A Little Ja-Ja-Ja-Janken Update!

I know that I wrapped up Janken a VERY long time ago at this point. Things are busy. That said, I go crazy if I don't work on something fun for myself, so I spent a little time putting this together tonight. I need to fix up some mistakes in the dialogue, and I really would like to do an epilogue or something to give a little closure to the story, and maybe a summary of the events of the hundreds of chapters I skipped to get to this conflict. Could be fun. Need time.

Recently wrapped up a project that had been on the back burner for a little while, but it could be some time before I ever have anything worth showing off on that front, as it is a collaboration and my contribution is pretty much over. I'll see if I can post anything related, as some of the concept art and stuff is just plain cool.

Also! I went to San Diego Comic Con to sign stuff and help sell Nova Phase to people! I met lots of really cool people, some of whom even bought stuff from me! If you came and saw me, thanks! I hope you enjoy your book! And if you're one of the people that just asked me to draw them Steven Universe for free, I hope you enjoy your drawing of Steven Universe!

Oh, and on a much less important but still potentially cool note, I have actually been posting stuff to the Doki Doki Arcade tumblr with some regularity lately. Mostly marker doodles of super heroes, so nothing super exciting, but take a look if you want to see a hastily thrown together illustration of the X-Men that screams "I grew up in the 90's".

http://jmatchead.tumblr.com/

That's it!

Game Development Fun: Shooter Mock Up

Wild west light gun shooting mixed with intense boss fights! Think Wild Gunmen meets Mega Man, but with a bit of Zelda style overworld exploration mixed in. Basically all of my games are something with Mega Man and Zelda mixed in, now that I think about it, but I genuinely believe that those games have a ton to offer other genres. As much as I love the Zapper, most of the games that utilized it were pretty simple diversions. Sure, it took a fair amount of time to get good at Duck Hunt or Barker Bill, but once you hit that plateau, there wasn't much else to do. It was hard to really get lost in those games.

Of course, other light gun games came as the years went by. Favorites like House of the Dead and Time Crisis are basically just more dynamic Zapper games, but even those end up feeling shallow. Even on home consoles, the arcade origin of the shooting gallery genre is very apparent. I think this is owed in large part to the lack of traditional control options on the light guns of the past. While I seem to remember my Dreamcast guns having some kind of buttons and maybe even a d-pad, actually using it for a game was out of the question. It just wasn't comfortable.

Now, I am admittedly a huge Wii nerd, and though most people look down on the Wii remote's design, I've always been enamored with it, and I don't think any game managed to utilize it's core value better than Metroid: Other M. Switching between the NES style sideways orientation for platforming and exploration and the light gun style pointer orientation for first person shooting and scanning demonstrated both the versatility of the controller and a kind of economy of design that made the control set up of virtually any other modern game seem convoluted.

Taking that dynamic as inspiration, I designed this game with the Wii remote in mind. All of the fighting and shooting would be done in these first person scenes using the controller like a pointer or light gun, while exploration and adventuring would be done Zelda style with the controller held like a NES game pad. While I don't have all the details hammered out (should there be random encounters?), I think the idea of going back and forth between world exploration and intense first person combat could be pretty cool. With lots of different guns, locations, sub weapons, and bosses, I'd like to imagine this as the first fully featured light gun game.

No actual programming work on this game yet, as it is still in the EARLY early phase of planning. That said, I have actually made some for real progress on Super Bird Force as far as programming goes, but I'll share more on that in the near future. Some actual in game screenshots could be right around the corner!

Okay, that's it! Stuff from my trip to Comic Con later!