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 be the rainbow MIKU
For: I wanna be the rainbow MIKU
Rating based on 100%. Difficulty rating based on the main color Mikus. Extra doesn't add extra points to the difficulty however.
To be honest, the 74.4 difficulty raing here on Del Fruit (previous to my rating) intimidated me, but that rating is an exaggeration, with all due respect, and this comes from someone who:
a) Is bad at avoidances
b) Does avoidances blind (being Contrary my most famous cleared example yet, and all three avoidances of Be the Catastrophe)
This is no Bye the Bye, and is definitely much easier than, let's randomly say, Aleph 0 for putting a famous modern example, which is a single barrage avoidance.
Man, I had fun. It's extremely simplistic, generic in level design (you will absolutely forget about the entire platforming in this game save for a couple of secrets and I guarantee it) and there is not as much gimmick variety as there are colors in the game. However, the avoidances stay with you (some of them, but still).
The premise is simple: you begin in a multicolor hub divided by warps, each warp taking you to the stage of the color you chose. At the end, a Miku of the same color awaits. You will face not more than 5 screens per stage (including the secret of each respective stage). Once you beat all levels, the green stage opens as final.
Following the most normal way that people would take, I will briefly evaluate each stage:
-Red Stage: Fun and harmless; it's vanilla needle with some pattern cherries, just like in the classic Go Across the Rainbow (save for the cherries).
-->Red Miku: (Almost) pure love; my third favorite Miku. It's entertaining to enter blindly and develop strats. Song is a classic. Reactable RNG with few instagibs and reasonable patterns that you can first-try. Little Polkka Miku will pose the biggest concern as you need an optimal route while you have Vietnam LoveTrap flashbacks and it's placed in the ending, which could cause frustration.
-Blue Stage: Water, duh. But hey, it's Nekoron water! This goddamn engine will cause you to dying while making one-fra... I mean full jumps, especially in a section with half diamonds required. It's dumb and it's garbage platforming; I have done better things in J-Tool and I'm not even a level designer.
--> Blue Miku: Not exploited to its full capacity considering that the water gimmick is surprisingly preserved in the avoidance, making it rather original. There are instances where you're dropped little cherries across the room and they freeze, but are made invisible; after another spray of cherries, they are all shot out of the screen. It's very easy, but if you have a bad memory, you'll die a lot to this attack. The trajectory, however, is very readable with previous old-school avoidance experience. The rest is just very boring, but very easy because you have the entire screen at your disposal with no platforms to block you.
-Orange Stage: Another vanilla needle stage, for whatever reason, and without cherries in the way. Once again, it is very inspired by LoveTrap needle design, but without the traps. Another fun and harmless one, and my personal favorite. Last save is amusing as you have to calculate the animated sprite of the cherries, but the cherries are moving. Nothing substantially concerning, though.
-->Orange Miku: Forgettable, and the vocaloid is one of those that is not necessarily good, but is very sticky. The design is very similar to Miku 2 in LoveTrap, but without the Polkka mini-Miku. Last attack is frustrating as it requires quick reactions, but the cherries are curved, so it's not very logical to figure out which direction they will curve; expect some deaths there.
-Yellow Stage: This is where the lol's come in, good and bad. This is the stage I was afraid of before entering: traps. And I later reasoned why I was afraid of this being a trap-based stage without even knowing it: Go Across the Rainbow. So it seems like some associate traps with yellow. However it may be, my fears were true. There isn't a single innovative or funny trap, and the color pierces through your eyes painfully. It's just bad, boring and generic. But my boy, the freaking secret. It's beyond ludicrous. To obtain it, you need to know Japanese braille, lmao. The cherries in the final screen are braille; I'm not f***ng around! Just press F. Ask me later.
-->Yellow Miku: I lol'd. First I thought the game had glitched, but no. The X and Y positions are correct and intentional: you ARE between Miku's legs (don't look up Kid!!*). You have to make an avoidance between Miku's legs in this hilariously suggestive avoidance (between her legs and everything is yellow?... ぺる, you're disgusting Kappa). It's not hard, but the last attack requires some precise timing and position-based strats. Vocaloid is bad, and the ending is a very funny instagib (which I avoided only God knows how).
-Pink Stage: Well, it seems like another vanilla nee---- wait, I thought the traps were over! Oh, no. Anyway, it's a combination between Red and Yellow platforming. Nothing to add; plain simple and brainless.
-->Pink Miku: Just OK, Red is still better. It's very repetitive and it takes some time to figure the reasoning behind the spot where a gray cherry appears out of the blue to kill you.
-Purple Stage: A copy-pase of the ideas in Red; trapless platforming with frozen cherries and a leeks screen. This stage has only two stupid screens, plus the secret one. There's a corner jump but you are given the best align and almost the best possible height to do it in a first try. What could have been fun lasts too little and becomes just obvious filler to satisfy all required colors.
-->Purple Miku: It's the hardest, it's tedious and it sucks; it's pretty horrible and the worst hands down. The song is also a terrible choice. The layout is slightly different but getting to the hard stuff is very boring and is too luck based. Final attacks require tough reading from four different angles and they are RNG. I spent in this Miku the same time the entire five previous stages plus Mikus took me. The hell with this boss. Leave it at last so you don't get discouraged.
Final Section Hype
-Green Stage: A single side-scroller screen which is a slightly grindy, yet fun test of consistency as there are no saves; the middle section has a very peculiar setup of corners where you are required to jump over them, but with a block above you that could cause you to bonk). That middle section took most of my deaths. With patience and not rushing things, you can clear it quick enough if you have some platforming experience. There are a couple of rough spots and the final 16px gap is not appreciated (it is either that or going through two corners in the same jump), but ok.
-->Green Miku: Tons of fun, and my second favorite Miku from the game. It is also arguably the second hardest, but it is not a bad thing in this case as the rought moments come precisely from pattern attacks. Very fun patterns with some precise blind spots like Catastrophe's Miku (some attacks also resemble Catastrophe's avoidances, such as the counter-clockwise expanding cherries each time faster). I don't care about the song choice at all in terms of personal taste but it ironically works wonderfully for the pacing of the attacks. Probably the hardest attacks are the spirals of all previous colors where you have to move at very precise blind spots, but thankfully they are pattern and very rewarding to dominate (I call that red and blue will be the hardest, but they are the first ones at least). I enjoyed it a lot.
***EXTRA TIME!***
No stage, it's just.... Rainbow Miku!
This is a very special avoidance:
-Almost entirely RNG-made
-A beautiful, slow avoidance (one of my favorites; at some instances it even seems that a real woman is singing)
-Slow attacks
-Exactly 6:30 minutes in length
This is not your usual avoidance, and I tremendously enjoyed it for that. Barrage enthusiasts and fast-paced avoidance fans, better stay away and call it a day. This one is a different kind of grind, almost simulating like if Miku is trying to make peace with The Kid but she must test his skills for the last time (what am I even talking about?)
Back to the topic: It's the best of them all. Since it is basically almost entirely RNG, all attacks are slow and 80% of them are reactable. Miku, with the pace of the beautiful song, invokes all attacks from all previous 7 Mikus. It has questionable instagibs, and the final attack is going to either make you laugh or cry; there is also that tough moment where it employs the attack of Green Miku where green cherries go left and yellow ones go right after being scattered all over the place, but it took me less than half the time of the stupid Purple Miku, and the maker ensured the balancing of the attacks was fair. The red star, which appears three times, *might* get you into trouble due to RNG but I haven't spotted a single instance of impossible RNG (the few times I died to it was bad positioning, alas, the very left corner; you need space to move from left to right given that a wall is not impossible to form, but if you're not in the very corner, you can walk beneath it).
Credits are very rewarding.
Play it for the avoidances, not for the platforming, which really bad and dated. You'll have an entertaining time.
*On second thought, after so much you have been through, you deserve it Kid. You are 15 and she's 16. Claim your fun times Keepo.
[2] Likes
To be honest, the 74.4 difficulty raing here on Del Fruit (previous to my rating) intimidated me, but that rating is an exaggeration, with all due respect, and this comes from someone who:
a) Is bad at avoidances
b) Does avoidances blind (being Contrary my most famous cleared example yet, and all three avoidances of Be the Catastrophe)
This is no Bye the Bye, and is definitely much easier than, let's randomly say, Aleph 0 for putting a famous modern example, which is a single barrage avoidance.
Man, I had fun. It's extremely simplistic, generic in level design (you will absolutely forget about the entire platforming in this game save for a couple of secrets and I guarantee it) and there is not as much gimmick variety as there are colors in the game. However, the avoidances stay with you (some of them, but still).
The premise is simple: you begin in a multicolor hub divided by warps, each warp taking you to the stage of the color you chose. At the end, a Miku of the same color awaits. You will face not more than 5 screens per stage (including the secret of each respective stage). Once you beat all levels, the green stage opens as final.
Following the most normal way that people would take, I will briefly evaluate each stage:
-Red Stage: Fun and harmless; it's vanilla needle with some pattern cherries, just like in the classic Go Across the Rainbow (save for the cherries).
-->Red Miku: (Almost) pure love; my third favorite Miku. It's entertaining to enter blindly and develop strats. Song is a classic. Reactable RNG with few instagibs and reasonable patterns that you can first-try. Little Polkka Miku will pose the biggest concern as you need an optimal route while you have Vietnam LoveTrap flashbacks and it's placed in the ending, which could cause frustration.
-Blue Stage: Water, duh. But hey, it's Nekoron water! This goddamn engine will cause you to dying while making one-fra... I mean full jumps, especially in a section with half diamonds required. It's dumb and it's garbage platforming; I have done better things in J-Tool and I'm not even a level designer.
--> Blue Miku: Not exploited to its full capacity considering that the water gimmick is surprisingly preserved in the avoidance, making it rather original. There are instances where you're dropped little cherries across the room and they freeze, but are made invisible; after another spray of cherries, they are all shot out of the screen. It's very easy, but if you have a bad memory, you'll die a lot to this attack. The trajectory, however, is very readable with previous old-school avoidance experience. The rest is just very boring, but very easy because you have the entire screen at your disposal with no platforms to block you.
-Orange Stage: Another vanilla needle stage, for whatever reason, and without cherries in the way. Once again, it is very inspired by LoveTrap needle design, but without the traps. Another fun and harmless one, and my personal favorite. Last save is amusing as you have to calculate the animated sprite of the cherries, but the cherries are moving. Nothing substantially concerning, though.
-->Orange Miku: Forgettable, and the vocaloid is one of those that is not necessarily good, but is very sticky. The design is very similar to Miku 2 in LoveTrap, but without the Polkka mini-Miku. Last attack is frustrating as it requires quick reactions, but the cherries are curved, so it's not very logical to figure out which direction they will curve; expect some deaths there.
-Yellow Stage: This is where the lol's come in, good and bad. This is the stage I was afraid of before entering: traps. And I later reasoned why I was afraid of this being a trap-based stage without even knowing it: Go Across the Rainbow. So it seems like some associate traps with yellow. However it may be, my fears were true. There isn't a single innovative or funny trap, and the color pierces through your eyes painfully. It's just bad, boring and generic. But my boy, the freaking secret. It's beyond ludicrous. To obtain it, you need to know Japanese braille, lmao. The cherries in the final screen are braille; I'm not f***ng around! Just press F. Ask me later.
-->Yellow Miku: I lol'd. First I thought the game had glitched, but no. The X and Y positions are correct and intentional: you ARE between Miku's legs (don't look up Kid!!*). You have to make an avoidance between Miku's legs in this hilariously suggestive avoidance (between her legs and everything is yellow?... ぺる, you're disgusting Kappa). It's not hard, but the last attack requires some precise timing and position-based strats. Vocaloid is bad, and the ending is a very funny instagib (which I avoided only God knows how).
-Pink Stage: Well, it seems like another vanilla nee---- wait, I thought the traps were over! Oh, no. Anyway, it's a combination between Red and Yellow platforming. Nothing to add; plain simple and brainless.
-->Pink Miku: Just OK, Red is still better. It's very repetitive and it takes some time to figure the reasoning behind the spot where a gray cherry appears out of the blue to kill you.
-Purple Stage: A copy-pase of the ideas in Red; trapless platforming with frozen cherries and a leeks screen. This stage has only two stupid screens, plus the secret one. There's a corner jump but you are given the best align and almost the best possible height to do it in a first try. What could have been fun lasts too little and becomes just obvious filler to satisfy all required colors.
-->Purple Miku: It's the hardest, it's tedious and it sucks; it's pretty horrible and the worst hands down. The song is also a terrible choice. The layout is slightly different but getting to the hard stuff is very boring and is too luck based. Final attacks require tough reading from four different angles and they are RNG. I spent in this Miku the same time the entire five previous stages plus Mikus took me. The hell with this boss. Leave it at last so you don't get discouraged.
Final Section Hype
-Green Stage: A single side-scroller screen which is a slightly grindy, yet fun test of consistency as there are no saves; the middle section has a very peculiar setup of corners where you are required to jump over them, but with a block above you that could cause you to bonk). That middle section took most of my deaths. With patience and not rushing things, you can clear it quick enough if you have some platforming experience. There are a couple of rough spots and the final 16px gap is not appreciated (it is either that or going through two corners in the same jump), but ok.
-->Green Miku: Tons of fun, and my second favorite Miku from the game. It is also arguably the second hardest, but it is not a bad thing in this case as the rought moments come precisely from pattern attacks. Very fun patterns with some precise blind spots like Catastrophe's Miku (some attacks also resemble Catastrophe's avoidances, such as the counter-clockwise expanding cherries each time faster). I don't care about the song choice at all in terms of personal taste but it ironically works wonderfully for the pacing of the attacks. Probably the hardest attacks are the spirals of all previous colors where you have to move at very precise blind spots, but thankfully they are pattern and very rewarding to dominate (I call that red and blue will be the hardest, but they are the first ones at least). I enjoyed it a lot.
***EXTRA TIME!***
No stage, it's just.... Rainbow Miku!
This is a very special avoidance:
-Almost entirely RNG-made
-A beautiful, slow avoidance (one of my favorites; at some instances it even seems that a real woman is singing)
-Slow attacks
-Exactly 6:30 minutes in length
This is not your usual avoidance, and I tremendously enjoyed it for that. Barrage enthusiasts and fast-paced avoidance fans, better stay away and call it a day. This one is a different kind of grind, almost simulating like if Miku is trying to make peace with The Kid but she must test his skills for the last time (what am I even talking about?)
Back to the topic: It's the best of them all. Since it is basically almost entirely RNG, all attacks are slow and 80% of them are reactable. Miku, with the pace of the beautiful song, invokes all attacks from all previous 7 Mikus. It has questionable instagibs, and the final attack is going to either make you laugh or cry; there is also that tough moment where it employs the attack of Green Miku where green cherries go left and yellow ones go right after being scattered all over the place, but it took me less than half the time of the stupid Purple Miku, and the maker ensured the balancing of the attacks was fair. The red star, which appears three times, *might* get you into trouble due to RNG but I haven't spotted a single instance of impossible RNG (the few times I died to it was bad positioning, alas, the very left corner; you need space to move from left to right given that a wall is not impossible to form, but if you're not in the very corner, you can walk beneath it).
Credits are very rewarding.
Play it for the avoidances, not for the platforming, which really bad and dated. You'll have an entertaining time.
*On second thought, after so much you have been through, you deserve it Kid. You are 15 and she's 16. Claim your fun times Keepo.
Rating: 5.1 51
Difficulty: 65 65
Jan 20, 2022
ElCochran90
For: I wanna be the Destination
For: I wanna be the Destination
***HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! LAST CLEAR OF 2021, and finishing my review 2.5 hours before New Year! Based!***
March 15, 2012, a milestone gets released, a fangame landmark that, in my opinion, hasn't been fully understood yet by absolutely everybody.
Assembling a game like this requires a lot of planning, both personal and artistic, since it is a conglomerate recap project of Carnival's games, not as a player, but as a maker. In this sense, I am creating the tag that I thought of first, ironically enough, when I cleared Prism: Visual_Medley. Also, you can write any word as a tag in this site, so I'll give myself the same permission if do not receive several objections.
The game structure is exactly the one that inspired Influka and Kamilia for I Wanna Kill the Kamilia 3: a "medley" section, a gatekeeper avoidance, an original section with another intermediate avoidance and a final boss.
I. First Section: Visual Medley
Personally, I don't recall a fangame where the original maker referenced his past games, from the most atrocious, unspeakable ones (Meet the Ruka trilogy is absolutely disgusting), to the more sophisticated ones like Crimson. Carnival's output at such a young age is extremely impressive. Granted, I am not favoring the ratings of his games based on his age at the time; I'm being as fair as I can. However, such young talent cannot go unnoticed and, whereas some consider that Heaventrap 1 & 2, Crimson and Destination had their days of glory, it all comes down to whether your taste can still appreciate some old-school fangames in today's day and age after the world of fangames have reached new quality standards, gimmick/needle/platforming creativity and production value at the time.
Anyway, you start right right at the first screen of Distrust as a main hub section, which later got buffed in Crimson for the best part of the game. From this hub, you travel to other worlds that are exactly from Carnival's past games:
-Nervous
-Distrust
-HeavenTrap 1
-Meet the Ruka
-Picture
Nekoron's LoveTrap level design and trap influences are present throughout this section, as well as in the latter section. However, every stage in this section does not copy-paste screens from the aforementioned games; it reinvents them, creating new platforming, traps and even new goals (such as in the Picture section). Throughout, mandatory secrets are required to progress to the second half of the game, which can be hardly counted as "secrets", but as collectibles: there is literally an arrow poiting towards a direction of where you should go in very specific screens in order to obtain the secret items. Unlike Crimson, they do not represent a peak in difficulty compared to the rest of the game and even the longest one is very fun to go through (Nervous) is not as infamous as the backtracking secret in Crimson.
Shoutouts to IanBoy141 for undertaking the task of creating the soundtrack playlist on YouTube, sometimes uploading the tracks themselves. It can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RMDBqQDtT8&list=PL5rk9Dkgn4kIrK2e6gg3pGWj4W52cHJhj. The soundtrack is terrific and suits each section properly: from the overused theme "Pop Star" from Kirby, to the absolutely banger remix of track 5 of Ridge Racer 2 which was used in Nervous as well (actually, Nervous had ace tracks). The bosses are slightly changed from their original versions, as well as the music choices, giving the fights a very different feel, such as using a song from the obscure game Last Bible II in the Nervous cherry boss (which re-appeared in HeavenTrap 1). This paragraph cannot omit the title screen's song: Ico - Heal, which is a subtle, modest masterpiece.
Traps, you say?? Well of course. Everywhere! However, the save placement is very wise and fair, and you won't get traps at the very end of a difficult save as often as you might think. Most than half of them are plainly ordinary (invisible blocks; flying spikes), but others are not, particularly in the second section of the game.
**Difficulty up to this point: 60 (considering items).
II. Gatekeeper: Ruka
Once the items have been gathered and the bosses have been beaten, you enter such a good and entertaining avoidance with one of my Top 10 vocaloids out there: 大嫌い／otetsu feat.巡音ルカ. It's even available on Spotify for many western regions, so play it loud as many times as you can! https://open.spotify.com/track/4HKz0zEM6B1URI3TWhccgm?si=61fb3f37cc8342a6.
The avoidance has a beautiful crimson palette and Ruka's silhouette is covered in shadows, but the cherries are not! The fight pumps you, the attacks are very readabale, there are two instagibs at THE MOST (I'd argue one), and a banger conclusion. I won't deny that building a path for the last attack takes some practice; however, it doesn't take much time and you'll be over it soon enough to just want a rematch.
**Difficulty: 55.
III. Second Section
The second section will throw the HeavenTrap 1 / Crimson vibes at you, so be prepared for true challenges. After the HeavenTrap 1 castle-like maze section (where a portion requires you to think like in Kayin's The Guy due to odd screen-wrapping), you shall find another old nemesis: Devil Kid from HeavenTrap 1. Be careful, because this divine being is on steroids now like a good Nekoron proposed with LoveTrap. It's not an avoidance fight (I have seen people saying it is, and it is absolutely not), following the same logic of LoveTrap's Big Kid, with the peculiarity of avoiding an attack chosen randomly every time you hit it. I remember this being one of my toughtest clears back in 2018, and after three years, this boss posed no significant problem; however, as you would know, once the health is low, you fill face some particular trouble when he starts firing bullets continuously a la LoveTrap and the random attacks do not stop now. The buffed part consists in tossing two attacks combined, and there are some combinations that can wall you fantastically. It is still more an exercise of patience than skill, although you Wwill feel the urge of insta-killing it fast during the last phase even if this might not be the most optimal strategy.
**Difficulty up to this point: 65.
At some point, you will encounter the infamous Crimson section from the ending of the game in a straightforward vanilla needle section, scored with the best track of Super Meat Boy (Betus Blues) instead of the ominous, monochromatic tone of the original Crimson. The game now shows its teeth in difficulty, where you reach a certain point and then backtrack through the same screens with inverted gravity, infinite jump and a dark-blue-colored section. These variations make sure that the backtracking is not monotonous or predictable at all. Suddenly, you appear in screens that are not familiar to your previous playthrough, and give you a warm welcome, after two "underwater" corners in a row (with the proper aligns at least), to the second significant wall of the game: Rin & Len
IV. Rin & Len
The silhouette of the Kagamine brothers that gave you nightmares in several Carnival fangames before is TOTALLY back, and this was to be expected. Complaints abound regarding this avoidance, but it is not as infamous as several have said: it is a big difficulty spike, but if you endured Meet the Ruka 3 (absolute AIDS), the last attack of Nervous, the buffed avoidances of Justice and Distrust, and Miku 2 of LoveTrap, you will understand most of the foundational logics of the attacks behind this avoidance. To begin with, the song is once again terrific: 【鏡音レン】 飛雷震 【オリジナル】. Attacks are fun to learn; unfortunately, it has two RNG wall attacks of gray cherries difficult to read exactly as in LoveTrap's Miku 2, which will take away many of your deaths. The pattern attacks are also difficult, but once you figure them out, including the conclusion, they are extremely fun to pull off.
As a tangent commentary, my younger brother, who has been watching my blind playthroughs of key fangames since a couple of years ago, said that the color palette of the game throughout has been good, and I wholeheartedly agree. There are some traditionally generic-looking sections in the first parts of the game, but most of them are not, so stages can be differentiated in mood and feels between each other. The color palette of this avoidance doesn't hurt as much as Justice second buffed avoidance and is nice to look at, especially when it's going to be a challenge you'll be grinding for some hours.
**Difficulty up to this point: 75
V. Bridge
I had no idea how to call this section, but it's a very special section. After you end up palming yourself in the back for passing the definitive (?) Rin & Len avoidance, which is a trademark for Carnival at this point, you stumble upon a genius surreal section of tilesets from all previous sections played, which are, at the same time, an act of reminiscing your personal journey through Carnival's game, in case you had it (which, if you did, the experience is definitely more meaningful).
Finally, enter a Bad Apple section inspired, again, by LoveTrap, but it's a more contemplative stage this time: with a piano version of 8 Melodies from the Mother series playing in the background, and with NO restarting music (the point in old fangames in which you knew things were getting serious or you were getting to a special moment of the game), difficulty is preserved pretty much at 75 (I swear there's a spotlight screen in this section replicated in Sunspike during the final screen of Stage 4), and low jumps will now be your best friend at some instances, if not align-dependent, frame-perfect jumps that will test your needle skill. To be frank, at this level of difficulty, the level design is alone, because there are also traps, but the spotlight gimmick, imo, is absolutely unnecessary and uncalled for, making this section more frustrating than it should be, making it more of a blind trial-and-error stage than it should be.
VI.Final Boss
As far as I am concerned, this is the official name of the boss:
/. .\
~V~
(Credits to DerpyHoovesIWBTG)
Final boss is a legendary titan, a monument that raises the difficulty up to 89. Grind time has come, the bastard that took me more than 40 hours when the entire previous freaking game took me around 24, the one that made Raganoxer to freak out and write a masterpiece of a meme review, the one that has been copied an endless amount of times (being GBC the most current adaptation I can think of as of now, the one that took fatalbrain 3 years to clear (people claiming the second avoidance was harder are absolutely mental).
-Main body: Smiley-face white ball
-Weapons: Domestic Pikachu battery, Red Fire-Mah-Lazeh, your toilet's faucet and Koffing's corpse.
You must take out each arm/weapon independently for then facing the smiley bastard, better known as choke phase (which killed me two very painful times).
Mechanics:
-A spike constantly moves from right to left, endlessly respawning, which serves as the projectile for your bullets, so you must shoot the spike (very logical eh) so your bullets bounce towards the weapons.
-The game randomly chooses one of the four colors, illuminating the entire screen, indicating the attack you will face and also the weapon you will harm.
-Each weapon has a lose-all-hope-in-the-rest-of-your-miserable-existence amount of health.
-Also, each weapon has a very prolonged invincibility frame once you damage it, so it is either a smash fest or counting the seconds before you're able to hit again.
-Once you have lowered each weapon's health down to 33%, a second phase of the attack enters, normally harder than the original.
-7 out of 8 attacks have two parallel components, which are key to understand: A POSITION-BASED component and an RNG component.
-Commit and entrust your soul and life to RNGsus for fangame salvation.
Attacks and strats in order of difficulty:
-Yellow 2: Unreactable, RNG cancer. The RNG falling cherries do not exist. Six cherries still go to all directions with one heading towards you, but the problem comes when not knowing which one will bounce and which one won't. Strategy is to remain at the corners for the biggest amount of time possible since it is 85-88% probable that if you remain in the middle, the cherries that went to the walls explode into RNG cherries (not knowing which ounce will bounce on the floor and which ones won't) and wall you from both sides at the same time at a height you cannot double-jump to escape. It's freaking terrifying.
-Blue 2: Horizontally-moving RNG cherries appear from both sides while a position-based attack tosses cherries at you from up above and at a diagonal angle, so there are two different walls you should time. Both individual attacks are free by their own; combined, they are deadly since most of your tragic deaths will come from timing the correct instance in which you should go through the cherries wall and to avoid the moving walls that randomly appear. STrat is to move from left to right and if you see a horizontal cherry or more spawning at your height and thus forcing you to jump, get close to it and then run away from it ensuring you have enough space ahead; in this way, you will be able to jump over the RNG wall with no problem. Very luck-based still.
-Red 1: I have no idea if I played another game, but this attack is fucking bullshit and unreactable at many instances (I might even prefer Blue 2). Fast RNG cherries are shot randomly at all angles from the bottom half of the screen while a position-based component shoots cherries at you intermitently. I have no fucking idea what the fucking strat is for this fucking ass shit attack. More than N times you will be walled, roofed, sandwiched or caught in the air during a transition. Fuck this fucking attack. A possible strat is moving from left to right while avoiding the spike but even so this is kinda unforeseeable because being in the middle increases the probability of death significantly (low time reaction; very possible roofs).
-Yellow 1: An infamous attack indeed, but it becomes absolutely free with two conditions: if you're in the left-most corner and if you understand that the VERTICAL cherries won't bounce and are RNG, and the diagonally-moving cherries are the ones that will bounce both on the walls and the floor. The attack shoots, just like Yellow 2, six cherries in an hexagon shape with one being aimed towards you: this are the ones that will bounce. Being on the left corner when the attack starts is awesome since all that is required is moving a wee-bit to the left, waiting for the next pattern spawn, and moving to the corner again. Repeat 3 times. Everything is readable with spike included. The problem is when you're caught at an uncomfortable spot because of a previous attack. If you're caught in the middle (e.g. Blue 1), ensure that the cherry hits the floor at exactly the middle of the screen (this ensures that the other two will hit the corners, which is what you want). From one spawn to the next, you have enough time to move from the middle to the left corner. It's all about the strats.
-Purple 2: Absolutely fun and much easier than fucking Red 1. It's the only attack that is 100% RNG as far as I am concerned: readable, reactable, attractively-looking from an aesthetic perspective, and even the spike won't that much of a trouble when you have to jump over it due to the intervals in which the cherries are aimed at you. My favorite attack when all things considered and balanced.
-Red 2: 450% more readable and fair than Red 1 for some stupid-ass reason. Anyway, enough cursing for Red 1. The RNG component is quite light, since big cherries explode into tinier cherries with one of them being aimed at you; however, the range of the big cherries mostly cover the middle of the screen, so there is enough space to move throughout. Go to the left corner, find a gap to go through, move carefully towards the center, find a gap that allows you to go back to the corner, and repeat. Very readable and reasonable; themiddle of the screen is the most dangerous section just like in Red 1.
-Purple 1: Self-explanatory. Just go from left to right since the circular attack is pattern and the corner cherries are aimed at your position. Start from any position (doesn't matter which), go either direction (let's say left, and I recommend this because the attack will last long enough for you to go all the way to the right and back to the left coner, which is the best starting position for many other attacks), and double jump. This will deviate the position-based pattern. Go through it and go to the opposite direction. Gaps of the circular attack are big enough for you not to worry.
-Blue 1: RNG big cherries, circular attacks which are based pattern. Nothing to say other than remaining in the middle portion and moving left to right makes it free. Also, you can apply a muscle-memory strat in which you don't focus on the position-based attack anymore and pay attention only to the big cherries to see if one's about to fall above you, giving you plenty of time to react.
There is one huge issue with the boss: transitions. One thing is to master the attacks (with the exception of the first 3, sort of), another thing is to be at the mercy of hideous transitions such as:
-Blue 1 to Red 1
-Yellow 1 to Red 1 (if you're in the corner)
-Yellow 1 to Blue 2 (Blue 2 has the huge problem of spawning the RNG horizontal cherries immediately, so you must stay away from the wall at all costs)
-Red 2 to Purple 1
-Blue 2 to Purple 1 (you are entrapped)
-Blue 2 to Yellow 1 (you can end up at any position, which is not optimal for Yellow 1)
-Blue 1 to Purple 2 (you're entrapped)
The final choke phase (it is a choke phase because the game tests the consistency of your pulse) was designed by the devil to increase your heart rate at levels above 150, and cause ulcers due to anger when you do choke. It's readable, but the problem is the spike that now moves faster and must jump more constantly, many times being moments in which you wish NOT to jump.
Legendary, self-referential, experimental, demanding a complete skillset of platforming, avoidance, trap-avoiding, memory and consistency, with unfair instances scattered throughout but not through the majority of an insane experience, this is one of the most complete fangame adventures out there not driven by plot, and quite possibly the definitive old-school experience, the next manhood test after beating The Guy, Solgryn and the Crimson Devils.
Besides my obvious complaints, I also wished one additional thing had happened:
-Credits as cheerful and celebratory as those of Crimson
Instant favorite and, up to this day, a standard for many creators.
[6] Likes
March 15, 2012, a milestone gets released, a fangame landmark that, in my opinion, hasn't been fully understood yet by absolutely everybody.
Assembling a game like this requires a lot of planning, both personal and artistic, since it is a conglomerate recap project of Carnival's games, not as a player, but as a maker. In this sense, I am creating the tag that I thought of first, ironically enough, when I cleared Prism: Visual_Medley. Also, you can write any word as a tag in this site, so I'll give myself the same permission if do not receive several objections.
The game structure is exactly the one that inspired Influka and Kamilia for I Wanna Kill the Kamilia 3: a "medley" section, a gatekeeper avoidance, an original section with another intermediate avoidance and a final boss.
I. First Section: Visual Medley
Personally, I don't recall a fangame where the original maker referenced his past games, from the most atrocious, unspeakable ones (Meet the Ruka trilogy is absolutely disgusting), to the more sophisticated ones like Crimson. Carnival's output at such a young age is extremely impressive. Granted, I am not favoring the ratings of his games based on his age at the time; I'm being as fair as I can. However, such young talent cannot go unnoticed and, whereas some consider that Heaventrap 1 & 2, Crimson and Destination had their days of glory, it all comes down to whether your taste can still appreciate some old-school fangames in today's day and age after the world of fangames have reached new quality standards, gimmick/needle/platforming creativity and production value at the time.
Anyway, you start right right at the first screen of Distrust as a main hub section, which later got buffed in Crimson for the best part of the game. From this hub, you travel to other worlds that are exactly from Carnival's past games:
-Nervous
-Distrust
-HeavenTrap 1
-Meet the Ruka
-Picture
Nekoron's LoveTrap level design and trap influences are present throughout this section, as well as in the latter section. However, every stage in this section does not copy-paste screens from the aforementioned games; it reinvents them, creating new platforming, traps and even new goals (such as in the Picture section). Throughout, mandatory secrets are required to progress to the second half of the game, which can be hardly counted as "secrets", but as collectibles: there is literally an arrow poiting towards a direction of where you should go in very specific screens in order to obtain the secret items. Unlike Crimson, they do not represent a peak in difficulty compared to the rest of the game and even the longest one is very fun to go through (Nervous) is not as infamous as the backtracking secret in Crimson.
Shoutouts to IanBoy141 for undertaking the task of creating the soundtrack playlist on YouTube, sometimes uploading the tracks themselves. It can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RMDBqQDtT8&list=PL5rk9Dkgn4kIrK2e6gg3pGWj4W52cHJhj. The soundtrack is terrific and suits each section properly: from the overused theme "Pop Star" from Kirby, to the absolutely banger remix of track 5 of Ridge Racer 2 which was used in Nervous as well (actually, Nervous had ace tracks). The bosses are slightly changed from their original versions, as well as the music choices, giving the fights a very different feel, such as using a song from the obscure game Last Bible II in the Nervous cherry boss (which re-appeared in HeavenTrap 1). This paragraph cannot omit the title screen's song: Ico - Heal, which is a subtle, modest masterpiece.
Traps, you say?? Well of course. Everywhere! However, the save placement is very wise and fair, and you won't get traps at the very end of a difficult save as often as you might think. Most than half of them are plainly ordinary (invisible blocks; flying spikes), but others are not, particularly in the second section of the game.
**Difficulty up to this point: 60 (considering items).
II. Gatekeeper: Ruka
Once the items have been gathered and the bosses have been beaten, you enter such a good and entertaining avoidance with one of my Top 10 vocaloids out there: 大嫌い／otetsu feat.巡音ルカ. It's even available on Spotify for many western regions, so play it loud as many times as you can! https://open.spotify.com/track/4HKz0zEM6B1URI3TWhccgm?si=61fb3f37cc8342a6.
The avoidance has a beautiful crimson palette and Ruka's silhouette is covered in shadows, but the cherries are not! The fight pumps you, the attacks are very readabale, there are two instagibs at THE MOST (I'd argue one), and a banger conclusion. I won't deny that building a path for the last attack takes some practice; however, it doesn't take much time and you'll be over it soon enough to just want a rematch.
**Difficulty: 55.
III. Second Section
The second section will throw the HeavenTrap 1 / Crimson vibes at you, so be prepared for true challenges. After the HeavenTrap 1 castle-like maze section (where a portion requires you to think like in Kayin's The Guy due to odd screen-wrapping), you shall find another old nemesis: Devil Kid from HeavenTrap 1. Be careful, because this divine being is on steroids now like a good Nekoron proposed with LoveTrap. It's not an avoidance fight (I have seen people saying it is, and it is absolutely not), following the same logic of LoveTrap's Big Kid, with the peculiarity of avoiding an attack chosen randomly every time you hit it. I remember this being one of my toughtest clears back in 2018, and after three years, this boss posed no significant problem; however, as you would know, once the health is low, you fill face some particular trouble when he starts firing bullets continuously a la LoveTrap and the random attacks do not stop now. The buffed part consists in tossing two attacks combined, and there are some combinations that can wall you fantastically. It is still more an exercise of patience than skill, although you Wwill feel the urge of insta-killing it fast during the last phase even if this might not be the most optimal strategy.
**Difficulty up to this point: 65.
At some point, you will encounter the infamous Crimson section from the ending of the game in a straightforward vanilla needle section, scored with the best track of Super Meat Boy (Betus Blues) instead of the ominous, monochromatic tone of the original Crimson. The game now shows its teeth in difficulty, where you reach a certain point and then backtrack through the same screens with inverted gravity, infinite jump and a dark-blue-colored section. These variations make sure that the backtracking is not monotonous or predictable at all. Suddenly, you appear in screens that are not familiar to your previous playthrough, and give you a warm welcome, after two "underwater" corners in a row (with the proper aligns at least), to the second significant wall of the game: Rin & Len
IV. Rin & Len
The silhouette of the Kagamine brothers that gave you nightmares in several Carnival fangames before is TOTALLY back, and this was to be expected. Complaints abound regarding this avoidance, but it is not as infamous as several have said: it is a big difficulty spike, but if you endured Meet the Ruka 3 (absolute AIDS), the last attack of Nervous, the buffed avoidances of Justice and Distrust, and Miku 2 of LoveTrap, you will understand most of the foundational logics of the attacks behind this avoidance. To begin with, the song is once again terrific: 【鏡音レン】 飛雷震 【オリジナル】. Attacks are fun to learn; unfortunately, it has two RNG wall attacks of gray cherries difficult to read exactly as in LoveTrap's Miku 2, which will take away many of your deaths. The pattern attacks are also difficult, but once you figure them out, including the conclusion, they are extremely fun to pull off.
As a tangent commentary, my younger brother, who has been watching my blind playthroughs of key fangames since a couple of years ago, said that the color palette of the game throughout has been good, and I wholeheartedly agree. There are some traditionally generic-looking sections in the first parts of the game, but most of them are not, so stages can be differentiated in mood and feels between each other. The color palette of this avoidance doesn't hurt as much as Justice second buffed avoidance and is nice to look at, especially when it's going to be a challenge you'll be grinding for some hours.
**Difficulty up to this point: 75
V. Bridge
I had no idea how to call this section, but it's a very special section. After you end up palming yourself in the back for passing the definitive (?) Rin & Len avoidance, which is a trademark for Carnival at this point, you stumble upon a genius surreal section of tilesets from all previous sections played, which are, at the same time, an act of reminiscing your personal journey through Carnival's game, in case you had it (which, if you did, the experience is definitely more meaningful).
Finally, enter a Bad Apple section inspired, again, by LoveTrap, but it's a more contemplative stage this time: with a piano version of 8 Melodies from the Mother series playing in the background, and with NO restarting music (the point in old fangames in which you knew things were getting serious or you were getting to a special moment of the game), difficulty is preserved pretty much at 75 (I swear there's a spotlight screen in this section replicated in Sunspike during the final screen of Stage 4), and low jumps will now be your best friend at some instances, if not align-dependent, frame-perfect jumps that will test your needle skill. To be frank, at this level of difficulty, the level design is alone, because there are also traps, but the spotlight gimmick, imo, is absolutely unnecessary and uncalled for, making this section more frustrating than it should be, making it more of a blind trial-and-error stage than it should be.
VI.Final Boss
As far as I am concerned, this is the official name of the boss:
/. .\
~V~
(Credits to DerpyHoovesIWBTG)
Final boss is a legendary titan, a monument that raises the difficulty up to 89. Grind time has come, the bastard that took me more than 40 hours when the entire previous freaking game took me around 24, the one that made Raganoxer to freak out and write a masterpiece of a meme review, the one that has been copied an endless amount of times (being GBC the most current adaptation I can think of as of now, the one that took fatalbrain 3 years to clear (people claiming the second avoidance was harder are absolutely mental).
-Main body: Smiley-face white ball
-Weapons: Domestic Pikachu battery, Red Fire-Mah-Lazeh, your toilet's faucet and Koffing's corpse.
You must take out each arm/weapon independently for then facing the smiley bastard, better known as choke phase (which killed me two very painful times).
Mechanics:
-A spike constantly moves from right to left, endlessly respawning, which serves as the projectile for your bullets, so you must shoot the spike (very logical eh) so your bullets bounce towards the weapons.
-The game randomly chooses one of the four colors, illuminating the entire screen, indicating the attack you will face and also the weapon you will harm.
-Each weapon has a lose-all-hope-in-the-rest-of-your-miserable-existence amount of health.
-Also, each weapon has a very prolonged invincibility frame once you damage it, so it is either a smash fest or counting the seconds before you're able to hit again.
-Once you have lowered each weapon's health down to 33%, a second phase of the attack enters, normally harder than the original.
-7 out of 8 attacks have two parallel components, which are key to understand: A POSITION-BASED component and an RNG component.
-Commit and entrust your soul and life to RNGsus for fangame salvation.
Attacks and strats in order of difficulty:
-Yellow 2: Unreactable, RNG cancer. The RNG falling cherries do not exist. Six cherries still go to all directions with one heading towards you, but the problem comes when not knowing which one will bounce and which one won't. Strategy is to remain at the corners for the biggest amount of time possible since it is 85-88% probable that if you remain in the middle, the cherries that went to the walls explode into RNG cherries (not knowing which ounce will bounce on the floor and which ones won't) and wall you from both sides at the same time at a height you cannot double-jump to escape. It's freaking terrifying.
-Blue 2: Horizontally-moving RNG cherries appear from both sides while a position-based attack tosses cherries at you from up above and at a diagonal angle, so there are two different walls you should time. Both individual attacks are free by their own; combined, they are deadly since most of your tragic deaths will come from timing the correct instance in which you should go through the cherries wall and to avoid the moving walls that randomly appear. STrat is to move from left to right and if you see a horizontal cherry or more spawning at your height and thus forcing you to jump, get close to it and then run away from it ensuring you have enough space ahead; in this way, you will be able to jump over the RNG wall with no problem. Very luck-based still.
-Red 1: I have no idea if I played another game, but this attack is fucking bullshit and unreactable at many instances (I might even prefer Blue 2). Fast RNG cherries are shot randomly at all angles from the bottom half of the screen while a position-based component shoots cherries at you intermitently. I have no fucking idea what the fucking strat is for this fucking ass shit attack. More than N times you will be walled, roofed, sandwiched or caught in the air during a transition. Fuck this fucking attack. A possible strat is moving from left to right while avoiding the spike but even so this is kinda unforeseeable because being in the middle increases the probability of death significantly (low time reaction; very possible roofs).
-Yellow 1: An infamous attack indeed, but it becomes absolutely free with two conditions: if you're in the left-most corner and if you understand that the VERTICAL cherries won't bounce and are RNG, and the diagonally-moving cherries are the ones that will bounce both on the walls and the floor. The attack shoots, just like Yellow 2, six cherries in an hexagon shape with one being aimed towards you: this are the ones that will bounce. Being on the left corner when the attack starts is awesome since all that is required is moving a wee-bit to the left, waiting for the next pattern spawn, and moving to the corner again. Repeat 3 times. Everything is readable with spike included. The problem is when you're caught at an uncomfortable spot because of a previous attack. If you're caught in the middle (e.g. Blue 1), ensure that the cherry hits the floor at exactly the middle of the screen (this ensures that the other two will hit the corners, which is what you want). From one spawn to the next, you have enough time to move from the middle to the left corner. It's all about the strats.
-Purple 2: Absolutely fun and much easier than fucking Red 1. It's the only attack that is 100% RNG as far as I am concerned: readable, reactable, attractively-looking from an aesthetic perspective, and even the spike won't that much of a trouble when you have to jump over it due to the intervals in which the cherries are aimed at you. My favorite attack when all things considered and balanced.
-Red 2: 450% more readable and fair than Red 1 for some stupid-ass reason. Anyway, enough cursing for Red 1. The RNG component is quite light, since big cherries explode into tinier cherries with one of them being aimed at you; however, the range of the big cherries mostly cover the middle of the screen, so there is enough space to move throughout. Go to the left corner, find a gap to go through, move carefully towards the center, find a gap that allows you to go back to the corner, and repeat. Very readable and reasonable; themiddle of the screen is the most dangerous section just like in Red 1.
-Purple 1: Self-explanatory. Just go from left to right since the circular attack is pattern and the corner cherries are aimed at your position. Start from any position (doesn't matter which), go either direction (let's say left, and I recommend this because the attack will last long enough for you to go all the way to the right and back to the left coner, which is the best starting position for many other attacks), and double jump. This will deviate the position-based pattern. Go through it and go to the opposite direction. Gaps of the circular attack are big enough for you not to worry.
-Blue 1: RNG big cherries, circular attacks which are based pattern. Nothing to say other than remaining in the middle portion and moving left to right makes it free. Also, you can apply a muscle-memory strat in which you don't focus on the position-based attack anymore and pay attention only to the big cherries to see if one's about to fall above you, giving you plenty of time to react.
There is one huge issue with the boss: transitions. One thing is to master the attacks (with the exception of the first 3, sort of), another thing is to be at the mercy of hideous transitions such as:
-Blue 1 to Red 1
-Yellow 1 to Red 1 (if you're in the corner)
-Yellow 1 to Blue 2 (Blue 2 has the huge problem of spawning the RNG horizontal cherries immediately, so you must stay away from the wall at all costs)
-Red 2 to Purple 1
-Blue 2 to Purple 1 (you are entrapped)
-Blue 2 to Yellow 1 (you can end up at any position, which is not optimal for Yellow 1)
-Blue 1 to Purple 2 (you're entrapped)
The final choke phase (it is a choke phase because the game tests the consistency of your pulse) was designed by the devil to increase your heart rate at levels above 150, and cause ulcers due to anger when you do choke. It's readable, but the problem is the spike that now moves faster and must jump more constantly, many times being moments in which you wish NOT to jump.
Legendary, self-referential, experimental, demanding a complete skillset of platforming, avoidance, trap-avoiding, memory and consistency, with unfair instances scattered throughout but not through the majority of an insane experience, this is one of the most complete fangame adventures out there not driven by plot, and quite possibly the definitive old-school experience, the next manhood test after beating The Guy, Solgryn and the Crimson Devils.
Besides my obvious complaints, I also wished one additional thing had happened:
-Credits as cheerful and celebratory as those of Crimson
Instant favorite and, up to this day, a standard for many creators.
Rating: 7.5 75
Difficulty: 89 89
Jan 1, 2022
ElCochran90
For: I Wanna Be the JK
For: I Wanna Be the JK
I owed this to someone; thanks for the rec.
Primarily, this is one of the many fangames that copies the entire screens structure of I Wanna Be The Guy, starting in the famous brown corridors screen. The entire layout is the same and you can choose going up (the screen with trees and cherries), down (the invisible spawning blocks screen) or left (the moving platforms and spikes screen). There are no more paths.
The catch is that every time you would normally reach an area that references a classic videogame in the original game by Kayin, you stumble upon a different game. The fangame does well at recreating some retro experiences, but none of them translate well to the engine with one exception. Whereas the level design is extremely bland and forgettable, the bosses stand out as funny oddities and are entertaining to play. My biggest difficulty issue concerning the bosses is that two of them require really fast reflexes and the attacks are random, so they don't follow always the same order. Those fights are: Megaman Battle Network and the final Sans fight. The former takes a lot to get used to, but there are some straight-up impossible combination of attacks that leaves you zero squares to move, assuring your death. The latter is ok, but in a LoveTrap fashion, you have to wait for 15 seconds until trying the boss again, and these kind of time losses get on my nerves (well, not that drastically, but it's so boring!).
As the original game, this one has also one secret per stage and they are much less cryptic to obtain.
The sequel does the same exercise this fangame did, but around I Wanna Be The Fangame! I will probably check it out just to see what other retro experiments get adapted to the engine.
For some reason this got tagged as an avoidance game, but it isn't.
[0] Likes
Primarily, this is one of the many fangames that copies the entire screens structure of I Wanna Be The Guy, starting in the famous brown corridors screen. The entire layout is the same and you can choose going up (the screen with trees and cherries), down (the invisible spawning blocks screen) or left (the moving platforms and spikes screen). There are no more paths.
The catch is that every time you would normally reach an area that references a classic videogame in the original game by Kayin, you stumble upon a different game. The fangame does well at recreating some retro experiences, but none of them translate well to the engine with one exception. Whereas the level design is extremely bland and forgettable, the bosses stand out as funny oddities and are entertaining to play. My biggest difficulty issue concerning the bosses is that two of them require really fast reflexes and the attacks are random, so they don't follow always the same order. Those fights are: Megaman Battle Network and the final Sans fight. The former takes a lot to get used to, but there are some straight-up impossible combination of attacks that leaves you zero squares to move, assuring your death. The latter is ok, but in a LoveTrap fashion, you have to wait for 15 seconds until trying the boss again, and these kind of time losses get on my nerves (well, not that drastically, but it's so boring!).
As the original game, this one has also one secret per stage and they are much less cryptic to obtain.
The sequel does the same exercise this fangame did, but around I Wanna Be The Fangame! I will probably check it out just to see what other retro experiments get adapted to the engine.
For some reason this got tagged as an avoidance game, but it isn't.
Rating: 3.5 35
Difficulty: 60 60
Dec 31, 2021
ElCochran90
For: I wanna be the RZ
For: I wanna be the RZ
A legendary game by Rukito that I kinda... enjoyed???
Well, it's a belated Christmas miracle, I presume. Initial needle stages are very boring and generic, but as you progress, they get more creative in both design and required platforming, featuring jumps not as predictable as you might expect. There are still trash instances in these latter sections, such as a save having to do a 9 jump two times in a row UPSIDE DOWN (this works well still if you have the muscle memory for it) and, given your height, the technical equivalent of an invert in the first save of the screen before the first boss, which was, hands down, the hardest save for me in the entire game. Curve difficulty follows no rhyme or reason, and the soundtrack goes from OK-ish to fantastic (Mushihimesama Futari Stage 2 for the win!).
Bosses are deplorably bad, as you would expect from a Rukito game; however, they had some cult charm. I don't know what's the videogame equivalent of a B-movie, but if such term exists, that would totally apply to Boss 1 and partially for Boss 2. Boss 2 is a luck-based boss, so if you're into that nonsense, give it a try. That is not difficulty at all, just... luck. It also doesn't compare to the quality of the second half of the needle stages.
It's my most difficult Rukito clear so far (still the most difficult trash boss is in GR), but the difficulty increased along with the quality, which is a good thing. I still wouldn't recommend this as a game, but as a must-clear curiosity for needle fans.
P.S. Beware with the final screen, since there is a trap that will make you lose your soul for 20 seconds or so when it happens.
[2] Likes
Well, it's a belated Christmas miracle, I presume. Initial needle stages are very boring and generic, but as you progress, they get more creative in both design and required platforming, featuring jumps not as predictable as you might expect. There are still trash instances in these latter sections, such as a save having to do a 9 jump two times in a row UPSIDE DOWN (this works well still if you have the muscle memory for it) and, given your height, the technical equivalent of an invert in the first save of the screen before the first boss, which was, hands down, the hardest save for me in the entire game. Curve difficulty follows no rhyme or reason, and the soundtrack goes from OK-ish to fantastic (Mushihimesama Futari Stage 2 for the win!).
Bosses are deplorably bad, as you would expect from a Rukito game; however, they had some cult charm. I don't know what's the videogame equivalent of a B-movie, but if such term exists, that would totally apply to Boss 1 and partially for Boss 2. Boss 2 is a luck-based boss, so if you're into that nonsense, give it a try. That is not difficulty at all, just... luck. It also doesn't compare to the quality of the second half of the needle stages.
It's my most difficult Rukito clear so far (still the most difficult trash boss is in GR), but the difficulty increased along with the quality, which is a good thing. I still wouldn't recommend this as a game, but as a must-clear curiosity for needle fans.
P.S. Beware with the final screen, since there is a trap that will make you lose your soul for 20 seconds or so when it happens.
Rating: 4.1 41
Difficulty: 87 87
Dec 31, 2021
ElCochran90
For: I wanna be the LoveTrap
For: I wanna be the LoveTrap
Rating based on getting to Big Kid and grinding the fight for 10 hours (getting cherries from four sides at high speed when you shoot him), and also on getting the secrets. Difficulty rating based on the same principles except for the secrets (which doesn't affect at all due to Big Kid's difficulty).
An attempt of translating actual quotes of the maker:
"Thank you for downloading this game.
Game Content:
It is an action game where you avoid obstacles such as spikes and defeat the boss.
Story:
There is none.
Difficulty:
When you start the game and select save data, the difficulty level selection screen will appear.
Touching a warp zone such as Medium or Hard will start a new game. Only the number of savepoints changes depending on the difficulty level, and the placement of obstacles and the strength of the boss do not change.
Q & A
[Q]
How can I clear the game?
[A]
It is clear if you can collect 8 items in the light blue part of the save selection screen."
The existence of this game today is considered as a timeline event. The cornerstone of this community (Kayin's original game) had three main derivatives from my very personal perspective:
a) Tijit's follow-up "Fangame!" which, after many versions, got reconstructed into its current version, following the same architectural layout of Guy, loosely resembling a Metroidvania style and actually adding more fun to getting the secrets
b) Geezer's tragically unfinished Kill The Guy, featuring, like the previous mention, an engine of its own, fantastic adventure paraphernalia and, to the greatest pain of my heart, not only the lack of an ending, but also of a stage and more than one boss
c) Nekoron's LoveTrap, a play on words of "Ai" (Love) and "Wana" (Trap), the one that used the engine mechanics that are used up to this day (older fangames already had it, however, such as the underappreciated GB) and an architecture that would influence an exceptional amount of makers, more from the East than from the West, starting with Carnival
This is exclusing less impactful releases such as Guy2, Challenge!, Be the Mario: The Movie: The Prequel, to name a few.
LoveTrap starts in a very similar fashion that the original Guy and Fanmage! do: choose your path, but watch your step, as you might immediately encounter a trap. And so, the story begins, introducing (at least for many) the concept of fast-paced triggers. As the game keeps advancing, it showcases fantastic surprises all the way through, as well as frustrating and exceedinly questionable decisions.
Evaluating this game under modern standards is not inherently incorrect, but I consider it as an inappropriate approach. However, taking the extreme opposite of "this fangame was the first to do X and Y and therefore that makes it good" is also a subjective bias.
Each stage is differentiated by a unique style or gimmick, and a couple of them have a unique visual style. The water stage introduced to us the Nekoron engine, which is infamous today for its 1-frame glitch, something that I find unbearably intolerable since it is quite easy for me to 1-frame in water sections or in infinite-jump sections: that results in a full jump because, due to poor water coding, the engine automatically substracts one frame from your jumps. As insignificant as one frame might sound, the level of platforming precision that some segments in this game require really makes you pay the bill. Nekoron has been my nemesis for a couple of years now and last year drove me mad with Go the DotKid! When you realize that this game is probably the earliest one to feature both downwards and upwards planes, you're in for a treat.
Sections such as the orange-background stage or the one with spinning delicious fruits are fun for a quick playthrough, but there is nothing that differentiates them. However, some vanilla needle is very welcome from time to time.
Enter the Bad Apple section and it is an explosion of meme platforming: it introduced the white-and-black section that would be replicated in more fangames than I can count and with actual visual creativity. The boss of said stage is really charming and the game mocks mechanics that move by frames as the strategy to beat it is going through it by analizing which frames it occupies every time it changes sides. Ridiculous for some, amusing for me, this is a terrific addition.
Bosses are certainly the best part of the game because they are intentionally not serious: a sticky figure, a boss that suicides (and thus introducing the concept of "troll boss" to the community), the debut of Just(???) in a funny gun duel mechanic and a
Inevitably, you will find a Miku sprite suddenly, a white background and a metallic-tileset layout that either you have or will see again 5,000+ times in the future. You shoot the Miku, but nothing happens. You're curious to see if the inert sprite kills you, and it turns out to be alive: it kills you by touching it. You shoot the projectiles and specific ones go away. But there's music, an everlasting signature Miku vocaloid to be exact: The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku -DEAD END-初音ミクの消失.[!/spoiler] Not only that, but the attacks are synced with the music and you must draw a specific path to avoid the attacks and have the best initial positioning for each new attack. This idea is insanely creative and I'm assuming the game blew up in Japan because the era of Vocaloid during 2010 was around its highest peak. This is also very interesting because this section might have a message: the vocaloid has one of the quickest portions of Miku singing along her entire catalogue and it is hypothesized this is happening because her time is running out and is about to die, which is exactly what happens when you endure the whole song: she dies by disappearing.
Irony, as Morpheus would say, does not lack a sense of humor because this was the first of thousands of Miku fights to be made in the fangame universe.
Platforming can be considered of 60s difficulty at worse for the water section alone, and 55 considering the rest of the stages (the first screen of the spinning delicious fruits are annoyingly precise and an iconic screen where you press red buttons in a screen consisting of very well timed diagonals will get the worst out of you).
After this, this game also features the mechanic of placing you in a tower once the game has ended (or, more properly, has made you think it has) which has a buffed Boss Rush. This is pretty much a Rockman idea, but the one that hits you the hardest is Miku 2, which easily increases the difficulty up to 75. The avoidance is legendary in many ways:
1) It is really dynamic in the sense that there is a desired initial position for each attack, and the fact that there is a Polkka mini-Miku sprite chasing you the whole time demands an even more strategical pathing which will make you realize you actually use all platforms
2) Your gun becomes useless. Shooting is out of the question; it is entirely an avoidance SKILL ISSUE
3) The intro is unbearably long, and Nekoron actually intended that you went through it every time you died, which is stupidly infamous considering its legendary difficulty for the time (even veterans today will find themselves grinding the avoidance). If you actually try to skip it, it plays a joke that kills you; I never imagined this and didn't know it until I played the game, and it is indeed funny, but when you realize the implications (not being able to skip 25 f****ng seconds every time you die) is enough for you to just give up due to PATIENCE ISSUES
4) There is a musical logic behind the construction of the avoidance: intro, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, outro. That is the structure of the vocaloid, and the attacks correspond to it, progressively increasing in difficulty, which many players consider unfair, others common, and others both. However, the last chorus is doubled in length, and the second half has a monumental difficulty which requires a galaxy-brain logic to time, place and beat, considering that there is an infinitely annoying Polkka mini-Miku sprite chasing you the whole time. Beating it is not enough, since the outro has a great portion based on luck and will ruin many attempts of conquering the LoveTrap attack, which is enough for considering yourself an avoidance god.
Which you aren't, but the fact that this was the first Miku avoidance is insane, just like with Go the Dotkid!
Also, Fragnattic's reaction to beating Miku 2 in an unbelievable way back in 2011 is one of my favorite "reaction" moments in all of fangamedom. It's all the merrier to me since, well, I speak Spanish. Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBfj_nbcN1E
The final boss is famously infamous: it is an extremely extended exercise of a combination of both luck and patience. The fact that sometimes the boss shoots two real bullets in a row can ruin all possible strategies against him, and that's where the luck part comes in. Beating the boss is also considered as a Timeline event.
Here's where my initial quote of the creator comes in: that's enough for clearing the game. There is no clear screen (unless you consider the next screen after the boss as one), but you actually get congratulated after getting all secrets, travelling through an "underworld" and getting to Big Kid 2, which location, without a guide, requires tons of blind exploration, which is pointless by this time because you already conquered all screens considering the secrets.
Big Kid 2 is a joke and have only seen a TAS of it. Time will tell when the "when" happens. Blue's attempts where the ones that inspired me to, one day, beat Big Kid 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0FxpKZUUtM
It's the sum of its parts that makes it great, and maybe Nekoron wanted to make a transcendent boss considering its difficulty. That's a ridiculous idea for me if it is almost unbeatable (referring to version 2), but Big Kid 1 alone is the reason behind my difficulty rating, which, again, is enough to clear the game according to the words of the maker. The rest is extra and a bad meme.
[3] Likes
An attempt of translating actual quotes of the maker:
"Thank you for downloading this game.
Game Content:
It is an action game where you avoid obstacles such as spikes and defeat the boss.
Story:
There is none.
Difficulty:
When you start the game and select save data, the difficulty level selection screen will appear.
Touching a warp zone such as Medium or Hard will start a new game. Only the number of savepoints changes depending on the difficulty level, and the placement of obstacles and the strength of the boss do not change.
Q & A
[Q]
How can I clear the game?
[A]
It is clear if you can collect 8 items in the light blue part of the save selection screen."
The existence of this game today is considered as a timeline event. The cornerstone of this community (Kayin's original game) had three main derivatives from my very personal perspective:
a) Tijit's follow-up "Fangame!" which, after many versions, got reconstructed into its current version, following the same architectural layout of Guy, loosely resembling a Metroidvania style and actually adding more fun to getting the secrets
b) Geezer's tragically unfinished Kill The Guy, featuring, like the previous mention, an engine of its own, fantastic adventure paraphernalia and, to the greatest pain of my heart, not only the lack of an ending, but also of a stage and more than one boss
c) Nekoron's LoveTrap, a play on words of "Ai" (Love) and "Wana" (Trap), the one that used the engine mechanics that are used up to this day (older fangames already had it, however, such as the underappreciated GB) and an architecture that would influence an exceptional amount of makers, more from the East than from the West, starting with Carnival
This is exclusing less impactful releases such as Guy2, Challenge!, Be the Mario: The Movie: The Prequel, to name a few.
LoveTrap starts in a very similar fashion that the original Guy and Fanmage! do: choose your path, but watch your step, as you might immediately encounter a trap. And so, the story begins, introducing (at least for many) the concept of fast-paced triggers. As the game keeps advancing, it showcases fantastic surprises all the way through, as well as frustrating and exceedinly questionable decisions.
Evaluating this game under modern standards is not inherently incorrect, but I consider it as an inappropriate approach. However, taking the extreme opposite of "this fangame was the first to do X and Y and therefore that makes it good" is also a subjective bias.
Each stage is differentiated by a unique style or gimmick, and a couple of them have a unique visual style. The water stage introduced to us the Nekoron engine, which is infamous today for its 1-frame glitch, something that I find unbearably intolerable since it is quite easy for me to 1-frame in water sections or in infinite-jump sections: that results in a full jump because, due to poor water coding, the engine automatically substracts one frame from your jumps. As insignificant as one frame might sound, the level of platforming precision that some segments in this game require really makes you pay the bill. Nekoron has been my nemesis for a couple of years now and last year drove me mad with Go the DotKid! When you realize that this game is probably the earliest one to feature both downwards and upwards planes, you're in for a treat.
Sections such as the orange-background stage or the one with spinning delicious fruits are fun for a quick playthrough, but there is nothing that differentiates them. However, some vanilla needle is very welcome from time to time.
Enter the Bad Apple section and it is an explosion of meme platforming: it introduced the white-and-black section that would be replicated in more fangames than I can count and with actual visual creativity. The boss of said stage is really charming and the game mocks mechanics that move by frames as the strategy to beat it is going through it by analizing which frames it occupies every time it changes sides. Ridiculous for some, amusing for me, this is a terrific addition.
Bosses are certainly the best part of the game because they are intentionally not serious: a sticky figure, a boss that suicides (and thus introducing the concept of "troll boss" to the community), the debut of Just(???) in a funny gun duel mechanic and a
Inevitably, you will find a Miku sprite suddenly, a white background and a metallic-tileset layout that either you have or will see again 5,000+ times in the future. You shoot the Miku, but nothing happens. You're curious to see if the inert sprite kills you, and it turns out to be alive: it kills you by touching it. You shoot the projectiles and specific ones go away. But there's music, an everlasting signature Miku vocaloid to be exact: The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku -DEAD END-初音ミクの消失.[!/spoiler] Not only that, but the attacks are synced with the music and you must draw a specific path to avoid the attacks and have the best initial positioning for each new attack. This idea is insanely creative and I'm assuming the game blew up in Japan because the era of Vocaloid during 2010 was around its highest peak. This is also very interesting because this section might have a message: the vocaloid has one of the quickest portions of Miku singing along her entire catalogue and it is hypothesized this is happening because her time is running out and is about to die, which is exactly what happens when you endure the whole song: she dies by disappearing.
Irony, as Morpheus would say, does not lack a sense of humor because this was the first of thousands of Miku fights to be made in the fangame universe.
Platforming can be considered of 60s difficulty at worse for the water section alone, and 55 considering the rest of the stages (the first screen of the spinning delicious fruits are annoyingly precise and an iconic screen where you press red buttons in a screen consisting of very well timed diagonals will get the worst out of you).
After this, this game also features the mechanic of placing you in a tower once the game has ended (or, more properly, has made you think it has) which has a buffed Boss Rush. This is pretty much a Rockman idea, but the one that hits you the hardest is Miku 2, which easily increases the difficulty up to 75. The avoidance is legendary in many ways:
1) It is really dynamic in the sense that there is a desired initial position for each attack, and the fact that there is a Polkka mini-Miku sprite chasing you the whole time demands an even more strategical pathing which will make you realize you actually use all platforms
2) Your gun becomes useless. Shooting is out of the question; it is entirely an avoidance SKILL ISSUE
3) The intro is unbearably long, and Nekoron actually intended that you went through it every time you died, which is stupidly infamous considering its legendary difficulty for the time (even veterans today will find themselves grinding the avoidance). If you actually try to skip it, it plays a joke that kills you; I never imagined this and didn't know it until I played the game, and it is indeed funny, but when you realize the implications (not being able to skip 25 f****ng seconds every time you die) is enough for you to just give up due to PATIENCE ISSUES
4) There is a musical logic behind the construction of the avoidance: intro, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, outro. That is the structure of the vocaloid, and the attacks correspond to it, progressively increasing in difficulty, which many players consider unfair, others common, and others both. However, the last chorus is doubled in length, and the second half has a monumental difficulty which requires a galaxy-brain logic to time, place and beat, considering that there is an infinitely annoying Polkka mini-Miku sprite chasing you the whole time. Beating it is not enough, since the outro has a great portion based on luck and will ruin many attempts of conquering the LoveTrap attack, which is enough for considering yourself an avoidance god.
Which you aren't, but the fact that this was the first Miku avoidance is insane, just like with Go the Dotkid!
Also, Fragnattic's reaction to beating Miku 2 in an unbelievable way back in 2011 is one of my favorite "reaction" moments in all of fangamedom. It's all the merrier to me since, well, I speak Spanish. Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBfj_nbcN1E
The final boss is famously infamous: it is an extremely extended exercise of a combination of both luck and patience. The fact that sometimes the boss shoots two real bullets in a row can ruin all possible strategies against him, and that's where the luck part comes in. Beating the boss is also considered as a Timeline event.
Here's where my initial quote of the creator comes in: that's enough for clearing the game. There is no clear screen (unless you consider the next screen after the boss as one), but you actually get congratulated after getting all secrets, travelling through an "underworld" and getting to Big Kid 2, which location, without a guide, requires tons of blind exploration, which is pointless by this time because you already conquered all screens considering the secrets.
Big Kid 2 is a joke and have only seen a TAS of it. Time will tell when the "when" happens. Blue's attempts where the ones that inspired me to, one day, beat Big Kid 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0FxpKZUUtM
It's the sum of its parts that makes it great, and maybe Nekoron wanted to make a transcendent boss considering its difficulty. That's a ridiculous idea for me if it is almost unbeatable (referring to version 2), but Big Kid 1 alone is the reason behind my difficulty rating, which, again, is enough to clear the game according to the words of the maker. The rest is extra and a bad meme.
Rating: 6.0 60
Difficulty: 93 93
Dec 30, 2021
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