#The Wii U was a mistake

[tngmpersonal]

Another poll, this one out of spite

[verflares]

bearer of the curse (everytime i rb or see a piece of tp/ww fanart i start thinking abt how bad i want to replay them)

[doubleddenden]

The topic of Palworld is pretty charged, but often times I see people be shamed for liking it because the CEO tweeted stuff about NFTs and the company using AI art in a separate game. Acting as if that's the most damning thing ever for a gaming company in an industry filled with similar people.

Make no mistake, I dislike both AI art and nfts, but do you realize how many gaming companies have involvement with that?

To begin with, Pokémon used AI art in a promotional piece for Pokémon Go in September, and nobody gave a shit because uwu Pikachu. The Pokémon Company also put a job listing some months back seeking an expert in NFTs. That's not quite damning evidence, but if I were a betting man, no "NFT expert" will willingly say "yeah nfts suck are bad for the environment, man, I'll take my paycheck and fuck off now." There's also a strong argument to be made that Pokémon has stolen ideas from fakemon artists (Finizen and Palafin, Scovillain, Dipplin, etc) and other franchises (kaiju movies, Dragon Quest, Megaman, final fantasy, western cartoons and food mascots, etc), a dubious legal statement that claims they own all fan art from the remixes and fakemon made on youtube to the pikachu your kid drew at breakfast; they have yet to apologize for the state of Scarlet and Violet while charging full price to millions of paying customers for a clearly unfinished and barely functioning game (which i did enjoy, but you can't tell me it was finished baking when it struggles not to shit itself just to run), and a bunch of other things people shit on Palworld for, but A. It's Pokémon so people don't care and think it's fine, and B. That's not the point of this post.

You know who else does NFTs and AI art? (Yes I heard Muscle Man from Regular Show in my head just now, too, moving along)

Square Enix sold several of their IPs for NFTs and claims to have used AI art "a minimum amount" in Foam Stars, yet I see nobody yelling for boycotts of Final Fantasy 14, 16, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, Life is Strange, etc etc etc.

Sony has invested in both, they want to implement AI into gaming, and has a patent for nfts to be used in games and consoles, yet there's no movement to throw out your playstations.

Bandai Namco- you know, that company with a hand in pretty much most anime games on the market and popular games such as the Dark Souls games? They have a game called RYU that's essentially a virtual pet game that uses the blockchain, and its AI driven, among other projects. Yet there's no outcry to stop playing the many, MANY games they brand with. This also includes quite a few Nintendo games (btw they just partnered together to form a special studio quite recently) like Smash Wii U/3ds and New Pokémon Snap. Nobody gives a shit though.

Android, Microsoft, Google, Apple- I don't even need to explain those, they have whole teams dedicated to both. Even popular VPN companies accept crypto.

I'm just saying an awful lot of you guys that scream and shit bloody murder about Palworld's company being involved with that shit are either the biggest "It's okay when my favs do it" type of hypocrites, or you're sorely ignorant to just how evil and greedy most corporations are. You'll be hard pressed to find a game company with popular AND fun games that DOESN'T have some interest in either, let alone movie and show studios. That's the awful reality we live in.

You have 2 options

1. You basically stop doing anything involving most modern tech, including throwing out your pc and smart phone. You could probably live a comfortable life with tech circa 2010, but you have to be aware that any thing you buy may go towards a cause you don't like.

2. You accept that people can enjoy a product while not necessarily agreeing with the CEO of said product. Most CEOs tend to be jackasses anyway, that's kind of the shared trait they all have. You can also discourage companies from using them while understanding it is everywhere.

Palworld at the end of the day is just a toy, that's it. From the looks of it, it's not even actually hurting anyone, and it seems like the company at least treats their employees pretty decently- at least according to a few things I've seen here and there that seems rather progressive for a Japanese studio (with room for doubt obviously, it's a company after all and as we've established, they're all evil). At the least its not like when people supported Hogwarts Legacy and directly put money into JKR's wallet so she can openly hurt more Trans women. In fact, the only people seemingly hurt in all of this Palworld drama are obsessed Pokémon stans that can't accept a parody, or the Pokémon Company themselves, who rightly deserve some punching up tbh.

You can just say you dislike the game, that's fine, I totally get that. Even though I personally think The Pokémon Company deserves a few nut shots after the way they've treated fans these last few years with the state of their games (and you know, stealing ideas from fans without credit), I can see why someone would be turned away from a parody that's literally meant to be Pokémon with guns. I can totally understand all of that, personally I'd prefer if the game was MORE like Pokémon with turn based combat.

But if you're going to defend Pokémon because you think its perfectly innocent because of Wooloo or something like that, just be sure you're aware you're defending the World's Richest Franchise and their own attempts at AI and NFTs while calling out an indie company (a real one thats learning as they go, not the fake "We're totally indie" franchise that hasn't been indie since gen 3) for having a ceo that also seems interested in the same stuff. And remember, you don't become number 1 without hurting people somehow (we could dig up receipts about certain partners Pokémon has teamed up with, such as Tencent with Unite, but I'd rather not right now.)

Just saying. I don't think you're an irredeemable person for still liking Pikachu, cuz I do too believe it or not. I've been a life long fan and still have fun with the games despite the clear scummy business practices towards their paying customers. Just maybe extend that courtesy to the millions of players just trying to have fun in this awful, putrid, shithole planet that just keeps getting worse and worse with each passing day.

Plus... you know, think about it. Do you think Pokémon would ever get around to making a gunless Palworld? Probably not. Do you think Palworld would exist if The Pokémon Company and Nintendo were the slightest bit chill about Pokémon fan projects like SEGA is with Sonic? Also probably not. From what I've read, the devs just wanted to make a fun game that happens to mostly be ARK with Pokémon adjacent monsters. That's not really a bad thing, all things considered, and it seems like the worst they've done is reference official Pokémon when making their own models.

Palworld being successful is actually beneficial to Pokémon fans, as well. It'll never really truly compete, but it has outsold Legends Arceus in terms of units sold (not as much financially because Palworld was only $30 plus a sale recently, but still impressive), and it is enough that Game Freak is aware of its existence. Let Palworld light a fire under their ass, and maybe GF will actually finish their next game before releasing it for full price (and no, we're not bringing up the tired imaginary ball and chain game devs, game freak owns 1/3rd lf the franchise and can easily take methods to get more dev time, they just haven't because money). Just saying, at least the Paldevs were honest enough to sell it in early access for half the price.

[alienvampyr3]

Long rant (kind of) about the results of the grandfest and how it could affect the next game

Im happy that team past won, but I think the people on the team don’t understand what the past being important means. It is extremely unlikely that we will get a great turf war spin off, and I think that’s a good thing. The importance of the past is that we remember our mistakes and learn from them, not to reminisce on them. My personal hopes are that we (the inklings and octolings) will understand that division brings us nowhere, as demonstrated by the story modes of the past games and the great turf war. I also hope that more emphasis is put on how humanity’s culture has influenced the world, and how we inherited both the good and the bad. As for the aesthetics of the next game (if there is one) there are so many directions it could go in. I don’t think they’ll do another cultural inspired idol group as we just had that with splatoon 3, but they might. It might be a retro inspired group in terms of music and style, or it might be inspired by the 2010s as thats when the wii u came out. Honestly I have no idea where they’re going as the past is such a broad concept, but im excited nonetheless.

[col-e7]

Ninjago headcanons again but my high school with no powers AU (post 2/5)

/!\ TW : traumas, mention of SA, bulliyin, racism, struggling with mental health, panic attacks...

Note : If you're dealing with any of those, please seek help, you're not alone you can do this, you are stronger than you think and my DM are always open if you need to talk :3

Jay Walker

• is 16 y/o

• is in 10th grade

• uses he/him and is a trans guyyy

• BISEXUAL ICON

• is Korean by his biological parents but raised as Irish by his adoptive parents

• can speaks Korean perfectly well and an old Irish dialect

• has heterochromia eyes

• is a freckles head and has ginger/blond mixed hair

• is between 5’6 and 5’7 (1m68) but used to be smaller than Lloyd

• is the 2nd youngest after Lloyd

• he’s born on the 1st April

• has ADHD

• has a collection of rubik’s cubs and always have one in his bag and a key ring with a tiny one and use the big one in class to stay focus

• is a genius in mathematics and P.E. class but just for running

• has hyperfixations are video games, dinosaurs, sharks and spider-man

• is very clumsy

• once tried skateboarding like Kai, Cole and Lloyd but failed miserably

• is a bad loser

• never does his homework, the ultimate procrastinator

• was a gacha/nightcore phase

• listening to all genders of musics but hyper pop>>>

• has an overload room but clean because he has cleaning pulsions at 3am and reorganise his all room during his calls with Cole. His parents had to create their own headphones for the noises during the night

• is a HUGE lover of Christmas and Halloween

• is an anime weeb

• Gave his WII U and all his games with to Lloyd because he knew Kai couldn’t afford it at this time

• Helped Lloyd to bind their chest for the first time with tape and for his birthday he gave him his own binder bcz he didn’t need it anymore

• Make fun of Kai’s height since he get taller than him

• Nobody knows it but him and Cole dated once for a couple months in 9th grade before they decided to broke up because they feel they were just friends

• To him he only had two relationships : one with Cole and one with an another boy named Felix in primary school where they couldn’t stop holding hands, kissing each other on the cheek and helping each other

• Has also a panic disorder which causes him to stress a lot and for the most tiny things. He got medication for it so he doesn’t have like a panic attack a day but he still can feel extremely stressed

• Because of his panic disorder and some bullying things in primary school he did his all middle school plus 9th grade at home

• Can play electric bass thanks to one of his old hyperfixation and sometimes plays songs to Nya even if he makes mistakes because it’s been a long time he didn’t play

• Is a dog person and has a dog call Flash

• Loves his adoptive parents with his all heart

• When he’s angry he cursed in the Irish dialect he learned from his adoptive parents and the others are either dying of laughter or being extremely concerned

• Is in love with Nya for ages and ages but didn’t how to approach her and all so she’s the one who did the first step and talk to him for the first time

• He has testosterone treatment so his voice is still in break and sometimes it is absolutely low and other times it’s high-pitched

• He builds a lot of stuff and knows how to repair cars and often helps Cole with his motorcycle

• His hands are always dirty and dust is often under his nails because of all the stuff he builds

• He has a hate (but he wishes love) relationship with cats since he’s allergic to them

• He’s nyctophobic (extreme fear of dark) and so he always has a little candle or the night light that his parents made for him so he can sleeps

• Used to have horrible panic attacks at night when he has nightmares or because of his nyctophobia and even have to go to the emergency once because of it

• Before getting his driver license he always go to places with his bike

• Before meeting all the friend group members, he always had to pretend he was « normal » because people used to mock him because of his ADHD, his anxiety tics and where he lived (the junkyard)

• He’s the nice and energetic guy of his village, every old ladies thinks he’s really nice while old men thinks he’s too noisy (they’re just jealous-)

• Always make little gifts to Nya that he made himself and love to do big surprises that he took months to prepare just to see her smile on her face

• Was, is and will always #1 Nya’s supporter with Kai ofc

• Is best friend with Cole since he’s been adopted bcz the Walker and the Hence Brookstone families are good friends

• he knows what Cole’s been through and knows to help him

• Nya is his biggest support when he has breakdown she knows what to do, how to deal with it and make him feel better and always listening to him

• Nya and him rarely fight because they work hard on communication and Jay is just freaking happy about that

• Jay will never admit it but he always admired how cool is Kai and even if they fight a lot he knows he can count on them and they know they can count on him if there’s anything

• Zane, Pixal, Nya and him plan every month a weekend to the junkyard to make a new invention together

• Loves to help people he cares about so when he learned that Zane was being bullied by some racists, he managed to always be with him if they go alone somewhere and felt extremely shitty when they got physically assaulted bcz he couldn’t help and even get hit too

• Sometimes he wished he was like Kai, confident and brave enough to fight for his friends

• Always say ily to Cole because he’s THE best friend he ever had and he’s always here when he needs help

• When he helps Kai with their maths homework, he become as strict as a math teacher can be (even worse) and it makes Kai just questionning his whole life

• Made the worse foolishness possible with Cole as a kid

• has arachnophobia

• dance and scream-singing at 3am with Cole on Timber

• is a BIG fan of Fairy Tail (has a plushie of Happy)

Nya Smith

• Is 16

• Is in 10th grade

• Uses the pronouns She/her and identifies as a cis girl

• Bisexual girl

• Mexican/japanese like Kai

• Speaks Spanish

• Is between 5’10/5’11

• Is the 3rd youngest after Jay and Lloyd (she’s older than Jay yes)

• Born on 27 March

• She’s an extreme perfectionist like it already made her sick at some point

• Drive an old but incredible motorcycle she repair with Jay two years ago and loves it, it’s literally her baby

• Is an amazing student in everything except art and literature because she struggles to express her feelings and to words on emotions

• Loves metal music and listening some with Cole

• Is extremely good at sport and even more at swimming

• She's not into dresses but she wouldn't mind wearing a skirt even though she prefers wearing trousers and shorts

• Is definitely not a morning person like she needs coffee to be awake, is addicted to caffeine

• she's been assaulted sexually when she was younger like 11-12 a day Kai has to work late again and couldn’t get Nya in time so she had to go back home alone

• Lloyd and her would definitely have the best sleepover/gossiping together when Kai isn't here for the all night and doing karaoke all night long

• has matching bracelets with Kai that they did when they were young. Her is red and his red

• due to her assault, she’s extremely afraid to be alone outside at night. She hated herself and feels so vulnerable so she build herself a shell and since now she rarely talks about her feelings and emotions, she sees it as weakness, but thanks to Jay she understands that talking and showing her emotions wasn’t about being weak but having the courage to open up to others and face her problems

• used to go in a boxe club with Skylor in middle school

• has undiagnosed ADHD and learned she has some symptoms by Jay who noticed them before they even started dating

• she can skate with rollers but not with a skateboard

• is very passionate about space and love talking about stars, planets and all

• wish Kai let her help him at home and open up more to her

• dated a girl in 7th grade but didn’t tell to anyone because she was worried to disappoint her brothers or friends

• when she has big breakdowns or she’s too angry to talk or see anyone, she takes her motorcycle and goes to the sea, to a secret spot. Sometimes she just watches the waves and put her feet in the water or sometimes she just swim all dressed up until she’s not angry anymore, usually she stayed until the night falls to watch the stars and moon, thinking about her parents until Kai comes and picks her up, worry asf but happy to find her and comfort her on the way home

• didn’t used to sleep without any cuddly toys until Jay offers her one of his favourite and ever since she only sleeps with it and can’t sleep without it

• hates TV shows about love but loves reading old books about impossible relationships

• loves gossiping with Pixal, Vania, Skylor and Cole when they do a sleepover

• she’s BUFF and can easily take her brother and Jay on her back

• get a tattoo of orcas, her favourite animal, on her left arm

• she wants to be a marine biologist and learn all she can about faune and flora of oceans, buy or emprunte books and hold a looot of notebooks where she writes down informations

• she wears bracelets made of leather and the one that Lloyd made her when he was a child

• often make fun of Kai when she sees they doing a whole skincare routine coz he got acne and black spot very easily while she never had a single spot on her face

• did have a crush on Cole when she was 14 and was hurt when he told her he was crushing on Kai and started realising her feelings for Jay (she always considered him as a brother) a year later

• always wanted a cat but she doesn’t know why they’re always scared of her and that’s kinda hurt her in some ways

Zane Julien

• is 17 soon 18

• they’re in 12th grade

• uses they/them/it pronouns and see themselves as non-binary

• they’re demi-panromantic and graysexual

• Russian

• can speak like 10 languages : French, Russian, Italian, Latino Spanish, Chinese, Polish, Creole, Indonesian, Greek and German

• They’re between 6’4 and 6’5 (1m95), which make them the tallest in the group

• It’s the second oldest after Cole

• is born on December, 17th

• has autism

• their longest hyper fixations since they’re little are literature and language study

• have a bionic arm (they're born without their left arm) and they don't like to talk about it, it's kind of a trigger

• has always kind of a loner since they're little, so when they started to befriend with Cole during middle school, they were hella scared

• Cole is their most close friend and the one they trust the most, with their girlfriend, Pixal, of course

• is dating Pixal since 10th grade

• they never feel in love with anyone before Pixal and used to don't understand the concept of love for years

• they always been bullied for either their skin tone or their autism, and developed trust issues and anxiety disorder

• are easily overwhelmed by noise or public places, so they never stay at school too long, only in the morning then they go back home

• are a HUGEEE fan of romantic/dramatic mangas

• has lost its mother when it was only a child and so lived with its father

• are often complimented by their friends about how beautiful their eyes are (they're blue but like a mix of ocean and ice blue)

• can do crochet

• wish that their friends's life could be better and always try to help them

• feel bad when anyone is standing up for them when they get bullied or victim of racism

• feel like a burden

• is active a lot in volunteering actions and associations for example homeless people or victims of any sort of abuse

• even though their hyperfixations are more inclined in the litterature domain, their dream job is to be a doctor or a surgeon

• loves flowers and often gather some when it's walking its way home or anywhre and put them in its herbarium

• don't really like sport but love hiking, they find it really relaxing

• wish their skin were white pretty often

• even if a lot of negative things happened or are happening to them, they always try to stay positive and enthuastic

• is always the first person to listen Cole's music before the other since it was the first to know Cole made music and never make fun of him for that

• their favourite kind of music are indie, classic and ethereal

• has earrings since it is in 8th grade and always has them on (they were its mom's)

• have a EXTREMELY well clean room and hate when people get in and touch things without their permission, it literally can triggers them

• drinks nothing except water and apple juice

• has a budgerigar called Icy because of its white feathers

• their therapist is often bring their conversation oh them getting diagnosed to approve, yes or no, if they're HPI

• are working everyday a bit on being able to go in publics places alone which makes their dad and friends very proud of them

• try as much as they can to give some money or medecine for Kai's IED since they know he doesn't/can't take his pills

• already has a colder body temperature but having its bionic arm makes it a little bit even colder somehow

• love ice cream (fav flavour is vanilla)

• its style of clothes fits in light academia and has a comfort jumper (the only one they have from their mother)

• loves rainbows and has an entire album of pictures of them in its phone

And that's it for the Headcanons of the "main" characters of ninjago, I know I took ages to post it but school has been pretty hard and other personnal problems had been on my mind but i'm really happy to finally show you this post ! As always, you can always put your own HC in the comments or discuss if you disagree with mine, as long it's done with respect ofc ! I want to thank @en0laa who often motivated me to continue this serie so I dedicate this post to her :D

Anyway, I hope y'all doing great and having a great day/night/afternoon ! See ya in the next post !!

[fullmoonfireball]

what is UPgamers i only JUST realized that the Pikmin 3 Secret File cutscenes use a different translation than the versions used in Pikmin 3 Deluxe for Olimar's Assignment

and all that because i wanted to grab a screenshot of Olimar mentioning the IT department in the Twilight River cutscene to be like "imagine working in IT for Hocotate Freight", only to make the discovery that line is remake-exclusive . so for future reference, here's a line-by-line comparison for both versions ig. dialogue below will be formatted like this:

AREA

"Wii U" // "Nintendo Switch"

GARDEN OF HOPE

"This is Olimar, captain of the SS Dolphin." // "This is Olimar, Captain of the S.S. Dolphin."

"This is the third time that I've set foot on this planet." // "I've been on this planet twice before already." (note: it's strange that they didn't fix this repeated mistake- this would actually be the fourth time, given that Pikmin 2 has two trips. i guess the miscounting is probably also in the japanese version(s), then.)

"Our company, Hocotate Freight, is up to its eyeballs in debt - courtesy of our beloved president." // "Hocotate Freight is drowning in debt. I'm not saying it's our company president's fault...because this is an official log."

"We've come here in search of treasure to help us repay that debt." // "We're here in search of treasure to pay off that debt."

[Louie cutaway]

"Needless to say, the local wildlife isn't exactly rolling out the red carpet for us…" // "But I know from experience that the local wildlife won't make this job easy."

TROPICAL WILDS

"This is Olimar, captain of the SS Dolphin." // "This is Olimar, captain of the S.S. Dolphin."

"This is my third visit to this planet. Hunting for treasure here never gets old!" // "I've been to this planet twice before already. I never tire of hunting for treasure here!"

"While searching this area, we stumbled across a key of some sort." // "I made an interesting find in this area: some sort of key-like object."

"I wonder if it unlocks a treasure chest?" // "I should hold on to it in case I find a treasure chest."

"Or could it be the key to..." // "Unless it's the key to something else?"

[Louie cutaway]

"…We'd better keep our wits about us." // "I'd better keep my eyes open."

"The crabs here are peckish, and we're on the menu." // "I wouldn't want to get between the crabs of this planet and their prey."

TWILIGHT RIVER

"This is Olimar, captain of the SS Dolphin." // "This is Olimar, captain of the S.S. Dolphin."

"This is my third visit to this planet. Hunting for treasure here never gets old!" // "I've been to this planet twice before already. I never tire of hunting for treasure here!"

"My explorations have taken me far and wide." // "I've travelled far and wide across this planet during my several trips here."

"Somewhere along the way, a number of my notes and memos went missing." // "But I'm only noticing now that several of my notes and log entries have gone missing."

"There must be some sort of bug in my file management software." // "It must be a leak with my file-management routines. I think I heard someone in IT talking about that once."

"Once we get back to Hocotate, I'll try to convince the president to invest in an upgrade…" // "Once I'm back on Hocotate, I'll try to convince the president we need an upgrade."

[Louie cutaway]

"Maybe he can upgrade Louie while he's at it." // "Maybe I can get an upgrade to my partner while I'm at it."

DISTANT TUNDRA

"This is Olimar, captain of the SS Dolphin." // "This is Olimar, captain of the S.S. Dolphin."

"This is my third visit to this planet. Hunting for treasure here never gets old!" // "I've been to this planet twice before already. I never tire of hunting for treasure here!"

"Unfortunately, I'm absolutely freezing, even with my spacesuit on." // "Unfortunately, even my advanced suit can't quite keep out the cold."

"It's doing a terrible job of keeping out the cold." // "I'm not surprised Hocotate Freight cut costs when it came to insulation. Brr!"

"It wouldn't surprise me if the president had plucked our spacesuits out of some budget mail-order catalogue." // "It wouldn't surprise me if everyone got the same standard-issue suit, no matter what kind of assignment they were on."

"Hocotate Freight's new venture has been an utter failure, and our earnings have suffered as a result." // "The company's new venture went down in flames, and it's dragged our yearly earnings down with it."

"Now it looks like we're cutting corners even on basic equipment like spacesuits." // "We don't have the money for decent space suits now. This one isn't even custom fitted."

[Louie cutaway]

"Shocking, to say the least." // "Without any insulation, I wouldn't want to put this suit up against any nasty shocks, either."

"I really should've held on to that Anti-Electrifier…" // "I really should've hung on to that Anti-Electrifier..."

FORMIDABLE OAK

"This is Olimar, captain of the SS Dolphin." // "This is Olimar, captain of the S.S. Dolphin."

"This is my third visit to the planet. Hunting for treasure here never gets old!" // "I've been to this planet twice before already. I never tire of hunting for treasure here!"

"While surveying this area, I came across something gold and shiny." // "Our survey has revealed a massive golden object in this region."

"It's got to be worth a fortune!" // "It'll be worth a fortune to the company!"

"My perpetually mute colleague Louie actually spoke up against coming here, for some reason…" // "My taciturn partner, Louie, didn't want to come here for reasons he refused to explain."

"Speaking of which… I haven't seen him around lately." // "Where did he get to, anyway? Well, it doesn't matter."

"Where's he disappeared to?" // "I'll just get this treasure myself and then it's back to Hocotate."

[randomthefox]

And that was Sonic Lost World! I actually think the main theme of Lost World is kind of a boring let down, so I just edited a really good song from a really lame fan project over the credits instead. I apologize if this offends literally everybody.

Sonic Lost World is a good game! I sincerely and legitimately have no idea what the fuck peoples problem with it is or why it has the reputation it does. I assume people just haven't played it? I'd say that's reasonable considering it was a Wii U exclusive BUT THAT'S NOT EVEN TRUE BECAUSE IT'S ON STEAM YOU CAN PLAY THIS GAME ON PC RIGHT NOW so I literally don't get it at all.

This game is absolutely stunning to look at, it's so visually vibrant and beautiful the colors just pop and everything is so aesthetically appealing. The level design feels like an effort to take the design philosophies of the 2D games and do the Super Paper Mario Z-axis flip and show those 2D levels from a 3D perspective, and the way they took the Different Routes element from those games and just made it this optional choice players could make of which angle they want to take across a stretch of level with the freedom to go back and forth was very creative and allows for a lot of player expression. The kind of speedrun shit people do with this game is insane.

The plot feels like a natural evolution of the Back To Basics approach that Colors had, still with a focus on comedy but the cutscenes never have a chance to outstay their welcome because of how brisk and to the point they are. And they even manage to touch on more thoughtful subjects like Sonic and Tails coming into conflict, and like I detailed - this is Sonic at his absolute lowest point where he's left completely alone and is beset by doubt because of his own mistakes. This is the kind of Sonic narrative that people SAY they always want, and hype up the comics for supposedly having, but then they don't give this games story its chops and I don't understand why.

The Zeti are great, they're flat one dimensional characters for the most part but they're all so much fun and have such great designs and boss fights. And this is EGGMANS game, he has SO much screen time and dialog and great moments.

Sonic Lost World is PHENOMENAL. Disregard EVERYTHING you hear people say about this game and listen to me instead: this game is $30 on Steam, fucking play it.

[athetos]

Wind Waker (GCN, not Wii U) has the dubious honor of having some of the worst pieces of heart in the franchise’s history. I’ve 100% completed nearly every other Zelda game, but this one pushed me to my limit and I didn’t bother. Lets look at some of the highlights:

The battleship minigame can be fun, but at the end of the day it boils down to luck, and trust me, when you lose a dozen times in a row, you’re going to be miserable. It’s also a piece you’ll want to wait until later in the game to do despite being accessible very early on, as until you get the ability to use bomb flowers/bomb bag you’re stuck with 200 rupees max.

The treasure chart ones are irritating because you won’t know what the reward is until you go to the location and dredge it up. One chart (as well as a piece of heart by itself) is sold in Beedle’s shop for large sums of money, which isn’t very exciting. Some charts are also found in dungeons, so you’ll want to pay very close attention as you progress, since returning to them later is a chore. One is given for beating the battleship minigame… again, with an even lower score than the first piece. One is won in the auction (as well as another piece of heart by itself) - which is just awful. You’ll want to wait for the larger wallets, and be prepared to play the song if passing a lot, because even if you win the auction every time and have the rupees, it’s random which item will be the one up for bidding!

Hitting Orca 500 times with your sword. It’s long, boring, and worst of all, very easy to make a mistake if you’re not paying attention. You can’t just mindlessly battle him while watching a video or whatever. You need to keep your eyes on the screen and stay patient. Miserable.

The trading sequence isn’t the worst in Zelda history, but it’s still a slog especially if you have no idea where to go next. Iirc the game doesn’t really do that great a job of hinting who the next npc you need to find is.

Watering all the trees is a pain. HD has the swift sail at least, but it’s very boring racing to the right island before the water expires. And then, you have to warp back to the forest to get more water. Honestly, any quest that has you sailing multiple places sucks.

I absolutely adore the wind waker, I replayed it in the last couple years and had a blast, but the optional quests can be so aggravating. I know HD version remedied quite a bit of this (as well as making the triforce quest somewhat tolerable) but man. This game has some incredible highs but some truly horrendous lows. Don’t talk to me about the pictobox.

[ghostlymonade]

Now it's Persona-l: Escapism and Freedom in Tokyo Mirage Sessions and Persona 5

On the surface, Tokyo Mirage Sessions seems about as Diet Persona™ as a game can get. With a cast of colourful teens out to save the world using their Stands Persona  Performa, some critique of our society, and the same amount of clueless running around Shibuya, it would be easy to write the game off as a quick cash-grab by their respective studios. But when giving TMS another look, you might be surprised at the depth that lurks beneath the pastel-coloured waters. Today we’ll be taking a deep dive into two specific themes that persist across both games.

For those who somehow missed an originally Wii-U exclusive JRPG which didn’t include the Fire Emblem or Shin Megami Tensei tags in its title, Tokyo Mirage Sessions: FE is a collaboration between Atlas and Intelligent Systems to bring a little Fire Emblem flavour to the familiar Zio-spamming recipe of the Shin Megami Tensei and Persona series. The game follows Itsuki Aoi, a nineteen-year-old with dark blue hair who has therefore been recognised by the universe itself as the main character. He discovers his ability to summon a Performa— a Fire Emblem character turned to a Persona – and joins up with other Performa users to battle mirages (i.e Shadows), pursuing their dreams and growing stronger as they do. It’s a setup that requires no further introduction if you’ve ever picked up an Atlas game before. They have a rightful confidence in this formula that allows them to focus on refinement and improved storytelling, the benefits of which absolutely shine in Persona 5.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions predates its more successful cousin by two years, but I argue we see the same brilliant attention to detail, themes and realism across both, and nowhere is this more apparent than in how both games handle freedom and escapism. For those still working through these eighty-hour behemoths, not to worry! There are spoilers for the first few story dungeons and other aspects, but not the endings of the games.

The two player teams present an interesting dichotomy, partly because of how similar they seem on the surface. Take their publicity situation. Posters of the Phantom Thieves’ logo plaster every building in P5, and Shibuya 106 is always displaying posters of Kiria or Tsubasa’s newest production— a very nice touch for TMS’s story, considering how much focus is placed on the nitty-gritty, mechanical aspects of building a career in performing. But there is one key distinction. While neither group is recognised for their heroic work in the Metaverse or Idolasphere respectively, the names Kiria Kurono, Tsubasa Oribe and Mamori Minamoto have gathered everything from a cult following to a full-blown fan frenzy. This has fascinating ripples throughout the rest of the story that feel fully considered by the writers.

Within the P5 cast up to Okumura’s Palace, many members join the Phantom Thieves because they feel backed into a corner. In Joker’s case, the corner is very literal. For Ann and Makoto, they could, in a purely technical sense, do the bidding of the villain and escape physically unharmed, but nobody in their right mind would suggest submitting to Kamoshida or Kaneshiro is a good idea. Imagery of imprisonment is everywhere, through promotional art and cutscenes and every line of dialogue. But this imprisonment is rarely a physical thing. Even in the literal jail of the Velvet Room replaces one wall with a huge portal back to the real world, albeit obscured by the camera angle. Restrictions on the Phantom Thieves are often nebulous or even self-imposed, and I find it fascinating that their problems rarely evaporate after they awaken their Persona and gain a new outlook. While the pressures of society are given a face for each Thief, the writers never make the mistake of treating it as if these singular persons are the only issue— instead, they represent a wider imprisonment.

Conversely, the Mirage Masters don’t seem to face these same issues. Not to say they have no conflict, but there is a sense of freedom that permeates every aspect of the game. It’s an interesting approach; their lives aren’t ruined or ended by failure, but their dreams will crumble before them if they can’t push on in their professional journey, and the world will be worse off for the loss of talented creators to the mirages. The Idolasphere may not feel of much import. Obviously there are consequences to leaving it unchecked, otherwise there would be no driving plot force to have the characters enter at all. But the Idolasphere and its adventures seem to be an inconvenience to most of the TMS cast. They aren’t actively seeking out new Idolasphere locations, excitedly searching for new equipment and attempting to train their Performa in their off time, the way the Phantom Thieves do. These are driven young professionals, yes, perhaps with the exception of main character Itsuki Aoi. But not driven by anything the Idolasphere offers- they already have their career aspirations, and it isn’t to fight shadows mirages for the rest of their lives.

This is even reflected in gameplay. Where leaving the palace in Persona 5 ends your day and has you missing out on a limited timeslot, TMS allows the player to jump in and out of any Idolasphere location, at any time. You could say that this is because TMS lacks the limited time frame mechanic that appeared in all three modern Persona games, but I would say the lack of that day-by-day mechanic is, itself, another way to show the freedom the TMS cast enjoy.

For the Phantom Thieves, the metaverse is their escape. Even in official art, you can see the grins as they jump into action:

Regular life, for the Thieves, is a tedious Sisyphean battle, where they feel like they have little power and little control. The power of a Persona is one thing that elevates them, makes them special, in their minds, anyway. Right from the flash-forward at the start of the game, it’s clear that the world is hostile to them. While Joker bounces around with a grin on his face and heaps of style, crowds react to him with fear, scorn, and derision. This in spite of the fact he has seemingly done little more than nab a prize and disappear, in true phantom thief style. And when Joker is caught by the police, the prospect of the truth being discovered becomes more and more unsettling, the closer the Phantom Thieves grow to each other. Beside the criminal charges: Ryuji is separated from his single mother, Ann loses her career and support network, Morgana loses the only people who understand him, Makoto loses her best chance at individuality and self-expression. The world is out to get the Phantom Thieves, and if that happens, they lose everything. They won’t die, presumably, but their lives are likely to become hollow and empty. This again emphasises the idea of their imprisonment being a less tangible thing, hard to fight and much harder to escape from.

I could probably go on for another few pages but we’ll draw things to a close for now. Escapism has always been a less talked-about motif in Atlas games, rarely the ‘point’ of any one story, but it’s often there, an interesting compliment to the main theme. Persona 3 delves into mortality, and I believe escapism is a fascinating part of that, as a way to distract from it and try to live a happy life in spite of the inevitable end. Persona 4 focuses on finding the truth, despite a society that tries to force conformity, and they discover comfort and freedom by finding people who let them be their true selves. Persona 5 was merely the first game to push these themes into the spotlight. But let’s not forget the lesser-loved Atlas games, either! And hey, maybe if you see Tokyo Mirage Sessions on sale? Give it a go. I promise it’s pretty good.

[autumnwyvern]

idk why but I'm gonna soapbox for a moment. its MY blog and I get to decide when I post a rambly rant!

People need to get it absorbed into their minds that a translation error and a deliberate localization change are not the same thing. A translation error is when two similar sounding/looking words get mixed up, or (in the case of JP-ENG which is what I'm about to really get into here) really inconsistent romanizations for proper nouns, or characters getting misgendered/having the wrong pronouns. There are tons of things. Read Legends of Localization. Read anything with the title of "This Be Bad Translation" because they are extremely funny, and then read the more informative articles. Buy the books even. For even further FURTHER reading Capcom has a really good track record with their localizers just talking about their games and the decisions they made in articles/blog posts. Actually let me reference one now to make a point:

Maya Fey in the original script loves a big hearty bowl of ramen. Adores it. And girl... I understand. However if you've played the english Ace Attorney games you may recall in those she really loves a big juicy burger. Is this a mistranslation? Did the localizers somehow goof up and say burger instead of ramen? No. The global release of the first game came out in 2005 and at that point in time most Americans who knew was a real bowl of ramen was were either Japanese-American, been to Japan, or a huge stinkin anime nerd. Everyone else if you told them to imagine ramen they'd picture a cup noodle. So if you want to go for mass appeal you think to yourself. Okay. What would be the American equivalent in this situation. A hearty cultural food that one may want to get to celebrate a job well done. And they landed on burgers. It was a deliberate, thought-through choice. And while you, personally, may feel that it was a mistake. It fundamentally isnt. There is no 100% right way to localize something. Theres a lot of factors to consider! And sometimes a change in how these factors are approached leads to my next point.

A character having slightly different mannerisms or way of speech between games is also, not inherently a mistranslation. If you are my age consider for a moment the anime localizations of our youth. Digimon Adventure. Early seasons of Pokemon. Sailor Moon. They were really allowed to go "off-script" and ham it up and make a bunch of jokes that weren't in the original, but I look back on them fondly and I know others do too! Being more loose and going for the overall vibes and doing so in a way that (hopefully) appeals to your audience is a perfectly fine way to do things. But now anime (and manga) localization has changed a lot. There is a lot more emphasis on "accuracy" and having a "true" translation. Which like isn't a thing that exists. In fact, often times being too 1:1 literal makes a localization worse and clunky and weird. But the point is in more modern "accurate" translations those characters often act a little differently. Neither of those versions are wrong its just a different approach. But it is in Splatoon where I think you can really see it in stark contrast, because in the first game the North American localization were allowed to freestyle it a bit more. In general they gave characters more bombastic personalities and weird little quirks that like werent in the european english version at All. So Splatoon becomes a hit, it is like The Game that ppl are buying a Wii U for, so the sequels roll around and the leash gets tightened a bit. You will sometimes see people say things like the translations got Better or crack jokes about how nintendo must have fired the old guys or whatever. But what happened is. They are going for brand consistency. Now all the English scripts are mostly the same (sorry not sorry for infecting the european english version with briish Spyke). Which is to say they are trying to avoid different versions from having really different interpretations of characters but they are still in some ways allowed to put their own little spin on things. Which brings me to the actual. true reason for all this meandering.

No. Craig saying "I don't see species" is not a mistranslation. Its a localization choice. Here we have a situation where we are trying to convey an older man who isnt Hip with it anymore but kind off thinks he is. Just a real out of touch guy. He means well but still has some internalized prejudices. Americans are really familiar with people saying "I don't see race." Like. He is A Grandpa. That is an extremely grandpa thing to say when someone challenges them on if they are going to be chill that there is someone of a different race over for dinner. It's fine. If you had a strong reaction to him saying that thats good, even. Like idk I wasn't in the room when they made that specific choice but I imagine they wanted to licit that "oogh uh oh no you cant say that grandpa yiikes 😬" reaction. Like idk I think that was their intent and it worked. And thats why we are still talking about it years later. (also, as more of an aside. I don't think him being Nicer to marina/eight in the JP script means he isn't still kinda racist towards octolings? Like the first thing he does in splatoon 3's story mode is announce the octarians are back and Totally behind whats going on and need to be stopped. He says this even if you are an octoling. dude got divorced so hard he became racist, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this. Marie is also kind of racist too. Sorry! that doesn't make them Bad Characters and that you are Bad for enjoying them btw. It just means they have character flaws. which is good and normal and cool.)

[iratheartist868]

randomthefox

Sonic Lost World is a good gamel I sincerely and legitimately have no idea what the fuck peoples problem with it is or why it has the reputation it does. I assume people just haven't played it? I'd say that's reasonable considering it was a Wii U exclusive BUT THAT'S NOT EVEN TRUE BECAUSE IT'S ON STEAM YOU CAN PLAY THIS GAME ON PC RIGHT NOW so I literally don't get it at all.

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This game is absolutely stunning to look at, it's so visually vibrant and beautiful the colors just pop and everything is so aesthetically appealing. The level design feels like an effort to take the design philosophies of the 2D games and do the Super Paper Mario Z-axis flip and show those 2D levels from a 3D perspective, and the way they took the Different Routes element from those games and just made it this optional choice players could make of which angle they want to take across a stretch of level with the freedom to go back and forth was very creative and allows for a lot of player expression. The kind of speedrun shit people do with this game is

insane.

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The plot feels like a natural evolution of the Back To Basics approach that Colors had, still with a focus on comedy but the cutscenes never have a chance to outstay their welcome because of how brisk and to the point they are. And they even manage to touch on more thoughtful subjects like Sonic and Tails coming into conflict, and like I detailed - this is Sonic at his absolute lowest point where he's left completely alone and is beset by doubt because of his own mistakes. This is the kind of Sonic narrative that people SAY they always want, and hype up the comics for supposedly having, but then they don't give this games story its chops and I don't understand why.

The Zeti are great, they're flat one dimensional characters for the most part but they're all so much fun and have such great designs and boss fights. And this is EGGMANS game, he has SO much screen time and dialog and great moments.

Sonic Lost World is PHENOMENAL Disregard EVERYTHING you hear people say about this game and listen to me instead: this game is $30 on Steam, fucking play

Thank you for the long analysis!!

I definitely don't dislike the game. Plus I've noticed a lot of people have started to say they like/love it!!

Recently I haven't really had the time to play video games. I'll try and make some time for that again

I'll remember what you wrote, maybe someday I'll get it💙

[thesuperawesomeaarpong]

In wind waker hHD for wii u. Why didn’t they put the tingle tuner on the gamepad?

The wii u gamepad is basically the same concept of the gameboy advance pink cable. Remember how many gamecube games used those things?

Yet none of those games were ported to wii u.

If it were possible to connect multiple gamepads to wii u they could have ported foour swords adventures to wii u.

Replacing tongle tuner with the now defunct miiverse bottles was their biggest mistake. Letting a second player use the gamepad to control tingle would have been so cool. It would have been perfect. Mindboggling how noone at nintendo thought of this.

[zalcolm]

@lumiidere Sure thing! I decided to do both Víctor and Victor just to make sure I didn't make a mistake.

Akira

he/they, cis male (for the most part; possibly demiboy), bisexual (male lean)

Dating Luca! Before he asked Luca out, he would usually just look at Luca with a deadpan stare with cheeks redder than his glasses. This creeped Luca out at first, but he got used to his awkwardness after realizing Akira was actually in love with him.

Bad at social interaction. Which is why they don't talk that much, due to them being a little bit socially awkward.

Doesn't like showing how he really feels that often. Only to people close to him or in extreme circumstances. Often, people like Misaki or Luca can somewhat tell how Akira truly feels about something even when he's not showing it.

Despite his personality being more catlike than doglike, he actually prefers dogs. In fact, his favorite color is brown because of his pet pomeranian.

TERRIFIED of insects. Akira's not really the type to run around and scream, but when there's a bug in the room they sure as hell will. Do not ask them about what happened to Oscar's late pet tarantula.

Usually wears jackets, except in summer. Doesn't really get hot that easily.

Ian

he/him, cis male, unlabeled sexuality/questioning

Homeless, lives in his car. Doesn't really have a place to live. Sometimes he stays over at his "friend" Víctor's house or his older brother Steve's apartment. Usually the former since Steve doesn't really like Ian that much.

Plus-sized. He's rather tall, so he's only somewhat overweight, but he's big nonetheless.

Snores VERY LOUDLY. Another reason his brother Steve doesn't want him in his apartment. Víctor doesn't really seem to mind this, as they usually go to sleep before Ian does.

Very hairy. Chest hair, arm hair, you name it. He almost never shaves.

He doesn't have any kids himself, but has earned the title of "dad friend" of his friend group despite them all being similar ages. He even makes dad jokes.

Luca

he/him, trans male, gay

29 years old, Birthday is May 17th (Taurus)

Amputee, since birth. Has a prosthetic leg, but usually wears long pants so not many people actually know that about him.

[The rest of these headcanons are copied and pasted from DeviantArt] Was an orphan until he was 10 years old, but adopted into a (mostly) loving family. His younger sister, Elisa, isn't the nicest and they get into a lot of fights but they're still on somewhat good terms.

Pacifist. Doesn't really like hurting other people unless he has to. His pacifism really helps some but sometimes hurts others. Elisa once screamed and asked Luca to kill a spider, but he just scooped it up and put it outside.

Takes a lot of naps during the day. Eepy boy.

His wardrobe is the most diverse array of clothes ether. He has masculine clothing, feminine clothing, unisex clothing, you name it. Most of it is green, but also has outfits of all different colors.

He paints his nails. Usually black or dark green.

Víctor (Wii)

they/he, nonbinary, gay

Has a HUGE crush on Ian. The only thing is, they're way too embarrassed about it to confess to him. He's afraid that he'll be looked down upon by his peers for dating him.

Autistic. Gets sensory overload in noisy places, and you can often see him wearing noise-canceling headphones at places like parties.

Very impulsive. They do a lot of things without thinking twice. They even got into a fight with Shinnosuke once. Víctor won, but still regrets beating him up.

Furry. He tries to hide this, but literally everyone in his friend group knows this. LOL.

Sometimes wears feminine clothing, but usually just sticks to casual clothes.

Loves the smell and taste of cinnamon.

Victor (Wii U)

he/him, trans male, questioning

He doesn't go outside very often. Usually he just stays at home unless he needs to be somewhere. He has a job, but his job doesn't require him to go in person.

OBSESSED with robots. Fictional or real ones. However, he's not very skilled in engineering.

Hiromasa

he/him, cis male, bisexual (slight female lean)

Despite having average proportions in canon, I headcanon him to have a tall and skinny body type. Somewhat frail, but don't underestimate him.

He only gets an average of 5 hours of sleep per night. He's barely making it through the days.

Coffee drinker. His favorite is just...regular black coffee. He'll insist he's not a caffeine addict.

Despite his mischievous grin, he actually takes things seriously...most of the time. However, he does enjoy the occasional mishap.

He plays the piano. In fact, he's more skilled at it than Rin.

[potatosteinsillustrations]

Just so you get to know that there are alternatives to this:

Back in 2013-2014 Nintendo's President and CEO Satoru Iwata (rest in peace) cut his salary in half (along many of the other execs like Shigeru Miyamoto cutting 30& of his own salary) to avoid laying off employees at the company after the Wii U severily underperformed.

Here are some of Iwata's notable quotes from an investor Q and A: Source: Polygon

"If we reduce the number of employees for better short-term financial results, employee morale will decrease," he said. "I sincerely doubt employees who fear that they may be laid off will be able to develop software titles that could impress people around the world." "I know that some employers publicize their restructuring plan to improve their financial performance by letting a number of their employees go, but at Nintendo, employees make valuable contributions in their respective fields, so I believe that laying off a group of employees will not help to strengthen Nintendo's business in the long run."

In 2021 everyone was rightly scandalized and enraged when it was revealed that Bobby Kotick ( Activision-Blizzard's CEO and one of the biggest scumbags in the world) received a $200 million bonus after laying off around 240 employees at ABK ( Source: Yahoo News) Now your next question should be: How much money will the CEO and executives at Epic (or any other AAA studio or company doing massive lay offs this year like the Embracer Group, Electronics Arts) will receive and why are they receiving said bonuses if their mistakes have led to 830 employees being laid off.

And of course most people won't care, much like when it was revealed that there was a super toxic and chauvinistic environment in Activision Blizzard that led to many women being rampantly sexually harrased and even on of them taking her own life.

Or the severe crunch that employees at CD Project Red had to endure with Cyperpunk 2077 (even after they were promised there wasn't going to be cruel crunch like they had to endure with The Witcher 3)

As long as consumers can play their game sadly they won't care and that massively sucks! There won't be any effective change in how employees are treated at these big corporations if consumers don't vote with their wallets and advocate for the workforce's well being.

And this tweets ring true:

- The metaverse isn't worth 830 people being laid off even if it was the" next big thing", but let's be real it isn't and it won't. -This is another reminder that corporations aren't anyone's friends. -Also fuck corporations.

[sky-squido]

Where in the World is the Kindgom of Hyrule?  PART ONE

Alright buckle up, friends—this one’s gonna get absolutely, utterly, wildly out of hand very quickly.

 Section One: The Dream

So recently, someone made the mistake of teaching me how to navigate celestially and we were talking about all the differences between how the sky behaves in the northern and southern hemispheres and I, proudly having absolutely nothing inside of my brain except for LinkedUniverse for almost two and a half years now, thought to myself: hey! Wouldn’t it be funny if one of the LU boys was from the southern hemisphere and all the others had never left the northern hemisphere? The first boy to pop into my head for this was Wind because he, being a sailor, would almost definitely have the best grasp on celestial out of the whole gang and that way he could use a bunch of nautical navigation terms when he freaks out and nobody would have any idea what he’s saying.

I mean, imagine, right, he gets to another Hyrule and he’s got this navigation stuff down pat and while you could do celestial navigation without knowing the earth is round (as far as I can tell, we have no indication the Mayans or Polynesians knew the earth was round, but they were epic celestial navigators), knowing the earth is round is really very handy and we’ve known the darned thing’s circumference for literal millennia. So, since Wind clearly has latitude and longitude lines on his map and those are defined by angles around the earth’s curvature (none of those lines are curved though, so smh my head Wind uses the Mercator projection (to be fair, most navigators do, too, because it makes drawing rhumb lines really easy, but I digress)), homeboy knows the earth is round. And also, I mean, have you seen the Wii U box art?

Anyway, my point is that a southern hemisphere Wind would know that a northern hemisphere exists he and could totally logically deduce how stuff would behave there, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t freak him the FRICK out, especially before he fully figured out what was going on, because supposedly, he’s still in Hyrule, just an earlier one, and he was right above Hyrule, so how the heck could this be in a different hemisphere?

It was at this point that I realized why my fun little idea wouldn’t work—they’re all from Hyrule. It’s the same place, just at different times, and so, if the Kingdom of Hyrule has any internal logic or consistency, it’s all just gonna be the same place so my silly joke wouldn’t make sense.

But then, I realized, the Kingdom of Hyrule doesn’t have any internal logic or consistency! Not only does the map’s basic geography change quite dramatically between games, but it’s full of locations that are quite explicitly meant to be the same ones from prior games, yet their relative positions to each other vary wildly (believe me, we are going to get to this).

Fortunately, we know a truly, insanely, staggeringly massive amount of time has passed between games. I mean, Wild’s Hyrule has lore that, ten thousand years ago, Calamity Ganon got yeeted by tech we don’t even remotely recognize from any of the earlier games, meaning all the other eras are far older than that. For context, 10,000 years from today humans were just starting to figure out how farming worked. If Nintendo is going to casually throw a ten thousand year long timeskip into their silly little timeline, then maybe we can account for all this wacky location shifting with some clever geographical wrangling. I mean, the kingdom of Hyrule is and always has been a big hot mess and if magic exists, ten thousand years is an acceptable amount of time to toss around between games, and *stares pointedly at Tears of the Kingdom trailers* then maybe we can reconcile all of this.

 Section Two: The Little Adventure

I really like that phrase, “little adventure.” I’ve started using it whenever something mundane goes wrong or unexpectedly somehow, like “I’m going to have to walk a whole mile to get back home and it’s raining and I forgot my umbrella? Welp, guess it’s time for a little adventure!”

Yeah, that’s an apt phrase to use here, I think.

Because, like, okay, I know 10k years is like no time at all, geologically, so mountain ranges aren’t popping up and scooting away willy nilly, but we’ve gotta account for canon-typical shenaniganery. So generally, we have Hyrule castle in the middle, a volcanoes somewhere up, a sand somewhere left, and a woods somewhere right (I refrain from using such terms as north, east, south, and west because while the maps all have little compass roses on them and there are compasses in the games, magnetic-true variation is a very big deal, the magnetic poles wiggle around and even fully reverse sometimes, and I have my reservations about trusting Hyrule’s royal cartographers too much. Very soon, you will too). Because even that basic outline of Hyrule is subject to change. Take Twilight Princess, for example. Even if you use the GameCube version, where Gerudo Desert is to the left of the castle, like it should be, Death Mountain is to the right of the castle, not up. Since the forest is straight down, though, we could just be like “oh lol whoops guess the magnetic pole took a hike, let’s just rotate the map an entire forty-five degrees because the Kingdom of Hyrule decides to make all of its maps using magnetic north for some unholy reason.” And I mean, that’s fair game, right? Sure.

This strategy doesn’t hold up for very long.

I mean, I’m looking at broad trends here, right. I’m already assuming nothing is drawn to scale (and they clearly aren’t to scale even when the maps are literally rips of the world like for Legend’s games because I refuse to believe that Hyrule Castle and Kakariko village account for one-quarter of Hyrule’s land area). We’ve all seen those ridiculously inaccurate old maps from ages ago in our own history—there’s a lot of room for error here. I’m already assuming every distance and position and landform is an artistic abstraction and I’m also generously overcompensating for hardware limitations and the fact that Nintendo did not know they were going to try and connect all of these games decades later and was just focused on making fun, interesting, stand-alone adventures. You can keep building your one town in different locations with completely different architectural styles but give it the same name every time just to be cute. You can rebuild your castle regularly in all sorts of different spots without leaving any trace of the original. The Lost Woods can just grow legs and run around wherever they want to because the whole point of the Lost Woods is that the rules of space and object permanence don’t apply to them. We can throw around ten thousand years like it’s nothing. I’m trying to be as charitable as humanly possible. I literally do not care about the minutiae I literally just want the barest, vaguest outline of what the heck this landmass is doing on only the broadest of scales. I want this to work. I’m ignoring virtually everything about the terrain at this point, only using the locations that are canonically the same ones as from other games and allowing for incredible amounts of drift in where these things physically are.

But like—Breath of the Wild insisted on being cute and having that statue of Hylia that ended up in the Sealed Grounds in Skyward Sword be buried in the Forgotten Temple. Nice! Why is it in the top-left corner of the map?! What’s that, Hyrule just expanded out in a different direction and most of Skyward Sword takes place farther to the left than this map shows? Cute, but the Sacred Springs, clearly designed specifically to be the same ones from Skyward Sword, are all along the right side of the map! Like, sure, maybe the Skyview Spring being the Spring of Courage in Faron Woods all checks out and the second spring is in Eldin and Akkala is pretty close to Eldin, so fine, Spring of Power gets a free pass. And, again, we can fudge stuff—Skyward Sword’s map is for artistic purposes, not navigation, so maybe it’s only vaguely accurate. There’s some nebulous unmapped space between Faron and Eldin and we can just… assume there’s mountains there and that whatever pre-Skyward Sword civilization was kicking around building these things tossed a spring up there and Zelda just ~didn’t have to go there~ to get her Goddess powers back because we never saw the Spring of Wisdom in Skyward Sword. Fine.

Maybe the massive Goddess Statue and Sealed-Grounds-looking temple up in Tabantha are just a different temple in a similar style. Fine, okay, and Breath of the Wild and Skyward Sword are the most incomprehensively far apart of any of these games—clearly the only reason the springs survived this long was the fact that they’re sacred.

[Digression time! It’s time for a little adventure where I ramble about the Sacred Springs! It’s not really relevant, but it sure is neat!]

Because if the same springs are in both Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild, that then implies that they were lurking around in every other era but, acknowledging real life chronology issues, obviously these springs weren’t in the previous games. If we’re willing to ignore cold hard canon to pretend this is a world that really exists, though, which is way more fun, then those springs should still exist and that would be a really fun thing to have the boys stumble upon! Just in case any enterprising fic authors were looking for neat ideas I can tell you where they are, but where they all fall depends on how you decide to line up the maps. As previously established, there’s buckets of drift and inaccuracy, and I’ll get into my own mega-compilation-map after this digression is over, but if you want to just vibe and just stick to the general area and biome (like Nintendo themselves) here’s how you do it:

Courage goes in any forest in the bottom or right, power goes in any hot mountain at the top or the right, and the center of the rightmost part of a Zelda map—the part between the volcano and the forest—is always either unmapped somehow or contains at least one significant area of higher elevation, so just slap the Spring of Wisdom there. It even works for Minish Cap! If you wanna play really fast and loose with exact locations of things and the border of the kingdom and also completely ignore the castle, as I’ve been doing, Minish Cap’s map is just the righthand side of Hyrule rotated like forty-five degrees. Hot mountain up, water to the right, green in the middle and the bottom right. Works out nicely with Skyward Sword to have Lake Hylia there in the forest on the right instead of at the center bottom, and Veil Falls and the Cloud Tops could fall right in that unmapped space between Eldin and Faron, so that’s totally a valid spot to put the Spring of Widsom. (there’s actually a lot of unmapped space in Zelda games once you start looking for it and having fics take place in those areas where the boys can then stumble upon relics of older eras would actually be so badass I’d actually love to see that happen in fics).

For Ocarina of Time, the Spring of Courage would be in the Kokiri Forest or Lost Woods, up to you, Power goes up on Death Mountain, and Wisdom’s in Zora’s River/Domain. For Wind Waker, you can put Courage in the Forest Haven, Power in either Dragon Roost or Fire Mountain, and Wisdom can go on any island between the two or just end up underwater for a hot minute (it’s not like that’s gonna ruin it—it’s supposed to be wet). For aLttP/ALBW, Courage goes down by Lake Hylia, Power’s up on Death Mountain again, and if you don’t want to use Zora’s Domain, we can retcon that the Spring of Wisdom wasn’t in Zora’s Domain in Time’s era, it was in that little unmapped sliver between Zora’s Domain and the foresty area, so now we can slap the spring of Wisdom somewhere around or just past the right side of the Eastern Palace/Eastern Ruins. Isn’t this fun? For Twilight Princess, we already have sacred springs, but these are different ones—by now it’s probably been a few geological epochs since Skyward Sword, so they’re allowed to make some new springs. The old ones still have to be kicking around, though, and Twilight Princess’ map has a delightful amount of uncharted territory so we can toss them in Faron, Eldin, and that mysterious space directly between the two of them.

[Okay, digression over!]

I mean, this is fun, and if the vague suggestion of similar biomes is all we needed to line up all these maps into one cohesive Hyrule, that would be great. But it’s not. There are a few locations that absolutely must line up across games, and they ruin everything. Like, okay, I’m going to start sounding completely feral with rage, but I’m not actually mad at Nintendo. They’re making good games and I’m trying to do something very silly to their games and I knew it wouldn’t work out before I even started. I’m just so incredibly theatrically frustrated by how close it is to actually working until some random detail gets thrown in and it’s always exactly the one thing that would break everything.

Let’s start with some neat ones that do kind of work, though. Positivity! We know that, in Wind Waker, Hyrule Castle and the Deku Tree are the same ones as in Ocarina of Time. If we overlay the maps so these two points line up, we see that Wind Waker is so much bigger than Ocarina of Time and I love that. The ocean should be huge, way bigger than the kingdom, and that means we can end up playing with some navigational stuff, it’s just that Wind won’t be the one freaking out, everyone else will be, because if they go to the right spot in his era, they’ll be dealing with weird latitudes they’re not used to (yeah, remember when this essay was about celestial navigation? Me neither). The only problem here is that to get them to line up, you have to rotate them. So yeah, magnetic north can just trek forty-five degrees to the right and everyone will ignore this fact and continue to make maps in magnetic north for some reason. This is fine.

Honestly, the most consistent feature of Hyrule is the volcanic hotspot. There’s always one there, it’s almost always in a comparable spot, and unlike deserts, which can totally change over pretty short periods of time, hotspots are very reliable and locationally stable irl. I mean, even as the continental plates shift, the hotspot doesn’t. That’s why Hawai’i is shaped the way it is—the hotspot sprouts a volcano, the plates move, it sprouts another, rinse and repeat until you’ve drawn a little line of lava across the ocean. So if we line up all the volcanic areas over the Hylian Hot Spot and do only the minimal amount of rotation necessary to get everything else to roughly align, we can draw some cool connections.

For example, we established how Wind Waker and Ocarina of Time’s Hyrules align. But then in Wind Waker there’s a side quest where you plant a bunch of new Deku sprouts to help spread the forest. If we line up the volcanic hotspots between Breath of the Wild’s map and Wind Waker’s, we can scoot and pivot around and match up all the seedlings to see which one most likely started the line that Breath of the Wild’s Deku Tree comes from (because again, ten thousand years). It’s the Deku Sprout on Eastern Fairy Island! That… actually works out shockingly well. North is the same between Wind Waker and Breath of the Wild and even Hyrule castle is in the right spot! I also love how Breath of the Wild’s world is only a little bigger than Ocarina of Time’s and Wind Waker dwarfs the both of them—that’s absolutely correct; you cover so much more ground sailing than on foot. Why the magnetic pole shifted more in the few centuries between Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker (so much of Old Hyrule is still alive so I refuse to believe it’s been more than a thousand years between the two of them) than it did in the canonical OVER TEN THOUSAND YEARS between Wind Waker and Breath of the Wild baffles me, but hey, maybe the magnetic pole yeeting across the earth’s surface is a side-effect of Ganon taking power, however briefly. But wait, then shouldn’t it have shifted again in Breath of the Wild, since he won for a minute there? Augh whatever.

Okay, you may be wondering why I’m making such a fuss about where north is on these maps. After all, directions are relative and constructs and it was convention to put south at the tops of maps for a lot of people at different times and places. Yes, that’s all correct and I really wouldn’t have the slightest problem with any which orientation if they didn’t say north ON THE MAP!! And locations have names like “east” and “west” and they’ll say “go south of—” and these are not abstractions! North means closer to one of the axes around which the earth turns, around which the stars and sun and planets revolve. Moving up and down along a given line between these two poles means you’re on a given line of longitude so the sun always reaches its highest point at the same time, east and west mean along lines of constant latitude, where the sun’s highest point on any given day is the same—these directions are not arbitrarily defined!! You can’t just decide to put north somewhere else! You can have true north (the direction to the geographic north pole, the place where all lines of longitude converge and the sun goes around the horizon in a circle on the equinoxes, making a 24 hour sunset, and the pole star stands still overhead) and magnetic north (the place where magnetic compasses point, which is different than true north and moves kind of a surprising amount, but is only really relevant because compasses point there and also the auroras are centered on them too, which is cool), and that’s it! Those are the norths!! Don’t make up new norths!!!

And I said magnetic north moves, and it does, like 25 miles a year, and if we’re dealing with the timescale of thousands of years, that’s gonna add up.

SO WHY ARE YOU MAKING YOUR MAPS USING MAGNETIC NORTH?! NOBODY USES MAGNETIC NORTH TO DRAW MAPS—magnetic north, as previously established, moves a lot and you don’t want to have to redraw all your maps every year! Why would you do that instead of using the permanent geographical constant that’s easier to calculate because you can use the definite motion of the stars that can be measured to a fraction of a minute (up to a half mile of accuracy anywhere in the globe!) and not a wibbly, imprecise compass needle that’s only ever accurate to about half a degree—which translates to thirty nautical miles when you start trying to figure out where you are with it (nautical miles are bigger than normal miles).

But anyway. Hylian royal cartographers clearly have no idea what they’re doing.

And this is when things start making even less sense.

Because why, why on earth do the two eras who are the most insistent on being canonical neighbors have the least compatible maps?! Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess want me dead in a ditch. The Temple of Time in Twilight Princess goes to great lengths to Be The One From Ocarina of Time. Great! Why the frick is it at the bottom of the map?! The Temple of Time couldn’t be any farther up on Ocarina of Time’s map. We could try just rotating the map because maybe it was that time of the geological epoch and the magnetic poles reversed, but now the desert’s on the right side and it’s always on the left side! If anything, the right side is either mountains or ocean! Definitely not a desert. Not allowed. But what if we used the other version of Twilight Princess’ map—the mirror image flippy one from the Wii version!!! Because this makes sense!!!—and pretend the magnetic pole just happened to invert between these two games and that Hyrule’s cartography division is smoking crack and convinced that orienting all your maps towards magnetic north with no indication that true north even exists is the best way of doing things. Fine. Now Kokiri forest ends up in either Zora’s Domain or Snowpeak and the Hidden Village, which is supposedly the Kakariko from Ocarina of Time, turns out to have once been Zora’s Domain.

And that’s not even the worst offender! I’m already ignoring the frick out of the Four Swords games, but the first two Zelda games?

Like, look, I know I said I was giving a pass for hardware limitations and the irl game chronology but come on—it’s the same guy, it’s the same kingdom, and you didn’t even try to make them match up! Like maybe Zelda 1 can be given a pass because it has that same basic scaffold of mountain up, desert left, forest right, but then Zelda 2’s map is just the biggest pile of mayhem and I wouldn’t be bothered if it wasn’t explicitly the same kingdom just a little while later! Like what?! And there’s no way to reconcile any of this even remotely with that volcanic hotspot location, which has been our one and only constant in this labyrinthine hellscape!

Look, guys, I tried. I tried to come up with a way to make any of this remotely make sense.

This was about how far I’d gotten before realizing I might not be using the right approach, here.

Because the whole point of this silly project is to make celestial navigation jokes! Maybe the Kingdom of Hyrule is on the back of a big massive turtle that crawls all around the world and bumps into other turtles sometimes! It doesn’t actually matter! What matters is how the sky behaves.

So why don’t we just do celestial navigation and see if we can’t figure out what latitudes these absolutely zooted turtles are at.

 But this post is long enough and also I haven’t finished collecting all my data from the various 3D zelda games so i’ll see you all in part two! (don’t hold your breath)

edit: part two is out, baby!!

[alln64games]

F-Zero X

JP release: 14th July 1998

NA release: 27th October 1998

PAL release: 6th November 1998

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

N64 Magazine Score: 91%

I loved F-Zero GX on GameCube, but I’ve never played the N64 version before. It turns out I love this version, too, even though it feels a lot more brutal than I remember GX being. This is Nintendo’s take on the sci-fi racer genre, and it does a great job at it.

F-Zero X features a whopping 30 racers at once (each with a unique ship) and – even with some obvious rubber banding – they all move like actual opponents, making mistakes and reacting to your presence. The game goes a great job at remaining smooth by adjusting the level of detail as the framerate is perfect throughout. The tracks twist and turn and it’s all incredibly fast.

One key part of the game is the energy bar. On top of representing your health, it’s also your boost. There are places to recharge on the track (usually near the end of a lap) so a key part of the game is deciding how much you’re willing to risk in order to go faster. Blow up and you lose a life and have to start the race again.

The tracks in F-Zero X start out quite gentle, but things take a sudden turn in the last track of the second cup (there are four cups in total, with 6 tracks each) and you’ll start getting thin portions of the track with no edges – fall off and you’re not placed back like other games, you lose a life and start again. Just surviving the tracks becomes the main challenge until you start learning them.

Not every choice is made against the player, though. You have barge attacks and a spin attack at your disposal. Take someone else and they won’t score any points for that round. To make good use of this, the game even highlights you rival (the opponent with the highest score) so you can try to target specific opponents and pick them out of the crowd.

On top of the leagues (which have four difficulties) and multiplayer, there’s a few extra modes. There’s an unlockable X cup that serves you up procedurally generated tracks and a “death race” mode where you race around a short track trying to take out every other racer (I personally would prefer if you could do this on other tracks as well).

F-Zero X is a great game that is quite full of stuff to do. It’s still a ton of fun today.

F-Zero X is fast. While other developers may have chosen to polish its exterior, Nintendo have created one of – it not, the most – well-judged and wonderfully balanced racing games we’ve ever had the pleasure of playing.

- James Price, N64 Magazine #22

Remake or remaster?

A remake of F-Zero GX with all the tracks and features of F-Zero X added in would be amazing – although it shouldn’t be based on this version of F-Zero X, but we’ll get into that when I play the Japanese-only expanded version of the game.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no way to buy a new copy of F-Zero X, the only official way to play is to rent it via the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pak.

Re-releases

2004: iQue

2007: Wii Virtual Console

2016: Wii U Virtual Console

2022: Nintendo Switch Online (Subscription Only)