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The War on Nickelodeon
Sep. 11th, 2012 09:48 amPeter Sollecito: What would you do if you saw Doug Funny?
Me: I'd put him in The Chamber!
Peter: And what would you do if you saw the Rugrats?
Me: I'd put them in The Chamber!
Peter: And what would you do if you saw Cousin Skeeter?
Me: I'd put him in The Chamber!
-An exchange I once had early in 11th grade.
To start off, yeah... I remember when the attacks took place a year earlier. During 6th period, Mrs. Collins, my biology teacher at the time, received a flyer about what had happened, and read it to us. Later, when I came home, just about every single TV channel was airing nothing but news and commentary about the event, except for a few.
Unfortunately, one of the few that wasn't saying anything about it, was Channel 33: Nickelodeon. But then again, ( Might be offensive to some readers. )
-----
Anyway, last year, I commemorated September 11 with... an entry about games I planned on "making" during high school and what I would do differently from most games in existence. That entry was concluded with a reference to a game I had focused most on during 11th grade, before I ditched all the ideas in favor of what would become known until recently as Monster Collection Chronicles. For those of you who weren't reading my blog at the time, here is that entry:
https://dmxrated.dreamwidth.org/2011/09/11/
So, before I start explaining what the game in question is all about, I should probably begin by explaining where it roots back to.
Well, 8th grade (1999/2000) was the year that I first became interested in Pokemon (after nearly everyone else already lost interest), and that Digimon first started airing here. During the middle of the year, I began to come up with my own version of Digimon, which would involve me and a bunch if kids I knew (mostly from summer camp, but a few not), and in which we'd also have Pokemon. (Well, yeah. The kids at the beginning of anime do start out at summer camp, before finding themselves in the Digital World.) To start with, it all followed the same lines as in the anime, but there were some differences as well, such as the inclusion of a Gazimon and "Snowballmon" on the team, Gesomon's episode involving my uncle Robby and cousin Adam (an infant at the time) meeting the kids on a subway train, Raremon's episode involving a huge party to mark the end of summer camp before Raremon himself shows up, and the girls staying at the church with some of the younger girls in the next episode to create the Powerpuff Girls before Phantomon shows up (earlier than in canon). The second season was still consistent with that of the anime, but not as much, and more and more kids (and more Digimon than in canon) join the team as time goes on. By the end of Tamers, it ended up becoming convoluted and nothing like the anime, with all kinds of crazy stuff going on for no real reason.
But anyway, the beginning of 11th grade was when I got bored of Digimon, after Tamers ended and Mon Colle Knights had been pulled off the air after having ended as well, and it was already half a year since I stopped watching Pokemon as well. However, at that point, I still wanted to create something that involved ( Unfortunate Implications )
October of that year was when I first got into the original Final Fight trilogy, starting with the second game (which was already on the ROM disk that Cousin David gave me and Brian more than a year earlier), before downloading the first game, and finally, 3. One of the main things about those games was how you could walk in all directions while being confined to facing or attacking left and right, ditto for TMNT IV: Turtles in Time (which I had played several months earlier). This was also true in Death & Return of Superman, which I would play months later, never to play again after beating it once or twice. Funny, though, how Turtles in Time Reshelled would eventually materialize for Xbox Live Arcade as an all-directional version of the original arcade version of TiT.
Anyway, while the specifics (not least of all, the areas you'd be exploring) changed constantly, the premise remained the same up until I scrapped the whole thing altogether: Go around in FF-style levels, beat the crap out of characters from all different shows on Nickelodeon, and eventually face off with ( Need I say it? ). Also fundamental were the following:
1) You have 26 kids and Digimon each to choose one character from to play as.
2) You can break things such as oil drums, trash cans, phone booths, etc. for items.
3) All items, objects, and enemies would be assorted randomly in each stage.
4) Each Digimon has Digivolutions for Champion, Ultimate, Mega, and Armor, while each human has one elemental transformation to enable them to fight magically, along with some Pokemon to send out to fight in tandem with. (Won't bore you with all those, but I will say that Digidex sure would've been handy to consult if I knew it existed (assuming it even had at the time), so that I wouldn't have to make up digivolution forms for where there wasn't already any.)
5) Items come in four groups: over 100 weapons of varying strength; over 50 kinds of food items with which to restore health; over 50 varieties of stuff to pick up for points, such as diamonds, money, pairs of sunglasses, gold bars, framed pictures, magazines, videotapes, and Game Boys (even though this was the beginning of the era of DVDs and the Game Boy Advance); and some miscellaneous items, as follow:
-Color-coded Digivices: Red ones are smart bombs, yellow ones let you execute one special attack, green ones let you Digivolve or transform, and blue ones let you switch characters. All are saved for whenever you see fit to use them.
-Handcuffs: With which to have one enemy arrested (like in Judge Dredd).
-First aid kits: Restores all health. (Most of the larger food items only restore 50 health out of 100.)
-Pokeballs: Restores all your Pokemon's health if you're playing as a human.
-Bulletproof vests: Halves the damage you take until you lose one life.
-Bottles of Ecstasy: Sends you into a frenzy, killing anyone in your path (just like the bomb pizzas in TiT).
-1ups.
There probably were a few other things, but I don't think I have the lists I made for the game anymore.
Moving on, despite it being Digimon, absolutely none of it had taken place in the Digital World or involved any Digimon other than those belonging to the main team. ( Unfortunate Implications up the wall! )
Eventually, realizing how desperate I was for Mon Colle Knights back, I dropped everything related to Pokemon and Digimon, and had Mondo and Rockna as two of the remaining playable characters. But, later on still, only weeks before I started 12th grade, I just dropped the whole thing and started on focusing on a possible two-part sequel to MCK.
More on what that eventually evolved into (and all the problems with it) next year. In the meantime, I hope to devote this year to actually getting what's now Cult well past the prologue (and Jake has already agreed to ghostwrite said prologue and further chapters for me).
( Only for those who've read the whole thing. )
Me: I'd put him in The Chamber!
Peter: And what would you do if you saw the Rugrats?
Me: I'd put them in The Chamber!
Peter: And what would you do if you saw Cousin Skeeter?
Me: I'd put him in The Chamber!
-An exchange I once had early in 11th grade.
To start off, yeah... I remember when the attacks took place a year earlier. During 6th period, Mrs. Collins, my biology teacher at the time, received a flyer about what had happened, and read it to us. Later, when I came home, just about every single TV channel was airing nothing but news and commentary about the event, except for a few.
Unfortunately, one of the few that wasn't saying anything about it, was Channel 33: Nickelodeon. But then again, ( Might be offensive to some readers. )
-----
Anyway, last year, I commemorated September 11 with... an entry about games I planned on "making" during high school and what I would do differently from most games in existence. That entry was concluded with a reference to a game I had focused most on during 11th grade, before I ditched all the ideas in favor of what would become known until recently as Monster Collection Chronicles. For those of you who weren't reading my blog at the time, here is that entry:
https://dmxrated.dreamwidth.org/2011/09/11/
So, before I start explaining what the game in question is all about, I should probably begin by explaining where it roots back to.
Well, 8th grade (1999/2000) was the year that I first became interested in Pokemon (after nearly everyone else already lost interest), and that Digimon first started airing here. During the middle of the year, I began to come up with my own version of Digimon, which would involve me and a bunch if kids I knew (mostly from summer camp, but a few not), and in which we'd also have Pokemon. (Well, yeah. The kids at the beginning of anime do start out at summer camp, before finding themselves in the Digital World.) To start with, it all followed the same lines as in the anime, but there were some differences as well, such as the inclusion of a Gazimon and "Snowballmon" on the team, Gesomon's episode involving my uncle Robby and cousin Adam (an infant at the time) meeting the kids on a subway train, Raremon's episode involving a huge party to mark the end of summer camp before Raremon himself shows up, and the girls staying at the church with some of the younger girls in the next episode to create the Powerpuff Girls before Phantomon shows up (earlier than in canon). The second season was still consistent with that of the anime, but not as much, and more and more kids (and more Digimon than in canon) join the team as time goes on. By the end of Tamers, it ended up becoming convoluted and nothing like the anime, with all kinds of crazy stuff going on for no real reason.
But anyway, the beginning of 11th grade was when I got bored of Digimon, after Tamers ended and Mon Colle Knights had been pulled off the air after having ended as well, and it was already half a year since I stopped watching Pokemon as well. However, at that point, I still wanted to create something that involved ( Unfortunate Implications )
October of that year was when I first got into the original Final Fight trilogy, starting with the second game (which was already on the ROM disk that Cousin David gave me and Brian more than a year earlier), before downloading the first game, and finally, 3. One of the main things about those games was how you could walk in all directions while being confined to facing or attacking left and right, ditto for TMNT IV: Turtles in Time (which I had played several months earlier). This was also true in Death & Return of Superman, which I would play months later, never to play again after beating it once or twice. Funny, though, how Turtles in Time Reshelled would eventually materialize for Xbox Live Arcade as an all-directional version of the original arcade version of TiT.
Anyway, while the specifics (not least of all, the areas you'd be exploring) changed constantly, the premise remained the same up until I scrapped the whole thing altogether: Go around in FF-style levels, beat the crap out of characters from all different shows on Nickelodeon, and eventually face off with ( Need I say it? ). Also fundamental were the following:
1) You have 26 kids and Digimon each to choose one character from to play as.
2) You can break things such as oil drums, trash cans, phone booths, etc. for items.
3) All items, objects, and enemies would be assorted randomly in each stage.
4) Each Digimon has Digivolutions for Champion, Ultimate, Mega, and Armor, while each human has one elemental transformation to enable them to fight magically, along with some Pokemon to send out to fight in tandem with. (Won't bore you with all those, but I will say that Digidex sure would've been handy to consult if I knew it existed (assuming it even had at the time), so that I wouldn't have to make up digivolution forms for where there wasn't already any.)
5) Items come in four groups: over 100 weapons of varying strength; over 50 kinds of food items with which to restore health; over 50 varieties of stuff to pick up for points, such as diamonds, money, pairs of sunglasses, gold bars, framed pictures, magazines, videotapes, and Game Boys (even though this was the beginning of the era of DVDs and the Game Boy Advance); and some miscellaneous items, as follow:
-Color-coded Digivices: Red ones are smart bombs, yellow ones let you execute one special attack, green ones let you Digivolve or transform, and blue ones let you switch characters. All are saved for whenever you see fit to use them.
-Handcuffs: With which to have one enemy arrested (like in Judge Dredd).
-First aid kits: Restores all health. (Most of the larger food items only restore 50 health out of 100.)
-Pokeballs: Restores all your Pokemon's health if you're playing as a human.
-Bulletproof vests: Halves the damage you take until you lose one life.
-Bottles of Ecstasy: Sends you into a frenzy, killing anyone in your path (just like the bomb pizzas in TiT).
-1ups.
There probably were a few other things, but I don't think I have the lists I made for the game anymore.
Moving on, despite it being Digimon, absolutely none of it had taken place in the Digital World or involved any Digimon other than those belonging to the main team. ( Unfortunate Implications up the wall! )
Eventually, realizing how desperate I was for Mon Colle Knights back, I dropped everything related to Pokemon and Digimon, and had Mondo and Rockna as two of the remaining playable characters. But, later on still, only weeks before I started 12th grade, I just dropped the whole thing and started on focusing on a possible two-part sequel to MCK.
More on what that eventually evolved into (and all the problems with it) next year. In the meantime, I hope to devote this year to actually getting what's now Cult well past the prologue (and Jake has already agreed to ghostwrite said prologue and further chapters for me).
( Only for those who've read the whole thing. )