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This is what I hoped to do ten years ago
Sep. 11th, 2011 09:50 amMost fans just aren't content to accept absolutely everything the canon offers.
-TV Tropes & Idioms: Better Than Canon
Up until 9th grade, I pretty much was. However, from grades 9 through 11 (this is why I chose today to write this post, also because 10th quite coincidentally happens to be the year that the attacks took place), I hoped to eventually make actual games. In fact, I even intended to create them at an actual game company, even though Mom did tell me at least once that there are people who make games for art. Even to this day, while I do settle much more easily for what I've got with any given game, much of the reason I wish to write Parasitic Trio is because I am very much dissatisfied with certain things about actual Pokemon games.
Well, let's take a look at some of the most notable things I planned to bring out in the games I wanted to make back then:
1) Making it resemble an anime or movie as much as possible.
NOT to be confused with making them as realistic as possible. There are plenty of commonly used tropes which do not at all follow real-life physics.
In any case, this is pretty much impossible. Even in games where you can go more than just left and right, there are a ton of limitations. Cutscenes notwithstanding, characters only talk to each other when they're programmed to (if at all), and only say what they're programmed to. Characters tend to act either based on the player's whims or according to game code, which is why enemies either have such predictable patterns or select moves randomly in battle. What you can do is limited because the input method (that typically being either a keyboard or a controller) can only do so much. Game mechanics are limited, which is why certain things are true such as only being able to use three or four characters in an isolated battle, or only one character at all while exploring. Battles themselves often take place on an isolated plane from the field, and very often involve all participants taking turns to act instead of doing so freely. Characters only suffer injuries or real death (not HP damage) if the story requires it.
Get the idea here?
2) Enable players to use practically anything, anywhere, on any enemy.
This would normally go only as far as would remotely make sense. Normally, you don't use ice attacks to kill an ice enemy, and enemies should appear only where appropriate. Pokemon goes to demonstrate this perfectly (save for Ice against Water, which should be Supereffective). However, you should be free to use anything within reason to kill something, instead of having to kill it in a very specific way (like with most enemies in any Zelda game).
To an extent, though, Kirby games tend to break these boundaries: Most attacks you can use tend to do equal damage to all enemies, and if fire enemies can appear in an ice level, then I wouldn't know where to draw the line. Like, you might as well have everything appear everywhere!
(The above, my friend, is why the twelve elements (24 in the past) is such an important part of MCC, and why I'm so damn fond of Pokemon.)
3) Incorporate as much content as humanly possible!
That would include stuff like items, weapons, enemies, and more. Whenever I thought of a new game, I would look through the entire franchise, and during 9th grade, would also look through all my Nintendo Power magazines for ideas to incorporate.
Perfect example: Bomberman. I thought up this game where you go through 26 ten-level worlds formatted exactly like the original Super Bomberman for the Super NES, but with all kinds of features. Purchased Bomberman Hero (after failing to download it, thanks to dialup), and downloaded Pocket Bomberman, Bomberman Quest, and Super Bomberman 3, just to add even more enemies that once existed to the game.
Other examples: Once rented Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, to harvest enemy species to add to a Kirby game. A week later, I rented Paper Mario, and later on, bought the player's guide for it, just to add more enemies and items to a remake of Super Mario RPG that I dreamed up. Also once thought up this Snowboard Kids game, which would include all courses, board paint styles, items, and characters from both of the N64 games, and then a few non-canon. (This was years before I ever found out about Snowboard Kids Plus for the Playstation.)
Nowadays, I don't go to such ridiculous lengths as that. Anything non-canon to the Pokemon franchise that I think up for Parasitic Trio just comes naturally.
4) Random configurations w/ enemies, items, and dropped items.
Yeah, it would cost the possibility of enemies, items, or item containers appearing in a particular arrangement. Also the reason we have games like Dark Cloud and Grandia Xtreme.
5) Consistency among items.
If I were still obsessed with this nowadays as I was back then, one example of inconsistency I would question would be the Bowser Bomb in Mario Party 2, which uses itself up when the round it was obtained on ends, while all other items let you wait until you see fit to use them. Or, why, in Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, do only a handful of non-transformation masks (such as the Bunny Hood or the Stone Mask) have any real use other than to accomplish certain tasks?
(Sometimes, though, what might seem random, actually has a real reason behind it.)
6) Apply all 24 elements to certain things.
In the aforementioned Bomberman game, that would be all the worlds except for the first and last ones. In other games, it would be the basis for stuff I think up, such as a half-entirely different set of weapons for a remake of Zombies Ate My Neighbors, or the dungeons that you navigate in that Zelda game I once dreamed up. (That's right, that non-existant game was one of them.)
Meanwhile...
No focus ever went into developing plots or characterization. All of it into gameplay. For example, I once thought of creating a remake of Chrono Trigger, w/ more content, but that, of course, was me Completely Missing the Point. But yeah, while that game and many others actually have a genuine story to follow, lots of other games only have a prologue, an epilogue, maybe a brief cutscene before the last level, and not much more than that (if even that).
Conclusion:
Most of the above would relate to why I want to write Parasitic Trio, and why I tend to put a lot more focus on rules rather than on scenes when I think about it. However, #1 on the list is the main reason why I also want to write Monster Collection Chronicles, which won't involve nearly so much of that, but will involve mapping out layouts and positions of everything, as well as determining how much longer anyone can continue to use magic or special moves. Video games will never, ever come to resemble any other medium (save for visual novels, if you count those as "games", and full-motion games such as Time Gal, Road Avenger, and trope codifier and ur example Dragon's Lair). In fact, games already based off of cartoons or movies even go out of their way to include stuff that didn't appear in the source material. For example, Disney's Pinnochio wasn't about whacking bugs with an umbrella or hopping between carts on a roller coaster. Wayne's World wasn't about shooting sonic-booms at killer musical instruments. No level in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers for the Super NES resembles an episode of the actual TV series, in which all five Rangers fight together, and which didn't involve navigating places like a factory, a sewer, or a secret base inside a cavern.
It wasn't until right before 11th grade that I discovered the concept of fanfiction. It changed my life in an epic way! If I ever did actually get to create any of those games, they'd still be severely limited, and I'd still be at square one. Even then, though, this whole thing still persisted for one more year, during which I mostly focused on... no, don't get me started on that one, or any other particular game ideas I thought up during or prior. This entry has gone on quite long enough.
-TV Tropes & Idioms: Better Than Canon
Up until 9th grade, I pretty much was. However, from grades 9 through 11 (this is why I chose today to write this post, also because 10th quite coincidentally happens to be the year that the attacks took place), I hoped to eventually make actual games. In fact, I even intended to create them at an actual game company, even though Mom did tell me at least once that there are people who make games for art. Even to this day, while I do settle much more easily for what I've got with any given game, much of the reason I wish to write Parasitic Trio is because I am very much dissatisfied with certain things about actual Pokemon games.
Well, let's take a look at some of the most notable things I planned to bring out in the games I wanted to make back then:
1) Making it resemble an anime or movie as much as possible.
NOT to be confused with making them as realistic as possible. There are plenty of commonly used tropes which do not at all follow real-life physics.
In any case, this is pretty much impossible. Even in games where you can go more than just left and right, there are a ton of limitations. Cutscenes notwithstanding, characters only talk to each other when they're programmed to (if at all), and only say what they're programmed to. Characters tend to act either based on the player's whims or according to game code, which is why enemies either have such predictable patterns or select moves randomly in battle. What you can do is limited because the input method (that typically being either a keyboard or a controller) can only do so much. Game mechanics are limited, which is why certain things are true such as only being able to use three or four characters in an isolated battle, or only one character at all while exploring. Battles themselves often take place on an isolated plane from the field, and very often involve all participants taking turns to act instead of doing so freely. Characters only suffer injuries or real death (not HP damage) if the story requires it.
Get the idea here?
2) Enable players to use practically anything, anywhere, on any enemy.
This would normally go only as far as would remotely make sense. Normally, you don't use ice attacks to kill an ice enemy, and enemies should appear only where appropriate. Pokemon goes to demonstrate this perfectly (save for Ice against Water, which should be Supereffective). However, you should be free to use anything within reason to kill something, instead of having to kill it in a very specific way (like with most enemies in any Zelda game).
To an extent, though, Kirby games tend to break these boundaries: Most attacks you can use tend to do equal damage to all enemies, and if fire enemies can appear in an ice level, then I wouldn't know where to draw the line. Like, you might as well have everything appear everywhere!
(The above, my friend, is why the twelve elements (24 in the past) is such an important part of MCC, and why I'm so damn fond of Pokemon.)
3) Incorporate as much content as humanly possible!
That would include stuff like items, weapons, enemies, and more. Whenever I thought of a new game, I would look through the entire franchise, and during 9th grade, would also look through all my Nintendo Power magazines for ideas to incorporate.
Perfect example: Bomberman. I thought up this game where you go through 26 ten-level worlds formatted exactly like the original Super Bomberman for the Super NES, but with all kinds of features. Purchased Bomberman Hero (after failing to download it, thanks to dialup), and downloaded Pocket Bomberman, Bomberman Quest, and Super Bomberman 3, just to add even more enemies that once existed to the game.
Other examples: Once rented Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, to harvest enemy species to add to a Kirby game. A week later, I rented Paper Mario, and later on, bought the player's guide for it, just to add more enemies and items to a remake of Super Mario RPG that I dreamed up. Also once thought up this Snowboard Kids game, which would include all courses, board paint styles, items, and characters from both of the N64 games, and then a few non-canon. (This was years before I ever found out about Snowboard Kids Plus for the Playstation.)
Nowadays, I don't go to such ridiculous lengths as that. Anything non-canon to the Pokemon franchise that I think up for Parasitic Trio just comes naturally.
4) Random configurations w/ enemies, items, and dropped items.
Yeah, it would cost the possibility of enemies, items, or item containers appearing in a particular arrangement. Also the reason we have games like Dark Cloud and Grandia Xtreme.
5) Consistency among items.
If I were still obsessed with this nowadays as I was back then, one example of inconsistency I would question would be the Bowser Bomb in Mario Party 2, which uses itself up when the round it was obtained on ends, while all other items let you wait until you see fit to use them. Or, why, in Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, do only a handful of non-transformation masks (such as the Bunny Hood or the Stone Mask) have any real use other than to accomplish certain tasks?
(Sometimes, though, what might seem random, actually has a real reason behind it.)
6) Apply all 24 elements to certain things.
In the aforementioned Bomberman game, that would be all the worlds except for the first and last ones. In other games, it would be the basis for stuff I think up, such as a half-entirely different set of weapons for a remake of Zombies Ate My Neighbors, or the dungeons that you navigate in that Zelda game I once dreamed up. (That's right, that non-existant game was one of them.)
Meanwhile...
No focus ever went into developing plots or characterization. All of it into gameplay. For example, I once thought of creating a remake of Chrono Trigger, w/ more content, but that, of course, was me Completely Missing the Point. But yeah, while that game and many others actually have a genuine story to follow, lots of other games only have a prologue, an epilogue, maybe a brief cutscene before the last level, and not much more than that (if even that).
Conclusion:
Most of the above would relate to why I want to write Parasitic Trio, and why I tend to put a lot more focus on rules rather than on scenes when I think about it. However, #1 on the list is the main reason why I also want to write Monster Collection Chronicles, which won't involve nearly so much of that, but will involve mapping out layouts and positions of everything, as well as determining how much longer anyone can continue to use magic or special moves. Video games will never, ever come to resemble any other medium (save for visual novels, if you count those as "games", and full-motion games such as Time Gal, Road Avenger, and trope codifier and ur example Dragon's Lair). In fact, games already based off of cartoons or movies even go out of their way to include stuff that didn't appear in the source material. For example, Disney's Pinnochio wasn't about whacking bugs with an umbrella or hopping between carts on a roller coaster. Wayne's World wasn't about shooting sonic-booms at killer musical instruments. No level in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers for the Super NES resembles an episode of the actual TV series, in which all five Rangers fight together, and which didn't involve navigating places like a factory, a sewer, or a secret base inside a cavern.
It wasn't until right before 11th grade that I discovered the concept of fanfiction. It changed my life in an epic way! If I ever did actually get to create any of those games, they'd still be severely limited, and I'd still be at square one. Even then, though, this whole thing still persisted for one more year, during which I mostly focused on... no, don't get me started on that one, or any other particular game ideas I thought up during or prior. This entry has gone on quite long enough.