Mailbag 5 - Delights
Once again, it's been several months since my last mailbag. The pace of questions has slowed down since the Fall of Cohost, but I have finally gotten enough to justify another issue in this beloved series.
This first question comes from a little round-robin Q&A from a forum I'm on. Amazingly, I was the second person to be grilled (note: I'm not actually sure if that's amazing):
doolittle asked:
we all know samantha arantes’ public appearances but tell us more about her humble beginnings – if you’re at liberty to say
In June 2020 I made a short romhack for a weeklong contest on MetConst, riffing on a longstanding community meme.
The following year, I had the amateurish ZZT world Indiana Jones and the Fate of Zebes and the venerable Samus Goes to the Fridge to Get a Glass of Milk series on my brain at the same time. This inspired me to make a silly, slice-of-life sequel to my previous hack for the ZZT community's yearly Oktrollberfest contest.
Part of the rules for Oktrollberfest was that all games had to be uploaded to itch. In light of that, one of my first decisions was to make a legally-distinct AU.
(I appreciate the positive response her games have gotten in spite of the fact that I think most of the humor is stupidly referential or just plain stupid (note: all cringe is 1000% intended 
))
Anyhow, sometime within the 12 months following the release of her first game I glommed onto the character like a fursona, hence the continuing series of ZZT worlds, the website, pngtuber, etc. Feels nice.
As for the character's fictional biography, she was orphaned at about age 5 and then adopted by a normal, middle-class family of space frogs (I kinda regret that choice of species for memetic overexposure reasons, but w/e). When she was 15 her family moved to a terran-founded terraformed colony world, where she had to relearn English as she struggled to fit in with her peers. (This year's game will go into a slight bit more detail about that.)[1]
i dunno know why or really care how her job ended up being a space hunter, but her power suit was originally designed as a mobility device to help her keep up with the high-jumping amphibious frogfolk, modded to suit the needs of her work. Also, she has some frog DNA.
These next several questions also came from the same forum as before, but in a thread I made for my birthday where I begged for questions:
daphaknee yelled:
WHY DO THESE THINGS KEEP HAPPENING
wourme inquires:
What’s your all-time favorite ZZT game?
I still maintain that the original ZZT worlds are generally well-paced, scoped, and balanced action-adventure games. Of the worlds from that primordial era, I'd say Dungeons of ZZT is still my favorite.
In the more modern era, there are a lot of shorter, simpler, narrative-driven worlds (adjacent to the bitsy ethos), with International Jetpack Conference and Atop the Witch's Tower being cited as a common standouts. Personally, I think Growing Up is still one of the best and most impactful of these. It's as sharp and as dangerous as glass. Food Fort is another modern (and overlooked) classic of the form.
For the past couple years the Museum has been showcasing worlds that had been previously lost, but rescued due to asie's tireless efforts. Of these worlds, Space Slug still sticks out to me the most. It has some really silly children's sci-fi worldbuilding and plotting.
If you asked me when I was younger, I'd say something like the mediocre Speed Racer X, the silly/laudable Punctuation People, or charming but slight Escape from Planet Red. In practice though, the majority of my time was spent sampling ZZT Encyclopedia Online, because my younger self didn't have the patience for proper games and their devious puzzles, mazes, and moon-logics (this is still more true than I'm willing to admit).
The real, non-belabored answer is either the enviably parsimonious Castle of ZZT by Interactive Fantasies, or the modernly maximalist Faux Amis --- but where's the fun in getting straight to the point?
HOBO hollers:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY what’s the best metroid
Today someone popped up on Metroid Construction and posted 5 (five) hacks out of nowhere:
I was gonna say something like "Metroid Prime until it decides to be a bad game" or "Metroid 2 when I'm feeling nasty" or whatever, but for all I know it could be one of these things now.
This is what I call a birthday present.
nettle needs to know:
what’s your favourite star system?
Almost certainly the Lylat System (from Star Fox), with our own real-life Solar System in second place.
Like, if you're asking me to rank star systems, then what you're basically asking to rank is collections of planets. Thus, a common problem with star systems in pulpy science fiction is that they tend to only contain 1 (maybe 2) plot relevant planets. And in real life, we have an epistemological problem where the planets we have the easiest time detecting tend to be the least interesting to me --- supermassive Jupiters or charred rocks way to close the star for comfort. Like, sure, it's cool that TRAPPIST-1 has 7 planets, but I can't imagine living there (I have a strong bias towards habitable planets or at least ones where the gravity isn't stupidly strong). The Lylat system gets past these issues just by the sheer number of varied (if generic) locations (also the fact that "Solar" is actually just a really molten, rocky planet will always be funny to me). Likewise, our own Solar system has this lovely earth and a good variety of rocky and gaseous planets with cool moons. Maybe we'll discover that some exoplanetary systems out there are as interesting as our own (maybe even one we currently know!), but imo that's not the case yet.
(There are also more exotic star system arrangements, like dyson spheres and ringworlds and that weird gas torus from the book the Integral Trees, but I'm more familiar with those things as hypothetical concepts rather than proper settings, so I'm not counting those.)
(As I say that I am remembering some sci-fi stories where a star system is artificially astroengineered into a particular configuration, but I couldn't tell you the name of the story to save my life or if it was actually interesting in practice.)
a_new_duck offers an age-related comment:
For some reason I always forget you’re this much younger than me. I guess I assume anyone into ZZT is my age or older.
I blame my older brothers for getting me into their variety of stupid nerd stuff before I had a chance to fight back.
jsnlv's qstn:
What’s your favorite building you visit on at least an occasional basis?
uhhhh...
I've been to a couple concerts at this place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benaroya_Hall
I wouldn't say it's particularly special as a building, but compared to my suburban existence it's a nice breath of fresh air.
This next "question" comes from an excerpt of a conversation I had with srarokz, author of the hack Galactic Marine, which I actually made a map of a few months back. The question was, believe it or not, about mapping:
srarokz inquires:
from a mappers perspective, what makes for an interesting map?
this is kind of a cop out answer, but i'd say "a good sense of place" is the main thing that makes me interested in making a map
to be fair its a rough question lol "how 2 good area design"
a world that is nonsensically or illogically contrived can really take the wind out of my sails when it comes to making a map, and there are a couple of hacks that come to mind specifically with that:
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SM Isolation from the contest last year had some weird non-euclideanness that I never felt the need or desire to parse out (maybe it actually makes sense)
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and the nestroid hack "Rise of the Demiurge" is a complete mess of rooms and elevators with no rhyme or reason (even by nestroid standards)
In contrast, hourglass station from Samus Wants Robot is very contrived and artificial as a setting, but its structure is imminently fascinating and satisfying to look at
There are lots of considerations like how things are shaped, how they flow, how they vary, where there's no particularly right answer other than "is it interesting?"
but things like the way areas connect, interconnect, jut up against each other, etc. do a lot of the heavy lifting in convincing me that a place is a proper place.
and, like, your hack is not entirely euclidean (due to the elevator spacing and a couple other things), but i like how both tiers of the world are constructed on their own merits. the general slope of the surface area with the pirate ship up high is cool, because it implies they parked on top of a mountain or a mesa.
yeah, I think its helpful for the world to exist and have a history, then you place the game in it
yeah. I like it when making and looking at a map can provide me with some insights into the fictional world (the maps at the front of fantasy novels were always my favorite things as a kid)
the fed base is in the valley, protected from the worst of the weather
pirates would want the tactical advantage of the mountain
I had the early edition of the hobbit with the hand drawn maps on the inside cover
nice
[ Conversation Moves on to Other Things Beyond this Question ]
This last set of questions comes from a forum thread where I posted about getting a GDQ prize:
km asks:
Which game made your heart beat the quickest
At GDQ? Probably watching CGN's F-Zero GX Story Mode run a decade ago.
Or are you just referring to me, specifically? If so, there are two possibilities:
a) Sub-Terrania, hard-mode, last level.
b) During this Metroid 2 speedrun race, the entire duration from when I did the spider throws over the top of the last big room of the game to when I finally entered the ship: Timestamped Link
SUPERSONNICK sez:
are you still thinking about the Webbed speedrun from time to time?
Not sure what speedrun you're referring to. v_v;
SUPERSONNICK elaborates:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa0xZoqcXs4
that one, for movement-purposes
*watches video a week later*
ah. it's just Spider-Not-Man: The Game
very nifty.
And that's it for this here mailbag. If you want to ask me another question, you may do so in the place currently dedicated for such thing, or you can just DM me on another platform.
Thanks for reading!
Footnote
- Since answering this question, the game in question has been released under the name Awful Dates Done Quick. ^