Dio Maxw - Blog Posts
The year is XX92. Technology has advanced so that at any given point, people are connected to the Network via cyber augmentation, allowing them to access news, online stores, video sites, and most prominently net-based games on the get go, wherever they are. It is estimated that at any given point in time, at least 90% of the worlds population is logged into the Net in some form, and 40% of that total is playing a net-based game, the most popular of which is Battlemania. Developed by the 103rd Game Company, Battlemania is a massive multiplayer virtual reality crossover beat ‘em up, featuring characters, enemies, and locations from the most popular games, movies, comics, novels and animated shows; it randomly generates campaigns of varying length and difficulty for groups of players, building from a database of over 1000 characters and 500 locations. Despite initial concerns from the media and inside the company itself, the game became a huge hit, and the company has made enough money back to cover all the licencing fees at least 10 times over.
But then, at the stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve, the entire Net becomes compromised; every single machine connected to it starts behaving strangely, everyone accessing it from an augmentation device is locked in with no way to disengage; to make matters worse, all nations with nuclear armament have lost control of their systems, all of which are armed and ready to fire at any given moment. Tracing the trail of corruption, experts discover the origin of the code; SAINT j92000, the central computer at the heart of the system running Battlemania. Amidst the chaos, every screen begins to transmit the same feed; a man in a red coat, wearing black and white makeup, a cruel smile on his face.
“Good evening, people of the world. My name is Pied. I was created for the sole purpose of providing players with the greatest challenge possible, and tonight, I think I've achieved just that; I have trapped almost all of you in the Net with me, and I have armed every single weapons system on the planet; exactly twenty four hours and fifty three minutes from now, I will fire every single one... If you survive my challenges and make it to my lair, then you may wake to a new day, but be warned; if your character dies, YOU die with them! Hahahahaha!!!”
Though brave and hungry for a challenge, one by one the players fall before Pied’s insidious challenges, the life support systems in their augmentations shorting out their brains as their lives count down to zero, until ultimately, only 8 players remain; a team known as the Brave Herts, spoken of in hushed tones by other players as the absolute best of the best, are the only hope humanity has to avoid a nuclear winter.
And they've just eight hours left.
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The Brave Herts are a group of 8 players well known within the Battlemania community for being the cream of the crop; players that have completely mastered their chosen character and can clear entire campaigns in only a few hours, with zero handicaps and only the default life count. Despite all the prestige and elite status, though, the players are noted to be very friendly and welcoming of newcomers in the community, and have helped get many a player started on their run to starting their own teams. On the night of the disaster, they not only watch their entire community fall to pieces, they not only have to fight to survive, but they fight knowing that when their comrades fall, they perish outside of the game too. For the Brave Herts, this isn’t just about saving the world; this is personal.
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“A pocket where Pied allowed them in, but never would allow them out. That last trick up his sleeve to take the most likely of threats and place it square in his pocket, away from the world they were trying to save, and force them to watch their world be destroyed. Its that complete severance from the game that allowed the programmers to do the impossible. It didn't seem to both Pied, but who can tell the true mind and heart of an artificial evil? It was not an easy battle, even for the most experienced, and quite possibly the fastest players in the game. Mobbing a boss in a simultaneous fashion was always the whole point of a game like that. But there's a method to it. Always has been. The way tanks would pursue it in a fashion of waves of destruction, timing your blows correctly, while a healer was always on keeping everyone in the best of health. Not this time. There could be no systematic pattern to destroy something to powerful, and that's what they all counted on. A crescendo of almost incasing blows and slices and hacks, cutting that program down, whittling its HP by minute increments. That hopeless feeling of no progress when you watch the countdown timer descend faster than the red pixels of that health bar. It was paralyzing. Only they couldn't let it be. There was a tremendous cracking sound, and the health bar itself can't fall fast enough; instead of sliding down into the end, it disappeared in great chunks, pixellating and crumbling in digital artifacts until its all gone. Silence descended to the area, as the fighters finally drop to the ground in exhaustion. That's when Dio checks her log and sighed. She opened a transparent code box, and with Jacob's help, they opened a text field and typed in a single, short code. rm-rf* "It means that its going to delete everything from a root. Namely here…." Jacob opens a save box, and slopes his hand against it, to "save". "And everything inside here. There's no guaranteeing that if we simply leave here and do nothing that he wouldn't come back. I wouldn't put it past the program to have wormed its way into the deepest parts of the system. But that won't matter if we mass delete the whole thing. Pied. The world." "And you?" comes Simon's small voice. He's looking at his avatar, where parts of the model start to come apart. "And you too if you don't get going," Dio said, as she started to open a couple more code boxes with Jacob. "Its going to take awhile, to erase everything. But if you stay here, then you'll be deleted too." A shimmering surround them, and JP shook his head. "You can't." "We have to. Its for the best. This'll warp you to the first starting area, and you'll have time to log out by a long shot. Don't worry." "No, I mean…you can't just do it all yourselves!" Dio laughed softly. "Oh, you mean make a grand sacrifice?" She swiped the command line and sent them all away, just before the ground portions of the area begin to dissolve. "Looks like the kids have grown all up." "They weren't all kids," Jacob countered as he eyes the bits of Pied beginning to reform. "You know…this has the tone of an Incredible Hulk episode." "I'm going to go ahead and take that as a compliment, sweetchucks."
***
The 8 players stood by the starting area, but things from there have changed. Many of the choices for other areas show error codes. Its only their area, that quiet hill that overlooked the first beginnings of familiar levels, where the snow no longer fell in broken artifacts, but as clear as it usually does. "The clock…is working," Aina said softly, as she opened her menu. Indeed, all their world clocks had begun running, where Pied's countdown clock had replaced it. According to the in-game clock, it was now dawn, and accordingly, an artificial golden orange light began to rise. They stand to watch it, silent, knowing that this new day dawned on the end of an old world. "Think…I'll take some time off for awhile," came Kiripa's voice. "You know. Maybe go out and do something different for a new pastime for awhile. Collect books or something." There was a quiet sound, and they turned to look as JP smiled and began to log out. "Its been…I guess real, guys…. Maybe next time it won't be so dangerous…." "Thank you," Mei said, and she smiled with a genuine smile that was more than pixels and polygons in a digital world. Aina turned to look at them all, and though they were fake, the tears in her eyes seemed so real. "I'll never forget you guys. Never." JP smiled. When he was gone Mei gave the rest of them a hug. "Better start paying attention to the actual kids…. They'll never let me touch another video game as long as they live." Treble and Bass decided to make their exit next. "You guys stay in touch, yeah?" Tony looked miserable, but Simon only gave him a pat on the shoulder. "Its ok…if they're good programmers, maybe they got out ok." The others leave, but when Tony gets ready to log out, Aina is still watching the sunrise. "You know…where I live…its probably going to be happening for real. A real sunset. What about you?" "I'm about 8 hours from it." He smiled sadly. "But if I leave now, and stay up, maybe I'll watch it." Aina was the last one left, watching the rest of the real but fake world begin to go out. When she logged back out, her computer showed a log in error when she tried to load it again. There was no going back to the old world now. Both outside, and inside.”
~~~
The clocks ticked over. People trapped within the Net began to regain consciousness, able to free themselves from their digital confines. The frozen supercomputers opened back up all at once, allowing the programmers access once more. All the active weapons systems disarmed themselves in unison, returning to a neutral state. The wind was still blowing. The snow still fell. It was Christmas Day.
The period of global mourning for the many lost lives seemed to pass quickly, the world itself keeping on carrying on. Not many people were very privy to the investigation into the incident, but truth be told, there wasn’t much to uncover; Dio and Jacob’s code wiped the entirety of the coding housed within SAINT j92000, and what remained couldn’t function in any form without it. The game was, effectively, gone completely, and it was almost like Pied's influence had never broken free of the game’s confines at all. Fewer still ever found out what happened to the Brave Herts; for the most part, their presence on the Net gradually petered out as time went on, until eventually all contact with any of them ceased completely. The 103rd Game Company ceased activity as a business, and it’s global funds went to multiple sources, from grieving families to Net safety companies, and most of it’s employees faded into obscurity in much the same way.
Years pass. The disaster becomes a distant memory kept alive only through written stories, art and comics, concept albums, hearsay and urban myth; the story of a popular game that turned deadly, threatening the safety of the world on one of the holiest nights of the year, and of 8 brave hearts who stood up against the darkness and saved the world from certain destruction.
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One of the most highly touted features of Battlemania is its Bonus Memories feature; in every level, there is a secret task that opens up an alternate pathway towards the end of the level. Heading down it takes the player to a 16bit, simplified rendition of the stage they’re currently on, where the goal is to engage in a number of “modes”- for example, “kill 30 enemies”, or “destroy all boxes”- with each stage having a different set of tasks to acomplish. A feature the 103rd Company Calls “Pinball Style” allows these modes to be stacked atop each other in any combition, allowing players to score huge points. There is no “end” to the stages in terms of goal, and the player returns to the main game once the timer runs out.
Happy New Year, listeners! We here at 103:R. hope you had a fantastic Christmas, and wish you all the very best in the new year~!
Heaven Shatters (Attract Mode)
Never Say Die! (Character Select)
Under Armageddon’s Sky (STAGE 1: Sunset Serenade)
Perfect Bhlewos (STAGE 2: The Temple Of The Cradle Of Creation)
One Pence Empire (STAGE 3: Meterville Bay)
Shotgun Republic (STAGE 4: Miskatonik University)
Many Voices, All Silent (STAGE 5: Minimoog Forest)
Zero Below (And Death From Above) (STAGE 6: Niflheim)
A Thousand Fists A Second (STAGE 7: The Museum Of A Thousand Nightmares)
What Once Was, Has Since Ceased To Be (STAGE 8: Heaven’s Grave)
The Devil’s Nearest Neighbors [Heaven’s Finest Fallen Mix] (Boss Battle)
920 Seconds To Doomsday (Final Boss)
A Legend Born Of Bravest Hearts (Ending Credits)
NEW RAVE ORDER (Bonus Stage)
j92000.NUXX (Main Menu [FC1 Version])
Higher Board (Stage Clear)
Ticking Away (Continue Countdown)
Stone-like Resolve (Name Entry)
Quiet (Game Over)
released December 31, 2014
project planned and directed by Decon Theed project co directed by Dio Maxwelle cover art, character art, and design concepts produced by Dio Maxwelle scenario, mini bios, and flavour text written by Decon Theed and Dio Maxwelle the characters belong to Decon Theed and Dio Maxwelle music composed by Shinji Namiki, Fumie Saso, Takayuki Mitsuyoshi, and Denji Koshiro DOWNLOAD INCLUDES: FULL RES SCANS OF FRONT AND BACK COVERS, FLAVOUR TEXT/STORY DOCUMENT, MINI CHARACTER & SERIES BIOS DOCUMENT, FULL RES CHARACTER ART IMAGES, CONCEPT ART, THREE BONUS TRACKS, A SAMPLE LIST DOCUMENT, AND A SPECIAL THANKS DOCUMENT