#gonna do all of the sonic CD levels eventually!!

[iasminomarata]

quartz quadrant 💎✨

[unlimitedtrees]

thinkin about 'Evil Mode' from 'Among the Others' , my last rom hack

so, after beating sylvie lime yesterday ,it got me thinkin about silly precision platformers and kaizo stuff ... U see , despite me being a Sonic CD-loving freak , i do like to play trial and error crazy platformers , such as N++ and celeste some other games im too lazy to think about right now . i just. like a fun and silly challenge sometimes. However , as i established in me last post , i am a Picky Bitch when it comes to platformers and i tend to prefer the controls and movement of the classic sonic games compared to every other platformer out there . i just Love the unique movement and interactions u have with environment in stuff like Sonic CD ... its something that no other game feels like and is something ive always wanted to see be experimented with in something like a kaizo sort of game .. but it hasnt really been done much before aside from a kaizo sonic rom hack that i thought handled the level design Very Poorly ..

there is also a rom hack named Sonic VR which i Really Really like ... but im probably gonna save that for its own post , teehee !!

Anyways. along with Sonic VR being a Huge Inspiration for me , and also seeing all those crazy kaizo mario hacks over the years , its something i wanted to try making myself for a Long, Long time . and well ... i finally got the chance in 2018, with my rom hack named 'Among the Others'.

so. Among the Others was a rom hack of Sonic 1 that i made. there is a Lot of history behind it that i wont get into for this post , but basically it was supposed to be my final, ambitious rom hack that eventually got cancelled and then i put a wall of text at the very end complaining about the rom hacking community. i then released it to the sonic hacking contest and then left the community .. but a few months before the contest begun, i still had a bunch of free time and the main game was already complete, so i decided to just add a bunch of random extra stuff just because .. and in the end there ended up being a Lot More content for a game that Was Technically unfinished...

one of the thing i added into the game was the secret 'Evil Mode' , something which not many people have played and is what im gonna get into in this post ... click da Read More thingy if u Dare !!!

So , in the level select (which u can just access by using the normal Sonic 1 level select code) , there are 3 evil mode levels in the game. these are basically extra levels based off the normal levels in the game, except these are completely redesigned to be Very Difficult and Evil. i wanted to make a sort of kaizo like thing ,where u have to get past all sorts of Deranged challenges that take advantage of the unique controls and movement of this game (which, btw, in case u dont know, this game has special abilities unique to it that make the movement Very Crazy , Lol !!).

There Is One Big Problem However... and it has to deal with the limitations of Making A Sonic ROM Hack When You Are Just A Dumb Little Creature Who Does Not Understand Assembly Programming.

You See, designing kaizo levels for a sonic rom hack is way more difficult than you may think. there comes a lot of Limitations to making sonic rom hacks that, combined with my limited skill, made making these levels very Annoying and Difficult to Create.

First Off, the game can only handle so many objects on screen. Which, well, i Suppose is fine. after all, im sure that's the case with mario world rom hacks. But In The Case Of A Sonic ROM Hack ... Well . Not only are you limited by having few sprites on screen, but you Also are limited by how many Types of objects can be in a level. You See.. all of the artwork for the objects are loaded in by 'pattern load cues'. each zone in the game has their own table which lists all the artwork thats loaded in ,including the level art and all the art for all the objects . not only was i limited by how Much art could be loaded in a single zone .. but Also i was limited by My Ability To Program. i could Not understand how the pattern load cues worked At All. getting objects from One Zone to work in Another Zone was Nearly Impossible for me ... idont know how to describe this fully. Basically , Most of the time , i could Not bring over another object from another zone Unless it used the same amount of tiles as an object from the current zone .. if that makes sense. idont know. All I Know Is ... I Was Greatly Limited by What objects i could use , and that's on Top of worrying about having too many objects on screen .

But That's Not The End Of It. you also have to worry about objects just. Disappearing in the game. sometimes , an object will just Not Load In and i have No Idea Why. i dont understand how any of it works .. all i know is that i was Unable to fully rely on building the level out of objects ,as id constantly have to worry if an important object would Unload , making progressing in the levels difficult.

because of all this , i was Severely Limited by how i could design the levels and what hazards i could even make . i couldnt even have too many spikes anywhere like a kaizo mario level ... it was very Limiting . and thats not even getting into the Level Chunks . you see, the levels themselves are also built out of Chunks of 128x128 pixels ,which have all the level art and collision. but i was also limited by How Many Chunks a zone could have , and these zones already were using the chunks from the normal levels which already used most of the chunks .... so i couldnt design much unique areas for these levels ...

despite it all , i tried my best to make levels that would be an interesting challenge ... and u know what. i am Kind Of proud of what i managed to accomplish , especially considering all the limitations i had to deal with. there's Definitely a ton of stuff i wish i couldve done with these levels, and theres stuff i probably couldve done better ,but Damn. playing through these dickish levels is kind of fun sometimes. Lol. i tried my best to make these levels use the physics and unique abilities to their fullest potential ... i just wish i coulda done More with em.

something i am pretty proud of that i think No One has done is playing the evil levels in Encore Mode. you see, in the game there is a secret encore mode that can be accessed by entering '81, 82, 80, 80' in the sound test ... and aside from letting you play as Pepsiman it also gives every level entirely different object layouts, along with new palettes and music. The Evil Mode levels in particular were fun to make Even More Evil , with The Core Zone specifically being made to be Actually Deranged , with its palette being Pitch Black and the evil mode level being Longer than the original one . and ,while i was also a bit limited with making these encore versions as i could only edit the object layouts , they were still fun to make and i am pretty proud of Encore Mode as a whole .

anyways. if you want something insane to go through, try the Evil Mode in Among the Others if you wish. you can download the game and its source code on github, if you wish.

anywayz thats all. there is so much about Among the Others ive ought to talk about .,,,, so much about this game that people dont even know about . maybe someday i can share more about it with you all ....

[shushvera]

*toy story shark vc* howdy howdy howdy ! i would like to make it known i’ve been unabashedly eyeing this since it opened ! anyway ! i’ve lost my ooc intro groove so we gonna move down to my ic intro down below:

oh hi there, welcome to holiday, VERA FLOROS. you’ve been here for TWO MONTHS? awesome! you look just like MARINA DIAMANDIS, it’s crazy. oh, so you’re a 30 year old ‘FORTUNE TELLER’/’MUSICIAN’. and you’re FEMALE and use SHE/HER? okay, just checking! oh, people say you’re INTUITIVE & DILIGENT but DECEITFUL & RASH? well, i’m sure that you can prove yourself here. you’re looking forward to the HALLOWEEN celebration? that’s a good one, you’ll love it. i have to get going now, bye! [fleur, 19, est, she/her]

i would like to start by saying i’ve played vera once (1 time) before and it was,, so much fun,, the dumbest smart person to exist. i’ve tweaked her bg a little (because..... that’s what happens when you read lucille ball’s autobiography that was SUMN.....), but ! who cares !

update: this got rly long so there’s a tl;dr at the bottom if that better floats your boat !

INTRO-WORTHY STATS

aka, stats that aren’t that deep™

FULL NAME: Vera Floros DOB: August 17th, 1989 AGE: thirty FROM: Abergavenny, Wales OCCUPATION: “fortune teller” & a musician who doesn’t understand marketing ORIENTATION: bisexual CLASS: middle class ( that inheritance kicked in ! )

BACKGROUND: 

CHILDHOOD

triggers: parental death, brief mentions of child abuse

alright, vera was born to a very young couple in wales. they’d gotten married fresh out of high school and had a child (her) just two years later. that being said, for about two years after, her mother began distancing herself from the father... not because he was a bad guy, but he moved cities entirely and she was NOT about that.

to be perfectly redundant, for about two years, it was just vera and her mother. 

grandparents weren’t about their daughter being married. at 18. did they help pay rent for a separate living space? until vera’s mom was 21, yes. but was she welcomed in their house? lmao!!!!!

THEN her father blew back into town. they reconnected, they both began working more so that vera’s mother didn’t have to rely on her own (we’ll get to her dad’s parent’s in a second). 

vera, at the Tender Age of Three™ learned that she was a complete Daddy’s Girl™. although she loved her mom for obvious reasons, she connected with her dad on an entirely different level. he was fun! he was playful! he was young, but he was the perfect dad! he even told dad jokes! which she didn’t get until she was five because three year olds usually aren’t that smart! they did little ‘acrobatic’ things! it was cute and fun and good!

but? this is a roleplay character?

our man died from unexpected heart failure. the autopsy showed an abnormality that hadn’t previously been discovered, and we know our man rarely went to the doctor. vera was six at the time.

her mom: married at 18, mother at 20, widow at 26. 

because she and her mom had never developed that Close Bond™, it was difficult for her mother to figure out how to... like... keep her from wandering around... because just telling her not to wasn’t working... so she was like “you know what.... a leash.”

we love ‘puppy’ by george saunders

so whenever her mom was at work and vera wasn’t in school, she was tied to a tree in the backyard.

cruel and unusual punishment!

eventually, her mom kind of just... threw in the towel... she left completely for a change of pace. she said she would be back and that vera would be under the care of her father’s parents in athens until then.

her father’s parents had always been more accepting of the young marriage. they’d been more supportive of them being young parents, in spite of her father having left for a while. they’d definitely been supportive of vera and her mother during that time because they were like “omg mood”

there were a few other kids under their care, all related or not. they did some work for her father’s parents, but nothing very laborious – just sort of... Bonding™ ja feel?

so her mom DID keep her promise and returned three years later when vera was nine. mind you, vera had never held any feelings of resentment towards her mother. when she was six, she... just didn’t get it. at nine, she was old enough to be like “i get u.”

BUT her mother DID get remarried. she didn’t resent her for that, but... she was not fond of the new husband. he wouldn’t accept the ‘dad’ title, was very stern, very serious, made her mom seem like an absolute joy, etc. 

but her mom was in love, so what could she do? and then they had a son together, so what could she do? nothing.

that summer, to learn more Discipline™, vera was sent to live with her step-father’s parents in london. boy howdy, it was nothing like her father’s parents! they had a knack for pointing out flaws, induced actual laborious work, constantly quoted the bible at the worst of times, and thought that a single head nod was the equivalent of “good job!” there were a couple of other kids there too, but yikes.

TEENS ( *hang ten emoji* ) + COLLEGE

triggers: brief domestic abuse implications

early was filled with Drama™ surrounding her step-father’s parents and her step-father himself. the overall consensus was that he was not a dope dude, nor were his parents. vera’s mother filed for divorce and gained sole custody of their son (keeping in mind.... she basically already had sole custody of vera.... considering she was her only legal guardian left lmao)

after the divorce was filed, vera’s mother was like “u kno what. my parents hate me. my first husband is dead. my second husband was a douche. i have no reason to be here anymore.” so they went to the land of golden opportunity

but wound up in america instead

(joke patented by dr. doofenshmirtz)

vera, around sixteen at the time (y’all i’m figuring out ages as i go along bear with me), now attended some strange high-school where they were like “fahrenheit.” 

by the way! it was in holiday! that’s important to note for possible future connections!

it wasn’t an unwelcome change, though. starting over... was nice...

but the problem was that she was like her father in that she always acted before she thought... which made her a very dumb smart person. 

alright get ready for the single idea that drove this entire thing:

she majored in philosophy then was *pikachu shocked face* when she realized there were no jobs out there for philosophy majors.

ADULTHOOD

alright... so what do you do when you have no good opportunities for things in your major?

you would think you would do something like... idk... find a well-paying job that doesn’t require a major?

or maybe a job that just requires experience in ___?

or maybe a job that just requires a bachelor’s degree of any sort?

or maybe a job that doesn’t require a major, but would like a major similar to yours, thus giving you a leg up?

etc.?

lmao no. you go to new orleans and become one of many phony fortune tellers using the one good thing you got from your weird upbringing: easy analysis of body language.

in addition, you try to make something of your life through music, but have no clue what ‘marketing’ is because you really don’t understand social media and probably still have the egg as your twitter profile picture.

what do you mean print is out of style?

what do you mean no one listens to CDs anymore?

what do you mean garageband isn’t acceptable to record on?

that being said, it’s not like... she wasn’t good at it... i mean she was v good at it... but musician is in quotes because she has made NOTHING of her LIFE with it. DOES NOT UNDERSTAND MARKETING.

*sonic kid vc* WHEN WILL YOU LEARN? WHEN WILL YOU LEARN? *end vc*

she got some decent pay from being a ‘fortune teller,’ though. tourists totally flocked and using a fake russian accent helped, as did... just speaking a language they didn’t know while pretending to contact spirits...

at least she’s a good scam artist

can’t market very well, but could probs create the next big ponzi scheme

returned to holiday when she heard news from her brother that her mother had fallen ill.

honestly rest in peace.

is still around because... that’s her home! sentiment! also rip!

also marketing isn’t as hard in holiday so???

also testing fortune telling out in holiday is more interesting so???

DOPE.

PERSONALITY

either really dumb for a smart person or really smart for a dumb person.

still has a childlike trait tbh. i mean when ur growing up just laying beneath child labor laws, ur gonna have to become a kid again eventually.

really bad at technology for reasons unknown to... everyone, but really good at scams.

has not thought before she acted even ONCE.

hasn’t used her degree since she was 22. the closest she’s come is buying some misc. philosophy books and sharing tidbits with strangers. 

“now this is a taoist anthem�� - vera @ ‘soak up the sun’ by sheryl crow

so many ragrets.

will find a way to bring up she’s half greek in every conversation. 

“and i’ve had mental illness since i was in middle school. good night.” - that video someone edited of professor tox

im so bad at personality sections but she’s got a fun one y’all one of the few characters i’ve played who’s had a Sad Backstory™ but wound up being a Fun And Comedic Character™

TL;DR

that was my first time ever writing this whole thing out, so it got real long. so we gonna give a tl;dr:

triggers: v brief mentions of parental death, brief mentions of child abuse, v brief implication of domestic abuse

born to a v young couple in wales. dad was like “brb” then he did, indeed, come rb. loved dad. but dad died when she was six lmao get wreckt this is a roleplay character.

mom was like “idk what 2 do” so she took notes from george saunders’s ‘puppy’ and just tied vera to a tree when she was gone adjsflka. went away for a while and vera stayed with her dad’s parent’s in greece. came back three years later and reunitedanditfeelssogood.mp3.

got married tho and vera was like “i don’t like this guy” and mom was like “i’m having his child.” lived with his parents over the next few summers. they almost violate child labor laws. like. just a hair more. hare? became source of any self-hatred lmao get wreckt

vera’s mom and step-dad divorced bc he was horrible and they moved to holiday when she was sixteen. she left for college when she was eighteen. she decided to major in philosophy which was a bad idea and the source of her entire character. 

decided to become a phony fortune teller in new orleans instead of... idk... just getting a job that didn’t require a degree or sumn? pretty successful tho! talked in a fake russian accent around tourists bc? why not? 

also did/does music but has no idea how marketing works. bad at social media. records things on garageband. an overall fool. good but a fool.

back in holiday bc mom died lmao get wreckt we’re an orphan now boizzzz

Sad But Rad™

WANTED CONNECTIONS

it’s 2:38AM as i write this part and i still have to go back and include a stats thing bc i love those then post ic but i’ll update this w/ some when im done i suppose?? but we do love brainstorming in this house!!

like this or hmu if you’d like to plot !

[therighteousdingo]

Game Review: Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories (PS1)

So, as of the last few weeks, I’ve been going back and buying all the old PlayStation games that I grew up with and rebuilding the collection I used to have as a child, while I build a new collection of vintage games in the process. One of the bigger games that stands out on this list, is Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories. My best friend Kaire and I were huge fans of Yu-Gi-Oh growing up and this game was kind of the proving grounds for us. We burned hours grinding through duels to get the strongest cards, plowing through the campaign in certain ways so we can unlock certain sequences and even messing around with different monsters just so we can see them in action during the animated fighting scenario that you can activate when attacking during a duel. No matter what, in the end, it was all about the cards. Starting off with little to nothing and moving up to get our hands on the likes of Blue Eyes White Dragon, Meteor Black Dragon and even the Gate Guardian. But lets get this thing on the road.

The basic facts:

There’s really not too many to place here besides the super basic stuff like the release dates and some small trivial facts.

Released in 2002 in North America but released in 1999 in Japan, a relatively large gap.

The game was released in a dual-CD packaging yet only came with the one game disc. A reason for this is unknown, but I always used it to store a page with fusions written on it to remember them when I first purchased the game and was getting used to the fuse mechanics that I’ll go over later on in this review.

This one isn’t 100% fact, but I have realized over the years that the game is only vaguely based on the anime and manga of the show.

The gameplay:

Now here’s where things get interesting, so I’m gonna be covering the controls, mechanics and the other miscellaneous stuff that’s attributed to the game. To start off with a big one, the Fusion Mechanic. Now as I stated earlier, the game is only loosely based on the anime and whatnot so the basic stuff about Yu-Gi-Oh that we all may remember, is just tossed in the air, for instance, sacrifices; there aren’t any. If you have a 3000/2500 Blue Eyes White Dragon in your hand, you can just throw that monstrous sucker straight from your hand to the field much to your opponent’s avail. Now, to balance this system, they added this mechanic where you can fuse the creatures in your hand, rather half-assed, and create an even stronger monster. For example, a weak dragon, mixed with a thunder creature creates Thunder Dragon but if you add another thunder creature or another dragon, you wind up with Twin-Headed Thunder Dragon which is 2800ATK (I don’t really remember the defense, 2300 maybe?) and is pretty much your key advantage right off the bat once you start the game. Now the thing with fusing is, although some stuff is incredibly easy to fuse and come up with, some stuff just completely throws you for a loop for no reason, wasting the cards you were attempting in the fusion (oh yeah that’s a thing, if you’re unsuccessful with a fusion, the cards are just tossed away), which can be frustrating but isn’t that bad of a complaint since there’s a Free Duel option that allows you to freely duel, win or lose, against whoever you’ve played in the campaign allowing for trial and error which is definitely whats needed in order to master the fusion system. With this being in place, they start you off staggeringly weak but chock full of cards that give simple, quick fusions, so at least the game comfortably sets you into the system to quickly allow for you to learn it. 

The campaign is utterly straightforward. There’s the option to choose alternate dialogues sometimes, but these are rendered essentially useless considering the story unfolds in the same manner regardless of what option you chose. There’s even a moment very early on in the game where you’re set against Heishin, the primary antagonist of the game, but the game literally cannot progress unless he beats you. Granted, his deck is freakishly strong, to the point where his base cards are the fusion of fusions, if that makes sense, but if you luck out and manage to beat him (Kaire did this once but it was kind of on a fluke, nonetheless we freaked out considering we were about 10) the game doesn’t progress and Heishin gives a stock dialogue along the lines of “Agh! This can’t be! Again!” and you’re shoved right back into a duel with him and the game won’t move unless he beats you. I’d quickly like to point out that yes, every instance that’s life and death or will decide the fate of the world, is decided over a duel, but I digress. Eventually you get to play as the “modern” Yugi, playing against the antagonists from the show in a random tournament. Facing Rex Raptor, Bandit Keith, Mai Valentine, and even Pegasus, you wind up back in the past as the Pharaoh’s son facing Heishin and his cronies. You have to wander around and face mages in separate temples, each one correlating with a different type and deck (Meadow, Forest, Desert, Mountain, etc.) forcing you to be versatile in your deck building skills. Each mage has different, powerful cards that they can give up when dueled in the free duel option. All of this boils down to a duel against Heishin and then eventually his higherup, Nitemare, the game’s final boss. Its dueling, dueling, dueling. Not much more.

The Looks / Music:

The normal sequences of the game, in which you pick dialogue and such, are incredibly basic, to get the job done, The bottom half of the screen gives dialogue while the top half gives you a torso shot of the character speaking. This does have the potential to kill intense moments that they attempt to get across such as Simon Muran, your caretaker in the game, telling you that the High Mage Heishin has just killed your parents and that hes taking over the entire region and oh yeah, we’re about to have to hide in this millennium puzzle for about a thousand years, yay. It just doesn’t give tension whatsoever. The music continues as ever with the scene, which is normally just regular, tribal style music that bops, and they don’t have any staunch facial movements, leaving you reading it with a slight, boorish take back. So, the story is incredibly difficult to get into on a personal or emotional level like so many other games have done just before, but that doesn’t necessarily kill the vibe of the game; its a boat load of dueling, man. There’s an option for battle sequences while you’re in the middle of the duel, which is useless in the long run, but is a cool addition to both present the power of the PlayStation and see the different monsters in the game use their different attacks. It feels good to see your Red Eyes Black Dragon blast your friend’s Baby Dragon into oblivion, now that I think about it. That’s really the only instance in which the looks are truly presented and beyond that, its basic dueling (is that getting too old to keep saying?).

Now the music, oh man, the music. Its pretty fantastic. There’s a few instances where the only mood enhancer for the entire scene is the music, its almost overpoweringly “soundtrack”. To listen to them by themselves isn’t as enjoyable as the Sonic soundtrack, for example, but its fitting for the game. The dueling music is moving and bouncy and goes with the fluidity of the dueling nicely. There’s even a cool sound that goes with the fusions of cards while they fuse and swirl. A good portion of the soundtrack for the game is entirely electronic sounding, and some even bearing a resemblance to European house music, which blows my mind; its freakin’ Yu-Gi-Oh.

The Cons:

What in the hell is up with the Guardian Stars system? Anyone whose played the game will most likely side with me when I say that this system is a wonderful idea and addition to the game but is confusingly laid out and sometimes mind numbing to decipher. The system is pretty much a temporary powerup system that plays out while dueling, giving the monster in the appropriate standing a +500 boost to AT and DF. So, for instance, fire is weak against water, right? Well is Mars weak against Neptune? Because that’s how the types and guardian stars are presented. Monsters have a choice of 2 guardian stars, which are all named after Roman gods, and some are easy to decipher; Flame Swordsman is Mars and I can’t remember the other, but that means that Mars is obviously resembling fire. This takes a whiiiiiiiiiiiile to get the hang of. Nothing is more frustrating than randomly losing an entire duel when a one-on-one goes against you because the computer knew the Guardian Star advantage and you didn’t. They could’ve simply put the type names in the system and named is something else to ease the confusion of system buts that’s retrospective. 

The other big one that I can point out is the grinding. When defeating somebody, the game gives you a card depending on a load of variables from the person you defeated, to the way you defeated them, and sometimes, how many times you’ve defeated them consecutively. When you defeat them using a lot of stronger monsters, or simply over power them, you get a POW win, which is essentially a “power” win. There’s other ways to win like TEC which is “technical”, and is difficult to do, but sometimes necessary in order to get certain cards from duelists, you have to win in other instances like, winning by your opponent drawing their entire deck. This can wind up in you dueling a certain duelist for hours just to get one card. I’ve dueled “Jono 2nd” over 60 times (W51-L9) and still haven’t received his ONE power card: Red Eyes Black Dragon. However, I’ve dueled the Meadow Mage just under 40 times and have received 3 out of his 5 stronger cards. That’s 2 duelists and roughly 4 hours later and have only progressed around 20% of the game, so you better hunker down.

This game was a pretty damn good choice when I was deciding to get the games of my past and rebuild my collection. I’ve burned more than 10 hours and will easily burn through more. But to look at is as a game altogether in comparison to other games and not with my childhood bias, 

6.5 / 10