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Berdly is a legend and if you don't recognize him as such, YOU SUCK

***Spoilers for chapter 2 of Deltarune following***

1) he's genuinely impressively strong and competent. He landed in a dark world without any explanation and immediately understood how to fight and immediately knew to team up with Queen, he fought the fun gang and gave them genuine trouble, he fought Kris and Noelle and stood his ground against them. And he was the person to save the day by creating the thrash machine, Queen would've otherwise destroyed the fun gang without him. There were 4 powerful warriors, a Queen with an entire kingdom and he still accomplished by himself the most out of the parties in chapter 2

2) he's such a genuinely good kid. He cares very deeply for Noelle, realizes that she's intelligent and doesn't feel intimidated by that despite knowing that she's much smarter than him. He was literally willing to fight to the death for her safety in the weird route. And he kept no hard feelings towards anyone at the end of chapter 2

I love him ngl. I hope we can go to the festival with him. Maybe he'll see someone slip on some grease and make a weird wavedash reference
 
Smash is a fun game but it's absolutely not worth getting into competitively

1) The community is bar none the worst gaming community out there. From them protecting sex pests, Leffen and making excuses for every kind of predator whilst punishing the victims in basically every situation, it's not only an extremely toxic environment, it's also genuinely unsafe. It's no wonder that it's the only competitive environment where there is maybe, at absolute best, one woman for every 200-300 men. Like these environments always have a surplus of men, but absolutely not to this degree. It makes sense however when you look at the community and their treatment of women, children and vulnerable people of any kind

2) It's not worth getting carpal tunnel and completely unfixable tendon issues for tournaments where you can get maybe a half eaten burger and some napkins for being the best player out of thousands of attendants for. Art, office work, most competitive games are detrimental for the wrists, but getting sick Fox combos is basically just a wrist destruction speedrun

Getting some friends together, playing some Slippy and taking it easy is fun. Getting competitive is awful. If you really need the fix, play Rivals of Aether competitive, the community is significantly less toxic and the game is much less taxing on the wrists. Or just go with any other fighting game, most of them have questionable communities too but not to the degree of Smash
This post seems to ring more true with Melee than a Smash as a whole? I bifurcate the communities in my mind although they will share tournament events.
 
Chekhov's Gun is secretly the worst thing to happen to storytelling. It's a good concept of having unimportant things come back, but it leads to modern overanalyzing where everything must be be important and story beats can never have lighthearted filler because goodness forbid we have some chapters where the characters hang out like regular human beings.

Similarly, Breather Episodes are a great trope and writers should use them more, that's what made Teen Titans (2003) so good.
 
Chekhov's Gun is secretly the worst thing to happen to storytelling. It's a good concept of having unimportant things come back, but it leads to modern overanalyzing where everything must be be important and story beats can never have lighthearted filler because goodness forbid we have some chapters where the characters hang out like regular human beings.

Similarly, Breather Episodes are a great trope and writers should use them more, that's what made Teen Titans (2003) so good.
I don't think there's anything wrong with reading symbolic or other meaning into the seemingly inconsequential details of a story, but I do think it's unnecessary for every detail in a story to have plot relevance later. As a writer, it's nice to just deploy some details for flavor or to indicate things about a character's personality from time to time.
 
I don't think there's anything wrong with reading symbolic or other meaning into the seemingly inconsequential details of a story, but I do think it's unnecessary for every detail in a story to have plot relevance later. As a writer, it's nice to just deploy some details for flavor or to indicate things about a character's personality from time to time.
Reading this post as part of the adjectivenoun filler arc
 
Companies shutting down ROM hacks (including Pokemon ROM hacks) is 100% within their legal rights and people are just upset they can't play games for free anymore.

While original fangames can be interesting, think about it from the perspective of Game Freak in the 90s for a moment. They had made games like Yoshi (puzzle game), Mendel Palace (mildly fun but who knows about it) and Mario & Wario (Japan only which only gets the occasional esoteric reference, like from Junker in Bowser's Inside Story to say "that game exists!"). Literally all of the programmers quit in the middle of Pokemon Red & Green's development. They got rejected by Nintendo several times and it was only because of Shigeru Miyamoto's help that Nintendo finally greenlit Pokemon. They released six games during Red & Green's long development cycle of almost six years.

They worked for it and it paid off big time.

Regardless of your opinion on Pokemon nowadays, look at it from the other end. Some random nobody is borrowing your idea that your company worked to the bone to develop for over half a decade, and they get all the attention because "all muh modern Pokemon games bad." Speaking as an author who struggles to be recognized in the public eye after spending years developing ideas, I think that's pretty lame ROM hackers can just leech off success Game Freak earned back in the day (even if some hacks can be fun).
 
Companies shutting down ROM hacks (including Pokemon ROM hacks) is 100% within their legal rights and people are just upset they can't play games for free anymore.

While original fangames can be interesting, think about it from the perspective of Game Freak in the 90s for a moment. They had made games like Yoshi (puzzle game), Mendel Palace (mildly fun but who knows about it) and Mario & Wario (Japan only which only gets the occasional esoteric reference, like from Junker in Bowser's Inside Story to say "that game exists!"). Literally all of the programmers quit in the middle of Pokemon Red & Green's development. They got rejected by Nintendo several times and it was only because of Shigeru Miyamoto's help that Nintendo finally greenlit Pokemon. They released six games during Red & Green's long development cycle of almost six years.

They worked for it and it paid off big time.

Regardless of your opinion on Pokemon nowadays, look at it from the other end. Some random nobody is borrowing your idea that your company worked to the bone to develop for over half a decade, and they get all the attention because "all muh modern Pokemon games bad." Speaking as an author who struggles to be recognized in the public eye after spending years developing ideas, I think that's pretty lame ROM hackers can just leech off success Game Freak earned back in the day (even if some hacks can be fun).
As someone who has made romhacks: what? Basically all romhacks are made by people who love the source material and want more of it. For Pokémon hacks specifically, they generally backport moves, abilities, mons and mechanics from later generations, so the later generation disrespect argument doesn't really hold up - gen 3 games are generally used as a basis, but that's because they're the easiest to work with. And there has never been a single example of a Pokémon romhack that got more attention than a mainline title so I have no idea where this argument is coming from.
 
Companies shutting down ROM hacks (including Pokemon ROM hacks) is 100% within their legal rights and people are just upset they can't play games for free anymore.

While original fangames can be interesting, think about it from the perspective of Game Freak in the 90s for a moment. They had made games like Yoshi (puzzle game), Mendel Palace (mildly fun but who knows about it) and Mario & Wario (Japan only which only gets the occasional esoteric reference, like from Junker in Bowser's Inside Story to say "that game exists!"). Literally all of the programmers quit in the middle of Pokemon Red & Green's development. They got rejected by Nintendo several times and it was only because of Shigeru Miyamoto's help that Nintendo finally greenlit Pokemon. They released six games during Red & Green's long development cycle of almost six years.

They worked for it and it paid off big time.

Regardless of your opinion on Pokemon nowadays, look at it from the other end. Some random nobody is borrowing your idea that your company worked to the bone to develop for over half a decade, and they get all the attention because "all muh modern Pokemon games bad." Speaking as an author who struggles to be recognized in the public eye after spending years developing ideas, I think that's pretty lame ROM hackers can just leech off success Game Freak earned back in the day (even if some hacks can be fun).
It's certainly within their legal purview, but I don't think that makes it moral, nor do I think it even makes financial sense. On the moral front, I think systems of copyright and intellectual property are unethical and antithetical to artistic expression, but I recognize that as a pretty niche opinion. On the financial front, though, I just don't think this level of insane protectiveness is actually a benefit. Nintendo is constantly mired in bad press for shutting down this or that fan project, and even if that doesn't hurt game sales too much, it certainly doesn't help. Plus, I don't think fan projects are actually costing them sales in the first place. Something like a Drayano hack is made for people who are already hardcore fans of the game in question and want a different experience out of it; I really doubt that being able to play Renegade Platinum has much influence on whether someone is going to buy Winds and Waves when those come out. Some court rulings (in America, at least) have protected emulators by labeling them as valid competitors to Nintendo's official consoles, so I get the sense that Nintendo sees every unsanctioned fan project as an attempt to siphon sales from their own products and undermine their intellectual property holdings, but their actions just don't really hold up to scrutiny from a business perspective, I don't think.
 
Companies shutting down ROM hacks (including Pokemon ROM hacks) is 100% within their legal rights and people are just upset they can't play games for free anymore.

While original fangames can be interesting, think about it from the perspective of Game Freak in the 90s for a moment. They had made games like Yoshi (puzzle game), Mendel Palace (mildly fun but who knows about it) and Mario & Wario (Japan only which only gets the occasional esoteric reference, like from Junker in Bowser's Inside Story to say "that game exists!"). Literally all of the programmers quit in the middle of Pokemon Red & Green's development. They got rejected by Nintendo several times and it was only because of Shigeru Miyamoto's help that Nintendo finally greenlit Pokemon. They released six games during Red & Green's long development cycle of almost six years.

They worked for it and it paid off big time.

Regardless of your opinion on Pokemon nowadays, look at it from the other end. Some random nobody is borrowing your idea that your company worked to the bone to develop for over half a decade, and they get all the attention because "all muh modern Pokemon games bad." Speaking as an author who struggles to be recognized in the public eye after spending years developing ideas, I think that's pretty lame ROM hackers can just leech off success Game Freak earned back in the day (even if some hacks can be fun).
That's a really weird way to think about it.

Yes, it's true that companies are legally allowed to shut down the ROM hacks. That's indisputable under current copyright law and thus not really an argument.

But from the developers' perspective, the first Pokémon games were released 27 years ago. They're not making any money off of them anymore, and they aren't in the public consciousness outside of maybe being slightly nostalgic. You don't have much to gain physically or emotionally from them anymore. So, if someone does play them decades later and still loves them enough after 27 years of design optimization to actively give their own spin on it, shouldn't that be flattering? The vast majority of ROM hacks are not monetized, nor is making one a viable option for gaining large recognition. They are simply labors of love.

Realistically, they aren't outshining the original games, either. How many people go from a passing interest in Pokémon straight to fangames? Personally, my first Pokémon game that I played was Fire Red, then Emerald and Crystal before moving on to fan games.

But even if they were outshining the original games, the fact of the matter is that they have a right to. While almost nothing is objective in determining the quality of a game - some people enjoy bashing their head against a wall - I think most people would agree that, under modern conventions, the old games have some pretty egregious mistakes. Crystal was the game that inspired me to check out Radical Red precisely because of the game's horrendous level curve and lack of challenge outside of the grind. I would get it if the fangames were essentially carbon copies of the original games and merely getting most of the attention due to recency bias, but they aren't, and I don't think it's fair to prevent players from choosing to play a quantifiably better game for no other reason than 'we did it first'. Would Edison have protested against the invention of LED because they made his filament bulbs largely irrelevant?

If they think that ROM hacks are taking attention away from modern Pokémon games, then respectfully, skill issue. You have the resources of the largest IP in the world, and are working with modern technology; if enough people prefer to play games built on 90s technology, the fault lies with you, not them. But, as Mechalico said, there has never been a fangame that has eclipsed a mainline game anyway, so it's essentially a moot point. If anything, fangames just pull people deeper into the Pokémon rabbit hole, which is a huge marketing opportunity.

Man, I get it about the writing. Public attention is fickle and unfair, and it feels really bad to have finally gotten some attention only to immediately get hit with a million copycats trying to be the next big thing. But that is absolutely not what is happening here. It's more like people writing fanfiction of your story.
 
That's a really weird way to think about it.

Yes, it's true that companies are legally allowed to shut down the ROM hacks. That's indisputable under current copyright law and thus not really an argument.

But from the developers' perspective, the first Pokémon games were released 27 years ago. They're not making any money off of them anymore, and they aren't in the public consciousness outside of maybe being slightly nostalgic. You don't have much to gain physically or emotionally from them anymore. So, if someone does play them decades later and still loves them enough after 27 years of design optimization to actively give their own spin on it, shouldn't that be flattering? The vast majority of ROM hacks are not monetized, nor is making one a viable option for gaining large recognition. They are simply labors of love.

Realistically, they aren't outshining the original games, either. How many people go from a passing interest in Pokémon straight to fangames? Personally, my first Pokémon game that I played was Fire Red, then Emerald and Crystal before moving on to fan games.

But even if they were outshining the original games, the fact of the matter is that they have a right to. While almost nothing is objective in determining the quality of a game - some people enjoy bashing their head against a wall - I think most people would agree that, under modern conventions, the old games have some pretty egregious mistakes. Crystal was the game that inspired me to check out Radical Red precisely because of the game's horrendous level curve and lack of challenge outside of the grind. I would get it if the fangames were essentially carbon copies of the original games and merely getting most of the attention due to recency bias, but they aren't, and I don't think it's fair to prevent players from choosing to play a quantifiably better game for no other reason than 'we did it first'. Would Edison have protested against the invention of LED because they made his filament bulbs largely irrelevant?

If they think that ROM hacks are taking attention away from modern Pokémon games, then respectfully, skill issue. You have the resources of the largest IP in the world, and are working with modern technology; if enough people prefer to play games built on 90s technology, the fault lies with you, not them. But, as Mechalico said, there has never been a fangame that has eclipsed a mainline game anyway, so it's essentially a moot point. If anything, fangames just pull people deeper into the Pokémon rabbit hole, which is a huge marketing opportunity.

Man, I get it about the writing. Public attention is fickle and unfair, and it feels really bad to have finally gotten some attention only to immediately get hit with a million copycats trying to be the next big thing. But that is absolutely not what is happening here. It's more like people writing fanfiction of your story.
I agree with your take of Crystal not being very good

I got a lot of replies on the above post so I'll say there's nothing inherently morally wrong with fangames. I just think people get up in arms too much when they do get taken down, even if they don't make profit off of it.

I'll say this. Pokemon Sacred Gold and Storm Silver are 100% better than Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver. They fix every problem with HGSS. HGSS are poop games that just happen to look and sound good, with so many bad and frustrating design decisions that are made strictly to inflate playtime for no real value (Game Corner without code seeds is dumb, Pokeathlon and arbitrary rematches hiding evolution stones are dumb, and so much more). Every single time I play HGSS with an open mind and it's just not fun. I'd unironally say RBY are better games than HGSS.

Also, Crystal Clear is good and I've been enjoying Jet Black.

Fangames can be fun, people just go straight to doomsaying if they get action taken is what I meant to say. Bad wording on my part.
 
Companies shutting down ROM hacks (including Pokemon ROM hacks) is 100% within their legal rights and people are just upset they can't play games for free anymore.

While original fangames can be interesting, think about it from the perspective of Game Freak in the 90s for a moment. They had made games like Yoshi (puzzle game), Mendel Palace (mildly fun but who knows about it) and Mario & Wario (Japan only which only gets the occasional esoteric reference, like from Junker in Bowser's Inside Story to say "that game exists!"). Literally all of the programmers quit in the middle of Pokemon Red & Green's development. They got rejected by Nintendo several times and it was only because of Shigeru Miyamoto's help that Nintendo finally greenlit Pokemon. They released six games during Red & Green's long development cycle of almost six years.

They worked for it and it paid off big time.

Regardless of your opinion on Pokemon nowadays, look at it from the other end. Some random nobody is borrowing your idea that your company worked to the bone to develop for over half a decade, and they get all the attention because "all muh modern Pokemon games bad." Speaking as an author who struggles to be recognized in the public eye after spending years developing ideas, I think that's pretty lame ROM hackers can just leech off success Game Freak earned back in the day (even if some hacks can be fun).
suffering for your art doesn't entitle you to be a dick to the little guy once you hit it big
 
Considering Edison sued competitors frequently, I think he would
yeah that probably wasn't the best example. he hired goons to destroy movie sets because he patented (important note: not invented, patented) the motion picture camera and a shit ton of other early moviemaking equipment, so he believed he owned the rights to any and all film made. this is one of the big reasons that the film industry is centered in hollywood—the entire industry moved to the other side of the country to get as far away from edison as possible. so this might actually be the worst example in all of history to try and prove your point, even though i agree with it
 
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