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Saturday, March 14, 2015

Women in Shoes: Baraduke --> XMen Mojo World

My cousin challenged me to a Six Degrees in which I look at video game women and their shoes. She wanted me to find characters that wore reasonable footwear. And I limited myself to games before the 2000s'. So here we go...

A. Baraduke (1985)
Summary:  While Samus Aran was the character best known for the last minute gender reveal, Baraduke may have been the first to do so. The main character was named Toby “Kissy” Masuyo. She was a spacewoman who had to clear all eight worlds and defeat all the enemies until she reached the final boss. The final boss was called the Octy King- which to me looks like a giant sea urchin with an eye. There was also a secondary playable character named Takky.

Commentary:  The reason I chose this game to start with was because Kissy was wearing a biohazard suit. The suit had boots attached to it. And that counted, to me, as reasonable footwear for being in space and fighting bad guys.

Connection: One of the enemy aliens that Kissy encountered was called a Paccet. It was a small, round creature with one eye.

This creature could also found in a painting on the Draconis ship in Tales of Destiny.

1. Tales of Destiny (1997)
Summary: The story began with a comet crashing onto a planet.Then, the native inhabitants farmed the comet using its material to create cities over the surface.This was only available to a select few causing a divide in the inhabitants between those who stayed on the surface and those who went to the sky. Weapons were built, also using material from the comet, and were left in the hands of the sky people, who called themselves Aetherians. Some Aetherian scientists were not happy with the behavior of the people so they defected to the surface. With the help of the surface people they created sentient swords called Swordians who could choose their own wielders. These pairing allowed the surface inhabitants to fight against the Aetherians. After they one, the Swordians slept over a thousand years until Stahn Aileron discovered a 'junk' sword. Soon after, he becomes entangled in a battle for an ancient weapon called the Eye of Atamoni.
Commentary:   There were three female characters that can join the party. These women were Rutee Katrea, Philia Felice, and Mary Argent. Of the three, I decided to look at Philia and Mary‘s footwear.

While Philia did wear a robe that concealed her shoes, a cosplay site showed that her shoots were white boots.


 A picture of Mary Argent at the Tales Wiki showed that she wore a pair of green boots. Both Philia and Mary were characters that wore reasonable shoes while traveling and fighting battles.
Connection: In Tales of Destiny, the heroes encountered many monsters and summons. One of these was summoned by the Valkyrie item. Her name if you hadn't guessed was Valkyrie.

This character was also found in the game Valkyrie no Boken: Toki no KagI Densetsu as the main playable protagonist. Her name in that game was also called Valkyrie.

2. Valkryie no Boken: Toki no KagI Densetsu (1986)
Summary: This game took place in the world called Marvel Land which was a very peaceful land. All the people and animals of the land lived in peace. And part of the reason was because an ancient evil had been trapped in a large, stone, grandfather-like clock tower. No one thought anything bad would happen. But one day, the clock stopped working. In an attempt to reset the clock, a villager dropped the clock key. The villager picked it up and set back in place. Still, the damage was done and Zouna, the big bad, was released. Zouna, doing what evil did, wreaked havoc and corrupted the people and the land. A shield maiden named Valkyrie was sent down from heaven, with a shield and her mace, to battle against Zouna.
Commentary:    I chose this game because of the main character Valkyrie. As a warrior, she shouldn’t be caught in odd shoes. Her shoes should be something that she could run in. A picture of the character showed that she wore laced up sandals.

These shoes looked similar to Buskin shoes that were common among ancient European civilizations.













So it wouldn't be unrealistic for Valkyrie to be wearing them.
Connection: Valkyrie wasn't limited to her own game. This probably indicated that the realm she lived in touched connected other dimensions. So, she was able to make appearances in other games. One of the games that she appeared in was named  Tales of Phantasia. In this game she was characterized as a servant of Odin and had come to retrieve the spear Gungnir.


3. Tales of Phantasia (1995)
Summary: Tales of Phantasia began with a flashback. Four heroes battled an evil sorcerer named Dhaos. They defeated him with the use of two magical pendants and then, the world was at peace. Ten years later, the town of Toltus was attacked by dark knight Mars Uldole. There were only two survivors, Cress Albane and Chester Burklight. The two boys traveled to the town of Euclid. Cress was betrayed and captured by the dark knight. A pendant that Cress owned was also taken. This pendant was given to him by his father, Miguel who was one of the original four heroes. And the dark knight used the Cress’ pendant and the second one to release Dhaos. Cress and Chester met Mint Adnade, Arche Klein, and Claus F. Lester. These five people were instrumental in stopping Dhaos the second time.
Commentary:    Two of the female characters on the team were named Mint Adnade and Arche Klein. Both girls wore reasonable footwear for travel and into battle.



 In the picture of Mint she seemed to wear a pair of short, white boots.

Arche Klein was shown to be wearing a pair of slip on shoes. They kinda of look like a slipper that would be worn in a harem.
Connection: In the land of Phantasia, they had a tree called Yggdrasill.

This great tree was the source of mana for their world. It was born from a mana seed. Yggdrasil was also seen in Breath of Fire III. In this game, the tree taught wisdom. And interestingly, it lived in three different places.


4. Breath of Fire III (1997)
Summary: In a far corner of the world, people were mining a rare and powerful mineral from the remains of a dragon. They found a large deposit and cracked it open. Out from this deposit emerged a baby dragon. The miners attacked, captured, and caged the dragon. This cage was placed upon a train- one of the open cars. While on the train, the dragon jostled the cage, knocking it off the car. It fell down a hill and broke. The dragon transformed into a young boy and passed out. He was found by Rei, a member of the Woren clan. The dragon boy, named Ryu, joined with Rei and Teepo in a gang of thieves. One day they stole money from a corrupt mayor. This mayor contacted a pair of hitmen who he sent after the boys. The boys were beaten and left for dead. Ryu awakened later in the home of a woodsman named Bunyan. Ryu left shortly after in order to look for his friends. But the assassins realized he was alive and came after. Helping him along the way were a girl named Nina, an inventor named Momo, a mutant named Peco, and a warrior named Garr.
Commentary: From Breath of Fire III, I chose to look at the footwear of the main heroine- Nina. During her travels she was commonly seen wearing a red dress. Along with that were a matching pair of red boots.

Connection: Bleak was a town of thieves. It was also a town that was in a perpetual state of night. The group came here when they were in search of a key. After they got the key, daylight returned to the town. But before the characters returned the town to light, the character could talk to a magician. If they paid him a 100g, he'd ask the characters to look away. If the character said no twice and then yes the third time he asked- the character would see Chun-Li giving a demonstration of her lightning kick.














Chun-Li was the first female fighter found in the video game Street Fighter 2. The lightning kick was her signature move in the game due to her massively strong legs.















5. Street Fighter 2 (1991)
Summary: Street Fighter 2 was a fighting game with a roster of 8 playable characters. These characters were Ryu, Ken, Honda, Blanka, Guile, Chun-li, Zangief, and Dhalsim. These characters were from all over the world from Japan to America. Ryu and Ken were the heroes of the first game and were probably the heroes of this one as well.
Commentary:   The character I chose from this game was the only female character on the roster. Chun Li was not only the most physically powerful characters but she was by the far the quickest. She wore a qipao with a blue leotard, dark brown pantyhose and white combat boots. Her opponents were probably very lucky she didn’t sport heels- it would’ve turned into a mortal kombat type fatality.
Connection: The Street Fighter II characters didn’t just fight each other or later members of their fighting roster.

Chun-Li ,

Dhalsim,

Ken,

Bison,

Ryu,

and Zangief have fought fighters from other game series. They met the X-Men team in the video game X-Men vs. Street Fighter. The X-men team included Apocalypse, Cyclops, Gambit, Juggernaut, Magneto, Rogue, Sabretooth, Storm, and Wolverine.


6. X-Men vs. Street Fighter (1996)
Summary: Ryu met Cyclops during his travels. Cyclops was interested in Ryu powers- probably wondering if it was mutant in nature or not. Apocalypse appeared challenging both the groups. The Street Fighter group and the X-men team combined their power in order to challenge Apocalypse. This game was one of the first games to blend a tag tame combat with regular combat.
Commentary:  There were multiple female characters to chose from in this game. There was Chun Li, Cammy, Rogue and Storm. Since I already covered Chun Li, I will quickly discuss the other three. Cammy was a special forces agent from Britain. She wore a blue outfit in the game along with red combat boots. Rogue, a member of the X-Men, wore her classic green and yellow jumpsuit with the yellow boots. And finally Storm. Storm wore her white jumpsuit with black boots.
Connection: Rogue, Gambit, and Cyclops were three of the X-men on this roster.





These three characters could also be found on the roster of playable characters for X-men: Mojo World.

B. X-Men: Mojo World (1996)
Summary: Mojo world was in a dimension called the Mojoverse ruled by Mojo. Mojo was of an alien race called the “Spineless Ones.” His second command was a six armed woman named Spiral. She originally was a human named Rita but followed someone else to Mojoverse where she was captured, brainwashed, and modified by Mojo. Besides being Mojo’s second in command she was also a television producer. She arranged for the X-Men to compete against their toughest foes on a show called “The Greatest Battles of the X-Men.” Through this she plotted to become the new ruler of Mojo World.
Commentary:  Besides Rogue, there was another female X-Men named Shard. She wore a blue jumpsuit with the Xmen logo and black boots.
 
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Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Mortal Kombat ----> Green Acres

A. Mortal Kombat 1992
Summary: Mortal Kombat began as a fighting game which didn’t have a story line but it was a story later. Its protagonist was a martial artist by the name of Liu Kang, who in the revised story was fighting to protect the Earth-realm. Raiden, the thunder god, whose role was that of the guardian of the earth realms, appeared as a playable character. Other characters include Sonya Blade, Kano, Johnny Cage, Sub-zero, Scorpion, Reptile, Goro, and Shang Tsung. Later, the story described Shang Tsung as a sorcerer fighting on the behalf of the Outworld.
Connection: Raiden, the thunder god and the earth realm protector, traveled the realms looking for participants for the Mortal Kombat tournament. As such, he turned up in a number of different video games, especially the first Mortal Kombat game.


Another of these games is called Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe. In this game, an attack by Raiden towards Shao Khan occurred at the same that Superman attacked Darkseid. These simultaneous attacks caused their two dimensions to merge.
1.  Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe
Summary: Earth-Realm and the DC Universe began to merge when Superman and Raiden both attacked their mortal enemies. Not only do their universes begin to merge, but their ultimate villains merged creating “Dark Kahn.” Heroes and Villains from the two universes switched places. They also experienced extreme mood swings called “rage” that gave them a power boost. This allowed and even forced, heroes to attack each other and match each others power. For example, at one point The Flash attacked Batman and Sub-Zero and Batman fought each other. Before their worlds were destroyed by the change in the balance of power, Raiden and Superman had to defeat “Dark Kahn.” At the end of the game, Darkseid was trapped in the Neatherrealm and Shao Kahn was imprisoned in the Phantom Zone.
Connection: One of the DC Universe characters seen in this game was Superman. 

In most media, Superman was and still is described as being an alien from tge planet named Krypton. Krypton was a planet that suffered a calamity by which it was destroyed decades earlier.  A baby boy named Kal-el was placed in a space pod that eventually landed on Earth. The pod and the baby were found by a couple by the name of the Kent. John and Martha Kent adopted and raised Kal-el, naming him Clark and giving him the surname of Kent. As a teenager, Clark discovered his abilities and became known as Superboy. Superboy, was a character in Adventure Comic #247.


2.  Adventure Comics #247
Summary: Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad, and Saturn Girl were (and will be) members of a superhero club from the 30th century entitled the Legion of Super-Heroes. They traveled back to the 20th to offer a young Superman aka Superboy aka Clark Kent, a membership into their Legion. He was taken forward to the future where the Legion tested Superboy’s abilities against their own. Superboy failed the three test, but learned later that they were designed to fail. These test were not a test for acceptance, but an initiation for already accepted club member. As a sign that he was accepted as a member of their club, he was given a medallion.
Connection: One of the three members of the Legion of Super-heroes was a girl called Saturn Girl aka Imra Ardeen.
 She was a strong telepath and had a tendency towards self-sacrifice. This tendency made her well-loved and she became one of the first female leaders of a Superhero group. And in the future her team ran into the crew from the Enterprise. Or maybe an alternate version of Saturn Girl and her team did.

Just under the IDW tag, in a red outfit, you can see the eponymous Saturn Girl.

3.  Star Trek/Legion of Superheroes #5
Summary: Not exactly sure what happens, but there was a crossover. The Enterprise crew from the year 2270 while the Legion was from the 31st century. According to one site, the Starfleet Officers and Legionnaires met in the distant past and they encountered a force that has erased their timelines. And once again, the two teams met in the 23rd century, which I am assuming was forward in time from the first meeting, and once again met the force that was erasing time. There was also some mention of Vandal Savage and Flint and how they are alternate versions of each other, called Vandar the Stone. Another site claims that Vandar captured Q, traveled back in time, and became the ruler. Apparently he even interrogated Kirk and the Legionnaires in order to understand the mistakes that were originally made. Spock and Brainiac traveled back in time and rescued Q and that was what salvaged the timeline.
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Flint
Connection: What was interesting about this was that Vandar the Stone was that he collected various time machines from throughout history, even though he already had Q.
 He either decided to collect the time machines to travel through time himself or to keep others from going to back to correct the changes he made. One of the traveling devices he collected was the StarGate from StarGate. 

4.  Stargate: SG1
Summary: In Egypt, a round portal was uncovered. It was discovered to be an ancient alien interplanetary traveling device. It was stored somewhere, maybe Cheyenne Mountain. While it was sitting in storage, it activated and an alien force of Gouald, led by Apophis, came through and captured some of the humans working at the base. Colonel Jack O’Neill and Samantha Carter were sent to Abydos to find Dr. Daniel Jackson and ask his help in finding Apophis. They found more gate address, and Carter, an astrophysicist as well as an Air Force soldier, figured out how to input those address using the computers at the base. After finding out how to use the gate,  they determined which address from Abydos led to Apophis' home world. When they traveled there, the team was captured, but escaped with the help of a Jaffa by the name of Teal’c. Teal’c joined the team and along with O’Neill, Carter, and Jackson- they traveled from planet to planet seeking allies for the fight against the Goauld.
Connection: Jack O’Neill, while coming off as a simple military man, was actually very complex and mysterious.

 Does he have any relatives? No one knew. We do know that he was married once in the past and even had son named Charlie. We know that it was Charlies' death which broke that marriage up. We know that there was and still is a clone of him running around that fans jokingly call MiniJack. We also know that he later married Carter. But what came before all that. Some fans speculate that before O’Neill was O’Neill, he was Macgyver. For me that is too much of a change in personality. In my opinion, Jack was always Jack and he doesn’t like discussing his family. So, I’m creating family for him. We also know that he was born in Illinois. Whatever family he does have would realistically live there or neighboring states. One such character is a character named Maggie O’Neill from the story Where There’s A Witch. She was an empath who dealt with the weird and lived in Indiana with her family. Even stated that O’Neill’s have lived there for decades. Which could explain why Jack barely blinked when weird events unfolded around him. For reference I even added a picture of Macgyver to have a general idea of a what a young Jack would look like. In my opinion, from what we can see of Maggie, the two slightly resemble one another.

5.  Where there’s A Witch by Madelyn Alt
Summary: Maggie O’Neill lives in Stony Mills, Indiana- where her family has lived for decades. She was an empath, able to sense emotion generated and imbedded into her environment. She worked at an antique shop called “Enchantments.” Her boss was Felicity Dow, who was teaching Maggie how to use her skills. On the side, Maggie investigated the paranormal with a group called N.I.G.H.T.S., a ghosthunting team. In this book, Maggie visited a carnival and sensed some bad spirits. When a body of a young girl was found, a construction workers was suspected of killing her, but Maggie suspected that another force was at fault. Her and her group of hunters investigated to stop the dark spiritual energy before it hurt more people.
Connection: The Chief of Police was a guy named Hiram Boggs. He was a twenty year veteran. If the story took place in the year that it was published, then he became a police officer around 1989. This put him in early twenties when he started policing and in his early 40’s in the book. He may be a relative of Harold Boggs from Petticoat Junction. Harold Boggs, in 1964, was a high-school dropout, dropping out when he was 13. I’m guessing that he is about 18 or 19 given his relationship with the older daughter. Old enough to be a father to or an uncle to Hiram Boggs.
 
6.  Petticoat Junction: The Ghengis Keane Story
Summary: A retired teacher of the Hooterville school system, sent a letter to Kate Bradley asking for a reservation. Kate and one of her daughters’ reminiscence on what they experienced with Mrs. Keane as a teacher. When the lady arrived, they noticed that she didn't act like they remembered her. So, thinking that she may be depressed they tried to cheer her up. Two of the girls asked for help with their homework. But after three days, the girls were worn out. The other guests felt bent out of shape due to Mrs. Keane’s domineering attitude. At first, Kate tried to ask her to leave, but Keane guilted her into changing her tune. As a final ploy, the Bradley’s created an educational program for dropouts- hopefully demonstrating to Mrs. Keane that she still has the ability to teach in her.
Connection: Petticoat Junction took place in a town called Hooterville. Hooterville was a town bordering Pixley and Crabwell Corners. Because of this close proximity between towns, characters from this show traveled frequently between towns. Doris and Fred Ziffel were characters that were regulars on Petticoat Junction.

These two characters were also seen on their sister show, Green Acres.














B.  Green Acres

Summary: Green Acres was a story about a couple from New York deciding that they needed a change. Oliver Wendall Douglas, an attorney, dreamt about being a farmer. His wife, Lisa, unwillingly went with him to fulfill that dream. Most of the show was about how these two people react to a town and situation that was completely different from what they are used to. Oliver and Lisa were surrounded by oddball characters such as: Fred and Doris Ziffel, Arnold the Pig, Newt Kiley, Floyd Smoot, Haney, Eb, and Drucker.