybe even more than Episode 1, but I can see why it's the least beloved of the trio.