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Category: 2022

What Is A Metroidvania Game And Why I Love Them

When I was younger, I played a decent number of 3D platformers but generally steered clear of 2D platformers. This changed around the mid-2010s when I ended up playing the earlier Sonic games along with Super Meat Boy. Afterwards, I was far more receptive to them and would actively seek them out. However, as I continued to explore 2D platformers, I gradually became aware of a subgenre that is commonly, but not exclusively, associated with 2D platforming, Metroidvania. As I’ve played more and more of these games, I’ve come to realise that they’ve become one of my favourite genres. Having said all that, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at what a Metroidvania game is and how I’ve come to love them.

First, let’s start by looking at the name “Metroidvania”. Interestingly, the genre name is a portmanteau of Metroid and Castlevania and, understandably, speaks to the influence that these two franchises had. The original Metroid game, released in 1986, helped to establish the concept that your character starts out relatively basic with few abilities but explores a large map while gaining new permanent abilities that allows you to access areas that you weren’t able to before. Castlevania originally started out as a more typical platformer but shifted, with the release of Symphony of the Night in 1997, to a style similar to Metroid but including more RPG elements.

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Perhaps The Most Controversial Anime Ever – Midori

I recently wrote about my thoughts on disturbing movies and I brought up the disturbing movie iceberg since it showed me a whole slew of disturbing movies that I’d never even heard of. Something that did quite surprise me though was learning that an entry simply referred to as “Shoujo Tsubaki” was an anime. As you know by now, I’m a big fan of anime and I found it fascinating that I’d never heard of this film, particularly since it shared its tier with other films like Martyrs, Cannibal Holocaust and A Serbian Film. As I began to research the movie, I found the history and production of the film to be interesting enough that I decided that I should write an article covering perhaps the most controversial anime ever, Midori.

Interestingly, the genesis of this anime goes back to the era of kamishibai where a character known as the Camellia Girl (Shoujo Tsubaki in Japanese) developed. This character would be either adolescent or preadolescent who starts out by selling flowers to raise money and eventually is forced to work at a circus. Suehiro Maruo, a mangaka, took inspiration from this character and developed a manga which would later be released in English as “Mr. Arashi’s Amazing Freak Show” around 1984. It was this manga that the anime film would go on to adapt.

The cover for the manga “Mr. Arashi’s Amazing Freak Show”.
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An Overview Of The Monkey Island Video Game Series

I have a great admiration for the classics of the point and click adventure genre as many of them have a wonderful charm, sharp humour and interesting puzzles. However, there’s no debate that the heyday of these games has long passed and, while the genre certainly isn’t dead, new point and click adventure games are certainly much more sparse these days than in the past. However, with a new release in the venerable Monkey Island video game series, I thought it might be interesting to provide an overview of the games that make up this franchise.

The Secret of Monkey Island

The first game in the series, The Secret of Monkey Island, was originally released in 1990 and was directed by industry legend Ron Gilbert who also cowrote the game with Dave Grossman and Tim Schafer. It follows Guybrush Threepwood who has just arrived at Mêlée Island in the hopes of becoming a pirate. The games style of humour has been rightly praised but one of the most important innovations that The Secret of Monkey Island contributed to the genre was the lack of death or dead ends. Prior to The Secret of Monkey Island, it was common in point and click adventure games to die due to a mistake or end up running into a dead end due to missing a key item earlier in the story. Ron Gilbert opposed this form of game design, saying “At no point should the player’s journey through the story in a game come to an abrupt end because they did something wrong.

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Why You Should Know About Animation Legend Max Fleischer

I’ve spoken about a couple of important American animators in the past that I feel are not as well known as they should be but, with regard to those, they are relatively recent animators who began to work in the 50s before later starting to direct films in the 70s and 80s. Today, I want to take a look at an animation legend who began working on animation in the very early 1900s, Max Fleischer, and why you should know about him.

To give a quick background to Max Fleischer before he started his animation career, he was born on July 19th, 1883 in Krakow which was then part of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, also known as Austrian Poland. He migrated with his family to the US in 1887 and he later studied and learned about art at the Art Students League of New York. He eventually got a job at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, a newspaper, working as an errand boy before eventually becoming a cartoonist for them. He met fellow cartoonist John Randolph Bray while working there and later worked with him at Paramount to produce animation.

Max Fleischer
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Comparison Of Most Popular Games On Steam And Steam Deck

I’ve spoken about the Steam Deck before, what my thoughts were, how I hoped that it would increase the Linux market share within gaming, provide competition in the portable gaming market etc. Now that it’s been out for a while, and clearly been successful, we’re continuing to see more and more fascinating information come out about the platform and its impact. One piece of info that I’ve found particularly interesting is the games that people are choosing to play and I thought it would be interesting to do a comparison of the most popular games on Steam and the Steam Deck.

Let’s start by taking a look at the most popular games on Steam itself. Looking at the chart below which was taken on the day that this article was written, you’ll notice that multiplayer games, particularly shooters, dominate the Steam platform with only a couple of games that could be considered single player scattered among them. This makes sense to me as multiplayer games tend to be highly replayable while also receiving content updates regularly.

Observe the dominance of multiplayer games on Steam.
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The Interesting Situation Of Taiwanese Manhua

I remember writing an article some years back titled “OEL Manga, Manhwa And Manhua” in which I discussed forms of manga from the English-speaking world, Korean language and the Chinese languages. Recently, I saw an article which noted that a Taiwanese manhua artist called Gao Yan had been noticed and praised by the Japanese industry. Seeing this, I thought it might be interesting to take a particular look at Taiwanese manhua and the situation it’s in.

To start with, let’s take a look at the history of Taiwanese manhua. There is some debate as to when manhua began in Taiwan but one of the earliest known examples comes from 1935 when an artist named Ji Long-sheng released a comic strip that took a satirical look at society in Taiwan while under the control of Japan. Manga would go on to have quite an effect on the development of Taiwanese manhua as manga remained popular even after the Japanese left.

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What’s An Anime TV Special?

I think we’re all familiar with what a TV special is but I’ve noticed that there’s little discussion when it comes to TV specials with regards to anime. I have my own theory on that that I’ll share later but I thought that the topic of TV specials with regards to anime is worth exploring, particularly since I’ve noted that there’s some mild confusion that some people have with these.

To start off with that mild confusion, it seems that some people are unsure of the difference between an anime TV special and an OVA. Basically, an OVA is an anime that was initially released on a home video format such as VHS, DVD or Blu-ray while an anime TV special is produced for television and, while it may be associated with a franchise or TV series, typically tells a standalone story that can be consumed by itself.

The poster for Bye Bye, Lady Liberty, the first Lupin the Third TV special.
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The Strange Career Of Director Uwe Boll

I can remember quite vividly that, while I was in secondary school, I wanted to see some good video game movie adaptations, something which was and still is quite difficult, and I quickly ran into a name that I was told time and time again to avoid, Uwe Boll. Sometimes called “the world’s worst director“, I thought it may be interesting to take a look at Uwe Boll and his strange career.

Uwe Boll was born in the West German city of Wermelskirchen on June 22nd, 1965 and later attended the universities of Cologne and Siegen. I was also surprised to learn that Uwe Boll has a PHD with his thesis being the popularity of genre stories in 18th century Germany.

Uwe Boll.
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What Exactly Is The Japanese Era System?

When I talk about Japanese media, I have on occasion mentioned Japanese era names such as Showa, Heisei and Reiwa. Specific times that I recall mentioning them are when I discussed the Godzilla franchise and when I touched on Shigeru Mizuki’s manga “Showa: A History of Japan” but there may’ve be other times I cannot recall. Anyway, someone asked me the other day what I meant whenever I mentioned those names. Therefore, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at what exactly the Japanese era system is.

The first thing to realise is that this system works very differently from the calendar system we’re familiar with, the Gregorian calendar, in that the years aren’t counted continuously and instead restarts at the beginning of each era. This system was originally imported from China around 645 CE and, barring a few periods of disuse, has been continuously used in Japan since then.

The kanji for “Reiwa”, the current era.
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What Makes A Video Game A Spiritual Successor?

Recently a Kickstarter to fund two JRPGs from veterans of the JRPG industry was launched with the intention to provide spiritual successors to both the Wild Arms series as well as the Shadow Hearts series. When I told this to someone the other day, their question was “What does being a spiritual successor mean?”. This made me wonder how many other people are unaware of the meaning when a video game is called a spiritual successor. Therefore, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at what a spiritual successor is when it comes to video games.

The first thing we should discuss is what the term “spiritual successor” actually means. A spiritual successor is a work that employs the style, themes or, in the case of video games, gameplay of a prior piece of media while being separate and legally distinct with none of the characters, creatures, world etc. that made up the previous work. There are many reasons why this may be the case and we’ll go through these reasons while also providing examples.

The titles featured in the Kickstarter are spiritual successors to both Wild Arms and Shadow Hearts.
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