AlexArtsHere

This is something I was originally kicking around on the SF Discord server (which is really cool and you guys should join it if you haven't already) - entries have now closed there with six entrants, so I'm opening things up to the wider community. Without further ado, allow me to introduce The Serenes Forest FE6 Telephone Game! This will be a full relay playthrough of Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade (i.e. from the first chapter all the way to Idunn, with all the relevant gaidens in between) with a twist: Each player will have no idea of what the player previous to them has done, nor what the player after them will do. Nobody will see anybody else’s gameplay until the whole thing is done and compiled into one playthrough. Here’s how this is going to work: • All players will have the same ROM and patch of FE6 • Each chapter will be assigned to a participant at random (possibly with some correction by myself to make sure proper rotation is achieved, depending on how many participants we end up with) • The game will be played iron man style – no resets, even if your favourite dies! • The only time a reset will be permitted is, of course, in the event of Roy dying, but also in the event that a player fails to meet the conditions for unlocking a given gaiden chapter – we’re going for 100% here (participants will be reminded of the relevant gaiden requirements when it’s their turn to play, but in effect it means keeping up to five other characters alive until their relevant gaidens have been reached) • Gameplay of your entire play session is to be recorded without commentary – once you have completed your chapter, you’ll send your .sav file to the next participant and a .mp4 video file of your play session to me (this will probably need to be done via file hosting site – I’ll figure out the logistics of this and the recording format once we’ve confirmed our list of participants) That’s about all I can think of for now regarding the rules. This is my first time organising something like this, so please understand if there are a few teething issues. Given that we've already got six participants, a maximum of a further 24 slots are up for grabs (I've lumped the endgame chapter in with chapter 24 given how much of a nothingburger both maps are) - if our total number of participants ends up being less than 30, there'll be rotation of however many participants we do have, so some people may end up playing two or more maps. Entries will close Monday 16th October, so if you'd like to join up, please drop a reply in the thread!

I'm the reason you ended up playing Sonic Forces. There are other bad Sonic games I could buy on Steam for you. Makes you think. 🔪

I was saying Sonic 1 is soup, but Generations is cosy too. I don't count Classic Sonic in Generations as a classic game on its own because there are actually a lot of differences between that and the Mega Drive games and Generations is more of a (laudable) approximation of the idea of that gameplay, but if you like to then that's your prorogative. With regards to the difference in level design after GHZ, I think it's best seen when you look at the levels through the lens of how they let Sonic build momentum. Green Hill and Star Light have lots of hills and loops that Sonic can roll through to reach some high speeds and get massive air time when he launches off of ramps. Marble Zone has a few slopes in its outdoor sections, but no loops and generally doesn't let Sonic reach that same speed, especially once things go in doors and everything is much more jump-centric. Spring Yard has a little bit more of an opportunity for speed with its half pipes, but also asks the play to do a lot of jumping. Finally, Scrap Brain but especially Labyrinth Zone both have next to know ability to build momentum. Scrap Brain has a few scant set pieces that let you build up speed, but the terrain of Labyrinth is composed almost entirely of squares and just isn't conducive to building momentum.

I suppose it’d be best to start with introductions, as it seems to me that the Venn diagram of active members of the SF boards and active members of the SF Discord server is almost two separate circles. I’m AlexArtsHere, frequenter and moderator of said Discord server. I’m also something of an artist, so maybe you’ll have seen my work in other circles, maybe you haven’t. That’s not what we’re here for though. No, we’re here today because I have something to prove. Some time ago (a year minus 19 days, in fact), alleged Ohian, Ike “Integrity” Forest, began a quest of 100%ing the achievements of every game in his Steam library. At some point (the very next month), he dipped his toes into the world of Sonic, starting with Sonic Generations, a game which will prove to be Ike’s undoing when he’s cursed to eternal damnation for his wrong opinions regarding it. Again, though, that’s not what we’re here for. After Generations, Ike played Sonic Lost World, one of the more critically maligned games as far as the Sonic community is concerned. For what it’s worth, Ike had a good time with it, and I’m happy that he did, but it caused a realisation to dawn on me: I’ve never finished Sonic Lost World. Hell, I barely qualify for having played it at all, given that the totality of my experience with the game is contained within the demos for the Wii U and 3DS versions of the game, played back in 2015/16. Frankly, this cannot stand. My identity is staked on being a Sonic fan. Without it, what am I? British, that’s what. And frankly, to only be able to call oneself British is a fate I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemies. So, here’s what I’m going to do about it: Not only am I going to play all the Sonic games available on Steam, not only am I going to play more Sonic games than Ike to once again become secure in my status as Serenes’ premier Sonic weirdo, I’m going to play every Sonic game that I can, and perhaps then some. I imagine I’ll be taking these roughly in release order, but I’m also fickle and inconsistent, so who knows? Hell, maybe this whole thing will just die on the vine after this inaugural instalment. I’ve never been great with commitment. At any rate, it’s also worth noting that, while I’ll do my level best to touch on every Sonic release worth talking about, there are some that I just don’t have a good way to access right now. The HD version of Sonic Unleashed is probably the best example of this, given that it was released on PS3 and Xbox 360, I don’t have an Xbox SeX for backwards compatibility, emulation for the original consoles is (as far as I’m aware) not in the same kind of place as emulation for consoles of prior generations is, and there is currently no Project 06 style remake in the works by dedicated fans. Alas, problems for later. Today, we start with something simple and entirely expected. The original Sonic the Hedgehog is a game I’m comfortably familiar with, as is most any Sonic fan worth their salt. I imagine it’s few people’s most replayed entry, given the rapid innovations the sequels brought, but it’s familiar and comforting and easy to digest, like warm tomato soup. The downside to this is that there’s probably not much interesting for me to say about it. The game is so familiar to me that talking about it makes me feel like I’m just being a bit boring, as opposed to how things might be for someone playing it for the first time. Nevertheless, we move. The big thing about the first Sonic game is that, back in 1991 when it first released, there was absolutely nothing like it. Generally, I struggle to appreciate games that revolutionised the landscape during their heyday but struggle to hold up today, but Sonic really was just something else, and even now there aren’t really any other games that have found huge success in doing what the original Sonic games did, unlike other spiritual successors or send-ups to retro classics such as Shovel Knight. No, Sonic has pretty much been one of a kind for 32 years and counting. And the debut game really does hold up in my eyes. Between 1991 and 1994, very little changed about Sonic’s core movement, and this still holds true for Classic Sonic games released in the past few years (well right now it’s just Mania, but Superstars is just around the corner and, by all appearances, that game too seems to be very faithful to the original trilogy. Compare and contrast with characters like Super Mario and Crash Bandicoot, whose character controllers didn’t quite come out fully formed. That’s not to say that Sonic didn’t change and build upon what he started out with in following entries – Sonic 1 is perhaps a little infamous for lacking the now iconic Spindash – but, the changes to the way the character actually handles are pretty obscure and technical to the casual player. To wit, the biggest changes to Sonic’s control are the successive increases to his ground and air speed caps after the first game and the sometimes removal of the roll jump lock (to explain briefly, this is a quirk of the original games where, if the player jumps while Sonic is rolling along the ground, Sonic isn’t able to manoeuvre in midair, committing him to whatever his current trajectory is – it’s pretty much universally scorned by those who know about it and the best received rereleases of the game disable it to allow for better control). Roll jump lock aside, you don’t generally notice such changes during gameplay, unlike the lack of a P Speed system in the first few Marios, or the very stiff and committal jump arc of the original Crash Bandicoot. For the most part, Sonic the Hedgehog pretty much just worked right from the beginning. However, this isn’t something I can quite extend to the level design of Sonic 1. When people think of Sonic 1, the vast majority of those thoughts are likely to be of Green Hill Zone. Of course, this is understandable – the most iconic locale of any action game is more or less guaranteed to be its first. But beyond this, Green Hill is also one of only two Zones in the first game that are truly representative of what the Sonic series would actually become. Playing through the game as I write, I’ve just breezed through the first two acts of Green Hill Zone with clear times in the low to mid 40 seconds, with Act 3 taking me over the minute threshold due to that act’s boss. For reference, the world record for GHZ Act 1 is 00:17.98, so I’m hardly achieving peak performance, but my point is that I can blast through these first levels pretty quickly without much thought or even an attempt at optimisation, compared to a newbie who’ll likely clock in somewhere in the range of one and a half to two minutes for just the first level (a slightly more efforted attempt places me at just under 28 seconds by the way). After this jaunt, however, the game’s level design changes drastically for the next three zones. To wit, at a similar level of execution to my casual playthrough of GHZ Act 1, Marble Zone Act 1 was finished at 01:44 (granted I took a few sloppy hits but even without those I’d probably have clocked in around 01:30). Zones 2-4, as well as Zone 6, almost completely forego the gentle slopes, loops and quarter pipes of Green Hill in favour of much blockier, labyrinthine levels that one would expect to find it more traditional platformers (hell, the fourth zone is straight up called Labyrinth Zone and, spoilers, it's the worst one in the game). Don’t get me wrong, these levels aren’t particularly bad in a vacuum (except Labyrinth Zone, fuck you), but they’re pretty antithetical to what we now know Sonic to be: stop-start affairs that place more focus on the player’s ability to time their jumps and precisely manoeuvre around hazards as opposed to their knowledge of the level design, ability to quickly react to that level design and their intuition for when to roll and when to run. Still, I can forgive Sonic Team for this in their first outing – as I said earlier, this style of platforming had never been done before so it's completely understandable that not every level fits like a glove and instead tries to execute something more familiar to the landscape of the time (I won’t forgive the cheap hits I took through Spring Yard Zone onwards, however). At any rate, the level design picks up again for a brief reprieve in Zone 5, Star Light Zone, with the return of those pleasing slopes and loops and quarter pipes that turn Sonic into a human (hedgehog?) catapult when he rolls up them with enough speed. One thing that Sonic 1’s level design never loses sight of, however, is a sense of exploration. This, like every foundational aspect of Sonic’s game design, would become expanded upon and deepened in the series over time (a bit schizophrenically so in the case of exploration, but we’ll put a pin in that for another time), but it’s absolutely on display in Sonic Team’s maiden voyage. Of course, we have the mulitple paths that have become one of the series’ defining elements. These, combined with the time attack nature inherent to gameplay such as this, are what make these games so damn replayable. If you’ve even a little familiarity with Sonic, you know how this song and dances goes – in most scenarios, the uppermost path is the quickest and least hazardous, but requires the most skill to reach and stay on, demanding twitch reflexes and a fairly intimate knowledge of the level design in order to maintain the speed needed to benefit from it, as it has little surface area and involves precise bandik bounces that must look like leaps of faith to the unitiated. Conversely, the lowermost path is the slowest, filled with spikes and badniks that the player must navigate around if they want to hold onto their rings. Meanwhile, everything in between has varying shades of difficulty and speed to the point that, even if you’re not playing for the best time, you can still have fun charting your own route through each zone, with no two casual playthroughs being quite the same, so long as you’re willing to not just do the same thing you did the last time you played. It’s a brilliant system that makes levels endlessly dissectable in analysis and functions very organically in practice, effectively boiling down to a player’s speed hinging on how well they can defy gravity. Exploration doesn’t just lead to new routes, but also bonuses. In Zones 2 through 4 in particular, a little exploration can lead to coves and cubby holes and hidden walls that hold rings, shields and 1-ups, giving the player a helping hand on their journey. It’s this feature of level design in particular that would be expanded upon and refined in pretty much every Sonic game after this, perhaps most notably in Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Sonic Mania as entrances to those games’ special stages. However, Sonic 1 does special stages rather differently. For those unaware, special stages are where the series staple Chaos Emeralds can be found. In Sonic 1, the Emeralds are pretty much plot coupons to give flavour to the conflict (Doctor Ivo “Eggman” Robotnik has set up shop on South Island to search for the Chaos Emeralds so that he may use them to power his mechanical machinations, and it’s for this purpose that he’s taken to trapping the island’s resident critters into badniks, creating an emerald hunting workforce that’s completely obedient, requires no sleep or sustenance and, most importantly, doesn’t have any labour rights – it’s everything Elon Musk wishes he had) and, when all are collected, unlock a slightly different ending with more flowers. In Sonic 1, the special stages…kind of blow chunks, and so will you if you’re less fortunate than myself. Accessed by making it to the end of any stage (except Act 3s and any stage in Scrap Brain Zone) with 50 rings and jumping in the large warp ring that appears at the goal post, these stages drop a permanently curled-up Sonic into a rotating maze that must be navigated by jumping in order to find the Chaos Emerald at the end, encased in diamonds that must be cleared before the Emerald can be accessed. These mazes are obstacle courses of not only bumpers and falsely mislabelled “GOAL” orbs that boot you out of the stage on contact, but also “R” orbs which reverse the stages rotation and “UP” and “DOWN” orbs that speed up or slow down that rotation. Oh, and while all this is happening, the background morphs every 20 seconds between birds flying rightwards through the sky and fish swimming leftwards in the ocean. Are you beginning to see why these stages are pretty rough? Even without the visual puke, the stages themselves are just kind of jank. They’re tricky, but less due to any skill requirement and more because it’s a bit of a crapshoot getting Sonic to go where you want him to, and you’ll often end up hitting a button you didn’t want to or flinging yourself into the failorbs. And, because everything looks the same and is constantly rotating, it’s pretty easy to lose your bearings in these stages, even for a veteran like me. Still, that the only reward for getting them is cosmetic means you can safely skip these without fear of missing anything meaningful. I’ve not got a clever segue here so let’s talk about bosses. This will bear out more over time as I review more and more of these games, but Sonic’s relationship with bosses is…delicate. For many fans, the platonic ideal of a boss is that it’s always vulnerable and how quickly it’s defeated is entirely dependent on how deftly the player can manoeuvre between hazards to get those hits in. However, the rings system of the Sonic series means that, in a lot of cases, the player can cheese through damage by just recollecting the same ring every time they’re hit and put down the boss before it even has time to do much of anything. Not particularly climactic. The other end of this spectrum consists of bosses that, either through invincibility frames or keeping out of Sonic’s reach, forces you to wait out its attacks until a weak point is revealed. Not particularly fun. With all of that said, the bosses in Sonic 1 are a decent enough bunch, with examples of both of these things. Green Hill’s boss, that iconic ball and chain swinging from the Egg Mobile, would actually be pretty threatening for newcomers…if the devs hadn’t tucked an invincibility monitor in a tree right before the boss. As such, you can tear through it like paper, with the only issue being that you have to keep up with it moving to each end of the arena. Meanwhile, the Spring Yard boss, an Egg Mobile with a spike on the bottom that only opens itself up to damage when dropping down to destroy your footing, is a bit of a pacebreaker. However, there are a couple of bosses that hit the sweetspot, those being the Marble and Star Light Zone bosses, which give you a lot of opportunity to hit them without being punching bags. The remaining two bosses, however, can go to hell. Labyrinth has you chasing an unarmed Eggman up a flooding shaft that’s fileld with traps and is more of an endurance against more of that Zone’s cheap level design than a real boss, while the final boss of Scrap Brain stiffs you with zero rings to act as a safety net and pretty much turns it into a coin flip as to whether you’ll even get the opportunity to damage the boss, as you’re forced to commit to one side of the arena or another as Eggman tries to crush you in one of four tubes. So a bit hit and miss, but none of Sonic 1’s bosses are going to be making lists of the best or worst of all time. With all the gameplay elements out of the way, allow me to spend a paragraph or two gushing about Sonic 1’s presentation values, because it’s a solid looking game that has definitely withstood the test of time. The character designs, crafted by “Sonic’s dad”, Naoto Ohshima, are a wonderful blend of cool, cute and a little goofy, with Sonic and Eggman being instant classics, while the environments also pop and are all wonderfully distinct, refusing to settle for stock video game locations such as grasslands, volcanoes and ice worlds. Green Hill is a lush lakeside paradise, Labyrinth is an ancient waterlogged temple and Scrap Brain is a moody, dystopic industrial complex, belching smoke and soot into a bleak, brown sky. Of particular note is Green Hill’s palm trees, with their leaves looking almost pre-rendered, being a wonderful epitome of Sonic 1’s vibrant, geometric surrealist look that’s oh-so 90s. All of this is, of course, enhanced by Masato Nakamura’s unforgettable soundtrack. Nakamura’s approach to scoring Sonic was the same as how he’d approach a movie soundtrack – compose music while watching the action unfold in front of him, and this clearly worked as every track fits the scenario in which it plays perfectly, each of them being instantly hummable. Sound effect design complements the music well too, with all the boops and pops and wooshes of Sonic’s movement and the breaking of badniks ringing out clearly alongside the game’s music without being disruptive. So that’s Sonic the Hedgehog for the SEGA Mega Drive. It might not be the best entry in the series, and it’s admittedly very basic and lacking in features that would come to be taken as standard in the sequels, but it holds up regardless and is absolutely worth playing for anyone who wants to get into the franchise. Even going for a 100% run, it can be beaten in an afternoon (hell, I’ve managed to beat it and write a 3000+ word review on it, all within the span of roughly six hours), so you’ve really got nothing to lose if you just want to try it to see if you can get into the series. Addendum: Forever and a Day Next instalment: Sonic the Hedgehog (SEGA Master System and Game Gear, 1991)

Ike is very mean and I will never recover from the deep emotional pain he has inflicted upon me.

Of course. If anybody can stop the oncoming storm of a thousand myrms, it's Spring Xander, his unbreakable body, and his phallic, Freudian carrot that dashes a thousand dreams like bugs to a newspaper. Can't wait to see you pull FEdel next time and have Athena end up with Atk/Def Ideal.

A worthy cause. You have my sword. Okay, so it's actually Hellica's sword, but, y'know, semantics.

*angy betrayal noises*

Yeah and then it becomes another form of privilege which usually benefits white, cisgendered heterosexual males. You make it sound like white privilege is a curse for White people, and while sure you can see it as someone’s work being overlooked for their skin colour, at least when it happens to white people they still get those opportunities. And I can absolutely guarantee minority people being casted in entertainment for their skin colour happens on an extremely infrequent basis because the entertainment industry is stills dominated by White people, specifically white men. Sure, some tokenism occurs but to imply it’s a widespread practice then diminishes the work of the minorities who have been given those opportunities. And at the end of the day you’re still arguing semantics and distracting for the real issue which is that white privilege exists systemically, regardless of what name it goes by and whether or not you like that name. If we put more time into solving that issue rather than talking about how we don’t like the name of the concept, said concept would sooner cease to exist and any dissatisfaction with the name would be redundant anyway.

Not with that defeatist attitude. Bad as things are, they're still hugely improved over what they were 50 years ago. Things have gotten better and as long as we put the effort in they will keep getting better.

@FrostyFireMage Image is broke try again

Absolutely. It's why the VA industry for example will assign generic numbers to auditions sometimes. As I've said previously in the thread, I'm not somebody who is directly affected by systemic racism as I am white, so anyone more informed or experienced than I should absolutely expand upon and correct me where appropriate.

As someone who on principal hates the same concept, that doesn't apply here. White privilege refers to the discrepancy between the way white people are treated compared to people of colour in similar situations. It's not inherently a means by which to undermine the input or existence of white people, it's simply the term for how white people benefit over people of colour in white majority countries, even if said people may suffer in other areas (usually due to fitting into other categories that face frequent prejudice). Basic example, a white person and a black person each apply for the same job with the same qualifications and the same performance in the interview. If the white person gets chosen for that job because the colour of their skin leads them to be viewed more favourably in the eyes of the person responsible for hiring (either intentionally or unintentionally), that's them benefiting from white privilege. It's not they're fault, they're not bad for being white, but it's an illustration of how deeply embedded racism and white privilege is into not only the U.S., but the U.K. and parts of Europe too.

That's distinction without a difference. The implication that you believe white people ought to be considered the default shows just how deeply embedded our privilege is into people's worldviews. I have absolutely suffered in my life. I was bullied and isolated through school and it's had lasting consequences on my mental health. But I am absolutely privileged in the fact that I can exist without fear that someone meant to uphold the community may take my life simply because they don't like my skin colour. "Black suffrage", while perhaps still accurate, takes the onus off of white people. Sure, lots of individual white people are decent, upstanding people, perhaps even the majority of white people are, but white people are massively benefit from a broken system simply because they were lucky enough to be born with the "right" skin colour. And I reiterate the point about comfort. Taking the focus away from white privilege allows people benefiting from said privilege to feel comfortable. And when the people at the top are comfortable, nothing changes for the disadvantaged and disenfranchised.

So I've been reading through this thread and, although I'm white and across the other side of the pond, I've got some input here directed @Anacybele because the thing is, yours is a similar mindset to one I had in high school, when I was less aware. You're where I was maybe 5 years ago, so I understand you're coming from a place of innocence, but this mindset is one borne of indoctrination. I'm going to repeat some stuff that others have said throughout this thread but there are some really important points you need to understand on this. First, and I think most important for you to understand, is that we, as the privileged race, are not meant to feel comfortable about protests. When we're comfortable, it means we can look away and pretend all this isn't happening. When we're debating about the validity of a protest and whether people are protesting "correctly", the people who don't want the world to be a better place, who want to keep minorities underfoot, the same people who want you to be an outcast for having autism; they're winning. These protests aren't polite and they aren't pretty because that doesn't grab attention. This is happening now because those with power and privilege didn't listen in the past. Now we're being made to listen because things need to change. I understand the impulse to question the morality of the protests, but ask yourself what's more important: brick and mortar or real, human lives? If there's something you don't like about the protests, acknowledge it, but also accept that it's happening in the service of a brighter future (bad actors notwithstanding). Second, police in America are systemically corrupt and racist, we just don't see it usually because it doesn't affect us. If you use Twitter, then you must have seen at least some videos and posts about the horrific and reprehensible acts being committed by police during these protests. One of the more notorious examples of police brutality was committed against an elderly white man who approached the police in a non-violent manner; he was pushed back by the police until he fell over and began bleeding from his ears. His name is Martin Gugino. I won't link the video in the interests of keeping in line with the rules on forbidden content, but a quick search will turn up the relevant information. Bear in mind this is but one of the many documented incidents of police brutality that has occurred in the wake of the protests. This in particularly was something I had difficulty accepting because I, like many people, had bought into the idealised version of the police that we see on TV and in the movies, when in reality that isn't necessarily the case. As such, when people talk about defunding and abolishing the police, the idea is to redistribute these resources into other areas of society to improve quality of life in order to prevent crime. Now, I say this as someone who doesn't necessarily believe in the full abolition of the police, but the 2019-2020 police budget for Los Angeles alone was $1.8 billion. This money could and should be put into other services to fix the system and take away a lot of the factors that prevent crime. For example, a better schooling system that actively helps disadvantaged kids, allowing them to go into the world as adults with the same opportunities and basic standard of living as everybody else, so they won't be motivated towards theft out of necessity. People don't talk about defunding the police in a vacuum, they want to use defunding the police as a means of putting more funding into other essential services so the police won't be needed as much. And sure, there are some people who are just rotten, and we will need to deal with those people, but just because we might not see a way to make the system perfect right now doesn't mean we shouldn't try to improve it at all. And finally, there's Trump. Some people expected the Trump administration to turn out the way it has, some people didn't. I won't hold it against you for voting Trump because it ultimately achieves nothing, but throughout his term he has shown himself to be an unstable, selfish demagogue. Through these protests alone he has taken George Floyd's name in vain by baselessly claiming that Floyd would be happy to see Trump send in the national guard to quell the protests against the police brutality that lead to his death. He tried to pin the blame for Martin Gugino's serious injuries on the man himself by saying that he fell harder than he was pushed. Is this really the man you want to support? Consider that you're in a minority. You have a developmental disorder. Others with such disorders have said that their communication difficulties have led to tensions with the police in the past. If you're murdered by police brutality one day because they couldn't understand or respect your challenges (god forbid) and people protest your murder, would the man claiming that you're happy for people to be violently subdued in support of your murders really be someone you want to stand behind? If you take away nothing else from what I've said, take away this: It's never too late to change your mind. We won't think less of you for it. Adjusting your mindset based on new information as it's presented to you isn't defeat, it's growing as a person to respond to a more accurate view of the world. You're uncomfortable about protests which have been visible to use for about a month. You're uncomfortable about Disney retheming a ride and the idea that it may have come about because of these protests. People of colour are uncomfortable because there are government sanctioned officers on the streets who can and will brutalise them for any perceived slight. People of colour are uncomfortable because their existence is, for some people, reason enough to hate them, simply for the colour of their skin. There are people in this thread who have explained things better than I ever could, and there will be more who will do the same, but I'm trying to reach out to you because I understand where you are and I don't want you to fall into a mindset that turns a blind eye to suffering, and I think everyone else who's disagreeing with you would share that sentiment. As a final request, please give this video a watch, it's helped me understand so much better how privileged I am. It's not a hard or unpleasant watch for a white person, but it is an important one:

"Happy Birthday Jingle Jangle!" (pls get me a dupe Fjorm)

To preface these questions, I've not been watching the streams since I want to avoid spoilers, so I don't know where you are in the game, but here we go: 1) How's the difficulty curve in Warriors - Do you feel like you're being challenged enough, and how does the game do this? 2) Is performance consistent? Obviously Warriors comes with two modes, one being 1080p/30fps and 720p/60fps. What I most want to know is if the game sticks to these specs. 3) Who would be your top pick for DLC (again, please no spoilers for the base roster)? 4) How long does a gameplay session last in terms of completing a map - is it conducive to portable play?

A commission for an album cover I received via Reddit. I worked on this on and off throughout March. Probably the most fun thing on this was designing the armour. I was told to do something "cyberpunk samurai", but other than that I had free reign. As you can see, inspiration is taken from Ryoma's armour (the armour I drew was originally blue, but the commissioner request it be red instead). Speaking of commissions, they're now reopen until April 21st! More info can be found in the link in my description.

I'm almost afraid to ask, but does Anna show up? Even as an NPC? I need some sweet Anna Hidari art. ;^;

Nintendo JP sources can no longer be trusted. No one is safe.

Amazon UK is back again.

Hate to bump, but Amazon UK seems to be back up and I want to make sure people know. Get it while it's hot!

So I put in an entry for the #CrashIdleContest yesterday. If you guys like it and want to support me, then please RT this. It's not how they're judging the contest, but if it gets enough positive reception, I hope it'll be considered favourably in the decision.

Definitely a nice change of pace, and I'm hoping this allows skills to be used without relying on TEC or LUCK, which would really give things a breath of fresh air.

Didn't you know? Garon is the real big bad of Gaiden.