Hatoba Tsugu Fanart, 2019

super math quest

The 12 Tracks of Christmas 2019 Track 3: Nightmares Won’t Chill (Course BGM #04) [from “Nightmare Busters”], by Denji Koshiro Original Track: Chilling Air

Don’t worry, folks; this album ain’t gonna turn into “R.I.P.1.0.3. x XMAS 2019”. Pinkie swear, this is a one off.

Nightmare Busters is an older project of mine that holds a special place in my heart; it was the first fully-fledged Gonkaka project I ever worked on and completed, as well as the first (and so far, the only full-length) chiptune project I’ve put together. If memory serves me correctly it’s initial release on 103 Records was the first release I ever charged for- this was before the “pay what you want or get for free” clause was mandatory. It definitely shows it’s age compositionally, as well as my inexperience in terms of sound design- not helped by the inconsistency of sound design between tracks (each piece basically uses entirely different sets of waveforms/“instruments”, which is not at all period-accurate for what was supposed to be an arcade game from the late 80s/early 90s)- but it’s only with the benefit of experience and hindsight that I can say all of that. And of course, none of that takes away from the fact that I sat down and put the time in to create an entire album using software I was pretty much completely knew with on a mobile device, working on rough “game design” documentation alongside it with help from Dio (who provided the excellent cover art). I did grow discontent with it after a period, and strongly enough to actually take the initial release of the album down, though cooler heads would eventually prevail and the idea to re-release it swam around in my head for a while before it eventually dropped in 2017, with the story surrounding it reworked to frame the version of Nightmare Busters that music was written for, in Gonkaka/Nincom lore, being an overly ambitious prototype from a freshly established company that collapsed under it’s own weight. The story does state however that Nightmare Busters was eventually revisited by Nincom, re-imagined for the console that in-universe stands in for the Playstation.

That’s where this song comes in, but first I should probably explain what Nightmare Busters is about. Like, the in-story game, I mean. Strap in folks; this is gonna be a long one. So much so in fact that I’m going to throw up a readmore to preserve the sanity of mobile users, but I encourage you to read further!

Keep reading

NEW ALBUM: BOSS RUSH

OOPS! ALL BOSS THEMES (with accompanying 3d scene for each track!)

(bandcamp) (spotify) (youtube)

Suzanne Treister 1991-1992 Fictional Videogame Stills

In the late 1980s I was making paintings about computer games. In January 1991 I bought an Amiga computer and made a series of fictional videogame stills using Deluxe Paint II. I photographed them straight from the screen as there was no other way to output them that I knew of apart from through a very primitive daisy wheel printer where they appeared as washed out dots.

The effect of the photographs perfectly reproduced the highly pixellated, raised needlepoint effect of the Amiga screen image. Conceptually this means of presentation was also appropriate in that it made it seem like I had gone into a videogame arcade and photographed the games there, lending authenticity to the fiction.

The first seven works on this page form a series titled, ‘Q. Would you recognise a Virtual Paradise?’

Many of these works were shown in London at the Edward Totah Gallery in March 1992 (view installation) and later that year at the Exeter Hotel in Adelaide, Australia. In 1995 the 'Q. Would you recognise a Virtual Paradise?’ series was shown in London at the Royal Festival Hall in the exhibition It’s a Pleasure, curated by Leah Kharibian.

Recent venues: Somerset House, London, 2018 view installation ; Akron Art Museum, Ohio, USA 2019 and tour; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, 2019/20 view installation

The original Amiga floppy disks which stored the image files are corrupt, but the photographic art works remain.

So a friend of mine from @mmmskulljuice‘s circle was talking about their desire to make a “submarine Zelda”, and I started drawing this little guy on the assumption that you’re playing AS the submarine. More ideas followed:

The title of the game is Foot-Long Hero. You play as a very small submarine drone who’s on a mission to visit five to eight dungeony areas above ground, but they can only be accessed from underwater. 

You can name your hero sub whatever you want, but his canon name is Hoagy. 

The villain’s name is Grinder.

Hoagy is a member of a wandering group of salvage drones who call themselves the Poor Boys.

Yes, we’re riding the sandwich puns hard in this.

Hoagy is a sentient, mobile vehicle in the tradition of classic game characters like Twin Bee and Opa-Opa. He gets hungry, scared, and has emotional reactions to things that happen in the game, but he’s still a machine and has interchangeable parts.

Hoagy is equipped with boots, boxing gloves, a propeller, and a nosecone. The boots and boxing gloves are only used while on land: the prop and nosecone come into play underwater. Each of his parts are interchangeable and he’ll find new propellers, boots and so on that will give him new powers.

Being a sub, Hoagy swims much faster than he can run. He’s highly mobile underwater, to the point where the underwater sections of the game are more like a top-down Zelda, whereas on land it’s a traditional side-scrolling platformer.

On land you can run, jump, launch your boxing gloves, and perform a special Periscope Flip, shown on the bottom, that lets you jump much higher. 

Underwater, you can not only launch your boxing gloves but also extend your periscope up to the top, which is a factor in solving many puzzles.

Later in the game you may even acquire a special hat that allows you to grab things with your periscope and pull yourself out of the water.

You can also play as a female-presenting sub, which adds eyelashes onto your periscope but otherwise doesn’t change the game. The canon name for the female sub hero is Baguette, but again you can call her whatever you want.

Video game titles created by a neural network trained on 146,000 games:

Conquestress (1981, Data East) (Arcade)

Deep Golf (1985, Siny Computer Entertainment) (MS-DOS)

Brain Robot Slam (1984, Gremlin Graphics) (Apple IIe)

King of Death 2: The Search of the Dog Space (2010, Capcom;Br�derbund Studios) (Windows)

Babble Imperium (1984, Paradox Interactive) (ZX Spectrum)

High Episode 2: Ghost Band (1984, Melbourne Team) (Apple IIe)

Spork Demo (?, ?) (VIC-20)

Alien Pro Baseball (1989, Square Enix) (Arcade)

Black Mario (1983, Softsice) (Linux/Unix)

Jort: The Shorching (1991, Destomat) (NES)

Battle for the Art of the Coast (1997, Jaleco) (GBC)

Soccer Dragon (1987, Ange Software) (Amstrad CPC)

Mutant Tycoon (2000, Konami) (GBC)

Bishoujo no Manager (2003, author) (Linux/Unix)

Macross Army (Defenders Ball House 2: League Alien) (1991, Bandai) (NES)

The Lost of the Sand Trades 2000 (1990, Sega) (SNES)

Pal Defense (1987, author) (Mac)

(part one, part two)

design document part 2

Oh man this artist conceived of a pokemon-like interpretation of Ghostbusters and that is pretty much all I want in a franchise.

I recognize every single ghost he’s adapted from the toys and cartoons. In fact, a lot of my favorites are represented and they’re favorites you can see in maybe one frame of one scene of the 80′s show. I wonder if he reads my website.

The four heroines are a little proportionately homogeneous, but

Fumie Saso - Gethsemane (Battle with The Agony) [from "Barnbellow's Estate"]

It's been a while since the last Barnbellow's Estate track; feels good to return to the project. It was actually a little off the cuff, though- I've got a few things on the backburner at the moment and whilst flitting through sample packs for inspo, I remembered I recently stumbled upon the second Methods of Madness sample pack (discovering that there even *was* a second one in the process- I had no idea), and things just kind of went from there- almost all the guitar loops and effects in this are from Methods of Mayhem 2 - Damage Control (and one set of loops in particular may sound familiar to people who've played Devil May Cry 3). There's still plenty of samples from the original Methods of Mayhem - Industrial Toolkit in here too, though- it wouldn't be a Pursuer related Barnbellow's Estate track if there wasn't. I'm mostly pleased with the song- I hit a major stumbling block with the original idea for the ending section, so the song's shorter then initially planned, and I definitely brushed up against the limitations of mixing in both Music 2000 and Wavepad, so the mix is a little bit muddy (though between that and taking tons of the reverb out + leaving the song sounding flat and sterile, I'll take the slightly muddy mix; if anything, that just makes it more era appropriate for a song styled to sound like it came from a 90s horror game). I did, however, reinterpret the melody used in "it cries. it cries. it cries. it cries." (henceforth considered The Agony's musical motif) + finagle the melody from Transformation (Ashes of Grief) (henceforth considered Yuna's musical motif) into that first proper section as sort of duelling melodies, cos It's Neat innit.

Speaking of Pursuers, the song's context; were Barnbellow's Estate a real game you could actually play, this tune would be used for the one and only direct fight in the main game, against the story's main antagonist; an eldritch being that serves as the avatar of suffering for life, known simply as The Agony. You only actually fight it like a traditional boss on a couple of the ending routes- on others, you escape from it like you would the other Pursuers- and neither of the endings where you fight it are good (one in particular is one of the game's planned two Bad Ends). This theme is specifically for the "fight" encounter and not the "escape" one. The title is taken from the Agony in the Garden oportion of The Life of Jesus Christ; Gethsemane is the most common name put forward for the garden Jesus retreated to following The Last Supper, just before his arrest and crucifiction, where he spent his time Having A Normal One, Praying, and generally being a complete mess. So there's your hackneyed hoity toity Biblical Reference of the project.

Below the readmore are excerpts from the Barnbellow's Estate Design Document, which covers The Agony + the "fight" encounter with it + the endings that can be achieved by taking that route.

***

Final Encounter/Pursuer #5: The Agony

Fury. Terror. Despair. These are feelings and sensations that transcend sapience and higher brain function; they are something even the most basic forms of life can know and understand, intimately, even if they don't have the words for them that we do. And my, are they powerful emotions, so severe and savage that they can scar the very land itself with wounds that will never heal. And It... well. It knows pain. It knows suffering. It knows despair. Some say that that is all It knows. It was not so much “born” as it was “formed”; spawned at the very beginning of this vast universe, billions of years before the Earth on which we live would come into being, in response to life's very first shed tear. And ever since, with each successive cry, it took greater form, forced to wallow and steep in an increasingly widening and deep pool of anguish. For longer then you or I can comprehend, this is how It lived.

It's no wonder that It would lash out in response. That It, too, would seek to hurt.

Without due cause.

Without an end goal.

Without any mercy.

Very few have encountered It directly. Fewer still have survived to tell It's story. Those that have know it by a single name;

The Agony.

The Agony serves as the “final boss” of Barnbellow's Estate, an avatar of it's form resting in the deepest part of a nightmarish, fleshy cave at the centremost point of the titular estate. Every horrible thing that has happened here has, in some way, been it's fault- a direct consequence of it's unending desire to inflict as much pain on every living thing as possible. Depending on a variety of factors throughout the game- the most important being how much the player has discovered and learned of each successive tragedy- Yuna's response to The Agony will fall one of two ways:

Her horror and anger overwhelm her, forcing her into a defensive position as a direct fight- the only direct fight in the game- between her and The Agony unfolds. This is what The Agony knows, and what The Agony wants, as this is how it can maximize Yuna's pain for it's own satisfaction.

---

In the Fight route, The Agony's room expands into a larger, circular arena, in which it- via a humanoid form- can traverse effortlessly, attacking either directly with abilities of its own or summoning fleshy proxies of prior Pursuers to use their abilities instead. Yuna's stress meter doesn't just max out here- the actual stress meter in the HUD completely breaks, disappearing as she goes into a manic, catatonic state. However, Yuna doesn't stumble or trip here; if anything, her movement speed (which has defaulted to sprint) has increased, and she doesn't tire. Though it might not be noticeable at first, when used on the proxies (which have the exact same stats as whatever Pursuer they've formed into), her cameras damage output has also shot way up in addition. All of this comes at the cost of Yuna's own durability taking a massive hit- anything that hits her does a considerable amount of damage, and the fight can end very quickly if the player isn't careful. They must make use of Yuna's massively boosted stats to play as carefully as possible to overcome the fight.

---

Endings

As briefly mentioned above, many of your actions throughout the game will determine what ending you get once the game concludes. Here's how that would work, roughly;

Yuna's main goal is to survive the night, but your actions as a player can influence the degree to which that takes precedence. If you, too, value escaping with your life, and thus play the game as a series of tense cat and mouse changes without doing much investigating, you will wind up with the most straightforward ending; Yuna fights The Agony, barely ekes out a win, and is forever haunted by what transpired in the estate. It is left ambiguous as to what, exactly, her life looked like afterwards, but it is at the very least made clear that she dropped out of her parapsychology program entirely and moved out-of-state, entirely uprooting her life and disappearing somewhere in the American Midwest to start anew, making no attempt to contact her family or anyone she knew back home ever again. Not the most rewarding of endings, but playing this way generally involves a higher degree of interaction with the various Pursuers throughout the game, as you're not taking detours to engage with anything else; to this end, the game itself becomes the reward, as the player takes repeated gambles on hiding from and escaping the Pursuers from start to finish and ends the adventure on an extremely tough boss fight that they can only just barely overcome.

However, Yuna may be terrified, but she is also curious; she has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge that persists even in life-or-death moments, and the players can lean into that. The Investigation Phase massively opens up to the player the more they choose to poke around in every nook and cranny, overturn as many stones as possible to find out what, exactly, happened in each layer of the estate- and indeed, there is much more to each Pursuer and their circumstances than is divulged above. The issue, of course, is parsing what information is useful, and what isn't, though there is at least one general rule the player can follow;

Maintain a healthy balance between Notes and Hauntings for the most “complete” outcome. Notes, by and large, contain most of the factual information; many of them were written by people who knew or encountered the Pursuers before and after their demise, and a good deal were written by the Pursuers when they were still human. If you want to learn the details, that's where you turn. But details are static, un-emotive things. To actually experience even a vague idea of what the Pursuers were going through, and gain a greater perspective on each of them, you will want to seek out Hauntings, as many of them relate directly to those experiences in some manner. Of course, not all of them do, and at least a few are unreliable in terms of their factual accuracy, distorted by time and by pain.

If you rely too heavily on the notes, Yuna gains understanding, but can't fully put herself in the shoes of the beings trying to hurt her. This leads to Yuna's fear, anger, and sadness to override her capacity for empathy. This plays out, in game, with the note count increasing and the haunting count decreasing; you learn more, but feel less, in practice. This also sets Yuna on the path to fighting The Agony at the end, though this time, she does not overcome it; no matter how hard you fight, you will fall to it. Her emotions at their absolute peak, entirely out of control, is the exact key The Agony needs to sink it's influence into her, tearing her apart and reshaping her as it sees fit, just like it did to all the Pursuers before her. Yuna never returns from her trip; she, too, becomes a denizen wandering the layers of the estate. Another scary story woven into the fabric of history; the tale of an overzealous ghost hunter who in way over her head, and joined the ranks of the very things she sought out. An ending that's a touch on the nose, given it's the conclusion to a route likely chosen by the most lore-hungry player, but similarly to the above, that wealth of information is it's own reward. And, for those looking to try out every possible permutation, the knowledge learned here can be used to fill in the gaps in other routes.