River City Ransom's Roxy's Return Revealed?

If you're still following River City Ransom Underground, Conatus Creative's ambitious sequel to that most famous of Kunio Kun series games, you likely know that after the umpteenth delay, they no longer are setting release dates, though they say they're "content complete"; whatever that means.  Still, two people involved in the game have been good enough to offer at least a bit more insights.  One is Andrew Russell, the programmer, whose video blogs about how he does important things in the game can be viewed here.  (But warning; it's very technical!)  The other is Sarah C Maas, and I'm not actually sure what her job is in the team, but she's answering questions, and that is at the subject of this article.

While Sarah isn't allowed to answer everything, she did tease a bit about Roxy, saying to a person they'd have to wait and see.  With a winking text emoticon, to boot.  So while that's not exactly a yes, it would seem Roxy is at least planned to be in this game, and likely playable at some point.  But how far might they have gone towards implementing her?  Recently, I've dug up some media and info that suggests she might well be there, and in the game as of release. (Whenever that may be.)

Let's turn to that silhouette at the head of this article; it's from a post made three years ago on RCRU's Facebook page.  It is quite obviously a female, though it doesn't look much like the official art of Roxy, who in the Japanese original was named Hasebe.  Yet whoever she is, we might just have gotten a fuller view of her since then, courtesy of this shot:

If you squint, you can see a very similar hair style blending into the carpet.

It can be found on Google Image Search, and it points to a site called www.just-gamers.fr.  However, the RCRU page on Just Gamers doesn't actual seem to have the screenshot, and it was probably one of the many broken media archived there.  I may be wrong, but I believe this was taken from a video that used to be online, but I can't find it anymore.  I'd love help from people who know where it might be.  Meanwhile, though, it seems likely this is the character who was previewed on Facebook three years ago, and based on her position in that screenshot, she's likely a player-controlled character rather than one of the enemies.  The less-answered question remains, is she Roxy?  Maybe not, but there's one more thing that points to her being so, and it's another game inspired by River City Ransom.

Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, referential to video games in general, but specifically modeled on RCR, also has a character called Roxy, and this is what she looks like.  The similarities to the girl we've been looking at so far in this article, though not absolute, may well be pointing in that direction.  Since Conatus Creative is, much like Scott Pilgrim, Canadian and in love with River City Ransom, it makes sense that they'd derive at least some inspiration. (Update: Since I wrote this, I saw a video interviewing Bannon Rudis, confirming that yes, a Scott Pilgrim Alumnus contributed to this game.)

All this is to be treated as speculation rather than a definitive answer, but I think it's based on some rather convincing evidence, so stay tuned!

Update: Another image with this character has been located at Kamgraphica, a web design company who took on RCRU as a client.  She is in the same pose, which likely implies it's her standard fighter stance.

Time to Address the Haunting Problems With the Sports Game Glut

Fellow gamers, we need to have a talk.  I love games overall, but there are some bits of this industry that really do annoy me, and I feel really could use at least some degree of reform.  I'm talking about sports.

So many sports.

Acronym, Acronym, Acronym...

Row upon row of sports.

Okay; disclosure, I have never had any interest in most sports.  I was in the occasional little league baseball and soccer teams as a kid, but I wasn't very good at them.  I kind of liked basketball, but again, I was bad at it.  I do not watch sports on TV, with the occasional exception of martial arts.  I find most things that end with "ball" to be a reduction of individuals to overexposed labels bouncing back and forth in buildings likewise full of overexposed labels.  Finally, video games based on sports feel as pointless (or maybe point-missing) to me as decaffeinated coffee and non-alcoholic beer.

All that being said, I don't wish to portray my tastes as dogma.  I wholeheartedly support motivating people to get into shape (which is the aforementioned reason why I don't understand sports video games, but whatever), and I respect the rights of people to buy and play what they wish to buy and play even if it's not what I wish to buy and play.  Still, holy shit.

When you run out of shelve space.

There's more!

We were so much better off back in my d--Never mind.

On the chance that maybe a picture is not actually worth a thousand words, here's some more words: Not long ago, Macklemore, one of my idols, albeit less for his musical talent and more for his subversive attitude, made it cool to go buy curios secondhand.  From that day on, those of us who went around looking in stores where we were bound to find something unique, which we couldn't find in places more caught up in the ratrace, began to around looking in stores where were bound to find something unique, which we couldn't find in places more caught up in the ratrace, with a sense of pride!  From clothes that were cool until they were uncool, and have now been uncool so long they might be cool again, to discontinued toys that might cost much more online, to books about a broad variety of things, to cassette tapes of things that might not even have become downloadable yet, these places are mints of uniqueness...and then there's used games.

The Genesis of a blight.

Whether sifting through the bargain bin at a mainstream video game store, or a drugstore, or a Big Lots, or the hip ma-and-pop emporium for games of all eras, where I took all of the photos in this article, one is forced to sift through sports title after sports title after samey sports title; their minimalistic boxart, brand-year names, and dreaded common EA logos numbing his or her head with their unapologetic uniformity until the few unique games, sought-after out-of-print classics, and/or irresistibly odd obscurities, don't even register.  This has gone beyond "don't-like-don't-play" territory.

Can you spot a non-NFL game there?  I can't.

Beyond it, because thanks to the sports game industry, the stores, shopping convenience, and desired quaint atmosphere of those of us who like video games for what they can do unique unto themselves, are being infested by a swarm of banal conformity that wastes space and time until shelves take on the aesthetic effect of a neighborhood full of communist housing projects.

The problem behind this is not simply that these games are made and sold.  I don't oppose that.  The problem is that these games keep getting made and sold, year by year, $50 by $50, same acronym by same acronym, with minor edits less than those one would find in a (typically free) PC game mod or retro cartridge hack, and somehow, people put up with this.  This is largely the doing of EA games, and any new excuse I get for bringing that trust old punching bag out, is welcome.  Somehow, there is a desire to continue paying for the experience of allegedly accurate teams every year, and apparently there aren't many nostalgic years.  I am aware fans talk about good years for individual teams, like, "Boy; The Chicago Bulls sure kicked ass when Michael Jordon was in them" (I'm assuming they did, anyway, based on how big a celebrity he was), but I don't hear about good years for the sports in themselves, wherein there were so many awesome basketball players and teams that such-and-such a year is worth experiencing again and again.

The result is what my photos document; the people who rush to buy the latest hyped-up hack job also unload last year's models as used games, and they proceed to pile up in the bins, on the shelves, in the cabinets and on the floors; passed both by people who don't like sports games and by people who don't like outdated sports games.  Used game shopping becomes a chore as these people fight through the mud to get to the gold nuggets that may or may not exist amongst it.  So I say to the world...

I'm posting pictures of all of the piles; deal with it.

 ENOUGH!

For all of our sakes, stop eating EA's shit!  Stop letting yourself be swindled out of fifty dollars a year for minor edits to games you already own!  Stop buying that you won't enjoy outdated rosters in otherwise identical games!  Stop funding the continued survival of a corporation that absorbs and ruins esteemed game franchises like SimCity and Command & Conquer!  Stop it all!  You deserve the following for your taste in games: You buy the game, and for that service they release yearly patches you can download; substantially less than $50 a pop.  You can force their hands if you stop giving them a raw deal, and it'll take willpower, but if you achieve the world devoid of that price-gouging and the new economic muscle it gives you, you won't want to go back.

And we all can finally be rid of used game shops that look like this.

I had to check the photo names to make sure I hadn't posted this one yet.