Burn Notice

In Street Fighter II, when a character is burned, their burning silhouette is clearly that of M. Bison/Vega regardless of your character.

Super Street Fighter II rectified this somewhat, as Zangief got his own burn sprites, which were reused for T.Hawk (in addition to there now being stand and crouch burns).

However, at no point in a 2D Street Fighter game did everyone get their own burn animation. The Alpha series (and thus MVC by reusing the sprites) went with a more cartoony artstyle, and had a generic orange color filter applied to burned players with a few translucent flames, similar to KOF. The same applied with III and CVS2, but with better animation. Capcom's Darkstalkers had unique cartoony ash face effects for everyone (even the headswap).

SF4, however, managed to replicate the effect by darkening and/or reddening the textures on the foe and adding the flame effect.  Some attacks make the foe go darker than others, which was a nice touch.

In the end: I have two questions:

1) What would specific burn animations of the other SF2 characters have looked like?
2) Could other fighters have characters identified from the burn silhouettes?

Sonic Lost World

I didn't choose the Freedom Planet Life. The Freedom Planet Life chose me

With my recent rant against SEGA's sociopath-like actions, some may ask "what's with the Sonic background?" My answer, I'm still interested in Sonic as a universe. Not so much in the franchise of games. And it's thanks to Sonic Lost World, one of the most utterly DIRE games I have ever had the misfortune to play (up there with F-14 Tomcat on the GBA), and the biggest piece of shit I have received for Christmas.

The worst factor is that I was utterly excited for this turd on first announcement. When first revealed, we were given a picture of a mysterious planetoid made of hexagons, that appeared to be falling apart, and Sonic and Tails were approaching it in the Tornado I.

This new location seemed interesting. Its biomes seemed consistent with deleted levels from prior Sonic games. With its status as a "lost world", could it have those ancient levels? Initial suspicious levied at the game included being exclusive to a failing system, and looking too Mario-ish. Others joked about these whines.

Then they unveiled a group of guardians, who looked "very cartoonish, like something from Rayman". They were shown in silhouette only.

Mysterious and spooky.

What were they? Were they friends or foes? Would they be playable? Were there more? People's excitement continued to boil, as fan-made logos were crafted, interpretations of the six were made, and plenty of guesses about the game's plot were posited.

Better than the official one by far

People were wanting to see the Chaotix, Tikal, Nack, and many other characters get involved after years of Sola Sonica. They hoped for an intriguing tale to shiver the bones after the joke plots of Colors and Generations. And then the trailer dropped.

Hey look, the Animal Friends! It seems that my theory about them having their own language is confirmed. And they're in... Green Hill Zone? The real thing? Wheeeeew... SLAM! Here come the "guardian" fellows.

They look pretty nasty, but not that bad. Definitely not "big bad" material, but fun bosses anyway. Maybe there's a bigger threat in here? Ah, here comes Sonic. 

Round 1, Fight! Sonic whooshes off into GHZ. It seems oddly... fake. Why's everything so cubist/paper-mâché? Why's the grass blocky paper? How come the Badniks look EXACTLY like the Genesis ones except for a few color differences? 

Hey look, Galaxy-ish parkour skills! Is that the gimmick? It looks kinda fun, and fits with Sonic, too. I noticed how he could run up walls in the classic games and especially the Adventures. 

Only Sonic is playable... Again. Why? We're tired of Sola Sonica! Can you give us one other character to play as?  Well, it seems they're in the story, at least, and more of them too.

That red dude said "Your fate is to be destroyed. Why don't you accept that? Lie down and die!" Wow, he's kinda threatening, expected him to be a total joke. WISPS? They're back? Why? They were left on their home planet at the end of Colors, how could they return to Sonic? Why pick Wisps, and NEW ones at that, over our favorite characters? The Eagle looks cool, but that musical note one... way too gimmicky and specific.

Ugh, Pontaff is back. Why them? Can they even bother with a serious tale? More gameplay. It's kinda finicky, hopefully it shall be fixed by release. At least the levels seem very varied. Even the gameplay types tend to change up, and there's a lot of level archetypes not previously seen in Sonic.

I theorized that each of these Deadly Six was actually a parody of a known Sonic hater:

• Zavok: GameInformer. His size reflects their professional status and sheer reach through their magazine. He also is quite threatening to Sonic with his above lines.
• Zazz: Mariotehplumber. He lurks in the GHZ ripoff, wants to "pound his sorry blue butt", and is rather spastic and thin.
• Zeena: Hoggys2much. The token gal gets compared to the nasty old womanizer. Zeena's cold home reflects Hoggy's cold heart and cold domain of lawless social networks.
• Zor: Gligar13Vids. His emo nature reflects Gligar's lust of dark content. 
• Zomon: Konata1000. They both look pretty wonky.
• Zik: Zero Punctuation. Fits by being the oldest and most curmudgeonly. 

Zeena is getting a ton of fan art, plus more than a few group shots as well. Meanwhile, Conflicting Views as a few other places started complaining that the game was "kiddie" and referring to it as Sonic Lost Mind. They were weeding out everything that was "un-Sonicy", like Dessert Ruins 3. They kept on screaming "The Nintendoization of Sonic!"

Well, this game's going to prove pretty fun, right? I enjoyed the Unleashed Trilogy, how can this be any worse? It's gonna be like those with more exploration-based gameplay and a somewhat darker story.

And then the game dropped. Mediocre reviews? What is this? Maybe they were right, I ended up with the game for Christmas. And oh boy, did it suck. Hard. It was so rancid it put me off Sonic games.  Well, let me sum up this hunk of junk in one witty sentence:

This Is Your Sonic On Drugs

The gameplay is a broken mess of gimmicks, bad controls, half-baked ideas, glitches, unforgiving difficulty,  and general tedium. The story tried to be decent, but fell flat on its face with unlikable characters. The visuals are forgettable at best. The music is so un-Sonic it can be described as anti-Sonic.

Actually, this applies to the whole game. This game tortured me with horridness.

First, let us discuss the "Deadly" Six, who feel like more of a nuisance than a threat regardless of how much the story tries. You almost feel sorry for them (and there's a few fans that did). They're also a horde of stereotypes that border on the offensive at times, and nothing else. Particularly aggravating is the fact they apparently die in Lava Mountain. Eggman is just as pathetic. The poor fellow is officially a complete Squidward.

He falls victim to Sonic's heroic antics, causing catastrophe to happen to him, and at the end, is still treated as a villain and given a karmic punishment. Even the boss battle couldn't make him a threat: hear this spicy POLKA music to battle him against as he fights you in a clone of the Egg Nega Wisp without any of the tension, excitement, or surprise.

And Knuckles? Knuckles has officially become a total Butt Monkey. All he does is get shoved by Amy and carried off by the Animal Friends. Poor guy, especially with the Pendering (induced largely by SEGA) destroying much of his remaining relevance. It's a good thing he wasn't around to experience the horrors of the later levels, especially that fucking snowball one. But I didn't get to experience most of this bullshit. I was already put off.

I was put off by the aggravation apparent in the crap level design. And Tails the primadonna. And the shit music.  Well, let's start with the opening cutscene. Sonic and Baldy McNosehair have a dogfight in the air. Sonic wants Baldy to "drop the critters". He complies, and sends them hurtling down off his Egg-O-Matic. They land on a planetoid called Lost Hex. Tails tells Sonic "It's the Lost Hex!" as if the both of them have known the place for a long time. We land, and basically the first glimpse of this "lost world" is practically Green Hill Zone. Way to start your new alien world, Izuka.

After a bit of simple parkouring and fidgeting to get used to this new style, we encounter these "deadly"  weirdos. Baldy tells sonic "They are no-one's friends!" "These are the Deadly Six,and they are your worst enemies!"  And then the thin pink creep says some sociopaths things to Sonic. Lets see how you turn out, pinky! He's weaker than Cut Man. Stinking Cut Man! Next, we fight him again after a finicky cave level. Hasn't grown a bit. Next is Desert Ruins. How compelling.

Our next baddie is Zomom after an admittedly fun Mach Speed area. His battle's actually pretty innovative and cool, with him shifting the little blocky head about before butt slamming IN 3D!

After that, however, things go to utter shit fast. Welcome to candy land. That zone made no sense. Why do the donuts float and spin in synchronization? Why is the road just licorice? Why all the arbitrary platforms? Next comes a lousy chase stage with Zomom in a tornado. After a super-gimmick battle, the Six betray Eggman, and then Sonic teams up with Baldy to stop them. 

Tropical Coast was mostly lousy and forgettable, except for the excellent Act 3, a highlight of the game. By Act 4, I decided "This is absolutely not Sonic." And I never played it again.

Lost Mind? Lost Sanity? Lost Cause? Lost Balls? I have a better name for this shit:

Sonic Ordeal

"ATTITUDE is the difference between an Adventure and an Ordeal". This is one of my favorite messages I have discovered.

Here, we have a Sonic game with no attitude whatsoever:

Ow the Lack of edge!

The characters act like they're in a Seth MacFarlane cartoon, uncaring of the "crisis" at hand. The music is varied but unfitting. And the graphics are eye-bleedingly doofy and neon. 

I now support the Adventure Spirit.

Overlooked Games: Random Heroes Series

Why has "app game" become a derogatory term? Why is everyone in the gaming world so afraid of games for phones regardless of content? Maybe it's due to the skinnerboxes, bland clones, broken ports, and dadaist slop that often haunt the truly vast App Store, blending in with and crowding out what is actually good there, giving the impression that all apps are evil. And with the ease of milking casuals through skinnerboxes, this is becoming horrifyingly common. 

Today on Overlooked Games, I will be writing an article on a certain series of iOS games which are my go-to apps for killing time: the Random Heroes series. Random Heroes is a series of 16-bit styled side scrolling action platformers focused on taking out alien enemies.

Developed by Ravenous Games, Random Heroes began life as an online flash game on Armor Games. You could play as a number of "heroes", whom were mostly the same, on a retro shooting adventure to gun down green aliens. Killed aliens would explode into coins, which could be spent on guns. Later, an iOS game was released, and the series truly began to pick up steam. Now, the number of heroes and weapons had expanded greatly, and each had different stats.

Overall the game was mostly the same as the browser original: a nice little diversion with a sweet 16-bit look and feel. The game apparently did well enough for a sequel to be greenlit, and that sequel was Random Heroes 2. This game here convinced me that Ravenous may be the best unsung developer out there.

Unlike the original where they only had different stats (and were referred to as mere costumes for Bandit), the heroes had different abilities from one another. The princess is my favorite: she can float in an obvious nod to another, more famous princess. While it's one different ability each, this combined with the stats is just enough to spark some replay value.

I haven't played the third yet, but all three seem to be worth your time.

SEGA is the Patrick Star of the Video Game Industry

The consumer is poor Gary

Yes, that Patrick, the one who a certain Mr. Enter declared a sociopath, the most evil character on SpongeBob. SEGA are sociopaths.

Unlike EA or Activision, which have a cold, business-minded sort of evil to them, or others like Atari who are just rather petty, SEGA seem to have a love for gleeful and active torment of their consumers. Lets take a look at their primary weapon, Sanic Sawneek Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic 2006 met a poor reception, and journalists everywhere complained. SEGA's response was to fix the wrongs with the game in a bizarre and extremist way with Sonic Unleashed.

The characters other than the Genesis ones are complained about? Pretty much give them the boot and make Sonic the only playable character. Too sluggish? Make a speed-oriented playstyle. Too serious? FOOD JOKES and unbuilt-upon world-building it is! Unfortunately, Sonic's playstyle was quite vapid and the other characters were forbidden, so they came up with a Werehog gameplay. Despite being Sonic, it was truly the series's most alien playstyle (other than the Tornado Defense and Gaia Colossus, which were COMPLETELY alien to core Sonic play but only lasted for a little bit), and rather trashy too. In the end, reception was lukewarm.

Past the energetic main gameplay, there wasn't much to it. Sure, there was the whole "collecting souvenirs" and other small bits here and there, but those weren't much compared to Chao Gardens. The lukewarmness, combined with some poor spinoff games, led to a game called "Project Needlemouse"

The game was given more and more tantalizing tidbits as the months ticked on, with all indicators translating to the revival of classic Sonic. And then it came. It was Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode One. Despite the modern Sonic and whatnot, people were still pumped for the game, and wanted it to be great. Then the game dropped, met a horrific reception in the fandom as a paraiah, and that was the last straw.

No, it wasn't. Critics only saw a lukewarm reception to the game, as opposed to despisal. SEGA, now knowing Sonic had lost all respect in the mainstream, killed Sonic, like Crash before him and Bomberman, B.K., Megaman, and others afterwards...

WRONG!

SEGA chose to torture the "fandom" and little kids with their old hedgepig. Have you even seen the games released recently?

Ha ha, so edgy. 

Uhh... I can explain

Other publishers and developers would have killed a franchise for a bad streak. Yet SEGA chooses to keep Sonic around as an instrument of torture, despite the games selling less and less, and appeal dropping to zero. They even got their paws on the spinoff media, like neglecting and at the same time overbearing the comics (remember the Pendering? It was SEGA's fault), making utter crap action figures (Storm before Blaze?), and the fiasco that is the Boom animated series (the opposite of what the fans desire). But enough of Sonic.

Their other classic IP are all laying dead in a safe somewhere, even though many of them are truly beloved by many, And some have came back for a short while to lukewarm reception. Super Monkey Ball has become a Peggle clone. And what of their newer IP? Shit, all shit (Except Hell Yeah!). Forgettable shit, but shit nonetheless. Particular mention goes to Jack Lumber, an indie game SEGA published. They mistreated and spited the developers of the game as well. And SEGA isn't doing this for money, no. They're losing more and more money even though similar tactics earn EA (Mr. Krabs) and Activision (Plankton) cash and territory (thankfully people ARE starting to wise up on them). SEGA are simply torturing because it is fun.

And that's what make them the true monsters of the industry.

"We Are Groot"... Sorry, What?

We are Groot.

- Groot, Guardians of the Galaxy

Guardians of the Galaxy features among its leads a tree-like alien named Groot, who works closely with Rocket Raccoon. His vocabulary is limited to "I am Groot", which is likely the language of his species, like how it is in the comics.

However, near the end, he says "We are Groot." as he creates a shield around the other Guardians. This line is ostensibly meant to be heartwarming, demonstrating how Groot has matured with the rest of the team. If you look into it, this line actually doesn't make much sense. As I mentioned above, "I am Groot" is presumably the language of his species. If so, how did he say "We are Groot?" Is the "we are" part a special set of words in his language? Is he actually fluent in his native tongue but only knows five words of English? Was that seemingly heartwarming scene all a joke? 

Because that's what it comes off as to me.

Welcome to the Ha! Parried! Column!

Ha! Parried is my new column meant as a sort of counter to Michael Westgarth's pro-Mario tirades! Basically, in every single post of this column, I will make a counter-argument to one of Westgarth's columns about Sonic! Since Conflicting Views apparently closed up shop, this is meant to be a spiritual successor to that site.

How to Utterly Raze a Franchise

I've always dreaded the day I'd have to do this. With all the complaints about the fall of Sonic/Mario/Street Fighter/Call of Duty/Pokemon/etc, and claims that Sonic's a dead franchise, people had to bring up franchises that fell harder than Sonic. Crash Bandicoot, Secret of Mana, Bomberman... But now, I think even those have had pleasant fates compared to what I think is the worst downfall in video game history: Backyard Baseball.

I've dreaded the day i'd have to bring up Backyard Baseball. This series went from a beautifully-sprited, functional baseball game full of life and color, to this mediocre sports league-shilling-fest with overpowered celebrity stars.

And then into this abomination:

For the sake of comparison, Sonic 06 got a 46% Metascore, whereas Backyard Baseball 09 got a 37. IGN gave Bomberman: Act Zero a 3, whereas Backyard Baseball 09 got a 1, a score close to such "luminaries" as Anubis II, Action Girlz Racing, Ninjabread Man, and Anubis II. For reviewers, Backyard Baseball was officially on level with Wii shovelware. Sonic was only on level with mediocre movie tie-ins, Backyard Baseball had it much worse. Emphasis on "had" because after one last installment in Sandlot Sluggers, meant to win back the old fans, the franchise died. Why was Sandlot Sluggers unable to save it?

Because it still had many of the same flaws as the other recent entries. The character models were very grotesque, and were teenagers and not children. Many old characters were still missing. There was still an overabundance of unneeded key commands. And it still played poorly.

With that, Backyard Baseball was completely run into the ground, through the core of the Earth, and all the way into the vacuum of space.