Tomorrow will bring the start to my GDC journey since all I can afford is an EXPO pass.  A lot of the talks I can attend don’t seem like much.  Though again that comes with the EXPO pass.  There is still a lot I am looking forward to though, the IGF/GDC choice awards is one big one.  The EXPO floor and everything like that is the other one.  I hope to do a lot of networking and just diving head into everything.  Maybe if I’m extremely lucky maybe a job?

Overall not much to say about 0 day.  Though a thing of note is I made some progress in CEL-ular dealing with the player stats.  I changed it around to use multiple cs files and to keep the updated version in one location and call them in and change them as need be.  Very excited about how that works and that opens the door to many more changes that can be made to push CEL-ular further.  Though that about covers it for the day now.

C.E.L. is a different take on the RPG genre that does a few things different than normal RPGs have been known to do for years and years.  Some of the main features include:

Rider Battle System – The battle system of C.E.L. where just brining an enemies health down to 0 isn’t enough, all enemies must be finished off with a finishing move, which adds extra strategy in combat.

Grid Movement System – This is the overworld more or less of C.E.L. instead of being a free roam RPG where players move from one town to the next, C.E.L. takes out some of the annoyances and uses a grid for all the maps, and players move along and explore, and by doing this players know exactly what they can and can’t explore and they should be able to plan their strategy out better.  It also will help to save time, so the game doesn’t have pointless segments where the player has to wonder around not knowing where or what to do.

Streamlined Menu System – By integrating the device the main character uses into the game into the menus as well, it adds an extra level of detail along with being able to integrate menus to easily be accessed.

Purpose/Application:

The purpose of the game is really all about creating a RPG that is different.  With all of the features C.E.L. has along with the witty light hearted story, C.E.L. is to be used by gamers as a break from the normal generic RPG or as a RPG that has brought in fresh new ideas.

Premise/High concept:

The player takes control of a group of heroes who are given superhuman abilities though finding a power glove that uses their phones to power the abilities.  Finding the gloves has brought them into a secret war that they are now stuck in and must fight to save the world.

Genre:

Role Playing Game

Platform:

The platform that will be primarily targeted will be the PC, because with the tools we are using it is the easiest to publish for the computer.  Though the Xbox 360 can be a secondary platform due to how XNA allows putting games on the Xbox 360 market place.

Audience/market:

An audience obviously targeted is people who play Role Playing Games.  The age range for that usually falls into teen or higher.  However with how the plot is set up and with a number of ideas in the game, fans of Tokusatsu, which to quote wikipeida: “Tokusatsu (特撮^?) is a Japanese term that describes any live-action film or television drama that usually features superheroes and makes considerable use of special effects (tokusatsu literally translates as “special effects”).” Is another market this game targets. To give an example the Viewtiful Joe games do a parody the Tokusatsu genre.

Rating:

The expected ESRB rating that is being planned for is T because of violence, language, and maybe mature/suggested themes.

Time Interval:

While in the overworld map portion, the game takes place in real time where the player controls the main character and leads him thought the maze.  Once the player enters combat the game switches to turn based gameplay.

Backstory:

The game takes place in the future where a device has been made that when a phone inserted into the device the phone is granted superpowers that the user can then use.  While not known to the majority of the population, a secret war has started between the people who have run across the devices.  As the battles went on between each other fighting or domination over how the devices should be used, one side had somehow found a way to get viruses to fight for them.  It is when this starts the main hero finds his device and is thrown into fray. He must go forth and battle his enemies and save his world from utter destruction. Our hero, Dio, travels with two companions, Shep and Tess, to stop those who would do harm. They must stop an evil organization, the organization called P4R4S0L, (Parasol).

Character Descriptions:

Dio – Is the main character of sorts, and the game starts off with him finding his glove device which lets him use his Cyborg phone to gain superpowers.  He then is quickly found by Shep and Tess who fill him in on the situation and he then joins them on their journey to bring down P4R4S0L.

Shep – One of the two people who found Dio right when he acquired his power.  Not much is known about Shep other than he use to work for P4R4S0L and have had his glove device that uses his GL phone since the beginning.  Shep often plays the role of the smart one in the group and is the calmest of the three.  Though it seems there is more to Shep that meets to eye, as some of it starts to show as the group gets closer to P4R4S0L.

Tess – One of the two people who found Dio right when he acquired his power.  Tess joined up with Shep not long after he quit P4RS0L.  Tess with her glove device that uses her horizon phone has proved to be very useful.  She is the support character of the group and keeps Shep and Dio healed in battle.

Comparative Analysis:

Shin Megami Tensei Devil Survivor – This game is like C.E.L. because it uses the same type of systems. The style of the games are also alike as they both are based off of Japanese ideas.  With this C.E.L. will be enough like Shin Megami Tensei Devil Survivor where it might draw in fans from this game.  Some of the negatives is that the market for the game is not very big to begin with, so getting around that becomes important, also the speed of the gameplay.  Devil Survivor plays somewhat slow, which is something C.E.L. is trying not to do.

Magna Carta 2 – This game is like C.E.L. because they fall into the same genre RPG.  There is not much in terms of gameplay that are between them, but being that the RPG genre is large and most people who play them play different RPG games.  With this, Magna Carta 2 has sort of the same style as C.E.L. does.  So people who like how Magna Carta 2 was done might move on to check out C.E.L., even though it is different in most areas.

Persona – This game is very much like C.E.L.  It uses a modulated dungeon crawler system, which is like the system in C.E.L. and then it switches to a battle system again very much like C.E.L. when fights happen.  This will help the audience be able to move from Persona to C.E.L. easily since the games will play somewhat alike.  Also since there are not many games like Persona it will make C.E.L. one of the only games to move on to, once people finish Persona.  Some of the negatives it could get is that Persona moves very slow at the start and it is not the easiest game to understand.  It will take some work to streamline C.E.L. so it does not have those problems.

Rules:

Number of Players: 1

Age Range:

Since C.E.L. is going for a T rating, the age rage will be from 13 up, hoping to hit all ages above 13.
Approximate Play Time:

Since C.E.L. is an RPG it will be a longer game, though it will be broken up into episodes and each one will take around 5-6 hours to beat.

Victory Condition:

The victory condition normally is just getting from point A to point B, the path to get to point B is full of enemies and various obstacles.  Each level might have a slightly different goal in mind and have some unique twist, as a whole though beating each stage is getting to the exit.

Loss condition:

The only real way to lose in the game is to have the player controlled party be defeated.

Gameplay:

The gameplay can be broken down into 3 different segments that are then repeated to make the game.  The first segment is a cut scene that sets up the level that is about to be played and reveals more of the story to the player.  After the cut scene is finished the level starts where the player pawn is put into the area the player must travel though to get to the goal to beat the stage.  The third segment is when the player pawn meets any type of enemy pawn, when this happens the game switches over to the battle system, where the player has to defeat the enemies to go back to the level and continue to make their way to the end of the stage.

Challenges:

There are a number of challenges that the player will have to get past to move the game forward.  First of all there is the level itself that the player will have to make their way though, as levels play out as a sort of maze, where it will take some time for players to reach the end.  The other main challenge the player will have to face is the enemies that are within the stage.  There will also be some paths where the enemies will be stronger, but in return will open up a shorter path or help out the player in some way.  Then in some levels right near the end of the level there will be bosses that the players will have to face, that will require some strategies from the player for them to be able to win.

Strategies:

One big strategy that the player just master to do well in C.E.L. is the finishing moves, the player must decide which finishing move to use.  The player needs to weigh the options of working to get the enemies HP to 0 and use a cheap finishing move, or to raise their finishing points (FP) to use stronger finishing moves so the player doesn’t have to bring the enemy HP down to 0.

Another strategy the player will have to use is what path to take in each level.  Each level plays out like a maze and there are multiple paths to get to the end of the level.  Each path has its own pros and cons the player must weigh.

Theory:

How game balance will be kept is though what enemies would have to be destroyed.  There will be a number of enemies that the player will have to defeat, which will make sure the player gains enough experience points to be somewhere around the same level as the enemies as the game moves on.  Though there are also not a ton of enemies so that the player could over level and be able to breeze though the game.  In battle the gameplay is mostly balanced where the players choices will decide if the player will win or not.  Though due to the AI and the luck stat, there is some luck that comes into play, but not enough to make the game unfair in anyway.

Perspective:

The setting of the game mostly takes place in a futuristic city and the levels of the game will show that, and show the different parts of the city as the game progresses.  In the level the perspective will be a 3^rd person aerial/isometric style where the camera follows the player pawn.  In the battle screen it follows the same type of 3^rd person aerial/isometric perspective, the main difference being that the camera oversees the battle and is not behind the main character.

User Interface:

The main interface the game will use is a menu system which is portrayed with a phone.  This will show up in combat when commands are given to the party, in the status screens where the player upgrades the party stats, and other areas such as that.  In the level portion there isn’t much of an interface, other than quick reference of the party’s stats such as HP.

Audio:

The biggest part of audio will be in the cut scenes of the game because they shall be voice acted.  For the other parts of the game there will be background music, done with a futuristic tone to go with the setting of the game.  Sound effects will also be in the battles, and a number of voice clips will be in the battles as well where the name of the attack is announced before it is use, and in other situations like that.

Art Assets:

These are some early art assets and concepts of what will be included in the final product. They will undoubtedly be improved upon during development of CEL:

Our main character, Dio and his phone:

Enemy Pawn:

Boss Pawn:

Enemy:

Summary:

In the end C.E.L. is a streamlined RPG to take away a lot of the grind and slow parts that the genera is known for.  It also has gameplay features to make the gameplay of RPGs seem fresh again.  The battle system adds new strategy in with enemies that are destroyed by finishing moves rather than just bringing their HP below 0.  Then how the levels work make sure the players are in the right direction by being contained, but also give freedom by having multiple paths to reach the end.  Some future updates that might be made would be just an overall expansion.  Since the game is short already for being an RPG it plays well to be an episodic series, where each game moves along the plot further, and can add in a number of features, characters, and so on.

Look an almost relevant image!

-Getting a schedule down, that is the most important one I think
-Starting a few themes to do about either longer series, or seasons, sequels, things like that
-Getting a theme, I really need to get to that
-Finding new things to post about and such, things that are not normally done 
Really to sum them up, just making this a better experience in both content and looks.  2009 looks to be an interesting year, and I’m looking forward to it at least, so Happy New Years everybody be you in the past, present, or future and hope 2009 will be full of extreme burning passion!

He did not make it in the game...I should be shot for this one

All right, Compile Error was really an experience for me, 8 weeks to make a game for school where you don’t really know the program your doing everything in is not an easy thing.  As I stated in the last dev post we we’re using flash, and it has its up and downs, it seemed like mostly downs.  There were things that could have been done so much easier if we knew a few extra thing we didn’t even know about till the end.

Anyway, if we move into what I did, which is what I know best; hey who saw that one coming!  I took it upon myself to do gameplay, that was my big thing I wanted to make sure it got done.  I am a huge fan of the 2D beat em’ up games, and I wanted Compile Error to have the classic gameplay the rest of those games had.  So, those big things came out to be the 3 hit combo, and the spin attack or the attack that takes away health to use, but is strong.  For the most part I am pleased with what I was able to do, I do have both things I just talked about, and they do work; there is just a lot of tweaking I wanted to do with them, so they were dead on; time did not allow for it though.  I think it was crazy enough that I was able to do these things in the last weeks of working on the game, so I can’t complain to much about it.

Another thing that in the game that was my doing for the game, was the movement.  This was a really interesting thing to figure out, it was not just as simple as player moves and it works.  With flash the camera is always in the same place, so you couldn’t scroll the level in the way you would think to.  What had to be done is that the level itself had to move, and then it had to stop and allow just the player to move when combat is started.  This was one of our early problems, but it was solved without too much of a problem.  The real secret to this was to have a bool (a simple on and off switch) where if it was on, the player was in combat, don’t move the stage; if it was off, move the stage, player is not in combat.  In the end this system worked really well and I think is one of the better coded parts of the game.

Now the last big thing I was mostly in charge of was the AI.  Now, I know nothing at all about AI so it was something that I even came up with any of it.  In the end I really wish I could have had a lot of time to work on it, so I could have made it better, but again time was a huge thing.  So for AI, I really only went as far, as follow the player and when they come in range attack the player.  That is about it, its simple, but it works though; this is really all I have to say about AI.

The title screen looks awesome, or at least I think so

Moving on now, to quickly talk about my other game that I worked on, I Wanna Be The Class: The Prequel.  This was for my flash class at school, and is mostly a mod of a platforming tutorial I found, but I re-worked a bit of it and at some point would still like to rework the engine more to make it better.  Either way this game was more or less to be I Wanna Be The Guy in flash.  So I wanted to make a super hard, but fair game.  Since I didn’t have really any time at all I did what I could and for the most part I think it turned out well.  Right now there are only 5 levels, but that last level is crazy hard.  I don’t want to go into this one too much, because not only did I go off a tutorial, I didn’t get to do very much with it, because there were some collision problems that took way long to fix so I didn’t get to put time into the things I really wanted to.  Though if all goes well, I might be able to rework everything how I want it.  So in the future there might be a I Wanna Be The Class: The Sequal.

All right, that is enough dev stuff; if you would like to play these games for yourself, you can find them in the games area of minusonecredit.com.  Now for the site stuff, and this is more or less things I would like to have be features so big stuff, I just want to see what people think of the ideas.  First off the Shin Megami Tensei feature is still planed to go on, I still plan to do my series of posts for the series, so still do be on the look out for that.  I have been playing a lot of the MMO I wrote about a few weeks back, and Persona 4 came along to help steal my time.  

Moving on, one thing I would really like to try is a huge feature on Final Fantasy 7, this is not what you think it is though.  I personally do not care for the game much, and I want to go though it and point out the things that are not talked about, like problems with the gameplay, story, how the resolution had to be lower to render Tifa’s tits, and stuff like that.  I would go though the game fully and talk about many things, this would span across some time I think, and I would think it would bring an interesting look to the game and maybe where the series has gone from there, but that is my opinion.  I want to hear what you guys or gals think about this idea.

Hey, guess what Nei from Phantasy Star II died before you and was more of a useful character

My other idea that I want to do is really taking something I already planned to do at one point further.  The base idea was to just do a huge post on the epic fail that is Odin: Photon Space Sailor Starlight.  Then I got thinking though after I made a friend watch it and how I would talk about the thing the whole time, why don’t I do a full commentary for it, I’m sure no one has done that before.  So, that is my other idea, to do a full commentary for Odin, and I mean the long version, no cheating out and doing the 90 minute cut, I am going all out.  I would either have it in parts on youtube, and there would be a voice track if you own the movie and such.  If this goes over well I was planing to have this be a panel at ACEN 09, but to early to call things.  So, again your opinions I want to hear them.

Then that is about what I had planned for the future, but if you guys want to see something, feel free to suggest so.  I do want to try to do new things that you don’t see often or at all, so if you guys have ideas, or want to do a team thing, or whatever just leave a comment or whatever.  I mean it would be great to do a round table discussion about whatever, and that would be a cool idea to try, and I would be willing to put the time and effort to get it done.  I mean maybe even some stuff over skype could be set up.

So this about covers everything I had on my mind for the site and such.  I do plan to finally get around and have a theme done, as I do plan to make the base site minusonecredit.com start to look nice and such.  Anyway, all of you have a good Holiday and I should have a post or two before the new years.

Many people, including myself have fond memories of this

 So, after watching Do You Remember Love, it brought back all the stuff I remembered from watching Robotech as a child. So I went out and got the original series and watched though that. I loved every minute of that, heck at a time I even bought the novels, I’m not really sure if those count, but hey its something. So after I watched though Macross not much after Macross F was announced.

Now after watching Macross I was extremely excited about Frontier, and went to go though all the series before the show came out. I never really did get though that, not really the point though; I suppose what is, is that I had high hopes for Macross F. So, lets skip to the first episode of Macross F, you know the one that came out early to celebrate the 25 anniversary. I watched that, and I was still excited about the show, the first time I saw the veritech fighter transform my jaw nearly dropped.

So when the series first started I was all for it. I watched the other version of episode 1, I still thought it was great. I continued to watch the show and thought it was still good, though I think at this point was when I realized something wasn’t right. I couldn’t put my finger on it, and ignored it for a while. So I just went though and kept watching, then episode 7 aired. Episode 7 made me forget about those feelings that something was not right, episode 7 made me say this is a Macross show. I watched that episode a number of times, and it is very rare for me to do that. Episode 7 was just that good to me, as I said it finally made me think Frontier was a real Macross show.

Though, things did not say good for me for long. After episode 7, the feeling came back and then I finally figured it out. Frontier wasn’t a Macross show to me, I mean it was at some parts, but they were just to far apart and there wasn’t many of those moments. I still did continue to watch the show after that, but I didn’t really find it that entertaining. I just had this hope that it would bring back episode 7 and just do what made that episode so great over and over. It never really came though, and in the last 3rd of the series, I just stopped watching.

Now I have heard that the series did end well and felt like a Macross show, but the whole show should have been that, not just parts of it. I will not deny part of the problem is that I had such high hopes for the series, but there was just so much that could have been done with the series. What I think was my main problem is the characters, I mean don’t get me wrong I’m a huge Sheryl fan, but it was all stereotypes in the end. Now that itself wasn’t the problem…well it kinda was, but for me it was more what the stereotypes were. I mean this is really more because this is what characters are done in this time, but still. I mean for awhile I could put up with it, but it just became to much, it was just so easy to throw the characters into stereotypes and the show even points it out. I mean there is Alto the pretty boy, Ranka the loli, Klan Klein the legal loli or huge breasted character depending, Sheryl the famous star person, Luca the shota character, and it just goes on. I mean this wouldn’t be such a problem if they maybe did something with it do keep it interesting, but that just never seemed to happen. What I’m getting at is even though almost every show can have stereotype characters, they can become unique and such and this show just didn’t really do that. The characters never broke out of the stereotype and just acted how you would think they would act, and for me I’ve seen it before so why watch it again.

Yes, I'm a Sheryl fan; can you really blame me...well you can...nevermind

I suppose that is really nitpicking and again that is more of the times than the series being at fault. I think its true flaw is what I hinted at above; that Macross F is only a Macross show at a few select parts, and the rest of the time it is just some average show, if that. For me it was about the same as going though filler after filler episode in hope for something to blow my mind, which episodes like 7 did; but again as I did they are to little and to far apart from one another. Again I think its more of the times thing and what I expect a Macross show to be is something that is long gone. It is just they like to tease you with a few awesome things here and there and then just give you filler the rest of the time.

There were some things in the story too and just I don’t think were done well. I really think having the Varija was a bad idea. I mean you just can’t compare them to the Zentradi, they were just a great enemy and it the Varija just don’t have the same effect. I mean sure song affects them, but it goes about it the wrong way. I mean it was a huge thing with the Zentradi and how though the power of song some would even change sides to fight for those feelings they learned about though song. In Macross F it is lets sing a song to distract them so we can blow them up. Again its the check list thing and that was have main enemy be affected by song. I will also say I did not care of the love triangle this time around, I think they just started it early and then it just kept snowballing becoming ever more annoying.  I also think it could have been handled a bit better, it never really gave me a feeling of seeing the choice go either way, I’m not even sure if it even gave me a feeling anything was going to happen.  When I was watching it did to lean more towards Sheryl mostly and Ranka was just felt out there most of the time.  Then we she did get time it was not as much and just didn’t accomplish as much.  Again this kinda does come back to the characters and how its nothing new which makes the love triangle stale.

Then it throws in all these throwbacks to the older Macross shows like this character looks like so and so, and you could try to use that to figure out what would happen. I do like that they didn’t have it so you could guess what would happen, but overall the fanservice to the older Macross felt forced. It was like they even realized the show was not a real Macross show and they had to put something in to try to make people think otherwise. The throwbacks to the older veratech fighters was nice though I give it that. All right maybe the fanservice to the older shows are not bad, it does feel like they had to throw it in, but it worked at least, so I can’t really complain about it to much, oh but I will anyway a bit.

The new Veritech Fighters do look really nice

So let’s look back at the tile Do We Remember Love, I don’t think Macross F does. I mean it had some of a idea, but they just ran though the things that make a Macross show a Macross show as if they were on a to do list. It is not cool, I think I died a little bit inside from Macross F, as stated above I had such high hopes for it and all that really accomplished is giving the show something to shoot down, and it sniped them well. Don’t get me wrong, Macross F isn’t a bad show, if I would to look at it as just some show it would be considered all right. The problem is, is that it is supposed to be a Macross show and I think that is the problem, it tried to be a Macross show, and did somethings, but that was it. So, do we remember love? Did you find Macross F to carry on what you loved about Macross? For me it didn’t I’ve said it a number of times, it was missing the feel other Macross shows have I suppose would be a good way to describe it.  Though I did fail to talk about the music, the music was the one thing that was done about perfect with Frontier, as much as I don’t care for the rest of it, I really do have to say the music was awesome, it was to Macross standards, though if they messed that up, hell would have broken loose.

So to sum this up, this was my look of what Macross was to me before Frontier came out and then how I saw Frontier.  I know I’m in the minority with how I didn’t care for Frontier, but I bring the other side of it.  Also, as I said before I don’t think its a bad show, I just think it forgot love (I’m overusing the reference I know).  If it wasn’t a Macross show, my opinion might of been different about it.  My opinion might have been different if I hadn’t had such a love and nostalgia for the Macross series, and if I didn’t have my hopes set so high.  Still though in the end, it is what it is; and that is my opinion about how we don’t remember love (yep I fit it in one more time at the end).  Though, to be fair there are not many awesome Macross series other than the original, that is for another time though.  Also as a quick note, as I said I didn’t finish the series, so this is only ment to be my impressions and what I thought from what I saw of the series.  I am also not saying anything about people who liked the show, I like a number of shows people hate and expect the same the other way around.  If you would like to let me know why you enjoy Frontier as I said above leave a comment.

Yes I stole this picture >.>

 Just before I get into the whole thing, I’ll fill in a little history about the game. The game came out in 2007 in Japan and was done by Atlus and Cave. For those of you who don’t know Cave, they are about the Fathers of the danmaku shooter genre (also known as bullet hell and a number of other names). Then it was picked up by the free to play MMO site Aeira. So this really had no big point expect to point out Cave, and I hope to do a post about them soon.

This shows off the neat pentagram that is your target cursor which is cool

Anyway, back to the MMO itself. I have played a few MMOs in my day, the biggest or the ones I played for the longest were Final Fantasy XI and WoW. I played a lot of the free to play ones, but I never really cared for any of them, so I didn’t play them long. When I first saw this game though I was truly excited about because I am a fan of the SMT series.

Enough about that too though, let’s just move into the game itself. Overall, I think it is a really solid MMO. It does a lot of different things so it isn’t just another MMO or trying to be the next WoW. I think the biggest thing done to the gameplay is that there are no classes in this game. Instead you choose from a set of skills and knowledge to tag, and as you use them, they level up. So what they do to have it so you can’t master everything is that each one has its own EXP meter and you can’t have the total EXP of all the skills and knowledge go past this number that grows as you level up. Then it is interesting with the skills and knowledge, skills are what you use in combat and stuff like that. Knowledge though is more experience in areas so you hit harder and are just better in general in that area, like guns, swords, and armor; so it helps you in non attack ways and you get to pick and choose what your want to become really good in.

Oh yeah you get to ride your demons when you get this special item

One of the defining features of a SMT game is the ability to persuade demons to join you and this game is no different. You are able to try to get just about every demon to join you, and this I think is a really cool thing to be able to do in a MMO setting. There are a few downsides to it, you can only have so many, depending on your COMP. Also you are only allowed one out at a time, which is perfectly fine. Overall it is done well enough where it doesn’t break the game and have things be extremely easy by having this demon with you.

The battling is also a bit different than other MMOs, the game reminds me a lot of Phantasy Star Online (which is a great game and I will have to write about it at some point). Even though it reminds me of PSO, it is still different, it is not true real time combat. How it works is that you ready your skills before you use them. It is a really interesting thing in combat where everything has a ‘cast time’, and there are even skills like guard and counter that spice things up. I was also reminded of PSO when I had to create this little dungeon to go through. It was a really cool thing, because not only is there the outside world, but there are these dungeons you create and go though those as well.

Of course Jack Frost is in the game, and...yeah art looks nice

One thing that is kind of out there is the story the game has. The game does go out of its way to make the story more noticeable than about every other MMO. This I think is a double edged sword, while its cool that the story is there and more part of the game than a lot of other MMOs, it kind of gets put down a bit knowing everybody will have this same story line. This was really apparent when due to a story line event you get this one demon, and when you’re just out walking around you see so many people with the same demon. Now to be fair, this might only be something in the beginning, since a lot of the beginning stuff is tutorial. Speaking of tutorial, I found the way it was done in this game was really good. It works in with the story and is practical for the most part, because you go through what is told to you right afterwards, that doesn’t sound right, I mean your told useful thing then you get to do it and see how it is useful right away. With how the battle system is, it was nice to learn the ropes of guard and counter and stuff like that.

Beta servers are not this populated...meh I just needed an image here I have nothing else to say

Really once you talk about what makes a MMO interesting, that is about it. While IMAGINE does have a lot of interesting stuff, it still has all the flaws other MMOs have. Grinding is always annoying, and all those other MMO complaints are here. This is not the best MMO ever, but it is something different. With it being free to play I don’t really see a reason not to try it out, I would say its the best free MMO I have played (not saying much really, but that is the other free MMOs fault). There are a lot of neat things done with gameplay and it is a MMO not in some fantasy world, so that gives it some points from me right there. For fans of the series, you can’t really go wrong with it; Persona fans might wonder why they are not putting bullets in their head for summoning though. Though really it is still in closed beta so things may change, as of right now though its a fun game despite its MMO flaws and beta problems (I know I didn’t talk about them, but that is because they are expected). So, if things change for better or worse I will let you know for it is my duty as a elitist video game fan OF JUSTICE to do so…or something like that.

My character, with my plot demon

Lastly, this is the mark of the start of my epic trip though the Shin Megami Tensei series. I planed to start this before hand and have this be the last once, but one thing came to another and this is how it started. So be on the lookout for that, and that also answers where there is a Shin Megami Tensei category. Also one more random side note, the overworld music for IMAGINE is the same as the SNES game (could be games, can’t remember), it is most excellent though.

I'm not going into the live action...this post at least

I have an interesting story with how I first got to know Guyver.  It was about the first manga I ever looked it, it was many years ago when I was quite young and just happen to find it in a bookstore.  This was really interesting since it is a very violent manga or at least the volume I was looking at.  Though being the fan of sci-fi it was, I thought it was really cool and such with the Guyver suit and such.  Either way I never did get it or anything so it kinda just stayed in the back of my mind.

This very much might be the manga I read back in the day

Now if we fast forward to my high school and my friend happen to have the OVA series and he let me borrow it.  Then I watched it and saw a guy get hit by a truck and was hooked ever since.  Even the show was very rushed and stuff considering it was only 12 episodes and they had to make it make sense I still think its a very good OVA.  Sure it doesn’t follow the manga exactly, but so what.  Not to go off topic too much, what I think is that if done well an adaptation can do its own thing if kept in check and is not just way out there or something.  If the original and the adaptation are the same, why watch/read both if there is nothing new to the table?

Anyway for those who don’t know what Guyver is, it is a long running shounen action show.  It follows the story of Sho Fukamachi, who though luck (who knows if its good or bad…no it is bad luck now that I think about it) finds a Guyver unit.  A Guyver unit in a nutshell is a parasite that fuses with a host and then gives them armor to be badass and stuff.  Which causes problems with the Cronos Corp. which is the huge Corp. that funds all these crazy ass projects, oh and wants to take over the world; that is kind of important to.  The big one is making Zoanoids which are ugly strong creatures that destroy everything and such.  So are Sho guy does epic battles with the Zoanoids because the Cronos Corp. wants the Guyver unit, or more or less him dead after a time too.  That is about it, and in normal shounen fashion this and that happens and happens and happens and all of that stuff.

Sho and Guyver 1 from the 2006 TV series, color of Guyver 1 is a bit off color though

Ah let me back up a bit though with the whole Zoanoid thing, for this is explained!  The whole deal with it is that humans are the base for these Zoanoids, and that humans were created by what is called ‘The Creators’ who came to either many years ago and did a ton of experiments.  What came out of those were humans, and due to artifacts left behind, the Cronos Corp. were able to recreate Zoanoids.  I think it is a neat plot point, at least there is something to explain how this even happened and it gives a sense of mystery to the show, wondering who they were, why, etc.  It also brings up a question about the Guyver because in ‘The Creators’ language Guyver means like imperfect, incomplete, or something of the sort.

Enzyme, the Zoanoid made to destroy the Guyver

For me what made the show interesting and awesome is that its sci-fi instead of fantasy or whatever.  It doesn’t have a ton of upgrade arcs form what I know of and it doesn’t really go through all the normal shounen action fillers.  Then again I don’t know it fully I haven’t looked into a lot of the manga or novels.  I just found the story interesting with the Corp. and such.  There just doesn’t seem to be many shows that do this kind of thing, I mean I cannot really remember the last time I have seen a show like this.  What I mean by that is a dark show with more of a mature feel.  The show is very bleak; things do turn out bad a lot of the time.  It just feels this kind of show does not show up in this modern day of anime, where things are constantly a downer.  I guess that would be the reason why it could be filed under horror because it is so dark and there is just little to no hope, it is a stretch though.  It is what makes the show so great though is that it does these things well.

Anyway Sho never gets a break from Cronos, they are a world superpower about and they have the resources to continue to go after him no matter where he is.  They target anything dear to him and he has to do his best to protect them. Then it doesn’t go over the top with everybody having a Guyver unit there are only really 3 (apparently 100+ chapters in there is a 4th).  Then really each of the units are not that different from each other expect unit 3 which has some extra blades and such.

Guyver 3, the coolest looking one of the 3

There isn’t really a lot to say about Guyver, I mean it is a shounen action show, there isn’t much to it.  Its really the setting, characters, and stuff like that changes from action show to action show.  I just think Guyver does most of its stuff in an interesting way.  It does a lot a monster of the week stuff, which I don’t really mind for the most part, it works better for than than the really huge plot arcs with one big enemy.  In the OVA even the important characters did not have huge long fights which is a nice change.  It also does defeat well, Sho does not get crazy strong, the monsters beat him around.  There is not a magical super hidden weapon to save him when things get bad, in the beginning there kind of is.  Maybe more or less it doesn’t happen often and it is not done in a training arc.  I guess the point is here, it does not do much new, but it is how it does it that along with its great story that makes Guyver awesome.  

Then I suppose, I really do have a soft spot for it, because I think it shaped how a grew as a fan since I saw the manga back before I even knew what manga was.  It was one of my first exposures the anime/manga right with Macross/Robotech and some other shows.  I think it planted the seed which came back when I saw the OVA and stuff like that.  Maybe even started to shape my love of mecha/sci-fi shows, I might be pushing it there though.  Either way I think it is something just about everyone should see, because of its story and mood of the show really.

You know Black Jack is a badass when he uses a scalpel as a shrunken

What I really mean by Black Jack lite is that the movie while it has what all the other shows and movies have, it does brings the medical stuff to the backseat a bit.  This is a double edged sword I think, it is good in the fact that it can bring in new people into this as a bit of testing the water to see if they would like the other stuff.  The movie has a few action parts to break up the story and such and is just a real easy watch.  In other shows there would be more focus to the operations and stuff like that, for there just doesn’t seem to be much focus on the operations and they happen very quickly.  This brings us to the other side of the show, for older Black Jack fans this can be a small downside.  After re-watching this to write this post I felt that it was just missing those crazy epic operations that happen in other shows.  It is a trade off though, because it could have held down some pacing problems and would not been as good to bring new people into the Black Jack universe.  In the end though this is my only gripe with the movie, and it is easily overlooked; just wanted to bring it up.

Anyway, for those who do not know about Black Jack; it is one of Osamu Tezuka’s works.  It follows the story of a rouge unlicensed doctor known as Black Jack, he is know for 2 things; outrageous prices and being able to do just about any job.  He is nothing short of a medical genius, and is even a kind hearted person to boot.  So each plot is normally medical problem, find Black Jack, make Black Jack take the job, medical stuff, and then everyone is happy.  Not the most complicated thing, but it works, because even if every episode or whatever is like that, it is always interesting to see how the medical problem is solved.

Would very much suck if you had Satan

The plot of this movie follows the normal steps for the most part.  What breaks it apart is it is longer and more complicated.  It starts off with a mall being bombed and Black Jack is let out of jail to go help with saving people.  Right here he works his medical genius by saving a young boy trapped between rubble, by detaching an arm and leg to pull him out, then re-attaching them.  Then it moves on to another job the doctor takes, again caused by this bomb and this one has some personal relation with because it reminds him of his trouble past.  Though this brings in the rival of Black Jack, Dr. Kiriko also known as Death Incarnate.  They happen to be working on the same person, the twist is that Dr. Kiriko specializes in killing people painlessly and Black Jack is against him for that and believes that people should be saved.  After the conflict between them is resolved and Black Jack takes a bit of a side trip to get his equipment re-worked.  While this does not seem important, it does a lot for the story and makes Black Jack question himself and what he does, and this comes back a few times throughout the movie.  

Some time then passes and then he is meet by two people who come to his house.  These people offer Black Jack a huge sum of money to save a person, but there are a few catches, he must be blindfolded and must keep things on the down low.  He takes the job and then is taken off to Icarus island, an island where many bio tests were made and have created many strange creatures, mutated the plant life, and is the home to a horrible disease.  Here Black Jack finds out that this group of people are the ones who set the bomb, and want to use this disease to get payback and Black Jack is there for finding a cure.  So this brings in this conflict of this radical group and big corporation, which gets developed thought out the move.  As the movie plays on it becomes more important Black Jack stops the horrible disease known as Satan and make sure it is not used for any means.  This Satan is one horrible disease, they say it is a form of Anthrax, and the big ending blow it does is destroy the brain.  Along the way there are many twists and turns to keep you guessing and wondering how Dr. Kiriko comes into it, since it is the two doctors of darkness.

 I do not want to give much away to this, because one I want people to watch it so if I give detail and such it might make people not want to since I went though it, and some people do not like spoilers.  Either way there is a lot of stuff that happens in this movie and in the end it all comes together to tie everything up.

Pro tip: Revolvers don't need to be reloaded, even though there are only 6 slots for bullets, it still shoots after that

In the end I very much so recommend this movie.  I would use this to bring people into Black Jack and then have them take a look at the other series from here.  With its ease of watch and good story line it is the perfect intro and brings a little more to the fans.  So now would you kindly (yes I went for the Bioshock reference) go watch this movie.

So what I am working on with my team is an old school beat um’ up game, such as Streets of Rage, Final Fight, and Double Dragon. Then because we are all nerds, we just molded the story around geek references all around. The whole plot for the game (named Compile Error btw) is that your character was sucked into their computer to fix the errors, kill the viruses, and things like that to complete THE build to finish their game.

The games plot or anything is not to be taken seriously; the game is going to the light hearted side and poking fun at everything. Which if you ask me not enough games do now a days, which is about stupid if you ask me. Back in the adventure game days, games were really damn funny; I’m digressing though.

The thing is with this game, there is not a whole lot you can say about a beat um’ up game. We are not trying to do a lot of different stuff. We plan to use an energy system for special moves; you know those ones that take health to use. Then we also don’t give all the moves to the player at the beginning of the game and they get more as they beat bosses and so on. The big thing is just how off the wall the game is, with fighting guys with cout << “swords!” << endl; and having crazy boss battles like a for loop and the Master Control List.

Overall not a long post, just want to get it out there and get you ready for when more stuff about the game comes, with code and talk about those kind of geeky things. So with that let’s end this on a picture showing our game mascot.