Good to see that Wario64 is still around in this timeline, albeit with a different name.
Battle Royale: The Last Generation Of An SNES-CD Saga
- Thread starter RySenkari
- Start date
April 2019 - Apple Releases A New Handheld (And Maybe Gets Upstaged!)
iPhone G: Technical Specifications And Launch Details
On April 5, 2019, Apple launches the iPhone G worldwide. The iPhone G is a modified iPhone SE, which is itself a model of the iPhone 7. It's primarily geared toward playing handheld games and streaming games from Apple consoles, and features a nearly borderless screen with a slideout control pad (the control pad has all the requisite buttons for playing modern games, including four face buttons, four shoulder buttons, two clickable control sticks, and a D-Pad, in a compact but comfortable form factor). The internals of the iPhone G are geared toward battery life and passive cooling, while featuring a less powerful CPU but a more powerful GPU than the current iPhone model (the iPhone 8). This allows the iPhone G to run console-like games without overheating even without the use of a fan, thanks to an innovative (with multiple patents) heatsink and thermal gel that allow the phone to play even the most intense games indefinitely as long as one has suitable power. The iPhone G is slightly more powerful than OTL's Nintendo Switch, capable of running ports of most current console games ITTL. Its form factor is fairly large for a smartphone but still capable of fitting into most pockets. It is thicker and heavier than the typical smartphone due to the slideout pad and the need for the slightly larger heatsink and battery, and of course it's smaller than the Gemini, with a screen comparable in size to the Nintendo Connect (a bit smaller than the Connect's screen, but still a good screen for a handheld). The screen itself is an OLED screen, and the phone also boasts some very good speakers, some of the best speakers ever made for a smartphone, though it also utilizes Apple's headphones (both wired and wireless). Of course, being an iPhone, it also does all the typical smartphone things (calls, texts, web browsing, apps), though it does them a bit slower than a normal iPhone would, due to the slower CPU. It's still a very good phone, especially for the price, but people who buy it are primarily looking for a gaming phone. It has 64GB of internal memory (on the $299 model, while the $399 model has 256GB), and it also allows the use of microSD cards. Like the Gemini, it's a download only device, no game cartridges of any kind.
The iPhone G initially releases as an alternative model iPhone, but what iPhone G really is is a gaming platform, in some ways similar to the Google Stadia, but also having similarities to Apple Arcade, as a platform intended for all of Apple's devices. For three months, the iPhone G is the exclusive device for iPhone G games, but afterwards, Apple begins to release other "G-compatible" devices, including an Apple TV box capable of downloading and playing iPhone G games with a controller. These controllers have a touchpad similar to the one on the OTL PS4, allowing the use of touchscreen controls on games that require them, though most iPhone G games won't have touch controls, or touch controls will be optional. In addition, starting with the iPhone 9, all iPhones will be capable of playing iPhone G games, though players will be advised that only the iPhone "G" models, starting with the iPhone G9, will be capable of playing games optimally, while a normal iPhone may run into battery life problems or may automatically exit out of games if a phone is overheating. Apple computers will also be capable of playing iPhone G games, and it's possible that Apple's next console will be able to play them as well. The iPhone G isn't being touted as an exclusive gaming handheld, merely as the best way to play what essentially counts as TTL's version of Apple Arcade. Rather than being a monthly subscription service, TTL's Apple Arcade, called Apple G, is merely a shared platform across multiple Apple devices on which Apple's next generation of portable games are capable of being played. Of course, there are still plenty of iOS games, but Apple G games are a "step above", designed as games first and apps second, a way to maintain a mobile-like ecosystem of dedicated handheld games. Apple took a loss on almost every Gemini sold, so, with Apple G, they're essentially pulling out of the dedicated handheld business while cultivating a library that can compete with both Nintendo's upcoming next-gen handheld and platforms like Google Stadia. Like Google, Apple is going into the software business primarily, though they still intend to maintain a dedicated console ecosystem with the next-generation Virtua successor. iPhone G/Apple G is a cross between OTL's Switch and OTL's Apple Arcade, and Apple intends to make a lot of money selling software for a slew of Apple devices in the next few years.
iPhone G initially launches with seven exclusive titles. Four are fairly minor games not really worth mentioning here, while three are major exclusives, including two based on a pair of Apple exclusive franchises and a brand new IP. Those three games are briefly described here:
Sonic Forever: A sidescrolling Sonic title intended as something between a traditional Sonic adventure and an endless runner, Sonic Forever features more than 100 stages that are somewhat simpler than the typical 2-D Sonic stages, but feature all the classic Sonic gameplay mechanics and a variety of challenges and characters from the series. The game is light on plot but very heavy on gameplay, and blends the best of modern and classic Sonic with its gorgeous 3-D graphics and its challenging 2-D gameplay. In addition to the 100+ stages, there's a procedurally generated mode in which the game can generate stages for players to enjoy, an endless runner mode, and a mode where players can play stages made and uploaded by other Sonic fans (it's not nearly as complex and creative as Mario Maker, but it allows for some fun and challenging stuff). Even if there's not much of a plot to speak of, there's TONS of classic Sonic gameplay and replay value here, and the game is well received.
No One Lives Forever: Spy Games: Cate Archer returns in this exciting prequel title that takes place early in her career and sees her battling H.A.R.M. and its operatives in order to save the world and rescue an old boyfriend. This game features easily the best graphics of the iPhone G launch titles (the exclusive ones, anyway), and looks every bit like an FPS one might see on the Google Nexus, in handheld form. It also features some creative puzzles and excellent voice acting, while the gameplay has been spruced up to modern standards. It's probably the best reviewed game of the iPhone G launch and one of the best FPS titles of the year, handheld or not.
Slapstick: Robot Assembly: A new original IP in which players build a humanoid robot that can then traverse a 3-D action platforming world, battling enemies and scaling obstacles with their new creation. As the name would imply, this game doesn't take itself too seriously, and though it's meant for younger players, it still has some challenging gameplay and a very complex creation system if players are willing to put the time into it. This game features a mascot in the form of a little robot named Slaps who sort of becomes a mascot for the iPhone G as a whole. It's a really fun game, and can utilize both touch controls and the control pad equally well.
In addition to the seven exclusive launch games, the iPhone G also gets a number of ports, including some current console titles such as Final Fantasy Elementus, Thrillseekers: All-Stars, Call Of Duty: Undead Warfare, and Metal Gear Black. April's three major adventure titles also get ported over: Snohomish, Crime Stories: The Mourner's Requiem, and Jessica Saves Her Mom (And Maybe The World!) all get iPhone G releases at launch, and the iPhone G is also backward compatible with all Gemini games, giving it a robust game library at launch (and that's not even including all the iTunes legacy games). Though the iPhone G does get a lot of criticism for its somewhat clunky form factor and its price, there's no denying that it's a serious gaming handheld, and it enjoys one of the best launch days ever for a smartphone model.
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*Nintendo's April 5th Direct begins with footage of early Game Boy games like Tetris and Super Mario Land, followed by games like Super Mario Land 2, Metroid II, Donkey Kong (1994), and then Pokemon Red and Green. We then see Game Boy Color games, then Game Boy Nova games, and finally, Game Boy Supernova games. Then, the screen switches off, and we switch over to Connect game footage. The screen switches off again, and then we see the outline of another screen, and some brand new game footage: what looks like a Squad Four game, followed by a mech-based game, then a Mario Kart game, with graphics very close to that of the Nintendo Reality. We see some ports: Final Fantasy XII, Call Of Duty: Undead Warfare, Cyberwar 5, Grand Theft Auto III... and then we pull back to show that screen on what looks like a handheld with a sleek, transparent casing, but unlike other "clear" handhelds, we don't see any internals, which seem to be cleverly hidden by the console's clear case. It looks like the screen is floating on air, while the device itself has all the typical inputs, and sort of looks like an OTL Switch Lite, but sleeker and prettier. The screen switches off again, and we finally get the console's logo and name: Game Boy Zero. Katsuya Eguchi then appears, and holds up the Game Boy Zero in his hand.*
Katsuya Eguchi: *in Japanese, dubbed into English for the North American/UK versions of the video* Hello, and thank you for watching today's Nintendo Direct. You just saw the first footage of our newest handheld gaming device, the Game Boy Zero. It looks beautiful, doesn't it? We have returned to the Game Boy name for this device, as we feel it best describes the intention of this new handheld: to play games, as many games as possible, in a handheld form factor. It plays games and only games. We have dropped the connectivity of the Nintendo Connect, but it maintains connectivity with the internet to download and play games with people all over the world. We have also returned to using cartridges for the first time since the Game Boy Nova. *he holds up a Game Boy Zero cartridge, which looks almost identical to an OTL Switch cartridge* These cartridges look small, but they can hold up to 64 gigabytes of data, making them perfect for playing all kinds of games. You will also have access to the Nintendo online shop, to download both Game Boy Zero games as well as thousands of legacy titles from across Nintendo's long history. You have already seen some footage of some of the games we will be offering, but we have more to show you... including this game, which will launch at the same time as the Zero. Please, watch this next video.
-the introduction to the April 5, 2019 Nintendo Direct, introducing the Game Boy Zero for the first time
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The April Nintendo Direct began with a brief retrospective clip montage of previous Nintendo handhelds, and then, as many of us anticipated and as many of the rumors predicted, we were treated to the first ever footage of the Game Boy Zero, the brand new gaming handheld from Nintendo. It boasts a beautiful clear form factor that, under certain lighting conditions, makes it look like the system's impressive OLED screen is floating in midair when you play, with all the internals hidden behind the screen and behind the controls. The Game Boy Zero is a lot like the Connect and boasts all of the same controls, but is somewhat bigger. You won't be able to fit it in your pocket (unless you have really big pockets!), but it's an incredibly powerful system, and looks more powerful than the iPhone G which was released today, with graphics that look very similar to those of the base Google Nexus, incredibly impressive for a handheld (we just hope the battery life is good!). We even saw ports of Cyberwar 5 and Grand Theft Auto III running on the thing. Again, this is a HANDHELD GAME CONSOLE. But that wasn't what blew us away the most: the very first game we got to see after Katsuya Eguchi's introduction was the newest Pokemon title, Pokemon Earth and Sky. It'll be set in a region based on Australia, called Ozback, and will feature full 3-D exploration for the first time ever, with a brand new action-RPG style of gameplay allowing Pokemon to be caught and captured in real time. Battles with trainers will still feature the typical turn-based structure, however. We also got a look at the new professor, Professor Pine, and we got to hear his voice as well... and it has indeed been confirmed that Steve Irwin will be voicing Professor Pine in the game (which is why Pine looks so much like him!). We then got to meet our three starter Pokemon, including a Grass/Bug type spider called Spindleaf, a Fire type kangaroo called Emboey, and a Water type platypus called Platypud. The Ozback region will see us traverse this massive island continent from one coast to the other, crossing an enormous wild area that's sparsely populated by people but chock full of new Pokemon. We also met the game's new legendary mascots, including a Pokemon known as the Spirit of the Rock, clearly based on Uluru and serving as the mascot for Pokemon Earth, and a Pokemon known as the Spirit of the Wind, an embodiment of a typhoon protecting the island's eastern barrier reef, serving as the mascot of Pokemon Sky. We didn't get names for them yet, but we expect to get those at E3. The island's gym competition is clearly based on some kind of soccer tournament, with fanatical fans cheering for their favorite Trainers and Pokemon with an "Oy, oy, oy!" chant, and will see players journeying around the continent before doing battle in the Pokemon League, based in Siddeley, Ozback's largest city (based on our world's Sydney). The six minute video feature revealed quite a bit about this game, and it'll be launching on the same day as the Game Boy Zero itself, the first Pokemon game to serve as a launch title for its system since Sun and Moon back on the Game Boy Nova. Next, we got a preview video for Squad Four Discovery, coming this November. Squad Four Discovery is a sort of "exploration on rails" experience somewhat like the original Squad Four: it takes place across a succession of missions, and we have free 3-D movement, but within a set area, a smaller scale journey than the console games for sure, but one that allows for absolutely stunning graphics that look very close to the ones in Squad Four Betrayal. The game will also feature Raquel as its primary playable character, and serves as a direct continuation of Squad Four Apocalypse's Raquel DLC. It's said to feature a few new characters working alongside Raquel, but will also feature Shad, Marcus, Lane, and especially Rebecca quite prominently, with the game exploring Raquel's friendship to Rebecca even further. It also features fast-paced melee combat reminiscent of Squad Four Protectors, and like Squad Four Apocalypse, has action-RPG elements like damage numbers and loot. Squad Four Discovery will launch in November, three months after the launch of the Game Boy Zero. Next, we got to see a mech/shooter action game taking place in a post-apocalyptic world where humans in mechs battle with dangerous artificial intelligence for the fate of their world. Called Daemon x Machina, the game will be coming to the Zero shortly after launch, in September. We then got to see a Squaresoft segment in which a number of games were announced to be getting ports, including Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy Elementus, and Chrono Break, before we finally got an announcement for a new exclusive, a beautiful game blending old-school 2-D sprites with gorgeous 3-D graphics, in which eight different characters each go on their own separate journeys but can also team up and aid one another. The game is called Octopath Traveler, and it's coming in October. We then saw a teaser for a new exclusive Fairytale game, Fairytale Imperia, coming in 2020. Next, we got to see a brief video clip of some developers from Rare working on a new game in the Velvet Dark series, in which we get to play as Joanna's AI sister Velvet in a first-person shooter taking place both in the real world and in cyberspace. This new title will also be coming in 2020. Then, we got to see a preview for a new Mario Kart game, also coming in the Zero in 2020. The next few short videos showed off games coming to the Zero in 2019, including a new Dr. Mario game coming at launch, a new RPG from the developers of Pokemon called Little Town Hero, which is coming in December, and a new Forever War game, also a launch title. We got to see some third party port announcements, including one for Thrillseekers: Generation Z, which will be coming to the Zero in November (it's also coming to iPhone G). The final game announcement was one for Gran Turismo Zero, which looks STUNNING for a handheld game, and also boasts that it will utilize VR capabilities (yes, the Zero can connect with the Reality's VR accessory to play certain Zero games in VR). We didn't get a launch date for this one, though the trailer implied that it's still early in development, so this one's probably coming 2021 or later.
After the Gran Turismo Zero preview, Eguchi thanked us for watching, gave us a worldwide release date (August 23, 2019) and ended the Direct. We didn't get a price from the Direct itself, but immediately afterward, we did get a press release for North America in which the US price was revealed: $199.99. It's actually less than what a lot of us expected (I was thinking $249.99 considering the OLED screen and the 64GB of built-in memory for game downloads), but $199.99 is the same as the Connect was and is a damn good deal, $100 cheaper than an iPhone G. Though you'll probably also need a microSD card if you plan on downloading games like Cyberwar 5, it still represents a great value for what you're getting: the most powerful handheld game console on the market, and what's likely to be an excellent companion to the Reality's successor, whenever Nintendo gets around to announcing it (my guess, next year).
-from a April 5, 2019 post on Super Nintendo CD Chalmers' Nintendo blog
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"KENNEDY SAYS NEGOTIATIONS WITH PAKISTANI GOVERNMENT 'TRENDING IN POSITIVE DIRECTION', PAKISTAN WILL AGREE TO ANTI-TERROR COOPERATION TO AVOID SANCTIONS"
-April 3, 2019 headline
"INDIA DEPORTS THOUSANDS OF PAKISTANI REFUGEES, CLAIMS TERROR THREAT AMIDST VIOLENT CLASHES WITH POLICE"
-April 8, 2019 headline
"PROTESTS IN NUMEROUS PAKISTANI CITIES LEAD TO VIOLENCE BETWEEN GOVERNMENT, EXTREMISTS, PROTESTORS, 17 KILLED, HUNDREDS INJURED, THOUSANDS ARRESTED"
-April 16, 2019 headline
"CAR BOMB KILLS 41 IN MUMBAI, AQIP TERROR CELL SUSPECTED"
-April 22, 2019 headline
"INDIA VOWS RETRIBUTION FOR MUMBAI ATTACK"
-April 23, 2019 headline
"8 MORE SOLDIERS KILLED IN KASHMIR CLASH"
-April 24, 2019 headline
"TERRORISM IS NOT ISLAM, WE WILL PUNISH THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR ATTACKS, VOWS PAKISTAN'S PRESIDENT"
-April 24, 2019 headline
"PAKISTANI MILITARY RAIDS NUMEROUS TERRORIST CAMPS IN OVERNIGHT OPERATION, HIGH-RANKING AQIP LEADER BELIEVED KILLED"
-April 26, 2019 headline
"COULD PAKISTAN HAVE THERMONUCLEAR WEAPONS?"
-April 30, 2019 headline
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Game Spotlight: Jessica Saves Her Mom (And Maybe The World!)
Jessica Saves Her Mom (And Maybe The World!) is an adventure game released for the Apple Virtua and Apple G devices. It tells the story of a 17-year-old girl named Jessica who lives the life of an average teenager while having a typical mother-daughter relationship with her single mom, Laura. However, Jessica's life is turned upside down after her mother Laura is kidnapped and Jessica begins to develop a strange ability to learn almost any skill instantaneously, allowing her to become a superspy to save her mom, but also putting a huge target on her back and forcing her to trust her closest friends to help her as she tries to save both her mom and, maybe, the world. The game plays like your typical adventure title, ala OTL's LA Noire, The Walking Dead and Life Is Strange, with a few added action sequences and puzzle segments mixed in. Most of the gameplay consists of finding clues, unlocking flashbacks, relationships, and story segments, and making choices about how best to save Jessica's mom. Choice plays a central role in the game's story, which can play out in a variety of different ways depending on the player's actions and dialogue choices. There's never one specific path through the game: while some paths turn the game into almost a pseudo-brawler, with Jessica fighting her way to her mom and kicking butt like one of the characters from Totally Spies, other paths are almost entirely dialogue-based, while still others have players solving puzzles like an old-time detective-style game. Though the game's major draw is the ability to choose one's path, the final result and ending is always the same: Jessica and her mom are reunited, alive and well, with their relationship stronger than ever. The game will always have a happy ending, but there's a HUGE amount of roads leading to that ending, with branching character paths and secrets that players can learn on their way there, so no two playthroughs are ever the same unless players make all the exact same choices throughout. While a typical playthrough takes 5-10 hours, there's about 40 total hours worth of dialogue, cutscenes, and secrets to find, so players are encouraged to play multiple times to see all the sides of the stories. Some playthroughs will have Jessica playing a more active role, like an action heroine. Other playthroughs will have Jessica's mom Laura becoming the big hero, with Jessica being a bit more passive once her mom is rescued. Also, even though Jessica and her mom will always make it out okay, there are a few choices that can lead to bad outcomes/endings for some of Jessica's friends and allies, so while there might always be a "happy ending" for the titular protagonists, it can come in shades of bittersweet depending on the player's choices. The overall tone of the game is lighthearted. There are some serious moments, even some intense/violent ones, but the game is rated Teen, and things never get TOO dark, with a mostly humorous tone throughout. The game's combat (which depends on how much the player has Jessica choose to learn) is fairly simple, though never repetitive or cookie cutter (this is largely due to the fact that the more the player chooses to fight with Jessica, the more she learns about fighting, while in playthroughs where she just learns simple moves, you don't actually fight enough for it to get old). You can climb and jump, but it's context sensitive: you can't just jump around whenever, but when Jessica needs to jump or climb, she'll do it, making the game's movement/action sequences feel very organic and in tune with the story. The game features fairly typical graphics for a Virtua title, with characters having a slightly stylized/cartoony appearance, but with realistic proportions, giving the game an almost comic-like feel (a lot of people compare the graphics to those in the Spider-Verse game). The voice acting is performed by a team of highly skilled pros, led by Jennifer Hale as Jessica (using her "teenager" voice, so think Sam from OTL's Totally Spies, Thorn from Scooby-Doo, Jessie from The Real Adventures Of Jonny Quest) and Cissy Jones as Laura. Even though Laura gets captured very early as part of the game's plot, we still see a LOT of her character, as not only are most of the initial cutscenes interactions between Jessica and her mom (to establish their relationship and make you care about Laura once she's taken), but there are TONS of flashback scenes during Jessica's search, and we also get to see Laura working to escape from the enemy. Jennifer and Cissy recorded most of their dialogue together (not typical for video game voice acting) so that players are able to really hear the interactivity between their characters, and the two were even allowed to improv some of their dialogue to feel even more natural. Ashly Burch, Sarah-Nicole Robles, Jenny Yokobori, and Jordan Fisher play Jessica's school friends in the game, each of whom has a major role in the plot depending on the player's choices (it's generally agreed that the game's "golden ending" is the one in which Jessica, her mom, and her four best friends each play a part in taking the bad guys down in the end), and each of whom has their own fun personality quirks and skills. Other voice actors include Carlos Alazraqui and Grey Delisle (playing a government agent and Jessica's favorite teacher respectively, both of whom can also be helpful allies), Richard Epcar (playing the head of the organization who initially recruited Jessica's mother, and who later tries to help Jessica, who can either refuse or accept his help), and Liam O'Brien (playing the game's primary antagonist, and is straight up just using his Maelstrom voice from OTL's 2019 Carmen Sandiego cartoon). In addition to these characters, there are also a couple of others who work for the organization who have their own special powers and can also be friends or foes depending on the player's choices.
The game's plot essentially revolves around Jessica's life as a typical high school girl living with her single mother Laura. Unbeknownst to Jessica, her mother Laura has a secret superpower: the ability to learn skills incredibly fast, which has essentially made her a polymath and a beyond-Olympic level athlete who knows hundreds of forms of martial arts, and who moonlights as a James Bond-esque superspy. She hides all of this from her daughter, but other than that she's a great mom. The two are almost like best friends, occasionally having the typical mother/daughter arguments but other than that being very close and supportive of one another. One day, Jessica notices that she's learning advanced calculus unusually quickly, and one or two other skills depending on the player's choices. Later that day, her mom disappears, and a strange man later shows up at her house. Using her newfound skills, she knocks him out, and finds a video on his phone of her mom being held hostage. She learns that this man is from an agency connected to her mother and that her mother's abductors want information and tech in exchange for her mom's life. Soon after, we learn that Laura has lost her superpower, having accidentally transferred it to Jessica a year early (Laura was supposed to pass it to Jessica on her 18th birthday). Though Laura has lost her learning abilities and a lot of her physical skills as a result, her spy senses and some of her skills remain intact, and so she's still able to try and escape her captors (and she has to try, because if she lets on that her skills got lost, it would tip her captors off to Jessica's existence, putting Jessica in danger). Jessica, now bearing her mother's learning ability, begins learning skills at a frantic pace while trying to find whoever she can trust to help her save her mom. Ultimately, Laura is found and freed usually about 40 to 66 percent of the way through the typical playthrough. This can happen any number of ways: most often, Jessica rescues her, though sometimes Laura has to escape on her own depending on the player's choices. After Jessica and her mother are reunited, this begins the game's second act: saving the world from the evil organization that seeks to engage Project Thanatos, which would kill billions and give the evil organization control over the rest. Jessica and Laura's tensions are renewed, with Laura terrified for her daughter's safety even though Jessica is now the only one who can save the world. The player can, through their choices, team up with Laura or go it alone. Regardless of what happens, even if Laura ends up arguing with Jessica and if Jessica ends up defying her, it doesn't truly destroy their relationship, as Laura loves her daughter and will be proud of her no matter what. However, it's usually more fun to make the choices that make Jessica and Laura (and their friends) a superspy team, as even with Laura's power gone, she's an incredibly competent spy who knows tons of secrets and things that Jessica doesn't know, and the two work best together (also, the dialogue between Jessica, Laura, and Jessica's friends is REALLY REALLY funny on the golden ending path). Ultimately, Jessica and her chosen allies stop Project Thanatos in the nick of time and take down the evil organization. Jessica and Laura return to their typical life, and though things have changed forever, with Jessica now a superspy hero herself, the two are still the best mother/daughter duo ever, and the game ends with the two of them talking about what college Jessica will end up going to (and, depending on the player's choices, about other things that happened in the game, including Jessica's boyfriend or girlfriend).
Jessica Saves Her Mom (And Maybe The World!) is released on April 8, 2019, for the Virtua and iPhone G. It gets rave reviews from critics, including a 91 score on Metacritic, making it the year's second best reviewed game thus far (behind only The Last Gift). Speaking of The Last Gift, the game begins a major debate about which of Jennifer Hale's performances was better: beleaguered mom Zoe in a dark and terrifying future, or teen superhero spy Jessica in a lighthearted adventure romp? While online fans tear each other apart over that debate, they can at least agree on Jennifer Hale being awesome, while the performances of the rest of the cast (particularly Cissy Jones, Ashly Burch, Jordan Fisher, and Liam O'Brien) are highly praised as well. It's considered perhaps the best adventure game ever released, and thanks to its somewhat budget price ($39.99) compared to typical Virtua games, it enjoys a huge amount of sales in its first week when one considers the game's genre and pedigree as an indie (albeit a "AAA-indie") title, with more than half a million units sold in its first week alone. It would receive a sequel (Jessica Meets Her Dad (And Maybe Saves The World Again!)) in 2021, while before that, it would get spinoff books and comics, along with two story DLCs: a Laura-centered prequel, and Jessica's Date Night, in which Jessica's first date with one of five chosen partners (two boys, two girls, and one non-binary partner) is interrupted by bad guys in hilarious fashion.
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Other Significant Titles For April 2019:
Fire Emblem: Legions Of Light And Darkness: Koei's Fire Emblem collaboration with Nintendo is released to strong reviews, thanks to the game's innovative new system that blends musou and strategy game mechanics with Fire Emblem's typical tactics-based RPG system. It's not actually a musou game, but features individual squad leaders taking teams into battle and fighting in small squads against one another, while also featuring an epic, sprawling story about two opposing nations, one based in light and one based in shadow, that have been battling for a century, only to be forced to confront an even more powerful foe together. It's definitely the most unique Fire Emblem title ever made, and even in a month when Jessica Saves Her Mom was getting the biggest headlines, many critics considered this to be the superior game. It's a best-seller in Japan, while in North America it does fairly decently, becoming the best selling new Reality title of the month. Fire Emblem still isn't QUITE as big in the West ITTL as it is IOTL, but thanks to titles like this, it's starting to get there.
Witch Farm: A cutesy anime-styled Reality exclusive in which you play as a witch who has her own farm where she raises magical flora and fauna to gather up magic and magical artifacts. Essentially, it's Harvest Moon meets Little Witch Academia, and it's as cute as you'd expect. Reviews are fairly good, in the low to mid 8s, and while this game doesn't sell as well as Fire Emblem, it has a HUGE niche fandom, and pretty much consumes anime circles on social media for a while, with posters showing off their characters and farms along with the game's cute romantic moments. You'd think this game would form a rivalry with Jessica Saves Her Mom, but no, this game has pretty much overlapping fanbases with that game (a lot of the people geeky enough to be in both fandoms are geeky enough to own both a Reality and a Virtua, or at least geeky enough to own one and read fanfics/draw fanart of the other).
52 Pickup: A mascot game for the Stadia, featuring a humanoid, jester-like protagonist who emerges from a magician hat to fling cards at his enemies. Each of the 52 cards he wields has a different magical effect, giving the player a wide variety of ways to complete the game's 30+ stages, which are full of wild platforming obstacles and crazy foes. There's also the Joker card, which can have unique effects and must be earned by performing certain tasks and tricks. The game's aesthetic is very much like OTL's Balan Wonderworld, with some of TTL's Masqueworld thrown in, but is generally much better received by critics than Balan Wonderworld was, even if the story is a bit lacking. Almost every card in the protagonist's deck has some useful function, so there really is no truly "right" way to play, though some cards are better than others and the game doesn't really ever force you to use a certain card except very rarely. A solid 8/10 game that sells quite well amongst the Stadia's family audience, serving to tide many young players over until Miraculous Ladybug 3 comes out.
Snohomish: A crime-themed adventure game and the spiritual successor to 2016's Pocatello, it takes place in suburban Seattle and is centered around a young college student (voiced by an original TTL actress) who stumbles upon a tragedy. At first, it appears to be a murder, but as she investigates further, she uncovers a web of mental illness and accidental death surrounding a beloved member of the community. Unlike the gritty Pocatello, Snohomish is more of a story of redemption, there are a couple of harrowing moments and the game is still rated M (though it's a soft-M rating, mostly for language and sensuality), definitely sad and tragic but with a bittersweet ending in which the girl helps nearly everyone involved with the tragedy to heal (including herself). One of three excellent adventure games to come out in April 2019 (along with Crime Stories and Jessica Saves The World), it's not quite a Game of the Year contender like Pocatello was, but is still highly regarded by critics. It's released for all the current consoles (Reality, Virtua, Stadia, and Nexus), would come to both next-gen handhelds, and would also be ported to the eventual Reality and Virtua successors, helping it to garner excellent overall sales and ensure its development studio continues to churn out more titles.
Ace Combat: Open Sky: Released by Namco for the Reality, Virtua, and Stadia, Ace Combat: Open Sky is essentially TTL's version of Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, but with more of an open world style of gameplay, nonlinear quest progression, and more side missions, but featuring similar gameplay and aerial combat. It's an absolutely beautiful game, and the VR component is heavily featured, allowing Reality, Virtua, and Stadia players all to experience thrilling VR combat. Very well received, it becomes the month's second best selling new game in Japan (behind only Fire Emblem on the Reality), and does fairly well in North America and Europe, making it the most successful game in the series in quite a while.
Jump Force: Released on Reality, Virtua, Nexus, Stadia, and later on Game Boy Zero, the Shonen Jump-themed fighting game comes to TTL, and like OTL, is a celebration of the popular manga magazine's 50th anniversary, featuring a roster of characters from all across the company's properties. Of course, with all the changes in TTL, the game boasts a slightly different roster, with some characters butterflied and other characters who are completely new TTL showing up, but Goku, Naruto, and all the big ones are still here. Like OTL, the critical reception was somewhat mediocre, but fans of these classic characters couldn't care less, and the game is quite a big seller, finishing a close third for the month behind Ace Combat 7 in Japan and doing well in the West also.
On April 5, 2019, Apple launches the iPhone G worldwide. The iPhone G is a modified iPhone SE, which is itself a model of the iPhone 7. It's primarily geared toward playing handheld games and streaming games from Apple consoles, and features a nearly borderless screen with a slideout control pad (the control pad has all the requisite buttons for playing modern games, including four face buttons, four shoulder buttons, two clickable control sticks, and a D-Pad, in a compact but comfortable form factor). The internals of the iPhone G are geared toward battery life and passive cooling, while featuring a less powerful CPU but a more powerful GPU than the current iPhone model (the iPhone 8). This allows the iPhone G to run console-like games without overheating even without the use of a fan, thanks to an innovative (with multiple patents) heatsink and thermal gel that allow the phone to play even the most intense games indefinitely as long as one has suitable power. The iPhone G is slightly more powerful than OTL's Nintendo Switch, capable of running ports of most current console games ITTL. Its form factor is fairly large for a smartphone but still capable of fitting into most pockets. It is thicker and heavier than the typical smartphone due to the slideout pad and the need for the slightly larger heatsink and battery, and of course it's smaller than the Gemini, with a screen comparable in size to the Nintendo Connect (a bit smaller than the Connect's screen, but still a good screen for a handheld). The screen itself is an OLED screen, and the phone also boasts some very good speakers, some of the best speakers ever made for a smartphone, though it also utilizes Apple's headphones (both wired and wireless). Of course, being an iPhone, it also does all the typical smartphone things (calls, texts, web browsing, apps), though it does them a bit slower than a normal iPhone would, due to the slower CPU. It's still a very good phone, especially for the price, but people who buy it are primarily looking for a gaming phone. It has 64GB of internal memory (on the $299 model, while the $399 model has 256GB), and it also allows the use of microSD cards. Like the Gemini, it's a download only device, no game cartridges of any kind.
The iPhone G initially releases as an alternative model iPhone, but what iPhone G really is is a gaming platform, in some ways similar to the Google Stadia, but also having similarities to Apple Arcade, as a platform intended for all of Apple's devices. For three months, the iPhone G is the exclusive device for iPhone G games, but afterwards, Apple begins to release other "G-compatible" devices, including an Apple TV box capable of downloading and playing iPhone G games with a controller. These controllers have a touchpad similar to the one on the OTL PS4, allowing the use of touchscreen controls on games that require them, though most iPhone G games won't have touch controls, or touch controls will be optional. In addition, starting with the iPhone 9, all iPhones will be capable of playing iPhone G games, though players will be advised that only the iPhone "G" models, starting with the iPhone G9, will be capable of playing games optimally, while a normal iPhone may run into battery life problems or may automatically exit out of games if a phone is overheating. Apple computers will also be capable of playing iPhone G games, and it's possible that Apple's next console will be able to play them as well. The iPhone G isn't being touted as an exclusive gaming handheld, merely as the best way to play what essentially counts as TTL's version of Apple Arcade. Rather than being a monthly subscription service, TTL's Apple Arcade, called Apple G, is merely a shared platform across multiple Apple devices on which Apple's next generation of portable games are capable of being played. Of course, there are still plenty of iOS games, but Apple G games are a "step above", designed as games first and apps second, a way to maintain a mobile-like ecosystem of dedicated handheld games. Apple took a loss on almost every Gemini sold, so, with Apple G, they're essentially pulling out of the dedicated handheld business while cultivating a library that can compete with both Nintendo's upcoming next-gen handheld and platforms like Google Stadia. Like Google, Apple is going into the software business primarily, though they still intend to maintain a dedicated console ecosystem with the next-generation Virtua successor. iPhone G/Apple G is a cross between OTL's Switch and OTL's Apple Arcade, and Apple intends to make a lot of money selling software for a slew of Apple devices in the next few years.
iPhone G initially launches with seven exclusive titles. Four are fairly minor games not really worth mentioning here, while three are major exclusives, including two based on a pair of Apple exclusive franchises and a brand new IP. Those three games are briefly described here:
Sonic Forever: A sidescrolling Sonic title intended as something between a traditional Sonic adventure and an endless runner, Sonic Forever features more than 100 stages that are somewhat simpler than the typical 2-D Sonic stages, but feature all the classic Sonic gameplay mechanics and a variety of challenges and characters from the series. The game is light on plot but very heavy on gameplay, and blends the best of modern and classic Sonic with its gorgeous 3-D graphics and its challenging 2-D gameplay. In addition to the 100+ stages, there's a procedurally generated mode in which the game can generate stages for players to enjoy, an endless runner mode, and a mode where players can play stages made and uploaded by other Sonic fans (it's not nearly as complex and creative as Mario Maker, but it allows for some fun and challenging stuff). Even if there's not much of a plot to speak of, there's TONS of classic Sonic gameplay and replay value here, and the game is well received.
No One Lives Forever: Spy Games: Cate Archer returns in this exciting prequel title that takes place early in her career and sees her battling H.A.R.M. and its operatives in order to save the world and rescue an old boyfriend. This game features easily the best graphics of the iPhone G launch titles (the exclusive ones, anyway), and looks every bit like an FPS one might see on the Google Nexus, in handheld form. It also features some creative puzzles and excellent voice acting, while the gameplay has been spruced up to modern standards. It's probably the best reviewed game of the iPhone G launch and one of the best FPS titles of the year, handheld or not.
Slapstick: Robot Assembly: A new original IP in which players build a humanoid robot that can then traverse a 3-D action platforming world, battling enemies and scaling obstacles with their new creation. As the name would imply, this game doesn't take itself too seriously, and though it's meant for younger players, it still has some challenging gameplay and a very complex creation system if players are willing to put the time into it. This game features a mascot in the form of a little robot named Slaps who sort of becomes a mascot for the iPhone G as a whole. It's a really fun game, and can utilize both touch controls and the control pad equally well.
In addition to the seven exclusive launch games, the iPhone G also gets a number of ports, including some current console titles such as Final Fantasy Elementus, Thrillseekers: All-Stars, Call Of Duty: Undead Warfare, and Metal Gear Black. April's three major adventure titles also get ported over: Snohomish, Crime Stories: The Mourner's Requiem, and Jessica Saves Her Mom (And Maybe The World!) all get iPhone G releases at launch, and the iPhone G is also backward compatible with all Gemini games, giving it a robust game library at launch (and that's not even including all the iTunes legacy games). Though the iPhone G does get a lot of criticism for its somewhat clunky form factor and its price, there's no denying that it's a serious gaming handheld, and it enjoys one of the best launch days ever for a smartphone model.
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*Nintendo's April 5th Direct begins with footage of early Game Boy games like Tetris and Super Mario Land, followed by games like Super Mario Land 2, Metroid II, Donkey Kong (1994), and then Pokemon Red and Green. We then see Game Boy Color games, then Game Boy Nova games, and finally, Game Boy Supernova games. Then, the screen switches off, and we switch over to Connect game footage. The screen switches off again, and then we see the outline of another screen, and some brand new game footage: what looks like a Squad Four game, followed by a mech-based game, then a Mario Kart game, with graphics very close to that of the Nintendo Reality. We see some ports: Final Fantasy XII, Call Of Duty: Undead Warfare, Cyberwar 5, Grand Theft Auto III... and then we pull back to show that screen on what looks like a handheld with a sleek, transparent casing, but unlike other "clear" handhelds, we don't see any internals, which seem to be cleverly hidden by the console's clear case. It looks like the screen is floating on air, while the device itself has all the typical inputs, and sort of looks like an OTL Switch Lite, but sleeker and prettier. The screen switches off again, and we finally get the console's logo and name: Game Boy Zero. Katsuya Eguchi then appears, and holds up the Game Boy Zero in his hand.*
Katsuya Eguchi: *in Japanese, dubbed into English for the North American/UK versions of the video* Hello, and thank you for watching today's Nintendo Direct. You just saw the first footage of our newest handheld gaming device, the Game Boy Zero. It looks beautiful, doesn't it? We have returned to the Game Boy name for this device, as we feel it best describes the intention of this new handheld: to play games, as many games as possible, in a handheld form factor. It plays games and only games. We have dropped the connectivity of the Nintendo Connect, but it maintains connectivity with the internet to download and play games with people all over the world. We have also returned to using cartridges for the first time since the Game Boy Nova. *he holds up a Game Boy Zero cartridge, which looks almost identical to an OTL Switch cartridge* These cartridges look small, but they can hold up to 64 gigabytes of data, making them perfect for playing all kinds of games. You will also have access to the Nintendo online shop, to download both Game Boy Zero games as well as thousands of legacy titles from across Nintendo's long history. You have already seen some footage of some of the games we will be offering, but we have more to show you... including this game, which will launch at the same time as the Zero. Please, watch this next video.
-the introduction to the April 5, 2019 Nintendo Direct, introducing the Game Boy Zero for the first time
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The April Nintendo Direct began with a brief retrospective clip montage of previous Nintendo handhelds, and then, as many of us anticipated and as many of the rumors predicted, we were treated to the first ever footage of the Game Boy Zero, the brand new gaming handheld from Nintendo. It boasts a beautiful clear form factor that, under certain lighting conditions, makes it look like the system's impressive OLED screen is floating in midair when you play, with all the internals hidden behind the screen and behind the controls. The Game Boy Zero is a lot like the Connect and boasts all of the same controls, but is somewhat bigger. You won't be able to fit it in your pocket (unless you have really big pockets!), but it's an incredibly powerful system, and looks more powerful than the iPhone G which was released today, with graphics that look very similar to those of the base Google Nexus, incredibly impressive for a handheld (we just hope the battery life is good!). We even saw ports of Cyberwar 5 and Grand Theft Auto III running on the thing. Again, this is a HANDHELD GAME CONSOLE. But that wasn't what blew us away the most: the very first game we got to see after Katsuya Eguchi's introduction was the newest Pokemon title, Pokemon Earth and Sky. It'll be set in a region based on Australia, called Ozback, and will feature full 3-D exploration for the first time ever, with a brand new action-RPG style of gameplay allowing Pokemon to be caught and captured in real time. Battles with trainers will still feature the typical turn-based structure, however. We also got a look at the new professor, Professor Pine, and we got to hear his voice as well... and it has indeed been confirmed that Steve Irwin will be voicing Professor Pine in the game (which is why Pine looks so much like him!). We then got to meet our three starter Pokemon, including a Grass/Bug type spider called Spindleaf, a Fire type kangaroo called Emboey, and a Water type platypus called Platypud. The Ozback region will see us traverse this massive island continent from one coast to the other, crossing an enormous wild area that's sparsely populated by people but chock full of new Pokemon. We also met the game's new legendary mascots, including a Pokemon known as the Spirit of the Rock, clearly based on Uluru and serving as the mascot for Pokemon Earth, and a Pokemon known as the Spirit of the Wind, an embodiment of a typhoon protecting the island's eastern barrier reef, serving as the mascot of Pokemon Sky. We didn't get names for them yet, but we expect to get those at E3. The island's gym competition is clearly based on some kind of soccer tournament, with fanatical fans cheering for their favorite Trainers and Pokemon with an "Oy, oy, oy!" chant, and will see players journeying around the continent before doing battle in the Pokemon League, based in Siddeley, Ozback's largest city (based on our world's Sydney). The six minute video feature revealed quite a bit about this game, and it'll be launching on the same day as the Game Boy Zero itself, the first Pokemon game to serve as a launch title for its system since Sun and Moon back on the Game Boy Nova. Next, we got a preview video for Squad Four Discovery, coming this November. Squad Four Discovery is a sort of "exploration on rails" experience somewhat like the original Squad Four: it takes place across a succession of missions, and we have free 3-D movement, but within a set area, a smaller scale journey than the console games for sure, but one that allows for absolutely stunning graphics that look very close to the ones in Squad Four Betrayal. The game will also feature Raquel as its primary playable character, and serves as a direct continuation of Squad Four Apocalypse's Raquel DLC. It's said to feature a few new characters working alongside Raquel, but will also feature Shad, Marcus, Lane, and especially Rebecca quite prominently, with the game exploring Raquel's friendship to Rebecca even further. It also features fast-paced melee combat reminiscent of Squad Four Protectors, and like Squad Four Apocalypse, has action-RPG elements like damage numbers and loot. Squad Four Discovery will launch in November, three months after the launch of the Game Boy Zero. Next, we got to see a mech/shooter action game taking place in a post-apocalyptic world where humans in mechs battle with dangerous artificial intelligence for the fate of their world. Called Daemon x Machina, the game will be coming to the Zero shortly after launch, in September. We then got to see a Squaresoft segment in which a number of games were announced to be getting ports, including Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy Elementus, and Chrono Break, before we finally got an announcement for a new exclusive, a beautiful game blending old-school 2-D sprites with gorgeous 3-D graphics, in which eight different characters each go on their own separate journeys but can also team up and aid one another. The game is called Octopath Traveler, and it's coming in October. We then saw a teaser for a new exclusive Fairytale game, Fairytale Imperia, coming in 2020. Next, we got to see a brief video clip of some developers from Rare working on a new game in the Velvet Dark series, in which we get to play as Joanna's AI sister Velvet in a first-person shooter taking place both in the real world and in cyberspace. This new title will also be coming in 2020. Then, we got to see a preview for a new Mario Kart game, also coming in the Zero in 2020. The next few short videos showed off games coming to the Zero in 2019, including a new Dr. Mario game coming at launch, a new RPG from the developers of Pokemon called Little Town Hero, which is coming in December, and a new Forever War game, also a launch title. We got to see some third party port announcements, including one for Thrillseekers: Generation Z, which will be coming to the Zero in November (it's also coming to iPhone G). The final game announcement was one for Gran Turismo Zero, which looks STUNNING for a handheld game, and also boasts that it will utilize VR capabilities (yes, the Zero can connect with the Reality's VR accessory to play certain Zero games in VR). We didn't get a launch date for this one, though the trailer implied that it's still early in development, so this one's probably coming 2021 or later.
After the Gran Turismo Zero preview, Eguchi thanked us for watching, gave us a worldwide release date (August 23, 2019) and ended the Direct. We didn't get a price from the Direct itself, but immediately afterward, we did get a press release for North America in which the US price was revealed: $199.99. It's actually less than what a lot of us expected (I was thinking $249.99 considering the OLED screen and the 64GB of built-in memory for game downloads), but $199.99 is the same as the Connect was and is a damn good deal, $100 cheaper than an iPhone G. Though you'll probably also need a microSD card if you plan on downloading games like Cyberwar 5, it still represents a great value for what you're getting: the most powerful handheld game console on the market, and what's likely to be an excellent companion to the Reality's successor, whenever Nintendo gets around to announcing it (my guess, next year).
-from a April 5, 2019 post on Super Nintendo CD Chalmers' Nintendo blog
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"KENNEDY SAYS NEGOTIATIONS WITH PAKISTANI GOVERNMENT 'TRENDING IN POSITIVE DIRECTION', PAKISTAN WILL AGREE TO ANTI-TERROR COOPERATION TO AVOID SANCTIONS"
-April 3, 2019 headline
"INDIA DEPORTS THOUSANDS OF PAKISTANI REFUGEES, CLAIMS TERROR THREAT AMIDST VIOLENT CLASHES WITH POLICE"
-April 8, 2019 headline
"PROTESTS IN NUMEROUS PAKISTANI CITIES LEAD TO VIOLENCE BETWEEN GOVERNMENT, EXTREMISTS, PROTESTORS, 17 KILLED, HUNDREDS INJURED, THOUSANDS ARRESTED"
-April 16, 2019 headline
"CAR BOMB KILLS 41 IN MUMBAI, AQIP TERROR CELL SUSPECTED"
-April 22, 2019 headline
"INDIA VOWS RETRIBUTION FOR MUMBAI ATTACK"
-April 23, 2019 headline
"8 MORE SOLDIERS KILLED IN KASHMIR CLASH"
-April 24, 2019 headline
"TERRORISM IS NOT ISLAM, WE WILL PUNISH THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR ATTACKS, VOWS PAKISTAN'S PRESIDENT"
-April 24, 2019 headline
"PAKISTANI MILITARY RAIDS NUMEROUS TERRORIST CAMPS IN OVERNIGHT OPERATION, HIGH-RANKING AQIP LEADER BELIEVED KILLED"
-April 26, 2019 headline
"COULD PAKISTAN HAVE THERMONUCLEAR WEAPONS?"
-April 30, 2019 headline
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Game Spotlight: Jessica Saves Her Mom (And Maybe The World!)
Jessica Saves Her Mom (And Maybe The World!) is an adventure game released for the Apple Virtua and Apple G devices. It tells the story of a 17-year-old girl named Jessica who lives the life of an average teenager while having a typical mother-daughter relationship with her single mom, Laura. However, Jessica's life is turned upside down after her mother Laura is kidnapped and Jessica begins to develop a strange ability to learn almost any skill instantaneously, allowing her to become a superspy to save her mom, but also putting a huge target on her back and forcing her to trust her closest friends to help her as she tries to save both her mom and, maybe, the world. The game plays like your typical adventure title, ala OTL's LA Noire, The Walking Dead and Life Is Strange, with a few added action sequences and puzzle segments mixed in. Most of the gameplay consists of finding clues, unlocking flashbacks, relationships, and story segments, and making choices about how best to save Jessica's mom. Choice plays a central role in the game's story, which can play out in a variety of different ways depending on the player's actions and dialogue choices. There's never one specific path through the game: while some paths turn the game into almost a pseudo-brawler, with Jessica fighting her way to her mom and kicking butt like one of the characters from Totally Spies, other paths are almost entirely dialogue-based, while still others have players solving puzzles like an old-time detective-style game. Though the game's major draw is the ability to choose one's path, the final result and ending is always the same: Jessica and her mom are reunited, alive and well, with their relationship stronger than ever. The game will always have a happy ending, but there's a HUGE amount of roads leading to that ending, with branching character paths and secrets that players can learn on their way there, so no two playthroughs are ever the same unless players make all the exact same choices throughout. While a typical playthrough takes 5-10 hours, there's about 40 total hours worth of dialogue, cutscenes, and secrets to find, so players are encouraged to play multiple times to see all the sides of the stories. Some playthroughs will have Jessica playing a more active role, like an action heroine. Other playthroughs will have Jessica's mom Laura becoming the big hero, with Jessica being a bit more passive once her mom is rescued. Also, even though Jessica and her mom will always make it out okay, there are a few choices that can lead to bad outcomes/endings for some of Jessica's friends and allies, so while there might always be a "happy ending" for the titular protagonists, it can come in shades of bittersweet depending on the player's choices. The overall tone of the game is lighthearted. There are some serious moments, even some intense/violent ones, but the game is rated Teen, and things never get TOO dark, with a mostly humorous tone throughout. The game's combat (which depends on how much the player has Jessica choose to learn) is fairly simple, though never repetitive or cookie cutter (this is largely due to the fact that the more the player chooses to fight with Jessica, the more she learns about fighting, while in playthroughs where she just learns simple moves, you don't actually fight enough for it to get old). You can climb and jump, but it's context sensitive: you can't just jump around whenever, but when Jessica needs to jump or climb, she'll do it, making the game's movement/action sequences feel very organic and in tune with the story. The game features fairly typical graphics for a Virtua title, with characters having a slightly stylized/cartoony appearance, but with realistic proportions, giving the game an almost comic-like feel (a lot of people compare the graphics to those in the Spider-Verse game). The voice acting is performed by a team of highly skilled pros, led by Jennifer Hale as Jessica (using her "teenager" voice, so think Sam from OTL's Totally Spies, Thorn from Scooby-Doo, Jessie from The Real Adventures Of Jonny Quest) and Cissy Jones as Laura. Even though Laura gets captured very early as part of the game's plot, we still see a LOT of her character, as not only are most of the initial cutscenes interactions between Jessica and her mom (to establish their relationship and make you care about Laura once she's taken), but there are TONS of flashback scenes during Jessica's search, and we also get to see Laura working to escape from the enemy. Jennifer and Cissy recorded most of their dialogue together (not typical for video game voice acting) so that players are able to really hear the interactivity between their characters, and the two were even allowed to improv some of their dialogue to feel even more natural. Ashly Burch, Sarah-Nicole Robles, Jenny Yokobori, and Jordan Fisher play Jessica's school friends in the game, each of whom has a major role in the plot depending on the player's choices (it's generally agreed that the game's "golden ending" is the one in which Jessica, her mom, and her four best friends each play a part in taking the bad guys down in the end), and each of whom has their own fun personality quirks and skills. Other voice actors include Carlos Alazraqui and Grey Delisle (playing a government agent and Jessica's favorite teacher respectively, both of whom can also be helpful allies), Richard Epcar (playing the head of the organization who initially recruited Jessica's mother, and who later tries to help Jessica, who can either refuse or accept his help), and Liam O'Brien (playing the game's primary antagonist, and is straight up just using his Maelstrom voice from OTL's 2019 Carmen Sandiego cartoon). In addition to these characters, there are also a couple of others who work for the organization who have their own special powers and can also be friends or foes depending on the player's choices.
The game's plot essentially revolves around Jessica's life as a typical high school girl living with her single mother Laura. Unbeknownst to Jessica, her mother Laura has a secret superpower: the ability to learn skills incredibly fast, which has essentially made her a polymath and a beyond-Olympic level athlete who knows hundreds of forms of martial arts, and who moonlights as a James Bond-esque superspy. She hides all of this from her daughter, but other than that she's a great mom. The two are almost like best friends, occasionally having the typical mother/daughter arguments but other than that being very close and supportive of one another. One day, Jessica notices that she's learning advanced calculus unusually quickly, and one or two other skills depending on the player's choices. Later that day, her mom disappears, and a strange man later shows up at her house. Using her newfound skills, she knocks him out, and finds a video on his phone of her mom being held hostage. She learns that this man is from an agency connected to her mother and that her mother's abductors want information and tech in exchange for her mom's life. Soon after, we learn that Laura has lost her superpower, having accidentally transferred it to Jessica a year early (Laura was supposed to pass it to Jessica on her 18th birthday). Though Laura has lost her learning abilities and a lot of her physical skills as a result, her spy senses and some of her skills remain intact, and so she's still able to try and escape her captors (and she has to try, because if she lets on that her skills got lost, it would tip her captors off to Jessica's existence, putting Jessica in danger). Jessica, now bearing her mother's learning ability, begins learning skills at a frantic pace while trying to find whoever she can trust to help her save her mom. Ultimately, Laura is found and freed usually about 40 to 66 percent of the way through the typical playthrough. This can happen any number of ways: most often, Jessica rescues her, though sometimes Laura has to escape on her own depending on the player's choices. After Jessica and her mother are reunited, this begins the game's second act: saving the world from the evil organization that seeks to engage Project Thanatos, which would kill billions and give the evil organization control over the rest. Jessica and Laura's tensions are renewed, with Laura terrified for her daughter's safety even though Jessica is now the only one who can save the world. The player can, through their choices, team up with Laura or go it alone. Regardless of what happens, even if Laura ends up arguing with Jessica and if Jessica ends up defying her, it doesn't truly destroy their relationship, as Laura loves her daughter and will be proud of her no matter what. However, it's usually more fun to make the choices that make Jessica and Laura (and their friends) a superspy team, as even with Laura's power gone, she's an incredibly competent spy who knows tons of secrets and things that Jessica doesn't know, and the two work best together (also, the dialogue between Jessica, Laura, and Jessica's friends is REALLY REALLY funny on the golden ending path). Ultimately, Jessica and her chosen allies stop Project Thanatos in the nick of time and take down the evil organization. Jessica and Laura return to their typical life, and though things have changed forever, with Jessica now a superspy hero herself, the two are still the best mother/daughter duo ever, and the game ends with the two of them talking about what college Jessica will end up going to (and, depending on the player's choices, about other things that happened in the game, including Jessica's boyfriend or girlfriend).
Jessica Saves Her Mom (And Maybe The World!) is released on April 8, 2019, for the Virtua and iPhone G. It gets rave reviews from critics, including a 91 score on Metacritic, making it the year's second best reviewed game thus far (behind only The Last Gift). Speaking of The Last Gift, the game begins a major debate about which of Jennifer Hale's performances was better: beleaguered mom Zoe in a dark and terrifying future, or teen superhero spy Jessica in a lighthearted adventure romp? While online fans tear each other apart over that debate, they can at least agree on Jennifer Hale being awesome, while the performances of the rest of the cast (particularly Cissy Jones, Ashly Burch, Jordan Fisher, and Liam O'Brien) are highly praised as well. It's considered perhaps the best adventure game ever released, and thanks to its somewhat budget price ($39.99) compared to typical Virtua games, it enjoys a huge amount of sales in its first week when one considers the game's genre and pedigree as an indie (albeit a "AAA-indie") title, with more than half a million units sold in its first week alone. It would receive a sequel (Jessica Meets Her Dad (And Maybe Saves The World Again!)) in 2021, while before that, it would get spinoff books and comics, along with two story DLCs: a Laura-centered prequel, and Jessica's Date Night, in which Jessica's first date with one of five chosen partners (two boys, two girls, and one non-binary partner) is interrupted by bad guys in hilarious fashion.
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Other Significant Titles For April 2019:
Fire Emblem: Legions Of Light And Darkness: Koei's Fire Emblem collaboration with Nintendo is released to strong reviews, thanks to the game's innovative new system that blends musou and strategy game mechanics with Fire Emblem's typical tactics-based RPG system. It's not actually a musou game, but features individual squad leaders taking teams into battle and fighting in small squads against one another, while also featuring an epic, sprawling story about two opposing nations, one based in light and one based in shadow, that have been battling for a century, only to be forced to confront an even more powerful foe together. It's definitely the most unique Fire Emblem title ever made, and even in a month when Jessica Saves Her Mom was getting the biggest headlines, many critics considered this to be the superior game. It's a best-seller in Japan, while in North America it does fairly decently, becoming the best selling new Reality title of the month. Fire Emblem still isn't QUITE as big in the West ITTL as it is IOTL, but thanks to titles like this, it's starting to get there.
Witch Farm: A cutesy anime-styled Reality exclusive in which you play as a witch who has her own farm where she raises magical flora and fauna to gather up magic and magical artifacts. Essentially, it's Harvest Moon meets Little Witch Academia, and it's as cute as you'd expect. Reviews are fairly good, in the low to mid 8s, and while this game doesn't sell as well as Fire Emblem, it has a HUGE niche fandom, and pretty much consumes anime circles on social media for a while, with posters showing off their characters and farms along with the game's cute romantic moments. You'd think this game would form a rivalry with Jessica Saves Her Mom, but no, this game has pretty much overlapping fanbases with that game (a lot of the people geeky enough to be in both fandoms are geeky enough to own both a Reality and a Virtua, or at least geeky enough to own one and read fanfics/draw fanart of the other).
52 Pickup: A mascot game for the Stadia, featuring a humanoid, jester-like protagonist who emerges from a magician hat to fling cards at his enemies. Each of the 52 cards he wields has a different magical effect, giving the player a wide variety of ways to complete the game's 30+ stages, which are full of wild platforming obstacles and crazy foes. There's also the Joker card, which can have unique effects and must be earned by performing certain tasks and tricks. The game's aesthetic is very much like OTL's Balan Wonderworld, with some of TTL's Masqueworld thrown in, but is generally much better received by critics than Balan Wonderworld was, even if the story is a bit lacking. Almost every card in the protagonist's deck has some useful function, so there really is no truly "right" way to play, though some cards are better than others and the game doesn't really ever force you to use a certain card except very rarely. A solid 8/10 game that sells quite well amongst the Stadia's family audience, serving to tide many young players over until Miraculous Ladybug 3 comes out.
Snohomish: A crime-themed adventure game and the spiritual successor to 2016's Pocatello, it takes place in suburban Seattle and is centered around a young college student (voiced by an original TTL actress) who stumbles upon a tragedy. At first, it appears to be a murder, but as she investigates further, she uncovers a web of mental illness and accidental death surrounding a beloved member of the community. Unlike the gritty Pocatello, Snohomish is more of a story of redemption, there are a couple of harrowing moments and the game is still rated M (though it's a soft-M rating, mostly for language and sensuality), definitely sad and tragic but with a bittersweet ending in which the girl helps nearly everyone involved with the tragedy to heal (including herself). One of three excellent adventure games to come out in April 2019 (along with Crime Stories and Jessica Saves The World), it's not quite a Game of the Year contender like Pocatello was, but is still highly regarded by critics. It's released for all the current consoles (Reality, Virtua, Stadia, and Nexus), would come to both next-gen handhelds, and would also be ported to the eventual Reality and Virtua successors, helping it to garner excellent overall sales and ensure its development studio continues to churn out more titles.
Ace Combat: Open Sky: Released by Namco for the Reality, Virtua, and Stadia, Ace Combat: Open Sky is essentially TTL's version of Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, but with more of an open world style of gameplay, nonlinear quest progression, and more side missions, but featuring similar gameplay and aerial combat. It's an absolutely beautiful game, and the VR component is heavily featured, allowing Reality, Virtua, and Stadia players all to experience thrilling VR combat. Very well received, it becomes the month's second best selling new game in Japan (behind only Fire Emblem on the Reality), and does fairly well in North America and Europe, making it the most successful game in the series in quite a while.
Jump Force: Released on Reality, Virtua, Nexus, Stadia, and later on Game Boy Zero, the Shonen Jump-themed fighting game comes to TTL, and like OTL, is a celebration of the popular manga magazine's 50th anniversary, featuring a roster of characters from all across the company's properties. Of course, with all the changes in TTL, the game boasts a slightly different roster, with some characters butterflied and other characters who are completely new TTL showing up, but Goku, Naruto, and all the big ones are still here. Like OTL, the critical reception was somewhat mediocre, but fans of these classic characters couldn't care less, and the game is quite a big seller, finishing a close third for the month behind Ace Combat 7 in Japan and doing well in the West also.
On the bright side, all those sweet video games to play!
But yeah, things will probably get worse in that part of the world before they get better.
Another reminder that TTL isn't a utopia.
Damn, Gameboy lives on ITTL. Wish Nintendo kept the name IOTL, but with the Switch's success I don't see that happening. Unless the next one is called Gameboy Switch.......
iPhone G sounds neat too. That would have ended up being my phone of choice ITTL for sure.
iPhone G sounds neat too. That would have ended up being my phone of choice ITTL for sure.
I was very surprised by the Game Boy Zero, and I'd probably pick one up whenever I got the chance.
Since Jump Force is marginally the same as OTL, does this mean that it's not getting a sequel?
Since Jump Force is marginally the same as OTL, does this mean that it's not getting a sequel?
Would a third game in the Jessica franchise be a good idea? Because I have a good name for it...
Jessica Reunites Her Grandparents(And Maybe Saves The Universe!)
Jessica Reunites Her Grandparents(And Maybe Saves The Universe!)
It's not getting a sequel, no.
Capcom's too busy fighting Marvel and DC to put Jump on their plate too
I imagine it would be a really fun and sweet game, like a more noblebright version of Life Is Strange. Maybe if Life Is Strange and Totally Spies had a baby.
It's definitely getting a third game, though I think the third game (well beyond the scope of the timeline) would focus more on her relationships with her friends, we won't be seeing any grandparents
I kinda thought so.
Well, I saw the incoming trend of "Jessica's family being related to global destruction" and wanted to capitalize off of it. But her friends are just as good as a reason to make a third game.It's definitely getting a third game, though I think the third game (well beyond the scope of the timeline) would focus more on her relationships with her friends, we won't be seeing any grandparents
The second game is a wee bit darker, because it turns out Jessica's dad is kind of a loser. He's not evil or abusive or anything like that, but he straight up left Laura because her superpower made him feel inadequate as a person, and Jessica gives him hell because him leaving hurt her mom really bad. It has a hopeful ending, but it's a lot sadder along the way. The threat of global destruction is tangential to the emotional stakes at play between Jessica and her parents
I wonder how everything ITTL will affect the YouTube channel shadow759 and his series of Shadow and Silver Watch videos.
May 2019 - Capcom's Blue Ribbon
Capcom has announced the launch of a new studio, Studio Ryu, which will be handling development of upcoming titles including Marvel vs. Capcom vs. DC and Street Fighter VII, the latter of which is said to still be quite early in development and has a target release window of 2021. The new studio was established during the production of Ribbon Chalice, another fighting game from the company that launches in North America and Europe next week after a successful launch in Japan back in March. Though Studio Ryu did not handle Ribbon Chalice, most of the production staff from that game are now working with the new studio and are deep into production of the upcoming Marvel/DC crossover. Capcom underwent a minor reorganization after the company began to once again produce games for non-Apple consoles, and part of this reorganization was said to put a renewed focus on 2-D fighters, the games that made the company such a massive success in the 1990s. Ribbon Chalice began production around this time, while the company also began work on a next-generation Marvel vs. Capcom game that later added DC characters once Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox entered into their deal to bring the two comic companies together for another crossover event. Capcom brought back Akira Yasuda to lead the studio, but Studio Ryu is also staffed by many young game developers and programmers, which Yasuda says has brought a "fresh new perspective", enabling the creation of games that would not otherwise be conceived.
(...)
In other Capcom related news, Keiji Inafune has been tasked with heading up the creation of a "next gen Mega Man" title. It's separate from Mega Man Destiny, the 3-D adventure game recently announced as a Nintendo exclusive next year. Inafune will be heading up a team designed with creating a game that will be a fresh experience for Mega Man veterans while also providing the classic series gameplay that fans know and love. He won't be alone, as he'll be teamed up with Dave Cox, a former Konami developer who worked on the Shadows of the Moon series, but who left the company after its gaming properties were acquired by Ubisoft. The new Mega Man game is said to be a joint production between Capcom's Japanese division and a team of Western developers headed by Cox, and has just entered the early stages of production, so its release is expected in 2021. As for Mega Man Destiny, Inafune's involvement in that title is said to be limited to a consulting role only, while a new team of developers takes the lead on that game. While it hearkens back to the old Mega Man Legends games, Mega Man Destiny is said to be more of a "traditional" adventure game with action-RPG elements, and will feature plenty of exploration, themes that haven't been seen in the series for quite some time.
-from a May 9, 2019 article on Games Over Matter
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Star Wars: Resistance Set To Launch On Fox Family This Fall
Star Wars: Resistance, a new animated series about the Rebellion in the time between the events of Star Wars: Episode III and Star Wars: Episode IV will debut on Fox Family and will air on Thursday nights starting in September. The show, which will feature traditional 2-D animation rather than the CGI animation that many animated shows have recently utilized, will center around bands of rebels in various parts of the Galaxy, including a group of Jedi said to have survived Emperor Palpatine's Order 66 at the end of Episode III. While no characters from the films have been announced as making an appearance, we're likely to see characters such as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, Darth Vader, and Palpatine himself appear in various roles, and we may also get to see characters from the sequel trilogy make appearances as much younger versions of their cinematic selves. We have the first news on the show's voice cast as well, with Enuka Okuma starring as the young Senator Suni Maykura, an old ally of Padme Amidala who vows to uphold justice in Padme's memory, and who secretly works with the Rebellion while skillfully avoiding the watchful eye of the Empire. Jason Ritter voices Arni Mudfly, a smuggler and technical genius who helps Suni but who also has a connection to a young rogue named Han Solo. Robbie Daymond voices Dane Blueskar, who was on the verge of becoming a Jedi Knight when his master was killed during Order 66, and he barely escaped with his life. Now, he seeks out a lost Jedi Temple in the hopes of contacting other Jedi to rebuild the order. Star Wars: Resistance is said to be a somewhat serious animated show, and will have a TV-PG rating, with director Joaquim Dos Santos promising that it "won't shy away from the same dark elements that oftentimes appeared in the films and novels". It's the first of two planned animated Star Wars shows coming to Fox Family during the next three years, with another show, rumored to be centered around Boba Fett, still said to be in the early stages of production.
-from a May 11, 2019 article on Tubehound
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Landmark 5-4 Ruling Bans Partisan Gerrymandering, Sends States Back To The Drawing Board Ahead Of 2020 Elections
In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that gerrymandering, the controversial practice of drawing Congressional maps to favor one party over the other, is unconstitutional, and that new maps will have to be drawn by nonpartisan committees who are only allowed to consider population when dividing up state districts. The ruling will take effect next year, which means that the 2020 elections will determine congressional representation for the newly drawn districts in each state. The ruling in Harley v. North Carolina was down partisan lines, with Sotomayor, Breyer, Nguyen, Garland, and Srinivasan ruling in favor of the change, and Kennedy, Mahoney, Thomas, and Gorsuch ruling against. Gerrymandering has been a hotly debated topic for decades in the United States, but it has not had a formal Supreme Court challenge until last year, when Martin Harley, an official in North Carolina's Democratic Party, challenged the state's Congressional maps in court, claiming that the maps provided an unfair electoral advantage to Republicans. The challenge went all the way to the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case just before last year's sex scandal broke against Alex Kozinski, which ultimately altered the balance of the Supreme Court. It's not yet known whether or not Kozinski's resignation affected this ruling, as Kozinski had actually expressed some disdain for gerrymandered maps in the past and may have ruled with the Court's liberal justices in this case, but he didn't get the chance, and ultimately, the 5-4 liberal majority decided along party lines to throw out maps that didn't pass Constitutional muster. The ruling also effects a number of maps in states like Illinois that are gerrymandered in favor of Democrats, but this ruling is expected to help Democrats and hurt Republicans in next year's elections. President Kennedy commented earlier today on the Court's ruling in a brief statement which said: "I welcome any ruling by the Supreme Court that gives the people of this country more say in their elected representatives and which makes elections more fair. Both the Democratic and Republican parties have used gerrymandering in the past, and this ruling ensures that the rules stay fair for everyone, which ensures a Congress more receptive to the needs of the American people."
The ruling on gerrymandering is the final ruling of this current Supreme Court session, which has seen a number of consequential rulings in a variety of cases, including a case upholding President Kennedy's public option healthcare bill by a 7-2 margin (in which Gorsuch and Thomas claimed in their dissents that the federal government did not have the right to serve as an insurance provider) and a campaign finance reform case in which the Supreme Court ruled that SuperPACs did indeed have to follow certain regulations restricting their total contributions to candidates (a 5-4 ruling along party lines, similar to the 5-4 ruling in the late 2000s that campaign spending was not considered free speech). A pair of cases concerning transgender rights and abortion were pushed to a future session, and rulings on them won't be issued until at least this fall. Though hot-button social issues weren't really considered during this latest Supreme Court session, it's clear from the rulings on campaign finance and gerrymandering that the new liberal majority is already having a major impact, an impact that will no doubt be felt in next year's general election.
-from an article on Yahoo! News, posted on May 20, 2019
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Game Spotlight: Ribbon Chalice
Ribbon Chalice is a 2-D fighting game produced and developed by Capcom. The game can best be described as Street Fighter meets Skullgirls, with a cast entirely composed of magical girl fighters (and a few guys and non-binary characters as well). The game's cast is battling it out over the legendary Ribbon Chalice, a Holy Grail-like cup with the power to grant any one wish, and in addition to a few good guy factions fighting for it, it's also being contested by some powerful evil magical girls and witches. The game features a total of 24 base playable characters, 4 unlockable characters, and eventually, 10 DLC fighters, for a total of 38 characters in all. The game's "primary" protagonist, so to speak, is a young schoolgirl named Inahime, who transforms into the legendary Pink Ribbon to battle her foes. Her three best friends are also playable in the game, while there are also three other squads of magical characters, two squads of three and a squad of six. There are also three "loners", so to speak, and then an evil team of five to round things out. The game's two main villains, a powerful evil witch named Deathqueen, and an evil student council leader turned arch-villainess, Zemasa, are unlockable characters, along with a pumpkin who turns into a magical school girl named Pumpkinella, and then a non-binary character named Oz who has a multitude of transformations and who sort of serves as the game's "flex" character in that they can represent a number of different characters' fighting styles. The DLC characters consist of characters from storyline DLC along with a few outsiders, like Saiyuki/Star Siren from Star Siren (the Battle Princess version, not the classi version), Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu from Magic Knight Rayearth, Lina Inverse from Slayers, and Rumi from Shadow Ocean. The game's combat style is fast-paced and full of special moves, with magic and objects flying everywhere. The gameplay is closer to Street Fighter, while the visual aesthetic is closer to Skullgirls (though it's in a more 3-D anime style than Skullgirls, something like anime cel-shading but a bit more CGI-esque). The musical score is by Yoko Shimamura, and blends whimsical traditional-style music (sort of like her work for Kingdom Hearts or Super Mario RPG) with more modern-esque music akin to modern bishoujo anime series. Each character has their own theme, and there are additional stage themes as well, making the game sound very much like an exciting work of anime fantasy even in the midst of intense combat. The combat itself is more silly than violent, there's no blood, there's just lots of magic and color and whimsy, though characters do get thrown and tossed around quite a bit (it's very much a Teen rated game, especially with all the skimpy outfits worn by most of the characters). The game features the traditional contingent of arcade and vs. modes, but there's also a storyline mode, and it's fairly involved, with each of the four heroic squads having their own separate storyline, and the villainous team having a storyline as well, while there's one more unlockable storyline once the five main stories are completed, in which players can take on a story that involves all five teams and even the villains teaming up against an even greater evil. With those six stories, plus the three DLC stories, that's nine stories in all that altogether take anywhere from 15-20 hours to beat, giving Ribbon Chalice plenty of content. There's also a beat 'em up/RPG mode that takes about 5-10 hours called Legend of the Chalice, and when you combine all that single player content with the bevy of offline and online versus modes (and take into account that Ribbon Chalice is a very fun and well balanced fighting game), the game has something for everyone, and lots to do for players of all skill levels. The game is fully voiced as well, with the English cast essentially a who's who of anime dub voice actors (along with a few Western animation regulars as well).
Ribbon Chalice is released on May 13, 2019 for the Reality, Virtua, Nexus, Stadia, iPhone G, and eventually the Game Boy Zero a few months after that system launches. Considered one of the better fighting games in years, it's a massive smash hit in Japan, becoming the best selling fighting game there since Super Smash Bros. Reality back in 2015. It's a bit of a tougher sell in the West, but does decent numbers, comparable to Jump Force, and ends up garnering a sizable niche fandom (and of course plenty of fanart and fanfiction). It's the first of three huge fighting game titles launched by Capcom in the 2019-2021 period, and though Ribbon Chalice is of course a big hit, many fans are eagerly awaiting the ultimate comic crossover fighting title in 2020.
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Other Significant Titles For May 2019:
River City Girls: This indie spiritual successor to River City Ransom comes to digital download platforms in May 2019, and is fairly similar to OTL's game, with slightly more girl power than OTL (Thrillseekers was a big influence on the TTL version's visual motif). Released in the same month as Ribbon Chalice, it's not nearly as big a hit as that game, though the fact that they end up being released on the same day leads to some fun crossover fanart and even a little rivalry between the fanbases of the two games.
Pitfall: The Descent: The month's big "blockbuster" title (with more initial hype than Ribbon Chalice), Pitfall: The Descent is the sequel to Activision's big budget 2015 series revival, and sees Harry and his girlfriend Annie return for another jungle adventure, this time with a bit of a horror theme. The 2015 title was a Nexus exclusive and co-produced by Google, but thanks to that game's success, Activision was able to put this one out on its own, for all the current consoles, and it does decently well, though reviews aren't quite as good as the original.
Emerald: Another Activision published title, but this one made by a smaller studio and given less hype, this is a sort of Souls-like dungeon crawler but with a somewhat lighthearted feel, about a daring knight who gathers up treasures and slays monsters for his king. Though he keeps getting killed, he comes back over and over to do it all again, somewhat like Dirk the Daring (in fact, Activision originally wanted to make a modern Dragon's Lair game with this concept, but decided to go with their own character early in development). It's fairly humorous and quite fun to keep ramming your face into obstacles over and over again, though the concept does eventually get old and it's not as good as the popular King's Grave series that occupies TTL's Dark Souls niche. It gets good reviews, but isn't all that big of a seller.
(...)
In other Capcom related news, Keiji Inafune has been tasked with heading up the creation of a "next gen Mega Man" title. It's separate from Mega Man Destiny, the 3-D adventure game recently announced as a Nintendo exclusive next year. Inafune will be heading up a team designed with creating a game that will be a fresh experience for Mega Man veterans while also providing the classic series gameplay that fans know and love. He won't be alone, as he'll be teamed up with Dave Cox, a former Konami developer who worked on the Shadows of the Moon series, but who left the company after its gaming properties were acquired by Ubisoft. The new Mega Man game is said to be a joint production between Capcom's Japanese division and a team of Western developers headed by Cox, and has just entered the early stages of production, so its release is expected in 2021. As for Mega Man Destiny, Inafune's involvement in that title is said to be limited to a consulting role only, while a new team of developers takes the lead on that game. While it hearkens back to the old Mega Man Legends games, Mega Man Destiny is said to be more of a "traditional" adventure game with action-RPG elements, and will feature plenty of exploration, themes that haven't been seen in the series for quite some time.
-from a May 9, 2019 article on Games Over Matter
-
Star Wars: Resistance Set To Launch On Fox Family This Fall
Star Wars: Resistance, a new animated series about the Rebellion in the time between the events of Star Wars: Episode III and Star Wars: Episode IV will debut on Fox Family and will air on Thursday nights starting in September. The show, which will feature traditional 2-D animation rather than the CGI animation that many animated shows have recently utilized, will center around bands of rebels in various parts of the Galaxy, including a group of Jedi said to have survived Emperor Palpatine's Order 66 at the end of Episode III. While no characters from the films have been announced as making an appearance, we're likely to see characters such as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, Darth Vader, and Palpatine himself appear in various roles, and we may also get to see characters from the sequel trilogy make appearances as much younger versions of their cinematic selves. We have the first news on the show's voice cast as well, with Enuka Okuma starring as the young Senator Suni Maykura, an old ally of Padme Amidala who vows to uphold justice in Padme's memory, and who secretly works with the Rebellion while skillfully avoiding the watchful eye of the Empire. Jason Ritter voices Arni Mudfly, a smuggler and technical genius who helps Suni but who also has a connection to a young rogue named Han Solo. Robbie Daymond voices Dane Blueskar, who was on the verge of becoming a Jedi Knight when his master was killed during Order 66, and he barely escaped with his life. Now, he seeks out a lost Jedi Temple in the hopes of contacting other Jedi to rebuild the order. Star Wars: Resistance is said to be a somewhat serious animated show, and will have a TV-PG rating, with director Joaquim Dos Santos promising that it "won't shy away from the same dark elements that oftentimes appeared in the films and novels". It's the first of two planned animated Star Wars shows coming to Fox Family during the next three years, with another show, rumored to be centered around Boba Fett, still said to be in the early stages of production.
-from a May 11, 2019 article on Tubehound
-
Landmark 5-4 Ruling Bans Partisan Gerrymandering, Sends States Back To The Drawing Board Ahead Of 2020 Elections
In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that gerrymandering, the controversial practice of drawing Congressional maps to favor one party over the other, is unconstitutional, and that new maps will have to be drawn by nonpartisan committees who are only allowed to consider population when dividing up state districts. The ruling will take effect next year, which means that the 2020 elections will determine congressional representation for the newly drawn districts in each state. The ruling in Harley v. North Carolina was down partisan lines, with Sotomayor, Breyer, Nguyen, Garland, and Srinivasan ruling in favor of the change, and Kennedy, Mahoney, Thomas, and Gorsuch ruling against. Gerrymandering has been a hotly debated topic for decades in the United States, but it has not had a formal Supreme Court challenge until last year, when Martin Harley, an official in North Carolina's Democratic Party, challenged the state's Congressional maps in court, claiming that the maps provided an unfair electoral advantage to Republicans. The challenge went all the way to the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case just before last year's sex scandal broke against Alex Kozinski, which ultimately altered the balance of the Supreme Court. It's not yet known whether or not Kozinski's resignation affected this ruling, as Kozinski had actually expressed some disdain for gerrymandered maps in the past and may have ruled with the Court's liberal justices in this case, but he didn't get the chance, and ultimately, the 5-4 liberal majority decided along party lines to throw out maps that didn't pass Constitutional muster. The ruling also effects a number of maps in states like Illinois that are gerrymandered in favor of Democrats, but this ruling is expected to help Democrats and hurt Republicans in next year's elections. President Kennedy commented earlier today on the Court's ruling in a brief statement which said: "I welcome any ruling by the Supreme Court that gives the people of this country more say in their elected representatives and which makes elections more fair. Both the Democratic and Republican parties have used gerrymandering in the past, and this ruling ensures that the rules stay fair for everyone, which ensures a Congress more receptive to the needs of the American people."
The ruling on gerrymandering is the final ruling of this current Supreme Court session, which has seen a number of consequential rulings in a variety of cases, including a case upholding President Kennedy's public option healthcare bill by a 7-2 margin (in which Gorsuch and Thomas claimed in their dissents that the federal government did not have the right to serve as an insurance provider) and a campaign finance reform case in which the Supreme Court ruled that SuperPACs did indeed have to follow certain regulations restricting their total contributions to candidates (a 5-4 ruling along party lines, similar to the 5-4 ruling in the late 2000s that campaign spending was not considered free speech). A pair of cases concerning transgender rights and abortion were pushed to a future session, and rulings on them won't be issued until at least this fall. Though hot-button social issues weren't really considered during this latest Supreme Court session, it's clear from the rulings on campaign finance and gerrymandering that the new liberal majority is already having a major impact, an impact that will no doubt be felt in next year's general election.
-from an article on Yahoo! News, posted on May 20, 2019
-
Game Spotlight: Ribbon Chalice
Ribbon Chalice is a 2-D fighting game produced and developed by Capcom. The game can best be described as Street Fighter meets Skullgirls, with a cast entirely composed of magical girl fighters (and a few guys and non-binary characters as well). The game's cast is battling it out over the legendary Ribbon Chalice, a Holy Grail-like cup with the power to grant any one wish, and in addition to a few good guy factions fighting for it, it's also being contested by some powerful evil magical girls and witches. The game features a total of 24 base playable characters, 4 unlockable characters, and eventually, 10 DLC fighters, for a total of 38 characters in all. The game's "primary" protagonist, so to speak, is a young schoolgirl named Inahime, who transforms into the legendary Pink Ribbon to battle her foes. Her three best friends are also playable in the game, while there are also three other squads of magical characters, two squads of three and a squad of six. There are also three "loners", so to speak, and then an evil team of five to round things out. The game's two main villains, a powerful evil witch named Deathqueen, and an evil student council leader turned arch-villainess, Zemasa, are unlockable characters, along with a pumpkin who turns into a magical school girl named Pumpkinella, and then a non-binary character named Oz who has a multitude of transformations and who sort of serves as the game's "flex" character in that they can represent a number of different characters' fighting styles. The DLC characters consist of characters from storyline DLC along with a few outsiders, like Saiyuki/Star Siren from Star Siren (the Battle Princess version, not the classi version), Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu from Magic Knight Rayearth, Lina Inverse from Slayers, and Rumi from Shadow Ocean. The game's combat style is fast-paced and full of special moves, with magic and objects flying everywhere. The gameplay is closer to Street Fighter, while the visual aesthetic is closer to Skullgirls (though it's in a more 3-D anime style than Skullgirls, something like anime cel-shading but a bit more CGI-esque). The musical score is by Yoko Shimamura, and blends whimsical traditional-style music (sort of like her work for Kingdom Hearts or Super Mario RPG) with more modern-esque music akin to modern bishoujo anime series. Each character has their own theme, and there are additional stage themes as well, making the game sound very much like an exciting work of anime fantasy even in the midst of intense combat. The combat itself is more silly than violent, there's no blood, there's just lots of magic and color and whimsy, though characters do get thrown and tossed around quite a bit (it's very much a Teen rated game, especially with all the skimpy outfits worn by most of the characters). The game features the traditional contingent of arcade and vs. modes, but there's also a storyline mode, and it's fairly involved, with each of the four heroic squads having their own separate storyline, and the villainous team having a storyline as well, while there's one more unlockable storyline once the five main stories are completed, in which players can take on a story that involves all five teams and even the villains teaming up against an even greater evil. With those six stories, plus the three DLC stories, that's nine stories in all that altogether take anywhere from 15-20 hours to beat, giving Ribbon Chalice plenty of content. There's also a beat 'em up/RPG mode that takes about 5-10 hours called Legend of the Chalice, and when you combine all that single player content with the bevy of offline and online versus modes (and take into account that Ribbon Chalice is a very fun and well balanced fighting game), the game has something for everyone, and lots to do for players of all skill levels. The game is fully voiced as well, with the English cast essentially a who's who of anime dub voice actors (along with a few Western animation regulars as well).
Ribbon Chalice is released on May 13, 2019 for the Reality, Virtua, Nexus, Stadia, iPhone G, and eventually the Game Boy Zero a few months after that system launches. Considered one of the better fighting games in years, it's a massive smash hit in Japan, becoming the best selling fighting game there since Super Smash Bros. Reality back in 2015. It's a bit of a tougher sell in the West, but does decent numbers, comparable to Jump Force, and ends up garnering a sizable niche fandom (and of course plenty of fanart and fanfiction). It's the first of three huge fighting game titles launched by Capcom in the 2019-2021 period, and though Ribbon Chalice is of course a big hit, many fans are eagerly awaiting the ultimate comic crossover fighting title in 2020.
-
Other Significant Titles For May 2019:
River City Girls: This indie spiritual successor to River City Ransom comes to digital download platforms in May 2019, and is fairly similar to OTL's game, with slightly more girl power than OTL (Thrillseekers was a big influence on the TTL version's visual motif). Released in the same month as Ribbon Chalice, it's not nearly as big a hit as that game, though the fact that they end up being released on the same day leads to some fun crossover fanart and even a little rivalry between the fanbases of the two games.
Pitfall: The Descent: The month's big "blockbuster" title (with more initial hype than Ribbon Chalice), Pitfall: The Descent is the sequel to Activision's big budget 2015 series revival, and sees Harry and his girlfriend Annie return for another jungle adventure, this time with a bit of a horror theme. The 2015 title was a Nexus exclusive and co-produced by Google, but thanks to that game's success, Activision was able to put this one out on its own, for all the current consoles, and it does decently well, though reviews aren't quite as good as the original.
Emerald: Another Activision published title, but this one made by a smaller studio and given less hype, this is a sort of Souls-like dungeon crawler but with a somewhat lighthearted feel, about a daring knight who gathers up treasures and slays monsters for his king. Though he keeps getting killed, he comes back over and over to do it all again, somewhat like Dirk the Daring (in fact, Activision originally wanted to make a modern Dragon's Lair game with this concept, but decided to go with their own character early in development). It's fairly humorous and quite fun to keep ramming your face into obstacles over and over again, though the concept does eventually get old and it's not as good as the popular King's Grave series that occupies TTL's Dark Souls niche. It gets good reviews, but isn't all that big of a seller.
The mentioning of Fox Family reminds me.
What are the most notable programming blocks on the Big Four of kids cable TV, as in, Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and Fox Family?
What are the most notable programming blocks on the Big Four of kids cable TV, as in, Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and Fox Family?