Leaderboard

I trust Nintendo unlocked a new title screen for collecting all those coins

Two satisfying (probably not for @Glen-i) replays from me.

Time matches tonight at 8pm.

Ah, I missed that, I was assuming choosing the frame rate option would give a stable frame rate. Carry on.

Sorry for the lapse in posting last week, someone was playing Wonder Boy III incorrectly, and I had to play through the entire Switch remake to wash the bad taste out of my eyes and ears. Kirby: Planet Robobot Releasing on the 3DS in 2016, this game is very much a direct sequel to Triple Deluxe, but instead of the Hypernova ability, Kirby has a mech! The Mech has different capabilities depending on the enemy it scans. Also, one of the new abilities is a big massive nod to Ness from EarthBound. It's a lot of fun, but that's not what we're here for. The plot involves a massive spaceship called the Access Ark invading Dream Land and very quickly mechanising the planet, Dedede and Meta Knight attempt to fight back, but are promptly lasered. It falls to Kirby, who slept through the entire thing, to boot the mysterious invaders off of his planet. OK, strap yourself in, this game goes places. Starting when you reach this boss: This is Susie, she antagonises Kirby throughout the game by siccing bosses on him, but you do get to beat her up eventually. Corporations? Evil? No! Anyway, you eventually meet said president. Yeah, he has a company song about how great he is. Not very loretastic, but it's amusing, nonetheless. Still, Kirby wins because water is wet, forcing President Haltmann to take drastic measures and activate his company's latest project. When will villains learn that making computers self-aware never ends well? This is Star Dream, the final boss of this game. It's kinda nuts, because it's freaking massive, and Kirby has to scan the Halberd, Meta Knight's ship in order to fight it. One ridiculous pink paint job and lots of shooting later, it merges with the Access Ark, because of course it does. It's just a massive sphere now! Yeah, Kirby's fighting planets now. Seems about right, more constant shooting causes that outer shell to gradually break off. I think this was the moment when I realised Kirby lore was proper legit There's a lot to unpack here, but I'll get the special screen out of the way. OK, so I'll just say it. The Haltmann Works Company has constructed their own Galactic Nova. You remember that thing from Super Star Ultra, right? And in case you're thinking "Ah, they just pulled that out of their behind for cool points", I'll redirect your attention to something @Dcubed mentioned. Yeah, I never noticed it either until I posted the Super Star Ultra post. But specifically, he's referring to this. Notice how it's "A Nova" and not "The Nova". They've been planning to have another one since the DS! The implications of this are staggering! Are all Nova's manufactured? Who made the original? Are there even more out there? What the hell are they even for? Of course, this doesn't get answered, Kirby's more of the "Explode first, never think about it ever" kind of guy. And that's what happens. Finishing the game unlocks "Meta Knightmare Returns", a tweak of the standard Extra Mode where you run through the game as Meta Knight. Naturally, there are harder bosses with alternate special screens. One boss in particular, the Holo Defense API, which made Kirby fight holograms of previous bosses, has a particularly interesting screen when fighting the recreation of the Sphere Doomers from "Returns to Dream Land" It's worth noting that Sphere Doomers were only ever encountered in what RtDL called "Another Dimension" considering that the only things that could get into that dimension were a big massive spaceship designed to do so, and Kirby, it raises massive question marks about Susie's past. Speaking of Susie, here's her second screen! Blimey! I don't think we've had a special screen that candid before. It's pretty obvious what has happened here, This accident sent Susie to Another Dimension somehow, and then she escaped. The thing is though, the rematch against President Haltmann reveals an interesting wrinkle to things. With the information that Haltmann doesn't recognise Susie, it seems that a long time has passed since Susie's disappearance and her getting hired by the company. Why she didn't tell her dad is not really revealed. Anyway, final boss! Meta Knight can't use the Halberd though (No idea), so he gets a different set of final bosses. A whole bunch of clones that Star Dream made on the side. Specifically, it cloned Dark Matter and Queen Sectonia. Star Dream just happened to clone two different Dark Matters (If my theory about Sectonia is on the money, anyway)? Coincidence? Probably. Anyway, there's a true arena and you know the drill with those by now... OH, COME ON! CLOSE THE BLOODY DOOR BEHIND YOU! No wait, hang on, Galacta Knight is back. The game even refers to this boss as "Galacta Knight Returns". HAL know what they're doing. I suppose more then one game without Galacta Knight is too much to ask. Nothing actually new in the special screen here, but there he is, again, and harder... Man, the sooner we see the back of him, the better. Now for the True Arena, an absolutely brutal boss rush, even by True Arena standards, that culminates in Star Dream Soul OS. Each of the three phases have alternate screens. Well, that's bloody depressing, isn't it? Safe to say that President Haltmann is very much the most tragic villain in the whole Kirby series. Which feels weird to type, but to summarise... Susie gets sent to Another Dimension by a computer experiment gone wrong. Haltmann discovers a deactivated Galactic Nova His company reactivates it, and Haltmann wishes to see his daughter again. His wish comes true, Susie escapes from Another Dimension, but Haltmann doesn't recgnise her, likely due to her aging. Haltmann's soul gets absorbed by Star Dream when he sics it on Kirby, but eventually gets deleted by the time Kirby beats it up. So despite my initial impression, Haltmann's company didn't actually make this second Nova, so we're still not sure where they came from. That wraps up Planet Robobot. It's my favourite Kirby game for many reasons, one being that the lore is really kicking into high gear now. And it only gets madder from here. Next time, we will be looking at Star Allies. It might be half the framerate, but trust me, the lore makes up for that.

Sure, but like I said, purely from a storytelling POV: it's also incredibly limiting and boring as hell to know how everything ends. We can debate all day and night on whether or not the prequels should have been made from a storytelling POV, but The Clone Wars covers only 3 years in the timeline and yet does so much to flesh out the clones, the Republic of that era, Anakin's eventual fall from grace, and so on, that from a storytelling POV I think it was an absolute necessity to tell those stories. There are 30 years (10x the amount of time TCW takes place over!) between the end of the OT and the start of the ST for them to fill out, as things stand. While I think a nod here and there to what is to come is fine, to flesh out the different factions of the Imperial Remnants and inform us about the New Republic, I'm sorry, but I'm going to be disappointed if all they do for that 30 year window is just wink and nod at Snoke, Palpatine's return, etc. This isn't me at all saying I'm right about Tantiss and it potentially tying into Thrawn, or anything else for that matter, but PURELY from a storytelling POV, that would be a huge waste of some seriously massive real estate in the Star Wars timeline as things stand. There's practically no space built into the sequel trilogy to flesh things out there, so by all means, set up the building blocks elsewhere - it's not like what they've done so far in talking about the Imperial Remnants and hinting at the creation of the First Order is anything particularly new for the New Republic era, as some of the novels have done plenty in that regard. For me, it's one thing to know where everything is heading, and something else entirely to have everything be leading to that place, if that makes sense. Heck, The Bad Batch made it clear as day that there were other things the Emperor was intent on cloning - a certain kaiju-style critter comes to mind - so I really don't think it's that far a leap to think there are other pet projects he has lined up for his cloning facility (whether or not they come to pass, like we've said, is a whole other thing). For me, I think the difference between the current New Republic era works (Mando, Book of Boba Fett, and Ahsoka) is that while they do take place earlier in the timeline and hint at what's to come, they are not being sold as prequels to the sequels, and nor should they be; similarly, they're not being sold as sequels to the originals, either. This is very different to the prequels and The Clone Wars, which were both sold as being prequels to particular storylines. It's clear that they have their own function within this New Republic era, and to be honest, Ahsoka is turning out to look like it'll be the direct Rebels sequel series we've been waiting for (and is being sold as such), and heck at this point even Mando - especially in S3 - has felt like it's been doing it's fiduciary duty by rounding off threads lingering back to TCW and Rebels. Again, you can tell Dave has been involved in this because of how many threads he's getting to tie up that he couldn't before. I don't know, for me, there are very few stories which serve as prequels - as in, actually serving as backstory in setting up a particular thread or beat in the original work - and amongst them I'd count things like Red Dead Redemption 2, Andor, and a few others which are escaping me, but the point I want to make is: a good story aiming to be a prequel is rare; very, very rare. Having two shows separately set up cloning for the villain returning some nearly 50/25 years after the fact would make The Bad Batch and Mando pretty important prequels in the grand scheme of things to the sequels in a way I personally wouldn't be a huge fan of. For me, what distinguishes stories like RDR2 and Andor is that they are character driven first and foremost, whereas I look at everything in the New Republic era of Star Wars and, by contrast, it is decidedly driven by plot. I have no issue with that - I loooooooooove a good plot and tie-ins as much as the next Star Wars fan - but everything being driven by plot to inevitably lead up to one point in another plot is, for me, and from a storytelling POV, incredibly boring and unambitious. Again, purely from a storytelling POV - not suggesting I'm right at all, nor am I really arguing for that but more the philosophy behind the story of it all - would it not be more interesting if we've basically been sleepwalking into these shows thinking that all of the cloning nods and hints were relating to the Emperor's return in the opening crawl of IX/his Fortnite-exclusive return message, only to find out it was actually hunting at something else entirely? I don't know, maybe it's just because I'm a huge fan of the old EU Vong theory stuff, where the Emperor didn't just create the Death Stars to keep planets in line, but also in fear of forces from outside the known galaxy swooping in and wrecking shop. I love that stuff and would love if we've been all been misdirected just by assuming we know exactly where this is going, just because we know where it leads to. But like I said before: just as likely they're not doing that, and that would be okay. I just really don't want the largest gap between trilogies be wasted, you know? Yeah, I agree, that's definitely one way it could end (with the destruction of Tantiss) and it could certainly be functional again by the NR era, but the only issue really I'd have with it is that Sheev is one hell of a vindictive douchebag (ahem, as one of his appearances as Sidious in TCW clearly shows) and I can't see any way he'd let any clone who had a hand in destroying his facility live. And that would extend to anyone who survived to Rebels, for me. I'm not sure I totally agree about the far-reaching victory part. It could be where it ends up - honestly, if I were a betting man, I'd bet that they do end up destroying Tantiss or some of those facilities - but I don't think anything beyond saving Omega and/or Crosshair is needed to be a win to our protagonists in The Bad Batch. Now, the clones at large? Sure, maybe they need or want a bigger win, but even in the old EU with the Kamino Uprising, that's not something they got. Like I said, Rex ends up pretty lost and defeated by the time we find him in Rebels, and him leading all of his brothers in one final charge against the Empire and getting crushed - and him feeling responsible for that - seems like a very easy way to put him into position for Rebels. Then again, they could just as easily make it so that a bunch of them sacrifice themselves while the Batch and Rex get off-world, which gives them both a victory against the Empire (in an incredibly pyrrhic sense of the word) and still gets Rex into position for Rebels. Also, like I said before, which is important to remember if we're talking strictly about Palpy's return, is that unless they tweak things, the Imperial Remnants/First Order ultimately aren't responsible for his return or Snoke's creation: the Sith Eternal were (not something I'm a fan of, but it was what it was). Again, they could tweak it, or make it so that they got a leg up with their dark magic through what they learned from the cloning projects, but for now... Ultimately, I'm sure I'll find things to enjoy in whatever we end up with – my points are more about storytelling potential and what I feel they could do to make it a bit more interesting (let's call it the sleepwalking subversion cliff), but yeah, I'm just here to enjoy the ride at least it seems like this time they've been allowed time for it all to be talked out and have a vision for where this is going!

Never change ResetEra...