This is an old collection of journals from FurAffinity that I thought I'd share. Pretty much because they were something of a creative exercise back in the day. I will be presenting each journal in as complete a manner as I can. I cannot inforporate any font effects here, but hopefully, something can be worked out. Originally posted October 11th, 2009 12:15 PM On a lark, I'm setting up some information on a faux-franchise of furry beat-em-up games loosely in the vein of Final Fight or Double Dragon. This is being released a little bit at a time and the comments section below will be a suggestion box. Fandom info was suggested by my brother. Here's the first part of the infaux proper. Think of this as a product of the 1980s meant to cash in on the TMNT craze. In the year 2000 (There was no president Bush in this timeline.), two geniuses joined their wits into a project to uplift animals into humanoid form and intellect. (Okay, so "geniuses" might be a misapplied term). One man, Professor Gene, thought this would be a boon to mankind. The other guy, Doctor Muton, sees this more as a means to attain an army of superpowered soldiers that will help him conquer the world. Muton secretly used the research to create an army from his underground base, while Gene only had three subjects for research purposes: a wolf, a coyote, and a vixen. One day, after a few years of research, Muton completed his army and got them all under his control. He sends a few to beat up Professor Gene and kidnap his daughter Alice (just because Muton wanted to show he could take anything he wanted). However, during the attack, the professor's three subjects were broken out of their tubes and became able to fight back. The anthropomorphic animal thugs got away and Professor Gene was badly battered, and the three animals have vowed to return his daughter as he recovered. The trio is as follows: Daniel: The coyote, clever, strong and fast, but plays as the middle ground character. He's the leader of this pack. Toby: The Wolf, very strong, but also quite slow physically (and also pretty stupid). He's a classic follower, recognizing Daniel's intellectual superiority. Viki/Ricky (The latter name was used for home NES/SNES ports because of policies concerning violence against women): the vixen/fox, fast, but lacking in the muscles. S/he's also typically high-strung thanks to the antics of the other two. S/he's only with them (rather than being out alone) because that seemed the most conducive to survival. Snarky. The humor in the brawler would be a case of starting out fairly normal, and only going more absurd as the game progressed. Game Info: Buster Blitz (Arcade: 1988, NES/Famicom: 1989, Sega Genesis: 1991, Super NES/Famicom: 1991) From Kitsune-Tsuki Studio The game that started the whole franchise. Set in the year 2000, Dr. Muton stole the professor's secrets and sent a mutant army to destroy Gene's laboratory and abduct his daughter. However, in the destruction, three canine mutants were broken out of their development chambers. They saw a threat to their well-being and fought back. These mutants were Daniel, Toby, and Viki (Ricky in the American NES and SNES ports). This game was a rather typical beat-em-up save for the presentation of absurd arenas, including one level in the sewers where the bad guys were in speedboats while the heroes surfed on the backs of alligators (Don't ask), or one boss fight taking place in a 50s Diner that was against a large poodle (the sprite was changed over to a wolf in the American Nintendo ports). The Diner fight was notable because you could toggle the music of that stage on and off by beating up the Jukebox. Fandom Info: After the release of the first game, a fan named Toshihito Komura began work on a dojinshi of Buster Blitz, removing much of the comedy and turning it into a dark action-drama. For example, Professor Gene was killed off and his daughter a survivor of being raped by the mutants, and the canine trio is dedicated to wiping out the other mutants and Muton himself. This was released as a graphic novel with a note of being an alternate retelling of the game's storyline. This is also considered to be the birth of the Buster Blitz fandom in Japan. Other dojinshi were written more faithfully to the game, which have been translated for underground publications in America, starting up America's fandom shortly after it's american release. (this also lead to questions about why Ricky was in the games and Vicky in the fanworks...) ===== Originally Posted January 7th, 2011 05:41 PM Well, it's been over a year, during which time I lost track of where on my computer the file for this little Infaux collection was. Comments below are intended as a suggestion box. Anyways, here is part 2 of the Buster Blitz series false information. Game Info Buster Blitz II: Muton's Menace (Arcade: 1990, NES/Famicom: 1991, Sega Genesis: 1993, Super NES/Famicom: 1993) Muton's Menace marked the return of the Busters approximately two years later when Professor Gene's daughter is now a high school senior. With Daniel, Toby, and Viki now serving as body guards, the game begins when Dr. Muton, operating from his prison, has his mutants crash in and abduct the girl again, leading our mutant canine heroes in a ballroom blitz! Amidst the chaos, Alice was abducted again and they had to fight through eight stages to get her back. Pretty much more of the same, except that “Pack attacks” were introduced as a mechanic to do damage all over the screen, and a good reason to have more than one player handy. This was not featured in the NES/Famicom port. Also, all. Six prior bosses made a return, along with two more at the beginning. The first level was also noteworthy for playing a modified version of the song “Ballroom Blitz” by Sweet. And also the toggle feature was on that level if you wound up beating on the music player. In the last two levels, you actually dealt with human enemies as the tale took you into the prison to fight against Doctor Muton again. Unfortunately, this all turned out be a gambit by the mad doctor to arrange an escape from his prison, leading to a case of the heroes having screwed up badly, but getting Alice back for Professor Gene. Buster Blitz: The Series Buster Blitz has seen a couple of TV adaptations. The new-found American popularity of Buster Blitz lead to an American TV pilot for the show. Based loosely on the first game, the executives wanted the project to simply follow the lead of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The pilot's writer had other plans. The script turned out to be an exercise in breaking the fourth wall, snarking over the ridiculous plot and premise, and slipping plenty of questionable humor past the radar in 1989, leading parents to complain. This pilot was the only thing seen for any televised version of Buster Blitz in America. In 1990, as an immediate follow-through for the second game, Japan saw a tokusatsu (special-effects heavy live action) TV series where the three heroes would fight off a new mutant menace every week. In Japan, this series was well known for being campy compared to other popular shows like Super Sentai and Kamen Rider. The fact that the costumes were very cheap and often less-than-convincing often played into the “so bad it's good” quality of the television series. The series lasted for 30 episodes, with 25 episodes airing on a weekly basis, followed by the last five episodes airing all in one week. ===== Originally Posted February 1st, 2011 05:57 PM For the last part of my continuing series on the game franchise that never was, Buster Blitz, here is a link: [Link is redacted.] Game Info Buster Blitz III (Arcade: 1992, Sega Genesis: 1994, Super NES/Famicom: 1994) In another couple of years, The Buster Blitz team made a third game for the series. This one was not ported for the NES/Famicom for some reason. This time, following almost directly where the second game left off, Doctor Muton has created an army of creatures called Chimera (mutants that combined features from more than one animal) to seize many parts of the world. The plot was actually a video game adaptation of the Japanese television series following the second game, but with an odd little gameplay gimmick: A one player game only had the player facing four levels before the final one. A two player game gave the players eight levels, and a three player game gave everyone 12 levels before the final thirteenth. This was explained as the other levels being taken on by non-present characters. The final level would have the unplayed characters appearing and controlled by the computer, though they seemed to have AIs that were lacking and were quickly dispatched. The gimmick was also quickly overriden by another player joining in, leading to shorter multiplayer games. A re-release took the approach of only allowing players to join in before the first level was played, much to the dismay of many arcade-goers. The console versions just let you play the whole game regardless of how many players there were, and the SNES version was finally able to incorporate both Ricky and Viki, retooling Ricky to be a mostly-balanced character favoring speed and Daniel to be mostly-balanced but favoring strength. This version also supported Four-player gameplay with the aid of a special plug-in from Nintendo itself. Fandom History Reaching Out to American Fans In America, a small group of fans and comic book artists in 1992 were given permission from the developers to begin work on an American comic book based on the Buster Blitz video games. This series has not gained much popularity due claims that it was just a knock off of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Schedule slipping didn't help matters either, however the series did have a run of three years, with an average of one issue every month. The run was eventually canceled after the group went bankrupt. Another attempt to reach American fans was a chance taking in the Role Playing Game industry. A small company called Grey Coyote Game Arts wrote in for permission, in an attempt to follow a similar attempt from another game company to create a role playing game based on a video game. They received permission, but it quickly became a cast of GCGA not caring so much on getting facts right, and making up a lot of stuff despite being given plenty of material to work with. And also, the editing was terrible, including the exclusion of whole sections of the rules. GCGA eventually made an errata and sold it as a sourcebook, citing it as being supposedly cheaper than a revised edition of the game. This also fell flat in America. But in Japan, they translated the game, with errata incorporated, and it was pretty popular for a few years, complete with a few supplements written only in Japan, while the American version never got any support beyond the errata and one book of five adventures. ===== Originally posted May 7th, 2012 05:06 PM Game Info Street Blitz (Arcade 1995, Sega Saturn 1995, Playstation 1996) The Buster Blitz team decided to try something different with their next foray into the Buster Blitz franchise, as much of their staff has been replaced with the goal of revitalizing the franchise. Sadly, this attempt at revitalization was poorly received for a good reason. The game would have been a standard fighting game, a 3d take on the team mechanics of the popular King of Fighters franchise, but the controls often lagged and the character designs lacked appeal for most folks, being blockier than the original Virtua Fighter in an age where Tekken proved you can do 3d smoothly. The storyline also did not help, as it put an end to any humor from the series in favor of something darker and edgier. After the apparent death of Doctor Muton, humanity rose up and began to kill off any mutants they could get their hands on. (How, if they were powerless before?) Any surviving mutants, including the Busters, were forced underground in order to survive. (That's how grateful humanity is? That they'd be willing to kill their saviors? What is this, the Marvel Universe?) One man had the idea of a way to bring out the hiding mutants for extermination: By holding a tournament. (How does that make sense?) Eight “gangs” (just to be edgy) fell for this ploy and are now forced to fight to the death. (Well, they're already ripping poorly off of Virtua Fighter and King of Fighters, so why not do a poor rip off of Mortal Kombat while we're at it.) Street Blitz even phoned in the finishing moves, even though one could perform one at the end of the round, making them three times more common than any previously released fighting game that boasted them. They were all completely unoriginal, and suffered from a lot of cutting and pasting, with 24 characters sharing from a pool of about 10 fatalities total. Japanese releases dummied out that feature as it was not as fashionable in that country. Overall, Street Blitz was an under-performer and the black sheep of the Buster Blitz Franchise. It was also perceived as it's death for a long time. Fandom History America Buys The Busters Following the disaster known as Street Blitz, it was acknowledged by the Buster Blitz team that the franchise has run out of life. The team has disbanded to work on other projects, but the head of the team, Toshiro Sato, still held the legal rights to the franchise, only to have forgotten about it until 2008 when his lawyer received a phone call from an American game developer who was looking to do a reboot of the franchise. Mr. Sato was informed and sold the rights in exchange for a fair chunk of money and a role as a consultant in the game's reboot. This lead to the creation of the game known as Buster Blitz 2011. Game Info 2 Buster Blitz (Also known informally as “Buster Blitz 2011.” Playstation 3 2011, Xbox 360 2011, Nintendo Wii 2011). Heralded as a true return to form, this game was a reboot of the Buster Blitz franchise after 15 years of not seeing any use. This was an American production, with the Japanese creators serving as consultant executives. The story was an expanded reproduction of the first game, with extended backstory following Professor Gene and Doctor Muton, with occasional levels where the perspective would flip and players took control of villains instead of the heroes. The game itself maintained the humor that got the original game its fans and even went for a feel not unlike a cartoon in terms of what kinds of gags they would throw in, which had a tendency to get rather jarring now and then when combined with realistic graphics. They did not actively exploit toon physics, but there was plenty of fun had with the fourth wall during cut scenes and especially during gameplay tutorials. As far as gameplay was concerned, it was a one player affair where a second or third player could join in at any time by plugging in a controller and pressing start. Players could swap around characters during the game in a manner not unlike the Lego Star Wars games. Having all three players present also made Pack Attacks (from the second game) possible with any two characters although many critics have decried the game's controls as being a bit on the shallow side, but just as many critics have mentioned this as a good thing in a game where you want to shut off your brain and mash buttons. Whether or not the Buster Blitz series will continue from this game or not is still up in the air, but the title itself does include unlockable ports of the first three arcade games as bonuses for beating the game once, twice, and three times respectively. Though Street Blitz has been deliberately left out at the insistence of the game's developers. ===== And that's all that's ever been made up on this franchise.