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Superman

In… Superman! Part II

At the end of this section you’ll know:

1. What is the best way to ward off a Laser Attack?

2. In a battle between Superman and a stalk of celery, who would win?

When Lois is captured we’re given our first look at “The Mad Scientist”. He has a Mohawk, but with sideburns, and wears eyeliner. Apparently our “Mad Scientist’s day job is as a front man for the Gothic Metal band “Suicide Scientists”. And of course he’s wearing a lab coat. Remember, all scientists wear lab coats. All of them.

Meanwhile with Lois tied up the Mad Scientist begins to destroy the city. Everyone seems to be exceptionally happy about this. Well at least I guess they are. They’re all smiling. Maybe they’ve all just been tazered.

At this point, what is to become the most over-used joke on the planet, is seen for the first time. Clark Kent jumps into a supply closet and changes into Superman. Nobody seems to notice, not even the janitor that was stuck in the closet with him.

As the scientist continues to pound on the city tearing the foundation out from underneath a building, superman quickly swings into action to put the building upright. Now, I know that some of you think that after you remove the foundation from under a building that there’s no way that you could get it back up. Well those of you who think that are wrong. It is completely logical to have a building stand with no foundation. Back me up structural engineers.

After pushing the building back up, where it stays, Superman begins punching the beam back up to the scientist’s lair. I hate to be the one who has to bring this up to the writers of such a fine show such as Superman!, but you can’t punch a laser. Hell, you can’t punch the water coming out of garden hose with any degree of success, so what is the point of sucker punching an energy beam?

Now I slept through most of my Physics class in High school, but I’m pretty sure that I never had a test that asked me to “Prove the Energy to Jell-O Ratio”. But a bunch of animators and Superman can’t be wrong, right? Remember, lasers and energy weapons can be punched.

Ignoring this slight technical oversight, Superman continues to make headway towards “The Mad Scientist” who we get to see at least 7 or 8 times flipping switches and looking peeved. As the scientist turns up the power to his Electrothenasia Ray it begins shooting rocks, which totally makes sense. We are also treated to yet another few shots of wildly pulsating nothings and some dials that, for all we know, show that the scientist’s wash is now in the spin cycle.

Superman eventually reaches the Ray-gun and ties it in a knot. The gun goes crazy and steam starts shooting out of it. It seems that “The Mad Scientist” was using a water powered laser gun. He may be evil but he’s planet friendly.

Then, as Superman bursts through the wall, The Mad Scientist in true bad guy fashion, yells out “Superman!”. Like we at home got confused. We thought that it was going to be Al Roaker. “There’s a 20% chance I’m gonna kick your ass.”

Then the building blows up and Superman saves everyone even the Gothic Mad Scientist who gets put in jail. The jail scene slowly fades to a newspaper that reads “SUPERMAN’S IDENTITY STILL A MYSTERY” on the front page. When was the last time you saw a front page article confirming something we already new was true? You’d seriously consider changing publications if you picked up the paper tomorrow and the cover story was “News Flash! Wood Still Comes From Trees! Details inside!”

In the end though, Superman wins, nobody gets the woman, and another villain with a retarded plan goes to jail. Remember, Superman always wins. Even against a giant steam-powered Jell-O gun.

Superman

In… Superman! Part I

At the end of this section you’ll know:

1. What is the best disguise you can wear?

2. All journalists have a part-time job. What is it?

From what I gather from the back of the DVD case, this episode of Superman is the first of the animated Superman Series to be broadcast in the early 40s. Like most bands first albums, this episode is self titled and the music sucks.

The show opens with a shot of Superman’s home planet, represented by a balloon, and a brief narration provided by the same guy who does the Superfriends. He explains that Superman’s dad realized that Krypton was about to explode so he built a rocket to take Superman to Earth. Superman’s dad was apparently a Geologist and a Rocket Scientist who had the intelligence and time to master both Tectonics and Interplanetary Travel, but sadly lacked the ability to call the Kryptonian Local News.

Superman’s rocket landed on Earth and Superman was taken in by an orphanage that the animator couldn’t be bothered to color. This orphanage, that didn’t seem too interested in asking questions about why infants were falling from the sky also gave Superman his great disguising skills. Superman changes his look from guy in blue with red underwear to guy in suit with glasses and hat. That outfit couldn’t fool my grandma.

I’ve had practical experience with the Superman School of Disguise. I remember once when I was streaking and the police were chasing me. I stopped and put on a pair of glasses and a hat, and they still knew it was me. Remember, a new hat and glasses makes you completely unidentifiable to even your closest friends.

The story itself opens to Thing calling Lois and Clark Kent into Mr. White’s Office. Using my super powerful deductive reasoning skills I determined that Mr. White was the Managing Editor. No, I used super sleuth skills, I did not just read it off his door.

Inside Mr. White’s Office Lois and Clark are read a letter written by a mad scientist, who is appropriately called “The Mad Scientist”. Ten yard penalty for no originality. It reads “My Electrothanasia-Ray strikes tonight at 12. Total destruction will come to those who laughed at me and failed to heed my warnings. Beware I strike at midnight!” Those of you who have written a few threatening letters (probably to me) will quickly identify the poor construction of this ransom note.

First of all, every bad guy from terrorists to General Zod to the bully on the playground knows that you always end your threat with “Unless you give me ____.” You ALWAYS demand something, be it money, a helicopter, or French toast. Especially if you want French Toast. They have to buy it and cook it, and that takes a long time.

Also, we’re left with several questions. Like: What the hell is an Electrothanasia-Ray? or What does it do? or Does it come in red? All important information that we the viewers need in order to accurately assess the Mad Scientists situation in comparison to that of our protagonist are unfortunately non-existent.

After reading the letter Lois accepts the assignment, runs off, jumps in a plane and flies to the “Mad Scientist’s” house. There’s a real important scene here where she puts on a flight helmet. From what I understand, it was supposed to shore up some sort of continuity error. Apparently the test audience didn’t believe that she actually put on her helmet. They also didn’t believe that as a journalist she had the credentials to fly a plane, but of course they do. Remember, all reporters are also part-time flight instructors.

Lois makes a few passes around the Mad Scientists lab, for good measure, and lands in front of it. But when she goes in to interview the scientist she’s captured. [Insert Fake Surprise Here]. This happens every flippin’ episode: Lois puts herself in avoidable danger, where she gets tied up at some point. This makes me think that Lois is some sort of bondage freak.

This does raise yet another interesting question: If everyone knows where the scientist’s lab is why don’t they dispatch a SWAT team or bomb the place? Heck, I’d just send two drunk guys and a bulldozer. Tell them to just take out the first floor, leave the others where they are. They’ll destroy the building (the scientist will have no weapon) the drunk guys will die (so you don’t have to pay them) and the bulldozer will be destroyed (a tax write-off). It’s foolproof. I really should be a consultant.

Create Your Own Japanese RPG
Episode 2 : With No Further Obligation on Your Part

In the previous article I introduced you to the main elements of a battle system (Sparkles and Numbers) and helped you name your game. But unfortunately there’s more to an RPG than that. You have to have, among other things, some characters, a world and a story.. People to do stuff, a place to do that stuff in, and a reason that they’re doing that stuff. It’s an exact science.

White Guys with Swords

Creating characters for an RPG is easy if you just follow the patterns. There are certain “classes” that you have to fill, and then once you fill that class you’ll assign one of the few personalities as well as a name. Really, its that easy. I couldn’t make this hard if I tried.

Types of Characters:

Guy with the Sword – We’ll refer to him as GWS. He is absolutely required. His weapon must be a sword so large that there is no way, due to the laws of gravity and leverage, he could spin it in his hand or swing it any better than your average human could swing a motorcycle. But hey, we’re making a game here, not writing a physics book.

Hot Girl – We’ll refer to her as HG. This is another character class that is absolutely required. Her means of attack will either be unbelievably cool (like puling a dragon out of the sky), or dumb as hell (she throws a really sharp plate at them). There can be no middle ground. She’ll start out as mad or uninterested in the GWS but 20-60 hours later will be madly in love with him for no discernable reason.

Big Dumb Guy – Or the BDG. This is the kind of guy who could probably tear a phonebook in half but thinks that Latte means “a bunch”. This character must either wield a gun or be some sort of kick-boxing champion. He can be black, white, or bright green as long as the fundamentals stay the same: Must be strong as hell and have the IQ of a bag of gravel.

Comic Relief – The CR is an incredibly annoying character designed to make the player want to drag its ass out of the TV and beat it to death with a steel baseball bat. The weapon of choice for most CRs is some object that could never hurt someone no matter how much you hit them with it (such as a Megaphone or an empty DVD case). The characters in the game must be completely oblivious to how incredibly aggravating said character is.

There Are Some Who Call Me… Tim?

Acceptable names for main characters have to be either some every day word (Squall, Link, Cloud), or a string of letters that follow the Consonant-Vowel-Consonant-Vowel formula (Tidus, Evan, Zidane). As for the secondary characters it’s really anything that you can work out. One way is to take a game of scrabble and throw it on a homeless person. The hobo will then pick up a hand full of the letters and toss them back at you. Use these letters in any order you feel like to create your secondary characters.

But for some people, getting a hold of an angry homeless person isn’t possible, sometimes you’ll get a mildly annoyed hobo who will just swear at you and sit back down. Scrabble is expensive, so another tried-and-true formula is to take a common word and replace a few letters in it.
Examples:
Bell -B +Z = Zell
Muumuu -U +O = Momo

Note: Always make sure that you have at least one character with a Latin/Spanish name like Vincent, Cid or Rosa.

Personalities:

You can assign these in any order that you want, as long as at least 4 of them are present

A) Young and Idealistic
B) Quiet and Rough
C) Dead
D) Undead
E) Egocentric
F) A kid
G) A Robot
H) F***ing Annoying (Required for the CR)

Note: Usually A leads to C, but more on that later.

For my example RPG, here are my picks:

GWS: “Steel” – Fights with a ten foot blue sword. – Quiet and Rough.
HG: “Yantie” (from “Panties”) – Human that fights with differing sizes of lampshades. – Young and Idealistic
BDG: “Mokon” (from “Moron”) – A Human that fights with a rifle. – Egocentric
CR: “Stotip” (from “Shut up”) – Half-cat Half-Turnip that survives on marsh mellows and uses a snow cone as a weapon – F***ing Annoying

Secondary Character (Created with the Scrabble Hobo method): Xipoz

I skipped the other alternates due to space, but I think you can see how the system works. Now that you’ve completed this you should have your merry band of adventurers ready to venture out into the world and knock the sparkles out of things.

The Things That Need to Happen

Congratulations! You’ve made your characters and given them names and personalities. Now what are they going to do? If you just have your characters run around and fight people for no particular reason other than to level, that’s called Pokemon. In order to avoid that we’ll need a world and a story, and a decided lack of badges.

The most important thing in the game world are save points. You forget these and you might as well throw yourself out of a window (For the BDGs out there, make sure you get one 5 stories up or better).

Also, place them in areas that don’t make any damn sense. Why any self respecting bad guy would allow someone to put a save point on the front porch of their evil fortress is beyond me. That’s practically begging for trouble. The salesperson for “Save Point Distributions Inc” must be a millionaire. Not only is he getting them in every bad guy’s fortress, he’s sold one to every inn keeper and priest on the planet. Good job buddy, but now its time to take your sales trophy and go home.

“Save Point Distributions Inc” has a proven method to creating save points for games. First pick any random object that has nothing to do with saving, make it float and add a lighting element to it, like a glowing ball or a shiny question mark.

I picked a blinking Eat at Joe’s sign. It was on sale.

What They Say and Where They Say It

Next you’ll actually need to develop an atmosphere for your world. If you’re running short on time then the easiest way to do this is to take two time periods at least a century apart and mash them together. You could take the 1920′s and combine it with the year 2200, creating a society that has floating cities but still uses coal powered trains. Also, to complete the image of “another world” make your characters wear overly-complicated clothing like hoods with no shirts or shorts with an excessive number of straps. If you’re feeling particularly evil remember that someone somewhere is going to Cosplay your characters at some point, so feel free to have all of your characters walk around naked with their underwear on their heads sporting a purple jockstrap that reads “I’m with Stupid.”

The last thing that you need to do is to write your story and dialogue. The story must have a world-shattering human-obliterating force taking the guise of some long forgotten evil that resurrects itself just about the time that our hero ventures out into the world. The evil force will be presented in a way that allows insight into the human spirit, the nature of love, or some other mushy crap that will lead players to wish that you had taken less time reading philosophy and more time learning how to write coherent sentences.

Dialogue is the easy part. As long as you have a subject, a verb and punctuation its up to the player to decide what the hell you’re talking about. Then, have the game translated from English to Japanese and then back to English by a dope fiend who SWEARS he knows Japanese. In fact if you’re on a budget just let him write the story for a few hundred bucks. The more convoluted the story the more of a chance that you’re going to get reviewers to say things like “Deep” and “intricate” in their articles. This is because they don’t have the balls to admit they don’t understand what’s going on either.

There! You’re almost done! Now that we have the game all together all we have to do is package it and sell it.

-cjdaweasel

For those of you wondering Xipoz is worth 23 points.

Create Your Own Japanese RPG
Episode One : With Little or No Money Down

So you want to make a Japanese RPG but you aren’t Japanese. You rented an office. You gathered the semi-competent developers, and a marketing department. You hired the soda guy and the janitor. Now what? How do you make a game that people will buy? Will making the characters have big eyes and eat sushi cut it? How do you know? I know, and I am going to guide you through the process of creating a Japanese RPG that will look, feel and act authentic even if you’re not quite sure where Japan is. Also, since I’m such a nice guy I’ll be creating a game along with you to show you what you might come up with if you were as cool as me.

Oh, and Japan is in the Pacific Ocean, but that’s just details.

The Name of the Game

Some people whine that what makes or breaks an RPG is the story, or the battle system, or the characters. Pansies all of ‘em. What makes or breaks an RPG in English speaking countries is the title. Case in point: Dragon Quest vs. Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy sounds cool. Final, meaning the end, and then Fantasy adding an alliteration quality that makes the whole name come off as sounding like the game isn’t going to take any sh*t. The name Dragon Quest on the other hand simply screams “give me a wedgie please”. The most important thing that you can do for your game is to create a name that is going to stick to the public like a week old shirt to a roofer in July.

If you aren’t continuing in a series that is already established, make sure that the title of your game does not make any sense, and if possible, do not use any real words.

Examples: “Shining the Holy Ark”, “Biomotor Unitron”, “Grandia”*

Here’s a few examples of titles that wouldn’t work, and why:

Title: “Boobies”
Why: Many purchasers may be upset that they have to DO things in order to see the boobies.

Title: “Guy with a Sword hits things for forty hours”
Why: It gives away too much of the plot.

Titles: “Syphilis”
Why: Never name a game after an STD. It’s just bad form.

*Note: If you feel your title absolutely must relate to the story of your game feel free to later go back and add a colon. Then describe your game in 5 words or less, preferably in a different language than English.

For my RPG I chose:
TurfQuester Sigmo : Last of the Ultitrons

Hitting Stuff

The next thing that you’ll want to create is your battle system. The easiest way to do this is just to have the good guys line up on one side and the bad guys line up on the other. Then let them take turns beating on each other until one side isn’t standing anymore. Not very interesting, granted, but it’s tried and true.

But no matter what type of battle system that you use, you must include lots of two things: Sparkles and Numbers. This cannot be stressed enough.

Sparkles must appear every time that you hit something, and increase with each attack in a series. The more powerful the attack, the more sparkles. The player must feel as if they are literally beating the sparkles out of things.

Numbers are the building blocks on which you’ll pretend to have the “system” in “battle system” worked out. Most players will ignore 70-80% of the numbers that come up on the screen, so don’t stress their accuracy. Nobody can do math that fast. Just have a lot of them appear when ever anything happens in a battle.

Historical Note: The number system actually replaces an old system where the screen would turn different colors to communicate the status of your characters. Green for “Good”, Red for “Bad”, and Black for “Turn on your TV, stupid”.

Lastly for your battle system, you’ll have to create buzz factor. The easiest way to do this to take one thing that your system does differently (even slightly), and make it sound like you’re going to put it on your resume. To accomplish this, simply use a bunch of physics or math terms followed by “Battle System”. This words can include, but are not limited to: Active, Matrix, Real, Time, Base, etc. Not only will this make it seem like you had a purpose when you created the battle system, but it will give the poor lonely souls marketing something to write in their press releases.

For my RPG I chose:
Active-Matrix Battle System

In the next installment we’ll learn how to create comedic relief with snowcones and find out what question marks have to do with saving. If you feel the need, you can stop right now with just the battle system and title and release the game with no stories or characters. This product can be marketed as either a puzzle game in Japan, or in the US as “Every single game released for Atari Jaguar”.