Flygon64

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4 years on this site and 17 years of age.

I don't know how to feel about 4Kids Pokémon dubs, to an extent I understand some decisions and sometimes they're pretty insulting. There's censorship that makes sense because at the end of the day they had to adhere to American conservative broadcast standards but wiping any hint of Japanese culture in a story that takes place in a fictionalized version of Kanto? This bugs me about the games as well.

The name changes, as much as they rubbed me the wrong way at first, were an effort in translating puns for the most part so they had the Ace Attorney excuse, I still don't like changing Satoshi and Shigeru's names to Ash and Gary respectively. Those characters were named after real people, it just feels like whitewashing, I get it would've felt "strange" to have these two boys with Japanese names next to the American ones but... it's complicated. There's plausible deniability but given the cultural context I get the vibe another motive was that "a show with a bunch of Asian kids isn't going to sell" so give the main boy a racially ambiguous cartoon name and he'll appeal to a wider demographic, it won't be weird to kids because his design is abstract enough and doesn't adhere to US standard cartoon racial coding conventions so he can be interpreted in many ways.

People complain about censored bento boxes and other crap like that, which annoys me as well, but it's the least of the 4Kids issues considering everything else, though it's another thing that highlights the underlying philosophy behind changes like I've talked about so far, USAmerican children could never grasp anything outside their cultural bubble. Of course, that idea's stupid, not only because, like, Japanese Americans exist and denies them a chance to see bits of their heritage on TV, but also like, kids know what food is, kids know what holidays are, kids know people have different kinds of names. I hate that the media I grew up with tried so hard to keep me away from learning more about the cultures of the people who created some of my favorite pieces of art, pop culture left me seeing them as mystical and mysterious figures of a strange land and not as human and informed by their surroundings as me. Like, I'll forever get bullied for being a weeb by insecure kids like I used to do to others but I'm grateful it eventually wound up expanding my worldview, though a teacher or some other authority figure should've corrected my orientalist idiocy way sooner than myself around my late teens or so tbh...

Currently thinking about how Dorkly characterized Tails as like this random dude the same age as Sonic who has... Kids? I remembered hate binging their skits for kinda masochistic reasons but maybe to articulate my feelings about their sense of humor as well, here I am.

The media illiteracy of the early work is so fascinating, the attempts at satire are atrocious because of their sheer lack of engagement with the source material. You just sit there watching these out of touch former gamers trying to crack supremely surface level jokes about an industry and franchises within that they haven't touched in years.

They failed. So bad. Mario fans don't need anyone to tell them lol, I find the writers' worldview peculiar is all, so jaded and cynical, reminiscent of Robot Chicken. This ironic sketch show celebration of pop culture, minus any overarching plot of something like Family Guy.

If it were just low brow comedy, I could move on and accept it if weren't for -- UGH -- politics. Standard fare for shows done in this style, punching down on the haha funny minorities or whatever. American comedy got much crueler around the 2000s and that behavior stook around for a while, maybe it had something to do with the twin towers and tolerance of cruelty in general when directed at the OTHER?? IDK.

I know their skits were crafted for mainstream nostalgic 80s and 90s kids crowds and not artsy fartsy people like me but the fundamental misunderstandings and malicious attitudes of Dorkly's cartoons are frustrating.

I'm so sorry for my disproportionate reaction here. I could have been much less nasty about it.

I used to type like a manic pixie girl.

Favorite parts of Final Fantasy 1 were the world exploration and its mixture of sci-fi and well... Fantasy! That ending was subversive in a way I haven't seen from this type of game before, it was way less generic than I expected. The dungeons and some of the battle encounters were frustrating but satisfying to overcome with a guide, you should definitely check out this Square Enix classic.

This was nearly as educational as my playthrough of DQ1, except this game stands up on its own merits to this day! The ludonarrative is very strong, it feels less lonely and larger in scale than its contemporaries, traveling the globe with your ragtag group of friends, managing your resources and toughing out adversity. The world building was really interesting too, I don't want to spoil anything though, I'll just say there were a lot of fun surprises. DQ walked so this series could run and let the JRPG genre burst through its former limitations!

I'm excited for the sequels, there's some people who don't like two but I've also heard the hate it gets is underserved, I'll have to see

smrpg snes vs superstar saga GBA

which would you rather play through again?

I'd go for Saga any day.

So, recently I've been playing through an old German RPG Maker game called... Well, y'know. Which roughly translates to "On The Road In Darkburgh" and I've been having quite a fun time with it! It has a lot of character, it very much embodies that indie dev spirit of a person's determination to make their vision a reality. It's not the pinnacle of good game design or anything, though there are very clever bits of it that may surprise you.

Now, I'm not much of a fan of a lot of high fantasy, it's rehashing of dated tropes and lack of critical reflection, this game has its fair share of that but for whatever reason... I've enjoyed its story. One part of it is that for whatever reason, the creator's country of origin makes this feel more earnest to me, stock Western fantasy pulls from Germanic folklore after all. When a fellow Yankee Doodle uses dwarves or whatever it doesn't hit the same, they're just ripping off Tolkien because it's easy. I mean the creator of this game totally did that as well but hey! He's got an excuse! Tolkien ripped off Germany! He also mixed in some sci-fi with some time travel, uh, that's the other part that solves the puzzle, I guess.

You can download the English version here :

This thing's a pain to get running on modern machines, so you should also check out this tool while you're at it :

It's got about 40 hours of content which I find impressive and inspiring, hope you find out why and find the free time to check it out!

why must flying enemies have the most annoying sound effects in Mario spin-offs

You can tell a character's an antagonist in one of those toy commercial cartoons when they have distinct shape language. Okay, I've been watching Bratz clips again because its aesthetic fascinates me, another Flygon yaps about archaic 2000s thing in-coming.

I'll start broad, its outdated corporate design ethos is so fucking funny. I love these Y2K diva caricatures and their doll house city purgatory. I can enjoy a plastic world if it's cheeky, the characters play into their archetypes in a usually entertaining way. I mean, obviously, it leans into negative aspects of the status quo at that point in time, don't like that, guyzz Bratz isn't politically correct wut da heck?? The utter lack of seriousness and sincerity drew me in though, I hate when these products pretend to teach moral lessons.

Where do I even begin to break down why my brain is hooked on this animation style? I am OBSESSED with the physic sims, the rigid quality of every frigging movement combined with those goofy hair swishes and clipping. The people who composed the scenes for the tv show episodes and movies did a competent job but it's just the character acting... it's so bad it's good but also genuinely really good too? Sometimes you have moments of strong posing and sometimes you have these oddly proportioned homunculi flailing around in an act of dance. The expression work is what sells it I think, the faces are usually very exaggerated and goofy but also have these tiny details that perfect them. This also helps the moments when the animators go for something more understated land even harder.

The sound design is something else entirely when it comes to this series. The vocal performances are gold, the inflection, the timing, all enhanced by the aforementioned features. I've been thinking about the moment where the girl meets the biker guy with a union jack helmet and they're located in some cut Final Fantasy 7 city and the two have this exchange for the longest time.

Girl : Hey.

Twirls her hair.

Guy gives her the goofiest grin ever.

Guy : Hey.


That's another thing, the script writers did. not. care. greatest comedic minds of our millennia? Go search "Bratz out of context" to see what I mean.

I had more to say about this than Undertale lmfao.

absolute cungadero

do you think wd's gonna get a bluesky or what. iykyk.

The Switch 2 has got to be the greediest egg I've ever seen.

Giana Sisters DS is pretty good.

Wishing I had more than a craptop so I could play through all of the Paper Marios folks care for. Can't run Wii, I can run N64 so the first is on the table, and TTYD is on Switch but... I want to play the original version of that one. The remake has QOL or whatever, but its script has been censored and uncensored for better or for worse and I want to have the intended experience y'know? The writing that inspired everyone? That's why I played the SNES version of SMRPG, it's the version the internet people grew up with, half the fun is witnessing the source of 90% of this website's endearing neurosis, (the other 10% is my own brand.).

New Super Mario Bros' power up gating was a very annoying design choice. Blue shells are a pain to get, mini mushrooms are annoying to find again after you inevitably lose them.

Did you know the Koopalings were caricatures of Nintendo devs? I love that trivia, it's so humanizing, I like learning about the PEOPLE behind big video games.

Danganronpa 3 is better than V3 in concept when you notice the meta narrative. Everything past 2 is about deconstructing the faults of the franchise and I think the train wreck of an anime is the most fascinating attempt. The execution? Really bad but I like thinking about it more than the others stories for what it's worth.

Undertale and Deltarune's retro JRPG artifice but self awareness but earnestness just scratches this personal itch I have so well. Insect games.

Gen 6 of Pokemon is the most otaku-coded one of the bunch, very fanservicey in many ways, it's the one that had softcore porn artists on the art team after all.

Not like the other gens weren't reflective of their pop cultural moment but 6 is the one that wears that influence on its sleeve. It was the one that tried to be the most hip, flashy mega evolutions, flashy characters, following all the trends. It indulges in the tropes of media of its time for better or for worse, sometimes you get fun camp and sometimes you get the Team Magma admin who sexually harasses middle school boys, and I want to scream.

Anyway.

Lysandre is a genocidal elitist madman.

Team Aqua forever, Archie is well meaning but dumb as bricks and I adore him like his admins, Maxie is insufferable and a pseudo-intellectual whose entire team consists of losers.

Kyogre for the win, it's not even a competition.

I forgot what a Womble was, so I asked British strangers to identify it, here was the picture I showed them depicting my vague memory of one.

The gopher from Petz 5 and its dumb little victory dance. Hatred.

Pokemon's worldbuilding is scuffed, it's gameplay loop restrictive, but I enjoy it for some reason.

What if exotic pets loved their owners? What if you could domesticate them? Use them?

The series can go up and down across town yelling "Pokemon are friends, not tools" but, no, lol, animal cruelty is embedded in this franchise's foundation. Satoshi and his childhood friend's crimes committed against bugs were the building blocks of Red and Green. Trading them, making them fight, "caring" for them.

There's kind of a morbid colonizer appeal, taming the SAVAGE beasts of the wilderness, this is most obvious in gen 1 concept art where everyone has a whip not just the obvious baddies. Your game increases in scale, you start with capturing bugs, then fish, then wolves, then lions, then dinosaurs and finally creatures of myth and science experiments gone wrong. Hell, originally you were supposed to be able to SELL your Pokemon but I guess Game freak thought that was too blatantly cruel. Imagine that on top of the breeding, blehhhh...

The franchise can escape these trappings in spin-off material where catching'em all isn't a goal, this is why the Mystery Dungeon and Rangers are my favs because they explore the fun parts of the Pokemon world, the myth and the cute n cool animals and friendship, without the uncomfortable undertones. Mainline is always going to brush against those though and can never give a straight answer to the questions that have been raised without basically self-destructing.

If I were a Pokemon I think I'd be Pikachu, it was my first fursona, shocking I know. I'm going to play Pokemon Pinball on GBA for a couple hours.

I am the great Wart, hahaha.

Update! The RPG Maker game now functions with some very generous help! All that's glitched, far as I can tell, is some text effects but for the most part, it's playable!