Ghost Mike's Ponyfic Review Monday Musings #110 · 5:00pm April 22nd
Anniversaries of media or pieces of tech abound all over the place these days to the point they can often mean less if you yourself don’t have an association with it. That said, what with me casually checking in to Nintendo Life semi-frequently, I couldn’t have missed that yesterday was the 35th anniversary of a certain Game Boy. A family of gaming devices that’s a forerunner for the most personally influential gaming system for me.
Now, my memories are largely dominated by the Game Boy Advance, given the generation I’m from and when I got my first handheld (late 2002, and no games until Pokémon Crystal in 2003). Thus, even counting that, it’s emphatically not the handheld I played for the longest when it was current; that would be the DS by default, though depending on what you classify the Switch as, that will change by the year’s end. Point of fact, I’ve only ever played Game Boy or Color cartridges on an Advance (sometimes SP, sometimes not), to the point it feels weird to not switchable colour palettes for pre-Color games, or the cartridge poking out of the system.
Still, though it’s effectively been a retro system for me all its life, that’s been part of the attraction, and though it’s not the system I have the most games for (honestly, the size of my libraries of physical games for Game Boy/Color, Advance, DS, Wii, 3DS and Switch are all in a similar range), it’s easily the system I’ve back-bought/played the most games for. Mostly Pokémon early on, naturally, but as I grew older, other franchises I got into (Kirby especially), and eventually odd one-off games that were acclaimed and I liked the look of.
For better or for worse, despite effectively having a 12-year run, the system’s library was not that big, between many Japanese games never crossing to the West, and the technology limitations being enough to ward off many developers and publishers despite its proven success. One need only look at the number of games released each year (in this handy separation toggle on the Nintendo fandom) to see how the system, pre-Color, peaked in 1990-93 with between 80-105 games yearly (for America) and then trickled downwards afterward. A rare case of the system’s evergreen titles being so strong (my fav stat: Kirby’s Dream Land started off with the same million-and-change first-year sales as the franchise would thereafter stay in for lifetime sales, but continued to sell gradually to the tune of 4.6 million units by 1997) that Nintendo felt little pressure to upgrade the system, despite being inferior technology even in ‘89. And indeed, redesigning it and slashing the price in 1996 gave it a boost in sales and games developed for it, even before Pokémon effectively skyrocketed the forthcoming Color so much that in ‘98-2002 that nearly matched the 60+ million sales the base GB shifted.
But that’s the real trick, isn’t it? The dated technology of the system is both a blessing and a curse in hindsight for retro players, looking at the system. I suppose that’s to be expected: being effectively the first mainstream system of its type (Game and Watch being a prototype much like Nintendo’s arcade titles were for the NES), meant there was a lot of figuring out the medium and the system, especially in the early days (in particular, especially where ports of console games were concerned, many games, third-party ones especially, were not designed with a square screen in mind). Not unlike the NES, this has rendered many titles mere curios that were “bettered” later, what with the Game Boy Advance hitting the handheld threshold the SNES did of the tech being just good enough that masterpieces were more common when developers worked with the limitations (it shows in developer interest, with 1500+ titles produced despite being succeeded by the DS not even four years in).
On the Game Boy, such standouts are few and far between: browse any list of the best games, especially one omitting Game Boy Color games, and you’ll see both an overwhelming dominance by Nintendo-produced games, and little variance between different lists. Even myself, I tend to gravitate towards Game Boy Advance games more, when what the GB provided is easily replicated or superseded elsewhere these days. Or even at the time: the three Donkey Kong Land games are class for sure, but there’s no reason to play them over the Country trilogy on SNES they were effectively reimaginings of, beyond being extra level packs in a distilled form.
Yet, perhaps because I’m so fascinated with lateral thinking as regards technology (this, and it making the battery life much cheaper, is the key reason the Game Gear, though holding ground for a while in ‘91-92, couldn’t keep up and petered out at 10 million units, to say nothing of the poor Atari Lynx’s 2 million), especially as I grow older, it continues to fascinate me, and entertain too. Thus, the simple pleasures I get from titles distilled to their pure essence and refined to a gem within such, like Mole Mania (underplayed gem), continues to dazzle. Doubtless this is all white noise to anyone who always upgrades to the newest console and overwhelmingly plays games with file sizes of 20+GB, or is a PC gamer with a partially-or-fully-modded-kit, but no matter how much time marches on, the Game Boy is something I have a feeling I’ll continue to enjoy, warts and all.
If you have your own memories, or are merely curious, consider browsing Nintendo Life’s user-curated Top 50 list for the system. You’ll be surprised by how much it triggers, even if there’s no nostalgia in there for you, whatever its flaws (my main gripe: Kirby’s Pinball Land should not be the only spin-off on there, it’s easily the weakest of the three eligible ones: sub it out for Block Ball and Star Stacker higher, come on).
Now, I’m gonna go play me some Donkey Kong ‘94, because puzzle platformers are my jam. 
I’ll leave you with some Ponyfic to enjoy while I’m gone.
Speaking of: my stance up till now was always to feature the novel I’d look at each month on the last Monday of the month. That almost always meant the 4th Monday (December was the only exception with taking Christmas week off), but of course this month has five Mondays. Could have waited another week, but I’ve been eager to drop this one since I finished rereading it, so sod it, here it is. Plus four other fics, of course.
This Week’s Spectral Stories:
The Price of Salt by RoMS
A very not lonely Heart's Warming by Arcticbrony
Within a Dream of Sunset, Love by Shilic
The Celestia Code by iisaw
Sunspawned by Masterweaver
Weekly Word Count: 83,976 Words
The Price of Salt by RoMS
Genre: Sad
Discord, Cozy Glow
2,741 Words
November 2019Reread
Cozy Glow has been dreaming within her stone prison. For a long time, and deep enough that no one knows of it but Discord. Thus, he takes it upon himself to visit her.
This isn’t your ordinary story of Discord trying to reform Cozy, even within the confines of him visiting her in the stone. Oh sure, she retorts with barbs, but otherwise it earns the Sad tag. Discord is very restrained and melancholy in a manner that seems off at first, but gradually starts to fit in until a late line makes it click (and even before that, he states that, this being Cozy’s dream, all his powers won’t work here anyway, waving away the lack of his visual chaos). And as it goes on, you feel and notice Discord’s struggles with the punishment of his own reform, that of empathy for this filly. Should one feel for either of these two, it’s quite potent.
The thing one will notice most is how heavy the prose feels (and also the metaphors, but mostly the prose). To a degree, it’s laid on too thick, especially as regards the character dialogue: it fits for Discord, but even excusing the lack of her coddling up “aw, shucks, gee golly” type phrases, Cozy does not sound like herself, and the passage of time doesn’t excuse this away (literally, by the story’s own lore). So it can feel lopsided in the authenticity.
Still, plenty of lines hit hard, especially the last one, and while being heavy and moody does not equal better art, this stands out enough from its pack to make do as a reading experience, even for one like myself who is very put off by Cozy.
Rating: Pretty Good
A very not lonely Heart's Warming by Arcticbrony
Genre: Slice of Life
Daring Do, Princess Skystar
2,193 Words
December 2020Reread
Having heard of the former Hippogriff kingdom Mt. Aris, freshly abandoned for reasons unknown, Daring Do set out to explore it. On the holidays, because that way her rivals will be too occupied being with their families to do so herself. At first she doesn’t find much, but further in, a creature resembling the mythical seaponies of old is present…
This story can be split into two halves: the first, of Daring exploring the ruins, is fine. Not really doing anything not seen in any other similar scenes, and Daring’s pondering as to why it was abandoned ends up being unrelated to the fic’s end goal. And the part of it just retracting the steps toe Mane 6 took in the movie going further in is wheel-spinning. But it’s adequate.
Once Daring and Skystar meet, though, it gets rougher. Mostly this is because Daring and Skystar just state their feelings and thoughts in a rather “paste from the outline” manner, thus making Skystar’s “you shouldn’t spend the holidays alone” mantra lack any resonance or impact. And while it’s good to start from a point of wanting this bubbly pony to warm this cold adventurer’s heart, Daring is portrayed far too softly and openly throughout for this to ever resonate, not just in reference to canon but for the contrast within the fic itself.
There’s also a lot of weird oddities in the prose that I found rather distracting: thoughts giving way to dialogue that still reads as thoughts, strength of perspective meandering without rhyme or reason. Which on top of how rather bland and inauthentic Daring’s thought and dialogue feels, makes much of it gloss over without even registering. It’s perhaps unfair to say about a Jinglemas fic, but this needed a lot more time in the oven, in story and the beats and especially in how it was written.
Rating: Weak
Within a Dream of Sunset, Love by Shilic
Genre: Romance/Sad (Human)
Moondancer, Sunset Shimmer
4,848 Words
May 2022
Moondancer dreams about being a unicorn. There, in the land of Equestria, she’s the girlfriend to Sunset Shimmer, who’s everything Moondancer could want, and more. There, Moondancer knows what it’s like to love and to be loved. The problem is that they’re only dreams. And everything about her waking life is… depressing doesn’t even begin to cover it.
That’s honestly not hyperbole, the writing of Moondancer’s moments as a human are that strong. Not to say the rest is a slouch: the dreaming portions of this fic are certainly well-written and show how much Moondancer battles with her self-confidence as she observes and helps Sunset with formulas she herself doesn’t understand, and later watched a sunset with her. With Sunset pulling her out of whatever funk briefly (but frequently) rears its head, and the bright passion radiating from the feeling the two have for each other, they’re enjoyable enough just on their own merits.
They are also absolutely needed in the face of the scenes in the human world (which are italicised rather than the dream scenes, a curious inversion that is quite telling and effective). The misery and downright suffocating malaise in Moondancer’s thoughts as she limps through a day of never leaving her room is so heavy. It’s the kind where the world is grey, you avoid those who try to help you, what you once loved and were enthusiastic about has all the fun gone, you lurk in chat groups and only occasionally engage in risk-free manners, you can’t see anything valuable in yourself, the works. And the writing sells this so well not by hammering it in, but through implied prose, like Moondancer acknowledging she could fix the eyebrows she hates but what would the point be, or the way she kicks her clothes across the room, or how she just reads and listens to what she’s already memorised just because.
Little surprise Shinic says the fic is borne out of deep personal experience: this is done so, so well that it could never be faked. The contrast between the two sets is so stunning that even the rather odd ending (maybe where the stated inspiration of Neon Genesis Evangelion rears itself beyond merely the tone) feels of a place and fitting. Besides, anything else would probably have left me (and others) an absolute puddle, so I approve.
This fic is so strong it might hurt to read, especially to the introverted or socially anxious or those hit hard during COVID. But if you think you can work with that, and don’t mind a fic that isn’t really “entertaining” in the conventional sense of enjoyable, this is rather unparalleled.
Rating: Really Good
The Celestia Code by iisaw
Genre: Adventure/Mystery (Alternate Universe)
Twilight, OC, Changelings
69,611 Words
October 2013-January 2014Reread
When Twilight happens upon a secret room in Canterlot Castle that only opens to the presence of an alicorn, she finds a trove of secret documents and writings. Among those are the writings of an archaeology teacher from centuries past regarding an expedition. Which just so happens to include a portrait of ponies looking up in fear at something Twilight knows very well. Some more digging around, and looping in an undergraduate assigned to her for some second inputs, convinces Twilight that a quest is needed. So with Celestia’s blessing and a nervy college student under her wing, she sets off for this forgotten city. It being in the Badlands, right near changeling territory, will turn out to be the least of her worries…
Despite the timing, this review isn’t a response to iisaw relisting the three sequels and several side-stories of his Alicorn Adventures series this novel kick-started, nor finally starting to publish a fifth entry, The Cadenza Prophecies (which is actually fourth chronologically 
). But it is very fortuitous – while this story remained up during the era from August 2021-March 2024 of every other work of his being gone, I’m sure there are some folks who shied away when anything after it would require going off-site. So, who knows, perhaps this will reach someone who hasn’t read it (or prod some into rereading it after several years like myself)?
That said, I don’t expect it to, with how many views it has and most of my readerbase having been around a long time. And if I kept the spoilers to just some stray observations like with most Ponyfic novels I’ve covered here, this would be more or less a find-and-replace job on past reviews others have done for this fic. So, this will have spoilers. Not super-specific ones, which is good as this is the kind of fic all about enjoying the granular details, but enough that you would be going into it quite informed. Rating’s at the bottom if you are new to this fic.
What this is, is mostly a clever and witty approach to the archaeological mystery genre. It’s not fully Indiana Jones: there’s not nearly enough action for that, and much of the story takes place in a desert ruin with between two-to-five characters in the scene or area. But it’s certainly far closer to that than the lethargic exposition slug of The Da Vinci Code (thankfully, despite the fic’s title, this shares no similarities with that besides Dan Brown’s affinity for end-chapter cliffhangers and teasers). Indeed, while the mystery aspect is certainly present and does drive the story, it is often de-emphasized and can go several chapters without being actively present.
This is actually kind of alright: the story falls into the middle ground of using the mystery aspect as seasoning or window dressing, like an inciting incident or a MacGuffin, and thus it remains exciting and keeps the drive and energy going even when it dominates. This is something the story ends up being really good at in an even broader sense, able to dive in and out of its lore and headcanon as per the plot’s flow, keeping the right balance between it and the character aspects and interplay.
This may sound like a minor aspect, but it is honestly pretty key to why the fic’s ideas register so well, even apart from the ideas themselves. And it’s a balance so few authors, fanfic or professional alike, manage. It helps that the scientific aspects are very well researched and presented. Thus, even when they don’t really make sense and come across as technobabble (or archaeobabble, if you will ) due to slips in the articulation, or on the few occasions where it’s clearly just nonsense and actual archaeobabble, it always sells as authentic).
Not unlike Hard Reset when I covered it two months ago, I was surprised to rediscover that this uses a first-person Twilight perspective. While this is the kind of fic that builds its impression and enjoyment largely from the accumulation of the little details, this is the one lynchpin the whole story rests on, because that affects everything: it makes her neurotic asides on the exposition in-character, but it also ends up majorly colouring how aspects of her personality are presented.
It’s not just that this is a Badass Twilight who’s always taking action and never falters in her resolve, and who has settled into the changes of her role as a Princess quite heavily already. While a normal third-person perspective might spell this out more, either through the perspective distance or other characters’ reactions to it, she goes through such moments here with only some quick witty asides, spoken or thought. More telling is the approach to her underlying dorkiness and social awkwardness, which she is kind-of aware of, sometimes slow on the uptake, and played out so the reader often only realises as she does.
This may sound like pretty normal ingredients, but something about the combination of them makes for a very idiosyncratic narrative voice. The gimmick of Twilight’s asides often being in footnotes, as she would default to when writing herself, is a good encapsulation of the kind of way this gets across her personality. And while I was developing a big worry as I read onabout how this would handle an arc for her, or if it would skimp on them altogether, this approach ends up being quite solid at inferring the beats of her growth without stating them, as a person wouldn’t realise themselves until another points them out.
This way of writing Twilight is not without its shortcomings – while having near-zero moments of introspection mostly fits, there are times when everything about the story’s parameters point towards such beats occurring, yet they are glossed over by or skipped (early on, the aftermath of a worm attack where Twilight consoles a petrified Jigsaw should land a lot harder than it does, rather than being so quickly glossed over). Plus, it tends to make moments of characterisation between her and others that tie in to her growth come across comparatively flat and perfunctory. Twilight’s attitude about the changelings, in particular, flip-flops as the story needs it to.
Ditto for some of the tension: even the one action scene before the climax where they are in actual danger (this fic incorporates every magical ability used as a one-off in the show to that point and more besides, so she’s very much an overpowered sorceress only threatened by new inventions of the plot) is so committed to Twilight’s internal snark and methodological approach that it feels a little perfunctory. And while characters that are confident and overpowered and largely unchallenged can work, it’s easy to let things slip through, and some moments are thus here.
Unlike most fanfic authors, though, none of the above is an accident: even if I didn’t know iisaw and his approach and preferences to fiction and Twilight, this all reads as deliberate, measured choices by someone who’s cut his teeth on writing over the years. And the points where this approach lets the fic’s intentions down are dwarfed by those where it works. So, despite hiccups that merited another pass on spots, this approach is mostly a winner.
Somewhat more problematically, the first-person approach does tend to make the other characters shallow and exaggerated (being honest, Twilight is too, it’s just camouflaged by the voicing there), making it perhaps a good thing there’s so few of them. The tertiary players of Chrysalis and a changeling captain fall into the territory of being only onpage so much that this suits them, and they thus work as stock characters for this kind of genre fiction and their turns and summer blockbuster-levels of depth fly perfectly (this is a very good Chrysalis). But the secondary characters don’t have that luxury. The changeling general assigned by Chrysalis is present just enough that the degree to which her personality at different points doesn’t quite match up, and Twilight’s lack of introspection meaning we’re intentionally kept at a remove, makes itself known. And this problem is only exemplified with the undergraduate, Jigsaw.
Now, Jigsaw starts out great, a mirror of a timid S1 take on Twilight, and her arc of becoming less naive over the story is credible. And the fic’s ability at planting setups subtly and paying them off gets several major workouts with her, both dramatic and comedic. Given nearly half the story only has Twilight and her in a vast desert or desolate ruins, a lot rests on her chemistry with Twilight, and it mostly works. And up until the halfway point, the way she was sometimes leading the way when Twilight was too in the zone flew too, using the same process-by-implication as with Twilight, feels just right too.
But thereafter, the fic’s major turning point concerning the changelings rests on her, and while the first-person perspective excuses the immediate lack of character interiority or it happening onpage, it’s brushed past. Oh, Twilight reacts and lets what she feels be known, but that isn’t followed up on. While the romance subplot concerning Jigsaw is otherwise minor enough that it being mostly just okay isn’t much of an annoyance, this is too crucial to the fic.
Though I don’t suppose I’d be bringing it up if it didn’t happen at the start of an multi-chapter stretch where the plot mostly pauses for character drama, a mode the fic isn’t inherently well suited for. It makes sense, with Twilight having to pause her investigations while changelings are snooping around, but breaking the ping-pong rhythm of characters, investigation, lore, banter and occasional action at this point only serves to highlight the flaws there. That Jigsaw suddenly develops character traits not previously present (or not properly hinted at, either way), especially an unhealthy libido, doesn’t help. Virtually every other issue is very minor or feels like a measured choice where I totally see the reasoning even if I don’t agree, but this stretch just plain and simple slipped through the cracks, whether that be because iisaw had clear notions on what he wanted and ran with them, or the fly-by-the-seats-of-your-pants writing approach didn’t work as well.
That all probably came across as very negative, but honestly, I only spent as much time there as I did because this fic’s strengths have been discussed so heavily in so many places, and I agree with most of them. The pacing, besides a wobbly opening that unsuccessfully experiments with chronology and lampshades the unnecessariness of a travelogue chapter it still incorporates (about half the content there could and should be cut), and parts of the aforementioned “pause the investigation” stretch, is sublime, turning the emptiness of the setting into an asset.
More importantly, the plot details are delectable. I may have said almost nothing on the specifics of the mystery and lore, but it’s all sublime: iisaw gets across the feel on the landscape and buildings without having to use more than sparse description to do so, and the tone and mood of the tribe that once lived here comes across as tragic rather than flat. Plus, many great ideas are tossed out as window-dressing that really do boost the fic. The dark moments do their part in shock value without feeling out of place, and the fic excels at tying in aspects of show canon that surprise but totally fit (one happens, you think that’s it, and then the second bigger one lands even harder). And the dialogue is exquisite and does a lot to cover up most moments where character depth is lacking. All these major components are as great as you’ve likely heard.
There are other quibbles: the incidental humour sprinkled throughout mostly does its intended job of making the characters and scenes more authentic, but occasionally such moments go too far and upset the balance (in particular, while they are great, the footnotes become too numerous after a while and many would work equally well in the body of the text or gone altogether). The fic was edited post-release to tie into future canon, with such bits as a mention of Tirek and alluding to Twilight’s castle and staff therein, among others. Even without knowing the fic’s mid-Season-Four publication date, these always call attention to themselves, because even this unwavering-and-taking-names Twilight is far too rooted in her early Season Four characterisation and point on her journey. Especially with the fic being rendered totally AU once the actual changelings returned in Season Six anyway, it would be improved with such changes reversed.
And a subplot with Luna in particular, apart from technically setting up Twilight’s winning move at the climax, is perfunctory, indulging things largely for self-indulgence and having unsubtle sequel plants in a story that otherwise does a magnificent job at tying up all the loose ends while leaving unstressed room open for the next adventure and the next steps in Twilight’s journey. It also keeps emphasising the romance subplot the fic emphatically doesn't want more present. This Luna certainly doesn't make allowances for personal space, put it that way, which only matters because it's never addressed. 
Very vexing given how solidly characterised she is otherwise.
Make no mistake, though, while there are some little details that don’t land, most do, and outside of a character drama heavy middle stretch, the major details all do too. It’s a story with a deft blend of tones that all come together, has near-unflagging forward momentum (give this to me, and I’d streamline it to be maybe 5K shorter at most), juggles flawlessly between character action and history, works wonders at saying things about character and story directly and indirectly, and satisfies the pulp adventure movie thrills while retrofitting itself for this medium.
Ultimately, that goal of light entertainment (well, and doing right by Twilight ), combined with some minor slips and one bigger one mean this didn’t quite cross to being an amazing, transcendent experience as I remember. But with this being more consistent at its goals than the kind of beach reads it is aspiring to, its popularity is easily explained and well-deserved. It may have tipped somewhat closer to admiration than adoration for me than before (still plenty of the latter there, mind), but The Celestia Code remains a must-read and a winner.
Rating: Really Good
Sunspawned by Masterweaver
Genre: Comedy/Drama/Random/Slice of Life
Sunbursy, Sunset Shimmer
4,583 Words
May-June 2016Reread
So, it turned out to Twilight’s surprise that the reason Sunburst and Sunset know each other was that the geeky stallion, while being Celestia’s student, made a magical clone of himself to pose as his date for the Gala. Was that the whole story? Well… more or less, but it sure didn’t feel so simple to go through it…
That’s basically what this is, depicting the twist the prior fic pivoted on in real time. It’s quite a talking heads affair: early on, because Sunset is still thinking she’s Sunburst and that he’s the magical construct, and to avoid using pronouns for her, and later, because the fic is still far more interested in the comedy from Sunburst being terrified at the repercussions of this, Sunset’s existential crisis whenever it manifests itself, and the gradual but forceful turn from her being timid to the assertive, forceful mare we all know, right to Celestia’s face when she investigates.
This is not an approach in prose I normally favour, and indeed in some respects the fic lacks the clean structure and unflagging momentum of its predecessor (even though it’s the prequel, yes). But it remains funny for largely the same reasons, and through the turns Sunset goes through, Sunburst’s neurotic side in a different light, and other characters in Celestia plus, briefly, a younger Upper Crust, this manages to avoid being a retread. For this brand of quirky comedy one-shot sequel to a one-shot, it hits the balance of being the good variety of more of the same.
I think there’s still some diminishing returns here, but not excessively so by any means, and those who love seeing Sunset not only being so verbally assertive, but literally transitioning into that phase (if being otherwise quite different from her in canon, doubly so with the mode of dialogue and tone this fic employs) should find it awesome on top of funny.
Rating: Decent
Spooky Summary of Scores:
Excellent: 0
Really Good: 2
Pretty Good: 1
Decent: 1
Passable: 0
Weak: 1
Bad: 0
I never had a Game Boy, nor played on anyone else's. Fact, is, when I first got into video games I became an addict, playing 16+ hours/day whenever I could get away with it. I was continuously on my NES, SNES and Sega Genesis. My parents hated it and tried multiple things to try and get me away from them. Some of them even worked, getting me off the games for a few months. But I always came back. So buying me a video game I could actually carry with me wherever I go? Not a chance in hell.
As such, I didn't get to try out handheld stuff until I bought a PS Vita with my own money. Turns out I really don't care for handheld gaming consoles; I only played a handful of games on the Vita and it quickly began collecting dust, and I only ever played my Switch on a TV unless I was traveling (and since I was already on the way to become a PC Master Race type of gamer, I didn't play it for very long either). It's my belief that having not grown up on them like so many of my generation, they struggle to appeal to me as an adult.
Ah, The Celestia Code. It's one of those stories that you know your audience has probably read already, but darn it, you're gonna review it (again) anyway because you want to.
As it happens, the (original, mono) Game Boy was the only console I ever owned during its commercial lifetime, at least until I bought a (not really mainstream) GP2X many years later. As you say, it was nothing special technically even at launch.¹ But having Tetris bundled was a masterstroke, and it had such superior battery life compared to the (colour) Sega
Master SystemGame Gear and Atari Lynx that it was much cheaper to run. In my case, though, Link's Awakening was the time sink. I still think that's an outstanding Zelda game, even the pre-DX monochrome original.¹ Mind you, nor was the Spectrum, and that sold about 347 trillion...
Mind you, it's not that surprising I didn't have a console earlier, since it wasn't the norm anyway here in Britain. You will doubtless know, but American readers may not, that up until the early 1990s it was computers that were dominant in the UK. The NES was around but very much a second-string machine: I don't think any of my middle school friends had one. The first console-only game that created a properly big splash here was Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega
Master SystemMega Drive in 1991... and even that didn't quite crack the all-formats top ten. Every single game above it in the list was for a computer.Anyway, on to ponyfic! I've read three of these: The Celestia Code (gee Logan, you don't say...), The Price of Salt and Within a Dream of Sunset, Love. I think the enjoyment (even with your small reservations) of iisaw's story goes pretty much without saying, but I'm happy that you enjoyed the other two. I did as well, though I can't remember enough details about them to pick up on much regarding your detailed observations. I do have Sunspawned on my RiL list, given that I liked Sunsplit, but I'll temper my expectations in the light of your thoughts.
5777821
Jesus. My parents did have a reasonably-well-enforced thing of 1 hour a day when I was young, though we were able to shuffle weekday hours to the weekends to "double up" if so desired. We referred to these slots as a "go" ("Mom, can I play my go?"). Exceptions happened, quite a bit, and they didn't force us to turn the system off as soon as the hour was up, but that was more or less how it worked. I think this relaxed once I became a teenager, at which stage it varied between encouraged-but-not-enforced limitation to enforced during exam time. And it unofficially expired altogether once school was over.
There is a not-zero chance that my comment about this all being white noise to current gen console players/PC gamers had folks like yourself in mind when writing this.
With how many of your own opening blurbs have touched on what games you've played over the years, and it being all PC games (with Xbox mentioned once or twice) this is not a surprise, my friend. 
And if you didn't play a handheld until the 2010s, of course if would be too little, too late.
Not that I judge you for that. You're happy playing what you like, and that's plenty awesome. And given how infrequently I've chimed in to your gaming blurbs, the kinds of systems I play was probably not a surprise either.
Kinda the ethos of Monday Musings in general! Especially as even a glowing review typically only directs up to a dozen new views towards anything anyway.
But you're right, it's mostly a review for me to get to read it again, if with analysis on some aspects, plus the how and/or why, that most folks haven't done. Because I can't resist trying to make my review different than the others!
Your comment made me curious as to where this sits in terms of views of all the stories I've read. So I sorted my Reviewed folder by Views, and… turns out this is only 17th! Hell, even among the novels I've looked at, it's only 3rd, behind The Moonstone Cup and Hard Reset. I suppose a mixture of its not-as-old-as-the-others age (its just late enough to miss the early wave of fandom hits that can sometimes feel antiquated these days) and that its when a novel hits those views, it's more likely to be remembered than a one-shot, which no matter how many people read them, often are forgotten despite being pleasurable beyond the lucky few, just due to the briefness of the experience of reading them.
In any case, this fic well deserves its 34K views, and with the newest sequel serving as free promotion, it'll keep climbing, even a decade on!
Thank you for the wonderful review, Mike!
Y'know, it makes me want to go back and re-read it myself, with an eye towards improving on some aspects that you've mentioned.[1] I won't make any changes at this late date, but figuring out how I could may just help me to be a better writer going forward.
Thanks again!
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[1] I disagree about the footnotes, though. Footnotes are fun, and there should be way more footnotes![2]
[2] Within reason, of course.
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Was the Game Gear actually called that in the UK to reflect it sharing a lot of its library with the console of that name? Or did people just tend to refer to it as such because it could play Master System games via an adaptor?
A lot of Game Boy games are more curios these days due to lacking the context of what made them great and being superseded – Tetris especially when one can play free versions of it on their phone – but Link's Awakening is the quintessential one from the pre-Color era that is even bit the masterpiece to play now that it was then. Like, of the four Zelda games at the time, most people would have put it second, behind A Link to the Past but ahead of the two NES games, it was that good. So good even the recent chibi-style Switch remake couldn't really improve on it more than superficially, least in gameplay experience.
Yes indeed, and up until 2002, my video games were all on PC too, which I'm sure was very much a reflection of that even as consoles became the market leader in the UK/Ireland in the late 90s. Though given my age, I wasn't playing the kind of games you were playing, but mostly licensed games like Harry Potter, and before that, edutainment games from Disney. Not something I really consider in hindsight a proper gaming experience.
Part of the reason the NES didn't grab the market to nearly the extent it did in Europe was that Nintendo didn't have the same infrastructure set up for distribution that they did in the US. As I recall, the various Nintendo of [European country] were set up midway through the NES' lifespan in Europe, and before that the systems were licensed to local distributors or something. This practice is quite common – Disney didn't even distribute their animated film in the UK until the mid-90's, if you can believe it – and having another middle man of a company can complicate matters until you have a local ground team at work as much as back home. This is also likely part of the reason why Sega well outstripped Nintendo in Europe during those days – they DID have a local department from the get-go, I believe.
Isn't the infrastructure of corporations fascinating?
That memory of the charts in video game magazines talking, or do you have access to such lists now like with your music charts?
Do you mean the Mega Drive? I know the first Sonic did have a Master System port, but I find it hard to believe it'd outsell its next-gen counterpart when the Mega Drive (Genesis to you Americans – it was likely called the Mega Drive in Europe because the Master System was reasonably successful as opposed to being a flop in America) has been out for a year by then.
It's no massive downgrade, as explained. More akin to really enjoying a nice juicy sausage when having a full English, and while the second sausage isn't any more lacking than the first in isolation, it's just not as special. With a few small notes on the side.
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One aspect I didn't touch on, because one has to draw the line at a review length somewhere, is the vaguely serialised/cliffhanger aspect of the fic's chapters and which "mode" of reading that best facilitates. A chapter as they come out every few days, as it was originally, or in a binge of a few sessions, as people likely mostly have since?
There's argument that my speed was the least-effective, where I read it over a week at about four or five chapters a day, due to taking notes after each chapter. This meant the stretch of no action and lounging around with the changelings lasted over a day for me, among other things, even though it's maybe only 15K-odd words, a length I've read in a single uninterrupted session for one-shots of that length, sometimes longer. So the way I had to read the fic for the purpose of taking notes did possibly make such pacing concerns more noticeable for me than they might have been.
Obviously – I'm surprised you revised it as many times post-release as you have! Though given how relatively evergreen its views have been over the last decade, it certainly wasn't wasteful. Though not having seeing the earlier versions, beyond the aforementioned canon signifiers like Tirek/the castle, and prose cleanup/polish for the published version, I wouldn't know what said changes were.
Given how emphatically you relate to Twilight and are in her mindset, as one would have to be to write the footnotes this way, I can't even argue against this in good conscience. You write such cracking pulp adventure fiction, I'll let you have your indulgent tics.
Anyway, I just want to emphasise again how exquisite the pulp adventure, the backstory of the city, and the adventure and action aspects were. Reviewing pulp fiction is weird like that, where it's hard to articulate why such things work, and though I gave it a fair old try, it still meant I spent less space there than the niggles. It's the kind of fic where the issues (mostly) just don't matter, as a reading experience. And that's nothing to be sniffed at.
Oh hey, I've been reviewed!
Within a Dream of Sunset, Love is probably still my favorite thing I've written for FIMFic, honestly. There's a level of emotional realism I'm not sure I can ever quite hit again, at least for the crushingly depressing human sections. The ending... honestly, part of it was the Evangelion inspiration, and my fondness for Gainax Endings in general, along with just... with the pitch, it's about the happiest ending you could possibly get, honestly.
It's... not exactly the most fun thing to read, but something I'm proud of. As someone who still, to this day, struggles with depression like that creeping into my day to day life... I dunno. It's been long enough that I don't have many memories on my process. Regardless, thanks for the review!
Daym, the Celestia Code. That one's a classic
which I've never read.I admit, though, hearing that it's fairly light entertainment focused on a settled and confident Twilight gets my attention.
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Aha! Knew I’d reach someone in the regular crowd who hadn’t yet read it!
I should stress, I mean light entertainment mostly in the sense that it’s just looking to entertain, not provoke deep musing on the human condition or anything. Not light in the sense that it’s all bubbly; despite the tone and comic asides of the narrator, there are plenty serious things in there and some dark-leaning elements. They are rarely in the limelight for extended periods of time, but there are very much present.
Just so you’re better informed, my friend.
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I can see that; those works that reach deep into our soul and pluck out something personal to come to life can really do a number on us, in a good way. That’s on top of the quality such personal writing can reach, as this very much does.
Well, you were restrained enough to only employ such an ending here for a story where it would serve a purpose, and the “out of nowhere, makes no sense” part of it is root to the fic and does have some justification, so I applaud that.
As well you should be. There’s a lot more to art that how it makes us feel, of course, but when it does resonate strongly with us, and does so legitimately and to its benefit, it’s worth sitting up and taking note. You did a bang-up job! Take pride in that.
Even if depression is still leaking its way around for you these days, this stands as a testimony to your ability to rise above it and others’ standing by you doing so.
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Okay, first up: yes, I meant Game Gear and Mega Drive respectively, not Master System. I'm not very knowledgeable about consoles, but I don't have an excuse for those mistakes! Edited now.
For years now I've intended to write a little bit about how different the UK/European 8-bit scene was from the US one (from the UK perspective, since 8-bit computers are something I do know a fair bit about!) but I've never really got around to it. I expect it'll end up on Dreamwidth when and if it ever happens, though I might link to it briefly from Louder Yay, maybe in a Ponyfic Roundup intro para or something.
Interesting! I didn't know all that background, but I did know that Sega outsold Nintendo here. Though as I say, for several years computers were still outselling both of them, largely because both hardware and software were cheap. (By 1992 it wasn't uncommon for Spectrum tapes, usually budget re-releases, to sell for as little as £2.99.)
In this case, I happen to have a scan someone took of the relevant chart from a magazine, so it's not just a memory. Places like archive.org are full of fully scanned 8-bit computer magazines, though I don't have specifics in my head and would have to look most things up.
The "full English breakfast" theory of ponyfic. I think that's a first!
It's worth remembering that the video-game market was a lot smaller back then, just starting to get going. Wikipedia, for example, only lists a total of 710 video games releasing across all available markets in 1992. Another site claims 995. But compared to today, when several thousand indie games are released each year on Steam alone, 80-105 games a year was a pretty respectable part of the market.
If you're curious about how the tech inside the thing helped sell it, check out this neat Youtube breakdown from Real Engineering. I recall those days, and the Game Boy just worked, and used its low-tech hardware to the absolute maximum.
Also, I noticed some discussion about Link's Awakening but not Oracle of Ages or Seasons. Which were GBC games, sure, but dang were they good.
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Very true; the market in terms of audience size and especially number of developers was a lot smaller. And that all games needed to be officially approved by the console owner before publication made it much harder for indies to publish anything outside of the PC platform. My point was that even compared to the NES, SNES or Genesis, systems it rivalled the sales of, the Game Boy had less games made for it in the West. A mixture of the limitations, especially in cart file size, and that more so than the console games, it was a hard system to succeed on if you weren’t published by Nintendo.
At least, in the early days – by the time of the Game Boy Advance, this has changed heavily, as one can see by consulting the Top 50 best-selling handheld games in North America between 2000 and ‘06. Lot of licensed tie-in games!
Nothing I haven’t dissected thoroughly before, but I appreciate the share all the same! This sort of info and perspective is the kind of thing I don’t mind rereading/rewatching.
For sure. I suppose they didn’t pop up because my focus (and that of Logan’s) was on the context of the era of Game Boy games that are, the big heavy hitters excepted, more curios these days that have been superseded. The Game Boy Color half of the library is closer to the sweet spot the SNES hit of games where the technology is just good enough that, with the right developer, the best games are effectively timeless. One can see this by your average list of best Game Boy games that allows GBC games typically having two-thirds from that 1999-02 window. Also that those Oracle games came out right as the GBA launched.
But they are pretty fantastic for sure, especially when there hadn’t been a 2D Zelda at the time since Link’s Awakening (whether or not you count its DX port!
)
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Was Sega as strict on this as Nintendo? I get the impression not, but I'd be glad to hear from someone who actually knows!
Mention of the PC platform has now got me idly wondering when sales of PCs (as in IBM compatibles) overtook those of non-PC computers in the UK. This isn't something I know! It will have been some time in the 1990s, but that doesn't help much given the massive changes between 1990 and 1999! I'd guess it probably happened in about 1994, around the same time that the internet was becoming mainstream. I suppose it might have happened a little earlier had the Amstrad PCW range not been such a huge success, since for those who simply wanted to produce club newsletters, keep simple accounts etc the PCW made the PCs of the time look absurdly expensive.
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This comes from US sources, so it may not pertain to the UK, but as nearly as I can recall, when Nintendo resurrected the US video game industry after the crash in the early 80's, they installed strict licensing rules for their NES where every game had to be personally approved by them as being quality (this pertains more to being functional and not being glitchy to the point of being unplayable), getting the official seal of such. And other devs couldn't just publish their own games for the system as had happened with earlier consoles. Not just because of the law, but Nintendo had a lockout chip in the console that only cartridges they manufactured could get past, forcing licensed games to have the devs pay Nintendo for the carts (which were a solid 10 quid).
Lastly, except for third-parties directly affiliated with Nintendo, third parties could only publish five games a year. Some got around this by setting up another subsidiary to publish five more (think of it like how Disney had the Touchstone Pictures film label to release more adult fare, even though it was still them in everything but name). I recall one studio found a way around the lockout chip and made their own games without Nintendo's approval, and got promptly sued.
As nearly as I can recall, when Sega came along in the States, they followed every bit of that, save the five game limit (the competition had to forgo that, to give themselves a fighting chance against Nintendo). However, they were not nearly as strict on the rating content (for Nintendo, you had to censor or use the door), something that eventually led to the establishment of the ESRB. But due to being less attractive to develop for, having a far smaller install base, and with Nintendo having a strict "you can't port games you release on our system elsewhere for a year" policy until the competition got strong enough that the policy hurt them and they abolished it, few devs would have broken it anyway.
But once the Genesis started becoming successful, and things changed, Nintendo being more relaxed started to hurt them (infamously, with the simultaneous releases of Mortal Kombat on both, the Genesis port outsold the SNES one three or four copies to one, as it had a "blood code" to replace the grey sweat that the SNES version was stuck with). So until Nintendo abandoned their old policies, there was a period of a few years where Sega were more attractive to develop games for. And with the Genesis/Mega Drive being the clear market leader in the UK (if behind computers, of course), we would have probably (?) seen a higher ratio of games cross over (many Nintendo games didn't if they were judged not successful in the US, or not likely to succeed in Europe).
Bit of a roundabout answer, but it answers a bit, I'm sure! I can't speak to the other types of home computers, but PCs obviously never faced most of the restrictions Nintendo imposed, and that made it easier to get a game published once you'd made it. If not necessarily for it to sell well, of course.
This really shows how little I know about kinds of computers before everyone basically just had PCs (whether they be Windows, Macs or Linux)! It makes sense, given my age, but still.
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Thanks for the very interesting reply re consoles! As I've said, this isn't something I know much at all about -- I knew Nintendo kept a tight rein, but for example I did not know about the five-game limit for third-party companies.
Just a function of you being a young whippersnapper, really! I was there, so I have an inbuilt advantage.
But yeah, the PCW was everywhere. Its built-in dot matrix printer had a very recognisable default font, and you were forever running across it on labels in places like museums.