Delicious FruitElCochran90's Profile
Send a PMJoined on: Aug 25, 2018
Bio:
About time I updated this bio.
Name: Edgar Cochran
Country: Mexico
Currently living in: Mexico City
-God's servant and one of his blessed sons (John 1:12; John 3:16).
-Lover of the entire animal and plant creation.
-Film lover and reviewer for Letterboxd.com (https://letterboxd.com/elcochran90).
-Adjunct professor and personal tutor of Statistical Inference, Business Forecasting, Marketing Research and Portfolio Theory.
Fangaming experience began in August 2018, so only modest achievements here. However, I'll describe some relevant FAQs here made to me during my stay here since 2018:
Q: Are videogames art?
A: Yes
Q: Are fangames videogames?
A: Yes
Q: Why are your reviews long and unconventional?
A: I am a film reviewer; in a way, I sort of unconsciously dragged my style of film reviewing to the world of fangames. I often involve personal experiences in my writing. Expect that structure; I'm not planning to change it.
Q: How are you rating games? Do you compare fangames as normal games that your ratings are lower than all other people ratings or are you just a critical person?
A: My ratings are not lower than people's ratings all of the time regarding fangames, but they are most of the time. However, this is not my intention. I am rating them as normal games, as in, I don't have a different spectrum for rating "normal", "official" games than fangames. They are in the same scale, because they are all videogames. I don't like to think myself as a critical person; ratings are just subjective numbers. However, I have realized that I rate games more harshly than I rate films/short films, which I do more often.
Q: What are your favorite fangames?
A: I have not played enough fangames to make a comprehensive and representative list, but this can be answered by going to my Favorites list. Anything getting 6.7 or higher will be considered immediately as a favorite.
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ElCochran90
For: I Wanna Kill The Kamilia 2
For: I Wanna Kill The Kamilia 2
**Dedicated to Denferok, CosmicSense, CakeSauc3, BBF and Thenadertwo.**
I know revolution when I see it.
I Wanna Kill the Kamilia 2 is the fangame equivalent of the relationship that exists between Evil Dead and Evil Dead II, which is Sam Raimi’s masterpiece: the latter functions simultaneously as a sequel and as a retelling of the events of the first feature. It reinvents the characters and stylizes the universe of the previous film to unleash the definitive edition of what Raimi, by 1987, decided what should be the auteuristic voice of the Evil Dead Trilogy. Army of Darkness didn’t change a thing of Evil Dead II, meaning that the director had already established his personal celluloid trademark and put a signature on it as his most representative.
Back when I played the Best Guy series and Timemachine 1, I noticed a drastically different meme culture and sense of humor than the one adopted by America and Europe, and explaining the geography behind this is beyond obvious and unnecessary. However, there was an implementation of gimmicks and humor in South Korea that differed greatly from the most ambitious trap/adventure games of the early 2010s, such as the fantastic Rukimin, the rustic creations by Carnival or the highly appealing Galaxy: South Korea is more explosive (literally, like, Michael Bay would be proud), shaky screens, cognitive dissonance, flashy screens, an abundance of gay jokes, and a pervasive freneticism. Best Guy 1 is a disastrous game, but analyze the bosses and, except for the first old man, which is beyond boring and frustrating, the rest are emblematic and an absolute blast. The final boss, Gustav, is one of the most badass and replayable final bosses I have seen, stupid meme instances throughout and whatnot. Just like with I Wanna Kill the Kamilia 1, the game was not made by the user referenced; marhite initiated the idea, and the Best Guy series was continued by Gustav himself. Part II, which is my personal favorite even if not the most visually ambitious, has tremendous replay value despite the self-awareness that Gustav displays throughout regarding that his platforming is woeful.
Now consider Influka. Timemachine 1 was a prototype for creating different visuals and time eras in an insanely good and fun adventure that offers many difficulty possibilities and, while recreating Boshy, pays tribute to both Boshy and IWBTG while remaining aesthetically authentic and self-sustaining. This is where The Game Terminators come in: a full-throttle, balls-to-the-wall display of Korean meme galore at a frenetically high speed with screams, gun blasts, female obesity, Ao Oni (as in Best Guy), first-person shooters, maniacal laughter, and some indie references (The Binding of Isaac, et al). The last boss of the game is one of my favorite fangame bosses of all times (along with Nue Houjuu in Breaking Out and Solgryn in Boshy), and the vocaloid choice is one of the best available. Influka self-represents as a Phoenix Wright version of Megurine Luka and is animated! A png sprite moving?? Insane. She had the capacity, just like Solgryn, of summoning the attacks of the previous enemies by physically calling them. Timemachine 2 implemented a much more mature of platforming, adventure and cohesion, and a beautiful thing came out of it, albeit with a questionable difficulty peak with the final boss.
Combine both talents and something of the quality of Justice Guy comes out: a hardcore, multi-faceted and varied adventure that combines the best of both worlds.
These arguments are being made not only to defend my opinion that Influka was one of the best fangame makers that actually had a learning curve, but that Influka works amazingly with other creators and testers. K2 is the proof of this.
Now construct a medley with these talents and passion. K2 is a timeline event for all communities, for the fangame world and, yes, for the entire world of videogames. Twitch was already a thing, Carnival was pretty much famous not only in Japan and Korea for legendary challenges such as Crimson and Destination, people had passed their test of manhood beating Boshy at least in Hard-On Mode, and communities were more united. We would now start talking about A community, not many. Eastern and Western players and makers interacted in a more significant basis and exchanged best practices more often.
This remake starts where K1 stopped (just like Evil Dead II) and reinvents the whole concept with a sequel fashion. The soundtrack has a gigantic passion for referencing original videogames, especially the Sonic and Kirby series, something that I thank because both characters’ game series get too overshadowed by even greater franchises; however, there is a special appreciation towards Kirby in the fangame culture. The title screen purposefully opens with Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 for the PS3 to seal it as an Asian fangame, emphasizing the perhaps-not-a-happy-accident of K1 concerning Kamilia’s eyes being Pink and Purple each, and we kick off with the meme of Chokochoko at the speed and rhythm of Sonic Colors. From there, exceptional pieces from Sonic Generations, Steins;Gate, EZ2DJ, Kirby (Kirby 64 and Kirby’s Return to Dreamland) and others hit your speakers and headphones hard with authentic awesomeness. Most importantly, the Dodonpachi series begins to have a protagonistic presence in the series, being Dai-Ou-Jou the case here. I do have complaints for Stage 5 putting a stressful song for the entirety of the stage, but it works greatly for doruppi’s amusing 5-star difficulty screen of Seven Trials, which was scoreless to begin with. SaiDaiOuJou and Maximum would become the spinal cord of K3’s soundtrack.
The mechanic of the soundtrack works stupendously because it has the same mentality of the playthrough logic. Each stage has a song that highly correlates with the difficulty of the stage. The majority of the bosses, with two exceptions (the first melee boss and The Guy, and the first one not really counting precisely because of being a melee boss) feature the song that played in the original fangame that they starred in. The Guy, for correlation, cohesion and entertainment purposes, places the Egg Emperor theme from Sonic Generations and works stupendously, especially since the fight is more concerned with remaking Phase 1 of The Guy (Phase 2... that will come in proper time, not in this game, also with a Sonic remix). However, once you step into Stage 6, you will find out that each new screen has a different song; they are all bangers and have a different tone according to the fangame portrayed. You know you’re in a special stage, probably the last one, where each screen is preparing you for the final challenge, as you witness giants like Catastrophe, Popularity’s Extra Stage, Crimson, Destination and LoveTrap suggesting wicked things to come, especially if you understood the logic of the last screen of each stage being a foreshadowing of the boss you would encounter at the end of it.
The difficulty curve is the closest to flawless I have ever seen in a fangame. I have no complaints with Geezer as a boss from a concept standpoint; the problem relies in the lack of a checkpoint like Kamilia 1 implemented, because there was an awareness that, up to that point, the whole first phase was redundancy if replayed. It is easy; it’s an introductory phase. Place a save after the Keese appear, just before the extra avoidance of Device, and you have a different experience. Actually, if I could swap the lack of an intermediate save, it would be Geezer for Boshy, just for the sake of emulating the original final fight of Boshy in Stage 5: 3 phases, no continues Revive one of the first big achievements you ever had in your fangame trajectory. Scratch the Geezer mistake, and you have the perfect difficulty curve.
A pivotal point of discussion for a medley are the game choices and, simultaneously, the screen choices per game. This game emulates much better the exercise that K1 did: not only the game gets progressively more difficult at perceivable levels without any drastic peaks, except for Geezer and the final boss, but the games in question also had that difficulty in question. Stage 1 games are beginner-friendly games, with the arguable exception of I Wanna Be the Fangame! (and it is arguable because it is one of the founding classics), and Stage 6 games are fangames for veterans or experts. Although it does have a bias towards Asian fangames as well (main protagonists with more than one of their fangames featured are Carnival, Mizudori, Doruppi, P, Surumeika, Teto Rin, to mention some), but it also gives proper credit to Kayin, Thenewgeezer, tijit and Solgryn for the influence they imprinted permanently on fangame players with a single fangame by 2012. Beyond the first melee boss, all bosses are iconic and have been immortalized by now: The Guy, Influka, Geezer, Solgryn, The Four Crimson Gods, Destination and Big Kid. Others, such as Nue Houjuu and Gravity Man, were chosen for their uniqueness, and I must admit they are good bosses, with an emphasis on Nue who is an absolutely freaking fantastic miracle of a boss in the original Breaking Out.
What is more relevant is the eternal discussion among medley players and critics: “they could have chosen a much better screen and instead they chose one of the worst ones”. At many cases, this rings true, such as Locus, Unknown, Terminal, Rukimin, Fangame!, Competitor, Timemachine and others. The exact opposite applies to ones like The Guy, Boshy (when shit gets real, it gets real), Best Guy (it’s the least terrible!), Crimson, Destination, Graduate from CT, Yellow Star, Experience, Skyclad, Rainbow Miku, Symmetry, Breaking Out, etc. Then you have the middle spectrum, like pretty much the rest, and for GB, there was literally no other choice as that screen was already a meme and it took 9 years for the Western community to respond to it with an immense collab. The true question, in my opinion, is whether choosing the most innovative or “best” screens, “best” being subjective in the eyes of the beholder, would bring the same pacing and playthrough consistency for a medley, or they just function better in the context of the original fangames. I think the point of a medley is dual: to celebrate the uniqueness of the fangames portrayed, and make it in a way that makes sense in the overall genre of the medley (needle, avoidance, adventure, etc.). K2 is an adventure medley. So, Tribute might me annoying as hell, and Yassan might scare curious beginner players that don’t even know who The Kid is, but the overall choices constitute a consistent and fantastic experience.
The game changer for the Kamilia series was a concept that many fangames did before. Take Device as a random example: you have the main game, secrets scattered all around, extra (which is unlocked by gathering said secrets), a buffed boss rush and a true final boss/avoidance. Influka applies the same concept by Stage 6, but borrows legendary bosses; the implementation is fascinating and mad good, which I speculate was based on Popularity’s extra stage, and ergo ended up taking the form and feel of Rockman 5:
-Instead of having Big Kid as a Stage 6 boss immediately due to LoveTrap being the 10th screen of the stage, you face four bosses of games that were also featured in that stage
-The bosses are gigantically nerfed for correct continuity and progress purposes: Destination has much less HP and only phase per color, at the expense of the attacks being faster; Crimson has less HP at the insignificant expense of figuring out when Blue triggers the water blocks; Nue Houjuu has much less attacks at the expense of having the original orbs pattern changed and you only having 1HP (bothersome, unfortunately); and Gravity Man has only the first of Popularity’s original true final boss and you have bigger bullets, at the expense of both of you moving much faster and Gravity Man shooting quicker after each gravity shifting. The game made the incredibly wise decision of nerfing all bosses and still making them enjoyable in the sense of reviving those epic fights you faced before, with the plus of having a much faster progression granted that you’re not fighting the original bosses at all. If that was the case of the game, we would have quite a questionable roadblock for everyone.
-You can choose the order of the bosses and autosave is implemented immediately after you beat a boss in case of any accident you or an external source or event might cause
-As in the Mega Man series, you unlock the true boss of the stage after beating all Kamilia’s minions. LoveTrap here is the funny response to Brute of a Man in K1; however, you do fight the boss in here. There is a catch: the game is reasonable enough to acknowledge that beating Big Kid was a feat that could probably take months, resulting in probably the most nerfed non-troll boss of all times. The pattern of killer and water bullets is set instead of being random, which allows you to fully plan your strategies ahead.
What mines the entertainment of players during the Boss Rush is the sense of progression compared to the previous, more known bosses and the smooth increasing difficulty of the platforming. Also, if it’s the first time you face these bosses, that’s entirely up to you, but for me, it was an incredibly enjoyable time while I reminisced about the many instances of my life where I beat the true, original versions of these tough bastards.
The Big Kid scene also became a moment in the annals of fangame history. Redone to death many times in both serious and parody forms, the chase challenge is a big consistency save against the clock. There are two problems with this section that make it shy away from perfection: the scrolling screen depends on the Big Kid, not your movement, and there are traps scattered around that do not belong in a chase / consistency save. Nevertheless, after what seems to be a nod to the ending of World 1-1 in Super Mario Bros. for the NES (getting through two choke needle sections instead of grabbing a victory flag), one of your fangame ancient dreams comes true: you do not only beat Big Kid: you watch him explode like everytime you die. Boy, does this game reward you for effort.
Enter M-Stage, the original stage of the game (although the chase is also technically original) at the beat of Tekken 6. It is time to pass the ultimate skill/gimmick/trap test of the game where wonders like two double sphincters in a row, upward planes, jump refreshers with gravity shifting, speed change gimmicks, corners of many kinds and 9-jumps await you before your final definitive trial. There is no way you don’t get pumped up with the aid of Tekken 6, and the extremely efficient and sensical saves placement makes the ride consistently enjoyable.
Before and during your encounter with Kamilia, there are many Easter Eggs that should be noted, including one that, much to my shock, no one in IWC had noticed:
-The hall with the big save on it displays a plethora of the tilesets belonging to the fangames featured in the medley
-When you shoot the save that transports you to her otherworldly realm, four words appear in a circle around you: EMMANUEL (“God is with us”), TETRAGRAMMATON (“consisting of four letters”, which is associated with the Hebrew word יהוה, which is YHWH “I am who I am” [Exodus 3:14]), JEHOVA (the most famous vocalization of the TETRAGRAMMATON), and an unclear one, which seems to read JEIAH, a word that, as a Christian, I don’t know. My hypothesis is that it was misspelled and the true word is JEDEDIAH, a name derived from Yedidyah (“beloved of Jah”).
-Before Kamilia appears, five orbs attack you, each one symbolizing a stage, and therefore, an enemy, or the concept of an enemy itself. The red one represents Geezer, the purple one represents Influka’s orbs, Green represents Solgryn’s orbs, and there’s a debate concerning the meaning of the yellow and blue ones. Yellow one could represent either The Guy’s bullets or the stars from Conquer The Blow Game’s Crazy Spike, and the blue one could represent the melee boss or the boss rush (so, in either case, it represents a collection of bosses). These orbs reunite and the former sprite of Kamilia, previously a female Kid-like sprite, assumes a new form, the form that was foreshadowed all along.
What does this all mean? Does this mean that we’re facing God? That’s unlikely, since Kamilia seems to be a fallen angel considering her final form, which makes her a demon. Does this mean that we’re bestowed with the power of God before facing Kamilia just like Kamilia receives the power of all previous big bosses/demons of fangames? I’m absolutely loving that review and I am sticking to it forever.
As the orbs suggested, an avoidance phase consisting of five phases ensues, with each attack representing the bosses per stage.
-Boss 1 and Boss 2 attacks are combined into one and have a single tough moment: the Gustav attack, to which you must react fast. The gray delicious fruit insta kills you as a position-based attack, Sticky Keys appears trying to crush you and, while avoiding a pattern of Crazy Spike stars and Flandre’s curving orbs, Guy bullets aim straight at you and the Gustav attack culminates what is the toughest attack to react.
-Boss 3 attack is easily one of the most epic moments I have played in fangames: Influka’s orbs swarm the middle portion of the screen while God’s attacks from Heaventrap 2 appear at two random spots of the ceiling shooting at random directions, Influka’s “tomb” attacks you wherever you are while the original Influka attack from K2 creates a portal that throws little pink orbs at you (the one that made gravity heavier in Stage 3 Boss). The sound effects for the portal, I must highlight, are eargasmic. For a final showdown, Pochi’s barrage attack from Rukimin floods the screen while making a combination of Venus’ attack of See the Moon. This attack is the apotheosis of awesomeness and the feeling of power you have after clearing something so menacing and yet so beautifully looking is indescribable. This attack is also a stunningly representative example of the importance of (and difference between) sound sound editing.
-Boss 4 attack sucks and it is the hardest by far. It combines Beelzebub’s attack from Heaventrap 1 as a pattern, creating blind spots that can be infested and crowded with the garbage that the two giant Explorer heads throw at you. Add some Geezer lava for the lol’s and a couple of Keese to compromise your jumps after the Explorer heads attack you simultaneously for the second time. It is luck-based trash that provides you many times with squished roofs/walls where you can do nothing about them.
-Boss 5 attack is considered as one of the hardest, and the second hardest for me. It follows the logic of Solgryn’s second phase were position-based green orbs hunt you down. The yom yom yom creature attacks you at 3 specific points in time while you’re attacked rhythmically by Missingno.’s Hydro Pump that pushes you up to the ceiling, precisely to where the Solgryn orbs are. Good luck making a consistent strategy, as the green orbs are random! After that, a consistent position-based strat exists for avoiding the hearts of the final boss of Scapegoat and the orbs at the same time. Very challenging.
-Boss 6 attack is a celebration of the Boss Rush enemies where the true skill of the first half relies in knowing exactly what every color of Destination did. Gravity Man’s attack have always the same blind spot, so stick in the middle, and the UFOs from Nue should pose no problem as they are a very easy pattern. The second half poses a challenge since Nue’s randomly moving red orbs, combined with the position-based attacks of Destination can create very interesting combinations that will demolish you.
There is a checkpoint! Will you believe that?
Enter Phase 2: Big Kid combined with Kamilia’s own attacks, which are very tame, but just like Big Kid, this is an exercise in patience and calculation, since the more damage you inflict on Kamilia, the bigger the amount of delicious fruits that will appear from any border of the screen. This stage, frankly, gets repetitive, redundant and boring very fast, but following the logic of referencing all past bosses and the tradition of Influka and Kamilia having the power to summon the attacks of other enemies, I supposed it “had to” be there. The problem is that there is no third checkpoint after the easy avoidance proceeding the Big Kid phase.
Phase 3 is the stuff of your nightmares: Kamilia shows her true fallen angel form because why not? If you keep questioning the logic of a fangame by this point, bruh, where have you living your whole life? Kamilia has an arsenal of no less than 10 attacks to choose from, half readable, half monstrous, especially one where the orbs do a screen wrap. The punishment for dying is going back to the boringness of Phase 2. Part of what makes the victory so heart-racing is that you have to make a clean clear of Phases 2 and 3 in one go, with Phase 3 being a tough-as-nails challenge. However, the feeling of hearing that heavily copyrighted song of the credits is very overwhelming, more fulfilling than a male autotune singing to you than you can call yourself The Boshy now.
Finally, you end up in a hub with access to all areas and bosses as an invitation to practice, replay any part you want, or even speedrun the game, which, I won’t lie, is a very tempting idea for me.
The penultimate thing I’d like to remark is that K2 is one game that not only takes care of offering a pristine production value, but also has a lot of little details that add value to the game, even if they might go unnoticed consciously by many:
-An original Game Over screen and theme
-The fact that every screen at Stage 6 has an original song
-Related to the previous point, the fact that Go the Dotkid! featured an 8-bit remix of the Factory Investigation Remix of Kirby 64 and that this game, in return, features the same screen with the same theme employing another remix (a very based one)
-The hit sound is epic; it does give you the feeling that instead of doing comedic damage reusing the sound effect from IWBTG, you are really impacting the enemy, making the battles more epic (the rushed sound effect during the Gradius section of Solgryn is tremendous!)
-The fact that there is a memorable “Stage Complete” theme
-The fact that the credits have a terrific, non-vocaloid choice of a song and properly credits all fangames featured and individual artists, gamemakers and testers
-The fact that there is a functional hub, a trademark of Timemachine 1
-The fact that Influka is considered as a boss as important as The Guy, Geezer and Solgryn, because it is
-The fact that it autosaves when it is the sanest thing for the player
-All main bosses are remade in a very original and authentic way without losing their essence: Influka calls all bosses from Stage 3 including Pochi if you go for the full cycle challenge, and Solgryn’s version is the best adaptation ever made, featuring an even better Phase 1 than Boshy and Timemachine 1
-The fact that all bosses in Boss Rush are nerfed to extremely playable levels (I second tried Destination, which is the hardest boss)
-The fact that Stage 6 features fangames that are unquestionably harder than Kamilia 2 itself, proving that this game never intended to be an impossible challenge to begin with, but a tribute to veterans
-The fact that it features the original fangame screens exactly as they were designed, and when there is a change or a buff, the game lets you know with a shaky, in-your-face warning sign (I have seen reviews and comments asking: “It's a screen just like any other screen. What is this Caution sign doing here?”. Bruh... know your fangames!!)
-No Nekoron or other weird engine, thank God!
-No restarting music
The landmark gimmick of inserting random, unrelated avoidance segments in the middle of the fights can be questioned, and it hurts the playability of Geezer due to the lack of an intermediate save, but not for The Guy or Solgryn.
K2 established the year 2012 as a new standard to measure fangame creation and successfully combining great platforming with production value, where the latter never overshadows the former. If the previous installment was a meme game that celebrated a person’s reputation, this magnificent adventure platformer celebrates the collective creativity of a community and what had been accomplished so far while being loyal to the graphics of many fangames that had a different look and feel to the usual standard tilesets and cherries. It reinvents the original concept and becomes a trip down memory lane for the fortunate ones that did play at least 75% of the fangames featured here. For those that didn’t, it became the definitive test of fangame skills that you could willingly experience by yourself and show off to others. This is the point where Kamilia’s Twitch attention started to peak, reaching a maximum around 2014-2015. It tries and succeeds at representatively showcasing what had been the greatest known challenges back then, from the Tower Guy to beating destination, embellished with a modern touch and soundtrack. When The Guy is the second boss and Solgryn is not even the gatekeeper, you know you’re currently playing and living a new definitive challenge.
This is a revolution, a tribute, a celebration and a stunning, action-packed adventure statement in the world of videogames.
And it also represents the Stockholm Syndrome for its admirers according to Kiyoshi.
FINAL STATS FOR MY 1ST BLIND PLAYTHROUGH:
Deaths: 3517
Time: 12:24:08
Games played before: 50/60 (beaten 47)
CLEAR SCREEN
https://discordapp.com/channels/82930961544646656/415571545075744768/945863119350165514
TWITCH HIGHLIGHTS (2nd PLAYTHROUGH, LIVE)
-Influka Full Cycle with Cool Kill: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1432159960
-Geezer: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1432163844
-Solgryn Hitless (No Skip): https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1438758085
-Boss Rush + Almost 1st Try Big Kid: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1432169537
-Final Boss: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1438759272 (fight starts at 4:21)
[10] Likes
I know revolution when I see it.
I Wanna Kill the Kamilia 2 is the fangame equivalent of the relationship that exists between Evil Dead and Evil Dead II, which is Sam Raimi’s masterpiece: the latter functions simultaneously as a sequel and as a retelling of the events of the first feature. It reinvents the characters and stylizes the universe of the previous film to unleash the definitive edition of what Raimi, by 1987, decided what should be the auteuristic voice of the Evil Dead Trilogy. Army of Darkness didn’t change a thing of Evil Dead II, meaning that the director had already established his personal celluloid trademark and put a signature on it as his most representative.
Back when I played the Best Guy series and Timemachine 1, I noticed a drastically different meme culture and sense of humor than the one adopted by America and Europe, and explaining the geography behind this is beyond obvious and unnecessary. However, there was an implementation of gimmicks and humor in South Korea that differed greatly from the most ambitious trap/adventure games of the early 2010s, such as the fantastic Rukimin, the rustic creations by Carnival or the highly appealing Galaxy: South Korea is more explosive (literally, like, Michael Bay would be proud), shaky screens, cognitive dissonance, flashy screens, an abundance of gay jokes, and a pervasive freneticism. Best Guy 1 is a disastrous game, but analyze the bosses and, except for the first old man, which is beyond boring and frustrating, the rest are emblematic and an absolute blast. The final boss, Gustav, is one of the most badass and replayable final bosses I have seen, stupid meme instances throughout and whatnot. Just like with I Wanna Kill the Kamilia 1, the game was not made by the user referenced; marhite initiated the idea, and the Best Guy series was continued by Gustav himself. Part II, which is my personal favorite even if not the most visually ambitious, has tremendous replay value despite the self-awareness that Gustav displays throughout regarding that his platforming is woeful.
Now consider Influka. Timemachine 1 was a prototype for creating different visuals and time eras in an insanely good and fun adventure that offers many difficulty possibilities and, while recreating Boshy, pays tribute to both Boshy and IWBTG while remaining aesthetically authentic and self-sustaining. This is where The Game Terminators come in: a full-throttle, balls-to-the-wall display of Korean meme galore at a frenetically high speed with screams, gun blasts, female obesity, Ao Oni (as in Best Guy), first-person shooters, maniacal laughter, and some indie references (The Binding of Isaac, et al). The last boss of the game is one of my favorite fangame bosses of all times (along with Nue Houjuu in Breaking Out and Solgryn in Boshy), and the vocaloid choice is one of the best available. Influka self-represents as a Phoenix Wright version of Megurine Luka and is animated! A png sprite moving?? Insane. She had the capacity, just like Solgryn, of summoning the attacks of the previous enemies by physically calling them. Timemachine 2 implemented a much more mature of platforming, adventure and cohesion, and a beautiful thing came out of it, albeit with a questionable difficulty peak with the final boss.
Combine both talents and something of the quality of Justice Guy comes out: a hardcore, multi-faceted and varied adventure that combines the best of both worlds.
These arguments are being made not only to defend my opinion that Influka was one of the best fangame makers that actually had a learning curve, but that Influka works amazingly with other creators and testers. K2 is the proof of this.
Now construct a medley with these talents and passion. K2 is a timeline event for all communities, for the fangame world and, yes, for the entire world of videogames. Twitch was already a thing, Carnival was pretty much famous not only in Japan and Korea for legendary challenges such as Crimson and Destination, people had passed their test of manhood beating Boshy at least in Hard-On Mode, and communities were more united. We would now start talking about A community, not many. Eastern and Western players and makers interacted in a more significant basis and exchanged best practices more often.
This remake starts where K1 stopped (just like Evil Dead II) and reinvents the whole concept with a sequel fashion. The soundtrack has a gigantic passion for referencing original videogames, especially the Sonic and Kirby series, something that I thank because both characters’ game series get too overshadowed by even greater franchises; however, there is a special appreciation towards Kirby in the fangame culture. The title screen purposefully opens with Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 for the PS3 to seal it as an Asian fangame, emphasizing the perhaps-not-a-happy-accident of K1 concerning Kamilia’s eyes being Pink and Purple each, and we kick off with the meme of Chokochoko at the speed and rhythm of Sonic Colors. From there, exceptional pieces from Sonic Generations, Steins;Gate, EZ2DJ, Kirby (Kirby 64 and Kirby’s Return to Dreamland) and others hit your speakers and headphones hard with authentic awesomeness. Most importantly, the Dodonpachi series begins to have a protagonistic presence in the series, being Dai-Ou-Jou the case here. I do have complaints for Stage 5 putting a stressful song for the entirety of the stage, but it works greatly for doruppi’s amusing 5-star difficulty screen of Seven Trials, which was scoreless to begin with. SaiDaiOuJou and Maximum would become the spinal cord of K3’s soundtrack.
The mechanic of the soundtrack works stupendously because it has the same mentality of the playthrough logic. Each stage has a song that highly correlates with the difficulty of the stage. The majority of the bosses, with two exceptions (the first melee boss and The Guy, and the first one not really counting precisely because of being a melee boss) feature the song that played in the original fangame that they starred in. The Guy, for correlation, cohesion and entertainment purposes, places the Egg Emperor theme from Sonic Generations and works stupendously, especially since the fight is more concerned with remaking Phase 1 of The Guy (Phase 2... that will come in proper time, not in this game, also with a Sonic remix). However, once you step into Stage 6, you will find out that each new screen has a different song; they are all bangers and have a different tone according to the fangame portrayed. You know you’re in a special stage, probably the last one, where each screen is preparing you for the final challenge, as you witness giants like Catastrophe, Popularity’s Extra Stage, Crimson, Destination and LoveTrap suggesting wicked things to come, especially if you understood the logic of the last screen of each stage being a foreshadowing of the boss you would encounter at the end of it.
The difficulty curve is the closest to flawless I have ever seen in a fangame. I have no complaints with Geezer as a boss from a concept standpoint; the problem relies in the lack of a checkpoint like Kamilia 1 implemented, because there was an awareness that, up to that point, the whole first phase was redundancy if replayed. It is easy; it’s an introductory phase. Place a save after the Keese appear, just before the extra avoidance of Device, and you have a different experience. Actually, if I could swap the lack of an intermediate save, it would be Geezer for Boshy, just for the sake of emulating the original final fight of Boshy in Stage 5: 3 phases, no continues Revive one of the first big achievements you ever had in your fangame trajectory. Scratch the Geezer mistake, and you have the perfect difficulty curve.
A pivotal point of discussion for a medley are the game choices and, simultaneously, the screen choices per game. This game emulates much better the exercise that K1 did: not only the game gets progressively more difficult at perceivable levels without any drastic peaks, except for Geezer and the final boss, but the games in question also had that difficulty in question. Stage 1 games are beginner-friendly games, with the arguable exception of I Wanna Be the Fangame! (and it is arguable because it is one of the founding classics), and Stage 6 games are fangames for veterans or experts. Although it does have a bias towards Asian fangames as well (main protagonists with more than one of their fangames featured are Carnival, Mizudori, Doruppi, P, Surumeika, Teto Rin, to mention some), but it also gives proper credit to Kayin, Thenewgeezer, tijit and Solgryn for the influence they imprinted permanently on fangame players with a single fangame by 2012. Beyond the first melee boss, all bosses are iconic and have been immortalized by now: The Guy, Influka, Geezer, Solgryn, The Four Crimson Gods, Destination and Big Kid. Others, such as Nue Houjuu and Gravity Man, were chosen for their uniqueness, and I must admit they are good bosses, with an emphasis on Nue who is an absolutely freaking fantastic miracle of a boss in the original Breaking Out.
What is more relevant is the eternal discussion among medley players and critics: “they could have chosen a much better screen and instead they chose one of the worst ones”. At many cases, this rings true, such as Locus, Unknown, Terminal, Rukimin, Fangame!, Competitor, Timemachine and others. The exact opposite applies to ones like The Guy, Boshy (when shit gets real, it gets real), Best Guy (it’s the least terrible!), Crimson, Destination, Graduate from CT, Yellow Star, Experience, Skyclad, Rainbow Miku, Symmetry, Breaking Out, etc. Then you have the middle spectrum, like pretty much the rest, and for GB, there was literally no other choice as that screen was already a meme and it took 9 years for the Western community to respond to it with an immense collab. The true question, in my opinion, is whether choosing the most innovative or “best” screens, “best” being subjective in the eyes of the beholder, would bring the same pacing and playthrough consistency for a medley, or they just function better in the context of the original fangames. I think the point of a medley is dual: to celebrate the uniqueness of the fangames portrayed, and make it in a way that makes sense in the overall genre of the medley (needle, avoidance, adventure, etc.). K2 is an adventure medley. So, Tribute might me annoying as hell, and Yassan might scare curious beginner players that don’t even know who The Kid is, but the overall choices constitute a consistent and fantastic experience.
The game changer for the Kamilia series was a concept that many fangames did before. Take Device as a random example: you have the main game, secrets scattered all around, extra (which is unlocked by gathering said secrets), a buffed boss rush and a true final boss/avoidance. Influka applies the same concept by Stage 6, but borrows legendary bosses; the implementation is fascinating and mad good, which I speculate was based on Popularity’s extra stage, and ergo ended up taking the form and feel of Rockman 5:
-Instead of having Big Kid as a Stage 6 boss immediately due to LoveTrap being the 10th screen of the stage, you face four bosses of games that were also featured in that stage
-The bosses are gigantically nerfed for correct continuity and progress purposes: Destination has much less HP and only phase per color, at the expense of the attacks being faster; Crimson has less HP at the insignificant expense of figuring out when Blue triggers the water blocks; Nue Houjuu has much less attacks at the expense of having the original orbs pattern changed and you only having 1HP (bothersome, unfortunately); and Gravity Man has only the first of Popularity’s original true final boss and you have bigger bullets, at the expense of both of you moving much faster and Gravity Man shooting quicker after each gravity shifting. The game made the incredibly wise decision of nerfing all bosses and still making them enjoyable in the sense of reviving those epic fights you faced before, with the plus of having a much faster progression granted that you’re not fighting the original bosses at all. If that was the case of the game, we would have quite a questionable roadblock for everyone.
-You can choose the order of the bosses and autosave is implemented immediately after you beat a boss in case of any accident you or an external source or event might cause
-As in the Mega Man series, you unlock the true boss of the stage after beating all Kamilia’s minions. LoveTrap here is the funny response to Brute of a Man in K1; however, you do fight the boss in here. There is a catch: the game is reasonable enough to acknowledge that beating Big Kid was a feat that could probably take months, resulting in probably the most nerfed non-troll boss of all times. The pattern of killer and water bullets is set instead of being random, which allows you to fully plan your strategies ahead.
What mines the entertainment of players during the Boss Rush is the sense of progression compared to the previous, more known bosses and the smooth increasing difficulty of the platforming. Also, if it’s the first time you face these bosses, that’s entirely up to you, but for me, it was an incredibly enjoyable time while I reminisced about the many instances of my life where I beat the true, original versions of these tough bastards.
The Big Kid scene also became a moment in the annals of fangame history. Redone to death many times in both serious and parody forms, the chase challenge is a big consistency save against the clock. There are two problems with this section that make it shy away from perfection: the scrolling screen depends on the Big Kid, not your movement, and there are traps scattered around that do not belong in a chase / consistency save. Nevertheless, after what seems to be a nod to the ending of World 1-1 in Super Mario Bros. for the NES (getting through two choke needle sections instead of grabbing a victory flag), one of your fangame ancient dreams comes true: you do not only beat Big Kid: you watch him explode like everytime you die. Boy, does this game reward you for effort.
Enter M-Stage, the original stage of the game (although the chase is also technically original) at the beat of Tekken 6. It is time to pass the ultimate skill/gimmick/trap test of the game where wonders like two double sphincters in a row, upward planes, jump refreshers with gravity shifting, speed change gimmicks, corners of many kinds and 9-jumps await you before your final definitive trial. There is no way you don’t get pumped up with the aid of Tekken 6, and the extremely efficient and sensical saves placement makes the ride consistently enjoyable.
Before and during your encounter with Kamilia, there are many Easter Eggs that should be noted, including one that, much to my shock, no one in IWC had noticed:
-The hall with the big save on it displays a plethora of the tilesets belonging to the fangames featured in the medley
-When you shoot the save that transports you to her otherworldly realm, four words appear in a circle around you: EMMANUEL (“God is with us”), TETRAGRAMMATON (“consisting of four letters”, which is associated with the Hebrew word יהוה, which is YHWH “I am who I am” [Exodus 3:14]), JEHOVA (the most famous vocalization of the TETRAGRAMMATON), and an unclear one, which seems to read JEIAH, a word that, as a Christian, I don’t know. My hypothesis is that it was misspelled and the true word is JEDEDIAH, a name derived from Yedidyah (“beloved of Jah”).
-Before Kamilia appears, five orbs attack you, each one symbolizing a stage, and therefore, an enemy, or the concept of an enemy itself. The red one represents Geezer, the purple one represents Influka’s orbs, Green represents Solgryn’s orbs, and there’s a debate concerning the meaning of the yellow and blue ones. Yellow one could represent either The Guy’s bullets or the stars from Conquer The Blow Game’s Crazy Spike, and the blue one could represent the melee boss or the boss rush (so, in either case, it represents a collection of bosses). These orbs reunite and the former sprite of Kamilia, previously a female Kid-like sprite, assumes a new form, the form that was foreshadowed all along.
What does this all mean? Does this mean that we’re facing God? That’s unlikely, since Kamilia seems to be a fallen angel considering her final form, which makes her a demon. Does this mean that we’re bestowed with the power of God before facing Kamilia just like Kamilia receives the power of all previous big bosses/demons of fangames? I’m absolutely loving that review and I am sticking to it forever.
As the orbs suggested, an avoidance phase consisting of five phases ensues, with each attack representing the bosses per stage.
-Boss 1 and Boss 2 attacks are combined into one and have a single tough moment: the Gustav attack, to which you must react fast. The gray delicious fruit insta kills you as a position-based attack, Sticky Keys appears trying to crush you and, while avoiding a pattern of Crazy Spike stars and Flandre’s curving orbs, Guy bullets aim straight at you and the Gustav attack culminates what is the toughest attack to react.
-Boss 3 attack is easily one of the most epic moments I have played in fangames: Influka’s orbs swarm the middle portion of the screen while God’s attacks from Heaventrap 2 appear at two random spots of the ceiling shooting at random directions, Influka’s “tomb” attacks you wherever you are while the original Influka attack from K2 creates a portal that throws little pink orbs at you (the one that made gravity heavier in Stage 3 Boss). The sound effects for the portal, I must highlight, are eargasmic. For a final showdown, Pochi’s barrage attack from Rukimin floods the screen while making a combination of Venus’ attack of See the Moon. This attack is the apotheosis of awesomeness and the feeling of power you have after clearing something so menacing and yet so beautifully looking is indescribable. This attack is also a stunningly representative example of the importance of (and difference between) sound sound editing.
-Boss 4 attack sucks and it is the hardest by far. It combines Beelzebub’s attack from Heaventrap 1 as a pattern, creating blind spots that can be infested and crowded with the garbage that the two giant Explorer heads throw at you. Add some Geezer lava for the lol’s and a couple of Keese to compromise your jumps after the Explorer heads attack you simultaneously for the second time. It is luck-based trash that provides you many times with squished roofs/walls where you can do nothing about them.
-Boss 5 attack is considered as one of the hardest, and the second hardest for me. It follows the logic of Solgryn’s second phase were position-based green orbs hunt you down. The yom yom yom creature attacks you at 3 specific points in time while you’re attacked rhythmically by Missingno.’s Hydro Pump that pushes you up to the ceiling, precisely to where the Solgryn orbs are. Good luck making a consistent strategy, as the green orbs are random! After that, a consistent position-based strat exists for avoiding the hearts of the final boss of Scapegoat and the orbs at the same time. Very challenging.
-Boss 6 attack is a celebration of the Boss Rush enemies where the true skill of the first half relies in knowing exactly what every color of Destination did. Gravity Man’s attack have always the same blind spot, so stick in the middle, and the UFOs from Nue should pose no problem as they are a very easy pattern. The second half poses a challenge since Nue’s randomly moving red orbs, combined with the position-based attacks of Destination can create very interesting combinations that will demolish you.
There is a checkpoint! Will you believe that?
Enter Phase 2: Big Kid combined with Kamilia’s own attacks, which are very tame, but just like Big Kid, this is an exercise in patience and calculation, since the more damage you inflict on Kamilia, the bigger the amount of delicious fruits that will appear from any border of the screen. This stage, frankly, gets repetitive, redundant and boring very fast, but following the logic of referencing all past bosses and the tradition of Influka and Kamilia having the power to summon the attacks of other enemies, I supposed it “had to” be there. The problem is that there is no third checkpoint after the easy avoidance proceeding the Big Kid phase.
Phase 3 is the stuff of your nightmares: Kamilia shows her true fallen angel form because why not? If you keep questioning the logic of a fangame by this point, bruh, where have you living your whole life? Kamilia has an arsenal of no less than 10 attacks to choose from, half readable, half monstrous, especially one where the orbs do a screen wrap. The punishment for dying is going back to the boringness of Phase 2. Part of what makes the victory so heart-racing is that you have to make a clean clear of Phases 2 and 3 in one go, with Phase 3 being a tough-as-nails challenge. However, the feeling of hearing that heavily copyrighted song of the credits is very overwhelming, more fulfilling than a male autotune singing to you than you can call yourself The Boshy now.
Finally, you end up in a hub with access to all areas and bosses as an invitation to practice, replay any part you want, or even speedrun the game, which, I won’t lie, is a very tempting idea for me.
The penultimate thing I’d like to remark is that K2 is one game that not only takes care of offering a pristine production value, but also has a lot of little details that add value to the game, even if they might go unnoticed consciously by many:
-An original Game Over screen and theme
-The fact that every screen at Stage 6 has an original song
-Related to the previous point, the fact that Go the Dotkid! featured an 8-bit remix of the Factory Investigation Remix of Kirby 64 and that this game, in return, features the same screen with the same theme employing another remix (a very based one)
-The hit sound is epic; it does give you the feeling that instead of doing comedic damage reusing the sound effect from IWBTG, you are really impacting the enemy, making the battles more epic (the rushed sound effect during the Gradius section of Solgryn is tremendous!)
-The fact that there is a memorable “Stage Complete” theme
-The fact that the credits have a terrific, non-vocaloid choice of a song and properly credits all fangames featured and individual artists, gamemakers and testers
-The fact that there is a functional hub, a trademark of Timemachine 1
-The fact that Influka is considered as a boss as important as The Guy, Geezer and Solgryn, because it is
-The fact that it autosaves when it is the sanest thing for the player
-All main bosses are remade in a very original and authentic way without losing their essence: Influka calls all bosses from Stage 3 including Pochi if you go for the full cycle challenge, and Solgryn’s version is the best adaptation ever made, featuring an even better Phase 1 than Boshy and Timemachine 1
-The fact that all bosses in Boss Rush are nerfed to extremely playable levels (I second tried Destination, which is the hardest boss)
-The fact that Stage 6 features fangames that are unquestionably harder than Kamilia 2 itself, proving that this game never intended to be an impossible challenge to begin with, but a tribute to veterans
-The fact that it features the original fangame screens exactly as they were designed, and when there is a change or a buff, the game lets you know with a shaky, in-your-face warning sign (I have seen reviews and comments asking: “It's a screen just like any other screen. What is this Caution sign doing here?”. Bruh... know your fangames!!)
-No Nekoron or other weird engine, thank God!
-No restarting music
The landmark gimmick of inserting random, unrelated avoidance segments in the middle of the fights can be questioned, and it hurts the playability of Geezer due to the lack of an intermediate save, but not for The Guy or Solgryn.
K2 established the year 2012 as a new standard to measure fangame creation and successfully combining great platforming with production value, where the latter never overshadows the former. If the previous installment was a meme game that celebrated a person’s reputation, this magnificent adventure platformer celebrates the collective creativity of a community and what had been accomplished so far while being loyal to the graphics of many fangames that had a different look and feel to the usual standard tilesets and cherries. It reinvents the original concept and becomes a trip down memory lane for the fortunate ones that did play at least 75% of the fangames featured here. For those that didn’t, it became the definitive test of fangame skills that you could willingly experience by yourself and show off to others. This is the point where Kamilia’s Twitch attention started to peak, reaching a maximum around 2014-2015. It tries and succeeds at representatively showcasing what had been the greatest known challenges back then, from the Tower Guy to beating destination, embellished with a modern touch and soundtrack. When The Guy is the second boss and Solgryn is not even the gatekeeper, you know you’re currently playing and living a new definitive challenge.
This is a revolution, a tribute, a celebration and a stunning, action-packed adventure statement in the world of videogames.
And it also represents the Stockholm Syndrome for its admirers according to Kiyoshi.
FINAL STATS FOR MY 1ST BLIND PLAYTHROUGH:
Deaths: 3517
Time: 12:24:08
Games played before: 50/60 (beaten 47)
CLEAR SCREEN
https://discordapp.com/channels/82930961544646656/415571545075744768/945863119350165514
TWITCH HIGHLIGHTS (2nd PLAYTHROUGH, LIVE)
-Influka Full Cycle with Cool Kill: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1432159960
-Geezer: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1432163844
-Solgryn Hitless (No Skip): https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1438758085
-Boss Rush + Almost 1st Try Big Kid: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1432169537
-Final Boss: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1438759272 (fight starts at 4:21)
Rating: 9.0 90
Difficulty: 85 85
Apr 21, 2022
ElCochran90
For: I wanna kill the Kamilia
For: I wanna kill the Kamilia
I know a watershed when I see it.
Carnival perhaps was the pioneer to apply the fangame intertextuality concept: conglomerate screens from past fangames and make a section out of it. Many Eastern supporters of this idea began rising afterwards, such as Mizudori, クライン (the Emperor/Meteor Stream guy) and ていく (the Device/Diverse/Tempest guy), and the Western community just answered to it.
Back in 2011, the West and the East had their separate communities and forums, before the Discord era (to which I don’t belong) and during the justin.tv, I Wanna Wiki and nicovideo era. YouTube was at its peak of content and memes which has now become the main contagion site for spreading centennial cancer and promoting influencers of all branches of human idiocy.
Back in this time, ㅇyㅇ had, not a vision, but an idea: to create a cohesive experience made of several fangames, mostly Eastern, that had been either emblematic or beaten by Kamilia, a name that causes sensation still today. From any viewpoint, either experimental, stylistic, artistic or conceptual, this experiment is extremely appealing. It’s a tribute in constant motion, where the excitement of the playability’s uncertainty comes, not from the gimmicks or the platforming per se, but what new fangame would be featured next. The original quality wasn’t something to determine the content of this new project (we have games from LIPCONE and Doruppi’s ugliest to the impossible Brute of a Man [no-mod version]). Had Kamilia really beaten Brute of a Man? That became irrelevant at a point where it was evident it was more a tribute to a person and to several makers that, for the better or the worst, released outputs that would become iconic for all decades to come.
Bosses would not be your typical fight: it would be an amalgamated melee of the memory lane that you just walked through at each stage, featuring all final bosses (mostly) of every screen you just remembered. Some screens are reinvented at the expense of ㅇyㅇ’s creativity, perhaps for an easier playability or to standardize the difficulty.
There is a logic behind the games selected however: if it is not the quality, or the makers, and we just have Kamilia’s clear/stream list as a parameter, then what is it? The difficulty. This is the only redeeming quality of the game. The difficulty curve sorta makes sense. Each stage was meant to be more difficult than the previous one, but without reaching the levels of Brute of a Man or, less absurdly, of Sadist. Not even Boshy’s… This was perhaps given as an opportunity for mortal players to explore the world of fangames and feel like Kamilia during the 5 stages of the game and then killing her for that illusion of saying “I beat Kamilia!”.
The concept is intriguing to say the least, but there are some facts to clarify:
-The game references a person and some makers, not the fangame world phenomenon
-The game was made in two days
-The engine is atrocious
-The game has a plethora of technical glitches; it’s one of the most broken things I have ever seen
The game is the apotheosis of old-school unenjoyable fangame ugliness: transitions that insta-kill you, warp you to another unintended screen, collision boxes that get you stuck in places that shouldn’t be or cancel your second jump, liquified diarrhea backgrounds during the boss fights (except for Stage 5) that introduced visual sudoku to the fangame communities before we would even comprehend or baptize whatever the freak sudoku was meant to be in the future, and screens modified beyond recognition for no valid reason (when did a screen for, say, GGM existed like that?)
For a two-day project, the result is understandable; that doesn’t make it acceptable or inexcusable. The screen choices are nightmarishly obnoxious, transforming the game into a trap game. This is the key tragic outcome of I Wanna Kill the Kamilia because, by 2011, traps were not the only thing that defined fangames. The collection of makers, however, put a heavy emphasis on this. Neverthekess, if we think on a pre-2012 Carnival game, traps were not the predominant trick under the hat: hardcore vanilla needle was also an ingredient. What about the multiple gimmick implementations of Dark Blue or Greeeen? On the other hand, if you put games like Tribute, Best Guy, Graduate from CT, Rukimin, Timemachine, 500, Experience, Yellow Star, Fortress Returns, and focus on the trap segments, you’re missing the point of the fangame world versatility and transform the first medley game into a trap game.
I’ll give three merits to this landmark, timeline project:
-The fact that it is the first medley, causing the viewer to wonder what the next screen will be like, and introducing many new fangames to other people, especially beginner enthusiasts or curious veterans
-The fact that every stage has a different song, and the soundtrack is good (who doesn’t love Portal 2?). Props to the Splinter Cell pick.
-The fact that, within certain boundaries, it retains a reasonable difficulty and doesn’t spike so much throughout like the Gamespot stock price of 1Y (do look at it).
As much as I loathe the brokenness, the engine, the transitions (being the most terrible one from See the Moon to CQ [I think someone clipped that moment during my Stream]), the bosses, the collision boxes, the screen choices, the scrolling spaceship section of Heaventrap 1, Geezer’s final phase including all the damn stupid attempts I had to make to get to the damn ship without going THROUGH it, the visually horrid backgrounds during 5 out of 6 boss fights, the Wuss saves being placed at potentially softlockable states, and finding out that bosses having a middle save between phases didn’t matter at all if you decided to continue the boss another day (it resets to Phase 1), I am glad to live in a world where this exists, because it became a thing, and still is. It created a genre that was born to stay forever. Western medleys were a reply mostly to this game and to Influka’s controversial sequels, and some sensational deliveries have come out, old and modern.
There is no reason on Earth I would decide to replay this unless I streamed it with good company: it is a wonderful and innovative concept made by a kid that doesn’t know how to build his Legos properly. Now imagine the same person coding and creating a game with 44 game references in two days, stuffing everything in, including all final bosses.
And as negative as my review sounds, I think this game was a necessity for the world. It was meant to happen. The implications it had for its future generations of the fangame community excel the actual quality of the game by far too much.
Finally, I should clarify this game is underrated in difficulty. Not ironically, the struggle of the player will steam from coping with the game's engine ultimately shattered structure and composition; however, the last 2 stages do feature difficult screens that I wouldn't recommend for a beginner as previous experience is required. I seriously don't think beginners were kept in mind when making this game, or experts either: just the average player exploring more worlds. There is a screen of GR's needle tower that is almost untouched, save for some corners and that infamous jump in the third save (middle portion of the screen). Adding a bunch of saves does not mean you will now know jumps that you didn't before.
And then a sequel came along...
[3] Likes
Carnival perhaps was the pioneer to apply the fangame intertextuality concept: conglomerate screens from past fangames and make a section out of it. Many Eastern supporters of this idea began rising afterwards, such as Mizudori, クライン (the Emperor/Meteor Stream guy) and ていく (the Device/Diverse/Tempest guy), and the Western community just answered to it.
Back in 2011, the West and the East had their separate communities and forums, before the Discord era (to which I don’t belong) and during the justin.tv, I Wanna Wiki and nicovideo era. YouTube was at its peak of content and memes which has now become the main contagion site for spreading centennial cancer and promoting influencers of all branches of human idiocy.
Back in this time, ㅇyㅇ had, not a vision, but an idea: to create a cohesive experience made of several fangames, mostly Eastern, that had been either emblematic or beaten by Kamilia, a name that causes sensation still today. From any viewpoint, either experimental, stylistic, artistic or conceptual, this experiment is extremely appealing. It’s a tribute in constant motion, where the excitement of the playability’s uncertainty comes, not from the gimmicks or the platforming per se, but what new fangame would be featured next. The original quality wasn’t something to determine the content of this new project (we have games from LIPCONE and Doruppi’s ugliest to the impossible Brute of a Man [no-mod version]). Had Kamilia really beaten Brute of a Man? That became irrelevant at a point where it was evident it was more a tribute to a person and to several makers that, for the better or the worst, released outputs that would become iconic for all decades to come.
Bosses would not be your typical fight: it would be an amalgamated melee of the memory lane that you just walked through at each stage, featuring all final bosses (mostly) of every screen you just remembered. Some screens are reinvented at the expense of ㅇyㅇ’s creativity, perhaps for an easier playability or to standardize the difficulty.
There is a logic behind the games selected however: if it is not the quality, or the makers, and we just have Kamilia’s clear/stream list as a parameter, then what is it? The difficulty. This is the only redeeming quality of the game. The difficulty curve sorta makes sense. Each stage was meant to be more difficult than the previous one, but without reaching the levels of Brute of a Man or, less absurdly, of Sadist. Not even Boshy’s… This was perhaps given as an opportunity for mortal players to explore the world of fangames and feel like Kamilia during the 5 stages of the game and then killing her for that illusion of saying “I beat Kamilia!”.
The concept is intriguing to say the least, but there are some facts to clarify:
-The game references a person and some makers, not the fangame world phenomenon
-The game was made in two days
-The engine is atrocious
-The game has a plethora of technical glitches; it’s one of the most broken things I have ever seen
The game is the apotheosis of old-school unenjoyable fangame ugliness: transitions that insta-kill you, warp you to another unintended screen, collision boxes that get you stuck in places that shouldn’t be or cancel your second jump, liquified diarrhea backgrounds during the boss fights (except for Stage 5) that introduced visual sudoku to the fangame communities before we would even comprehend or baptize whatever the freak sudoku was meant to be in the future, and screens modified beyond recognition for no valid reason (when did a screen for, say, GGM existed like that?)
For a two-day project, the result is understandable; that doesn’t make it acceptable or inexcusable. The screen choices are nightmarishly obnoxious, transforming the game into a trap game. This is the key tragic outcome of I Wanna Kill the Kamilia because, by 2011, traps were not the only thing that defined fangames. The collection of makers, however, put a heavy emphasis on this. Neverthekess, if we think on a pre-2012 Carnival game, traps were not the predominant trick under the hat: hardcore vanilla needle was also an ingredient. What about the multiple gimmick implementations of Dark Blue or Greeeen? On the other hand, if you put games like Tribute, Best Guy, Graduate from CT, Rukimin, Timemachine, 500, Experience, Yellow Star, Fortress Returns, and focus on the trap segments, you’re missing the point of the fangame world versatility and transform the first medley game into a trap game.
I’ll give three merits to this landmark, timeline project:
-The fact that it is the first medley, causing the viewer to wonder what the next screen will be like, and introducing many new fangames to other people, especially beginner enthusiasts or curious veterans
-The fact that every stage has a different song, and the soundtrack is good (who doesn’t love Portal 2?). Props to the Splinter Cell pick.
-The fact that, within certain boundaries, it retains a reasonable difficulty and doesn’t spike so much throughout like the Gamespot stock price of 1Y (do look at it).
As much as I loathe the brokenness, the engine, the transitions (being the most terrible one from See the Moon to CQ [I think someone clipped that moment during my Stream]), the bosses, the collision boxes, the screen choices, the scrolling spaceship section of Heaventrap 1, Geezer’s final phase including all the damn stupid attempts I had to make to get to the damn ship without going THROUGH it, the visually horrid backgrounds during 5 out of 6 boss fights, the Wuss saves being placed at potentially softlockable states, and finding out that bosses having a middle save between phases didn’t matter at all if you decided to continue the boss another day (it resets to Phase 1), I am glad to live in a world where this exists, because it became a thing, and still is. It created a genre that was born to stay forever. Western medleys were a reply mostly to this game and to Influka’s controversial sequels, and some sensational deliveries have come out, old and modern.
There is no reason on Earth I would decide to replay this unless I streamed it with good company: it is a wonderful and innovative concept made by a kid that doesn’t know how to build his Legos properly. Now imagine the same person coding and creating a game with 44 game references in two days, stuffing everything in, including all final bosses.
And as negative as my review sounds, I think this game was a necessity for the world. It was meant to happen. The implications it had for its future generations of the fangame community excel the actual quality of the game by far too much.
Finally, I should clarify this game is underrated in difficulty. Not ironically, the struggle of the player will steam from coping with the game's engine ultimately shattered structure and composition; however, the last 2 stages do feature difficult screens that I wouldn't recommend for a beginner as previous experience is required. I seriously don't think beginners were kept in mind when making this game, or experts either: just the average player exploring more worlds. There is a screen of GR's needle tower that is almost untouched, save for some corners and that infamous jump in the third save (middle portion of the screen). Adding a bunch of saves does not mean you will now know jumps that you didn't before.
And then a sequel came along...
Rating: 1.3 13
Difficulty: 60 60
Apr 19, 2022
ElCochran90
For: I Wanna Be the Unknown
For: I Wanna Be the Unknown
As a standalone, yes, this is Mizudori's best game. With Starter, Symmetry and the collab Breaking Out, I had made some personal theories: judging by the needle design in Symmetry and in Starter, and the gimmick/avoidance implementations in Breaking Out, carua was the visual innovator/experimentalist and Mizudori was the gimmick guy.
Leave Mizudori the task of creating his own adventure game and the gimmicks are much more limited in creativity, but the platforming improves. There structure of the game is typical of his prolonged structure: many hubs featuring many levels interconnected by "gatekeeper" bosses/avoidances until you get to the true final boss: a Touhou fight. This is literally Mizudori in a nutshell just like you can summarize Rukito with poor visuals, sometimes interesting platforming, lots of traps and atrociously-looking and unplayable bosses.
Regarding this creator, my thoughts are pretty much aligned with the legendary Xplayerlol, being Breaking Out our greatest source of disagreement, and for a good reason: Breaking Out is absolutely all over the place and has no rhyme or reason, but glorious segments exist and the final boss is a blissfully entertaining miracle. Here, the quality is somewhat more consistent, with special moments that stand out, being my Top 5 ranked:
-The pattern avoidance of The Dark Abandoned Mine
-The color gimmicks of The Metallic Zone
-The Tower of Heaven progressively challenging logic, implementing rules in a fantastic way (unfortunately, the boss makes some illogical/unreactable combinations of attacks that are certain to kill you)
-True final boss: Flandre Scarlet
-Grolla Seyfarth's time freezing/slowing mechanics
Then you have lows, like:
-Freudia Neuwahl's weird gravity flip timing and instachoke slide attacks
-The medley section (I love medley sections that reference past fangames!), since it unfortunately features very few screens and the least creative choices from Mizudori's deliveries; I had high hopes for it once I had entered it
Questionable sections like the bamboo forest puzzle will be more cryptic for those that didn't play the haunted mansion maze in Breaking Out, which is still kinda cheap. The Fairy's Forest has amazing platforming and frustrating bosses that require granding.
All in all, like Breaking Out, it's one of highs and lows, but they are less drastic. The ideas scattered are interesting, and there is a spot-on screenshot upload by Xplayerlol that serves as an example of how to make the regular tilesets look good.
Recommended. It is also significantly less hard than Breaking Out because of the latter's aforementioned greater inconsistencies.
[1] Like
Leave Mizudori the task of creating his own adventure game and the gimmicks are much more limited in creativity, but the platforming improves. There structure of the game is typical of his prolonged structure: many hubs featuring many levels interconnected by "gatekeeper" bosses/avoidances until you get to the true final boss: a Touhou fight. This is literally Mizudori in a nutshell just like you can summarize Rukito with poor visuals, sometimes interesting platforming, lots of traps and atrociously-looking and unplayable bosses.
Regarding this creator, my thoughts are pretty much aligned with the legendary Xplayerlol, being Breaking Out our greatest source of disagreement, and for a good reason: Breaking Out is absolutely all over the place and has no rhyme or reason, but glorious segments exist and the final boss is a blissfully entertaining miracle. Here, the quality is somewhat more consistent, with special moments that stand out, being my Top 5 ranked:
-The pattern avoidance of The Dark Abandoned Mine
-The color gimmicks of The Metallic Zone
-The Tower of Heaven progressively challenging logic, implementing rules in a fantastic way (unfortunately, the boss makes some illogical/unreactable combinations of attacks that are certain to kill you)
-True final boss: Flandre Scarlet
-Grolla Seyfarth's time freezing/slowing mechanics
Then you have lows, like:
-Freudia Neuwahl's weird gravity flip timing and instachoke slide attacks
-The medley section (I love medley sections that reference past fangames!), since it unfortunately features very few screens and the least creative choices from Mizudori's deliveries; I had high hopes for it once I had entered it
Questionable sections like the bamboo forest puzzle will be more cryptic for those that didn't play the haunted mansion maze in Breaking Out, which is still kinda cheap. The Fairy's Forest has amazing platforming and frustrating bosses that require granding.
All in all, like Breaking Out, it's one of highs and lows, but they are less drastic. The ideas scattered are interesting, and there is a spot-on screenshot upload by Xplayerlol that serves as an example of how to make the regular tilesets look good.
Recommended. It is also significantly less hard than Breaking Out because of the latter's aforementioned greater inconsistencies.
Rating: 6.3 63
Difficulty: 80 80
Mar 16, 2022
ElCochran90
For: I Wanna Be the Competitor
For: I Wanna Be the Competitor
I think this is the spot most of us can agree that Mizudori didn't impress at all this time. 8 stages with non-repetitive bosses (each one is unique in its own way, which is a plus), but gets ruined by the fact that most of them are pattern avoidances plagued with instagibs and extremely precise blind spots that are not obvious at all unless you record your own gameplay and rewatch it. It's a poor exercise in creativity and it is free grinding, which not all of us are into if we're honest. Each attempt you'll last 1.5-2 seconds alive until the next instagib kills you so you can ask: where should I move precisely towards to now??
Stages feature their own gimmick but are recycled from other old-school fangames and had been done to death by that point: single-jumping, making yourself blurry or almost invisible compared to the background, your kid being mirrored in the upper half of the screen such as in "GreeeeN" and countless others, etc. Platforming is not creative at all and traps are frustrating here, unlike in Symmetry, where the big lack of them played in favor of the gimmicks and their enjoyability.
Final Miku, being the best (ugh... least worst) part of the game is not worth the whole journey (ironically, it is not the hardest avoidance), but if you're either into Mizudori or old-school fangames, give it a pass.
So, avoid.
[3] Likes
Stages feature their own gimmick but are recycled from other old-school fangames and had been done to death by that point: single-jumping, making yourself blurry or almost invisible compared to the background, your kid being mirrored in the upper half of the screen such as in "GreeeeN" and countless others, etc. Platforming is not creative at all and traps are frustrating here, unlike in Symmetry, where the big lack of them played in favor of the gimmicks and their enjoyability.
Final Miku, being the best (ugh... least worst) part of the game is not worth the whole journey (ironically, it is not the hardest avoidance), but if you're either into Mizudori or old-school fangames, give it a pass.
So, avoid.
Rating: 3.1 31
Difficulty: 70 70
Jan 27, 2022
ElCochran90
For: I Wanna Be the Symmetry
For: I Wanna Be the Symmetry
**I should clarify before anything something factually incorrect stated by Xplayerlol. The orange stage where your keys are reversed, they are actually not. Keys are not randomly locked so you have to restart "until they work". All FOUR arrow keys have a 0.5 probability of being assigned a direction (left or right), and the gimmick is programmed to lock the probability to 1.0 so that only TWO out of the FOUR keys work, which makes the gimmick a wee bit more interesting and original, but not so much. It feels funny, but it is not a glitch in either the V0.9 or V1.01 (I tried both to confirm).**
Rating based on 100% clear including extra, which is only included in version 1.01. Difficulty rating based on normal clear without secrets and Extra (consider a difficulty of 75 for the act of getting all secrets, doing the extra stage and the extra boss).
"A huge ass mixed bag", says DerpyHooves, and I sort of agree, but that definition suits Make It Breaking Out so much better. So here I am, exploring what seems to be the undervalued Mizudori. Evidently, the creator has a gigantic set of gimmick ideas and never fails to deliver playability variety. After playing Breaking Out and Starter, it is evident who was the Touhou fan between him and carua, and also who came up with the structure of the game: hubs with different routes unlocking new hubs, then the extra section after a "final boss" which just turned out to be a gatekeeper, play a new extra stage, a previous extra boss and the definitive final boss. Judging by the needle design here and in Starter, carua is much more creative, including in the visual aspect. Mizudori is the gimmick guy.
Hence, expect tons of gimmicks with atrociously repetitive and generic needle (several stages are gate fests or shuriken fests, so expect tons of those). The difficulty curve has no rhyme or reason, except that it never gets tougher. Imagine a random series, but stationary. That's what to expect here: if you clear the main hub, don't expect something tougher in the future. Just more gimmicks.
The core concept is, obviously, symmetry, and there are some fascinating ideas, so where the game lacks a huge deal in level design, it compensates in variety and gimmick creativity. The symmetry is not always visual; sometimes, you have to picture it, and sometimes, it is about the controls. Those are highly positive points in this fangame. The overall structure of the game, which is almost identical to Breaking Out, is fun, as each stage has no more than 4 screens each.
Is there a great boss variety? Of course not. That was carua's work, but no carua this time (who curiously worked more often in collabs). The game is plagued with big cherries; however, again, the ideas behind are enjoyable, so it is clear that the intention is to experiment with movement and coordination, sometimes creating great results. Some bossess are actually avoidances, not in the traditional sense you'd expect (either Mikus or just projectiles appearing according to a song); however, you beat them avoiding. Some bosses do require puzzle-ish reasoning from you as you determine either the patterns drawn or manipulate them according to your movement. This type of grinds are not frustrating because they make you think about the consequences of your decisions (that sounded deep, but I'm only talking about how The Kid moves).
Extra stage is short, but fun, the pre-final extra boss is questionably easy (you will first-try it) and the extra boss is the best of them all. It kinda reminded me of RZ's final boss, except this is not luck-based trash and the character's sprite is very nice. Any combination of attacks can have a strategy that will consistently work so that your only biggest problem will be the RNG of the fountain attack (and the obstacle halfway through, unless you place it conveniently).
If you dig experimentation with ideas, go for it. There's more than meets the eye.
[2] Likes
Rating based on 100% clear including extra, which is only included in version 1.01. Difficulty rating based on normal clear without secrets and Extra (consider a difficulty of 75 for the act of getting all secrets, doing the extra stage and the extra boss).
"A huge ass mixed bag", says DerpyHooves, and I sort of agree, but that definition suits Make It Breaking Out so much better. So here I am, exploring what seems to be the undervalued Mizudori. Evidently, the creator has a gigantic set of gimmick ideas and never fails to deliver playability variety. After playing Breaking Out and Starter, it is evident who was the Touhou fan between him and carua, and also who came up with the structure of the game: hubs with different routes unlocking new hubs, then the extra section after a "final boss" which just turned out to be a gatekeeper, play a new extra stage, a previous extra boss and the definitive final boss. Judging by the needle design here and in Starter, carua is much more creative, including in the visual aspect. Mizudori is the gimmick guy.
Hence, expect tons of gimmicks with atrociously repetitive and generic needle (several stages are gate fests or shuriken fests, so expect tons of those). The difficulty curve has no rhyme or reason, except that it never gets tougher. Imagine a random series, but stationary. That's what to expect here: if you clear the main hub, don't expect something tougher in the future. Just more gimmicks.
The core concept is, obviously, symmetry, and there are some fascinating ideas, so where the game lacks a huge deal in level design, it compensates in variety and gimmick creativity. The symmetry is not always visual; sometimes, you have to picture it, and sometimes, it is about the controls. Those are highly positive points in this fangame. The overall structure of the game, which is almost identical to Breaking Out, is fun, as each stage has no more than 4 screens each.
Is there a great boss variety? Of course not. That was carua's work, but no carua this time (who curiously worked more often in collabs). The game is plagued with big cherries; however, again, the ideas behind are enjoyable, so it is clear that the intention is to experiment with movement and coordination, sometimes creating great results. Some bossess are actually avoidances, not in the traditional sense you'd expect (either Mikus or just projectiles appearing according to a song); however, you beat them avoiding. Some bosses do require puzzle-ish reasoning from you as you determine either the patterns drawn or manipulate them according to your movement. This type of grinds are not frustrating because they make you think about the consequences of your decisions (that sounded deep, but I'm only talking about how The Kid moves).
Extra stage is short, but fun, the pre-final extra boss is questionably easy (you will first-try it) and the extra boss is the best of them all. It kinda reminded me of RZ's final boss, except this is not luck-based trash and the character's sprite is very nice. Any combination of attacks can have a strategy that will consistently work so that your only biggest problem will be the RNG of the fountain attack (and the obstacle halfway through, unless you place it conveniently).
If you dig experimentation with ideas, go for it. There's more than meets the eye.
Rating: 4.5 45
Difficulty: 70 70
Jan 24, 2022
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