Wario Wario Wario

Continuing from my post about NASB voices, I feel the NASB voices do show further how Smash taking itself seriously damages it as a product. Even before my spunchbop-induced awakening, there's always been something slightly off and uncomfortable tonally about Smash to me that I could never put my finger on, I always chalked it down to just the violence of characters like Sephiroth and Ridley in proportion to their cute opponents, but now I realise what it is: nobody's having fun. Not outside of the game, but inside the game. Hit voices sound pained, you'd be lucky to see a fighter both (non-sinisterly) smile and attack at once, victory quotes and animations are vindicitive, Chrom full-on death threats his opponent, it doesn't reflect what the game is on any level and makes the inclusions of animal and kid characters feel extremely ill-advised when they absolutely don't have to be.

I really like Lincoln's voice clips in NASB because it actually sounds like he's having a lot of fun even when KO'd or hit. Fighting the kids (or otherwise "vulnerable" characters) in Smash can often feel really bad because their voice clips sound so serious, while all the NASB characters sound like they're throwing giant beach balls at each other.

I feel Sega failed to get the memo that the reason why Nintendo Directs worked was because they rarely if ever mentioned t-shirts/action figures/plushies/corporate tie-ins (not counting amiibo) and therefore didn't feel like an ad.

Rocko and SpongeBob have a lot of similarities - I think even people who have only heard of Rocko in passing have some kind of awareness of this, hell whenever I try to describe Rocko to people who aren't into 90s cartoons I say "the social satire of The Simpsons combined with the slapstick of SpongeBob" - but it is kinda insane just how many similarities they have. Almost every main cast member you could find some kind of SpongeBob parallel to, and there's tons of plots that were reused in SpongeBob, ranging from extremely simple plots (friend loses their home, protagonist takes them in and loses their patience; character is given a cop-like role while lacking the responsibility, leaving someone to get arrested) to extremely specific and wild ideas (character drawn without a nose gains an artificial nose, and is horrified to learn of bad odours; protagonist's childhood bully is said to visit them after a set amount of time, after a lot of worry they turn out to be completely harmless)

That being said, these plots are all handled different ways - for example SpongeBob's bully BlackJack had shrunk over the years and is now too tiny to hurt anyone, while Rocko's bully Dingo had become a pacifist monk since their last encounter. When Patrick got a nose, he tried to violently destroy everything that radiated a bad odour, while when Bev got a nose she took issue with Ed's BO specifically, causing a marital issue.

Who needs Morbius 2 when you have this?
finding clips from youtube of this show is extremely hard, forgive the twitter link

Knowing how Sonic Team tend to respond to fan feedback, I have a feeling the only change they'll make to Frontiers from what we've seen is making the seagull flap its wings.

I hate to diss the work of a legend like Jim Cummings, but the Shredder voice acting in NASB is really rough. Are we sure he didn't accidentally send his Pete voice clips for Speedstorm?

I'd much rather any proposed Smash spin-off be a single series spin-off instead.

Tradfighter Smash? Make that Donkey Kong Fighters
Smash racing? Nah, how does Star Fox Grand Prix sound?
Turn based card game Smash? Drop everyone except the Pits and Palutena.
Smash Bros tactics RPG? Why not Metroid Tactics?

Just a reminder that we're submitting stages and clones!

I feel the Morbius memes got way funnier after being unsuccessfully capitalised on.

VOICE.

ACTING.

We're submitting morality swapped clones, stages that go together, and music for Ashley's "Devilish Dinner" stage!

YouTube is down again - but this time it isn't just me!

Sonic Frontiers would've benefitted greatly from an urban setting like Unleashed and the Adventure games. You can split up the more free parks, rooftops, and interiors with challenge-based linear road or street segments instead of flying rollercoaster rails; add NPCs to speak to or race with and missions to do; and add extra stakes to enemy combat by having pedestrians to protect.

The most annoying thing in finding music for creation threads (SMSB specifically) is when you find a really good remix and then half way through it turns into Banjo-Kazooie music or the Pinky & the Brain theme or something else that's completely unrelated for 5 seconds so you have to remove it.

Honestly I much prefer stage bosses like the yellow devil over Classic Mode and Story Mode bosses.

Finally got Dall-E to work

If we had to have a dark-humour-based character from a 3D platformer with context sensitive buttons in Smash, I'd much rather have Voodoo Vince than Conker since he's a homegrown Microsoft character.

If the new Crash game is a non-crossover platform fighter I will be so happy, even if it turns out crap.

This is scummy and manipulative AF, like down to the "specificly tailored character count to cut off at the right point" - especially given that this channel is clearly aiming at younger Sonic fans with its raccoon.png mascot and fake host voice that could very well be from a Sonic game.

I was considering unwatching Infinite, but the stage and music passes have got me interested again. I'm not sure if that's good or bad though.

This same episode is also a Ghostbusters parody, and features an antagonist that possesses household appliances, so that'll be three coincidencal resemblances to Nintendo games. The sausage cult episode (the slyly titled Schnit-Heads) also has a very Eggplant Wizard-esque character. Obviously not intentional on either end though - cartoon writers in the 90s weren't the gaming nerds they are today, and I don't believe any of the non-SBSP Nicktoons got much exposure in Japan - at least beyond the niche Western cartoon fandom over there.

I still find it baffling that people were expecting the Cuphead Show to be anything other than a hijinxs-of-the-week "good guy has fun, bad guy gets annoyed and tries to stop the good guy's fun, bad guy gets a really insignificant dealing of temporary karma, status quo" SpongeBob clone. Is there anything else it could've possibly been? Like even looking solely at the written, digetic lore and ignoring the aesthetic + cartoons it was inspired by, the bosses in Cuphead are almost all just his hypnotised friends and not outright villains - you can't really write an epic lore-heavy action cartoon where every single villain has the same "gambling/game show-induced-hypnosis" backstory

Reminder that we are submitting criteria for a new clone, and submitting changes to Peach; Bowser; and/or Dr. Mario!

I kinda worry that if Frontiers flops, it will hurt the overall 3D platforming genre instead of just Sonic's brand. This is the big show for open world platformers after the Switch-exclusive bundle-tethered mini-game Bowser's Fury, and in a gaming climate where open world is the new big trend and considered by some the "objective way forward", it will likely represent platforming as a whole for a lot of more modern-minded players.

I really like the idea of a healing item that also deals damage to its user either after a while or before healing.

Seth Green's bored ape escaping the blockchain to prevent his fate of being in a bad adult cartoon

We're submtting changes to the Melee veterans and clone criteria for Monday!

If I win Sabrina predictions, I'll probably funnel most of my RTC NASB votes into Raph & Donnie, and maybe give some to Heffer; multiple SpongeBob characters; Parker J. Cloud; the live action stages I'm aiming for a double day with; or Silver Ball rep

I do think Peter Pan was just chosen for the Chip N' Dale movie because his schtick is "never growing up" and not direct malice or a desire to be edgy, but it was still a really unfortunate and misinformed decision to make, especially when you could've gotten the same effect from an episodic cartoon protagonist.

If I was rebooting Q*Bert, I'd probably want to play into the 70s-nostalgia-for-the-50s aesthetic that the Saturday Supercade version used. It's really random as the closest thing to a 50s period concept in a Q*Bert game is Slick's hairstyle and sunglasses, but the world of Q*Bert is kind of random as is, with the only part of the original game that feels particularly intelligently designed from a worldbuilding/aesthetic perspective being that a character who hops on cubes is shaped as a Q. Plus I feel that modern-but-pre-80s eras are very overlooked in gaming.

Think you can make the next Delfino or Skyloft? We're submitting travelling stages!

Reminder that we are submitting our first ever cosmetic hat content!

No.

Ninja'd, Yes.

If you're gonna play the "all Smash picks are good" card, that's fine - good even! We could do with more of that - but don't backtrack it once the radicals start suggesting characters.