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So what you're saying is, if the law is not in place, unsavory folks can either make a blatant ripoff or an unauthorized adaptation and claim "it's a fanwork", right?
There's a great deal of texture to the issue, most certainly, but I think the current laws are insufficient for the world we live in.
It's generally agreed that charging money for anything labeled fanwork isn't kosher, though- You'll never get anyone to confirm this stuff, but I suspect the reason Nintendo doesn't throw out the C&D orders until after the games have been released suggests to me that they don't mind them beyond the issues presented by the laws regarding trademarks at this point.
edited 3rd Mar '17 11:32:28 AM by Pulse
I sure said that!The Mother 4 fangame had its music released on iTunes and other places, meaning for the actual game they need a new composer. https://www.reddit.com/r/mother4/comments/7dq8b0/shane_mesas_mother_4_soundtrack_is_now_available/
This doesn't sound good for the fangame.
edited 20th Nov '17 1:33:23 AM by lalalei2001
The Protomen enhanced my life.@1107
Well, so far as I can tell...
- Saturn Valley, of course.
- The system isn't ever named, but presumably one where they developed psychic powers and the ability to produce FTL travel and/or generation ships.
- Porky is blatantly brown-nosing in order to secure more power and a place of self-worth. His goal is transparently to outlast his benefactor and end up on top of some variety of totem pole, complete with an escape hatch if things go south. This holds true as of Mother 3, as well. Since Giygas was the greatest power, Porky latched onto him like a lamprey. I think the better question is, just how did Porky pull it off? (Porky needed either a way to survive Giygas' power or, if he met Giygas before the latter became "an almighty idiot," the ability to persuade Giygas that he should be spared. Both seem a bit incongruous.)
The graphics are pretty popping for their era.
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.I brought Earthbound and Earthbound Beginnings almost as soon as they came out on VC, but I haven't played Beginnings in months. It's really... difficult. I understand why people say to skip it, but I would rather play in order of release. There's so much grinding and it's unclear what to do.
Still, it's a fun game. I wouldn't mind remakes of the Earthbound series some day.
The Mother games are basically the peak of what you can do with Dragon Quest-style cypher characters you come to care about while still keeping the focus firmly on the player. Heck Mother 3 uses the convention of assigning names to characters as a Player Punch. That game remains one of the moodiest and most melancholy experiences out there. Even when the actual tragedies only happen a few times during the game, the space between feels like a sad clown in narrative form, throwing jokes and weirdness at you to distract from the sparse environments, mechanization and dehumanizing a sense of community, the atmospheric and gloomy score, and character ambiguity.
I've seen people call the creator a bad writer for not having more conventional character interaction and obvious development, but the games were never one to be so straightforward. The plots tend to be vague on the details of why exactly collecting these objects/finding this thing/fulfilling this prophecy fits together, characters are either just as in the dark as the player or aren't talking, and the exposition you do get tends to throw out cryptic illusions to events and places without further elaborating.
While I am not gonna use the "You don't because you don't understand it" card, I do agree that most people do like it when there is obvious development in games and it is a turn off when there isn't in this game.
"Fan, a Mega Man character."Well, yeah, he was a copywriter and book critic among other things so he's outside of the manga/anime/JRPG sphere in terms of writing sensibilities and whatnot.
If you ever get the time look up Lost Odyssey, or more specifically, the dreams. They were written by an actual acclaimed short story writer and it really shows.
I think that's why his characters feel underdeveloped to some people. No one exposits about their life or their character traits (except Jeff, but that's actually in character for him since he's rattling off his character flaws) and you have to infer a lot through dialogue and things like abilities.

In the writing? No.
In actuality? Absolutely- AM2R was slapped down after becoming really huge and notable to the point IGN was writing about it. Up to a certain point there's a degree of plausible deniability, but after that you must take action or else lose your trademark.
edited 3rd Mar '17 11:13:39 AM by Pulse
I sure said that!