This Week’s Topics:
- Rundown Preamble Ramble: Press-Switch Is on an Indefinite Hiatus
- TF Artists Launch A Comic Storefront (A BSB NZFW, GTG, & JN Joint!)
- I Just Learned Front Mission 3: Remake Was Announced (Forever Entertainment Makes Me Pine for Ports, Not Remakes)
- Pokémon Legends Z-A Is Launching October 16th (Welp, Guess I GOTTA Buy A Nintendo Game Again!)
- Every Issue of Game Informer Has Been Archived (And You Can Freely Read Them on Their Website)
Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Press-Switch Is on an Indefinite Hiatus
For the past few weeks, the developer of the TSF visual novel Press-Switch, Trigger, has been undergoing online identity issues spurred by a stalker going after him and his family. This led him to delist the TFGamesSite page for Press-Switch, the old TFGS Press-Switch forums, and set the Press-Switch Discord server to private. This appeared to be a temporary measure at first, but in the early evening on May 29th, Trigger released the following message along with a new version of Press-Switch.
Hello there everyone. Unfortunately, due to real life complications I need to take a hiatus from P-S. TLDR; P-S produced a stalker who has been harassing my family and myself.
In order to not leave you all empty-handed, I’ve made a build with what I have done for version 0.6c. It is not complete, and it might be a bit tricky getting to the main new content, and it has not had music added (for all of it: will stop at the drinking game), nor had any spelling checks or any pass overs by me. This is more or less a beta version of this update that I would normally take a lot of time on. However, rather than not releasing it for an undetermined amount of time, I’ve decided to package this.
I am very burnt out on P-S anyway, and I had planned on 0.6c to be my last update on it for a long time. Not the finish I would have wanted, but real life takes precedence. This is not necessarily the end of P-S, but it is the end of it for now.
I will still be around the discord in various forms. So I’m not exactly saying a farewell-farewell, but I am going to be tied up with some RL stuff. After that, we move forward – to new projects and new things. I may set up a new Discord for that when that time comes. For now, I hope you enjoy what it is in (what may well be) the last update for Press-Switch.
It’s been quite a ride, and I’m happy lots of people have enjoyed the content thus far, shared their stories with me, or made their own games because of me.
Again, this version is buggy, clunky, and is quite different than how it would be both in writing/endings/mechanics and many other aspects, but… if it works, it works. Something is better than nothing, I say. The “Drinking” game which was supposed to be the focus of this update is now a clunky hindrance so, uh… you all may need a guide. Cause 90% of it leads to pending messages. Old school P-S players will feel at home.
The two reachable ending branches from it (of what would have been several)…
One requires the Calvin symbol to be -2 and the Reina to not be 2.
The other requires Reina’s to be 2. (The main content)In both instances, you need to have your drink level at less than 4 by the end of it. Thankfully, I made it so Calvin sobers up between each “event”. Hot-fix, and makes no sense, but I don’t have time to do much else.
Again, it will be a buggy mess – no need to report them, I am sure they are everywhere and I’m not fixing them for now.
As for the discord, it will remain as it is for the time being. Though that may shift in time.
Thanks again for everything. Put on some music of your own and delve into the last bit of P-S content. Hope you enjoy. I leave you with this brief little farewell comic to P-S.
In short, Trigger is taking a hiatus from Press-Switch and has packaged together the in development unfinished build of Version 0.6c. As a beta build, the product is buggy, filled with incomplete paths, and lacks significant editing passes. While he cites the stalker as the main reason for doing this, he also claims to be burnt out on Press-Switch, having wanted to take a hiatus after finishing Version 0.6c in its entirety.
With no TFGS to circulate the links and no dedicated Press-Switch website beyond a download relay, download links for this beta Version 0.6c are not widely circulated. Accordingly, I have updated my Press-Switch page with all available links. To reiterate, this is an unfinished build that lacks music, polish, and content originally planned for this release. However, it’s far better than nothing and contains a substantial amount of new content.
Edit 7/13/2025: Per a request from Trigger, all download links to Press-Switch have been removed from this article.
Trigger has also stated that this may be the last release of Press-Switch, as he is unsure when or if he will resume work on the game after this experience. I would note that he has gone on hiatuses before, such as the three year hiatus between versions 0.3b and 0.4a. Or the other three year gap between version 0.5c and version 0.6a, though that was broken up with the release of Illia’s Mansion. But with his online and real identities potentially compromised, he is saying farewell for the time being, and I really hope it’s not a farewell forever.
For Trigger, I understand why he is doing this. Stalkers can and have ruined the lives of creators big and small, and from the sound of it, this one appears to be particularly tenacious. They are putting their safety and the safety of their family first, and I’m sure he’s deeply upset that things had to wind out this way. Press-Switch is a project he’s devoted thousands of hours to over roughly 15 years of his life. So I can only imagine how much of a connection he has formed with his work and how much of himself he’s injected into it across all its forms.
This is unfortunate for Trigger, but this is also unfortunate for the broader world of TSF, of transformation themed visual novels, a niche where Press-Switch has served as a huge inspiration. As I have said before, without Press-Switch, we would not have Student Transfer, its hundreds of scenarios, re:Dreamer, or any of the works produced by Cinnamon Switch. I would further state that the world of TSF and TF as a whole would be notably weaker without Trigger’s work on Press-Switch. The game itself has to have been played by hundreds thousands of people, and who knows how many TF creators were directly inspired by his work.
Hell, I’m one of them. While I was a devout fan of TSF before playing Press-Switch, it is the thing that inspired me to step out of the shame closet and start triumphing TSF as a genre. It’s also a big reason why I’ve written over 1.2 million words of TSF fiction over the past decade— half of which could be dismissed as Press-Switch fan fiction. Over 200,000 150,000 words of TSF game reviews. Over 400,000 words of TSF Showcases (yes, really). And like 30,000 words across my rambles on the subject.
I would like to openly thank Trigger for creating Press-Switch. It’s one of my favorite games— favorite pieces of media really— and it inspires me even to this day. I would gush about it some more here, but I will save that for the review of v0.6c.
I wish him the best in whatever he chooses to pursue next, and even if this is the end of his public-facing tenure as a creator, I hope that the bonds and friendships he made through this game remain strong.
There is a palpable bitterness in seeing him end things like this. I wish he didn’t need to hide away years of discussion and burying a good chunk of his legacy. But in a climate of unfulfilled promises, cancellations, and creators vanishing into the ether, I’m just glad that he gave his community a final gift before laying low for the foreseeable future.
Again, I should stress that this may not be the end. Trigger could come back swinging with Version 0.7 in a few years, and I could wind up looking like a fool with egg all over her face. But for now, this is goodbye.
…Also, I will try to get out a review of v0.6c out next week, likely on Friday. I was not mentally prepared for this, but I’m not going to let this opportunity pass me by. Even if I will need to endure Hell and The Underworld to create this flowchart. I was told to quiver in fear, and goodness am I quivering.
…Wait, if all the pages for Press-Switch were taken down, does that mean my site is the de facto best place to learn about and download Press-Switch? …That just ain’t right.
TF Artists Launch A Comic Storefront
(A BSB NZFW, GTG, & JN Joint!)
I have spoken before about how cowardly platforms are when it comes to hosting adult works and how payment processors are determined to impose their moral standards of their owners. It makes the prospect of selling NSFW and erotic content on the internet a tough task for creatives, as their livelihoods can be stripped from under them with little to no notice. I’ve seen places like DLSite shuffle users through roundabout workarounds to buy points that you could use to buy things using international payment cards. (Though, they fixed this, and you can use Visa/MasterCard yet again, yay!) I’ve seen Patreon push creators to only share things via Discord because they don’t want to host non-consensual content. Well, non-consensual sexual content. You can have non-consensual violence, but once a titty is involved, it’s too perverse.
Things are only getting worse with provinces in the United States mandating the use of government IDs to visit certain sites of a sexual nature, requiring either VPN usage or giving one’s government ID to a third party. Which really just skirts around the catastrophic liberty issue of a government restricting what websites its citizens can visit. But even if one is using a VPN and preserving their privacy, modern payment processors have become the bloodlines of online commerce and without them, the internets don’t work. Admittedly, some of these issues could be averted with a decentralized currency system, like crypto, but that has far too many downsides to be a viable alternative. Trust me, I would know. I’ve seen more crypto bullshit than any sane woman has.
This is all preamble to something that I love to see. A group of four prominent western TSF creators— BlackShirtBoy, NotZackForWork, Grumpy-TG, and Jo Nothing—have gotten together and created their own storefront and website by the name of Welcome Change. Or We Change if you prefer to refer to websites by their URL. Overall, it’s a fairly simple website that features a collection of comics, some available for free, most behind a paywall. It’s clearly imperfect, with typos and some oddly missing items, but it is a functional website and I love to see creators branch out, collaborate, and make their own slice of the internet.
…However, the site is currently a bit broken when it comes to payments. I tried buying the latest BlackShirtBoy comic—
Akumako: “He doesn’t inner-cap his name like that, you know.”
—Bell Hooks does not get to determine how English works and neither does the godking of GOOP! I tried buying the latest BlackShirtBoy comic, but their payment processor, CC Bill, kept giving me problems, not processing the order using my credit card. Even after I made an account with them, they forced me to contact support. I tried calling, but their system required me to read a 20-ish digit number into the phone, and people in call centers are incapable of understanding me when I try to read out long things. (I mean, can you blame ’em?) So I tried online support, the transaction was approved, but because I had the audacity to click on the support link on the payment page, I could not resubmit the order. So I just sat there, with $6 out of my account, and no comic to speak of. Drats.
Now, I do not really blame the folks behind the site for this, as launching a new platform is always full of problems. This is especially true when using a less prominent payment processor to handle a lot of small orders. I can tell they are trying to improve things and get back to people trying to buy things, but it’s still a hassle greater than what one would experience when buying something from, say, Itch.io.
I really wish that I could spin this into a positive thing, but so far it is too early for me to really say much. I like all of these creators, I’ve followed them for quite a few years, and I am happy that they are collaborating on a platform that could grow into becoming a hub for transformation comics of all sorts. Kind of like TG Comics, but rooted in a modern era and with a different aesthetic of offerings. However… fix your payment system so I can pay you for your work. Naturally, I contacted support to remedy this issue, and while I have not heard anything back as of writing, I will amend this post once the issue is resolved. Right… here:
Actually, they resolved the issue 12 hours after I sent in a request. I have my comics and the charges were cleared. No idea why this happened, but it’s all good, so I can actually end this on a mostly positive note.
Akumako: “Yo! Nat! Why haven’t you featured these artists on TSF Showcase yet?”
Uh… two reasons. One, they primarily focus on shorter 20-ish page comics and series without a clear end in sight. While TSF Showcase began as a way for me to talk about shorter works that I thought were neat, it has mutated into a series of deep dives, and how deep can you dive into a waist-high pool. Two, my file organization system is imperfect. I tend to collect these creators’ works when they post them on DeviantArt or social media, and I put them into their folder in an art directory, rather than my comics directory. Even if they are making a comic, it goes into the art directory. This creates a structural and mental gap where I do not see these creators when looking for potential Showcase subjects.
Now, should I cover some of their works? Yes, but figuring out which one for each would require digging and planning and assessing.
Akumako: “…So, do it?”
Fine, fine, I’ll make some time after covering Press-Switch for the, potentially, final time, TSF Monogatari, and an AI translated version of Jigoku Ane that someone wants me to cover.
Akumako: “Oi! Spoilers!”
Also, as a reminder, if you get excited in the comments and ask me to spend 20 hours reading, writing, editing, and grabbing images for a TSF Showcase about a sufficiently girthy TSF media, I will do it. Comics, web fiction, old-ass novels from the 1930s, movies, whatever. You might have to wait a few months, but I love talking about this stuff!
I Just Learned Front Mission 3: Remake Was Announced
(Forever Entertainment Makes Me Pine for Ports, Not Remakes)
I remember being excited when I first heard that Forever Entertainment was picking up neglected IPs and remaking them anew. It was the most attention IPs like The House of the Dead, Panzer Dragoon, and Front Mission had received in years. An opportunity for these IPs to be revitalized for a new generation, for a fandom to grow, for more people to experience stories, designs, aesthetics, and moments that were beloved by small clusters of people of a prior generation. This desire to maintain relevance, to have communities, legacy, and ideas live on in the go-go world of video games is what excites me about video game re-whatevers.
I love seeing games be mad more accessible, both in the sense of being easier to access/play, and easier for folks with disabilities to play them. I love seeing developers make games better by addressing some of the less graceful design decisions. Whether it be tweaking things smartly or adding features that don’t clash with established mechanics. Like additional save spots, rewind, drop rate boosters, speed up mode, changing difficulties on the fly, wider aspect ratios, that sort of thing. And I love seeing them enhance the original vision of the art team with visuals that are not encumbered by technical limitations of a system with 4 MB of RAM.
These are roughly the things that I want to see from a re-whatever. (Unless you want to do something entirely different while preserving the same core and characters. That’s fine too.) A respectful upgrade of the original that aims to exclusively improve the original, and take away as few things as possible. …In practice though, this rarely never happens. Re-whatevers tend to come with a laundry list of changes and transformations that almost always run the spectrum, to the point where one could assess that it’s harder to make a good re-whatever than it is to make a good game. …Which makes no sense when I try to think about the logistics. After all, so much of what one needs to do is already there. They just need to copy and re-make the thing while changing this and that.
This is admittedly an ignorant assumption from someone who never developed something more complex than a rudimentary jumping score attack game. However, I think that some developers are just not good at making remakes of games, whether due to incompetence, a lack of understanding, or just flat out bad direction set from the top. Case in point, Forever Entertainment!
Both of their Front Mission Remakes have been bad, lacking the artistry or fine audiovisual design of the original games. Their House of the Dead remakes have been just bad, misdirected on nearly every level. Their Panzer Dragoon remake was bad and overly transformative, replacing the aesthetic for something that would be permissible in a sequel, but not a remake.
Their Donkey Kong Country Returns HD re-release introduced technical issues because, rather than do a ‘full’ port of the game and redoing its back-end, they used Unity as a base, which is too heavy of an engine to run optimally on Switch. They do not produce high quality products, touch a lot of IP, and I do not think they should be allowed to continue creating these bad remakes. They achieve very few of the goals that a remake should achieve, and do not even contain a quality port of the original games. Which is basically a get out of jail free card for bad remakes.
This brings us to the actual topic here today, Front Mission 3: Remake. Technically this game was shown at Tokyo Game Show last year, but I did not even realize it was in active development until now, and it looks… like another iteration of Forever Entertainment’s Front Mission remake lineage. I’m sure that people have already done detailed deep divers into the failings of these remakes as remakes, but what is alarming about them to me is how little they do to preserve the little things about these games.
With its initial entries, Front Mission was not a game series of robust aesthetic prowess, featuring a more muted and plain look, but it ultimately had a vibe, a visual identity. One that resonated with over half a million Japanese players across its first two entries. And this was in 1995 and 1997. That was a lot of units back then! Only like 750 games (Source) have ever sold that many units in Japan! These are not some weirdo freak games for niche weirdos, this was a big IP for Square that deserves a hefty spot in the pantheon of the proud Japanese lineage of mech games!
Akumako: “You say that like there aren’t western mech games. MechWarrior was pretty big in its day, and I know you liked playing MechAssault (2002) with Usman Saleem back in middle school.”
Shit, I haven’t spoken to Usman in 12 years…
One, different cultures have different views of mechs. Americans and Japanese view mechs in vastly different lights. Ask a Japanese mech fan to talk shit about American mechs and ask an American mech fan to shit talk mecha. It’s hilarious. Two, MechWarrior and MechAssault are not part of the same series, much to my surprise.
Point is, Front Mission is a series that warrants respect, but Forever Entertainment does not appear to have really understood the aesthetic nuance of these games. They copy the maps, superficial UX design, and the core guts of the game, without really emulating the look, the feeling, or the style. I think this can be seen just by looking at a gameplay comparison of the two, showing how plain and boring the remakes look in comparison.
It all begs the question of why even remake these games when one could just port the originals to modern hardware. Because these games are made cheap, look cheap, and fail to do anything to make them stand out as more than generic looking mech games with a recognizable name. I’m not trying to poo-poo the devs, I’m sure they’re doing their best, but something’s got to be wrong with management if this is the goal.
Front Mission is really a series that warrants a proper collection, but publishers have shied away from such conservative and modest successes, thinking that remakes, regardless of quality, will sell more by virtue of hype. But what makes a remake of Front Mission 3 (1999) particularly frustrating is that it was released in North America by way of Square Electronic Arts. This has caused the game to endear an international reputation, and is often seen very positively by western fans, as it was a deeply robust title built off of two predecessors, while boasting two game-length campaigns! It was a Square PS1 RPG, helped introduce oodles of people to the world of Japanese mech strategy, and by all metrics I care to acknowledge, was a good-ass game.
So while every prior entry hurt to see, this is an instance where it straight up would be preferable if they just put a PS1 ROM on a Switch game card along with a version of ePSXe designed to run on Switch. Instead, we’re getting a remake that’s due out in… three weeks, on June 26th.
…Gosh, things like this make me want to assemble ROM and emulator collections, pair them with art pieces, soundtracks, guides, and reviews, zip ’em up, and just say they are official collections.
Pokémon Legends Z-A Is Launching October 16th
(Welp, Guess I GOTTA Buy A Nintendo Game Again!)
This is just going to be a li’l thang, as I don’t give a hootnanny about most game release windows. But, without issuing another trailer, Nintendo announced that this year’s Pokémon game, Pokémon Legends Z-A is coming October 16th. Thus cementing the start of their holiday lineup and basically ensuring that I will be getting the game, after wavering around the subject. Why does this date mean so much? Because it’s right after tax season, which ends on October 15th in the land of fascism and exile. This will conveniently be aligned for when I plan on leaving America for the first time in my life. Meaning I will need something to keep myself busy during two transatlantic flights and when hanging out with a bedridden buddy. A new Pokémon game will be perfect for that!
Also, the box art they revealed for this game… just looks weird. Most Pokémon games have dog water box art, and I hate how blasé it has been since the series went international. Spin-offs fare just fine. Pokémon Legends: Arceus‘s box art, while generic, is very structurally sound and efficient, deliberately reminiscent of Breath of the Wild. Pokémon Legends Z-A’s box art like they took some promotional art and cropped it, as it was good enough. When, no. It ain’t.
It shows Lumiose City and its key landmark tower, it shows good old Luis Cario unleashing his Super Saiyan Mk. VI form to promote the Mega stage they are bringing back in this game. It shows the three starters, the protagonists, and a Pikachu, because you gotta have one of those! Even my dead great grandmother knew what a Pikachu was! (She bought me all sorts of Pikachu books.) But what is going on here? They are having a battle with a deliberately detailed character, one people are speculating might be Emma, a minor character from Pokémon X and Y (2013)’s post game. …A character who is too small to be identifiable at a glance, too redesigned to be inarguably the same character, and if there is one thing X and Y were bad at… it was the characters.
The two player characters have all three starters and Chikorita, the worst match-up, leaps out to fight Luis Cario and a Pikachu? Is this implying that double battles are going to be in this game? Because that’s a wild feature to include in a real-time combat system. Hell, it even gets worse when looking at the full art. Is Emma using a Mega Gardevoir, Mega Lucario, and a Pikachu? Are the Noivern and Mega Scizor part of this scuffle? Who is the other trainer with a mega ring and why do they want to cream these newbies? …Wait, is the Mega Absol the protagonists’ Pokémon, or are they just chilling? This perspective is confusing!
Every Issue of Game Informer Has Been Archived
(And You Can Freely Read Them on Their Website)
Well, this is a perfectly pleasant confluence of two stories I talked about earlier this year. After being cruelly shuttered by the heartless hacks running GameStop, a company that only exists because of meme stock traders, Game Informer was resurrected by some NFT game developer called Gunzilla Games. I was cautious about this resurrection as a result, but everything has been above board so far. And after building themselves up over the years, the Video Game History Foundation launched an online archive of old video game magazines, preserving them for scholars and weirdos galore.
Game Informer launched with magazine archives dating back to 2012 when the site was resurrected, but that meant 21 years of the publication’s history was still unaccounted for. Recognizing the legacy and value of the publication, GI and VGHF banded together to collect and release the entire Game Informer magazine library, all available via their official website for no charge. This is an incredible historical artifact, and a way for people to learn more about video game history. Which is something of vital importance now, as it is too easy for magazines to become lost media or websites to shutter… like Game Informer did for a few months. The only bad thing about these scans is that they don’t have text you can search through or any OCR built-in. Which would further their accessibility and research potential.
Still, I think this is a fantastic asset for game history, and something that I know I will have a particular interest in using in the foreseeable future.
Akumako: “Are you finally going to start on an outline for Psycho Shatter 2000: Black Vice Mania? You know, that nerdcore Y2K Body Swap Erotica novel with a song parody every other chapter and a mini game review at the start of every chapter?”
Oh… SHADDUP YOU! I’m trying to tackle what I can, trying to achieve what I can, and keep up my output. But my interests are a bit too varied to do everything I want to do, and my ability to just focus on making stuff has been put in jeopardy for months at this point. I’m hoping to— as The Youths say— lock in and crank out some 5K days the next two weeks to get things done, but there are only so many productive hours in the day…
Akumako: “You’ve had literally seven years to do it though.”
Yeah, and I wrote a couple million words of other stuff instead!
…Screw it. Next week is gonna be a big Rundown, because of all the Segmented Summer Showcases, and I’m upset over everything happening with Press-Switch. So we’re done! Later, bitch!
Progress Report 2025-06-01
I finished my time with Tribe Nine, review’s going to come in mid-June at this rate, and it’s ultimately a 7/10 experience. A fascinating mess made by some exceptionally skilled people. It ranges between a 9/10 at its best moments, a 3/10 at its worst, and is just a fascinating artifact to analyze and understand how the game became what it was. Also, if you skipped out on the game before now… you’re boned, since they got rid of a bunch of progression aids! No more events, no more free battle pass, no more daily stamina tokens, nothing! Thanks Akatsuki Games! You wet bag of clams!
Should I have bothered with this game? Probably not in retrospect, but I’m glad I played it enough to develop a full opinion on it. …Now, am I STUPID enough to play the Persona 5X gacha when it launches in a month? …All signs point to yes? …DAMN IT!
Also, also, if you didn’t notice, the understated theme of this week is that Natalie does not care about her privacy. She will openly share both video of her home and name-drop a middle school chum! While someone like Trigger will shut down his online identity after one stalker and his IRL identity being possibly compromised. If I had a stalker, I’d make ’em my friend!
Akumako: “Do not take Natalie seriously when she goes on this tangent. She lives in a world where she thinks everybody looks like an anime.”
2025-05-25: Tribe Nine and anime with the Cassie!
2025-05-26: Tribe Nine and anime with the Cassie! Mk. II!
2025-05-27: Wrote 1,400 words for the intro during work, which lasted like 11 hours today because of damn crypto reports.
2025-05-28: Desperately trying to finish everything in Tribe Nine before the season ended, as I thought the game might not have a second season. And it does not. The game’s a full-on zombie now and its progression system is fucking broken! Wrote 1,700 words for the Front Mission and Legends Z-A bits.
2025-05-29: Shelved the preamble I wrote for the June 15th Rundown. Wrote the NEW preamble for this week, which was 800 words, along with the Welcome Change and Game Informer bits, for another 1,300 words. Then I edited this fish before going beddy-bye.
2025-05-30: Worked on Press-Switch V0.6c, drafting the initial skeleton of the flowchart before realizing this shit is too complex for me to do it by bouncing around variables. I’ll dedicate most of my weekend to mapping out the game, since I am now on mandatory vacation. (My boss is on vacation, and he brings in the work. No boss means no work.)
2025-05-31: Big Press-Switch v0.6c day for me. Finished playing, finished drafting the flowchart, started writing the review. I do not want to promise a 6/3/2025 release, as much as I think that would be cute, but 6/4/2025 should be definitely in the cards. Had to stop working on this after showering, as I just needed to decompress the sense of loss I am feeling.
On behalf of… myself, unofficially, it’s very sweet to hear your P-S talk, and I apologize for the suddenness of it all. I hated to keep the secret, knowing how busy your schedule always is already, but I’m naturally sworn to confidentiality with such things, and frankly, Trigger’s exact plan remained indeterminate pretty much until rollout. I figured if anyone would notice the notice the writing on the wall, it’d be you. In some ways I find your openness terrifying, and in others, admirable. I’d hate to work on such a fruitful passion project like this site or P-S for over a decade and not be able to talk about it with friends and family. But alas, Trigger’s own lax opsec is what led to the security breach in the first place, so that’s been the main motivation behind the embargo on his online presence, unfortunate as it is from an archival perspective. If it’s any condelence, I do think your site being the premier place to pick up P-S’s ultimate version is actually pretty fitting, in a kinda roundabout, weirdly poetic way. I hope you find that more of a reward itself than a burden, but either way, thank you.
I’ll try not to speak too much on the game itself here, but… man, that last panel of the farewell comic is a tear-jerker, isn’t it? It’s so somber and… kinda stoic, I don’t really think I’ve processed it all. At least the hiatus is more of a monumental *end* than a monumental *loss.* Trigger’s love for writing itself hasn’t faded, so who knows, but I can at least say that us maids will be sticking with him in the interim.
Eh-heh… feels a bit awkward going back to regularly scheduled programming, but there were other topics in today’s rundown, so ah well. I find the prospect of a TSF-focused paysite… well I’m sorta hesitant about it; I wonder how well it might attract artists outside of the founders’ circle, or what moderation process if any they might employ to the artists who want to sell their work there, but then again, who knows. For all I know, it could gain traction and be the next big startup, though I do question if (Western) TSF comics alone have enough paying audience to sustain its own platform in direct competition with more ubiquitous ones.
And I dunno, I think the PLZA box-art is kinda nice. I agree that the crop is weird, but the on-foot camera angle and nighttime setting are a refreshing contrast to PLA’s (and BotW’s) and I’m pretty sure all the megas in-frame are protected under the “Rule of Cool” statute. From the sleeve, I believe the disembodied hand belongs to the game’s rival character (who has two differently gendered designs, so the ambiguity makes sense). It is weird that that person the protags are fighting had no formal introduction, but they share enough design motifs with Emma that I have no doubt in my mind as to her identity. And I won’t pretend Emma’s anyone’s *favorite* Pokemon character, but I found her cute as a kid and was a little envious of her sleek, skintight exosuit, so to see her in an apparently important role, complementing it with a snazzy cropped Looker coat, is pretty much all I was hoping for her return and more. Because regardless of *who* they are, getting returning, especially aged-up characters in Pokemon games will *always* be cool! … But yeeaaah, not looking forward to trying to get a Switch 2 in time for October. Assuming I’ll even have enough drive to play it in between classes… assuming I’ll even be in classes!
Trigger actually contacted me directly before any public delistings, and I had a vague idea as to what was going on.
I was originally quite secretive with my online identity, operating under a pseudonym, before eventually deciding to ditch that all together and use my legal name for everything. I know this is a significant risk, but that is the path that I chose for myself. Technically my family does not know about this site— just that I write a lot— but I find being open about things to be deeply comforting, as I spent so much of my life hiding away who I truly was and denying myself a meaningful identity.
On one hand, it is an honor to be as much of a part of Press-Switch as I am, providing links to resources and information to thousands of people every month, but I am also a little bit unnerved about the responsibility with that. If this is my responsibility, I probably want to do a better job of archiving things, but with so many pages and channels shut down, I don’t have a complete collection of things. Like the Mac version of Illia’s Mansion or the v0.5a-c builds. I should probably talk to Trigger about making an archive of things…
I will address the sorrow of something I love ending in the review proper, but it is a very sorrowful sensation, knowing this thing that I have followed for over a decade may be coming to an end. It’s not the first time something like this has happened, but I think this is the thing that has had the biggest impact on me, what I appreciate, and what I admire.
The structure of these Rundowns has always been analogous to a weekly podcast (back before podcast developed a different connotation) where I go through whatever topic interests me, so I tend to shift abruptly between topics. Arguably I should break certain things up into smaller posts, but I like the idea of keeping my post feed relatively clean and uniform, treating Rundowns as the obligatory Sunday morning updates. Sometimes I have no news, sometimes I have big news!
Welcome Change is largely a collaborative effort amongst friends and lik-eminded persons, and I’m guessing they want other collaborators to host their works there. I doubt that they employ the artists themselves, it’s more of a way for them to sell their works without relying on existing platforms. …Except for CC Bill, and you can gather my thoughts on them from the post itself. Regardless, this is meant to be a niche storefront, and I suspect it will remain that way. Which is fine, as TSF is, and will likely always be, a niche.
Good luck getting a Switch 2. I’m sure that they will be HELL to find for the rest of the year. Personally, I’m just going to stick with the Switch 1 version, even though I’m pretty sure it will look and run like spoiled milk. …Not sure what the comment about not being being in classes means. Degrees are important, so is experience, and if you’re gonna got o college, you may as well go all the way! (I say as someone with a Master’s in Accounting.)
Here I stand, also inspired by Press Switch to start my own thing. It’s sad to see it go, but I’m happy and thankful for all that it brought. I hope this isn’t the end too, but if it is, then it was a fun ride.
Dang, I always forget to shout you out Nost! I guess it’s because I still haven’t checked out the standalone version of Eman Looc. I’ve been following your weekly updates, but it seems the game is still relatively early on, so I’ve been patiently waiting to see it grow. Let me know when you think there’s enough to warrant a review and I’ll happily give it a whirl! ♥
All these details are very sad, of course. I hope everything goes well for the developer, best wishes. Thanks to him for a wonderful game, one of the best in its genre along with ST I believe. And to you, Natalie, thank you for the link to the new version, I usually get information about updates through TFGS website.
the box art of Z-A feels strange for me due to how cluttered it feels, the mainline games all are mostly just the important legendary with some pattern behind it but Arceus, although it deviates, is still restrained on how much is on the artwork.
Exactly. PLA’s box art was not cluttered and had a strong composition. But PLZA… just does not look like an official box art because of how fairly weak its composition is.
That’s very rotten and scary about the stalking! Hope the hiatus helps and good online security solutions are found.
As far as suggestions go, I’m curious about the explosion of (mostly or entirely self-published?) gender swap fiction in eBooks and print-on-demand paperbacks. Wondering how much of it is any good, and the extent to which it may be suffering from AI content. Authors specializing in it, multi-volume series, subgenres… just LOTS. Probably a lot of it romance or erotica, but maybe not exclusively – hopefully not exclusively? There’s just so much of it possibly would have to start by strategizing a way to first identify the potentially better works among them somehow. See e.g. goodreads.com/shelf/show/gender-swap although that has other stuff mixed in that are not ebooks or print on demand like Ranma 1/2 and Inside Mari. I wonder if there’s an online forum discussing them, where some of the more interesting might be identified.
I read some self-published works from Gregor Daniels and M. Wills. They are pretty good writers, but their works both suffer from being 10k to 15k novellas that never go into as much detail as I would have liked. I have tried distributing my works on proper storefronts, but it did not draw much attention, as I wound up releasing them right around the time AI generated novels started flooding the market.
I have not taken a serious look at TSF published writing in a while, as writing is so decentralized and so hard to gauge on a glance. I also am not sure if forums interested in that stuff would be active nowadays, as so many communities have shifted to Discord and the like.
I only just discovered this now after getting kicked I think automatically today from the PS discord after getting a notification from one of my Vencord plugins that it happened. With all the routes that were left unfinished that I wanted to see this actually feels like a kick in the gut right now lmao.
With that said I hope one day in the future when things cool off maybe Trigger picks up the pen again. It’s frustrating this is happening because I’d assume that this was part of the ultimate goal of the stalker to make Trigger quit in such a fashion on the project. I’m deathly curious what happened in full but I’d assume if I were to try get a real breakdown it would be in private.
Well, guess the news is out there then. Yes, Trigger is in the process of expelling people from the privated Press-Switch Discord due to the continued harassment and personal life issues brought on by the stalker. In fact, I just finished wiping away all Press-Switch download links from my website per Trigger’s request.
I do not know the extent of what the stalker put Trigger through, but I do know that they ultimately wanted Trigger to KEEP writing Press-Switch, and demanded that they update the MassPoss route. Instead, they wound up doing so much personal damage that I think this may actually be the end of Press-Switch. MAYBE when this is behind Trigger, he would be willing to tell people, but I’d sooner assume that this will lead him to share fewer details about his personal life going forward. I cannot give any details from my DMs, but this whole situation has been a fine mess.
Damn, thats why i cannot find P-S dsc server on my server list. Is there any way to download 0.6c without downloading it from some shady websites?
Unfortunately, Trigger has asked me not to share any links to Press-Switch on Natalie.TF, and that includes the comments section. However, I previously provided download links via my Press-Switch page, https://natalie.tf/press-switch/. If you were to find an archive of that page, you would be able to download v0.6c and its v2 patch. I hate being so cryptic, but this is for Trigger’s own safety.
Just wanted to say a big thanks for the help with getting those files! The way you explained it was a bit cryptic, but honestly, it didn’t bother me at all. Can’t believe I didn’t think of that myself… feels so obvious now. Really appreciate you taking the time to point me in the right direction.
For the record, I was deliberately being cryptic. :P