More from pencil illustration-land.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Bloody ROAR
Bloody Roar is a series of fighting games created by Hudson Soft, and developed together with Eighting. The series has been published by multiple companies, including, Virgin Interactive, Activision and Konami.
Hudson Soft later became a subsidiary of Konami.
The series began as an Arcade game in 1997 under the name Beastorizer. The game's theme incorporated anthropomorphism, where the player has the ability to transform into a half-human, half-animal creature known as a Zoanthrope (The name came from the clinical term, 'zoanthropy', which is similar to that of lycanthropy, but not just with the mind-set of a wolf) . The game would appear under the name "Bloody Roar" when ported to the PlayStation in 1998, which would become the permanent title thereafter. There are three Bloody Roar sequels, plus two updated ports of the third game to the Nintendo GameCube and Xbox.
Bloody Roar has kept somewhat the same controls over the series. A button each for both punch and kick, the beast (transform/attack) button and a fourth button that has been either a throw button, a block button, an evade button (Introduced for some characters in Bloody Roar 4) and a rave button (An early version of the hyper beast in Bloody Roar 1 only)
The games play very similarly to the Tekken series of fighting games, and Bloody Roar has certain advantages and disadvantages compared to the more popular Tekken games. While Bloody Roar offers a far superior experience in terms of smoothness and speed of gameplay, each character has only a relatively small and completely unchanging move list, lacking the kind of combination strings or similar variety one finds in nearly every other fighting game series. This greatly limits the style of play one can adopt with each character; the best ways to play a certain character, which in other fighting games might take study and practice to figure out, are readily apparent in the Bloody Roar series and do not change across the games.
Bloody Roar was adapted into a manga drawn by Maruyama Tomowo. It was originally published in Shonen Jump. A few themes were used from the games but the scenarios and characters in Maruyama's version were completely new, though a few of his characters looked a lot like the original game characters. The main stars of the manga were a loner wolf zoanthrope, Fang and a rabbit girl named Mashiro. Their adventures had them fighting out of control beast men and trying to stop an evil creature being released by the gathering of talismans. The manga was released in two volumes during 2001.
In the first three games, artwork by Artist Naochika Morishita, also known as CARAMEL MAMA, was used for concept artwork and in game cut scenes.
Don't U Know, The picture above is Bloody Roar too, He he he =)
Guitar Hero III
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock is a music video game developed by Neversoft published by Activision and RedOctane
The Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock gameplay remains unchanged from previous titles in the series; the player must hit notes as they scroll towards the bottom of the screen in time with music in order to maintain their performance and to score points. Hitting notes using the guitar controller requires strumming the strum bar while holding down the correct fret button(s). Playing with the standard controller only requires the correct button to be pressed. Notes can be sustained (in which the fret button(s) must remain held until the note is complete) and can also form a chord (two or three notes played together; however the song "Go That Far" by the Bret Michaels Band features four note chords on the rhythm guitar track on expert difficulty. It is the only song that features four note chords in the Guitar Hero series). The game also simulates hammer-ons and pull-offs for sections with a rapid series of notes. Missing a note will cause a performance meter to drop; if this meter drops too low, the player will fail the song, represented in-game by the band being booed off the stage. A string of 10 consecutive correct notes earns a multiplier to increase the player's score (up until four times), and special sections, marked by starred notes, can be used to build Star Power; when released (by tilting the guitar controller up vertically or hitting a button on a standard controller), the player's multiplier is doubled, the performance meter increases faster when a correct note is hit, and there is less of a penalty for missing notes. As with the previous games in the series, Guitar Hero III contains four difficulty levels: Easy (which uses three of the fret buttons); Medium (which makes use of four of the fret buttons); Hard (which utilizes all five fret buttons); and Expert (which adds no new fret buttons, but increases the number of notes and the general difficulty).
The Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock gameplay remains unchanged from previous titles in the series; the player must hit notes as they scroll towards the bottom of the screen in time with music in order to maintain their performance and to score points. Hitting notes using the guitar controller requires strumming the strum bar while holding down the correct fret button(s). Playing with the standard controller only requires the correct button to be pressed. Notes can be sustained (in which the fret button(s) must remain held until the note is complete) and can also form a chord (two or three notes played together; however the song "Go That Far" by the Bret Michaels Band features four note chords on the rhythm guitar track on expert difficulty. It is the only song that features four note chords in the Guitar Hero series). The game also simulates hammer-ons and pull-offs for sections with a rapid series of notes. Missing a note will cause a performance meter to drop; if this meter drops too low, the player will fail the song, represented in-game by the band being booed off the stage. A string of 10 consecutive correct notes earns a multiplier to increase the player's score (up until four times), and special sections, marked by starred notes, can be used to build Star Power; when released (by tilting the guitar controller up vertically or hitting a button on a standard controller), the player's multiplier is doubled, the performance meter increases faster when a correct note is hit, and there is less of a penalty for missing notes. As with the previous games in the series, Guitar Hero III contains four difficulty levels: Easy (which uses three of the fret buttons); Medium (which makes use of four of the fret buttons); Hard (which utilizes all five fret buttons); and Expert (which adds no new fret buttons, but increases the number of notes and the general difficulty).
Two players using the same console can participate in Co-op Career Mode, which is arranged similarly to the single player Career mode, with one player on lead guitar and the other on bass or rhythm guitar. There are only 6 tiers of songs, with each encore song being unique to the co-op mode. There are no boss battles in this mode.
The co-op storyline portrays the vocalist and drummer looking for a guitarist and bassist. After their first performance, the drummer has the idea of making a video to make a name for the band. The video skyrockets the band's popularity, earning them a gig in Japan, but differences between the core members put the band on a three-month hiatus. In the band's comeback performance, the pyrotechnics start a fire in the neighborhood, and the members are sent to jail, where Lou bails them out as long as they perform for the inmates. As soon as the band leaves prison, though, they are sent to Lou's "Inferno", where they must find their way out by playing a live show
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock introduced Battle Mode, a competitive mode between two players either locally or over network play. The mode puts a twist on the Pro Face-off mode introduced in Guitar Hero II. Two players compete against each other, trying to make his or her opponent fail or lose by successfully playing "Battle Power" sequences (which replaces Star Power) to earn attacks that can be used against the opponent. Players can store three attacks at a time. To activate these temporary attacks, the player tilts his or her guitar upward, presses the select button (PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 releases), back button (Xbox 360 release), or minus button (Wii release). If neither player fails the song, they will face each other in a Sudden Death segment, where all further "Battle Powers" attainable are Death Drain attacks, which inevitably makes the opponent fail by draining his or her Rock Meter
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock introduced Battle Mode, a competitive mode between two players either locally or over network play. The mode puts a twist on the Pro Face-off mode introduced in Guitar Hero II. Two players compete against each other, trying to make his or her opponent fail or lose by successfully playing "Battle Power" sequences (which replaces Star Power) to earn attacks that can be used against the opponent. Players can store three attacks at a time. To activate these temporary attacks, the player tilts his or her guitar upward, presses the select button (PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 releases), back button (Xbox 360 release), or minus button (Wii release). If neither player fails the song, they will face each other in a Sudden Death segment, where all further "Battle Powers" attainable are Death Drain attacks, which inevitably makes the opponent fail by draining his or her Rock Meter
Detective Conan
Detective Conan in Japan and most countries, is a detective manga and anime series by Gosho Aoyama
The story starts by introducing 17-year old (initially 16 in the manga) high school student Jimmy Kudo (Shin'ichi Kudo) who is a genius savant, and his childhood friend and crush, Rachel Moore (Ran Mori). Jimmy treats Rachel to a trip to a theme park named "Tropical Land" and encounters a murder. After easily solving the case and showing off his detective skills, he notices two mysterious men wearing black. Telling Rachel to go home without him, he tracks the men to a meeting place and witnesses an illegal deal. However, one of the men in black (known only as Gin), notices him and knocks him out. Instead directly killing him, the two men in black decide to give him an untested experimental poison named Apotoxin-4869 (APTX4869), because there are still many police around from the previous case. The poison was supposed to not only kill Jimmy, but also leave no trace of itself in his body. However, Jimmy wakes to find that he is still alive, but has now been shrunken, and his age reverted back to that of about his six-year-old self.
Following the advice of Dr. Herschel Agasa (Dr. Hiroshi Agasa), Jimmy decides to hide his real identity, lest the men in black find out that he is alive. When Rachel asks for his name, Jimmy spots books by Arthur Conan Doyle and Edogawa Rampo and comes up with the name "Conan Edogawa". Agasa says that "Conan" is a relative of his, but that he is too busy to take care of a young child, and suggests that Conan go to live with Rachel, and both Conan and Rachel agree. Conan feels that by living with a detective, he may be able to amass clues that would lead him to the people who poisoned him.
However, Rachel's father, Richard Moore (Kogoro Mori) is an inept detective and Conan almost always has to solve mysteries in his stead, while he gets all the credit. As Conan appears to be just a boy, police do not pay much attention to him. Conan instead uses Detective Moore by putting him to sleep with an "anesthesia dart-watch", propping him up so the others can't see his that his mouth is not moving, then hiding nearby and pretending to be Moore by using a voice changer disguised as a bow tie. These gadgets and more are made by Dr. Agasa. However, when this method is not an option, he points things out to Richard which help him solve the case.
To maintain his cover, Conan goes to Titan elementary school (Japanese: Teitan Elementary School ) and has made friends with three children in his class; George Kaminski (Genta Kojima), Mitch Tennison (Mitsuhiko Tsuburaya) and Amy Yeager (Ayumi Yoshida) who form the self-styled "Junior Detective League" (Detective Boys in the Japanese anime and manga). Although Conan feels profoundly self conscious playing with them given his true age, the foursome have numerous adventures of their own and the trio have proved capable assistants to the detective for their age.
Jimmy was eventually able to find out that Gin was working for a huge super-secret international crime syndicate, known as the Black Organization. In addition to Gin, other major members and operatives of the Black Organization that appear later in the story include his partner Vodka, Vermouth, Kir, Chianti, Korn, and a mysterious "boss" who has only been mentioned so far.
Later on in the series, Jimmy meets with his parents, Booker (Yusaku) and Vivian (Yukiko) Kudo along with Harley Hartwell (Heiji Hattori), a rival detective from Osaka who later becomes his good friend, and Harley's childhood friend Kazuha Toyama. Another recurring character is the gentleman thief known as the Phantom Thief Kid (Kaito Kid) , who also appears in Aoyama's other manga, Magic Kaito. Aside from the Black Organization members, he is the only person that Conan seems unable to catch, and neither realize that they are both after the same "bad guys".