It's that time again for the next Joe's Monologues and the first one of August. We are four months away from 2025 and time sure flies. Not only that because I have turned 30 over three weeks ago and boy, I am out of my 20s. Anyway, let's get started with the latest scoop on this post.
Visions of Mana:
The demo version of the upcoming new Mana game came out not too long ago and I am already excited for Visions of Mana. But there is something about this upcoming Mana game I'm excited for. But why would I be excited for something I don't know anything about? Well, there is one thing we do know one thing's for sure. One that is completely factual is that this is the first Mana game of the franchise to have an original story. If you played Trials of Mana, then Visions of Mana is where it's at.
So why am I excited for Visions of Mana, you ask? It's actually not the fact that this is the first Mana game in its originality in 18 years. But it's the aspects. First off, the demo version gets you straight to the part of the story where you have two Elemental Vessels and Val, Careena and Morley on your party and that progress you see in the demo version will also be in the full game. You need to be aware that Palamena and Julei are not featured in the demo version and you'll see them in the full game.
That's when I'm gonna use the Palamena: Water Princess and Morley: Renegade Moon jokes. I know this seems weird and all, but the jokes I'll be using will not be dark. If Xena: Warrior Princess, Fena: Pirate Princess and Xavier: Renegade Angel are a thing, then Palamena: Water Princess and Morley: Renegade Moon would be a thing. Again, these are jokes, not real TV shows.
I can hear them say what about Careena: Wind Princess. And well, that's another good joke, but doesn't ring a bell as much as Palamena: Water Princess. I believe this joke, along with the Morley: Renegade Moon joke, is gonna be funny and not dark. The I can't breathe joke Mike Z made four years ago? Nope! That's dark and it's NOT funny.
Square Enix has teamed up with One Tree Planted to plant 25,000 trees globally. In order for them to do that, they must tune in to any Twitch channel streaming the demo version of Visions of Mana for 60,000 hours. Once the goal 60,000 hours have been reached, 25,000 trees will be planted globally to fight deforestation in a process of reforestation. I agree with the process because trees are made to produce oxygen and Mana, so if we get more trees, we'll have more oxygen in Earth. In fact, if they planted a Tree of Mana in real life, that's gonna be a miracle. I always wanted to meet the Goddess of Mana in real life.
In case you don't know, there are common denominators between Trials of Mana and Visions of Mana, so let's take a look. Trials of Mana and Visions of Mana are both action RPGs. They involve combo attacks and defeating all monsters in any area to earn EXP, Lucre and items and bonus values occur when defeating all enemies within a certain amount of seconds, finishing battles without taking damage and defeating a enemy with a Class Strike. They both have Class Strikes. They have a star on the map to represent your destination. They have a border you can run against to escape from battle, but certain battles can't be escaped when the border is red. So that's it. These are the common denominators between Trials of Mana and Visions of Mana.
Both are action RPGs. But both games have a different mindset. The Trials of Mana mindset involves characters each having their own Class Strike gauge, switching their classes up to three times at the altar in the Goddess of Mana's humble abode and choosing three out of six characters to go on an adventure. Then you have the Visions of Mana mindset that involves only one Class Strike gauge for the player that controls any character to use, putting three characters in the battlefield and two outside of the battlefield, Elemental Vessels that vary by class and hearing the map BGM play its beats during combat like in the original .hack games in the PS2 era.
I am loving the game's demo version so far. Once the full game comes out, it will be a phenomenal experience since Xena: Warrior Princess and Ape Escape for the PS1. Even in the case of Fallow Steppe and Rime Falls, traversing through these areas literally made me think of the one trail that Xena and Gabrielle walked through at the beginning of the game, and Frozen Mammoth from Ape Escape. I can't wait for the full game of Visions of Mana to come out. I am planning to purchase the game digitally, but I'm gonna rent it first. There might be some Johnny Test vibes too.
Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics:
Over to the compilation we have dreamed of being a reality for an update. It was showcased during EVO 2024, but three games were available to play there. There has been some exciting stories about Marvel vs. Capcom we already heard. UMvC3 was last year's throwback game. Capcom has finally made our dream into a reality and I am excited for the compilation.
What makes me excited for the collection? Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection offering every game of the franchise is actually not why I am excited. But better yet, it's one of the games in the compilation that a lot of people in the FGC want freed. That is Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes. So why is this exciting? Good question.
Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is known for its 3v3 battles to have two assist buttons and four attack buttons and its huge roster. This is the game that people, including me, in the FGC want freed from jail, so what am I talking about? Sure, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 became phenomenal with its large roster of 56 characters. Capcom did something amazing.
During the development of Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Capcom's genius team came with making original characters on the Capcom side. This is when Ruby Heart, Son Son and Amingo were born. These are the characters that never starred in a single Capcom franchise. That's why these characters were original. When the developers put in original characters on the Capcom side, they also put in characters on the Marvel side we don't know much about, Marrow, Blackheart and Silver Samurai, because these Marvel characters are low in popularity and didn't get that much attention.
It doesn't take a professional developer to understand the release of MvC2, because it first came out on 6th generation consoles, then released on 7th generation with all content unlocked by default and will be available to play in Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection along with others on 8th generation consoles. So MvC2 came out and it became such a phenomenal vs. Capcom game, right? Sure, it can be, if you like Spider-Man web swinging and walking on the walls on a building in the city.
The date as to when we can pre order it is unknown. We do know that it's coming out this year. But sadly, Xbox has had an omission from the collection for some reason. Regardless, I am excited for the collection we've been waiting for years since Marvel vs. Capcom Origins. Again, no release date just yet. If Capcom plans to make a new Marvel vs. Capcom game, I'll be ready for that, if they knock the netcode out of the park and make it the best game it can be, unlike UMvC3 where we are restricted to playing on Bonne Wonderland and MvCI where we are restricted to playing on the training stage like on Street Fighter V. It's annoying.
The Meme on My Career:
An update on my Wrapper Offline career is obvious. I shifted to the 3.0.0 build and it has a huge selection of assets to update my characters. But that is not relevant. What is really relevant is a meme I came up with that involved having things that they are not allowed to have, which is the Sierra Mist.
One of the British YouTubers made that meme about the characters not being allowed to eat Walkers Crisps because they can make them sick. It's just for fun and entertaining purposes. They don't really make them sick in real life. I came up with the Sierra Mist meme. In real life, Sierra Mist was rebranded into Starry, but not in my videos. I had to make that entertaining because one of the defunct companies that published the Crash and Spyro games in Universal Interactive's stead has "Sierra" in the name. It's to pay homage to the company.
Broken Saw:
And speaking of Sierra, it's time to talk about and go into detail on one of the YouTube channels that did a great job covering logos from media, which is Broken Saw. Broken Saw did a great job covering logos from media. I'm basically into the ones from video games because of how logos flow. It's common for all generations. But I preferred the ones that are outside the game and also silent, like the one that is from Dragon Ball Z: Budokai showing the old FUNimation logo and the one that is from the 6th generation WWE games. The one from Budokai 2 is ten seconds shorter than Budokai 1. The logos from Budokai 3 haven't been covered yet. While they are known for covering logos, they also covered copyright screens with logos on it.
Broken Saw's way of covering video game logos from the back in the year hit me with nostalgia. It's among those games I played from back in the day. Especially the Ape Escape 3 one when the two kids read "Sony Computer Entertainment America". It's a game that I want to revisit and now that PS2 emulation has reopened, it's likely to happen if Sony released Ape Escape 3 on the catalog, and also re-released Ape Escape 2 and other older PS2 games on the catalog to have both NTSC and PAL versions, quick saves, rewinds (PS5 only), up rendering and video filters.
The logos from Crash Bandicoot games, though became a starting point to cherishing old logos mostly from video games. The remasters have also been covered, though they said that they can't make any promises that they are gonna cover the remasters. Especially the original games.
July's additions on the classics department was revealed and they turned out to be an utter disappointment. I never played any of those classic games before. And there wasn't a single PS1 game on the previous month. It had none of the games Broken Saw has covered and that's why I am a bit disappointed in that. But let's hope August's additions won't be so disappointing as July's and has at least one retro game I played before Broken Saw has covered like June's additions did to have at least one retro game I played before. Well, two because Days of Play has offered us new PS2 games.
Conclusion:
So this wraps up today's Joe's Monologues. The end of 2024 is almost upon us. I hope you all have a fantastic day. And now that I'm settled after the long haul, I'll be able to work on posting future posts.
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