i started working on these months and months ago but only just came back and finished the rest so i'd have some extra reference material for artfight - classic-styled sprites of all my robot master ocs! left to right the palettes are nes colours, nes without palette restrictions, and colourpicked right from their art
[click for quality since i imagine tumblr will butcher my perfectly good nearest neighbour upscaling]
we sure may!!!!! rhythm dump under the cut as always
rhythm man was made to do a variety of tasks relating to sound! mostly he either does sound checks for important devices like hydrophones, sonar, seti listening devices, stuff like that, or he analyses the audio that they pick up in greater detail than any human or almost any computer can. someone [probably dr light, who created him] showed him a rhythm game pretty early in his life, and he instantly fell in love with the game genre and, more significantly, the concept of music itself. he's still doing the job he was designed for, but his real passion and arguably what he's better known for in-universe is creating music, which he uses his intricate understanding of audio to excel at
he makes a point of being a cool guy to be around! he's nice, fun-loving, and always has a joke ready. he's very encouraging of others, and thinks everyone should get to chase their dreams and do what makes them happy. when there's no bright side for him to look on, though, he doesn't really know how to act, and as such he feels uncomfortable confronting serious emotional situations and has a bad habit of repressing any negative feelings he doesn't know how to deal with and just letting them get worse. he might be developing some resentment towards his work for how much of his time it takes up that he'd rather be spending pursuing his interests, but oops that's not a fun feeling! better bottle it up and not think about it
all robots are neurodivergent but rhythm in particular has SO much undiagnosed adhd. he [probably] doesn't mind his job, but he can't pretend to be nearly as enthusiastic about it as he is his music, and tends to come off as distracted and spacey when he's at work. he's also capable of entering a hyperfocus-like state that temporarily re-allocates computing power usually dedicated to spatial awareness and sensory processing to focus on something else, which was designed to let him analyse audio with even more precision. rhythm occasionally uses this feature as intended, but more often finds himself turning it on while he's making music or playing a game to get into the groove more
he'll gladly enjoy any genre of music, but anything under the electronic umbrella is his favourite to listen to and create, especially bass music and all its subgenres! outside of genre preferences he likes songs with a lot of tiny bits and pieces and intricate details to notice - i think he'd really enjoy bill wurtz's music, for instance, due to just how much is going on in almost every song. he posts the music he makes online, and has a pretty sizeable following for both the novelty of a robot that makes music and the fact that everything he makes genuinely slaps super hard. being a robot, his criteria for 'good' music is all very simple and objective stuff like whether it's in key or has a time signature that makes sense or follows a pattern rather than just being random sounds, so he's able to appreciate almost any music for what it is and can name the number of songs he actively dislikes on one hand, although despite his best efforts to be forgiving he's a bit of an audio quality snob
the only sound he genuinely doesn't like is white noise, because the total lack of a discernable pattern or anything notable freaks him out. it's hard-coded into him to try and find meaningful noise in very fuzzy sound, and even if he analyses it back and forth on every level and concludes that it's just random aural static he's still left with a feeling of unease about it. his headphones have a sort of noise-cancelling mode that completely blocks out most background noise so he can maintain a conversation without constantly pausing to overanalyse everything he hears - without the noise cancelling he's got the world's worst case of auditory processing disorder. he's weak to psychic cry because it's just a really violent blast of white noise, and is one of the only bosses susceptible to its stunning effect because the sound freaks him out so badly he has to stop for a moment to force himself to ignore it
almost everything about rhythm came from the idea i had for his stage! i imagine it functioning as a sort of rhythm platformer where almost every moving part is timed to the beat of the stage music. it's the obligatory yoku block-spamming stage of the game, but in theory if you follow the music and jump across in time with the beat you'll make it through without much trouble [and maybe even have fun! in a stage with *yoku blocks!!*]. other stuff like constantly-spawning enemies and the attack patterns of rhythm himself would also be on that same beat cycle! as for theming, his stage is a mostly-vertical climb up a radio tower - wily's reprogramming takes his repressed frustration over not always getting to focus on his passion and upgrades it to outright spite, and he decides that actually you WILL listen to his mixtape whether you want to or not and proceeds to hijack the biggest radio tower in mosteropolis and override every single station with lofi beats to take over the world to
rhythm is the first robot master idea i ever had that wasn't a reference to something else, although for a pretty long time he was only a stage idea and a name. maybe that's why his design changed more throughout his development than any of the other guys [even between the sketch and the final lineart for this art i refined his look like 3 times]. initially he had a more 'tough'/punk-ish look, with spikes on his helmet and around his wrists and ankles, but i ended up phasing most of those elements out in favour of the led lights and generally less intimidating look. i briefly considered having his design reference rhythm heaven somehow, since it's my favourite rhythm game and the only one i'm any good at lmao, but nothing came of that - perhaps his stage enemies could have some rh references in their ranks instead, chuck some screwbots up there or something. he also had massive anime sunglasses at some point but it's better for that design to never see the light of day
he also likes dancing! hence his funky moves in the art. his body shape isn't compatible with every dance style what with the clunky robot limbs and having a stereo for a chest, and he definitely wasn't built for physical agility, but with a little practice he can pick up most dance moves no problem. he's definitely a dance battler, and i think he would love rhythm games that trick you into exercising like dance dance revolution or just dance. rhythm man does a frame perfect ddr tas in real-time on an actual cabinet
that about wraps it up for the rhythm infodump, thank you for asking about him!! as always here's the unfiltered and transparent versions of his artwork
THEM! who built them? what sort of weapons do they have? what's the weakness cycle?
-THEM!!!!!
-i'm not sure who created them [aside from drum, who's obviously a wily bot], but i'm thinking they'd mostly be from different scientists! tide man in particular i'll probably make either a lalinde or cossack bot, since he's based on the design for ocean man the same way vesper is based on honey woman both in-universe and in real life and i like the idea of light giving all his friends his unused blueprints to have fun with hnfjkbn
-the weapon wheel looks like this! i imagine drum would be a wily castle boss in the fangame for them but i'm not sure what she'd be weak to. maybe psychic cry?
i am absolutely bonkers for coming up with weapon ideas but even repressing the urge to ramble as much as possible the post got way super long so those and some charmingly bad ms paint illustrations are under the cut!!
rhythm man gives beat drop - a stomp attack that sends out a shockwave to hurt any enemies touching the ground. probably accompanied by some kind of bass boosting noise.
pixel man gives pixel firewall - a shield weapon with three orbiting pieces. it can absorb up to three attacks, or the remaining pieces of the shield can be fired by shooting. as projectiles, they home in on the nearest enemy rather than being fired directionally.
cool woman gives sleet foot - an attack that replaces the slide like charge kick in mm5. when rock kicks an enemy that doesn't die in one hit to the damage, it gets encased in a block of ice and slides away until it either hits a wall and shatters or slides harmlessly offscreen or into a pit.
care woman gives psychic cry - a blast of white noise, too high-pitched for humans or most robots to hear. it doesn't do any more damage than the mega buster outside of weaknesses, but it stuns enemies it hits for about a second.
tide man gives harpoon shot - imagine the hookshot from zelda but in a 2d platformer and you've got the basic idea. a harpoon gun that can be fired left, right, up, or diagonally up. if it hits an enemy or the side of the screen it bounces back to rock, if it hits a wall he'll be pulled to wherever the harpoon landed.
sweet woman gives sugar rush - a glob of icing shot in an arc similar to flame burst from mm6, but without the explosion. honestly it's kind of a joke weapon, but given how much use i got out of flame burst thanks to its trajectory it's probably useful for something. it can be rapid fired by holding down the shoot button.
hex woman gives eerie pulsar - a charged area-of-effect attack with three levels of charge increasing in range, damage, and energy cost. uncharged it's a quick zap within social distancing range, partially charged it goes further, and fully charged it's a screen nuke. rock can't move when he's charging and it takes a couple seconds to fully charge, so it isn't a get out of jail free card like other screen nukes, but it's still pretty helpful i would hope. also this one was the hardest to draw i know this doesn't look clear at all sorry hjwnkjgdbn
glass man gives molten shard - a shard of white-hot glass that explodes when it hits a wall. if it hits an enemy that it destroys in one hit, it keeps going rather than disappearing on impact like most bullets.
oooh this one's tricky because i haven't really thought of any belongings they'd have, but there's a less physical example for rhythm - he gets emotional when he listens to some of the first music he ever heard, or stuff that sounds similar to it. it's mostly 80s rock songs and rhythm game soundtracks that make him particularly nostalgic, and those are still his go-to music styles for when he's stressed out and needs to calm down and cheer up
hello 😱🤝🤷♀️🎵🐺 for rhythm man i want to kiss him so badly
RHYTHM MAN MY BELOVED
😱 [any fears?] - he absolutely hates white noise or similar sounds without any rhyme or reason to them. since his purpose is to analyse audio to find patterns or muffled sounds within it, he tends to panic if he's listening to something that he can't pick anything distinct out of because it makes him paranoid that he might not be working properly. there's also the fact that psychic cry [which he's weak to] is just a blast of white noise at a frequency strong enough to damage his internal components, which after everything is over and done with upgrades the discomfort and paranoia into actual fear
🤝 [approach to intimacy?] - as friendly as he is casually, he actually gets pretty nervous around legitimate emotional intimacy - he kinda puts up this front of hey it's ya boy rhythm i'm fine no undiagnosed adhd here just your cool pal rhythm man being totally cool and normal, and he struggles to be honest about his real feelings if they're anything less than cheerful and relaxed. he definitely appreciates getting the opportunity to be emotionally intimate! it's just quite a way out of his comfort zone and he doesn't really know how to approach it
as for physical intimacy, he's fine with it so long as it's on the casual side! it's worth noting that he's aroace and a little put off by the thought of romance in general, so anything with overtly romantic vibes is gonna freak him out a bit and lead to him shutting down the interaction fairly quickly, but he's super chill with physical affection between friends! he would accept your kiss if it is a strictly platonic one on the cheek
🤷♀️ [approach to strangers compared to friends?] - rhythm's default course of action is to be nice to everyone he meets, so he acts about the same way around strangers as he does around people he actually knows. once he's gotten to know someone more personally, though, he starts to pick up on what makes them laugh or feel comfortable around him and develop inside jokes, and adjusts his approach to specific people accordingly. he's also more likely to try and suppress his jokey attitude around strangers who intimidate him for whatever reason, but given time he'll either relax into how he normally acts or at least figure out where he can push the envelope and dare to be a little snarky
🎵 [songs associated with them?] - ain't nothing like a funky beat is my theme claim for him! by extension i think hideki naganuma's composition style fits rhythm man really well - i haven't actually listened to any jsr music yet, but i'm intimately familiar with the sonic rush and rush adventure soundtracks, and i think the combination of banging drum beats and basslines with crunchy vocal samples fits him so well
🐺 [thoughts on being alone?] - he likes being alone but hates being lonely, if that makes sense. rhythm definitely likes and needs to have time to himself sometimes; it gets tiring for him to maintain the high-energy cheerful personality at full blast all the time, and he's at his happiest when he's just chilling out by himself making music or playing video games and not worrying about his job or what people think of him. on the other hand, he really craves validation and wants to feel emotionally connected with people, so there's a delicate balance for him to maintain between having enough time alone to recharge his [metaphorical] social battery without getting isolated and sad. his success at maintaining said balance varies
