Let us consider the unwavering faith of Billy Lee Black.
Like many of the people we have featured in these sermons, Billy had a difficult childhood. When Billy was barely ten, his father went out for a pack of smokes, and didn’t come back for a decade. Billy was left alone with his mother and little sister, but zombie-like Wels attacked his home soon thereafter. While Billy and his sister were able to survive thanks to the quick thinking of Bishop Stone, Billy’s mother was lost to the Wels. When Jesse Black came back, Billy and his sister, Primera, were already forever traumatized. Primera would not speak, and Billy had turned to God for help with his broken family. Billy joined the Ethos, and took up the guns his father gave him to exterminate the Wels creatures that had killed his mother.
So when Billy encounters a group of strangers that are trying to help their sick friend, Billy does everything he can to help. He escorts the injured Fei to a church of Ethos, hoping that the advanced medical technology of the order will help the wounded boy. Billy then leaves these new comrades, because he must go back to the orphanage he runs (with the support of Ethos, naturally), so there are less children alone in the world. And then, when a ship full of Wels floats near his home, Billy works together with his new companions to eliminate the threat. Why, it is almost like these strangers were a gift brought to Billy by God!
But it seems that God was not home when the Ethos Headquarters was attacked. Billy initially suspected his truant father of being a genocidal murderer, but soon discovered that Ethos was not all that it seemed. The technology and religion of Ethos was all a front to control people, and every Etoner in the place was a puppet of the Solaris government. And when Billy’s friend Verlaine reveals himself to be an assassin, it is unambiguously demonstrated that Billy’s entire religion is a lie. Oh, and then Bishop Stone revealed he was responsible for the death of Billy’s mother. Billy proves to be the only pious survivor of the Ethos massacre…
But does Billy lose his faith? Does Billy give in to his father who has always renounced religion? Does Billy give up on being a better man? No! Billy joins Fei’s friends, and continues to fight for the good of people everywhere. He still eliminates the perverse Wels. He defends the Thames from encroaching monsters. He infiltrates an Ethos dig site, and rebuffs the nefarious Bishop Stone. He still serves his faith, but rejects the philosophy of “only the chosen will be saved”. He will save everyone! And, through it all, he still prays after every battle. Even when faced with the seemingly invincible Id, Billy’s true faith never waivers.
No matter what happens, Billy Lee Black has faith.
… And we will see if he is still praying after he punches God.
Even Worse Streams presents Xenogears
Night 8
Original Stream Night: March 9, 2021
Night of the Silver Star Story
Random Notes on the Stream
- We’re back after taking a week off. I cannot for the life in me remember what we were doing that week. Oh, and I accidentally activated a stupid card game.
- Maybe we could just stop playing and listen to Xenogears Creid album?
- “Billy’s obviously a fucking nerd.”
- “I do appreciate that your characters are now two grown men lost in a church.”
As we hit Billy’s orphanage, we discuss NFTs. My position on this matter is clear.- Jessie doesn’t know how chairs work. This is canon.
- “I wrote an entire article about how that game is the worst.”
- “The Robin Hood movie is why we have furries.” Sure, but I blame Chip ‘n Dale.
- Enjoy hanging out with Bill Gunhaver.
- While raiding the boat, it is important to know how exploitative Dead or Alive 6 can be. 462 items on Steam, all at $2… so it only costs nearly a thousand dollars to completely own that game.
- What is your worst bathtub in all of gaming? I’m voting for Eternal Darkness.
- And then I die to the giant Wels. Whoops!
- Trynant stops by for the night while we make attempt number two on the boss.
- And then Kishi! Maybe they can help!
- The Giant Wels has been defeated… forever.
- “Oh, my dad committed genocide? Yeah, that makes sense.”
- World Heroes: it had a Goku in it.
- Billy: currently having a crisis of faith and looking smug doing it.
There are apparently mass-produced Jesuses in Neon Genesis Evangelion. This should surprise no one.- Over at the Thames we are asked to, “Just try to imagine an action sequence.”
- Deathscythe is not so much a thing as something that is fun to say.
- There are so many of the same monsters in this undersea dungeon that it gets kind of ridiculous. But the snail mutants are awesome!
- “It’s not Porygon’s fault.”
- The Elements have freckles? They sure don’t have enough fanart…
- I pronounce Id wrong. Also: here’s Id.
- And we close on one of our longest streams by talking about making Kishi sad through eggs.
Next time on Xenogears: It’s about the climb.
“The moll’s got a mole!”
According to contemporary evolutionary theory, our modern-day birds are direct descendants of dinosaurs. For the longest time, dinosaurs were assumed to merely be the big brothers to our current crop of not-so-terrible thunder lizards, but a recent spat of scientists being attacked by antagonistic pigeons has given rise to the theory that there is a direct link between your Jurassic Park’s raptors and… well… raptors. Huh. Maybe we should have been able to figure that one out earlier. But, regardless of whether or not the Dinosaucers should have had feathers, one thing is obvious: there is a clear and undeniable link between dinosaurs and birds.
But, as time has gone on, Sesame Street has also become a place where children can learn from puppets how to be more human. Ever since the Snuffleupagus snafu of the 70s, Sesame Street has paid careful attention to guaranteeing the children of yesterday and today not only know how to count cookies, but also how to cope with a cruel and uncaring world of grouches. Sesame Street is not just about goofy songs and guest stars that are comfortable making eye contact with muppets, it is also about addressing children from all walks of life (those born into families both amazing and dreary), and teaching them that they are going to get through this world. Sesame Street is not universal for every child (how could it be?), but it does do its best accommodate as many children as possible, and express that the world may not be perfect, but they are loved.
Oh, and if you didn’t have a kid around that demanded to see Barney, you were probably familiar with the creature, too. Barney had a bit of a… negative following. Or, put another way, to my knowledge, this is the first time I am covering something on this blog that had a roleplaying book dedicated to a “jihad” to destroy it. Barney was almost universally loathed. Yes, of course there were “kids”, preteens, and other sarcastic malcontents that made up “funny” songs about barbequing the purple dinosaur’s head, but the whole antipathy enterprise leaked into adult entertainment, too. Remember The Critic? An obvious descendent of 
Barney is supposed to be a big, purple manifestation of unconditional love. He loves you, you love him, we’re a great big family. Barney is great for kids, because his unconditional love of the audience tells children that there are people out there that will love you no matter what. That is a great moral! But, to anyone over the age of five, it sounds an awful lot like bullshit. In fact, that very bullshit is likely a significant reason why Barney was so loathed. A generation of kids that had just experienced He-Man, G.I. Joe, and Ninja Turtles was now seeing the next generation (or their little siblings) being influenced by Barney the Lover. And, whether anyone really understood what was happening, they all recognized this… deception. Barney did not love you. Barney did not even know you. And neither did Prince Adam of Eternia, Sargent Slaughter, or Leonardo, but they all took time out of their day to give you some Sailor Says knowledge and sell a few toys for a half hour a day. They didn’t know you, they didn’t care about you, but they made you think they cared about you. And you, a stupid kid, bought it, literally, every time you waddled into Toys R’ Us. And an entire generation was just starting to realize this. He-Man had retired. The Ninja Turtles were losing shelf space to the Power Rangers. Our lovers had left us, and here was a new sucker ready to be tricked by the latest dinosaur of love. He’ll leave you like they all left us, Little Timmy! Do not love Barney! He doesn’t really love you! Flush his body down the potty while you can!
That is the difference between Big Bird and Barney. Despite a similar evolution, they are both the products of very different times. Big Bird loves you, but it is not his whole identity. Barney exists in a world wherein he cannot conceive of being unloved, and, while that works for some ages, it does not for people starting to understand all their heroes were little more than toy commercials. And, as a result, to this day, Big Bird continues to star in any number of counting-based videogames, while Barney never escaped the Sega Genesis. Love did not keep Barney alive, and it never could. In our modern world, Big Bird still stalks the Earth, while Barney is extinct. A big, purple evolutionary dead end.
You are in Control: Big Bird’s Egg Catch was built for the Atari Kid’s Controller. That controller was, essentially, a num pad. It was basically only built for educational/egg-based games. But since it had more buttons and was more complicated than your typical Atari “paddle”, it was kind of ironic that this became the “Kid’s Controller” and not “Accountant’s Delight”.
Did you know? Barney’s “I Love You” song was used for psychological torture at Guantanamo Bay detention camp. That’s the fact. No moral.
Let’s talk about Alfred Chicken, and what he means to the current state of our democracy.
Now, before you go thinking that the Alfred Chicken Party had anything useful to contribute to political discourse at the time, consider that Karl Fitzhugh was absolutely just the marketing arm for Alfred Chicken’s Amiga (amigo? Were you trying to say amigo? How about amiibo?) debut. The Alfred Chicken Party was rightly pegged as a publicity stunt, and wound up placing second from last in the election (and, to be clear for my American readers, this is not a situation where “placed last” also means “won the popular vote”). In fact, the Alfred Chicken Party was such a flagrant and obvious publicity stunt, it rapidly inspired new legislation that would require a candidate to acquire many more signatures to actually appear on a ballot. Democracy works! Through Alfred Chicken!
It has come up again and again in recent months, but people show a surprising amount of loyalty to faceless corporations that don’t care if the average consumer lives or dies. Toys Я Us recently went out of business, firing every last employee while its board of directors skipped town with giant bags adorned with dollar signs. But it’s been determined that “the brand” is still viable, so Geoffrey the Giraffe will be back in our faces soon enough. And a huge portion of the population is going to eat it up with a multicolored spoon! Toys Я Us? I love that place! That’s where toys come from! And videogames! Just like Gamestop! And who cares if one single company has been selling me $60 games for years, and then buying them back at 60¢, I’ve got brand loyalty! I’m a Powerup Rewards Member! Sometimes I earn a free pen! I will follow these companies straight into Hell, so please show me your viable political candidates! Who is the leader of the Think Geek Party? Does he need a donation!?
And the most unfortunate thing about all of this is that there is literally nothing you can do about it. You can vote for your favorite party, you can vote for the candidate that is going to save the world, and you can canvas your neighborhood and drum up support in every way you know how. But, end of the day, Wal-Mart is still going to make literally billions of dollars, and whoever is in charge of those billions of dollars is going to make just a smidge more of an impact on the political landscape than anything you could hope to achieve with a “grassroots” campaign. And do you think you’re ever going to compete with Wal-Mart? Fat chance, little voter.
But a funny thing happened. Netflix came along, and, in a few short years, Blockbuster was dead in the ground. Netflix was cheaper, more convenient, and less overtly evil than Blockbuster, so people took their business elsewhere in droves. And it didn’t matter that many areas still have terrible internet connections. It didn’t matter that Netflix and its ilk could never support the historical selection of a well-stocked Blockbuster. It didn’t matter that streaming services would doom us forever to a fragmented system wherein you just kind of hoped your favorite new release would drop on a subscription you already own. No, none of that mattered, because Blockbuster simply could not compete with the new monolith that was streaming, and, in practically no time at all, Blockbuster was resigned to the same fate as the dinosaurs (mostly frozen in remote regions of Oregon). Blockbuster was once king of the hill, and now it is barely a footnote in history.
No company is ever going to be perfect (they are, almost literally, money making machines. That has a tendency to step on a few ethical toes), but maybe you don’t need the latest make believe horsey game if it is also apparently responsible for 80% of all crunch misery in North America. Or maybe that company could just produce one god damn game with a female protagonist. That would be a step in the right direction…
Other Questions: And Alfred collects eggs as one-ups, and hatches from a new egg after every death. Is there more than one Alfred Chicken? Does each collected egg start the cycle of life anew for our hero? The theological implications of this game alone…
Let’s start with Yuji Naka. To start, Yuji Naka is a programmer, not an artist or character designer, but it is that programming that is absolutely the reason we have Sonic the Hedgehog. Naka created one simple trick for animating hedgehogs: he developed an algorithm for rendering sprites on curves. And that’s huge! We absolutely take it for granted now, but the very concept of Sonic on a loop would be impossible without such coding. So, sure, Naka didn’t draw the first Sonic, nor did he design the hedgehog’s levels, but he was responsible for a part of Sonic that is so iconic, it is still a huge part of the blue blur 
Naka didn’t seem to have much to do with Ristar, but the basic concept for the adventure came from his pre-rolling ideas for Sonic the Hedgehog. The “original” Sonic (or at least one of them) was a bunny that would grab enemies with his extendable ears. This concept fell by the wayside when Sonic earned his speed and rolling (rabbits don’t roll, do they?), but was eventually revived for Ristar. And it was good! In a time of innumerable “mascots with attitude” (which only existed because of Sonic anyway), Ristar stood out not only for his memorable design, but also his fun “grab and fling” gameplay. Sure, we’d see something similar again with 
Okay, I’m just salty because Nights is a terrible, terrible game, but many people saw the appeal of the action floating title. Once again, Sega took a new technology (the aforementioned analogue controller), and married it to some gameplay that had never been seen before. Naka (he’s back!) endeavored to make a game that was based on flight, but a more gentle flight, as opposed to the cape or 
But the Dreamcast brought new opportunities, and a metric mickey-load of mice. ChuChu Rocket! was described as an action puzzle game, but that is completely wrong. ChuChu Rocket! is frenetic joy in mini, mousey form. Once again, Yuji Naka used the latest technology to create something that appeared to be graphically simple, but had a lot going on under the hood. At any given ChuChu moment, there may be hundreds (or at least a hundred) lil’ mice on the screen at a time. While we take such a thing for granted nowadays, that was an exciting new frontier in 1999. And the Dreamcast was capable of supporting this nonsense not only on the couch, but online as well. No small feat in the age of AOL. Or, actually, it meant a lot of small feet puttering around and attempting to avoid KapuKapus. And, can’t stress this enough, ChuChu Rocket! was one of the best multiplayer games of the era, and certainly the most unique.
And then, finally, we arrive at our “from the creators of Sonic the Hedgehog” title of the day, Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg. BHatGE was the first new Sonic Team IP to ever appear on a non-Sega system. Sonic Team had already gained some Gamecube experience with rereleases of the Sonic Adventure titles, and Billy Hatcher does feel like a natural evolution of the SA engine. But this is no mere Sonic clone! Even with a “spin dash” like egg rolling skill, nearly all of Billy’s moveset is all new… or at least all different. Rolling an egg and “using” the egg for acrobatic maneuvers sounds pretty straightforward (see any game where you push boulders or blocks), but it’s obvious that a lot of care and effort went into… egg physics? Is that a thing? What’s important is that “Billy” and “Billy with an egg” are arguably two totally different characters, and the utilization of both movesets (and protecting your egg whenever possible) is important to making progress.
Sonic Team Coda: Aside from 
