SG X BBTAG Update #4

Alright, readers, this fourth update to Skullgirls X BBTAG is the moment of truth we've been waiting for. We'll do this in a past, present and future format.

The Past:

The six eligible characters out of eight in the original Skullgirls' starting roster is a good starting point when it comes to 3v3 battles. It starts out all female like in Them's Fightin' Herds. It has one depicting a BlazBlue character, three depicting Persona 4 Arena characters and two depicting Under Night In-Birth characters. It has Labrys, Mika, Teddie, P4A Mitsuru Kirijo, Makoto Nanaya and Merkava.

The number of eligible characters have been increased from six to eleven, with the difference of five additional eligible characters. Hilda, Iron Tager, Hakumen, Kanji Tatsumi and Aigis are the additions and all five funded DLC characters in the Indiegogo campaign are eligible. As a result, it is no longer all female because Big Band and Beowulf in Tager and Kanji's colors are on there. It now has three BlazBlue palettes, five P4A palettes and three UNI palettes.

This is a good odd number of characters and that's the number of characters Them's Fightin' Herds will expand to with its Season 1 Pass, which contains Texas, Stronghoof, Nidra and the fourth yet to be announced character. Nidra was supposed to come out this year, but they pushed her back to early next year so that she can come out clean with the best experience possible. If the fourth character in the Season 1 Pass is revealed to be a female character, it can make it perfect to match the Skullgirls X BBTAG roster of nine female characters and two male characters during the Indiegogo period.

Practically speaking, the three versions of Crossing Fate require at least four characters of the same department and thanks to the Indiegogo campaign that added two more characters eligible for P4A palettes, that's more than enough to play Crossing Fate ft. P4A with these characters in game in 2v2 and 2v3 formats. If there is a 6th character eligible for their P4A palette, it can hit the maximum amount of six characters in game. Their Personas are not included.

The Present:

And now, here we are. All four Season 1 Pass characters have been added to the Skullgirls X BBTAG roster of 15 eligible characters. Izayoi, Platinum the Trinity, Nine the Phantom and Orie are the new additions. An odd number of 15 is actually good because Marie in Orie's colors is in the middle of the collage to make it stay true to the fact that she is the current Skullgirl being faced by an even number of characters in their BBTAG palettes in the BBTAG 2.0 period. That makes it six BlazBlue palettes, five P4A palettes and four UNI palettes.

Thanks to the Season 1 Pass period that adds three more characters eligible for BlazBlue palettes, it is more than enough to play Crossing Fate with these characters in game in 2v2, 2v3 and 3v3 formats. The BlazBlue palette department is at the number of characters at the maximum amount in game. If there is a 7th character eligible for their BlazBlue palette, it can exceed the maximum number of characters in game. But hey, the more the merrier, right? Their Drive attacks will not be included.

Playing Crossing Fate ft. UNI is something I wanted to do and since Marie is the fourth character eligible for her UNI palette because of her maid's outfit and her ability to summon her Stand despite being a Skullgirl, it is likely to happen more than ever. I'll be playing it either after Marie hits Alpha or after she is fully released in 2nd Encore. But it must be 2v2 as BBTAG tradition in order for it to work until a 5th character eligible for their UNI palette is confirmed. While the Canopy Kingdom is mostly nighttime, it is not considered a Hollow Night and their EXS will not be included.

As a bonus, Under Night In-Birth II: Sys:Celes was announced at EVO and this will be in response to that.

BBTAG 2.0

BBTAG 3.0:

The BBTAG 2.0 period has six empty spaces left while the BBTAG 3.0 period has five empty spaces. The Under Night In-Birth row is likely to be left with one empty space in both periods because it has six eligible characters on the department. During the BBTAG 3.0 period, it has six P4A palettes. I'm keeping Cerebella in Mika's colors because of her forte of punching and grabbing things along with Marie in Orie's colors.

BBTAG 2.0:

BBTAG 3.0:

During the course of Marie's development in Mobile, she didn't get her Orie palette. But there is still a chance, which is during her Alpha phase. If it didn't make it, it will stay on this palette pack.

Introducing the Skullgirls X BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle Season 1 Pass; featuring Annie, Umbrella, Black Dahlia and Marie in Izayoi, Platinum, Nine and Orie colors.

Best friends, rivals, ASG warriors, TV stars, Renoir sisters of the Canopy Kingdom, Parasite users, Fortunes and grapplers! The Skullgirls X BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle cast of 15 characters is coming along nicely!

In case if you're wondering if there will be more characters beyond Marie, yes, there will be more of them. But the characters on my Discord server's splash art must be smaller in order to fit more characters on there.

Now, that being said, it's time for the full story for this.

Skullgirls X BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle pits warriors in their BBTAG palettes in a "Dark Deco" world. Their mission is to fight the current Skullgirl that is Marie in Orie's colors. Marie is unlockable when you beat the General Story Mode, like in all games developed by NetherRealm Studios. Marie's Story Mode is half visual novel and entails her connection with the Skull Heart. On the hardest difficulty, Marie's skin turns red and she turns into Marie 300% in Orie's colors, but with a red skin.

In a fortunate turn of events, the Skull Heart has been destroyed, but Marie herself is spared and freed from all influence from the power of the Skull Heart, thus making her both an unchained Skullgirl and a playable fighter.

And finally, my fanmade character select screen now has a portrit of Marie in Orie's colors. The blank green square is the random selection. Also reverted the podiums to the original one. I didn't add the ? mark on the green square because importing my own fonts requires Canva Pro.

It's now time to post more BBTAG Trinities.

Team Best Friends - Big Band, Peacock and Marie in Tager, Teddie and Orie colors. Peacock isn't alone because Marie is her best friend at the castle orphanage and Big Band is a close friend at the ASG labs. Those who have the balls to run this BBTAG Trinity will make them a legend.

Skullgirls X BBTAG 1.0 Wave 1 - Umbrella, Beowulf and Marie in Platinum, Kanji and Orie's colors. Because you just want to embrace the goodness of this BBTAG Trinity without being obvious that others are being embraced right now.

The Future:

Without Marie:

With Marie:

You think that I'm done with my endeavor of making BBTAG palettes out of Skullgirls characters? Well, guess again, becuase we are down to the future of my projects that this update will not be the final one. My collages above have four more empty slots. Without Marie in Orie's colors, it can hold up to 18 characters in their BBTAG palettes while with Marie in Orie's colors, it can hold up to 19 characters in their BBTAG palettes. The empty slots are for the eligible non-playable characters below.

And that covers everything in this moment of truth update. Phew, it was a lot that I had to go through. All of my projects are now updated to have a final picture of Marie in Orie's colors and they are coming along nicely even more to become a masterpiece. It's finally over. This is the moment of truth, but that doesn't mean this will be the final standalone update because if they greenlight a Season 2 Pass, I'll be ready for that as long as it contains at least one character eligible for Skullgirls X BBTAG. I am gonna share this on X, but it will not happen until I finish posting the rest of the quips. I am coming down the wire on it.

Let me tell you this. When I was watching SPL, right? When I was watching SPL, it was the tip of the iceberg that the Oni Warriors would break the 2-0 run of the remaining European SCC team, Hex Mambo during Summer Masters. It was the icing on the cake. They would've completed their undefeated journey in Phase 1, but the Styx Ferrymen managed to do so.

Now that all of my projects have a final picture of Marie and since she is the final Season 1 Pass character, I can now wait for her Alpha to full release and post the rest of the quips on X with a clear mind, as well as waiting for Sonic Frontiers' The Final Horizon update coming out tomorrow. Signing out.

Joe's Monologues - 9/17/23

Hello, guys, gals and non-binary pals. Back with today's episode of Joe's Segues, now called Joe's Monologues and that's what the series is gonna be going forward because you know, monologues are speeches made by one person while dialogues are conversations between multiple people. In fact, monologue makes more sense than segue. This one is gonna have interesting things to monologue, so get ready to embrace as I talk a bit.

First off, my family and I have a new router days ago and it is so much better and much stronger than the old crappy one that I had. I have a new password for my electronics and I'm not gonna tell you. I give doing something online a go to see how smooth it is. What does this mean after I invested a new router? It means my online experience is smoother than before. Practically speaking, it takes a smooth internet connection. Thanks to my new router, I'll be able to have a smoother online experience.

Live Streaming:

Having a smooth live streaming experience is something I want to do and with my new router that is stronger, it is likely to happen.

Watching livestreams:

My old router was the reason why livestreaming hit networking skips and lag no matter what device I'm on. Now that I have a new router, that will no longer be the case. I will finally be able to enjoy watching livestreams smoother than before.

Online Multiplayer:

Barring and mitigating most of the network skips and lag, my new router is gonna encourage the smoothness of playing online multiplayer.

As a test, I played some Crash Team Rumble. I played a couple of games on the new 4-player co-op Party Mode. It is introduced in Season 2. The first time I played it, my experience isn't smooth because of the old one I had. But thanks to the new router, I was able to play my games smoother than before without experiencing network skips and lag often.

When playing this game online, my experience turns out to be smoother than ever. I didn't even experience network skips often. I also watched one of the movies on my Fire Stick and it plays smoothly thanks to my new router. My old one was the reason why I was having trouble watching my movies. And with the SMITE Pro League coming back for the Road to the SWC soon, I'll be able to watch it without experiencing a single network skip thanks to my new router. I was even able to watch Mortal Kombat Legends smoothly too.

Speaking of Mortal Kombat, I pre loaded Mortal Kombat 1 yesterday and it is fast approaching. If you pre-ordered the Premium Edition, you'll get early access and everything else. The starting roster is 23 fighters and 15 Kameos. That's 38 in total. More fighters and Kameos are on the way through its first Kombat Pass that contains Omni-Man from Invincible, Homelander from The Boys, DC's Peacemaker, Quan Chi, Takeda and Ermac. Those who got the Premium Edition will get early access to the DLC characters in the Kombat Pass. It's hard to believe that MK1's roster has a handful of 3D-era characters; the ones who haven't been playable for long since back then.

There are two days away from release, so the end of the early access phase is approaching. So is getting ready for some brutal butt kicking action. The new era when peace is encouraged is approaching.

And you know what else is approaching? My time to update my projects because Marie is releasing on Skullgirls Mobile this month. On the second Skullgirls State of the Game, they announced that similar to what they did to Annie, which didn't have an Alpha, they are gonna prioritize new character releases on Mobile first so that they can fully switch over to 2nd Encore to give their Alpha their full attention it deserves moving forward. It's because the characters in Mobile have significantly less development time than on 2nd Encore.

I agree with this because I want that character to release on Mobile first so that I can update my projects to have their final pose sooner if it's an eligible character for Skullgirls X BBTAG during both periods or during the BBTAG 3.0 period. And since Marie is fast approaching her Mobile release on the 6.0 update, I am a stepping stone away from updating my projects to have her final pose and they will be coming along nicely even more. After that, I can look at how my projects are coming along nicely after updating them to have a final picture of Marie in Orie's colors. The moment of truth is looming.

Then it's off to her Steam-exclusive 2nd Encore Alpha release to drop shortly after her Mobile release and that's where I come in to get Purity & Strictly ready for her entrance. Since Skullgirls 2nd Encore is now available on all four digital storefronts on Steam, PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch, she is gonna be fully released on all platforms. That's when Purity & Strictly gets play to the true max. And I said true because 2nd Encore is available on all four digital storefronts. That's another moment of truth that Marie will be fully released on all platforms.

The developers are doing Marie fighter reveal trailers. They shown her Mobile-exclusive character ability and four of her cards out of eleven, which is the number of cards Marie will launch with. But no sign of her Orie palette, which will be a Dark elemental because it depicts an Under Night In-Birth character. I'll be on the lookout for that. Four down, seven to go. If it makes it into the game, I'll remove it from my palette pack idea. If she doesn't get it over the course of her Mobile release, her last chance to get it will take place during the course of her Alpha phase in 2nd Encore. If she doesn't get it during her Alpha, it stays in my palette pack. I am hoarding my standard relics until 6.1 and that's the update where she will be fully available across all standard relics because she will not be available in all standard relics in 6.0.

As a treat, I am posting BBTAG palette-specific quotes on X, formerly Twitter. So far, I posted five quotes. More of them are coming, so stay tuned. Of course, the quotes are just for fun purposes and they can also include the ones that are already in the game. This is gonna be in preparation for my special online casual. Apparently, the Skullgirls fanbase has declined because of that controversial censorship update that angered the community and they still haven't forgotten about it. I might have to postpone sending the link to an invite to my Discord server until this blows over.

Back in 2014, I signed up for GoAnimate and bought the GoPlus plan, which was cheaper. The plan was no longer available on that day it expired and years later, Comedy World and the older themes have been sunset for its shift to the HTML5 platform. The older themes use Flash and they are not compatible with the latest release and was renamed to Vyond. I went to the school platform that doesn't use assets that commit violence, which also gone into business. Because of it, I searched for alternatives that are similar to GoAnimate, but none of them are nowhere near as similar to it.

I was so sad that I will never make animated videos again as Vyond killed the GoAnimate community, until I heard something really good. They have developed something called Wrapper: Offline, which is a emulation of GoAnimate's legacy video maker that contains the older themes and can't be shut down since it's offline. Thanks to Wrapper: Offline, I have the power to continue my creativity and the GoAnimate community has revived.

I plan to post new content on my channel over on YouTube. However, it won't be on the current state that I am not happy with. I intend to reset my channel and start fresh. To do that, the only way to reset my channel is to delete all of my videos. I am even working on a second channel dedicated to gaming purposes. Also, I won't be posting new GoAnimate/Wrapper videos on the main channel. Going forward, I will be posting them on the new channel.

Now, for the upcoming video, I need to make a handful of characters that are based on my life interests. I will screencap and post pictures of characters on YouTube. Unfortunately, due to the issue that keeps my projects from saving on my Wrapper: Offline, I'll have to postpone it until the issue is fixed. In the meantime, I'll screencap the characters on the current version.

These are today's interesting monologues. Going forward, this series will henceforth be called "Joe's Monologues." I will see you in the next one.