The Other Side of the Fourth Wall

 When I was young, I played SkiFree on Windows, with a collection of various other games in the Microsoft Entertainment Pack 3. Several of those games left an impression on me in various ways, but SkiFree was, in some ways, the most memorable. The game is somewhat basic skiing, so there isn't all that much to say about it. You ski down a mountain, shown from a top-down perspective, from the top of the screen to the bottom, while trying to avoid hazards such as rocks, trees, and other skiers. You can launch yourself high into the air off of ramps, which, in rainbow hues, stick out on the white snow. There are three different modes- Freestyle, Slalom and Tree Slalom- which are selected by going straight, to the left of the screen (turn right) or to the right of the screen (turn left). Each has its own rules, and once you reach the end of the course, you're scored on your performance. After that, the only thing left to do is ski down an endless mountain slope full of various obsta

While many of my posts are about consuming other people's works and what we can take away from them, this one will be about creating one of your own works. The question I will attempt to tackle this time is- when can you decide that your work is no longer a rough draft, but a finished product? No one is perfect. This is a simple enough truth, albeit one that many people struggle to fully accept. Despite that, another simple truth is one should always strive to do as well as possible; the only question is how well one can expect to do. There are many times when it is obvious that the producer of a piece has not put adequate effort into writing it. The piece may contain many glaring errors, possibly even in the title. There may be times when you end up making mistakes like this, but you should never willingly settle for this level of quality. On the other hand, it's also important to actually finish your writing, and setting your standards too high may prevent you from getting an

School is hardly the most entertaining setting for a video game, especially considering that many children (a major demographic for gamers) are less than enthusiastic about going. Despite that, one game called Skool Daze set out to do what few other games tried to do at the time, making an admirable attempt, albeit not a complete success. Skool Daze (yes, that is how the title is spelled), is a 1984 video game for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, Atari 8 Bit and Oric Computers; I will mainly focus on the Spectrum version. It takes place in what seems to be a British all-boys school, and stars a student named Eric. Eric's goal is to steal his report card from the school safe(updated to a computer in later versions) and replace the grades on it without getting caught. Doing that is easier said than done, however, since it involves completing the following steps. Hit all the shields around the school with Eric's "catapult" (i.e. slingshot). This process most o

Many Danganronpa stories, both canon and fan fiction, have similar story structures, plot developments and other fandom-specific tropes. I came up with a bingo board so you can mark off the tropes you see in any given story, and see if you can get five horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. Here are a few points to consider before you view the board. The letters are columns and the numbers are rows, respectively top to bottom and left to right. For example, A1 is the top left corner, E4 is the the right edge of the second row from the bottom, and C3 is the center. The Protagonist refers to whoever is the protagonist at the end of the fic. Feel free to mix up the spaces as you wish if you aren't getting anywhere with the current layout. Lastly, keep in mind that there will be spoilers for all three canon games, especially when I give examples. Without further ado, here's the board. Play it with your favorite Danganronpa game or fanfic, and see if you can get a bingo! A1.The th

Here is the first installment of a recurring feature in which I look at some of the strangest works of fiction I've ever encountered. I will begin with a video game released for the Panasonic 3DO in 1993- Plumbers Don't Wear Ties. It ostensibly "Plays like a game... feels like a movie," but like many hybrids, it has all of each half's weaknesses and none of either half's strengths. It has a movie's lack of interactivity, and the poor storytelling that was par for the course for most video games back then. So why do people still talk about it more than 25 years later, long after the console was written off as a failure? For all that Plumbers Don't Wear Ties did wrong, it wasn't merely bad, but often spectacularly so, an did things differently from many other games of the early 90s. This post will evaluate the game in a few different areas. What's In A Name? There are a few schools of thought when it comes to naming your work. Some works go for a

I've long enjoyed the Heroes and Might and Magic series, and consider the third game to be the high point of the series. It continued the improvements started in the second game, while still staying true to the fundamentals of the series- turn-based combat with RPG elements for the heroes who lead your armies. The campaigns are largely enjoyable, but have their share of problems, such as rapidly increasing difficulty early on. Steadwick's Fall, an early mission, is unusually difficult compared to the others, and this entry will discuss why that poses a problem. Context For starters, let's provide some details as to where Steadwick's Fall is in the campaign. The campaign mode allows you to start with one of three campaigns- Long Live the Queen, Spoils of War and Dungeons and Devil- and you must complete all three campaigns before you can access the next two. The player must then complete the next two campaigns- Liberation and Long Live the King- to unlock the last campai

The Persona Q series is a fascinating sort of crossover. It unites the casts of Persona 3 and 4 (as well as Persona 5 in Q2) in a hybrid of the Persona series and the Etrian Odyssey. The second game improved on the first in many regards, most notably the following: Rebalancing the combat system to make magic skills more useful, and magic users more viable. Giving the party free HP and SP recovery upon leaving the labyrinth, making it easier to save money to buy gear and items. No longer requiring specific party members for sidequests(with a few exceptions), but instead giving a motivation bonus to the members involved. Letting the party do All-Out Attacks after downing all enemies, instead of having three or more party members enter Boost, which is a system that's easier to understand. Better-written characters who don't fall back on their most noticeable quirks as often. That said, there are some things that Persona Q did better than the sequel, and I will list them here. Stro