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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378 Reviews!
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ElCochran90
For: I Wanna Be the Butterfly
For: I Wanna Be the Butterfly
*Cleared on 06/07/2023*
Considering one thing takes to another, there are two main inspirations for the creation of Noesis: Butterfly, and Emperor. Butterfly is an adventure game like almost no other preceding it: borrowing the structure of many creators from ホネ。(End the Blood Festival, Buy the Crayon, White Cherry) and ていく (Device, Diverse) to 水鳥 (Competitor, Symmetry, Unknown, Make It Breaking Out), the guy that made us appreciate the meme-teor stream, vanish needles and challenged us to become the emperor, and that other guy that teamed up with the former guy to be the flower, make their duo peak adventure extravaganza. They take the structure from Unknown and Breaking Out, a structure that consists of evolving hubs and evolve into subsequent challenges, a universe that keeps expanding, and turn it into something of their own. The soundtrack throughout is absolutely fantastic and the production value is through the roof without overdoing it: for 2020s standards, it has aged like fine wine (even though I don’t drink).
The first hub has four main worlds:
-Red warp.- The most standard one, and the least fun due to its stupidly precise platforming; the first save is a good intro for this: there will be blood. The third screen, which is the second area of this world, is an infamous one as you are asked to shoot four switches in a row perfectly while falling and then do an A-jump. Then figuring out what to do with the moving spike is mysterious, but the trap after it literally makes your soul escape your body for three seconds. The fifth screen, which corresponds to the third area of this outer-space-like world, was the most difficult for me in the entire game and I don’t exaggerate: the ascending and descending water costed me 11% (rounded) of the total amount of deaths in the entire game, and do mind the game is very long. This screen, with all honesty, is AIDS. The seventh screen, which corresponds to the fourth area of this world, has two saves. The first required jump of the second save is unspoken of, but at least it gives you the proper align for the TAS landing. The last jump of the final screen of this world is also terrifying, but it looks more intimidating than it really is: if you have built the required memory muscle beforehand, you’ll pull it off correctly faster than you might think.
-Green warp: Trigger fiesta, but the first screen is the hardest by a ridiculous margin in the stage. The traps are brutal, and knowing what will happen does not tell you the very specific set of strats and inputs you must apply to pass the screen, and this applies even more to the very first save. Once past the two first screens, the game plays with terrific gravity and jumping gimmicks in screens 3-6 that amount for a fantastic experience. I found a funny glitch in screen 5 which allows you to walk in air infinitely, but the game still registers the shift inputs for jumping.
-Orange warp: For better or for worse, it happened: a v-string stage. Holy moly. Opening with 2 16px diagonals in a row, this stage obligates you to thing about your vertical velocity for making it through specific gaps. The precision is not the one you’re used to, as old fangames used to be ruled by 32px and 16px logic, but not here. It will be less memory muscle and more constant calculation. This stage is often hated the most by regular players, but the implementation is utmost effective: exploit the concept without being horribly unfair with it. Also, the song is beautiful and the overall atmosphere is engrossing.
-Blue warp: The Legend of Zelda time, with a fangame touch of its own! It’s a modest and short, yet fully fleshed out adventure quest within a greater game: puzzles, chests, items, secrets, and a map. Just, how? This is commitment for certain. Needle difficulty is lax as backtracks are required and you can sometimes take more than one route. It must be played to be fully grasped.
From here on, consider even heavier spoilers, as the rest of the game is encouraged to be played blind past this point at the least:
--
A new warp opens, and you enter a sort of underworld, creepy and colorless, where you have to replay a specific screen of each stage and gather items again: it gives the feeling that something became unstable, and its balance must be restored. I love open lore like this. Achieving this leads to a Destination-like buildup to a ridiculous cherry boss, which I am pretty sure is a parody of all the fangames that relied on this type of boss, tilesets and the theme of Megaman 2. Obviously, this can’t be the end? What lies ahead now?
Everything was just the opening. To put it in a way, it was the typical intro scene of the game for background or context, except you were not an NPC in it: you played it. The intro theme plays, introducing the lore of the butterfly: Kid has a crush for Gigachad Mario but doesn’t care for Remilia Scarlet. Maybe he gay??? Maybe canonical sequel of GB?
The variety displayed from here onwards is outstanding: low gravity in a huge scroller area, jump gimmicks involving triggers, and a brand new, very different hub divided into two challenges. The left one is, literally a new hub that sections into three parts: a New Super Mario Bros. tribute, a shoot-the-target collection of challenges (where a significant portion of your playtime will be spent as you figure out optimal routing strategies), and a sensational collection of minigames with the rules explained beforehand. The game keeps expanding upon its original premise and places the stakes higher and higher, and all stages genuinely seemed as planned to be playable and offer something interesting rather than a “let’s see if this works” brainstorm of concepts, such as Make It Breaking Out. The minigames test your memory skills, aim, speed, needle skills (punishing you per spike touched), and much more! This is a terrific concept for actually being self-aware about your skills and how it is affecting gameplay per second. Out of all levels, the latter one has a boss. If it’s not memorable at worst, it’s creative at best. It takes some time figuring it out, but it plays more as a minigame than as a normal boss.
Finish the new hub, and an extra challenge appears: a race that will certainly remain with you. Reading the smaller sprites of the enemy and how they dance around you is weird and inconsistent. Nevertheless, it’s a recap of most of the previous challenges and does wonders at creating tension. The final moment of the chase is terrifically animated. You’re transported, then again, to the hub referenced beforehand. The right side remains. This right portal has a continuation of the aforementioned jump gimmick triggers section, and a brand-new hub, like the left portal had. This one has five challenges.
For this right-side hub, my humble recommendation is: if you wish to have a true sense of final boss, as the game doesn’t really have one because it is more focused on being an adventure game of many ideas as trials and took less care of a climactic rendition for an adventure story, then take the upper teleporter last.
-Left teleporter is a creative crossover between Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’s three lifelines, and the fangames based on numbered, individual jump / needle challenges. This has a boss that I think is more a parody on how many fangames use the Suki Suki Suki bouncing cherry of LoveTrap as a boss than anything else, since it is the second type of boss in this game (the one in the Mario stage was more relevant).
-Right teleporter takes you to a Megaman stage. It’s brief and quite uninspired unlike many other fangame attempts to bring this concept to life, even if it’s not the core idea of the fangame such as Be the Rockman (take the secret challenges of Be the Overlord, for example). Also, the main save is really long. In spite of this, the boss works really well as an original concept instead of dodge and shoot, or memorize and dodge.
-Downwards left teleporter is nothing special: trap screens with only one notable gimmick. The real meat is the scoreless cherry avoidance. Fun to do, but might be tedious for some.
-Downwards right teleporter is the most generic and I would personally take this first. It consists in many generic screens with Kirby’s music in a heavy Carnival fashion that has a counter for every screen: either how many jumps you do, or how many pixels you’re moving left or right. The latter has a big opportunity window, but the former is stricter, as there’s only one way to do every screen. Boss is, well, Kirby, and has the quality of 2011 aqua’s fangames in average. Also really easy.
The top teleporter has the only vocaloid avoidance of the game and will be the second highest grind after the shoot-the-target one imo: Meiko. Much of it is pattern, which can throw some people off, and save for the long intro you can’t skip, attacks are in perfect sync and the balance between pattern and RNG is just fair. Pattern segments can be too precise at times, but they will never change, so it’s up to you to find the blind spots. The entire avoidance has the infinite jump gimmick and there are no platforms, utilizing the entire screen at its advantage, and yes, you will go throughout the entire screen. In short, it’s fun, creative and surpasses the memorable Rin “Benzen” avoidance of Flower.
After this, you’re taken to a final platforming section which is just the epilogue and lighter in difficulty, and the structure is bizarre as heck in the best way. Here, the game throws all the bizarre jokes in for good measure and finding the true exit becomes a task. It’s no daunting task as the game knows exactly what you will try to do and has a special trap or joke prepared in there, so it even gives you the feeling of hopefully not missing any. This is the epilogue of all times.
As a conclusion, the game is unique and most of the ideas work splendorously; the quality gap between Flower and this is pretty much doubled. Every continuous expansion the game makes will make you go “there is more!” instead of “please just end”. The inert underworld version of the first hub was great and just the intro for the grand variety that lied ahead. The game does consider you can go to any hub in any order, so this results in several difficulty curves being all over the place. These are minor observations and I am no game creator in any way, but if I could change the pacing and order of the game instead of giving too much freedom, I would lock the right warp of the third hub (the one after everything goes colorless underworld mode) and make it available until the left one is completed. Then, when you enter the right one, I would leave only the four teleporters at your sides visible and make the top one (Meiko’s) visible once you pass all four to give a feeling of a final boss. Anyway, this still can be done by yourself in this way, and for those willing to do it in a different order, well, what can I say?
Immediate favorite. If you haven’t played this, change that stat now!
[0] Likes
Considering one thing takes to another, there are two main inspirations for the creation of Noesis: Butterfly, and Emperor. Butterfly is an adventure game like almost no other preceding it: borrowing the structure of many creators from ホネ。(End the Blood Festival, Buy the Crayon, White Cherry) and ていく (Device, Diverse) to 水鳥 (Competitor, Symmetry, Unknown, Make It Breaking Out), the guy that made us appreciate the meme-teor stream, vanish needles and challenged us to become the emperor, and that other guy that teamed up with the former guy to be the flower, make their duo peak adventure extravaganza. They take the structure from Unknown and Breaking Out, a structure that consists of evolving hubs and evolve into subsequent challenges, a universe that keeps expanding, and turn it into something of their own. The soundtrack throughout is absolutely fantastic and the production value is through the roof without overdoing it: for 2020s standards, it has aged like fine wine (even though I don’t drink).
The first hub has four main worlds:
-Red warp.- The most standard one, and the least fun due to its stupidly precise platforming; the first save is a good intro for this: there will be blood. The third screen, which is the second area of this world, is an infamous one as you are asked to shoot four switches in a row perfectly while falling and then do an A-jump. Then figuring out what to do with the moving spike is mysterious, but the trap after it literally makes your soul escape your body for three seconds. The fifth screen, which corresponds to the third area of this outer-space-like world, was the most difficult for me in the entire game and I don’t exaggerate: the ascending and descending water costed me 11% (rounded) of the total amount of deaths in the entire game, and do mind the game is very long. This screen, with all honesty, is AIDS. The seventh screen, which corresponds to the fourth area of this world, has two saves. The first required jump of the second save is unspoken of, but at least it gives you the proper align for the TAS landing. The last jump of the final screen of this world is also terrifying, but it looks more intimidating than it really is: if you have built the required memory muscle beforehand, you’ll pull it off correctly faster than you might think.
-Green warp: Trigger fiesta, but the first screen is the hardest by a ridiculous margin in the stage. The traps are brutal, and knowing what will happen does not tell you the very specific set of strats and inputs you must apply to pass the screen, and this applies even more to the very first save. Once past the two first screens, the game plays with terrific gravity and jumping gimmicks in screens 3-6 that amount for a fantastic experience. I found a funny glitch in screen 5 which allows you to walk in air infinitely, but the game still registers the shift inputs for jumping.
-Orange warp: For better or for worse, it happened: a v-string stage. Holy moly. Opening with 2 16px diagonals in a row, this stage obligates you to thing about your vertical velocity for making it through specific gaps. The precision is not the one you’re used to, as old fangames used to be ruled by 32px and 16px logic, but not here. It will be less memory muscle and more constant calculation. This stage is often hated the most by regular players, but the implementation is utmost effective: exploit the concept without being horribly unfair with it. Also, the song is beautiful and the overall atmosphere is engrossing.
-Blue warp: The Legend of Zelda time, with a fangame touch of its own! It’s a modest and short, yet fully fleshed out adventure quest within a greater game: puzzles, chests, items, secrets, and a map. Just, how? This is commitment for certain. Needle difficulty is lax as backtracks are required and you can sometimes take more than one route. It must be played to be fully grasped.
From here on, consider even heavier spoilers, as the rest of the game is encouraged to be played blind past this point at the least:
--
A new warp opens, and you enter a sort of underworld, creepy and colorless, where you have to replay a specific screen of each stage and gather items again: it gives the feeling that something became unstable, and its balance must be restored. I love open lore like this. Achieving this leads to a Destination-like buildup to a ridiculous cherry boss, which I am pretty sure is a parody of all the fangames that relied on this type of boss, tilesets and the theme of Megaman 2. Obviously, this can’t be the end? What lies ahead now?
Everything was just the opening. To put it in a way, it was the typical intro scene of the game for background or context, except you were not an NPC in it: you played it. The intro theme plays, introducing the lore of the butterfly: Kid has a crush for Gigachad Mario but doesn’t care for Remilia Scarlet. Maybe he gay??? Maybe canonical sequel of GB?
The variety displayed from here onwards is outstanding: low gravity in a huge scroller area, jump gimmicks involving triggers, and a brand new, very different hub divided into two challenges. The left one is, literally a new hub that sections into three parts: a New Super Mario Bros. tribute, a shoot-the-target collection of challenges (where a significant portion of your playtime will be spent as you figure out optimal routing strategies), and a sensational collection of minigames with the rules explained beforehand. The game keeps expanding upon its original premise and places the stakes higher and higher, and all stages genuinely seemed as planned to be playable and offer something interesting rather than a “let’s see if this works” brainstorm of concepts, such as Make It Breaking Out. The minigames test your memory skills, aim, speed, needle skills (punishing you per spike touched), and much more! This is a terrific concept for actually being self-aware about your skills and how it is affecting gameplay per second. Out of all levels, the latter one has a boss. If it’s not memorable at worst, it’s creative at best. It takes some time figuring it out, but it plays more as a minigame than as a normal boss.
Finish the new hub, and an extra challenge appears: a race that will certainly remain with you. Reading the smaller sprites of the enemy and how they dance around you is weird and inconsistent. Nevertheless, it’s a recap of most of the previous challenges and does wonders at creating tension. The final moment of the chase is terrifically animated. You’re transported, then again, to the hub referenced beforehand. The right side remains. This right portal has a continuation of the aforementioned jump gimmick triggers section, and a brand-new hub, like the left portal had. This one has five challenges.
For this right-side hub, my humble recommendation is: if you wish to have a true sense of final boss, as the game doesn’t really have one because it is more focused on being an adventure game of many ideas as trials and took less care of a climactic rendition for an adventure story, then take the upper teleporter last.
-Left teleporter is a creative crossover between Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’s three lifelines, and the fangames based on numbered, individual jump / needle challenges. This has a boss that I think is more a parody on how many fangames use the Suki Suki Suki bouncing cherry of LoveTrap as a boss than anything else, since it is the second type of boss in this game (the one in the Mario stage was more relevant).
-Right teleporter takes you to a Megaman stage. It’s brief and quite uninspired unlike many other fangame attempts to bring this concept to life, even if it’s not the core idea of the fangame such as Be the Rockman (take the secret challenges of Be the Overlord, for example). Also, the main save is really long. In spite of this, the boss works really well as an original concept instead of dodge and shoot, or memorize and dodge.
-Downwards left teleporter is nothing special: trap screens with only one notable gimmick. The real meat is the scoreless cherry avoidance. Fun to do, but might be tedious for some.
-Downwards right teleporter is the most generic and I would personally take this first. It consists in many generic screens with Kirby’s music in a heavy Carnival fashion that has a counter for every screen: either how many jumps you do, or how many pixels you’re moving left or right. The latter has a big opportunity window, but the former is stricter, as there’s only one way to do every screen. Boss is, well, Kirby, and has the quality of 2011 aqua’s fangames in average. Also really easy.
The top teleporter has the only vocaloid avoidance of the game and will be the second highest grind after the shoot-the-target one imo: Meiko. Much of it is pattern, which can throw some people off, and save for the long intro you can’t skip, attacks are in perfect sync and the balance between pattern and RNG is just fair. Pattern segments can be too precise at times, but they will never change, so it’s up to you to find the blind spots. The entire avoidance has the infinite jump gimmick and there are no platforms, utilizing the entire screen at its advantage, and yes, you will go throughout the entire screen. In short, it’s fun, creative and surpasses the memorable Rin “Benzen” avoidance of Flower.
After this, you’re taken to a final platforming section which is just the epilogue and lighter in difficulty, and the structure is bizarre as heck in the best way. Here, the game throws all the bizarre jokes in for good measure and finding the true exit becomes a task. It’s no daunting task as the game knows exactly what you will try to do and has a special trap or joke prepared in there, so it even gives you the feeling of hopefully not missing any. This is the epilogue of all times.
As a conclusion, the game is unique and most of the ideas work splendorously; the quality gap between Flower and this is pretty much doubled. Every continuous expansion the game makes will make you go “there is more!” instead of “please just end”. The inert underworld version of the first hub was great and just the intro for the grand variety that lied ahead. The game does consider you can go to any hub in any order, so this results in several difficulty curves being all over the place. These are minor observations and I am no game creator in any way, but if I could change the pacing and order of the game instead of giving too much freedom, I would lock the right warp of the third hub (the one after everything goes colorless underworld mode) and make it available until the left one is completed. Then, when you enter the right one, I would leave only the four teleporters at your sides visible and make the top one (Meiko’s) visible once you pass all four to give a feeling of a final boss. Anyway, this still can be done by yourself in this way, and for those willing to do it in a different order, well, what can I say?
Immediate favorite. If you haven’t played this, change that stat now!
Rating: 7.0 70
Difficulty: 80 80
Nov 11, 2023
ElCochran90
For: I Wanna be the 256
For: I Wanna be the 256
Double the 128, double the fun? Not literally in a mathematical way, but there’s improvement in this one.
Homie 128-Up is back with lessons learned and a more solid difficulty balance and progression. The game still begins brutally and is not devoid of traps; it focuses more on triggers and makes them more obvious, although this often comes with the price of paying with many trollish deaths, so this is also getting the “trap” tag. Stage 1 still has dumb guessing games: First screen, if you do the gate, the minispike will move, as it’s obvious; second screen of the same first stage, if you touch the perfectly still brown platforms, they will move! Etc...
The third stage is the most interesting one overall, as it plays with the concept of backtracking. I wish it scrolled horizontally, but you don’t have to backtrack through the same spots you went through. So, considering what seems to be possible routing, you should try that road first and see if it works. Unlike many parts, the screen transitions here are sometimes unfair as you might die.
For the life of me, stage 4 used a Crash Bash song and I was cheering. Green stage looks bad, but I couldn’t stop thinking about this, as brutal as it was. Also, stage 5 punched me in the face with featuring the song of my favorite track of Sonic Riders for the PS2. Awesome sauce! I enjoyed the Sonic-Riders pink stage. Stage 5 is when things get exponentially harder and when the game begins competing with RZ in terms of difficulty: it’s horribly precise. Your first major grinding will be done here. The substantial backtracking begins here as well, but at least it speaks favorably for the thought that went into the level design. Second screen of stage 6 has the brilliant idea of ending a long, hard save with a 9-jump: this is uncanny to the second save of Stage 5 of RZ (although I’ll grant RZ makes you do two and upside down).
The last stage is a foreshadowing of greater things to come in the sequel. It is also the most brutal for many (2nd hardest for me). Add some inverted gravity water sections with triggers since the very first screen and you’re in for a blast. The third save is unforgiving from the opening maneuvering you have to do, an unfriendly screen transition, many intended 16px gaps and triggers that are traps. This is where I began to suffer the griding more than enjoying the increasingly creative level design. Third screen has one of the bs moments of the first game: “See this diamond? To the naked eye, if you do it, you’ll most probably die and it’s useless, but do it anyway: it’s necessary for progressing through the stage”. Even when you do the diamond successfully the first time, you have no idea what will happen and die anyway, but it’s the only way to find out. What’s the logic of treating the player like this?
Now, I still have to be honest: the final screen is a near-masterpiece, and the best moment in the entire trilogy (yes, including 512): it’s a harsh endurance test, but balanced, intuitive, heart-pounding and challenging. There are no unpleasant surprises, no triggers that have to be activated in a random wall in North Korea so you can come back to the screen and progress. The screen keeps changing after you go to a dead end, indicating exactly where to go next: purely trigger needle. Inverted gravity is used correctly, and there’s a lot of tension and calculation involved. The second vine in the middle is the toughest jump in the screen, but you know exactly what you must do. It’s the perfect setup for the final boss.
The final boss, Super Galaxy Man, has less visual challenge than the predecessor of 128, making the endurance boss a fun ride. It’s a refreshing take after so much freaking needle. It’s more memorable for better reasons than the final boss of 128 and is perfectly readable: no unfair shenanigans to blind you temporarily after a long attempt. It’s you and your reflexes vs. the boss. Classic theme also.
Concerning the difficulty, in average, I found this as difficult as RZ. It’s unreasonably hard. I had a very similar amount of deaths in both games, but there are two effects I think cancel each other out numerically: I did RZ more than a year ago, with less skill than today, but there is no luck boss. On the contrary, this boss is the total opposite: it’s even kind of trivial for some reason (maybe because the main purpose of the game is still to be trigger needle).
Thanks for making.
[0] Likes
Homie 128-Up is back with lessons learned and a more solid difficulty balance and progression. The game still begins brutally and is not devoid of traps; it focuses more on triggers and makes them more obvious, although this often comes with the price of paying with many trollish deaths, so this is also getting the “trap” tag. Stage 1 still has dumb guessing games: First screen, if you do the gate, the minispike will move, as it’s obvious; second screen of the same first stage, if you touch the perfectly still brown platforms, they will move! Etc...
The third stage is the most interesting one overall, as it plays with the concept of backtracking. I wish it scrolled horizontally, but you don’t have to backtrack through the same spots you went through. So, considering what seems to be possible routing, you should try that road first and see if it works. Unlike many parts, the screen transitions here are sometimes unfair as you might die.
For the life of me, stage 4 used a Crash Bash song and I was cheering. Green stage looks bad, but I couldn’t stop thinking about this, as brutal as it was. Also, stage 5 punched me in the face with featuring the song of my favorite track of Sonic Riders for the PS2. Awesome sauce! I enjoyed the Sonic-Riders pink stage. Stage 5 is when things get exponentially harder and when the game begins competing with RZ in terms of difficulty: it’s horribly precise. Your first major grinding will be done here. The substantial backtracking begins here as well, but at least it speaks favorably for the thought that went into the level design. Second screen of stage 6 has the brilliant idea of ending a long, hard save with a 9-jump: this is uncanny to the second save of Stage 5 of RZ (although I’ll grant RZ makes you do two and upside down).
The last stage is a foreshadowing of greater things to come in the sequel. It is also the most brutal for many (2nd hardest for me). Add some inverted gravity water sections with triggers since the very first screen and you’re in for a blast. The third save is unforgiving from the opening maneuvering you have to do, an unfriendly screen transition, many intended 16px gaps and triggers that are traps. This is where I began to suffer the griding more than enjoying the increasingly creative level design. Third screen has one of the bs moments of the first game: “See this diamond? To the naked eye, if you do it, you’ll most probably die and it’s useless, but do it anyway: it’s necessary for progressing through the stage”. Even when you do the diamond successfully the first time, you have no idea what will happen and die anyway, but it’s the only way to find out. What’s the logic of treating the player like this?
Now, I still have to be honest: the final screen is a near-masterpiece, and the best moment in the entire trilogy (yes, including 512): it’s a harsh endurance test, but balanced, intuitive, heart-pounding and challenging. There are no unpleasant surprises, no triggers that have to be activated in a random wall in North Korea so you can come back to the screen and progress. The screen keeps changing after you go to a dead end, indicating exactly where to go next: purely trigger needle. Inverted gravity is used correctly, and there’s a lot of tension and calculation involved. The second vine in the middle is the toughest jump in the screen, but you know exactly what you must do. It’s the perfect setup for the final boss.
The final boss, Super Galaxy Man, has less visual challenge than the predecessor of 128, making the endurance boss a fun ride. It’s a refreshing take after so much freaking needle. It’s more memorable for better reasons than the final boss of 128 and is perfectly readable: no unfair shenanigans to blind you temporarily after a long attempt. It’s you and your reflexes vs. the boss. Classic theme also.
Concerning the difficulty, in average, I found this as difficult as RZ. It’s unreasonably hard. I had a very similar amount of deaths in both games, but there are two effects I think cancel each other out numerically: I did RZ more than a year ago, with less skill than today, but there is no luck boss. On the contrary, this boss is the total opposite: it’s even kind of trivial for some reason (maybe because the main purpose of the game is still to be trigger needle).
Thanks for making.
Rating: 4.5 45
Difficulty: 86 86
Nov 7, 2023
ElCochran90
For: I wanna be the 128
For: I wanna be the 128
*Cleared on 01/06/2023*
“Guess which random space to go to by dying many times: the game.”
128-Up applies his username to a fangame, the dream of all auteur(?). This is the first real attempt to create a Rukito-like game. Despite the variety and playtime this game aims at giving, I dislike this one very much.
The core problem is that it never decides between being a trigger game or a trap game (I don’t know why the trap tag hasn’t been applied as it is quite shameful in this department unlike the sequels: fake blocks, alternate paths, etc.). Traps can be memorized and that’s fine-ish, but the triggers are horrendous. The most intuitive way to handle a trigger game, which must not necessarily be a trap game, is to open a new path or activate a mechanism that transforms the screen at least marginally, or in the best of cases, reshapes it to a way that is not even considered as backtracking anymore. The game fails miserably at this.
It starts looking really bad from the first stage (perhaps it’s forced tradition, like all forced Stan Lee cameos in every Marvel film, may he rest in peace), and this is where the trigger problem begins, but I’ll get back to it later. The second stage looks really cool and this is where you realize the emulation of Rukito is real, but with a distinguishable stamp. Then the third stage, which is vine-heavy, comes back to an annoying Microsoft Pain green with a dark blue background. Visual style is not consistent and that original in its attempts to create soothing brand new appealing stages.
You can get over this: fangames that are deficient visually can more than compensate this with the platforming, and this was something very real in the early 2010s. However, the trigger implementation is, to put it mildly, stupid. As mentioned, triggers should be intuitive, but the problem begins even in Stage 1 where several spots could be tried after a long save to see if anything freaking moves. Take the second save of the first screen (no lie) as the first example. The first jump is quite tight. You might be trying to activate something in the ground, but nope, you have to go to the middle block. Fine, you see something moves. It worked: it required a very weird jump in the very first screen (no difficulty curve in this game; even Rukito had them). Now let’s go to beneath the two spikes with their tips colliding; there’s a small space beneath. Go. Yes, it works. A spike moved. Let’s go there. Cool, worked also; something opened on the right. The following moment is dumb: a spike opens to take you to a place that leads nowhere. It’s a 16px gap with nothing above. Should I try left? Should I try right? I did try right since there was no roof. Nope. It was left, but I died. It’s not obvious; sometimes it’s a guessing game.
There are two main ways to solve this:
-Close all alternate possibilities and have a single clear one
-Indicate with a marker what wall you should randomly touch or what 32X32 space you should go to
This bad trigger problem is ALL OVER the game, creating unnecessary difficulty. However, I’ll mention the three most infamous examples that scarred me:
-Screen 3 of Stage 5 (yellow pyramid-like stage): it’s an underwater race against the clock (which you of course activate by “almost doing” a random gate that exists because it exists. The road is obviously closed by spikes, so good luck finding the triggers, to keep opening the road. Some of them are even 16px wide. It’s nonsensical.
-Save 2 of Stage 6 (red stage): this is the worst example of them all. I had no idea what to do. There’s a vine on the left wall; I kept exploring everything in that area because it was the obvious thing to do, at least for me. What you must do is stupid: jump over the completely useless and random spike on the far right wall (you must go through a 16 px space of course) and hug said wall double jumping as high as possible. And I mean, very high. This will intuitively deactivate the minispike on the previous left wall you were trying and will obviously remove the upper road once you run away from the floor trap. What in the world?!! Shamefully, this was the moment I had to use an online guide and this moment is beyond me.
-Save 2 of Stage 7 (gray castle-like stage): after doing the double diagonal in the middle of the screen, a spike opens, but the jump is impossible. Naturally, one must activate a new trigger that is... where? It’s a leap of faith. Well, let’s fall down. No? Ok, maybe try going through the diagonal and over the three spikes: perhaps one will move. No? Well, it’s the block beneath me even if I’d immediately die. Completely obvious!
Honorable mention goes to the water section of Stage 7 also.
Final boss Mushroom Mecha is fun, but the background choice can make you confused with what hurts you and what doesn’t. It has many phases, so be prepared for an endurance test. I am not a fan of the huge light made in the fifth phase to blind your view completely, making it a luck game pretty much more than a reading one.
If you finished this game, play the sequels; they do up the standards progressively.
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“Guess which random space to go to by dying many times: the game.”
128-Up applies his username to a fangame, the dream of all auteur(?). This is the first real attempt to create a Rukito-like game. Despite the variety and playtime this game aims at giving, I dislike this one very much.
The core problem is that it never decides between being a trigger game or a trap game (I don’t know why the trap tag hasn’t been applied as it is quite shameful in this department unlike the sequels: fake blocks, alternate paths, etc.). Traps can be memorized and that’s fine-ish, but the triggers are horrendous. The most intuitive way to handle a trigger game, which must not necessarily be a trap game, is to open a new path or activate a mechanism that transforms the screen at least marginally, or in the best of cases, reshapes it to a way that is not even considered as backtracking anymore. The game fails miserably at this.
It starts looking really bad from the first stage (perhaps it’s forced tradition, like all forced Stan Lee cameos in every Marvel film, may he rest in peace), and this is where the trigger problem begins, but I’ll get back to it later. The second stage looks really cool and this is where you realize the emulation of Rukito is real, but with a distinguishable stamp. Then the third stage, which is vine-heavy, comes back to an annoying Microsoft Pain green with a dark blue background. Visual style is not consistent and that original in its attempts to create soothing brand new appealing stages.
You can get over this: fangames that are deficient visually can more than compensate this with the platforming, and this was something very real in the early 2010s. However, the trigger implementation is, to put it mildly, stupid. As mentioned, triggers should be intuitive, but the problem begins even in Stage 1 where several spots could be tried after a long save to see if anything freaking moves. Take the second save of the first screen (no lie) as the first example. The first jump is quite tight. You might be trying to activate something in the ground, but nope, you have to go to the middle block. Fine, you see something moves. It worked: it required a very weird jump in the very first screen (no difficulty curve in this game; even Rukito had them). Now let’s go to beneath the two spikes with their tips colliding; there’s a small space beneath. Go. Yes, it works. A spike moved. Let’s go there. Cool, worked also; something opened on the right. The following moment is dumb: a spike opens to take you to a place that leads nowhere. It’s a 16px gap with nothing above. Should I try left? Should I try right? I did try right since there was no roof. Nope. It was left, but I died. It’s not obvious; sometimes it’s a guessing game.
There are two main ways to solve this:
-Close all alternate possibilities and have a single clear one
-Indicate with a marker what wall you should randomly touch or what 32X32 space you should go to
This bad trigger problem is ALL OVER the game, creating unnecessary difficulty. However, I’ll mention the three most infamous examples that scarred me:
-Screen 3 of Stage 5 (yellow pyramid-like stage): it’s an underwater race against the clock (which you of course activate by “almost doing” a random gate that exists because it exists. The road is obviously closed by spikes, so good luck finding the triggers, to keep opening the road. Some of them are even 16px wide. It’s nonsensical.
-Save 2 of Stage 6 (red stage): this is the worst example of them all. I had no idea what to do. There’s a vine on the left wall; I kept exploring everything in that area because it was the obvious thing to do, at least for me. What you must do is stupid: jump over the completely useless and random spike on the far right wall (you must go through a 16 px space of course) and hug said wall double jumping as high as possible. And I mean, very high. This will intuitively deactivate the minispike on the previous left wall you were trying and will obviously remove the upper road once you run away from the floor trap. What in the world?!! Shamefully, this was the moment I had to use an online guide and this moment is beyond me.
-Save 2 of Stage 7 (gray castle-like stage): after doing the double diagonal in the middle of the screen, a spike opens, but the jump is impossible. Naturally, one must activate a new trigger that is... where? It’s a leap of faith. Well, let’s fall down. No? Ok, maybe try going through the diagonal and over the three spikes: perhaps one will move. No? Well, it’s the block beneath me even if I’d immediately die. Completely obvious!
Honorable mention goes to the water section of Stage 7 also.
Final boss Mushroom Mecha is fun, but the background choice can make you confused with what hurts you and what doesn’t. It has many phases, so be prepared for an endurance test. I am not a fan of the huge light made in the fifth phase to blind your view completely, making it a luck game pretty much more than a reading one.
If you finished this game, play the sequels; they do up the standards progressively.
Rating: 3.3 33
Difficulty: 80 80
Nov 6, 2023
ElCochran90
For: I wanna be the Dieary
For: I wanna be the Dieary
*Cleared on 25/05/2023*
Rating and difficulty score include “extra”, but I’d highly debate it is actually extra. Secrets are required to go for the true ending, but there is really no ending for making only the basic stages.
Azure is one of a kind. When it comes to platforming ideas, there is nothing new, and the overabundance of traps will make you chop your head off. However, there is a story behind this fangame that is quite intriguing, as subjective as it might be. It has RPG splashes all over it.
The story opens with an undefeatable boss that is meant to be impossible until everything turns out to be a dream. At this point, your intuition will whisper: “this is obvious foreshadowing for the final boss I’ll have to face when I’m more powerful”. You wake up. Nice to see the Kid finally owning an apartment with a nice view; what this fangame plays with is the notion between what is real and what is not, and this “portal” between the two realms seems to be his bed. One could theorize that the entire game is a dream and the final boss is a projection of his internal fears or loneliness (can’t ever read too much in a fangame), as there doesn’t seem to be an ominous danger for the planet, but inner challenges the Kid must face. There is even a secret in Kid’s bed, which might also indicate everything is happening in a dream.
All is beautiful so far, but it is the stages that make you forget about Azure’s intriguing conception of bringing a fantasy adventure story to life and take you back to generic half-assedness. Some are fun to play (Bomberman, chase of spike walls and roofs with the wooden tilesets), one is cryptic (puzzle) and one of them in particular (red warp which takes you to a purple stage; for some funny reason colors never coincide) is completely mental with the traps. Do not even dare play this in Hard Mode; it’s obvious many are meant to be played in Medium Difficulty for save balancing.
One review stated there is a lot going on in this “surprisingly short game”. Make no mistake, as this is no short fangame at all. For reference, Wolfie’s first playthrough took more than 2 hours, and the WR currently for 100% is 25:42 (17:46 for any %). The game has six main stages, each one with a visual style and platforming of their own; there is a secret in each stage, which location are more than often cryptic, but they are fun to get. At least the game provides variety, and if you’re suffering through a stage, you have the guarantee that the next one will be slightly different at the least. A secret in particular requires dancing at a beat while dodging, and although it is quite mental, the game gives you enough error margin for pulling it off.
Bosses are not that generic, so expect zero cherries, which is an overused old-school trope. One boss in particular (all I will say is it involves a dog) is so sudoku-looking and yet so sentimental that you have no idea what the intention behind the boss is, and once you get the funny-looking segment, there is a second phase that gives you no prior warning of what it was meant to be. There is a troll boss, maybe for the laughs, but it is shown in one of the longest stages, so maybe it is not such a good idea to reward the player looking for adventure bosses with a troll boss after so much effort was invested in a long stage considering their length and difficulty is all over the place and you can take them in any order you wish: it’s a dice’s roll.
The reason I debate extra is because there is not a “Thank You” screen once you jump off the balcony; it just says “The End” in an obvious “This is not the intended end, bro”. Getting the secrets is more than commended, because it will lead to the most special section of them all: the final stage before the boss.
This stage is easy to confuse with an L_game, and for being such an early game, that notion could be challenged. Azure is the author of an infamous fangame called “I Wanna Be the Goner”. In short, it is a freaking J-Tool default tileset with extremely precise cancer-ish jumps, but with a save immediately after each jump. Sounds like L, but it is not, as it mostly restricts the jumps to 16px, but mostly it is 32px. Align knowledge is utmost recommended. The final stage is a Goner-like stage, perhaps the prototype for Goner and Goner-like games, as I don’t know the actual release of Goner. It’s THE Guy-Rock-themed, generic-looking stage of the game, but just like the route to the right in Go the Dotkid!, it is oh-so-fun. For 2011-2012, it was strange to find something like this and, as far as I’m concerned, you cannot softlock (theoretically, you should try really hard to get there). It has only two screens, and believe me, it is enough. Azure was really conscious about the unusual difficulty peak, so there is a counter of your deaths on the top right corner that belong exclusively to this area. I wish this area had another song and visual style, but I swear it was so fun.
The final boss was a first try, which is beyond stupid. It was one of the most anti-climactic feelings I’ve ever had after such a huge build-up.
Recommended; there’s more than meets the eye.
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Rating and difficulty score include “extra”, but I’d highly debate it is actually extra. Secrets are required to go for the true ending, but there is really no ending for making only the basic stages.
Azure is one of a kind. When it comes to platforming ideas, there is nothing new, and the overabundance of traps will make you chop your head off. However, there is a story behind this fangame that is quite intriguing, as subjective as it might be. It has RPG splashes all over it.
The story opens with an undefeatable boss that is meant to be impossible until everything turns out to be a dream. At this point, your intuition will whisper: “this is obvious foreshadowing for the final boss I’ll have to face when I’m more powerful”. You wake up. Nice to see the Kid finally owning an apartment with a nice view; what this fangame plays with is the notion between what is real and what is not, and this “portal” between the two realms seems to be his bed. One could theorize that the entire game is a dream and the final boss is a projection of his internal fears or loneliness (can’t ever read too much in a fangame), as there doesn’t seem to be an ominous danger for the planet, but inner challenges the Kid must face. There is even a secret in Kid’s bed, which might also indicate everything is happening in a dream.
All is beautiful so far, but it is the stages that make you forget about Azure’s intriguing conception of bringing a fantasy adventure story to life and take you back to generic half-assedness. Some are fun to play (Bomberman, chase of spike walls and roofs with the wooden tilesets), one is cryptic (puzzle) and one of them in particular (red warp which takes you to a purple stage; for some funny reason colors never coincide) is completely mental with the traps. Do not even dare play this in Hard Mode; it’s obvious many are meant to be played in Medium Difficulty for save balancing.
One review stated there is a lot going on in this “surprisingly short game”. Make no mistake, as this is no short fangame at all. For reference, Wolfie’s first playthrough took more than 2 hours, and the WR currently for 100% is 25:42 (17:46 for any %). The game has six main stages, each one with a visual style and platforming of their own; there is a secret in each stage, which location are more than often cryptic, but they are fun to get. At least the game provides variety, and if you’re suffering through a stage, you have the guarantee that the next one will be slightly different at the least. A secret in particular requires dancing at a beat while dodging, and although it is quite mental, the game gives you enough error margin for pulling it off.
Bosses are not that generic, so expect zero cherries, which is an overused old-school trope. One boss in particular (all I will say is it involves a dog) is so sudoku-looking and yet so sentimental that you have no idea what the intention behind the boss is, and once you get the funny-looking segment, there is a second phase that gives you no prior warning of what it was meant to be. There is a troll boss, maybe for the laughs, but it is shown in one of the longest stages, so maybe it is not such a good idea to reward the player looking for adventure bosses with a troll boss after so much effort was invested in a long stage considering their length and difficulty is all over the place and you can take them in any order you wish: it’s a dice’s roll.
The reason I debate extra is because there is not a “Thank You” screen once you jump off the balcony; it just says “The End” in an obvious “This is not the intended end, bro”. Getting the secrets is more than commended, because it will lead to the most special section of them all: the final stage before the boss.
This stage is easy to confuse with an L_game, and for being such an early game, that notion could be challenged. Azure is the author of an infamous fangame called “I Wanna Be the Goner”. In short, it is a freaking J-Tool default tileset with extremely precise cancer-ish jumps, but with a save immediately after each jump. Sounds like L, but it is not, as it mostly restricts the jumps to 16px, but mostly it is 32px. Align knowledge is utmost recommended. The final stage is a Goner-like stage, perhaps the prototype for Goner and Goner-like games, as I don’t know the actual release of Goner. It’s THE Guy-Rock-themed, generic-looking stage of the game, but just like the route to the right in Go the Dotkid!, it is oh-so-fun. For 2011-2012, it was strange to find something like this and, as far as I’m concerned, you cannot softlock (theoretically, you should try really hard to get there). It has only two screens, and believe me, it is enough. Azure was really conscious about the unusual difficulty peak, so there is a counter of your deaths on the top right corner that belong exclusively to this area. I wish this area had another song and visual style, but I swear it was so fun.
The final boss was a first try, which is beyond stupid. It was one of the most anti-climactic feelings I’ve ever had after such a huge build-up.
Recommended; there’s more than meets the eye.
Rating: 4.6 46
Difficulty: 75 75
Nov 5, 2023
ElCochran90
For: I wanna be the Shiny spark!!
For: I wanna be the Shiny spark!!
*Cleared on 18/05/2023*
This game... This game has me mad.
Important disclaimer: If you want to make all planned challenges for the game and play all extra content, you must play in Very Hard Mode (because Popularity, remember??). This is very dumb by itself, as the Normal difficulty is the intended one (not Zako).
For anyone that claims this is the worst fangame featured in K2, you should (not) introduce yourself to Sadist, but this one is quite up (down?) there.
From the creator of the infamous Popularity and one of the makers of THE iDOLM@STER, Shiny Spark is infamously stupid and hilarious at the same time, a surreal and absurd experience I would only recommend to those that can extract fun from Sudoku idiocy.
The whole game circles around the concept of you having to conquer hidden areas in the original castle of The Guy. Each fake exit is now an entry to a new area that goes from very interesting to mind-blowingly dumb. There are also extremely cryptic secrets hidden in each stage for unlocking the extra content of the game which is the equivalent of willingly signing a contract for free urethrotomy.
Levels are listed in the order I played them:
-The Super Mario Bros. 3 section is straight-up sudoku trash. All block and “spike” sprites are from the original game and have no rhyme or reason. Version 1.0 had a straight-up gray background; the most recent Version 2.0 has a cave background which makes it look less cancer. More often than not, the game uses a star gimmick which is too precise for its own sake: it gives you invincibility and higher speed, but the timing for it to end is very specific and one screen expects you to do miracles as there is almost no spare frames to get to the end. The secret is a horrible guessing game full of black 32X32 piranha plants, and many of these are fake, so you must find your way through. However, you cannot save inside the secret room, so you have to do the way to the secret every time. The boss is ok, featuring a funny recreation of the famous Fight Against Smithy from Super Mario RPG, including his most damaging attack.
-My second stage ended up being an absolute rarity and I can’t say I loathe it because of how crazy it is, but also has inconsistent obstacle hitbox mechanics: a race through a track where everything kills you, including the sides of the racetrack. The level uses an infinity jump gimmick for maneuvering (thank God no Nekoron engine), and it amusingly implements a map of the whole racetrack which is no more than a copy-paste of the original screen but in smaller size (you can see yourself in there as well). Contemplating every pixel of all stationary and spinning attacks is amusing to the max, but the design is really badly done, especially with the rotating ones, so they cannot be timed correctly at first glance. Secret requires an awful, long backtrack and surviving a very tight, prolonged section, but the boss is the worst highlight of the game for me: a grindy, learny avoidance that has a high degree of precision during the last attacks (you’ll spend most of your time here), and a very prolonged and unnecessary choke phase at the end which is so easy that you can get bored and hence die easily. This post-section trash demands from you to pay attention to the embodiment of boredom. Concept is funny, as it is not an avoidance featuring music, but dialogue, but it gets tedious real fast.
-My third stage was LoveTrap, and it is a genius stage, so genius, that the game-maker reinvented the stage... Not really. Eden literally just makes you play the original water stage in reverse and, as far as I’m concerned, nothing changes. It even has the planes at the ending (or beginning?) of the stage. There is the secret, and it’s the least cryptic of them all. I don’t even have to explain the boss because it is the Suki Suki Suki cherry and I don’t need to tell to jack sh!t. This is the fangame dictionary definition of how not to do a tribute to another fangame.
-My fourth stage was fun against all odds, in spite of its unfair RNG: it’s a beatmania stage with an amazing song that unfortunately restarts with pressing R (you simply don’t restart a beat like that), and an avoidance featuring the song Miracle Moon. The stage consists in a cascade of RNG platforms that push you up at random speeds, so it’s a clumsy mix of skill, timing and luck. The section is quite trollish, as you’re going up happily at full speed and it turns out the entire left or right side of the screen is guaranteed death by spike. The secret requires you to do the first screen, save, and come back all the way down, and it is torture. Sounds easier to fall than to go up, but no; there is a section where you get bombarded by spikes from both sides. The boss is badly timed and a few times the timing does not consist with the song: I am aware this takes a lot of time to program, but bad programming can cause death, and the very ending of the avoidance forces you to do a forced maneuver; it gets worse when the beat lines become invisible and it becomes either a forecasting teller exercise, or one of memory.
-My fifth stage was the puzzle stage with the Trials of Mana layout and sprites. The puzzles are stupid, especially one that asks you to progress every you’re your PC time ends up with the number 5. This is beyond belief. There’s so much dead time in 10 minutes. There is nothing special about this stage, save for the design, but the infamous part of you choosing invisible walls as correct paths goes beyond description, and that is a requirement not only for getting through the stage, but also for the secret. The boss is interesting in the sense that, as long as you fire only one bullet in his direction while your horizontal position matches any pixel of his hitbox, he will avoid it. If there are two bullets on the screen, and the second is done at damaging him, it works best. Doesn’t help that the screen gets loaded with trash the more damage to inflict, but it is what it is. The strat is two shooting him while falling, but the first bullet must be above him and the second or third towards his direction; for some reason, boss goes blind and the attack works.
-My sixth stage was the worst and I wish I didn’t have left it for last. It’s the infamous Yoshi stage, where you face the same level over and over again and you must, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, figure out what to do: invisible blocks, triggers, traps, appearing and disappearing blocks, or sometimes even wait. Anything goes in this horrible stage, except you’re not given a single hint whatsoever of what one should do. It’s unspeakably terrible and up there with the most frustrating stages I’ve ever played. The secret requires a great endurance test and avoid going to the warp during a particular screen; it’s horrendous. The boss is equally bad: it’s a bunch of Super Mario World tubes which spawn an increasing amount of Yoshis throwing eggs at you the more damage you inflict the main green one.
Once this has been done, you can collect an extra secret, which is found within the hub of The Guy’s maze itself by activating several triggers. I must admit this overtly simplistic idea was mildly entertaining and, with the help of some additional triggers to the original, it makes you go through almost every ramification of the maze from beginning to end and back to the beginning to obtain the secret. One switch is very hidden, but the challenge is ok to do.
As old-school tradition dictates, we have a new section dedicated to the original IWBTG and a boss rush. Terrific. No news here. Once beaten, you go to an amusing Pokemon battle which, for my two cents, has amusingly the best production quality of the game. The fight is interesting, and I can’t get over how freaking cute the dancing Pikachu is (you also feel like an idiot when you die to him).
Game ends, credits roll and a wonderful song plays: 隣に・・・ 三浦あずさ(CV:たかはし智秋) (Tonari Ni... by Azusa Miura). The game does two things to hint you it’s not the true end:
1) It plays the music differently. During a portion that is supposed to be heavy in instrumentation, you only hear the singing. For my two cents, this is, I think, an unofficial version and my favorite: you hear her voice echo and the chorus accompanying only, contrary to the original version. This is something stunning. Unintended brilliance?
2) The clear screen has a question mark.
So this is the point where the credits play the role, right? Well, not necessarily. You’re royally f**ked if you played in any difficulty lower than Very Hard, because all the extra deaths and time wasted for getting those tough secrets is completely a waste of your life: in Normal, it didn’t make a difference if you went for them or not. You might say: “bruh, the original IWBTG did the same thing”, but I disagree: the secrets were additional optional challenges and the disappointment was that they didn’t unlock anything or gave you extra guns. Here, you know there’s a whole game still lying ahead of you, including new platforming stages based on the original six stages, and you will never see them because, just like eden did with Popularity or Carnival with Picture. Picture betrays you with being able to get secrets in Medium and then raises a middle finger to you; this game does as well.
For anything that’s worth, I have some references that, at least, extra involves all bosses in a boss rush buffed and you must clear it without deaths; extra increased difficulty to unreasonable levels. Maybe, no thank you?
Anyway, screw you.
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This game... This game has me mad.
Important disclaimer: If you want to make all planned challenges for the game and play all extra content, you must play in Very Hard Mode (because Popularity, remember??). This is very dumb by itself, as the Normal difficulty is the intended one (not Zako).
For anyone that claims this is the worst fangame featured in K2, you should (not) introduce yourself to Sadist, but this one is quite up (down?) there.
From the creator of the infamous Popularity and one of the makers of THE iDOLM@STER, Shiny Spark is infamously stupid and hilarious at the same time, a surreal and absurd experience I would only recommend to those that can extract fun from Sudoku idiocy.
The whole game circles around the concept of you having to conquer hidden areas in the original castle of The Guy. Each fake exit is now an entry to a new area that goes from very interesting to mind-blowingly dumb. There are also extremely cryptic secrets hidden in each stage for unlocking the extra content of the game which is the equivalent of willingly signing a contract for free urethrotomy.
Levels are listed in the order I played them:
-The Super Mario Bros. 3 section is straight-up sudoku trash. All block and “spike” sprites are from the original game and have no rhyme or reason. Version 1.0 had a straight-up gray background; the most recent Version 2.0 has a cave background which makes it look less cancer. More often than not, the game uses a star gimmick which is too precise for its own sake: it gives you invincibility and higher speed, but the timing for it to end is very specific and one screen expects you to do miracles as there is almost no spare frames to get to the end. The secret is a horrible guessing game full of black 32X32 piranha plants, and many of these are fake, so you must find your way through. However, you cannot save inside the secret room, so you have to do the way to the secret every time. The boss is ok, featuring a funny recreation of the famous Fight Against Smithy from Super Mario RPG, including his most damaging attack.
-My second stage ended up being an absolute rarity and I can’t say I loathe it because of how crazy it is, but also has inconsistent obstacle hitbox mechanics: a race through a track where everything kills you, including the sides of the racetrack. The level uses an infinity jump gimmick for maneuvering (thank God no Nekoron engine), and it amusingly implements a map of the whole racetrack which is no more than a copy-paste of the original screen but in smaller size (you can see yourself in there as well). Contemplating every pixel of all stationary and spinning attacks is amusing to the max, but the design is really badly done, especially with the rotating ones, so they cannot be timed correctly at first glance. Secret requires an awful, long backtrack and surviving a very tight, prolonged section, but the boss is the worst highlight of the game for me: a grindy, learny avoidance that has a high degree of precision during the last attacks (you’ll spend most of your time here), and a very prolonged and unnecessary choke phase at the end which is so easy that you can get bored and hence die easily. This post-section trash demands from you to pay attention to the embodiment of boredom. Concept is funny, as it is not an avoidance featuring music, but dialogue, but it gets tedious real fast.
-My third stage was LoveTrap, and it is a genius stage, so genius, that the game-maker reinvented the stage... Not really. Eden literally just makes you play the original water stage in reverse and, as far as I’m concerned, nothing changes. It even has the planes at the ending (or beginning?) of the stage. There is the secret, and it’s the least cryptic of them all. I don’t even have to explain the boss because it is the Suki Suki Suki cherry and I don’t need to tell to jack sh!t. This is the fangame dictionary definition of how not to do a tribute to another fangame.
-My fourth stage was fun against all odds, in spite of its unfair RNG: it’s a beatmania stage with an amazing song that unfortunately restarts with pressing R (you simply don’t restart a beat like that), and an avoidance featuring the song Miracle Moon. The stage consists in a cascade of RNG platforms that push you up at random speeds, so it’s a clumsy mix of skill, timing and luck. The section is quite trollish, as you’re going up happily at full speed and it turns out the entire left or right side of the screen is guaranteed death by spike. The secret requires you to do the first screen, save, and come back all the way down, and it is torture. Sounds easier to fall than to go up, but no; there is a section where you get bombarded by spikes from both sides. The boss is badly timed and a few times the timing does not consist with the song: I am aware this takes a lot of time to program, but bad programming can cause death, and the very ending of the avoidance forces you to do a forced maneuver; it gets worse when the beat lines become invisible and it becomes either a forecasting teller exercise, or one of memory.
-My fifth stage was the puzzle stage with the Trials of Mana layout and sprites. The puzzles are stupid, especially one that asks you to progress every you’re your PC time ends up with the number 5. This is beyond belief. There’s so much dead time in 10 minutes. There is nothing special about this stage, save for the design, but the infamous part of you choosing invisible walls as correct paths goes beyond description, and that is a requirement not only for getting through the stage, but also for the secret. The boss is interesting in the sense that, as long as you fire only one bullet in his direction while your horizontal position matches any pixel of his hitbox, he will avoid it. If there are two bullets on the screen, and the second is done at damaging him, it works best. Doesn’t help that the screen gets loaded with trash the more damage to inflict, but it is what it is. The strat is two shooting him while falling, but the first bullet must be above him and the second or third towards his direction; for some reason, boss goes blind and the attack works.
-My sixth stage was the worst and I wish I didn’t have left it for last. It’s the infamous Yoshi stage, where you face the same level over and over again and you must, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, figure out what to do: invisible blocks, triggers, traps, appearing and disappearing blocks, or sometimes even wait. Anything goes in this horrible stage, except you’re not given a single hint whatsoever of what one should do. It’s unspeakably terrible and up there with the most frustrating stages I’ve ever played. The secret requires a great endurance test and avoid going to the warp during a particular screen; it’s horrendous. The boss is equally bad: it’s a bunch of Super Mario World tubes which spawn an increasing amount of Yoshis throwing eggs at you the more damage you inflict the main green one.
Once this has been done, you can collect an extra secret, which is found within the hub of The Guy’s maze itself by activating several triggers. I must admit this overtly simplistic idea was mildly entertaining and, with the help of some additional triggers to the original, it makes you go through almost every ramification of the maze from beginning to end and back to the beginning to obtain the secret. One switch is very hidden, but the challenge is ok to do.
As old-school tradition dictates, we have a new section dedicated to the original IWBTG and a boss rush. Terrific. No news here. Once beaten, you go to an amusing Pokemon battle which, for my two cents, has amusingly the best production quality of the game. The fight is interesting, and I can’t get over how freaking cute the dancing Pikachu is (you also feel like an idiot when you die to him).
Game ends, credits roll and a wonderful song plays: 隣に・・・ 三浦あずさ(CV:たかはし智秋) (Tonari Ni... by Azusa Miura). The game does two things to hint you it’s not the true end:
1) It plays the music differently. During a portion that is supposed to be heavy in instrumentation, you only hear the singing. For my two cents, this is, I think, an unofficial version and my favorite: you hear her voice echo and the chorus accompanying only, contrary to the original version. This is something stunning. Unintended brilliance?
2) The clear screen has a question mark.
So this is the point where the credits play the role, right? Well, not necessarily. You’re royally f**ked if you played in any difficulty lower than Very Hard, because all the extra deaths and time wasted for getting those tough secrets is completely a waste of your life: in Normal, it didn’t make a difference if you went for them or not. You might say: “bruh, the original IWBTG did the same thing”, but I disagree: the secrets were additional optional challenges and the disappointment was that they didn’t unlock anything or gave you extra guns. Here, you know there’s a whole game still lying ahead of you, including new platforming stages based on the original six stages, and you will never see them because, just like eden did with Popularity or Carnival with Picture. Picture betrays you with being able to get secrets in Medium and then raises a middle finger to you; this game does as well.
For anything that’s worth, I have some references that, at least, extra involves all bosses in a boss rush buffed and you must clear it without deaths; extra increased difficulty to unreasonable levels. Maybe, no thank you?
Anyway, screw you.
Rating: 2.2 22
Difficulty: 60 60
Nov 3, 2023
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