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Have you played Pocky and Rocky?
What are your favourite levels?

Set in a Far East-themed world, Pocky & Rocky is about a young miko girl named Pocky (known in Japan as Sayo-chan (小夜ちゃん)) who is tending to a Shinto shrine when she is visited by Rocky the Tanuki, or raccoon dog (known in Japan as Manuke (魔奴化)). Rocky is a member of a group of creatures known as the Nopino Goblins. Some time ago, the Nopino Goblins (Yōkai in Japan) went insane, but were stopped and cured by Pocky. Rocky tells Pocky that the Nopino Goblins have gone insane yet again and that she must help them. Suddenly, Pocky and Rocky are ambushed by the Nopino Goblins, which appear to be under a spell. Together, Pocky and Rocky must unravel the mystery of who is controlling the Nopino Goblins. Throughout the game, they battle a number of creatures from Japanese mythology, including kappas.

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocky_%26 ... ideo_game)

I have eaten Pocky & watched Rocky.

And remember, "I'm-a Luigi, number one!"

I've played it but it's way too difficult for my liking. It's great if you can tolerate the sheer brutality.

...I kind of want to play it, but not enough to buy it for a whole lot of money.

I like SNES drunk. He does quick videos on games a lot of times I never heard of. This one I heard of, but never played it. Looks like it could be interesting but not really my type of game, and the challenge would probably keep me away anyway. I did like Smash TV at the time, but back then I was more apt to play anything. I did trend more toward strategy/RPG, but there weren't many of those to keep me busy.

Yeah, SNES Drunk is one of my favorite retro gaming reviewers. I found a few cool games through his channel.

I REALLY HATE POKEMON! wrote: ↑

Sun May 29, 2022 7:07 pm

Yeah, SNES Drunk is one of my favorite retro gaming reviewers. I found a few cool games through his channel.

If I had to see that box-art I would be an SNES drunk. I mean sweet-mosses ..........

Pockey and Rocky both literally was like if they made a game starring "La Blue Girl" ( yes the ****** ).
In fact no different then LBG the "Valis" even goes down this route. Now it is

Pockey, Rocky, and Becky. I really do not get the addition of Becky but again all of these magical girl series seems to do the same thing.
However Pockey and Rocky was never a magical girl game. it was a shooter via a shrine-maiden.

............................................................................

When I was a small boy I never knew anything about anything or why it was appealing. I got "Dino-City" instead of etc.... Dino-City/Dino-wars was way better and way more original.. still play it today.

Beyond that Pockey and Rockey is literally across so many platforms. I think it is even on the MSX ???

That is indeed some rather poor box art. Unfortunately, that was super common during the SNES era. The Japanese box art would often be replaced with some low quality trash. Worse, not only wou6thecart usually be much worse, but sometimes the new art wouldn't even reflect the game well at all. Even though this box art is bad it's still actually not as awful as it could have been.

I never heard of Dino-City. Sounds pretty cool. I'm guessing it's a 2D Platformer?

The artwork is not bad or terrible.

The problem in western culture and videogames is the people doing the artwork do not connect to the videogames that are being made at all. They do not actually feel anything towards it, or respect the genre itself. So it looks more like

"Okay I will do a job to make some artwork for this ______"

It is the same issue with graphic designers. They get to a worksite and end up working on that specific project but they have hudreds of other projects and do not take it seriously at all, or give it any respect.

The same person who did some illustration in "17 magazine" or "Girl magazine" is the same person who is working on "Animaniacs".

They R$#$@$@$ up an entire industry forcing people to have standards just to do a job that has nothing to do with those standards at all.

They are making that product in mind specifically for a type of audience member who has a type method of thinking.

............

That being said the way it works in the west is that each department do not have each other in mind or is not synchronized with each other.

You make some good points. But not only did they not respect these games, they had this bizarre notion that nobody would like Japanesey stuff back then.

That's almost entirely changed today, but still persists in a different sense. Now you see the Japanese developers westernize their content during its creation. I think that's even worse because the artistic integrity of the product is gone at that point.

All of this was because they put profit above all else, it's understandable to a degree but it's unfortunate.

It is not about that, it was the way the company worked. They had to make something with their own style and own artwork, to make it their own. They could not just reuse the original box-art, cross region. It is a business model.

Take "Working Designs". They brought the rights to Lunar, Translated it, installed their own fonts, remade artwork and prints they had access to but also made other products. If you look at Lunar PSX v. Lunar 2 release you would understand.

Working Designs was a bit of a double-edged sword, without them some games would have no English release. On the other hand, they were wildly inaccurate to the original content, changing a lot and even tweaking gameplay unnecessarily, often resulting in a worse experience.

Well imagine having a SEGA-CD in your household and being younger then twelve with no internet and all you can see on your computer is MS-Works with a floppy disk F:\ ( not even A:\ drive ). Oh and the Television that you connected your games to had UHF, where you had to attach an adapter to get anything via the Adapter, and your television had nothing but turn dials with orange and green lights behind the glass indicator.

So the idea of "correct translation" was not really a valid option. We had what we had. Even now you have some un-official translations that literally are broken or has been edited "because X language does not have phrase or word". It is like the evil-witch-army-brat that literally walked all over the "Metal Gear Solid 2" translation and literally cut out a whole bunch of material, or used western references ( feeling the western player would have no relevance to what was being written at all ). Then the witch tried to suu Konami for prissy-harassment bs. She did the same bs to some kind of reviewer who wanted to interview her about the translation effort. She literally attempt to take them to court in France ( which was nuts ).

......

This is the problem with have with videogame content in general. When there is no connectivity or synchronicity between everyone working on a project. You just got a room of selfish people, who are more interesting in paying the rent then actually doing the work. It is like that show "It crowd" and Gwen invites them for a dinner-party with her friends ( who are almost as strange as her co-workers ). Gwen is actually selfish and just wanted the position for the pay-grade not really knowing how things are run in that department at all. While the two main It-peeps ( both stereotypes ) are just jokes. That is the biggest problem with the artwork ( or anything ) in videogames.

Take "Donkey Kong Country 3" soundtrack. Great soundtrack and great score but the original person from the first two games ( where the second was like the Manga-Opus ) the third game music literally reflected the person doing the work. The main character was a girl, and the music maker was a girl. Yes the music had it's moments but you will never get that ____ the second game had on us. The world was bad-arse and everything, meanwhile the 3rd was like
Kremlings be hanging of the skin of their tails.

...hmmm. New Pocky & Rocky game comes out tomorrow. And me with two days off in a row. Maybe I'll download it before playing more 'Borderlands' check it out.

Booyakasha wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 07, 2023 12:50 am

...hmmm. New Pocky & Rocky game comes out tomorrow. And me with two days off in a row. Maybe I'll download it before playing more 'Borderlands' check it out.

I've played Reshrined a few times on Switch since it came out last year - fun game, although the fact that you have to unlock two-player mode was rather disappointing.

Bomby wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 07, 2023 1:22 am

Booyakasha wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 07, 2023 12:50 am

...hmmm. New Pocky & Rocky game comes out tomorrow. And me with two days off in a row. Maybe I'll download it before playing more 'Borderlands' check it out.

I've played Reshrined a few times on Switch since it came out last year - fun game, although the fact that you have to unlock two-player mode was rather disappointing.

That's a dumb decision. It reminds me of needing to play through games to unlock different difficulty options, I hate that kinda thing.

Well, apparently 'Reshrined' isn't playable on my XOne. I guess those pixelated graphics would just kill it dead.

...hmmmph.