Wire Witch Violet

I love that you have this sort of relationship with your mother. I'm jealous even.

It's $2 if you feel like paying me $2, or if you want to just wholesale cram it into something you publish (and you don't suck). Otherwise it's free.

The other day someone showed such an incoherently written random encounter table for a premade adventure that out of pure spite and irritation I:
- Wrote up a whole system for random encounter tables that uses playing cards.
- Wrote a 1-shot RPG to go with it.
violet-hargrave.itch.io/rescuing-the...

really has value if you think someone's going to need to pull in a judge in some kind of competitive scene, and even then I'm honestly a little skeptical.

As an aside, with both this and my other little quickie RPG up on itch, I'm doing this thing where I write all the rules in a super informal conversational tone.

I feel like this does a much better job of conveying the tone and energy for this sort of thing. Writing rules like it's a math test only

It's $2 if you feel like paying me $2, or if you want to just wholesale cram it into something you publish (and you don't suck). Otherwise it's free.

The other day someone showed such an incoherently written random encounter table for a premade adventure that out of pure spite and irritation I:
- Wrote up a whole system for random encounter tables that uses playing cards.
- Wrote a 1-shot RPG to go with it.
violet-hargrave.itch.io/rescuing-the...

I miss my best friend so much.

This is unconscionable Koudelka erasure.

Still just shocks me that in all these years nobody has done one. Going all in with the character interaction would be a pain, but recreating the combat system today seems like it'd be a fairly trivial thing. RTS games push those numbers just fine, and that's in full 3D.

... I feel like I definitely missed a very atypical episode of Count Duckula at some point.

YouTube video by Wire Witch Violet Shining Force 3

And Shining Force 3 which was also randomly missing earlier. www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HHw...

YouTube video by Wire Witch Violet Magic Knight Rayearth

OK here's the youtube version of Magic Knight Rayearth, after being chewed on by copyright claims I don't have the energy to argue with: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBSt...

I have to legitimately ask at this point. Is it ACTUALLY a case of language changing over time? Or is it like how people snicker at the gay/bondage implications of classic Wonder Woman, where people don't realize that no, no, that's just the sort of thing it was actually overtly about the whole time

Hands down my all-time favorite show period. I'm still bitter as hell about the circumstances of how it was cancelled and holding out hope for some kind of a revival to happen.

But get it right, those are proper capital-M muppets on that show.

YouTube video by Wire Witch Violet Dragon Force

You're a little late to vote, but I did end up showcasing Gongos' early game www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeFj...

Personally my favorite is Junon. Slow start but it's the only way to keep her cool helmet on long-term. Or Goldark if I can be bothered to keep this space-hogging save alive for long enough.

So yeah, the Saturn. Great system, way too overlooked in retrospect. I'm still here for nearly every game I have for it, and one of these days I still need to hunt down that 10-player Bomberman, Baroque, Deep Fear, Enemy Zero, Legend of Oasis, Sakura Wars 2, and yeah I'll say it. Virtual Hydelide.

some people actually got together to do a really solid fan translation of this because wow, the original has a whole ramble in the back of the manual about what an absolutely ridiculous amount of text needed to be processed for all these custom dialog interactions everyone has going on between them.

Mind you, I'm still totally on board here. It's a bit like Mega Man 2 and 3. You can argue all you want about which one's better, or you can just enjoy how you've got two really good games with 8 bosses to start with that look and play a bit differently from each other.

And I am just floored that

out a bunch of main storyline stuff on a now now fully under your control map towards the end (admittedly, a flaw of the original) by making a big demon/dark elf army a constant presence you need to deal with on the side of the nation by naton conquest stuff, but they're really generic and bland.

it's... just kinda drab. Characters are less interesting, sprites are less charming. The map is more of a coiled up strand than a big open field. It tries to fix the weird balance the original has where the first half of the game is a big free-for-all and then the pace grinds to a halt as you play

and most significantly, in addition to doubling the number of troop types, you can now command a mix of two at once, doing things like sending out skirmishers backed by archers, or doubling your troop density by having half of them fly over the battlefield. So it SHOULD be a massive improvement, but

addresses some of the exploits I showed off from the first game, made generals a bit tankier overall so duels happen more consistently and they have twice as many spell-casting options, and then it also adds elemental affinities to the generals so when they do go one on one it's less of a coin toss,

YouTube video by Wire Witch Violet Dragon Force 2

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrG7...
Dragon Force 2- While Dragon Force never became the big sprawling franchise with tons of imitators it deserved to in my heart, it did get one Japan-only sequel and it's... kind of a lateral move, honestly. Mechanically, it streamlines some of the more tedious bits, it

Just grab all of your action figures, we are going to smash them all together and make up a really stupid plot to justify it. While you play honestly kind of a dull and tedious TRPG with like no terrain or interesting gimmicks. But we've got the theme songs and the big attack shout-outs, usually!

The idea is we have these bog standard generic TRPGs, where your units and enemies are comprised of the mecha from whatever anime series the developers were able to secure the license for that year. Or whoever else. Devilman, Vtubers, freakin' Minky Momo, Godzilla, Kamen Rider, Crayon Shin-chan...

YouTube video by Wire Witch Violet Super Robot Wars F

www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-my...
Super Robot Wars F- Bandai has been cranking these out forever. Not counting spin-offs or sister games, going by wikipedia there are currently 49 of these, the first being for the Game Boy in 1991, and honestly they haven't really innovated on the gameplay since then.

old for me (even if, I admit, it takes a lot less time to master all the strategic potential than it takes to finish even one character's storyline).

There's a lot of heavy hitters on the Saturn, but if you're just going to play one game on it? This would be my top recommendation.

Meanwhile the generals gain access to 3 spells each as they level, most of which just carve swaths through the battlefield in various patterns.

Personally even this many years later, just watching 200 cute little sprites all trying to smack each other in the face with scaling effects has yet to get

the troops broad collective orders (spread out, close in, move forward, pull back, break ranks and just hit the nearest available targets, plus some more advanced special formations where you can sneak people around the edge of things to go for the general, or maintain a living wall or whatnot).