A Shirt I Want To Make So Bad I Share With You

There was something wonderfully naive about growing up in the 90's. I'm not sure if there was ever a generation that held surfers and ninjas in such high esteem, or that there ever will be in the foreseeable future. Put this on a shirt and proudly show that you too have been irreparably damaged by 90's pop culture.

If you don't feel like fiddling with color printing, you can use this hastily decolorized version, which I almost think turned out better for it's wild jankiness.

Awesome. In other news, I'm almost done sticker stuff. I have three sets of four stickers in the works. Although I mainly wanna focus on original characters and stuff, I couldn't resist drawing Robot Masters and Ninja Turtles, so look forward to those as well.

Also contemplating the game situation here at Doki Doki. I don't have the time or a reliable enough piece of software to develop a whole game, but I think I might be able to manage doing single "episode" style stages every now and then. Would you play a vertical shmup one stage at a time? I guess we'll see.

Lots of work on AtomMan

Was seized by the desire to work on AtomMan, a project I've been working on and off on for a very long time. It was actually the first ever game I ever made, waaaay back in like 1999, when I was just a 6th grader! It originally started as a MegaMan fan game, but after a little while, I guess I wanted to make up my own bad guys and such, and it turned into a VERY thinly veiled ripoff, parody, homage, or whatever you want to call it. The sprites were even just crappy recolored versions of MegaMan characters, with pretty minor tweaks. There was a great deal of humor in the game, and some pretty terrible and basic gameplay, but I felt pretty accomplished.

Now, years later, I couldn't really resist the urge to look at these characters again, and I started to think that maybe there was some potential here. Sure, it started as a pretty basic ripoff, but some of the designs had genuinely cool elements, and I thought I could re-imagine it into something much more original, while still obviously honoring the games that inspired it.

So yeah, the inspiration is probably SUPER OBVIOUS, but I think this turned out really well. I don't want to talk to much about the story just yet, but these guys are the main bad guys.

Now, because I can't focus on anything, this is both a comic and a game, so here's some of the animations and such I've whipped up!

 Look at him go! These are just his basic animations, but there are going to be tons of other weapons and maybe even forms to take on. To get started, though, I think these are coming along nicely.

I also mocked up a little screenshot today, which I think turned out well. This is the first time since being a kid that I've gotten this far on this project, so it's pretty exciting.

 Not  finished anything yet, but just trying to establish the look of the game. Obviously very MegaMan inspired, not going to debate or deny that, but I want to push this game into some pretty out there territory. I want to try to bring all the things I loved about the Legends and Battle Network games into the basic gameplay of a 2D classic MegaMan game, but there's elements of other games from this era that I really loved back then, including Shenmue, Brave Fencer Musashi, Legend of Zelda and Mystical Ninja.

OKAY! So that's what I got so far. Feeling pretty good about it so far, but definitely a work in progress.

Azure Striker Gunvolt Makes Me Question The Need For Mighty No. 9?

Keiji Inafune, the creator of acclaimed series such as Megaman, Dead Rising, and Onimusha has unveiled a new game from his recently formed company, Comcept. Since leaving Capcom, Inafune's studio has dabbled in all sorts of games, but this new title, tentatively called Azure Striker Gunvolt for North America, is probably the most familiar. Teaming up with Inticreates, the studio that developed the popular Megaman Zero and ZX subseries, it looks as though Inafune is getting back to his roots with a good old fashioned side scrolling action game. But there's something familiar about all this...

Yeah, not even a year ago, this same thing happened, but the game was called Mighty No. 9, and it went to Kickstarter to find funding. I was a very early supporter of Mighty No. 9 (and donated a considerable amount), but I generally don't like the fan interaction on these types of projects, and the long wait before anything resembling a finished game is shown off is agonizing. Add in some completely terrible and unfounded drama over something incredibly stupid, and Mighty No. 9 has kind of soured in my eyes. Meanwhile, Gunvolt comes completely out of nowhere, looks completely finished, looks AWESOME, and didn't require any kind of financial contribution from me to get going.

So what happened here? If Comcept and Inticreates were already creating an amazing looking sidescroller that looked to channel Megaman's spirit, why the need for kickstarter? Why the need for so much fan mongering and hyping? It's a little confusing.

Now, it should be noted that Gunvolt is only slated to release on the 3ds, which is honestly the platform that 90% of fans of Megaman or sidescrolling action would be anyway. Mighty No. 9 is shooting to launch on a staggering amount of platforms, so maybe Gunvolt is actually a smarter project. Going after a single platform that there is definitely a market on, and taking advantage of that unique hardware is generally a smarter idea than just trying to jam your game on to everything that plays games. Lots of side scrollers in particular, including Mutant Mudds and Gunman Clive, have seen significantly higher sales on the 3ds than other platforms, such as PSN and Steam, combined. Sales trends would seem to indicate that the audience for side scrolling action games is mostly on Nintendo's handheld. This isn't surprising, though, considering side scrolling action would tend to appeal to very dedicated players, most of which are going to be playing on a dedicated handheld. 

In any case, I'm excited for Gunvolt. I'm much more excited for it than I am for Mighty No. 9 at this point. The lack of fan interaction, community management, crowd funding and grandstanding in this project has refreshed my outlook on Inafune's new company. Whereas Mighty No. 9 seemed to put literally everything before the actual game, Gunvolt has done it right.