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tokumusume · 4 years

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tokumusume’s list of best and worst movies and dramas watched in 2019:

There’s a new category this year. Inspired by kpopalypse, welcome the Honorable Mentions! Movies that weren’t exactly bad but also weren’t good. Movies and dramas are qualified to enter if I watched them for the first time this year, not that they were released this year. Click on ‘keep reading’~~

Best Movies:

1. Parasite

Another masterpiece from the director of Snowpiercer (let’s pretend Okja never existed). A poor family con their way to a rich household. Choi Woo-Shik from The Witch (see below) is the eldest son and mastermind, fabulous as always. Definitely the best movie of this year. For me, movie of the decade.

2. The Witch Part 1 The Subversion

This movie is amazing, hard to describe without spoilers. A perfect mix of Stranger Things and Hanna. Choi Woo-Shik can come to my house and kick my ass anytime. I can’t wait for part two.

3. Death Trance

Visually stunning, kinda like Amemiya Keita’s style in early Garo or Mad Max. I wish the movie was longer and the characters were better fleshed out, Ryuen the monk and the little girl had so much potential... The most interesting thing about this movie is how sexualized the main male character is compared to the female ones, and apparently, the swords were designed to look like veiny penises (can’t find a source for this info), and yes, they do look like veiny penises. The final showdown is heavy with sexual energy. Have I already said that Ryuen deserved better? #RyuenRights

4. Gintama 2: Rules are made to be broken

The barber shop scene is a fucking cinematic masterpiece. I never laughed so much like I did with this movie. The way it doesn’t take itself seriously, the meta jokes, everything is perfect. Even better than the first one.

5. Kingdom

While I think that some fight scenes were way too long (like the bamboo forest one), the dynamics between Shin and Hyou/Eisei were highly entertaining, at least in my shipper eyes. I like that (SPOILER) the King of the Mountain People is a woman and not once they try to call her Queen. She is a King. Hashimoto Kanna is adorable as a Ten, Kanata Hongo does a great job as Eisei’s psycho brother, Sakaguchi Tak waves his sword around, the usual stuff but with added layers of dirt and sweat.

6. Bravestorm

A movie I lovingly call “Japanese Pacific Rim”. Full of Kamen Rider stars (Hino Eiji! Misuzawa Haruka! That girl from Heisei Generations, the one with a sword! She has a sword in this as well!) and giant robots (god, I love giant robots!), I waited so much for this movie and it exceeded my expectations. I just wish I could’ve watched in theaters, it had a limited showing in my country.

7. Twelve Suicidal Children

What begins as a murder mystery ends with a twist you won’t see coming. All of the actors are amazing, but special mention to Sugisaki Hana and that guy from that one boy group I forgot the name but can’t be bothered to Google.

8. Gakkou Gurashi

Four girls and their teacher try to survive the zombie apocalypse trapped inside the school. This one destroyed me for days.

9. Forest of Love

I’ve watched some Sono Sion movies but nothing prepared me for this. Be aware of extremely gory sequences and sensitive topics. Hinami Kyoko is so amazing as blue-haired, punk girl crush Taeko that I totally didn’t notice she was AkibaBlue in Akibaranger.

10. The Host

After watching Parasite I decided to go on a Bong Joon Ho binge and watched this horror movie. Not as good as Snowpiercer and Parasite in my opinion but heart-wrenching nevertheless. The little girl is the star of the movie.

11. The Hungry Lion

A story about the dangers of social media and slut-shaming. I want to punch Mizuishi Atom in the face.

12. Cromartie High

A little absurd comedy about yakuza-style high school boys (played by middle-aged men lol) forming a club to battle aliens summoned by themselves just because. It made me laugh like a child. A hidden gem.

Honorable Mentions:

1. River’s Edge

Depressing as fuck. Warning: the cats die. It’s not graphic but it’s traumatizing. Yoshizawa Ryo is a gay boy who sleeps with old men for money. There’s a graphic sex scene (not Yoshizawa, sadly) where my only thought was “That thing is gonna get stuck in there! Use a condom!” Can’t remember much from it except for these three scenes.

2. The Disastrous Life of Saiki K

Yamazaki Kento has the acting chops of a dead fish but it comes handy for playing a teen with psychic abilities and zero social skills. Hashimoto Kanna is one of the prettiest girls in Japan. Yoshizawa Ryo with white and blueish hair looks more like Sakata Gintoki than Oguri Shun in the Gintama live action. The end is a huge let down but the fun ride is worth it.

3. Ano ko no, Toriko

Congratulations to Yoshizawa Ryo, he has FIVE movies in my list of favorite movies this year! This is to make up for crowning GIVER as the biggest waste of time of 2018, this list is totally not biased, lol. “Ano ko” could be just another romance movie but the (very) little insight into how the entertainment industry works and not focusing on school life made me love it. Poor Sugino Yosuke being left behind again, when will this boy get the main girl?

4. Monstrum

It doesn’t reinvent the wheel but it’s pleasant enough to fill a rainy afternoon with a lot of blood and spilled guts. Hyeri of Girl’s Day is the heroine and Choi Woo Shik is the commander she falls in love with.

5. Weirdo Go

I confess I watched this one just to see Ji Li (aka my snake son Nie Huaisang) dressed as a woman but it was enjoyable and not that problematic.

6. Real - Kanzen Naru Kubinagaryu no Hi

Directed by the same guy that did “Creepy” and “Before we vanish”, there are lots of twists you won’t see coming. And a dinosaur. A fucking dinosaur.

7. Tomodachi Game: The Final

The movie loses its focus halfway through then picks up again minutes before ending. Yoshizawa Ryo delivers again as the sadistic Yuuichi, much like his role in Gintama. The plot twists are the star of the movie.

8. The Living Dead

Sorry Wen Ning. I saw the plot twist coming in the first 30 minutes of the movie, not very smart of the writer. His personality did a 180° turn for worse and I’ll demote the movie to an honorable mention for it. Gao Han is cute though, I would like to see him as a better character.

9. Backstreet Girls

Some recycled scenes from the drama to situate the viewers, a completely new story for the movie, it is certainly funny and enjoyable, if you can get past the forced gender reassignment surgery background and transphobic jokes (you shouldn’t get past it btw). I like the soundtrack.

Best Dramas:

1. The Untamed

Do I need to say more?

2. The Tale of Nokdu

This Korean romance had everything to be a mess but it wasn’t!!! *claps* I don’t hate the main female character and the whole palace politics actually kept me interested until the end. The complete shift of atmosphere mid-season was strange at first but ultimately very welcomed.

3. The Naked Director

Netflix original Japanese content is amazing. This one is a look at the life of a legendary porn director in the late 80s, I learned a lot about the history of Japanese porn and censorship (yay pixels!) and went looking for his, erm, works. Very graphic, 69/10 don’t recommend watching with people in the house.

4. Channel wa Sonomama!

I don’t remember it well but it’s about a news station and what is like to be a journalist and it was very interesting and funny.

5. SCAMS

Forgettable. Sugino Yosuke with black hair cons old people via phone calls.

Worst Movies and Dramas:

1. The cat in their arms

The cats spend 90% of the movie in human forms, and halfway through it they simply abandon the cats’ plot to show a fucking long montage of a weird guy painting a picture of a nude girl. It’s also super creepy to see a grown-up man acting like a cat, getting belly rubs and eating cat food from a bowl. Yoshizawa needs to choose his roles more wisely.

2. Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun

A waste of Suda Masaki’s talent. Can Japan stop casting Tsuchiya Tao already?

3. Samurai Marathon

Almost two hours of dirty men running through a forest. Maybe Japanese History experts will enjoy it, because I certainly didn’t.

4. Lady Vengeance

While there are legit great moments, I didn’t find this “classic” to be anything special. The animal cruelty was too much for me.

5. Hot Gimmick

This movie makes Bohemian Rhapsody’s editing look like a work of art. There are more flashing cuts than a T-ARA music video. I have no idea who likes who, who’s banging who, what even are they saying. Too much poetic shit for my like. I wanted to see Shimizu Hiroya naked. I was bamboozled.

6. The Divine Fury

While some parts were interesting, at the end I still don’t know if the protagonist is possessed by a demon (if yes, then why would he help a priest destroy his friends?) or if he was blessed by God when his father died and talked to him (the glowing hand thing, why and how??). The exorcism parts are really, really scary, or maybe I’m just a chicken, but I had to avert my eyes. The best (only) part is that the protagonists are hot. Hello Woo Do-Hwan, you can sacrifice me to Satan any time…

#tokumusume awards #2019 #Parasite #Gintama #The Untamed #The Tale of Nokdu #Yoshizawa Ryo #long post #jdrama #kdrama #jmovie #kmovie #cdrama #cmovie

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honeybammie · 5 years

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the world › bang chan

↳ in which chan is back after being away for months, and he doesn’t smell like home anymore ↳ little bit angsty, mostly fluffy

Chan is home, returning for the first time in months. He doesn’t smell like himself anymore. No longer do the scents of singed candle wicks like lavender and oak cling to his skin. Instead, the entire world fills my nostrils: spices I have never tasted and flowers I have never heard of. He smells like the rain in Thailand, and I have no idea what that even means. At the very least, he looks like himself—a few months older, maybe, and tired, but the latter has always been true.

The afternoon is warm, mid-seventies, and I’m shaking. Shaking because touching him sends jolts of electricity through my legs. Shaking because I smell the same and look the same and am for the most part well-rested. Shaking because I’m not the world.

But Chan doesn’t seem to realize.

“Hi,” he says, kissing my forehead and cheeks and every inch of my bare face until he settles on my lips. “I’m home.”

I hadn’t stopped fidgeting in days, but hearing him say home stills my nerves for a brief moment of peace. “You are,” I say, cupping his face in my hands to confirm. He’s not a compilation of pixels through a low-quality video chat or a high-quality fan photo. He’s warm and real and here.

“Are you cold?” he asks, leaning into my touch. I wonder if the electricity flows in him, too. It has to. “You’re shaking.”

I shake my head. No, I was afraid you’d come home from the world and realize I’m only a fraction of it— a fraction that starts with a decimal and is followed by a million zeros.

But he tells me, on a nightly basis, that he loves me, that he can’t wait to see me again. I grasp for him over video chat on the nights he has a spare moment to call, hoping my atoms will disperse and reform on the other side of the computer. My attempts have yet to meet success.

“Just excited,” I tell him instead. He lifts his hands to wrap his fingers around mine, squeezing gently to remind me not to venture too deep into my own thoughts.

“Want to tell me how your week has been?” he asks. Usually he takes a few minutes to ask what I’ve been up to, but wrapping up promotions has taken up so much time that he’s barely been able to message me other than to tell me goodnight.

To be honest, I don’t remember any of the past four days now that he’s here. I had lunch with a coworker. French food, I think, or maybe Greek. I got an email about an event downtown and wanted him to join me, but what or when the event was escapes me. “It was just another week. It became the best week a couple minutes ago.” I blush, and in a quieter voice I add. “I’d rather you tell me about the world.”

“Okay, then let’s sit. Mind taking this?” Chan hands the bag on his shoulder over to me and lifts the two suitcases behind him, carrying them into the living room. He told me a couple times that he’s been working out a lot, but I only notice the progress now in the way his muscles shift under the black tee he’s wearing.

Oh, I think, swallowing hard, but the thought that follows is one of thousands of screaming fans ogling over the same body that I do. I’m still getting used to sharing him.

“Come here, silly.” He brings me back by patting the space on the couch next to him, and I join. He takes back the bag that I carried and sets it in the unoccupied cushion, pulling back the zipper to reveal contents I don’t recognize.

“What’s all this?” I ask, craning my neck over him.

“I’m gonna show you! No peeking!” he fusses, and I smile a little at his childlike enthusiasm. He’s brought back pieces of the world, treasures to share with me.

One by one, he pulls materialized memories out of the bag, explaining each gift like they are stars he brought from the sky, and to me, they’re damn close. There’s a bracelet in my favorite color that he found at a bazaar in the Philippines, and a vial of sand from a beach in Thailand with a couple shells trapped inside. Candy from Japan he says I’ll love, a few books on foreign philosophies that he knows I’ll devour as soon as he leaves again. Even a tacky “I Heart New York” shirt thrown in the mix, because he thought it was funny, and I think it’s funny, too.

“Oh, one more thing,” he gushes, reaching into a side zipper as he tells me to close my eyes. I listen, squeezing them shut until cool metal hits my hand. “Okay, you can open them now.”

There’s a silver key resting in my palm, attached to a delicate chain. “Let me guess. Because I have the key to your heart?” I tease, expecting him to pull out another necklace with a locket.

“Not quite,” he says, showing me his hand, in which rests an identical key. He flips it over to show me the spot where my initials are engraved, and I turn over my own. Sure enough: CB. “Because together, we can unlock any door, or do anything, or be whoever we want.”

“That’s just as cheesy,” I say, deadpan.

“It’s romantic!” he pouts. “I had them custom-made in Paris. They didn’t appreciate that I only gave them two days, but it worked out.”

“Paris?” I echo, and I love the gift that much more. He had been to a couple countries in Europe, but not France. How would he ever have found the time?

“You’ve always wanted to go, and one day, we’ll go together, but for now I decided to bring a piece back to you,” he says. I think my heart falls out of my chest because it needs to find a place with more room to love him. “Do you mind if I—?” He takes the necklace, unclasps it, and hooks it around my neck. I return the favor, and for a moment we sit and stare at the other half. At our other half.

“Une clé,” I say. My years of French classes don’t fail me, and he smiles.

“That has a nice sound to it,” he muses, hooking his finger under my chain and gently pulling me forward until my lips brush his. “Une clé.” My accent is better, but his effort is admirable. I spend the afternoon teaching him French words.

Night is normal again, with Chan in his spot in bed next to mine. The way it should be. The way it rarely is. His long day of travel puts him to sleep first, but I remain, unable to help myself as I get a headstart on one of the books he brought home. I glance at him now and again, too, trying to get used to the changes. His presence. His physique. His key, still hanging around his neck. One of his arms is tucked under the pillow, and the other reaches for me, rested on my stomach so he knows I’m there. I’m not the only one who has to remind myself, apparently.

“Baby,” he murmurs long after I assumed him asleep, fingers twitching to life.

“Yes?” I answer, marking my page and closing the book. I set it on the nightstand, sliding down under the covers until my nose is only inches from his. He smells less worldly after a long shower, but still doesn’t smell like home.

“You were worried earlier,” he says. “The shaking. Your eyes. I could tell. What was wrong?”

I was afraid. I was afraid. I was afraid. I think of the world in him and the stagnancy in myself. “There’s the world, and there’s me. There are a thousand cities waiting for you and a million people, and there’s me. There are infinite things, and there’s me. Do you understand?”

His eyes flutter shut in a moment of tired processing, and then he shakes his head. “Not at all.”

I take a deep breath and sigh. “I’m afraid that while you’re out seeing the entire world, you’ll forget about me, because the world is so big and I’m so small and eventually the cities and the sights and the people will swallow me whole.”

He’s wide awake now, eyes darting to every curve and edge of my face. “You’re not the world,” he says. So he does realize. “But you are bigger—bigger than every city, or every sight, or every person put together. I’d sooner forget myself than you.”

“I get jealous. Sometimes,” I admit, quieter, because I hate to say it. “Because the world gets to see you so much, and I get to see you so little, and I have to share you with a million people who fawn over you and your talent and your body and...everything. Is that terrible? Am I terrible?”

“You’re jealous that other people want to sleep with me?” he smirks. I whack his arm and try to roll over, but he laughs and brings me right back. It’s not hard to do. “I appreciate you everyday for letting me live my dream. You know that, right?”

I nod. Because I do. And Chan would never look at another person with an ounce of the adoration he showed me, but every once in a while jealousy grinned my way. “I know, yes.”

“And maybe there are a million others you have to share me with, but none of them I’d share this with.” He touches the key hanging at my chest. “They’re custom, remember? No two others like them anywhere, and no one deserves to wear it except you.”

“Just me and you,” I say, and he nods. As much as the world around us has changed, Chan is the same boy I fell in love with. To most, time and distance are a ticking equation for ruin, but they’re nothing but words to him.

“And one day you’ll be able to see it all with me. I’ll bring you everywhere I’ll go, and we’ll never be apart longer than a week.”

The promise sounds so far away, especially considering he’ll leave again in a few weeks, but I believe him. “And until then I have the key. And everything else you brought.”

“Exactly. And my love, always,” he says, kissing my forehead. “What’s French for ‘you have the key to my heart’?”

“You said that’s not what they were for.”

“They can have a dual meaning, and I’m curious.” He shrugs, but I know he just wants to hear me say something else in French.

“Tu as la clé de ma cœur.”

He repeats after me, his pronunciation much less graceful, and he giggles at the sound of himself halfway through, but the sentiment is the same.

“Et tu as la mienne,” I answer. I don’t need to translate for him to know.

me?? actually writing something?? and posting it?? after three months?? i’m gonna try to be more active i promisE but college is R O U GH

#stray kids #stray kids imagines #stray kids scenarios #stray kids fluff #stray kids angst #bang chan #stray kids chan #kpop scenarios #kpop fluff #kpop imagines #kpop au #stray kids au #stray kids bang chan #kpop drabbles #stray kids drabbles #stray kids oneshot #kpop fanfiction #skzwriters #stray kids fanfiction

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liugeaux · 5 years

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The Master of Blasting

Months ago, once I realized my Retron had a save-state feature, something got into me. I realized I could go back to old retro games and actually finish them. Sure, I played 100s of games in the 8 & 16-bit eras, but I’ve never been that good at anything with a steep difficulty. Most games of the late-80s, early 90s were punishingly tough and typically, without cheat codes I never got to see the end of them.

After playing through all the old Donkey Kong Country games and Sonic the Hedgehog 1, I turned my eye towards a peculiar series I had only dabbled in before, Blaster Master. With the release of Blaster Master Zero on Switch, I was extra interested in diving into the well-regarded B-tier NES original.

With a little research, I found that a total of 8 Blaster Master games have been released...that’s when the classic Sergio completist kicked in. I convinced myself that I shouldn’t play the new Switch games until I’ve completed all of the retro titles. When I began my journey I didn’t realize it would be such a headache. Here’s my run-through of all the Blaster Master Games.

1988 - Blaster Master (NES)

Ah, the original. This little game has a charm to it that most games of the late 80′s don’t have. It was clearly inspired by Nintendo published games like Metroid and Zelda. Blaster Master’s key gimmick is the ability to play as the armored tank Sophia the 3rd or as an on-foot character named Jason, the pilot of the tank. As needed, Jason jumps out of the tank and enters human-sized doors.

Blaster Master is a 2D platformer, but once Jason enters a door, the game switches to an overhead perspective for navigation through maze-like dungeons. None of the mazes are particularly hard to solve, but all of the game’s bosses are found in these dungeons. As a kid, having a game that completely switched perspectives was rad. I never owned it as a child, but I vividly remember my time with it through rentals and such.

This first game is super hard and I found myself using known glitches to get past the game’s harder boss sequences. In true Metroidvania-style, there’s heavy backtracking throughout Blaster Master and if you don’t know where you’re going getting to the next level can be quite annoying. Having played the whole game, I can finally say that despite a super strong first impression, Blaster Master isn’t that great.

It's WAY too hard and by the halfway point the luster had worn off the unique gameplay. For some reason, this is the point where I decided to dive headfirst into the rest of the Blaster Master games. I’m a glutton for punishment I guess.

1991 - Blaster Master Boy (Game Boy)

Prior to playing the original, I had no idea there were so many titles in this series. I definitely didn’t know there were multiple portable entries. Blaster Master Boy is less a Blaster Master game and more a Bomberman game. Technically its a sequel to the Bomberman spin-off Robo-Warrior. A quick trip over to Youtube can confirm that the gameplay and music are lifted directly from Robo-Warrior. To add even more confusion, in Japan, Robo-Warrior was called Bomber-King, Blaster Master Boy was Bomber-King Scenario 2 and it wasn’t even published by the same company.

Because of this weirdness, I didn’t spend too much time with Blaster Master Boy. It also didn’t help that there isn’t a decently priced copy anywhere on the internet.

1993 - Blaster Master 2 (Genesis)

Five years after the original, Blaster Master returned to the console market with Blaster Master 2. It was a Sega Genesis exclusive and the only title in the series released in the 16-bit era. Playing this immediately after the original really made it quite hard. The controls aren’t as precise and the difficultly level is somehow ratcheted up. Blaster Master 2 is a more straight forward platformer without the backtracking of a traditional Metroidvania.

Unlike the first game, when you enter the human sections of the game, you don’t start a top-down sequence. Instead, the pilot levels are 2D platform shooter areas. All of these seem half-baked, clunky and compared to the game’s contemporaries, quite sad. Fortunately, top-down gameplay wasn’t completely abandoned, before the end of each level there’s an odd top-down sequence, where you pilot Sophia. This mechanic never returns in future games, but taking the rest of the game into consideration, it really isn’t terrible.

Unfortunately, there’s not much good to say about Blaster Master 2, It hits most of the design notes that the first one hits but the entire experience feels like it was made by a completely different team. Funny enough, after saying that, I looked it up and Blaster Master 2 was, in fact, made by a completely different team. Ha!

The game’s only saving grace is its vivid color pallet and solid sprite design. Like the first game, the music solid, but unless you’re taking a trip through the whole series like me, Blaster Master 2 can be skipped.

2000 - Blaster Master: Enemy Below (Game Boy Color)

It took Sunsoft awhile to get around to the Blaster Master series again, but in 2000 they came out swinging. Blaster Master: Enemy Below was released for Game Boy Color and of all the games on this list, it is the game that most resembles the original. Much of the art is designed to look nearly identical to the NES games’, even down to a nearly pixel-perfect recreation of the SOPHIA tank.

The top-down Jason segments return as does the extreme difficulty and fantastic soundtrack. It’s hard to really complain about the execution of this title. It was clearly an attempt at just trying to make the closest thing they could to the original and in many ways, it is a tighter and more consistent experience. Unfortunately, that’s also a strike against it. Enemy Below doesn’t bring anything new to the table. The bosses are basic re-hashes of the originals, the levels feel like a “lost levels” DLC pack and the game being portable doesn’t really encourage innovation.

I guess the coolest thing I can say about Enemy Below is that it's still available for purchase. On the 3DS Virtual Console, you can pick up Enemy Below for about $5. At that price, it’s easy to recommend, especially since it comes with built-in save-state functionality.

2001 - Blaster Master: Blasting Again (Playstation)

Also, released in 2000 (in Japan, 2001 in North America), is the weirdest game in the series to date, Blaster Master: Blasting Again. For those of you too young to remember, the Playstation/N64 era of video games was full of 2D series trying their hand at 3D games. Blasting Again is an egregious example of this frustrating industry trend. You still pilot a tank, with all the same features, like homing missiles, and hover, but you’re dropped into a fully realized 3D world with painfully bad anime cut-scenes.

The “Jason” sequences are still here, but they too are 3D and mundanely boring. Also, with this being an official sequel to the original, you play as Jason’s son Roddy, not Jason. Much of the music from earlier in the series is remixed, and rerecorded, so not all is lost in the odd one-off. Unfortunately, the antiquated tank controls and punishing difficulty makes Blasting Again hard to recommend. I was able to play it on PS3 with no issues, but the toggle switch for the digital and analog controls was initially hard to find.

I ended up sinking about 40 hours into finally beating this tragedy. I wasn’t able to use save states and despite it being objectively bad, I grew to love it’s janky and unfair presentation. As a whole, these games have really tested my ability to control my anger, but Blasting Again was the first one to truly get all the way under my skin.

2010 - Blaster Master: Overdrive (WiiWare)

Notice, I have yet to say any of these games are good, that’s because they aren’t. What they have is a charm to them that conjures the aura of the scrappy beginnings of gaming and the forced appreciation of only owning 4 games that had no checkpoints. Thus far, despite initial misgivings, I’ve enjoyed my time on this journey. Blaster Master: Overdrive is where that joy ended. The fun I was having with the series was taken out back, brutally beaten, and left to die in the town square as an example to anyone daring to play this absolute nightmare.

Overdrive starts innocently enough. It does it’s best to try and evoke the gameplay and tone of the original and for what it's worth the art style isn’t terrible. The Sophia and Jason gameplay loops are in-tact and even the gun-upgrades are more important than ever. Where Overdrive falls apart is its difficulty and embarrassing lack of control options.

I’m sure most of you are at least familiar with the Wii-Remote. With this being a Wii-Ware only game, it could only be played with the Wii-Remote. The real downside is that the developer either ran out of time or opted not to explore the myriad of control options the Wii offered. There’s no classic controller support, no Gamecube controller support, there’s not even a way to map buttons to a nun-chuck. You are stuck playing with the Wii-Remote turned sideways.

This wouldn’t be that big of a deal if they had found a better way to implement strafing into the controls. To strafe, the player must hold the B button. That’s the button underneath the Wii-Remote. In a world where the player is using the remote like an old-school NES controller, B button usage is a legit finger-bending-nightmare. Couple this broken control scheme with punishing difficulty and you have the perfect recipe for rage-quitting. I‘m not proud of my behavior during my time with this game and let’s just say I own 1 less Wii-Remote now.

The last thing I want to say about Overdrive is less about the game itself and more about its availability. The Wiiware marketplace is 100% closed, which means there’s no legit way to purchase this game, outside of buying someone’s Wii who had already bought it. This is an ominous foreshadowing of things to come. I would have paid for this game. Hell, I’m deep enough into this BM adventure I would have paid a premium to play this dumb game, but Nintendo’s shut-down of the Wii-Ware shop is a low-key attack on game preservation that us archivist, CANNOT forget. *steps off of soap-box*

2017 - Blaster Master Zero (Switch/Steam)

With the release of Blaster Master Zero, the series got the most attention it’s had since the original game. Most of that attention was because Zero was basically a launch game for the Switch. The best way to describe Zero is to say that it’s developer Inti’s attempt to take the Blaster Master formula and actually make a decent game. For the most part, they succeed. Oddly enough, almost 30 years later, Zero is the first legitimately good Blaster Master game.

Much like Enemy Below, Zero tries its hardest to evoke the look of the original NES game. Some refer to games like this as pixel art, others refer to it as lazy...I float somewhere in the middle on it. It was great playing a Blaster Master game with a proper controller where the mechanics actually work. However, it was frustrating seeing a game, based on a design aesthetic that hit its ceiling in the late 80s, try to beautify itself. Many attempts were made to make the design stand out, but it just kept hitting the ceiling established by its predecessors.

Alternately, by Inti making the game super-playable, the flaws of the older games stand out even more than before. Typically, good Metroidvania’s have an intuitive way of hinting at where you need to go next or a good way of telling you what access you’re new power-ups give you. Due to Zero’s obsession with evoking the original, that intuitive gameplay is replaced with a red box on the map screen. This turns the game into a “drive to red box, shoot things, drive to next red box and shoot more things, experience”, rather than the naturally explorative nature of other games in its genre. The anime story seemed unnecessary from the start, but I’m sure someone will enjoy it.

While playing Zero I honestly asked myself, “Is this game way easier than the older games, or can I finally control this little tank properly?” I’m sure the real answer is somewhere between those two extremes, but ultimately Zero was a blast, albeit WAY too easy. I’m really looking forward to seeing how the sequel improves upon this wonderful jumping-off point. However, I’m positive I’ll be disappointed that more wasn’t done to bring the series into the modern 2D-platforming space.

2019 - Blaster Master Zero 2 (Switch)

Zero 2 is very much a sequel to Zero. In true anime fashion, the story immediately gets super self-serious and consequently superfluous. I’m sure some players will love the dialog between protagonist Jason and all of the various anime-faced characters, but that’s not what I’m here for. Needless to say, the story gets involved in ways other Blaster Master games haven’t. That’s not a strike against it, it’s just a characteristic that may not actually matter.

All previous mechanics are intact here and new ones are introduced almost immediately. If Zero was truly the first good Blaster Master game, then the refinements introduced in Zero 2 make it...wait for it...THE BEST BLASTER MASTER GAME EVER MADE! It controls well, the levels are interestingly built, and where previous sequels in the series lacked innovation, Zero 2 is full of cool and weird, new stuff. The bosses are fresh and interesting, the Jason sequences have been enhanced with a brand new counter mechanic and the space travel segments add a level of depth not seen in previous games.

I hate that I’m being so positive about the game. It’s been so much fun talking shit about Blaster Master games. Unlike the previous game, developer Inti found a way to modernize the gameplay and still make a genuinely challenging experience. I had trouble with multiple bosses, but never did I feel like the game was unfair, or something was broken. Many of the additions to the story also benefited the gameplay. Something as simple as making the Frog from the original game the reason Jason can immediately leave dungeons serves both the story and gameplay.

This has been a long journey, and the real hero is Inti Creates. Hopefully, Zero and Zero 2 have done well. The work put in by Inti deserves praise. They have perfected a formula that’s been pending since 1988. Both titles are only $10 on the Switch shop, and at that price, you are basically stealing them. Anyone with a Switch has no reason not to pick at least one of them up and check it out.

As for the series itself...I have very mixed feelings. There are very few good Blaster Master games. It's a series that trades in loose nostalgia for a widely forgotten NES game. From that, a bunch of often half-hearted sequels were developed trying to capitalize on the little bit of cache the original game still has. I don’t regret my time with the series and I think more titles deserve the Blaster Master treatment, but subjectively, I wouldn’t recommend anyone pick up any games outside of the original and the 2 newest Switch titles.

#blaster master #blaster master zero #blaster master enemy below #blaster master blasting again #blaster master overdrive #blaster master 2 #blaster master zero 2 #blaster master boy

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crystalninjaphoenix · 5 years

Text

Stalkers and Masks

Septics Inverted

A JSE Fanfic

These are two moments that I really wanted to address, but I felt both were too short for their own story. So I took one and made it a framing device for the other. One’s about Stacy and what she’s going through, and the other is about Marvin and one of his problems. Ehhh, probably not my best work but I’ve done these two plot points all the justice I can.

Read the intro story: Part One | Part Two

Various other AU-related stuff found here

Taglist: @evyptids @awkward-bullshit @watermelonsinmyattic @asunachinadoll @a-humble-narcissus @metautske @odysseus-is-best-boi @acuriousquail @beerecordings

Stacy liked to think that her computer was secure. She kept up-to-date on her antivirus software, didn’t give trust anything that asked for her security information, and kept her passwords on a sheet of paper in her nightstand drawer instead of anywhere digitally that could be hacked. However, she quickly learned that all these precautions were for naught when it came to the living glitch who decided he wanted to check on her every ten hours or so. She’d be browsing the Internet and suddenly the webpage would freak out. That didn’t mean she was being hacked (actually, technically she was) it just meant Anti decided to pop in.

Honestly, she was starting to warm up to him. Maybe that was because he hadn’t showed up in person for the last week so she didn’t have to deal with his personality. Occasionally she’d get an email or text from a blocked user, asking her how life was, if she was safe. And, well, life was better. She’d gotten a new job at a department store with better pay. The hours were good too, now she had time to spend with her kids and also get enough sleep. Things in the city seemed to have calmed down, in that there was less death and disappearance on the news.

But...something was off. There were times when she was out and about, driving the kids to places or running errands on her own, when she felt like someone was watching her. When she looked around, she usually didn’t see anyone. But there were times when she thought she saw...him. To the point where it was starting to freak her out.

One night, after putting the kids to bed, she sat down at her computer and typed a simple phrase into Google: “how to tell if someone is stalking me.” Immediately, the page froze. She hit enter several times, trying to search, but a strange, rapid staticky beeping just came out from her speakers. And it was that moment when she realized it wasn’t just something wrong with her Internet.

A fizzing of pixels later, Anti was sitting on her desk, legs dangling off the side. “What are you, seven?” she asked before her brain could catch up with her mouth.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Anti said. “So what’s up with that search?”

“Are you spying on me whenever I use Google?”

“No, I just installed a program to let me know when certain words were searched. Such as ‘stalk’ or ‘stalking.’” His eye narrowed. “So? What’s the deal? Is it him?”

“I’m...not sure,” Stacy said slowly. “Sometimes I think I see him, other times I just get a...a vague sort of sense that...someone’s watching me. It’s probably nothing, I’m probably just being stupid, but...better safe than sorry, y’know?”

“Definitely, especially considering they could be magically tracking you.”

Stacy gaped at him and his nonchalant statement. “Excuse me?”

“Come on, you were there that night at the diner. You saw that magic was real. Didn’t you think something like that was possible?”

“No, I didn’t.” Stacy leaned back in her swivel chair. “I guess it never occurred to me that that was a-a possibility. I didn’t know the rules for this sort of thing. Sorry, I should have thought—I should have known.”

Anti stared at her, then glitched off the desk and into a standing position. “No, you really shouldn’t have, because nobody told you. It’s not your fault, so don’t assume it is. I could possibly give you a brief overview, let you know what you’re in danger of.”

“Oh! Th-thank you!” Stacy hadn’t realized she was apologizing for things that weren’t her fault. Force of habit, she assumed. She looked at the computer screen, where her question still lingered, unsearched, in the search bar. “Do you think...I-I mean, I know Chase doesn’t have any magic, unless he does and I didn’t know, so...are they teaming up?”

Anti considered this. “Probably. Your ex and the magician aren’t on the best terms, but they’re civil. You’d be in more danger of having the doctor or the vigilante stalking you for him, those guys are closer.”

For some reason, that simple statement made dread pool in her stomach. “H-how many of them are there again?”

“Five.”

“And...and they could all help Ch—help him follow me?”

“Mmm, probably.”

“Oh my god. Oh my god.” Stacy sat on her hands to keep them from shaking. She’d never done anything in her life to warrant so many enemies. And, if she remembered correctly, these guys were responsible for most of the current chaos and terror in the city. She worked hard to take deep, controlled breaths. “Do you...do you have any, uh, um, any info on these guys I could see? You’re all computery, do you have files on them or something?”

“I do. But you don’t want the full files, you’ll lose sleep. I can maybe give you some edited versions...” Anti’s head tilted to one side. He stared intently at her computer screen. She watched as her browser closed and her file explorer opened. By itself, the computer navigated to the downloads folder, then five new folders appeared, each one labeled with a name, followed by (edit).

“Huh...that’s handy.” Stacy scooted her chair closer to the desk, grabbing the mouse. She stared at the folder with his name on it for a while, but she couldn’t bring herself to click on it. Instead, she clicked on the next one down, opening up the folder to reveal various .txt files.

“There used to be photos and videos in here,” Anti said, peering over her shoulder.

“Why’d you remove them?”

“How squeamish are you?”

“I mean...my daughter broke her arm once. It was all bent but I could look at it.”

“I probably made a good call then.” Anti pointed at one of the files, and it opened up. “Brief overview: guy’s a doctor. Not really, ‘cause he got booted from medical school for maltreatment. Didn’t stop him from faking graduation, getting a job at a hospital, and then stealing the patients who wouldn’t be missed.”

“This sounds like the backstory of a horror movie villain,” Stacy laughed nervously.

Anti didn’t laugh. “I’m sure the patients thought they were stuck in a horror movie.” He gave Stacy a dead-eye stare until her smile faded. Then he turned back to the screen. “Police in his home country found out. He ran, ending up here. Started a nice little black-market clinic and kept up his hobby.”

“You know I think I’ll read this one later, when it’s lighter outside.” Stacy hurried to click out of the folder. She opened up the next one instead. This one had videos as well as text files. “...should I be worried about these?” she asked, circling one of the videos with the mouse.

“Nothing explicit, just violence like you’d see in a movie. Criminals get the shit beat out of them. The works.”

“Wait...this is for that vigilante, isn’t it? The one on the news?” Stacy looked at the folder name. “That’s his real—”

“Yep. So if you see a guy who looks like this—” He opened one of the videos, fast forwarding until he got to a good image of the vigilante’s face. “—and he introduces himself to you as that, you better run. Actually, don’t, he’s probably faster than you. Distract him until you can sneak away.”

“He can’t be that bad, can he?” Stacy asked, skeptical. “I mean...getting rid of the criminals in the city? It’s like a real-life superhero.”

“Well, superheroes don’t beat confessions out of mob members and then murder them. He’s probably the safest to have a conversation with, though. Assuming you haven’t done anything illegal.”

“O-kay...then...” Stacy was starting to realize just how deep this trouble she was in really was. She could feel the beginnings of panic edging in on her, but she pushed it away. She’d let herself freak out later. “Wh-what about that magician guy? I think you called him Marvin in the diner? Can he really...magically track me?”

“Probably.” Anti closed the vigilante’s folder and opened up the magician’s. There were a lot of images in this one, what looked like pictures of pages from books. “I’ve been trying to keep track of the spells he knows, but it can be difficult. There’s a good chance he knows a tracking spell, but he probably wouldn’t use it unless someone, like your ex, asked him to.”

“...do I want to know why?”

“Eh, he doesn’t really care for spells like that. If they can’t produce effects he can see, he won’t use them unless necessary. He’s a flashy bitch like that. Has a style and sticks to it. Like that cape, which he only takes off maybe one day per week, and that mask, which I actually haven’t seen him take off yet.”

“Really? Never? Not even to sleep or take a shower or anything?”

“Sleeps with it on. And I’m don’t know about that shower thing, I didn’t put a camera in their bathroom.”

Stacy briefly wondered if his knowledge about sleeping with the mask meant he’d put cameras in the bedrooms, but she pushed that out of her mind for now. “Why? Seems uncomfortable...”

Anti laughed. “Well, a long time ago, he tried a spell he wasn’t ready for, and it blew up in his face. I’m pretty sure he’s embarrassed about what it looks like underneath there...”

“Schneep! I know for a fact you’re in there!” Marvin banged on the door. When there was still no answer, he sighed, looking around the reception room of the clinic where he was standing. He didn’t like this place. It was that kind of almost-nice that looked like it was trying to fool you into thinking it was less shady than it actually was. The good doctor really needed to upgrade his decor.

Having enough of contemplating his dislike of this place, Marvin turned back to the door and started banging harder. “Hey doc! I’m not against melting your door down if you don’t come out in the next thirty seconds!”

The door flung open, and Marvin barely jumped out of the way in time to avoid getting a whack to the face. Schneep poked his head out. He was wearing his mask, which he proceeded to pull down in order to scowl at Marvin. “There is no need for such a commotion, my friend!” he scolded. “I was in one of the back rooms, I did not hear you for a while and then it took me a tick-tock to get here.”

“Whatever. Get a security camera wired up here, or a buzzer or something. I could’ve been a customer who just decided to take business elsewhere.”

Schneep barked out a laugh. “If people come here, it is not because they have options to take business to. But enough of this, what did you want?”

Marvin shifted on his feet. “I...need you to take a look at something.”

“Oh, is that all?” A wave of relief crossed Schneep’s face. He stepped back, opening the door wide enough for Marvin to pass through. “Come in, come in, I can see what it is back here.”

Marvin let Schneep lead him into the operating part of the clinic, but he refused to sit down on the table. “It seems not so serious, so if you would please wait a moment while I take care of this...” Schneep vanished through one of the metal doors leading deeper into the building, leaving Marvin to tap his feet impatiently. He didn’t like this. First of all, this place looked like it was thrown together, and also needed an upgrade. Second of all, he was already having doubts about this, he didn’t want them to have time to fester.

Schneep reemerged, tossing an empty syringe on a nearby tray. “There we are, we will not be disturbed now,” he said. “What is it you need help with?”

Marvin started fidgeting, pulling on his fingers. “Okay. So. I am—look, I’m trusting you with this. You can’t tell anyone, alright?”

“That is no problem.”

“I’m serious. I will literally put a fucking curse on you if I find out you told anyone.”

“Okay.”

“I’ve been working on one that can make it feel like pins are being shoved in your eyes whenever you look at something, and that something can be as vague as a specific color. Y’know, like the literal version of ‘cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.’”

“Now you are going overboard with this. I have no intention of telling anyone whatever it is this is about. This secret of yours is safe with me.”

Marvin exhaled slowly, and looked toward the ceiling. “Okay. Okay, good. Fuck. Here goes nothing.” Before he could change his mind, he reached up and undid the straps of his mask, then pulled it off. He slowly looked back towards the doctor.

Schneep’s eyes were wide. He stepped forward until he was uncomfortably close to Marvin. He raised his hand. “May I...?”

Marvin hesitated. “...fine,” he grumbled. “But take off your gloves, they’re still messy. And be careful.”

The doctor pulled off his gloves, then put his hands on either side of Marvin’s head, turning it from side to side so he could get a better look. “My god,” he muttered. “What happened to you?”

“That’s not your fucking business,” Marvin said through gritted teeth. “But they’ve been...itching for a while now, and I’m wondering if they’re infected or something.”

“I would be surprised if they were not. They look...angry.” Schneep’s eyebrows furrowed. “How old are they?”

“I think about...four years at this point?” Marvin started turning his mask over in his hands. It was hard to remember sometimes.

“Really? I would think only a couple months.”

“Doc, I’ve been living with you for two years and haven’t once taken off my mask. You didn’t think there was a reason for that?”

“Ah yes.” Tentatively, Schneep reached out and tapped Marvin in the middle of his forehead. “What is this?”

“Okay, that’s enough.” Marvin yanked his head back.

“Excuse me, I am concerned! That looks like bone!”

“It’s not bone, it’s just—making my first mask out of ceramic was a really bad idea, ‘cause even magically-enhanced pottery can still shatter.”

“Why do you have ceramic embedded in your face?!”

Marvin resisted the urge to touch the places where the shards had ended up lodging. He had them memorized by now, mostly because of the dead spot in his nerves there. Forehead, upper cheeks, one between his nose and left eye, one above his right. He could have dealt with the rest of the scars, if only the shards weren’t there. “Look, I was wearing my old mask at the time this happened, it broke, I ended up getting pieces of porcelain fucking stuck to my face, can we move on?!”

Schneep raised his hands in surrender, stepping back. “Okay, okay, fine!”

“Thank you.” Marvin began spinning his mask around his pointer finger, using one of the eyeholes. “Anyway, can you tell if they’re infected? And can you help if they are?”

Schneep bit his lip, eyes scanning the damage. “Well, I would have to know what caused them. They look a bit like burns, but in the pattern of knife slashes. Like hot glass.”

“What?”

“Bits of broken glass, heated up so they will burn, flung at your face. That’s what it looks like. There are also parts where I am reminded of Lichtenburg figures.”

“What?” Marvin repeated, exasperated.

“When things are struck by high voltage, patterns will appear. These are not quite the same as scars of lightning, they are...bigger. But I am reminded of them.”

Marvin sighed. “You know what? Let’s just work under the assumption that someone took a hot, electrified knife and repeatedly applied it to my face, that’s probably as accurate as you’re going to get. There might also be some lingering traces of magic in there.”

Schneep rolled his eyes. “Well, I cannot do anything about that, but if they are itching and irritating you, I have some salves that may help. They are in the other back room, the storage one, if you would kindly follow me.”

“Alright, alright, but I hope you find this stuff quickly. Chase is making me watch his ex for him, and I don’t feel like getting into a shouting match with him over not actually doing it.”

It was around midnight when Stacy decided to go to bed. She’d tried to read through the file Anti had given her on the magician, but had to stomp halfway through. Some of these spells...why would anyone want to use spells like that? Instead, she switched to reading the vigilante’s file, managing to finish it. Then she realized it was way too late, and she had to get up early to make breakfast for the kids, get ready for work, take the kids to school, and go to work herself. That was only four things, but that was too much.

She was walking down the hall to her room when there was a knock on the front door.

Fear jolted through her. Who could be knocking this late at night? Nobody good, probably. She stood shock-still in the hallway, waiting for something else. When nothing happened, she swallowed her nerves and crept toward the living room and the front door. Maybe it was nothing?

When she flipped the lights on, the front room looked exactly the same as it had earlier that day. Except for one thing: there was now a brown envelope sitting on the floor, in the perfect position to have been pushed through the mail slot. Stacy slowly stepped forward. She peered through the peephole on the door, seeing nothing on the other side. So she looked down at the envelope on the floor, then bent over and picked it up. She turned it over in her hands.

There were words written on the back of the envelope. “Hello sweetheart.”

Stacy recognized that handwriting.

She collapsed on the couch, staring at the envelope, listening to her heart pounding in her ears.

He’d found her.

#jacksepticeye #jacksepticeye fanfiction #jacksepticegos #septic egos #septic egos au #antisepticeye #chase brody #marvin the magnificent #dr schneeplestein #septics inverted au #invertedau #brigid writes fanfiction

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