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Tales of Suspense #39: Iron Man is Born!
He lives! He walks! He conquers! WHO? WHO? WHO?
Hey friends. I've started this like 2 or 3 times and never gotten very far, so here I am trying again. Basically I'm just going to (try to) read through The Invincible Iron Man and comment on it. Not necessarily all of it, as I'm using the DVD-ROM thing I bought forever ago which was released in 2007 so I'm obviously missing over a decade of comics here. I'm also only reading Iron Man itself and not like, every other comic ever where he appears because then I'd pretty much have to read the entire Marvel publication list from the 60s to doay, and I'm... not doing that.
I actually don't know crap about Marvel or comics or anything. I just read Iron Man as a kid and have a huge crush on Tony Stark. And I've always wanted to read them from the beginning. So this is the perspective of a complete idiot reading these things, so maybe that's interesting?
But yeah, this is just a commentary with a few little "screencaps" of the comics (I mean, they're on a DVD so I guess that's appropriate to call them?). They'll be cropped and this is just commentary, so this isn't meant to be a way to actually get the experience of reading them, so if you wanna see it for yourself, go subscribe to Marvel's online thing (I'm assuming they have these lol) or buy the DVD-ROM collection yourself, if it's still around. Or I guess shell out millions of dollars for the actual mags.
Anyway, we're going to start with Tales of Suspense No. 39, which is where Tony and Iron Man's story begins. Apparently ToS was a science-fiction anthology where this story started before it spun off into its own magazine. Later it featured the story of Captain America and the magazine just became the Cap series itself, I think?
This one is from March of 1963, in the middle of Vietnam's war of resistence against American colonization, or as we like to ambiguously refer to it here, the "Vietnam War." Which is an important context as the story intends to take place in an alternate timeline to our real lives, basically just... real life but with superheroes.
But yeah, enough of that blabbering, let's get blabbering on other things!
The cover of the magazine entices you to guess who this mysterious new hero is, showing parts of the "armor" being picked up by mysterious hands with captions, "WHO? WHO? WHO?"
But then we go on to introduce a completely new character and story so I don't really get this angle here, since we wouldn't know who this was anyway...?
But yeah, let's get to it.
Well, kinda. A cool thing about the DVD-ROM is that they are just scans of the mags, so the advertisements and weird side-content is still in-tact. The first page is actually an ad for the Made Simple self-teaching Encyclopedia set, which you can own for mere pennies a day!
I don't think owning an encyclopedia is much of a thing these days, but when I was a kid, my family had a set or two. I actually used to enjoy reading random parts of them, even though I don't think I actually learned anything concrete from it. But I'm sure I got some kind of growth out of it.
The one in the advert seems kind of cool, as it seems to be structured to be more like a self-teaching school course, instead of just a big compilation of informative articles. Ours were just organized alphabetically, so we had like an "A" encyclopedia, while these have like, a math book, an astronomy book, etc. I probably would have read them even more as a kid if they were like this, honestly. Though once I was a little older we got the Encarta 95 CD-ROM, which had short video clips, sound clips, color pictures, hyperlinks, and even some little games you could play. I don't think I'd have too much interest in a traditional paper encyclopedia after that, hahaha.
OK, you've been here for like 10 mintues now and we still haven't even started talking about the comic or the story.
So after the encyclopedia, we get the inside cover page, or whatever you call this. We see Iron Man emerging from behind some rocks, almost as if he's creating that crevice himself by shoving the rocks apart.
This page is also where we get to see the credits for who worked on this episode. The main plot was devised by Stan Lee, the indiviudal script written by Larry Lieber, the art by Don Heck, and lettering by Art Simek. I'll be honest and tell you I never paid attention to these things as a kid, and of these names, Stan Lee is the only one I even really know. From having friends who love comics, I'm somewhat familiar with the name Don Heck but I don't know enough about any of the artists to be able to tell whose style is whose or whatever. So I'm going to try to pay attention to that this time. And try to do it without looking up stuff about them so I'm forming my own strange opinions about these things lol.
Iron Man's original appearance is pretty funny; not only is he this bulky tinman thing, but he even has an antenna! Get ready for a lot of funny 60's sci-fi stuff like this.
Comic language has always been funny to me, too. I love how words are randomly written in heavyweight text, and they try to cram as many "creative" words as they can in there. The panel on this cover starts with, "Watch his awesome approach! Listen to his ponderous footsteps as he lumbers closer... closer..."
I'll admit this is my first time hearing the word "ponderous." Immediately I relate it to the word "ponder," so I feel like his footsteps must be lost in deep thought about something. Or maybe it's like the word 'curious' where it can describe a reaction as well, so maybe his footsteps incite you to become contemplative yourself.
Well, I guess it really just means clumsy and heavy or something. I really wonder how many kids in the 1960's knew the word "ponderous," and for those who didn't, how many looked it up? Like, maybe "ponderous" was just a normal part of 60 kid vocabulary, but...
SO LET'S GET TO THE ACTUAL STORY!
We open up with Tony showing some government agents the power of his TRANSISTORS. And just so you know, transistors are going to be a big thing. Pretty much whenever anything fantastical happens, the reason will be transistors.
Anyway, we're actually inside his own lab, which is "secluded somewhere in the U.S. defense perimeter." The government officials show up and talk about how Stark must really RATE. In fact, he RATES so much, The Commies™ would give their EYETEETH to know what he's working on.
The bold stuff is the stuff that's written like that in the book lol.
But yeah, transistors. Stark is demonstrating his transistor by placing a small magnet on a huge steel vault, then "powering it up" with a "tiny transistor" sitting on a table. Basically he switches on the fancy table thing and it makes a zappy beam that BLOWS UP THE ENTIRE SAFE DOOR. Woo, TRANSISTORS!
But we also gte to see the face of our new hero. The sexy, delicious, mustached face. He seems to have a nice pyramid stache here, but we'll soon see that the exact style will bounce around a little bit, but mostly stay in the pyramid-pencil range.
Oh, and that agent he's showing this too is pretty cute himself.
We're invited to learn more about the man behind the TRANSISTORS, which consists of just two panels of him flirting and girls looking at him so we learn that not only does he make nifty science things, but he's rich and everyone wants to bang him.
It's the mustache.
And then we're taken to the actual beginning of the story -- somewhere in a ~crazy Vietnam jungle~ or something, there's an evil RED tyrant named Wong-Chu who just goes around pillaging towns for fun.
He also is literally colored yellow and speaks in short, broken English. Though I would assume he's actually speaking his native language in these parts and we're just reading a translation, so I'm not sure why it would be translated as having bad grammar and short, abrupt thoughts... well, I mean, we all know why, but...
At least they had the decency to give him a handsome manchu. And it's hard to really see from this angle, but it's indeed a manchu with a little goatee, not a circle beard. This was just an angle where he looked kinda hot.
Anyway, Stark is in the same jungle as Wong-Chu because the U.S. army wants to transport their heavy artillery through the dense jungle, so TRANSISTORS make them lightweight and small for some reason. But he trips over a booby trap with a big BAROOM and is captured by THE REDS. Well, Wong-Chu at least.
Tony is about to die because some shrapnel is closing in on his heart. Wong-Chu's evil scheme is to "trick" Tony into making weapons for him by promising to have a doctor operate on his shrapnel problem after the weapons are complete. They give him a big lab with plenty of iron and tools to work with, and complete privacy, as well!
Well, kinda. The next day they throw in some Professor Yinsen guy to help for no real explained reason whatsoever. Yinsen clearly does not want to cooperate with the RED TYRANTS so it's not like they're putting him in the lab to keep an eye on Stark.
So Yinsen and Tony work together to create an "iron body" that will not only work as a weapon to fight the REDS but also will somehow keep the shrapnel from reaching Tony's heart, keeping him alive.
I really appreciated the recent(-ish) film adaptation of this story, by the way. It was basically just a modern version of this exact story, using Afghanistan instead of Vietnam (which you can also draw your own parallels on America's roles there lol) and being pretty true to Tony's character overall. Of course, the sci-fi tech Tony invents in the movie is a lot fancier than a giant iron plate, too.
The tech in this, though, is of course, just TRANSISTORS. So Tony lies inside the big metal suit thing they made and Yinsen powers it on. Transistors keep his heart beating, but the transistors need to power up or something, and of course, everything has to happen at the last second before disaster to make it exciting, so for some reason Wong-Chu and Friends are coming to check on them RIGHT NOW. Yinsen pretends to "go mad" and run around to distract them for a bit while the transistors power up, and Tony vows to avenge his new buddy's death.
In the few seconds Yinsen was running around, the transistors successfully power up and Tony gets up in his new suit. From his thoughts we learn that TRANSISTORS also make it possible for his brain to control the suit in the same way it would control its own muscles.
But he seems to wobble around a lot, with those, you know, ponderous footsteps. He falls down and talks about how he's like a baby learning to walk. Then in the very next panel, he's already mastered everything about his new body because he's so smart! Not even kidding, he's just suddenly super good and we're supposed to accept that was his learning period. All of this is still happening in the few seconds that Wong-Chu is like, walking 10 paces toward the door...
Tony then has a bit of an existential crisis after realizing that he's technically still alive, but will have to live the rest of his life inside a giant tinman body that keeps him alive. But a bit of reflecting in the mirror later, he realizes he doesn't have time for that shit and needs to hide. Because still Wong-Chu and his lackeys have not arrived at the door for some reason.
But of course, TRANSISTORS allow him to rocket boost out of his feet and suction to the ceiling with his limbs! Wong-Chu and co. reach the room and are surprised to find Tony is gone and that he hasn't been building weapons. This is literally the first time they decided to check on him at all...? Did they like, not feed him for days? What even???
They also didn't hear the noise of the giant metal dude rocketing off the ground and clunking into the ceiling when they were right at the door. And they don't seem to notice him hanging feet above their heads, either.
So Wong-Chu immediately gets bored and goes back to pillaging towns and beating up the townsfolk because Communism. Or something.
But a new villager appears to challenge Wong-Chu this time!
He actually appears in a trench coat and says, "First, I shall remove my clothes!" before fighting, which is a SUPER weird thing to say before you fight someone, but I'm not going to complain about a Tony striptease.
Wong-Chu freaks out as expected, and Iron Man beats him up. We're then interrupted by another advertisement, this time for a special tool that can help you learn how to draw "even if you can't draw a straight line" but it's seriously just a mirror and a light.
Iron Man then fights off more baddies using TRANSISTORS such as one that makes Reverse Magnetism and blasts everyone away!
We then continue with a chase scene where Iron Man uses various little tricks Inspector-Gadget style to show off the various things he can do. For example, when Wong-Chu locks a door, instead of just punching it and busting it down with his superhuman strength, he turns his finger into a mini-buzz-saw that can cut through doors despite being small because TRANSITORS. Other things include not being hurt when a filing cabinet filled with rocks (why exactly was this even there???) is pushed at him, interrupting radio waves to make a loudspeaker tell everyone to desert Wong-Chu, and turning his thumb into a tiny lighter or flamethrower or something, I don't even know.
Wong-Chu goes to kill all his prisoners... just because... so Iron Man stops him by burning the entire place down. So I guess he killed the prisoners, too? I really don't understand. But that's our dramatic ending!
The magazine also comes with a short prose about a boy and his "wishing dog," and a couple other short one-shot comics. I'm not really going to go into the extra stuff unless something really stands out. The Last Rocket is at least funny because it's about how the entire world abandons this planet because the sun is going to die, and only two people out of the entire population of the Earth decide they want to stay behind. Also for some reason everyone is white. And the two people who stay behind witness the miracle of a new sun appearing and the Earth going into its orbit for... some reason.
And that's our first appearance of Iron Man! If I had read this first as a kid, I probably wouldn't have really gotten into it. I have no idea where I actually started, though, or why I even got into it in the first place. Well, I'm sure it was the mustache, even if I didn't realize it at the time. And I guess this one had the stache, as well, so... maybe...
Anyway, I didn't mean to recap the story THIS much this time, so future entries will probably be shorter for a while, since the stories will be silly and episodic until much later. But since this is the origin story or whatever, I went a little more into describing what was happening.
I also collected all the handsomest Tony panels throughout the issue:
And here's one of Wong-Chu from the front so you can see the manchu more clearly:
And here's one from behind because teehee:
Well, look forward to reading more of these. Hopefully. Every time I do this I get a few in and then stop. This is my first time doing it on ThaaoNET, though, and my first time paying attention to the artists, so maybe I'll be a little more motivated to keep going...? Plus with them more easily organized on ThaaoNET, I'll be able to pick back up whenever I want without too much hassle.
Until next time, keep stachin'~
Romancing SaGa 3 REDO
Heya friends~
So, I've been meaning to update this blog a lot more. I keep thinking, "Ah, but this isn't worth making an entry about..." even though I want to update on my game progress and stuff like that. Which is exactly what this blog is supposed to be for. And I mean, it's just my personal blog so why not...?
I've been playing various things and working a lot on The Strelitzia Inn, which I'm trying to soon expand into a site for not only Unlimited Saga, but also SaGa Scarlet Grace and Romancing SaGa 3.
I also have finished up making the beard!Mikhail mod for RSG3... but more importantly, I found while looking on a Japanese guide site for characters' initial equipment that there's actually a way to recruit Young Fang early in the game. I mean, not right away, but before sealing any Abyss Gates. All English-language resources say you can't recruit him until the very end of the game after sealing all four gates, making him almost pointless.
I had put the Romancing SaGa 3 play diary on hold because I was waiting for more information about the remaster of the game and its eventual promised localization. Well, the remaster still seems to be a way off, so the localization is not going to be around any time soon. Plus if I wait for the remaster, I won't be able to use my fuzzy face mod. I mean, I guess I could try to create one for the remaster, but I don't know what it's going to be like.
Anyway, I guess the point is that I'm strongly leaning toward restarting the RSG3 play diary entirely to use my beard mod and recruit Young Fang earlier and have the fuzzy harem for most of the game, instead of just throwing one member in at the end for the sake of it.
Mega Man X Legacy Collection
Hey friends. So, Mega Man X Legacy Collection is coming out in like a day, and I want to whine about some stuff. You know, because the best way to celebrate something you're super excited for is to complain about it. Well, only one of the complaints is about the collection, the other is just about the fanbase lol.
SO BIG COMPLAINT TIME. It's been officially disclosed that they're going to alter the English version of Mega Man X5 and change the names of the characters to their Japanese versions.
This is kind of old news now but I've been whining about it on GameFAQs for a while, so why not here, too? Well, I don't want to rant TOO much there so I can put more detail here where no one will even read it.
If you're unfamiliar with what I'm talking about, the person in charge of the localization for X5 back when it was released on the PlayStation decided to take some creative liberties with the names of the eight boss characters. Instead of the Japanese names like "Tidal Makoeen" and "Shining Hotarunicus" we got names like "Duff McWhalen" and "Izzy Glow." Personally, I loved this change because it gave the characters more personality, and in X5 in particular, they tried to start putting a lot of backstory to the characters, 'humanizing' them more than just 'animal-shaped things you fight.' You actually talk to them before fighting them and there are a variety of possible dialogues depending on what's happened in the story so far, and you can learn about them as characters. So I've always loved being able to refer to Dr. Glow as, well, Dr. Glow
Since the release of the English version of the game, fans have complained about the names and created their own fan-dubbed names for the characters. That's right -- they didn't use the Japanese names! Because as much as people hate that it was changed, they don't even like the Japanese names either. Instead of Hotarunicus, people would say things like "Shine Firefly."
This is because it put them more in line with the localized names of the first four games -- all of which were changed for the English releases, too. The names of the characters have always been creative or strange alterations of English words, like "Icy Penguigo" or "Electro Nazamuros," but they were changed for the English versions to tame things that followed this ugly Noun + Animal Name formula like "Chill Penguin" and "Volt Catfish." So all this time people are complaining that we didn't use the Japanese names (yes, the complaints were specifically worded like that) when fans didn't even like the Japanese names anyway. For the longest time I never had played X2 or X3 in English and only knew the Japanese names of the characters and would get crap for it from other fans when I used them because I was using the "stupid" names and the English names were "better." But I'm not going to go look up the English names just to talk about the game lol.
So fans hate all the names except for the weird early-English ones. And now people are cheering that the names are changed... but they're changed to the other names that those exact same fans hated as well...? The fans that were complaining about the new names refused to use the original names, too, so... lol.
Anyway, this actually wasn't meant to be my complaint about the fanbase. This is my complaint about Capcom's decision. The reason that Capcom gave for changing the names back to the original version was that it was to create a ~cohesive experience~ now that all eight games are available together to be played at once. Of course, they didn't bother changing it back when the Mega Man X Collection was released for PS2 that contained the first six games all together.
But my main problem with this excuse is that changing only one game's name doesn't create that same experience...? The first four games still have their localized names unchanged, so we're going to go from games with characters named stuff like "Armadillo" and "Ostrich" to suddenly having names like "Pegacion," "Scaravich," and "Stonekong." That's... not a cohesive experience at all?
And I would put money on saying they probably won't even change various other localization errors that cause even worse breaks to the cohesive experience like saying Magma Dragoon "left the Irregular Hunters" and crap like that.
So what does this decision even do? Fans are not getting the names they like, just another set of names they hate. And Capcom isn't getting the cohesive experience they're claiming to create. So this change does literally nothing other than ruin the nostalgic experience for fans who liked the original names. Oh, and to add insult to injury, the Japanese versions of the games will also be playable in the collection so you could easily just play those if you wanted to see the other names.
OK, first rant done.
Now my second rant is against the fanbase itself. And that's in the constant hatred toward Mega Man X7.
Now, Mega Man X7 is by no means a great game. Personally, I love the game, but I will quickly admit there are a lot of flaws. Unlike Unlimited Saga, though, which I would hesitate to recommend to someone unless I knew their tastes very well because it's a flawed game that I would anticipate many people disliking, Mega Man X7 is decent enough that I think most people could easily have fun with it, especially if they like Mega Man X games. In fact, the game pays homage to the rest of the series in a lot of ways that it should be even more enjoyable to long-time fans.
Recently, I've been playing a lot of Sonic Adventure 2: Battle on Steam, trying to 100% the game (which also includes breeding three perfect Chaos Chao and filling the rest of the Chao Garden with Chao based on my friends and Twitch regulars, so I'm nearing 300 hours with the game now...). This is my third time replaying Sonic Adventure 2 from beginning to end. Having lots of experience with both SA2 and MMX7, I'm pretty confident to say they have very similar quality.
Both of them have messed up cameras (though Sonic's can be worse at times where you can get stuck with the camera behind a wall or something so you see literally nothing at all and have no choice but to die, where as X7's camera is more just frustrating in that sometimes you want to be able to turn it but you can't, but you can still see your character and see what's around you enough to keep playing the game; not any worse than Super Mario 64's camera issues.)
Both of them have clunky controls. Here, both of them are pretty equal where they both have times you'll try to use a certain skill only to use another and end up getting yourself hurt -- or worse -- plummeting to your death. But both of them had predecessors like this with Sonic Adventure and Mega Man X6 also having these problems.
Both of them have hilariously bad voice acting, with a couple of characters having good voices while everyone else is terribly that you hardly notice the good ones anymore. Both have noisy, talkative bosses that repeat the same lines ovr and over and annoying support characters who constantly interrupt you to say stuff like, "Did you know you can JUMP in this game?!"
The only things that Sonic really has over X7 is the Chao Garden and the graphics are a little nicer. Though the PC version of X7 has great graphics, as they were able to do a lot of aesthetic stuff they had to cut or redo for the PS2 version. So hopefully we'll be getting a port of the PC version and not an emulation of the PS2 version. Then the only thing we're missing is the Chao Garden.
X7 also was the first Mega Man X game to offer a New Game+ mode, allowing you to start the game with powered up Hunters and unlocked characters and abilities, as well as allowing you to fully upgrade your characters with all of their Chips, something that fans complained about not being able to do in previous titles. The game also is more cinematic and has more story than previous games, trying to create a more cohesive story experience with (skippable!) cutscenes between every stage and a lot of character and lore development. Again, another thing people complained about in previous titles.
Now, I understand the initial backlash to X7 pretty well. It does a few things that infuriated a lot of fans. The main thing being that the game's title character, X, has now retired and turned into a background support character, with a completely new made-up character named Axl with an "annoying teenager" personality taking his place. I think that's reason enough to immediately have a sour taste about the game, and I understand how that can affect your impression of the game from the start. Then there's the fact that they tried out the 3D stuff. In a franchise that already had about 20 major titles and plenty of spinoff titles that were all build around the same 2D platforming formula, suddenly changing that around is off-putting.
And this is the place that X7 suffers the most. Fans wanted something the same, but they got something different. And the reaction to that is always "this game is terrible and bad and everything about it is bad." But X7 is actuall a really fun game in its own right, marred by a few unfortunate flaws. But it's not any worse than something like Sonic Adventure 2 or Banjo-Tooie which are decent-but-flawed games succeeding previously better games. The difference is that Sonic still starred sonic and was built around the Sonic Adventure engine, while Banjo-Tooie starred Banjo and Kazooie yet again while being built from the Banjo-Kazooie engine.
Overall, I'd say I enjoy Mega Man X7 more than either Sonic or Banjo. Actually, I kind of hate Banjo-Tooie and think it's objectively a poorly-designed game overall. Sonic and X7 are around the same level, like I mentioned before, I'm just more attached to Mega Man as a franchise and like the shoter, replayable aspect of Mega Man compared to the long do-it-once campaign style of Sonic Adventure.
OK, so with all of that context, here's the problem we're having now: This is going to be many fans' first experience with Mega Man X7. This is a perfect opportunity for them to add another fun new Mega Man game to their library. An entire experience they can enjoy. But so many aren't going to. I've seen so many fans who haven't played X7 before already saying they're going to refuse to even try the game despite owning it on the collection, or already saying the hate the game before even playing it. And it's all because of the overreaction of previous fans.
Like, I get being upset that the game is about some new rando and does all this weird new stuff and didn't deliver the experience you were expecting it to. I definitely undrstand that. That's happened with me many times with many franchises. But instead of, you know, objectively criticising the decisions and direction of the company, people loudly and publicly hate on the game so bad that they ruin others' experience of the game by marring their opinion of the game before they even have a chance to try the game for themselves.
I played X7 not knowing the fan reaction of the game at the time and found it to be a very enjoyable experience. Yeah, I had my own complains about it and think some of the design choices were pretty questionable. But there's a lot to the game beyond that and a lot to love there. And I remember when I told my brother and some friends that it was a pretty much universally-hated game and they were shocked to learn that, because they also viewed the game for what it was and not for what it was made out to be by obnoxious fans. And I've met plenty of other X7 fans online, and we all share the same experiences -- whenever we try to express any kind of fondness for the game, we're heckled and belittled, usually by comments with very little substance.
In fact, I've seen entire professional reviews of the game that can't even manage to explain why the game is bad, and just constantly say "Oh man, this is so terrible! Don't even play it!" the whole time. It's so ridiculous. X7's reputation is one of the most overblown and unrealistic things I've ever seen in the history of gaming. And I have a lot of complaints about general reactions to various things throughout gaming history...
So, lots of crying about why I'm mad about this game.
But don't get me wrong, I am so stoked about Mega Man X Legacy Collection, and yeah, one of those reasons is finally having a PC version of X7 to play. In fact, I've been losing sleep because I can't contain my excitement for pretty much the entire weekend and I won't even be able to play the game until Tuesday. To be honest I can't even tell you why I'm so excited considering I already own all of the games in the collection anyway...
So let's talk about something I really like about the collection, so we're not all negative here. (Geez I've been using a lot of italics in this post...)
And that awesome thing is the achievements! I know some people don't care about stuff like that, but I love achievements in games, because I like to replay games anyway, and it's fun trying to explore the game and see what kind of stuff I missed. Achievements usually encourage you to try things you wouldn't normally try or to pay attention to aspects of the game you didn't pay much attention to otherwise. Well, when they're good achievements.
Sadly, the achievements for Mega Man Legacy Collection were not very good. Pretty much there were just achievements for clearing each title in the collection and for clearing arbitrary numbers of the challenges. So I was expecting this collection to be the same. I'm trying to avoid learning too much about the collection so I can have some surprises (though I'm way too excited and involved with talking to other fans so I don't think much will be a surprise at this point) so I was considering not looking at the achievements beforehand. But I figured I may as well sneak a peek and get the disappointment out of the way early.
But instead, I was very pleasantly surprised!
There are achievements related to each individual title, which encourage you not only to play through each game and collect all the optional items and stuff, but also encourage you to play around with the games in various ways! For example, there's an achievement for cutting off Flame Mammoth's trunk in Mega Man X or for defusing seven bombs in a row in The Skiver ~~Spiral Pegacion~~'s stage in Mega Man X5. Sadly, the X7 ones seem to be the least creative, but they at least encourage you to try out all the different weapons and techniques and play the game on New Game+ a little.
Actually X8's look even worse and less creative but will force you to play the game way too much because the requirement to upgrade everyone to 100% is pretty much a ton of tedious grinding.
There are also a slew of hidden achievements, which will probably be awarded for reaching certain story points in each game. But that's interesting because X5 and X6 both have a lot of varying story paths and endings so hopefully there will be hidden achievements for doing things in those different ways.
Four Job Fiesta!!
Hello, friends~
I've mostly been working on The Strelitzia Inn so I haven't been updating Play Diaries too much (oops!)
But I have been playing quite a bit of UNLIMITED:Saga for data collection, so I'm moving forward with Ventus. I'm kinda at a crossroads now where I'm wondering if I should finish up the Play Diary and just load an old save to work on the site, or if I should keep on chugging now and write about the experience in the Play Diary...
I've also played a lot of Romancing SaGa 2, but I just haven't been writing entries lol;;
I've been streaming regularly on Twitch, too, mostly playing Mega Man games. I've been doing this 'death tolls' thing to see how few deaths I can accumulate while playing through games while on stream.
I've also pre-registered for the Four Job Fiesta again this year, and I'm gonna be doing #BERSERKERRISK. I'm not gonna be trying to write about it again, but I hope to be streaming the whole thing, so make sure to come check me out on Twitch next week if you wanna see it~~
Mega Man 8 BOLT DISTRIBUTION
Well, I've been trying to clear all the achievements on MMLC2 on Steam, which means playing through Mega Man 8 again. I'm actually playing ROCKMAN8, since I haven't played it before. It's just as funny as MM8. I do like how the speech styles are able to give a bit more personality to the characters.
Anyway, that means I'm rekindling my love/hate relationship with this game. This game is full of long, poorly-designed stages, obnoxious minibosses, weird and useless items, sluggish movement, and mostly annoying music. But on the other hand, the graphics and little voice clips are super cute, the character designs are pretty neat, and most of all, there's BOLT COLLECTION!
If you haven't played the game before, basically there are these Bolt items hidden throughout stages which can be exchanged for parts that power up Rock as you play, enhancing your abilities. There's a limited number of Bolts, and the cost of all the upgrades is more than there are total Bolts in the game, plus you can only have eight total upgrade items built from Bolts, so you need to think wisely about what to spend your Bolts on. Furthermore, you obviously will collect Bolts as you go, so you can't just buy all the upgrades right away.
Probably my favorite aspect of this game is planning out a route through the stages and planning when and on what to spend my Bolts.
There are 40 Bolts to spend, with 17 different items you can build with them.
Some items are fairly useless or don't help much if you're skilled at the game. For example, if you're planning a no-damage run, there's no reason to buy the Power Shield which decreases knockback when you take damage, since, well, you're not going to be taking damage to begin with.
The useless items include Power Shield, Spare Extra, and Spare Charger.
There are also items that suit other players' style of gameplay, that are largely unnecessary for me personally, like the Shooting Part, Auto Shoot, Boost Part, and Rapid Part.
That leaves these items as the ones worth buying:
- Energy Balancer (5) - When collecting Weapon Energy Capsules when the current weapon is full of energy or no weapon is equipped, the weapon with the least amount of energy is refilled (rather than just wasting the energy like normal). Not necessary, but very convenient.
- Exit (4) - Allows you to leave a stage you've cleared before at any time, without having to get all the way to the boss room. Very convenient considering the amount of revisits required and the slow, long stages.
- Laser Shot (5) - Changes Rock's Charge Shot to the Laser Shot. I still am not sure which I like the best out of the regular, Laser, and Arrow Shot.
- Arrow Shot (5) - Changes Rock's Charge Shot to the Arrow Shot.
- Step Booster (5)- Makes Rock climb ladders faster. Totally unnecessary, but nice to have.
- Energy Saver (6) - Makes weapons use less Weapon Energy. Probably the best item you can make!
- Super Recover (5) - Makes Rock recover more Energy and Weapon Energy when picking up Capsules. Very nice for recovering Weapon Energy!
- Hyper Slider (5) - Speeds up Rock's slide dash. Pretty nice.
- High Speed Charge (7) - Lessens the time it takes to charge the Charge Shot. Very nice for what it does, but I also hardly use Charge Shots.
- Exchanger (4) - If you pick up Life Energy Capsules while Life Energy is full, they will be converted to Weapon Energy instead! Extremely powerful when combined with Energy Saver and Super Recover!
Of course, that's more than 8 items, and the total cost of all of those is well above 40, so we can't have them all.
The Energy Saver, Super Recover, and Exchanger combined make it difficult to run out of Weapon Energy, which is extremely powerful. Those combined cost 15 Bolts, however, and everything after Step Booster in that list can only be purchased after clearing the first six stages (including the intro stage and the Duo stage). Energy Balancer makes the whole setup a lot more convenient, and with that we've already spent half our Bolts and filled up half our space.
If we're collecting all the bolts possible, Exit is a must, which leaves us with 16 Bolts to spend on other things, and only three things left we can buy. Hyper Slider and Step Booster maximize our speed, but we're missing out on the two unique Charge Shots since we'll only be able to hold one more item. If we forego the two unique Charge Shots, we can barely afford High Speed Charge as our last item, though, powering up the regular Charge Shot by making it faster to charge.
If we go for both special Charge Shots and both mobility boosters, we could still get by with sacrificing one of our convenience items, either the Exit or Energy Balancer.
Though if we're not concerned with collecting all the items in the game, we can skip Exit altogether and just not revisit stages. It will give us fewer Bolts to work with, but we'll at least be saving 4 Bolts by not buying the Exit. And of course, we don't have to fill up all 8 slots, either. We could sacrifice even more to minimize our time spent running around stages.
All of these factors make the Bolt collection aspect of Mega Man 8 interesting for me. I think I actually enjoy thinking about Bolts more than I actually enjoy playing the game, but then it's kind of pointless to think about them if you don't actually put all this thought into action.
So, it's been a long time since I planned a route through this game and I don't feel like digging up my old notes on LiVEJOURNAL (or rather, DreamWidth now) so I'm going to just plan a new route. Though I've always prioritized Energy Balancer and sacrificed one of the special Charge Shots. I think this time, I'm going to try to create a route that collects all the Bolts, minimizes time spent revisiting stages, and collects the most useful items early in the game. I also want the collection to feel very "complete" so anything that adds unique functionality into the game will be bought. This means we're getting both special Charge Shots and both mobility items.
Exit is far more convenient and necessary for this type of playthrough compared to Energy Balancer, and I'd like to have the Holy Trinity of Weapon Energy with Energy Saver, Super Recover, and Exchanger.
So our eight items to build will be Exit (4), Energy Saver (6), Super Recover (5), Exchanger (4), Arrow Shot (5), Laser Shot (5), Step Booster (5), and Hyper Slider (5).
In all, that's 39 Bolts, so we're within our budget.
The question now arises, when do we buy each thing? Exit is only necessary once we start revisiting stages, which will be after clearing the initial ten stages, so we can hold off on it for a while. Everything else, though, seems like it could be useful early on. Laser Shot is particularly good at damaging bosses, and I like to face the bosses the first time around without using the special weapons that they're weak to. So having Laser Shot for those would be nice. Most bosses have a time they're invulnerable so you can spend that time charging, using regular shots otherwise. Arrow Shot, on the other hand, is very useful during stages, as it creates a splash of shots upon impact, letting it destroy many enemies at once. Step Booster would be nice to have in Sword Man and Aqua Man's stages, as they both have parts where you evade death traps while climbing ladders.
There's also the fact that Exit, Laser Shot, Arrow Shot, and Step Booster are the only items that can be bought in the first "half" of the route. This can mean buying them early, or not buying anything to save up for the Energy-based items once they become available in the second half.
In the first half of the game, we can collect bolts from these locations:
- 3 Bolts in the intro stage
- 4 Bolts in Clown Man's stage
- 4 Bolts in Grenade Man's stage
- 5 Bolts in Frost Man's stage
- 3 Bolts in Tengu Man's stage
One of the Bolts in Frost Man's sage requires the Flash Bomb to acquire, so we have to make sure to defeat Grenade Man first. Similarly, one of the Bolts in Clown Man's stage requires the Rush Bike to get, which is also obtained from Grenade Man's stage. This isn't the total of all the bolts in each stage; all of them have another Bolt that requires revisiting after acquiring weapons from the second half of the game. So in all, the first half of the game allows us to procure 19 Bolts before we unlock the second half of the items.
Once we get to the second half, we'll gain an additional 2 Bolts from the Duo mid-stage thing, and then we'll have access to these bolts:
- 4 Bolts in Search Man's stage
- 4 Bolts in Astro Man's stage
- 4 Bolts in Aqua Man's stage
- 3 Bolts in Sword Man's stage
A Bolt in Search Man's stage requires us to have the Flame Sword from Sword Man first, while a Bolt in Aqua Man's stage requires us to have the Astro Crush from Astro Man first.
We don't need to buy Exit until we've completed all eight stages once, so we don't need to worry about prioritizing it early. Both of the special Charge Shots are available from the beginning and would be nice to get early. Step Booster is also available right away, but we only really need it for Sword Man and Aqua Man's stages the most.
If we buy all three of the items available right away other than Exit, we'll spend a total of 15 Bolts. This leaves us only with 4, plus the 2 from the Duo stage, going into the second half. With this six we can afford only one of the Energy items.
If we hold off on buying the Step Booster right away, though, we'll be able to afford two of them at the midpoint, but buying two of them will lock us into playing Astro Man's stage first, as we can't visit Aqua Man until we have defeated Astro Man, we can't visit Search Man until we've defeated Sword Man, and we can't visit Sword Man until we've bought the Step Booster. I mean, we could easily go through Sword Man's stage without the Step Booster, but part of the fun of creating these "paths" is to get optimal usage out of all of the different items.
Buying the Step Booster early and saving one of the Energy items for later allows us to at least choose to visit Sword Man's stage first in the second round of stages, which also allows us to choose the next stage as either Search Man or Astro Man. So we get a bit more variety to the stage order. The Flame Sword isn't a particularly useful weapon overall, so there's no reason to want to get it early. Though the Homing Sniper is pretty nice, but so is the Astro Crush.
It's also possible to visit Frost Man's stage before visiting Grenade Man's stage if we want, since we'll have to come back to Frost Man's stage later anyway. We'll just have to save that one Bolt there for later, giving us fewer Bolts in the first half. The same can be said for visiting Clown Man's stage before Grenade Man's.
There are also the four Rush Adaptors that we can find which we have to account for. They're freely dropped by the minibosses in Grenade Man, Clown Man, Sword Man, and Aqua Man's stages.
Grenade Man's stage houses the Rush Bike, which is really awesome and allows us to ride quickly on rush like a motorcycle. This allows for extra-long jumps, too, like the one required for one of Clown Man's Bolts.
Clown Man's stage houses Rush Item, which just summons Rush to drop an item and can be used once per stage. There's a chance of him giving even a Yashichi, though!
Sword Man's miniboss drops Rush Bomber, which lets Rush fly around above the stage and drop bombs. Cool in theory, but hardly ever that necessary.
And Aqua Man's stage has the Rush Health adaptor, which is like the Rush Bomber, but Rush drops Energy Capsules (both Life and Weapon types!)
Giving us Rush Bike and the Flash Bomb which gives us a powerful weapon, cool adaptor, and the ability to get two extra Bolts in the first half without having to revisit, Grenade Man's stage seems like a great place to start.
Having at least the Flash Bomb and Ice Wave help a lot in Tengu Man's stage. Tornado Hold can be useful against Clown Man's miniboss, and Thunder Claw isn't particularly useful anywhere in the first half any more than other items are.
So a decent order for the first have sounds like Grenade - Frost - Tengu - Clown.
There aren't too many places where the Arrow Shot becomes useful in Frost Man's stage, but the Laser Shot can help defeat Frost Man more quickly. So buying the Laser Shot first after Grenade Man's stage seems like a good way to go. Then after Frost Man's stage, we can get the Arrow Shot, which comes in handy in Tengu Man's stage (and most stages at some point).
In the second half, we need to visit either Sword or Astro first, as explained before. If we go to Astro first, we can save our Bolts from the first half and get both Energy Saver and Exchanger right away. Or we could save Super Recover and Exchanger for much later and prioritize Hyper Slider earlier.
Or if we want to visit Sword first, we'd have to pick up the Step Booster ahead of time and save the Exchanger for later.
I guess it depends on whether I'd rather have Astro Crush for Sword Man's stage or Rush Bomber for Astro Man's stage. The former seems like it would be more useful, so I'll go with that for now, but I'll have to pay attention for places to make use of Rush Bomber next time I play Astro Man's stage.
After that, we could go to Sword Man or Aqua Man's stage next. We'll get 4 bolts in Aqua Man's stage, and 3 in Sword Man's stage. I don't think we'll make much use of Rush Bomber in Aqua Man's stage (nor the Flame Sword), so it might be better to go there first. And Water Balloon is a decent spam-shot weapon. Either way, we need to make sure we buy Step Booster first.
Search Man's stage can really go anywhere after Sword Man, so if we're saving Sword Man for third, that means Search Man ends up being last.
So here's an example path through the game:
- Intro Stage (3/3 Bolts)
- Grenade Man (7/7 Bolts)
- Laser Shot (2/7 Bolts)
- Frost Man (7/12 Bolts)
- Arrow Shot (2/12 Bolts)
- Tengu Man (5/15 Bolts)
- Clown Man (9/19 Bolts)
- Duo (11/21 Bolts
- Energy Saver (5/21 Bolts)
- Astro Man (9/25 Bolts)
- Step Booster (4/25 Bolts)
- Aqua Man (8/29 Bolts)
- Hyper Slider (3/29 Bolts)
- Sword Man (6/32 Bolts)
- Super Recover (1/32 Bolts)
- Search Man (5/36 Bolts)
- Exit (1/36 Bolts)
- Revisits (5/40 Bolts)
- Exchanger (1/40 Bolts)
It sounds pretty good overall, minimizes revisits, gets Step Booster before the two areas where it would be most needed, and even gets Hyper Slider before Sword Man where it can be helpful.
With so much opportunity to replenish energy in the game, though, it might be better to hold off on something like the Exchanger or Super Recover in favor of something like High-Speed Charge. And if we didn't care about collecting all possible bolts, we could even avoid the Exit, since it basically just pays for itself anyway (since there are four Bolts you get by revisiting four stages, and Exit costs four Bolts itself).
Replacing Super Recover and Exchanger with High-Speed Charge will save an extra 2 Bolts. So we'd have 3 left over at the end, and nothing to spend them on. It's a bit of a shame since it means we won't be filling up all eight slots of items. But that's part of the price of buying expensive items like Energy Saver and High-Speed Charge.
The biggest con against getting High-Speed Charge is that it's acquired so late in the game it isn't able to be put to much use. It would be nicer if we could have had it earlier in the game before we got lots of nice weapons and used more Charge Shots.
And sort of like not filling up all eight slots, there are also four slots for "Shot" in the second submenu. The regular Charge Shot is one of them, and then the Arrow Shot and Laser Shot take up the next two spaces. I have no idea what even fills up the last spot. But it will be left empty with the above path.
But yeah, this is just the example of one thought process I go through thinking about playing Mega Man 8. And honestly this is probably the most fun part of the game. The planning part, I mean.
