Serah Elliott

She/her Huge dork. Watch my dumb videos! https://youtube.com/@ethereal_worlds Check out my website! https://ethereal-worlds.neocities.com 

[serahtherabbit]

NEW VIDEO TIME

The structure and systems of your average survival horror game owe a great deal to the dungeon crawl format created by the original Dungeons & Dragons. That format was invented to simulate a very specific era of macabre adventure fantasy fiction, though, so how does that impact the way that survival horror games tell their stories?

[serahtherabbit]

Even before we had the internet at home, anime fans were out here making their own games, digital zines, and gallery disks full of fan art and eroge rips for all the world to see. It's fascinating stuff and I have a video all about it!

[serahtherabbit]

I've just been reading a 1989 Amiga disk magazine about anime and manga and holy shit they hate Astro Boy so much!!!!

[suppermariobroth]

Illustration from a Satellaview broadcast depicting unethical experiments being conducted on Luigi.

The Satellaview was a Japan-only add-on for the Super Famicom that allowed it to receive satellite transmissions; while it is most commonly known for featuring games, it also offered shows that had live audio alongside a slideshow of pictures. Many of these featured bizarre and outlandish scenarios involving Mario characters.

Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Source: twitter.com user "TheUltiMarioFan"

[sonichedgeblog]

‘Klonoa Gameplay Mod’ (SADX Mod) by Sora-yx Wahoo! Adds Klonoa to the game! https://shc.zone/entries/contest2023/870

[micfrog]

Just saw a post about an indie game being trashed for being inaccessible and how difficulty is just a filter. It's an interesting discussion to have in a different circumstance but their example is something along the lines of: "this inexpensive game made by maybe two or three people is the worst most toxic example of exclusionary design in games, but I only think this because my reading comprehension is closer to a bug or fungus and the real reason was technical constraints that I was made aware of."

Something about that doesn't feel right to me, and is likely indicative of why productive discussion of video games won't or maybe can't happen. People just don't want to read.

[quinnkdev]

My Failed Translations for other French RPG Maker Games: "Duplo", "Exercice de Style", "Dark Soul.Ace"

So, while looking through my games folder on my computer, I stumbled across three RPG Maker 2003 titles I'd like to briefly talk about.

A few years ago - nearly a decade by this point, most likely - I was such an enormous fan of Mortis Ghost's work that I was effectively scraping the bottom of the barrel. Comics and non-game works, but also: Short jam-games, and group-efforts, and shitposts...

Which brings me to my numerous failed translation efforts of those kinds of games. More under the cut.

Dark Soul.Ace

I'll head Dark Soul.Ace, the shitpost of the bunch, off at the pass:

I played it, and didn't think it was particularly interesting or funny.

I looked through the code, and, at the time, was confused, and mixed with the fact I didn't find it entertaining, a translation never got off the ground. I had no passion for it.

Below is the "trailer" for this shitpost game. Be advised that it's VERY late 00s-era humour, and really hasn't aged gracefully.

It gets more interesting from here, though:

Duplo

As far as I remember, this was a jam game Mortis Ghost made together with Exaheva, another comics artist he was collaborating with at the time. Exaheva is still around these days, and she seems a good sort!

Duplo was a strange little beast. Clocking in at only around 15 minutes of playtime, it's a game wherein the protagonist (whose name escapes me atm) lives in a sucky town in a sucky world where people are jerks to him - and then finds a hat that, when put on, transfers him to a version of that same world where people are actually nice to him and respect him!

My translation of this one actually got a decent bit further than the one of the other games I named. My main issue were the colloquialisms it used, which I could much more easily push through now.

If I had more spare time, I'd actually finish it - but while this game is only slightly edgy by today's standards, I still feel like there's not really a demand for "Duplo" to be brought to the English language.

Exercice de Style

This one hurts to admit as my great, big failure. For many reasons!

Those of you who have read some of my Patreon posts about An Outcry's story will know that I have a fondness for the French Oulipo, a kind of writer's association (founded in the 1960s) whose main philosophy is the use of intricate restrictions in order to focus the potency of a written work.

Well, one writer under that umbrella was Raymond Queneau! And he wrote a short book called "Style Exercises", in which he told the same, simple story of a man having an argument on a bus in several different writing and narration styles.

And in ~2009, the Oniromancie forums, as instructed by Exaheva, did the same with RPG Maker 2003.

The "vanilla" story is really simple: You're a plucky RPG hero living in a house with your mum and your sister, when, ALAS! A slime attacks a girl outside! You kill it, and the day is saved.

And among 15 variations, this story would be turned on its head, and retold in several interesting fashions. There's one told from the perspective of a slime's family; One where everyone is a featureless cube; one where the entire thing is an action-RPG on the overworld rather than turn-based one; a dystopian sci-fi one; one made BY Mortis Ghost and one made in the STYLE of OFF - hell, even one that's just a visual novel!

"That's so interesting!", I hear you say. "I want to play that!" Well...

The reason I didn't finish my translation of this one is unfortunately, multifold.

A lot of the text in these 15 game-variations is hard-coded - or rather, hard-printed onto assets. Translating that means translating and editing a staggering amount of image assets without interfering with their size or dimensions, which is a nightmarish edge to walk on.

Some of these have really not aged gracefully - specifically the VN-variation I felt was really ill-conceived and had a incestual ending (????????)

A few of these game variations are VERY buggy. Specifcally the one Mortis Ghost had a strong hand in - the "abstract horror" one - has a glitch where the walls cease to function, and generally-speaking, the game deals very badly with finishing one of the variations and returning to the scene-selection screen. I don't... want to scour through code that I didn't make to fix all of that. Straight-up.

Now, do I suggest you check this game out? Sure, if you can find it. I'm purposefully not providing a download link here because I'm unsure where Mortis or the other contributors stand with this often silly and sometimes ugly thing, but I do think it's absolutely worth being checked out for people who love weird and obscure RPG Maker 2003 titles.

imo, it's worth it alone for the surreal horror piece that Mortis created with the story. It's a little silly, and you can tell it's not taking itself 100% seriously, but somehow it manages to be genuinely disquieting at the same time.

[serahtherabbit]

The video is out!

The UK's Official PS1 Magazine lasted until March 2004, long after the PS1 had been thoroughly replaced in the mainstream by its sleeker younger brother. In lieu of any real news, the magazine relied on quirky humour and bizarre new features to attract readers, which included a literal Final Fantasy fanzine. While we're here, why don't we trace the lineage of some of the most popular Net Yaroze games back to their origins on the Amiga and Atari ST?

[freakinasheet]

Shoutout to what is maybe the funniest game balance mod I’ve ever seen

(Context: In MMBN, all chips have a letter code, and you’re able to use chips that have the same letter code together in the same turn, so it’s an effective strategy to load up your folder with as many matching letters as possible. In Battle Network 2, the “G” code just happened to be filled with a lot of strong, easily obtained chips, making it disproportionately powerful. This mod balances the game by removing the “G” code, changing all chips that used to be “G” to different letters, and for good measure, removing all other instances of the letter G from the entire rest of the game)

[ganondorf]

[sparrow-va]

(via @some-loser-called-jab )

[serahtherabbit]

Honestly just obsessed with this sort of UI design at the moment. I *love maximalism*. I love when the HUD is built to reinforce the game's intended tone. It rocks

[serahtherabbit]

We need to bring back elaborate, maximalist HUDs.

(Game is Evil's Doom for AGA Amigas)

[serahtherabbit]

I love MGS and Final Fantasy will forever have my heart, but when I think of "PS1 vibes" it's always something like one of these.

[quinnkdev]

[quinnkdev]

This post got a lot of attention, so I should probably tell you all a few things about this game:

It has a name that you don't get to know yet.

It's about life in a dead-end town ruled by evil birds.

You are employed as the evil birds' town secretary, and have to make difficult decisions for the town as instructed by the head-bird.

You may just be able to rebel against them - but be cautious...

Think of it as a mix between An Outcry, Moon, Papers Please and Hotel Dusk.

Your support of my making this project and BLANKSWORD alongside it would be immensely appreciated:

Patreon

Patreon is empowering a new generation of creators. Support and engage with artists and creators as they live out their passions!

[cherubcallremade]

im having a moment

[quinnkdev]

Thinking about how strange it feels to have made a story for a video game that is very overtly "European" and more specifically of the country I grew up in (Austria), but is - well, no nice way of putting it - nearly impossible to tell in the language of that same country.

The obvious take-away from this would be that the story is too convoluted, or that German is insufficient, being a gendered language - but I can't help but feel a strange anger over this. Like capitalism and the imperialism it necessitates have robbed me of my ability to tell my stories and the stories of my people in the language we grew up with first, rather than second.

An Outcry would need to be painstakingly translated to German so people from my country who can't read English can play it. And that, considering the game is about local (and European) LGBTQ+ culture, is maddening.

The reach and influence of English are so pervasive that they bother on coercion; keeping a work contained to a language other than it is dooming it to obscurity, especially if it's already a niche "product" (ugh) as-is. I put a lot of my mental and financial resources into finishing that game, so making it German first and English second simply wasn't on the table if I wanted to be recompensed for even part of the labour I put in.

I really can't imagine how much worse this must feel for those whose languages are at the brink of extinction, or even already dead, killed by the English language. Itself, it isn't malignant, but the expectations associated with it for sure are; the laws and societal norms, the discrimination and hiring practices. They're erosive.

I feel a deep need to push back against this problem, but I don't know how to while still making a living. Maybe I need to accept that this world is no longer made for ~90% of its population- but I can't pretend to think that that is okay.

[majocrafter]

Made a tribute to my super cool girlfriend @serahtherabbit https://www.youtube.com/@ethereal_worlds

[serahtherabbit]

My beautiful girlfriend drew an Amiga-loving StC Amy for me!!!