Reading the plot, you probably will think I have some strong nostalgic attachment to Sega and am a huge Sega fan, but... not really? The only Sega system I ever owned was a Genesis. It was the first home console we ever owned and probably contributed a lot to my love of video games, but even back then I was still more a Nintendo nut than a Sega fanboy. The Game Boy clinched it when I was able to get one along with Pokémon, but before then, just playing the SNES at my cousins' house, playing the SNES at my old neighbor's place... games like Donkey Kong Country and Mario All-Stars blew most of Sega's content out of the water. Sonic and Knuckles was of course a favorite game of mine as a kid on the Sega and still one I hold with a lot of nostalgia, and back then licensed games could be trusted a lot more, but still, I never really got into Sega franchises or anything. I dismissed the Saturn as a joke, Game Gear a power hog, Dreamcast's good games are all out on new systems in better forms but Shenmue... what's to like?
And I think that's what made me do this plot. My opinion of Sega grew of course with time, even after they became The Sonic And Acquired Companies third party publisher they are today. Nintendo I will always prefer, as series like Virtua Fighter don't appeal much and other big Sega franchises are often barely populated. So why not make a Nintendo Nostalgia plot?
I like Nintendo's history, but I feel most everyone does. They're the weathered old warrior, and people know its history much better than they do most other companies. Nintendo is happy to indulge in its past, and Sega does slap their catalogue of old games on every new platform they can, but with little fanfare or attempts to draw attention to them. Sega's history is really interesting though, and also lesser known and explored... even by me. Sega plot was an excuse for me to dig deep into this world I've never explored, and while it mostly manifested as characters during the plot, I went deep down the rabbit hole... or Professor Asobin hole, and learned a lot of cool things about this company I once dismissed. Nowadays, I want to buy a Master System converter to play those old games, I'm hoping to find some way to play Saturn games, and Dreamcast? ...my opinion hasn't improved much. It's a cool moment in time but its a mostly skippable console because Sega smartly rescued a lot of its quality content. Still wish I had bought it that time I saw it a yard sale though! If just to sit on top of my non-fuctional NES and SNES.
The main thing of note here is... while this was what clinched Sega plot, the true inspiration was Sonic Man, and a few videos I found online that inspired me...
"Hey."
Meet Sonic Man, the first of the accidental pieces to the puzzle. Before 2015 even really started I was pretty sure of most of my 2016 cast due to what would be Spectrum, even if certain details were certainly in flux back then. Sonic Man, however, would come out of nowhere to intrude on the tight package with what was, at initial conception, absolutely and completely just meant to be a joke character.
Some time in 2015 Retsupurae inspired yet another character in my roster, after inspiring Jasper with their Dungeonworld podcast and commenting on a friendly mimic. Sonic Man, of course, came from their playthrough of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006). Now, as a bad game fan I of course want to play Sonic 06 some day, but I decided to watch the playthrough still and as they progressed they came across the peculiar character of Sonic Man. Just... a guy dressed like Sonic who will race you. He kind of thinks he's Sonic or something and is really fast, and just like literally any other male NPC he says "Hey." flatly when you talk to him.
So, a man who thinks he's Sonic and did nothing else really in his source game captivated me for some reason. A guy running around claiming to be the blue hedgehog seemed like a good source of comedy, so I opened up my roster a little to admit was then meant only to be a joke character. Maybe he would've stayed one too, if not for another video I discovered before he could be RPed.
And then things started falling into place.
What if... Sonic Man WAS Niles Nemo? Well, how would that work? Well Niles was an old Sega mascot, albeit a failure, and Sonic Man almost seemed like a poor attempt at one... and the plot emerged from there. Sonic Man became the kid called Niles Nemo, who saw his chance at importance and fame and was cheated out of it by Sega's many failures and missteps. His story wasn't anything grand, just a guy made redundant but kept on payroll out of Sega's shortsightedness. There's a few more pieces to the puzzle besides this instant backstory springing up for Sonic Man, but let's finish our look at essentially the main character of the plot, even for how little he might've done in it.
On a basic level, yes, I might've let this plot pass by. It was a fun romp, but tied to a strange character I wasn't going to force people to care about. He could've very well stayed Mr. Braggadocio all year, and help me remember that braggadocio is a word to improve my vocabulary. I did try to hook people early on though, with the man behind the Sonic helmet poking through when his attempts to be a good mascot or hero failed and he'd wither or get dejected. Very early on he revealed he was basically bound to a ridiculous contract that dictated his behavior and actions, but I tried to poke the real man through when I could while keeping to that. I imagine his schtick might've got old eventually or hard to integrate if no one tried to pick him up, and he might've faded away. However, even after the plot and other character changes, I tried to keep him mostly a humorous character, using 90s slang quite often and showing his love for the old Sega days by keeping Sega Visions on hand always and just general being stuck in that era down to his phone choice.
One thing I usually try to avoid and most people are thankfully quite kind and obliging to me with in RP is my characters also existing in whatever franchise they come from as fictional characters. I want to use Theodore Rex without having his movie exist in-universe, or Inch High without his show being a thing. I don't like to have my characters openly acknowledge they are from games because personally, that's just not an idea I like. I've done a compromise before with this though, where Thomas from Thomas Was Alone was literally from his game, and Sonic Man and other aspects of Segaplot tie into a similar idea. Sonic Man, Elise, Alex Kidd... they're all basically people groomed to be like video game character for the sake of advertising them. They're real people who play these roles like people being Snow White or Cinderella at Disneyland.
The early heroing stuff was kind of desperately trying to get people to question his nature, mostly just so I can say "this guy is Niles Nemo" more than kick off the plot. Having the Sega Visions magazines, writing a comic and trying to hint he was in comics before but not as Sonic Man, it's probably not hard to find the hooks on a second read. I was happy that Sonic Man's arc was able to work out pretty well, both its "finding the real man" aspect most closely tied to Sega plot and the afterplot "how to be a hero" part. I knew I didn't want Sonic Man to be really capable, but I figured his in-game speed would be fun to reflect on a real guy. He's still not super-speed fast, but he hits 40 mph and has pretty good endurance so he's more like what humans might be if we go crazy with genetic experimentation. Besides that, his punches are weak, he has no combat training... but he does want to be a hero. He doesn't hate being Sonic Man or Niles Nemo, he just wants to do both the way he believes they should be done. Sonic Man IS a hero, just one who has to do things differently because of his limits, which he learned along the way with the Kobbers. Of course, his development away from being forced to act like Sonic Man and the beginning of Segaplot all came because Nitori took a chance on hiring him, and opened an unexpected can of worms
Nitori giving Sonic Man a chance to be more was certainly what allowed Sega Plot to finally happen and his past to come out fluidly, but with this transition, we see the last part that allowed Sega Plot to form...
So Retsupurae's Sonic 06 video gave me Sonic Man. The Gaming Historian's video on Sega Visions made him Niles Nemo.
Digi Valentine's Who Dat? video on Dreamcast made this a plot.
The Sega Hard Girls are Sega hardware made into girls, which is what Japan does with literally everything, but at least these ones were given a show to develop personalities and combat styles in. A show that, unsurprisingly, embraces Sega's history quite hard, although it was mostly original research that contributed to the plot's other Sega aspects save one very important one...
Segaplot needed a bad guy. Center-Sensei would fill that role. See, the groundwork was there certainly, and Asobin might have just been an overbearing boss we'd need to talk down with a lot of the similar character traits to what he is still: resenting Sonic and hating his waning fame. Sega having a more obscure past also helped this angle work since even if I had Sheriff from Nintendo do it on a Nintendoplot, Smash Bros has elevated his recognizability and all. Asobin's only tie to current Sega is his small allusion in a Japanese short series that hardly anyone has heard of. He could still be a twist, and a double twist in that I decided to give him a rabbit avatar that is literally just him... although not as twisted as we would find him later in the plot by age and the life support machine.
Anyway, in the show, Center-Sensei is actually a benevolent character. He's a teacher and therefore sometimes harsh on the girls, but he wants them to succeed and guides them as best he can, and even when he seems to be being evil or negligent, he's teaching them in situations that weren't actually dangerous to begin with but had to simulate peril to train them right. In the show also, he's not actually Professor Asobin, but actually a Sega game designer of old called Yuji Naka, the guy behind the original Sonic the Hedgehog. I didn't put any actual Sega staff in, but I did want things mostly grounded in a somewhat believable way, especially with the conceit that Sonic is fictional to these characters. I wasn't worried too much about Sonic Man meeting Sonic, but it would have conflicted with this plot quite a bit! Meeting Eggman was certainly different at least because he's a human and not a talking hedgehog, and we even see the wheels turn in Sonic Man's head when he sees Eggman.
Anyway, Center-Sensei gave us a bad guy and a way for him to interact with us despite what would become Asobin's fate... but that could have been a character scene. Jaws had Gifelte Fish, Sonic Man could have Center-Sensei... but the Sega Hard Girls are what made it a plot with events and fights. I wanted to fight these girls! They had Sega-fueled powers, although a lot of it was me being generous and making them more interesting with their capabilities. The Vita game I would go on to buy had no English patch and the show didn't have them use their stuff too often, so there was very little English material on exactly how these girls fought, so I filled in a lot of blanks. They still had their weapons, but I grew ideas from them and mixed things up so its more like fighting Game Consoles instead of Girl with Sword.
Sega plot might have even been just a dayplot to fight the Sega Hard Girls and free Sonic Man from contract, but opening the door for the girls let everything else pour in, and hence the events we would come to get as I added as much as I could without going overboard. You will notice every other character of mine on my cast got one central event day, even if they bled into others occasionally. Why was Sonic Man special? Because the plot grow to be more than just about him. Certainly not my first and only plot of the year to make you question your antagonist and their motives, but the Sega Hard Girls were pretty much Sonic Man perfected in Asobin's eyes except for not having spread their appeal far enough yet. Maybe they could have been moved around to better reflect that, but I think a strong and interesting lead is important so you can't always lead with the bottom stuff. It certainly wasn't hard to decide to set them up as sympathetic foes, but it was important to find out how many we'd fight. The three central girls of Mega Drive, Saturn, and Dreamcast were a must as they were established in the show (a show I didn't watch until much too close to their event, should have prepared better but again: sort of didn't expect it to happen!) so the question after that was what to include from the expanded brand. Some made cameos in the show, but Sega Hard Girls material often includes Game Gear and Master System as well to round out the consoles, with most other girls secondary and weird things that weren't really worth bringing in due to lack of interesting angles to work with. Game Gear had a cool and striking design, but Master System was soooooo poorly established. Just like the game system! She likes music, is like, all I could find on her, hence her cameo in RP being almost just that. Her games also don't have as much to draw on for attacks that make her unique compared to the others. Game Gear had a similar problem in that her powers drew on wider Sega brands since Game Gear's library lacked a lot of standout titles that weren't shared with other systems, but based on potential participation and idea availability, Game Gear got in and Master System got cut, to wallow with Genesis who could have cameoed as something more than just a threat to spur Mega Drive, although nothing really came to form in my head besides maybe popping in to drive in the "these girls aren't bad, they're just in the same situation as Sonic Man" message.
Don't worry, we'll come back to Asobin later, but first we've got a lot to work through with the Girls. Sega Hard Girls is strange in that, Dreamcast is cute and like Shimmer design-wise yes, but she might be my least favorite? Out of a group of three I like of course. Saturn has the most interesting aspects in the show, and Mega Drive is fun personality and concept wise, but Dreamcast, while also being a fun personality and having a good purpose in the show, doesn't come up to the other girls in likeability. Mega Drive, heck, I like her so much I may just RP her as a protagonist some day, with the other girls as supporting cast or something. Bringing Dreamcast into RP though, I tried to consciously make her less Shimmer-like, maintain her bubbly personality, but accentuating the fact she is a tease, a troublemaker, and playing around with her "connected to the internet" gimmick. Saturn it was hard to do anything too complex with, but she is a girl out for love and desperate for admiration since her system failed worse than any other Sega one. Mega Drive is the smart one, serious but also having a side that I can explore should I RP her in trying to defrost a little. Game Gear, yes, is a battery joke about her laziness, but I also made her much ruder and rougher than the rest to balance the group out more. From there, it was a Wikipedia trip to get a good list of games to base their attacks around. Mega Drive's Sega quiz with Dolby was really fun, and a good way to integrate things that were harder to add to the plot but I felt owed a place like Shinobi and Flicky. Flicky, in fact, was almost fought as a separate entity rather than Mega Drive's book generating it! (an aspect that was not in the show but added since the book just made holograms as far as I know rather than real tangible things.)
Other than that, the quiz and the Sega Hard Girl powers were great for getting out the more expected nostalgic hits like old fantasy franchises, even if I tried to keep the actual characters on the plot pretty normal-ish humans. Like I mentioned later, Nei from Phantasy Star was the only one I remember not getting to use, and others were looked up on the fly as I drained my reserves. Dreamcast I remember not trying to use anything too crazy and well... a lot of its big games to draw on were pretty crazy! I also avoided Sonic games and most Sonic stuff in general because this wasn't Sonic plot after all! With things like Spy using Big as well making Sonic existing as a real person in RP possible, I tried to avoid touching Sonic as anything more than a concept for Sega, plus it was more interesting to draw on the Sega stuff that isn't so well known or... well, overdone.
A portion removed that later manifested as the Puyo Puyo flood we say early on was getting Arle Nadja involved in Segaplot since Sega acquired the Puyo Puyo creators.
Before we move on, here's an image that was incredibly useful for establishing the other characters for Segaplot:
Hold on, I hear you saying, you just used Alex Kidd to transition? Why are you talking about these two?
Well, because they're important! As I delved deep into the research portion of this plot, a curious game appeared on my radar: Segagaga. Made for the Dreamcast and sadly never given an English release (although there is a slow-going language patch by the fans), Segagaga is sort of... bitter sweet. Sega made a game celebrating its long and storied history, the company, and a lot more, but the game's plot kind of shows that Sega knew what was coming back in that era. The villain in the game is a stand-in for Sony and their Playstation, made much more evil and ruthless of course, but the disc-based competitor was killing the Dreamcast in the real world, and doing it a bit more literally in the game world. Desperate, Sega called in two teenagers(?!) to help revitalize their company. The gameplay is literally about raising Sega's market share by playing as Tarou Sega, going around the office and motivating programmers and employees through RPG battles where you don't actually fight so much as use instructions and motivational sayings as attacks. The game certainly seems interesting and quirky, and in a way it is a bit like Segaplot, including having Alex Kidd as a washed up mascot, Professor Asobin makes a cameo, but otherwise Segagaga was more willing to make Sonic the Hedgehog a real character and more.
If you want a good idea of the game, watching this video of one of the final chapters will show how insane it got:
Since most information on Segagaga is not fully translated, I took liberties once again, but also tried to ground this a bit more in reality. In RP, Tarou and Yayoi were still brought in to save Sega... and succeeded! In a limited capacity. The hardware division died, and while Tarou didn't go to space and fight Sega consoles in ZFRPverse, he did do a lot of the employee motivating along with Yayoi. A more banal version that might have been said to be dramatized in the Segagaga game.
I watched the final fight with the Sony stand-in and that's where the idea of Yayoi using actual guns instead of playing around with safe attacks came from, as she openly did so in-game whereas Tarou always fought with his words or other normal human stuff. Yayoi is also maybe an alien or cyborg or something that cannot be gleaned well from visual context, and the evil Sony does kidnap her to try and harness that. In RP this would manifest to explain her inexplicable headplate, where she did get kidnapped and all but the headplate is not from otherworldly origins, but rather an early example of what we'd see keeping Asobin alive. Yayoi in the game seemed to be forceful but not perhaps mean, which was extrapolated into her fighting to the death in gratitude for what Sega did and sort of escalating things beyond the point of "here's another wacky fight!" She was also, of course, an advancement of the idea of the Sega Hard Girls. The Girls needed Sega to succeed to keep the jobs they've been groomed up as, it was their living. Yayoi, it was her life that Sega gave her back, a debt she tries to repay in whatever way she can.
Tarou was a bit less explored (and hence, did not end up in jail) but was a decent bridge to the finale and the back-up plan if people had killed Asobin. Tarou would have taken over his role and done the restructuring with help from Dr. Games, so mostly I played into what seemed to be his meek and easily overwhelmed side so that he wasn't likely to be hated or maligned for stepping up should that result be needed. Of course, Segagaga was not like to invoke much nostalgic interest so its not like they could support an event alone, so they became more important for their connecting parts and Yayoi kind of upping what might have been growing to be a no-danger scenario. To make sure Event 2 had some meat to it, Segagaga took it upon themselves to bring in some mascots that Center-Sensei had no in-character reason for bringing back (once his desire to supplant Sonic with something new came to light)...
If anyone asked you to name two Sega Mascots without mentioning the Sonic series, these guys are the frontrunners. Don't worry, we'll get to Vectorman in Professor Playor's section later.
Once Segaplot became more than "fight the Sega Hard Girls", Segata was cinched. I was very surprised we never fought him in RP, considering his memetic status and his appearances in VGCW to keep him fresh in many minds. Alex Kidd was also a shoo-in as he is perhaps the only identifiable designated mascot Sega truly had, whereas Asobin, Dr. Games, and Opa Opa were kind of floundering for a face. Kidd was someone they tried to make big and push like a mascot and still gets to join in Sega crossovers for it. He had to show up, and while I was a bit worried the big-eared boy might stretch the whole "mostly realistic" angle I went for, he could probably just as easily say he's a little weirdly proportioned.
Naturally, I watched all the Segata ads and some Alex Kidd gameplay in preparation for the event. I plucked a lot of what would become Segata's attacks from his strange, over-the-top commercials, like the hundred-Segata army, his need to judo throw everything and cause it to explode, and in reference to the ad where he seemed to die, he would ride the R720 down into the ground and later a missile into Draco's space battle. It's more his favorite mode of travel now than a real threat to the man. He is certainly not invincible, and he is good at heart, but talking him down and making him realize the truth of the situation would have been much easier than grinding him into the ground. The real hard part of RPing him was not making him a fair opponent, but trying not to sing his song all the time! It is possible we may see him again some day even with the rest of the Sega crew retired, as he is on deck as my pseudo-nuclear option, but mostly he was just a very capable man and while fun to use, I do worry about writing his dialog. I watched some Project X Zone 2 stuff to try and get it down, but in that he talks about the Sega Saturn way too much... which is why Saturn totally had a major unreciprocated crush on him when the Sega crew would get together. The only thing I didn't really get to use with Segata was a reference to his stranger commercial where he calls out for "SAKURA-SAN~" in a way much different from his usual macho and determined manner. No real set-ups arose sadly.
Alex Kidd was also me trying to mix together a lot of his elements. I don't think I've ever played an Alex Kidd game (and actually, Vectorman may be the only guy from a game I have played on this plot, and I didn't even like it much!) but after watching some gameplay and reading wikis, I settled on the parts I wanted to use. Of course, his big punch had to come into play (and the enlarging fist during it was another "is this too unrealistic" moment), I almost had him ride his motorcycle, but transitioning from what I wanted to use (the peticopter) to a motorcycle was a bit too much of a stretch. The Peticopter got more use than expected when I later moved Kidd onto the SNN team as more of a secondary member than the main three, and we might still see him there occasionally, if Kuwahawi has traffic worth commenting on. Most importantly though was the game of JANKEN! Jokerton and Leonard Looney had played a high-stakes game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, but Alex Kidd upped it into a full on combat style, and it was fun to do it as an attack method to make Alex Kidd not get too overshadowed by his company on the plot. His angle as the overlooked mascot was a bit more obvious, but not touched on too much to avoid making him, Sonic Man, and Asobin all the same. Alex Kidd was desperate to prove himself and still wants the recognition, but goes about it differently than others.
While Sega Hard Girls was to introduce you to cool new Sega mascots and event 3 was to delve into the forgotten past, this one was certainly one meant to tap into the guys you'd want to fight on a plot like this. I even considered not mentioning Segata was going to show up since he was such a fun reveal to do, but at the same time I didn't want people to miss out on it if they wanted to fight him!
Before we move on to Event 3's characters, let's remember another important part of this plot...
I didn't even think of the old Elise when I decided to bring her in, but as the inexplicable human that Sonic kisses in Sonic 06, there was a gold mine of material for integrating her into this plot with Sonic Man. Eggerman's event with Eggman certainly changed the how of Elise would convince Sonic Man to come with her, as he was doing it more as a hero than he might've before.
Anyway, Elise was meant to be Sonic Man, but worse. Both of them had been built up for the same role to advertise Sonic 06, but when the plan and the game failed, the contracts sustained Sonic Man well enough despite his problems with it... but Elise was dragged down by it. She was recognizable, people remembered her and she was the easy scapegoat for people to blame Sonic 06's problems on. She had nothing going for her, and Center-Sensei's offer to make her important again was her last desperate hope, one that Sonic Man couldn't resist. Their history was certainly a part of it, but his growth as a hero made him willing to sacrifice himself to try and stop Center-Sensei from hurting more people like Elise with his strange business practices. The choices for who they were to be redesigned as, Jack Frost and Hatsune Miku, drew on Sega's current practices of mostly drawing on other companies to make games for them, that being Atlus and I can't be bothered to look up the Vocaloid people. They'd be shunting Sonic Man and Elise off to other companies to deal with so that Center-Sensei wouldn't have to deal with their trouble anymore, and that was actually part of an idea I wanted to do with the finale. Center-Sensei was done, he didn't want anyone to die for this, he would have just festered in his HQ doing his thing from then on after sending Sonic Man and Elise off. A Kobber villain who was calling it quits of sorts, stopping his aggression because he knew he lost. But when it came on his home turf, all he could do in his mind was fight.
She would also become the "voice" of the Sega crew after they turned good and Sonic Man's tie to the group as he would still try to be friends with her as they were pretty close once. Not sure if people thought the romance angle was expected, but I tried to indicate that while there had been something once, they had moved on, but it helped nail in how much they meant to each other and why both acted like they did, thinking they were helping the other and establishing how well they knew each other.
One thing, Cornwind wanted to do an Elise fakeout with what would become the Batman Forever tribute event of Sonic Man being captured along with Aggie. There was even a deleted post of the initial version where it worked a lot better since it was before the relevant Segaplot moment! Instead, Woe's thing got pushed back since Sonic Man had to be incapacitated for a while but it wouldn't work in conjunction with other stuff. I guess its as good as anywhere to mention that Sonic Man's second, nicer suit that he wore in the Olympics came from his brief appearance in the Archie Sonic comics where he was an actor, but still had next to no character outside that. It made a good fit for the Nitori advertising angle and I think was Chao's idea to use it for such after I showed it to him.
Anyway, while some people might not like Hatsune Miku or Princess Elise in her source game, she got a happy ending doing what she had wanted to do as a character a lot of people like, and the lighter contract rules means she doesn't have to look like a Princess 24/7 anymore! Also of note: I did make sure there are actually people who dress as Hatsune Miku in public events since I was worried her being a hologram on stage and stuff might make that not a thing!
Let's move into Event 3 now though...
Perhaps the last element added to the plot, Sega Gorillesis is me paying homage to our Zoofights roots once again like I did with JRM's plot including Snake Pilgrim last year. Not using Sega Gorillesis would have been a crying shame, and it tied into what would justify Professor Asobin existing in an otherwise somewhat grounded-in-reality cast of characters. Gorillesis was the Zoofights connection, allowing them to make a rabbit character a reality without straining things to far and just saying "yeah Sega has talking animals" and also helped to explain why Asobin was so angry when he was created for a purpose he was swiftly denied.
Picking the Sting Kong design rather than the other mutations and designs he went to was highly contingent on two things: the pretty art there that looked cleaner than some other options that were either action shots or steeped in things contrary to the plot, and him having the scorpion arm and harpoon arm in case his system-based attacks were failures. Gorillesis would be another shot of nostalgia as well as opening up the gates on an area I had not touched: Sega CD and 32X. I knew I wanted to get Night Trap involved for its importance to gaming as a whole, and I came upon a way to make Gorillesis use the same "drawing from the game" gimmick the Sega Hard Girls did but in a new way. He was altered by the games put in, more becoming a character rather than summoning them, although that idea was stretched of course to be more interesting. I read through all of Gorillesis's appearances in Zoofights to make sure he never used the 32X and CD before, and while it did appear on him once, he was killed before using it at all really. Hence, he became MK. 3 to differentiate himself from the previous Gorillesises.
DR. GAMES AND HIS ROBOTS
Professor Playor was a delightful discovery that opened a lot of doors for Segaplot. This old guy was found in old Sega Manuals offering hot tips. A video I found while doing research probably explains him and Sega's relationship with mascots better than I ever could.
Vectorman was chosen specifically for being recognizable enough to be interesting and but not too mainstream. His weird orb body and the transformations he had allowed him to be an interesting opponent even though he had no real character to him. His death could have also been a hook to get us to Sega HQ if I hadn't used Elise or if people looked harder. Non-hero Sonic Man might have left without a note or been tricked or something rather than trying to sacrifice his safety to try and end the plotting rabbit's plans. Nobody really investigated the broken ball robot though, so instead we just got him as an opponent to add to the ranks of event 2.
The Bonanza Bros are a bit of a weird case as they bring up the idea of how much these robots might be alive. The Bros and Vectorman don't appear with the Segacrew in the final post of the year when they're going to see Sonic Man's movie after all, but the Bonanza Bros clearly have some personality, even if they're just machines made by Dr. Games to keep in line with the whole "this needs to be realistic enough" aspect. Two yellow guys like this are a bit too far down the scale of realism than Alex Kidd, but I still wanted to use them, partly because of a level in Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed that ties into a lot of Sega nostalgia: the Race of AGES. You can actually see Segata in this level as well! More importantly it has giant holograms of the Bonanza Bros that made me inspired to use them (despite also not having played their game or Sonic and All-Stars Racing!). Their megaphone guns and the dynamic the two criminals could have was enough, and since the third event was trimmed due to the forum not wanting to work that day, we missed out on the scene that would establish Sega Advertising HQ a bit better: The Bonanza Bros were rough guards for the place, but somewhat friendly and just doing what they were made to do. They had just enough personality to be friendly and funny, but the scene where they looked serious and then defrosted when the Kobbers explained themselves was instead run through without people being able to actually respond and wonder if it would be a fight.
The Brothers did join in the fight with Gorillesis since I didn't want the gorilla to be dogpiled, and I quite like the moments of things like Chiharu taking control of one of them. Not really serious foes but I'm glad I used them still.
Professor Playor himself was meant to be the guy dragged into things by Asobin, obliged by a long friendship and being in a similar situation. People still seemed pretty angry at him, but I tried to never portray Dr. Games as malicious or anything just so we had the back-up plan of him and Tarou in the bank. Professor Playor even straight up mentions he planned to install Tarou if Asobin failed since he wanted to help his friend but didn't want him to succeed at the same time.
I'm sure you must be wondering by now: what's the deal with his name? Professor (or Doctor) Playor Games is a name confusion caused by localization, and on the very small off chance he was recognized, I didn't want people to recognize him with the wrong name. In one region he was Professor Playor, in another Dr. Games, so I combined the names and, for a lark, came up with the idea that even he can't ever settle on either name. Time constraints also meant Professor Playor's attempts to explain this were reduced to small statements though, although he kind of says it in the stuff that lays out the ending and all.
I do wish I had played a Fantasy Zone game before hand though, as I felt I struggled to find things for Opa Opa to do. I almost let Opa Opa break down permanently on Draco's plot when it came down, but Segata rolled high and I was already getting another offer to salvage it, so I just patched it up and let it be.
Otherwise, Dr. Games was the guy on hand so Asobin wasn't talking to himself in certain scenes.
Your villain, ladies and gentlemen! I was very worried the cover would be blown before Center-Sensei revealed his identity, even with the show connection possibly being a false spoiler if people investigated Center-Sensei on google. I was even more worried when Professor Playor did appear for fear someone might google him and find the image from earlier with all the old mascots. Gooper was right to guess it would be Sega's first mascot even if he didn't know who it was, and I quite liked the unreveal that the rabbit on screen was representing an actual rabbit, and the sort-of mostly human real feel would possibly make it seem likely it was a human as well! I've mentioned in chat I almost had a reveal fakeout with it being Blails all along before Asobin pushed him aside, mostly as a way of tying in a Sega element from my existing RP into the plot. Otherwise, Center-Sensei's real identity I might have played up too much in chat as a joke and tempted fate with possibly baiting people into looking into it, but Asobin still got to be a surprise as much as he could be I feel.
Asobin/Center-Sensei has been described throughout the blog occasionally, so some info on him you'd just have to look up to find. Center-Sensei keeping the name was an odd choice I guess, although he was still the center of the Advertising division and an actual teacher to the Sega Hard Girls at least, so while it wasn't very relevant when people like Nitori talked to him, it made more sense for the mascots to call him that as their leader and instructor and I didn't want to overcomplicate things by adding a third name to the rabbit. Of course, as the mind behind it all but also being tied to a giant computer that provides life support, Asobin couldn't do much combat wise, and Center-Sensei was only an avatar so you didn't see withered dying rabbit when you talked to him. To fight though, I pulled up one thing I was very excited for, even if it wasn't as good as what I had hoped it could do: AGES.
Speaking of the Hornet car's bipedal stance, it and Gorillesis's use of Wild Woody were hinted at in chatzy to make them more interesting when they might have been otherwise. Wild Woody got a lot more attention of course because of how bad it is. However, I still felt fighting AGES could have gone better, and that I don't think can be blamed on the time constraint!
Funny how the Asobin section feels small compared to the others, but we did talk Center-Sensei earlier and throughout after all. I did want to do a bit of a twist on the washed-up old jealous guy who got replaced though. Asobin knew he was beyond hope of being the mascot, but hated Sonic for pushing him out and wanted to wipe away the hedgehog rather than take his spot. If Sonic Man or the Sega Hard Girls or Alex Kidd had dethroned Sonic, he would have been content, although still probably mean and controlling if he hadn't had gotten a reality check from the Kobbers. The ending was at risk because of the time constraints, and Chao's internet crapped out, meaning he had to PM me his ideas for an ending, which included trying to help Asobin or shooting him in the head. I had expected him to die, but when Chao suggested Nitori encourage reform instead, I thought that idea was a better fit. I still can't help but laugh at the hypothetical scenario in chatzy of what would make Dolby kill Asobin after he basically called them out to kill him. I think I changed Dr. Naeem's stuff a little so it didn't mirror it too closely as they were both basically guys incapable of defending themselves on the table to be killed.
Either way, Sega was mostly reformed by the experience, with everyone getting a pretty happy ending. The mascots have less restrictive contracts and opportunists are opening up for them now. Yayoi is still in prison for trying to kill people though, but the others are working on doing things better and right. I was really happy with my epilogues and all this year since denouements were things I identified as a weak point, but the Segaplot one seemed good and Sonic Man's final post and him saying "Hey!" for the first time also seemed a good sign of progression and all for the characters of this plot.
Although... it does feel like I'm forgetting something. Something I haven't mentioned yet despite their parts in the plot... Let's stop ignoring the walrus, nutria, wolf, and many many weasels in the room.
Well Segaplot was not their proving ground, they were involved in its events as part of their own development even. Similar to the earlier mentioned Blails instance, The Lightning Bolts were to get other Sega stuff I had in there, and that was actually the reason they impersonated Soar and SNN at one point since I didn't want to self-indulge and have Soar report on my own plot as a hook. Plot hooking was one of my major faults this year, as even when I thought something loud, big, or city-wide would get people to enter the plot, sometimes it required another push from the bar into serious to do so.
However, despite my misgivings initially, I am happy with how these buffoons came out! They were a bit odd in their initial teaser post at the end of the year, although really it was Sonic Man who changed the most from then to now as I borrowed basic character traits from Sonic Boom for the Lightning Bolts. Sonic Man was in full character mode, bragging about things we would later learn are just boasts and quotes he was required to say to sell his character. The Lightning Bolt Society had their personalities I suppose, but other than that, some things like their Headquarters were vague and not yet fully figured out.
The idea behind RPing this group began when they started showing up in Sonic Boom episodes and I thought it might be a funny idea for the Alliance to face off with them in Fite Club, an idea I suggested to Chao but never followed up on. Then, when I wanted to tease Sonic Man as a character for 2016, I decided I could do a small scene of him "beating" the Lighting Bolt Society just as a one time showing of some loser villains... but the idea took root and began to grow, and writing them out made me realize I liked them. The shadow of the Alliance of Evil hung over them throughout though, and I did my best to differentiate themselves from them. The Alliance were always trying to be evil, even if they didn't understand it, and they usually succeeded at what they did. The Lighting Bolts were failures who, we later learned, didn't want to be evil but felt they had to as their group took on the mantle of being villains from being marginalized. They also didn't go to the bar or interact with the Kobbers in many direct ways, paths intersecting but you'd never say they were Kobbers like you would the Alliance.
Another thing I was nervous about besides perhaps being seen as ripping off the Alliance was how I intended to get them on plots. They'd be trying to kill Sonic Man as Sonic Man was doing actual hero stuff, a set-up already strained by Sonic Man being sort of weak and not able to do bigger plots (although thankfully a glut of potential plots for the Lightning Bolts appeared near the end, and I could justify a reason to send Willy without also sending Sonic Man on one). I had broached the subject with Ven during one of his visits and he seemed mostly ambivalent towards it which did not help :V Still, I tried it out on the King Boo event and Dave not only was fun to use, but Helena and Etch and all followed up on him and opened up the box to explore and flesh out these characters who I was also willing to resign to a joke role like Sonic Man if things weren't panning out well.
I guess first we should talk about where they meet: Meh Burger. As Gooper pointed out in his recent blogpost, the food service game in ZFRP was getting a little crowded, even before I introduced Meh Burger. Silver Diner, the bar itself, Scoopa Koopa, I didn't want to compete with theme really, but the place served as a great meeting point for the Lightning Bolt Society that would also put them in contact with the Kobbers easily enough if desired. I certainly didn't advertise the place or force people to go to it, if anything, it was sort of discouraged by what Meh Burger was! In the Sonic Boom show, Meh Burger is the name for the place, and I do use the reference picture of it from the show, a practice I got into more as it seemed there was some misunderstanding on whether or not it had things like a door or a ceiling. I played it off with jokes at first, but at some point I was pretty much like "sure, its nebulously designed and the ceiling or door can be there sometimes but other times it isn't." I'm sure I could BS a reason if I needed to (maybe a ceiling to cover the restaurant on a rainy day?) Otherwise, in the tv show, despite the name, everyone seems to like the place and food, and Dave is the only real sticking point of the place. He's a typical teenage fast food employee, but also apparently an Intern, which I think was more a holdover of them reusing the character when initially he was an Intern for Eggman in an earlier episode. He's still an intern in RP, although I've kind of avoided saying if he's paid or not. I imagine he must be, but I never committed too hard to it in case I could think of a funnier way of explaining it.
Speaking of Dave, let's go down the list of Lighting Bolts! In the show, the Lightning Bolt Society is a bit more "Alliance of Evil" in that they think they're very evil when they're doing small things. A lot of the Lightning Bolt's offscreen but alluded to petty villainy is more the complete scope of what they do in the show, and certainly no one seems very beat-up about being evil. Willy Walrus is the leader, another reused character who at first was a naked walrus man who was really good at busting down walls, so he got recruited by Eggman for it once. In RP, he still busts down walls, but not for personal gain. Harpy often has her male characters do effeminate things freely and openly and Willy Walrus ended up being a guy who struggled with that problem himself, hence why I was not surprised when Stag Beetle used Sol as an example of a guy who gets away with it :V Willy wanted to be the tough guy and the sensitive guy, good at fighting and wrecking stuff but enjoying interior decorating and other "womanly" hobbies, but we don't live in a world quite open to that yet. Of course, laying it out on paper makes it sound more melodramatic it is, especially since Willy's solution was to stop caring what others thought and embracing both sides. Willy was probably the most capable in combat if least varied, but Nightmare's event was a decent fit since he could throw his weight around in different ways, and it helped the Lighting Bolts mostly realize that things as bad guys weren't working out.
Actually, before continuing, a bit more on the Society itself. In the show they just seem to be bad guys who meet up and do bad stuff (and they have a bunch of faceless wolves in the first episode who disappear and are replaced with the weasels). In RP, it was gradually hinted at what caused their turn to being "evil". Their scrapbook shows that Willy, Tree Spy, and Dave had all met up and sort of bonded over the fact they felt marginalized, but it was more a place where they could be honest rather than a society until the Weasel Bandits rolled in. The Bandits had a much harder reputation to shake and they thought it inescapable, so they fed into it, and the three soon-to-be leaders went along with them since they also felt locked in certain roles. The Weasel Bandits were a bad influence and the closest to actually being bad of the bunch, but ultimately it was sort of "if everyone thinks we are that, I guess we have to be that" for them. Which later became the whole reason they turned evil and thought they had to kill Sonic Man, to continue being what they thought they had to be!
I guess we'll go into the Weasel Bandits while we're on them. A group of 30-odd weasels, a lot of the jokes were about them being interchangeable and with little individuality. They were what made the Lightning Bolt Society capable of certain things and helped fill out the ranks, although I did flirt with the idea of reducing their numbers sometimes, to the point they almost had members killed by Pteron or had them permanently launched away during the Sega crew attacks. They all eventually survived and even the ones knocked away came back, and I'll never commit to an exact number of how many there are besides there is one designated the Weasel Bandit Leader who is usually the one who'd speak for the group or appear in the images with other Lightning Bolts. The Weasel Bandits definitely fought using teamwork, and in a bit of serendipity, Zeldoten adopted them and gave them a big push into being a bit more interesting. They'll still crop up in the Zeldoten Gang perhaps, although I'd basically say Draco is free to use them and if I'm present I can RP them doing stuff too. I wanted every Lighting Bolt to have an event but would not have been surprised if they didn't get one, but Halley's event worked surprisingly well for them! But as mentioned earlier, they are the least beat-up over doing actual crimes, since while they were originally bandits just to survive, there was a point they did it because they had gotten used to it. With Zeldoten they'll likely do the same level of crime, basically stealing things that aren't too crazy and don't involve killing. OR WILL ZELDOTEN LEAD THEM DOWN A DARKER PATH?!?! Probably not. I also made sure to never give any of them names to keep up the jokes about them even knowing their interchangeable.
Dave the Intern really was just an angry teenager who thought being evil would be a good outlet for his frustrations. He's nerdy and he works at the soul-crushing Meh Burger. In the show, like I said, Meh Burger is a decent restaurant, but in RP I played up the Meh name to the point the whole place was so bland and mediocre but it was affordable and easy to get. Sometimes it did perhaps venture too close to "this place is bad" because of the connotations words like mediocre have, but it was basically a restaurant that survived on being acceptable. Dave was fun to do because of his ties to the restaurant and teenager jokes, and he got the unique pleasure of being in the food fite! Still, the fact people followed up on his reactions during the King Boo plot was what was the go-ahead to actually try and flesh out these goofballs instead of keeping them ineffective villains. They also avoided anything too serious or evil right down to their plot event to avoid people feeling bad for not dealing with them sooner or wanting to do so. In the Sonic Boom show Dave is actually evil, perhaps more than other Lighting Bolts, and his mother actually rags on him for not being evil ENOUGH. I might've made a joke about his mother in RP once but this is definitely not the Dave we got, as he was basically just the same kind of kid who might name himself xXxSephiroth69xXx in a game to show how angsty he is and how cool he wants to be, as being nerdy marginalizes him at school. While "being a teenager" is not a conflict you can exactly fix other than getting older, he's been diverted from the dark path and having a supporting group of friends he can be himself around now will help him survive high school and Meh Burger. Dave was also an inventor and had a lot of cool robots and stuff he could use. I pulled some stuff he made from the show, although I never used a helmet he had once that could basically give him super powers since it seemed too powerful for him to make. Even the weather machine was not that great until Shabunga cursed it.
One change you could probably see was how Tree Spy initially went from the most sympathetic and least evil to Dave taking that role once he got his moment to shine. Willy was observed doubting Tree Spy's commitment to evil early on, and really, the Spy was just more interested in being a spy rather than doing evil stuff, but since being a Spy is what he was really good at, he realized there wasn't much good guy work for him. A spy is almost always sort of hurting someone by spying on them, and people aren't like to trust you much or be open with you if they know what you are. It's like how people can't smoke pot around a friend who's a cop, but turned up higher since if Tree Spy was a good guy spy, he'd be potentially feeding all your behaviors to some organization bent on bringing you down. He's also sort of learned to put aside the connotations of spying now and just be what he wants to be regardless of what people might think of spies. Tree Spy in the show has little personality and mostly the joke is that yes, he's still in the tree suit, even though it was only appropriate as a disguise the first time we ever saw him. I'm not sure if he's stuck in it or not in the show, but in RP he is but he also thinks it is a very effective disguise still, not that he won't put on new ones like when he pretended to be Saguaro PI... although he put it on OVER the tree disguise. He was really fortunate to get the submarine on the Fantastic Voyage plot to overcome what otherwise was not his strong suit. He was able to interact more with Kobbers due to being a spy, but he couldn't fight as well as the others. I remember struggling with him on the Eggman event, but the submarine made him capable.
The set-up of killing Sonic Man was one I knew wouldn't last, and I was not surprised Gooper sort of labelled them as defeated on the villain list before they even realized they couldn't kill Sonic Man. Segaplot happening how it did might have nailed that in too hard with back-to-back failed attempts at killing Sonic Man, and while it was sort of a cop-out way to keep Sonic Man from getting involved or having to keep track of him, I liked writing the meetings and how they got owned by whoever Sega sent to fight this time. Making fun of SNN was also pretty fun :V It probably would have helped if the Lightning Bolts had their stuff happen closer to Segaplot rather than near the end of the year, but scheduling was another problem of mine this year, mostly in reference to the Olympics shaking so much up. I'm really glad I got to put the whole team up against Eggman and do their crazy Lightning Bolt move, as it showed the group's dynamic as a trusting, friendly team better than some of their conversations had (save maybe when they told Dave it's okay if he can't kill Sonic Man).
In the past, and this will certainly come up in the Spectrum blogpost, I've tried to develop characters on plots, but this year more than any I felt it worked without stretching it too much to make it work. Sonic Man and the Lightning Bolts are no different. Sonic Man's was slowly learning his own self-worth after being beaten down, and while his plot helped free him of his shackles, he still needed plot events to become a hero and someone he was proud to be, as well as learning the lesson he'd impart onto the Lightning Bolt Society about how they shouldn't let others or titles dictate their actions. The Lightning Bolts mostly each learned that lesson in half-measures on their own plots, how satisfying it felt to be something they aren't supposed to be, and learning to embrace aspects of themselves others dismissed. They of course had a plot day that finally sealed that all in properly, and to wrap-up the blogpost, we shall talk about that event, and the other Sega character who got involved in it...
It was so fun to have plots intersect! I almost couldn't wait to actually do it!
Soar the Eagle appeared in 2015 when I needed a news report on what happened with Joyce Jr.'s nuke, partially to ensure no one used THE DESERT IS NUKED to justify some horrible things later... for how little that actually worked. Either way, Soar was plucked since I had been watching Sonic Boom and he was a fun news reporter, although he was mostly the whole self-important news anchor type rather than what he became in RP. Soar is certainly a joke character, although I decided to add some depth to him as I used him more and more. SNN, the Sensationalist News Network, is mostly a news reporting tool and a way to make jokes, but I do remember once Bree said the news wasn't that Sensationalist, so I upped it a little. Originally, the whole idea was he would be reporting facts but then present Kobber stories as the Bigfoot/Loch Ness Monster type stuff you wouldn't believe because it is actually really weird outside of our context.
Earlier in the blogpost I mentioned how the Sonic Boom show basically just moved characters into new roles, like Willy and Dave. Soar initially appeared as a one episode character teaching self-help to Eggman before they reused him and settled him into the role as a news reporter. I decided to work on this a little for his backstory, where he was a huge self-help guru until "the day the weirdness came", aka the starting point of ZFRP and Zoofights in this universe. Then he went off to make this his life's work, reducing costs and all to keep it working despite people not being as gaga as they were for his betterment stuff. It was always kept vague who did the camera and all and how the station worked until it came out that it was basically pirate-radio-by-way-of-TV, and his operation is much cheaper than it needs to be.
Hence what would become Woppy. Soar's shtick is fun, but it won't sustain him forever. Joke's need to evolve, so Soar got a partner, which worked very well with the NBN coming in narrative he developed. Woppy the Weather-Robot is from the podcast Cox n Crendor in the Morning, which is a comedy podcast where two guys just kind of be funny at each other, but its also got the trappings of a morning radio show to keep them on course if they need it. They do a weather segment despite being a podcast, so what Crendor would do was go on weather.com and type in random words or zip codes and report the weather from there, but one day he did it robotically so Jesse Cox asked him if it was a robot, and the joke evolved from there that he had Woppy the Weather Robot to report the weather. The character concept and art came from there (as did how he reports the weather from seemingly random places, and the need for percussive activation as Crendor would pretend to hit him to activate him) but most the personality is homegrown JRM goodness. The wine comes from one day where Crendor made a strange slurping sound during the weather, and it was said Woppy was having a glass of wine, although it only really happened once and in the next episode as a follow-up on it.
Twisting this concept around, Soar got himself a cynical, malfunctioning companion who was ALWAYS drinking wine and weighed down Soar's intense blind enthusiam with some realism and low energy speech. I'm not sure Woppy did much talking ever besides weather reports in Cox n Crendor, so basically I could do as I pleased and balanced out the news team with a duo dynamic... but as time went on I considered shaking it up more, and that's where we moved into what would become the plot event.
Looking around the internet for another weather robot, whether it be just a good design or a character, I came across S.A.M. from an episode of Ben 10. Another robot that basically had no personality but reported the weather, I decided to basically make S.A.M. desperate to be a star, openly dismissive of his competition, but also competent in his role. This also allowed me to put Woppy in the traffic role, another part of the news show I considered (and something they also do on Cox n Crendor, although that segment has no interesting characters to draw from!) Alex Kidd literally got on SNN just because he had a cheap helicopter available, although I did once consider giving Woppy an actual copter or maybe some cheap rinkadink. There might be more mileage with Alex Kidd and the Traffic yet, so Woppy being back on weather doesn't mean Alex is out of a job yet.
S.A.M., anyway, was a strange case. I wanted it to be clear he wasn't a great robot, but also not totally evil. He wanted things and he was rude sometimes, but it wouldn't be until he was distorted by Shabunga's magic that he really did awful stuff. Before that, S.A.M. just put an antagonistic edge on the news proceedings for some jokes and was a good vehicle for delivering the SNN backstory as he tried to be the head anchor instead of just weather. His turn to help the Lightning Bolts was supposed to make sense, but also, if people had liked him, it was meant to be clear that he and the Society both were just planning basically bigger mischief rather than going full evil without that push from the genie.
Speaking of Shabunga, originally he was brought in to make the Lightning Bolt Society and Melvin have something to do at the Ren Fair, and I thought it a nifty idea to make the funny merchant from Star Fox Adventures the guy hosting what had become their idea to do it. There was a point S.A.M. was going to be straight-up evil on his own, but when I put Shabunga in RP for one moment, I felt he was wasted potential. Most of his humor from the game does come from his strange voice, but dinosaur-genie is also a strange thing that can be fun without the vocal side of things. So, since I knew I would probably use him eventually, I realized I had already set up what I needed to make this event work as his moment to be reintegrated. A fun fact: a Nintendo character ruined the plans of Sega characters! :P
I almost had Melvin come along or show up too but it made no sense and I don't want to punish people for keeping Melvin around either, especially after I brought him back post-Twisted Metal since I did explicitly say "Cornwind, don't kill him" and he did anyway and plus to make sure Zargeesh could meet him.
Shabunga ended up just being the piece to turn the weather machine S.A.M. from a device to cause light hail and impede people's days into a city-destroying weather monster. People had thought we would fight Aviaticus on Spectrum plot and we sort of didn't get that save as Black Spectrum, but S.A.M. was sort of the chance to fight a weather being instead so people didn't feel they missed out! ...Unfortunately it was way late in the year, and while I did it as a fun stress-free battle as the plan, it ended up kind of sputtering since people probably just would've rather not plotted at all than beat up a big monster. I'm not sure I utilized his powers or forms well either. Since I had got him from Ben 10, they also conveniently had a rampage and abilities in their episode, which I sort of watched in preparation (skipped some parts without S.A.M.). All the pictures during the event were from the show, although I did cook up the attacks and originally I had thought of making my own weather monster/form or forms for this second weather robot.
I asked Del the night before if I could attack an NBN building and he gave the go ahead, and idea I realized I had but might need to ask if I do anything more than just have S.A.M. lean against it threateningly, and I was glad to see the responses I hoped to see: "This is technically bad but also kind of good!" Considering the point in the year, it was also a good way to spur the NBN finale I thought, and initially, the SNN report that S.A.M. would do was one on NBN's FALL rather than on Woppy entering Drown Yer' Mates. That would have sealed him being bad a lot more though since Soar would be so disappointed, and ultimately, I wasn't sure how S.A.M. was perceived by people, hence the weird ending where it wasn't clear what to do with him. It's hard to kill joke characters, and it was partly the magic behind the rampage, but I hope collecting garbage is a humbling enough experience for this fame-seeker turned foe.
The event was also an easy way to have the Lightning Bolt Society escalate things to the point they had to stop being evil, but without making them irredeemable or even, really that guilty. I was worried people might want to actually fight them and felt bad denying that, but we had seen what they could do really already and they had a good redemption at the end. I did hope that burning down Meh Burger would get some reactions, but since people like Bree seemed to like it a lot, I had the perfect idea that even burnt down, it was still going to keep running because its standards are that low.
CONCLUSION
Certainly the less serious of the two plots this year, but doing things that would show up in Spectrum a lot too. Questions of personal identity, how guilty an antagonist is, and just doing weird, fun things that call back to old stuff or show recognizable stuff from outside of RP. I do not regret Segaplot or its secondary plot of the Lightning Bolts. I did mostly what I wanted with both, even if I sometimes worried or felt I was going down the wrong path. Or felt the limitations of certain things. Sonic Man and the LBS got the development they needed, and we all got to learn a bit more about Sega along the way. I bet there are things I forgot to say, but that's the way of it, isn't it? Almost shouldn't add that note at the end of these blogposts.
Things to learn from this plot are certainly scheduling matters, pacing (especially since S.A.M.'s phases all felt too face and almost like I was trying to rush through the setpieces rather than fight), trying to gauge reactions to certain characters better. Trying to find better ways to use guide characters. I do think I did some things well, and I think when Sonic Man finally hooked his plot naturally it worked well rather than my desperate pushes. I think we had a lot of good moments from others, like Kasumi and other Kappas coming into their own, Hina getting some time out and about, Komachi and Parsee being cool, Dolby and Format Wars characters getting teased and developed simultanously. This is actually making me consider the viability of other small plots after I felt JRMplot was not up to snuff last year, but I think it helped Sonic Man was more present than JRM and also on his first year rather than fifth.
Either way, despite me not being the biggest Sega fan in the world, I certainly had a lot of fun playing Sega.
You know, I actually hadn't expected a Segaplot blogpost! I figured you'd just do Spectrum for whatever reason. It was certainly a pleasant surprise!
ReplyDeleteSegaplot was great. You don't need a ton of events for a plot to make an impression, and Segaplot did very well for itself with just three. The plot as a whole was very important to me - not only was I invested, but this was Dolby's big break as I tested her out as a regular protagonist. She passed!
The funny thing is that despite me being probably the biggest Sega fan in the community, having grown up with a Genesis until the turn of the millennium, I actually only had a passing familiarity with most of the characters used and referenced! Though I suppose a big part of that is Segaplot avoiding two of my favorite Sega IPs, Streets of Rage and Skies of Arcadia (and for good reason, since the former has been thoroughly mined by me and the latter is getting slowly spread amongst the community and might wind up getting mined for characters one of these years).
The Lightning Bolt Society was awesome. I think you did a fine job separating them from the Alliance of Evil, and I'm glad we had more than one attempt on the "useless ineffectual sympathetic villain" type of character, since it's a fun concept that can be used in more than one way.
I tried to guess what S.A.M. was from without looking him up and my prediction had been Futurama. The art of it just looked kinda Groening-ish to me. I was way off on that one!
Altogether it was a lovely plot and I anticipate the next JRM-flavored adventure next summer!
The Lightning Bolt Society was definitely a high point of the year for me. Roping them in as members of the Zeldoten Gang was a lot of fun.
ReplyDelete