RASpotlight - CobaltZeroni

StingX2 By StingX2.

Intro

For this month we have in the spotlight a user that has been around awhile but only recently had a spotlight on him. You’ve seen his emote everywhere the past few months but why? Cobalt is a new staff member but also the new Claims Manager, a critical part of the development family here at RA.

Let’s get to know a bit more about: COBALTZERONI

CobaltZeroni CobaltZeroni

Interview with CobaltZeroni

StingX2

So first off congrats on officially being sworn in as the Claims Manager, a lot of our readers may not understand what that is. What is a claims manager and what do you do?

CobaltZeroni

In short, I keep track of who’s developing achievements, and which games they’re working on. I maintain a long list of every game that has been claimed for development. Adding new claims, deleting dropped claims, archiving completed claims, and reminding people about overdue claims are the bulk of the work I do.

StingX2

So for those readers who aren’t developers what exactly is the claim system?

CobaltZeroni

From what I understand, RA used to have problems with multiple developers trying to work on the same game, which led to confusion and infighting. The claims system was introduced to fix this: a developer (or group of developers) effectively “calls dibs” on the game in the RA forums, and they have exclusive rights to work on it until they finish (or give up on it).

StingX2

So this list you work on sounds like it also is a preservation of RA history in terms of when sets come out, why is it important to keep such a history?

CobaltZeroni

For the same reasons it’s important to keep a historical record of anything, pretty much. For reference purposes, to settle debates, to track the legacy of major developers, and to celebrate the history of RA in general.

StingX2

I hear you are a big fan of touhou but this isn’t a known quantity in gaming. Can you explain why you like touhou and what exactly is it?

CobaltZeroni

The Touhou Project started simply: in 1997, a dude in college known as ZUN started making bullet-hell games for the PC, about a shrine maiden who fights ghosts and monsters (partially inspired by the Pocky & Rocky series). During the years 2002-04, the series transitioned from PC-98 to Windows, and began to pick up a serious following in the indie scene of that period. ZUN was (and is) super-lenient with allowing fanworks of his games, and so Touhou fangames/comics/etc. rapidly became a staple of otaku-oriented conventions like Comiket. By the time my young self discovered it in 2010, Touhou had become a genuine cultural phenomenon, seeping into every corner of online anime nerd culture. Its popularity has reclined somewhat in recent years, but it’s still trucking along to this day, with 30 games and several spinoff manga/books under its belt. In a lot of ways, Touhou’s history parallels that of Undertale, a game it directly inspired. Both games were extremely low-budget indie productions, which wound up having bigger cultural influence than anyone could have predicted.

StingX2

Yea but why do you like it?

CobaltZeroni

If you’ve ever seen me rant about Touhou in the chat, you’re aware that the series has a ton of memorable character designs (almost all cute girls :V), and a ton of beautifully intense music to go alongside them. Those are the most common draws for fans, but what I think makes Touhou really special is the deeper lore of the series, and how it’s integrated into the bullet-hell gameplay.

To give a quick primer, the series is about the episodic misadventures of the aforementioned shrine maiden (Reimu) and her reckless witch friend (Marisa) in a magically-sealed country called Gensokyo, which serves as a refuge for gods and mythical creatures that our modern world has stopped believing in.

As such, a great many of the characters are fanciful reinterpretations of classic folklore and mythology - mostly Japanese mythology, but myths and legends from around the world have appeared throughout the series’ history.

Which brings us to Touhou’s biggest innovation as a bullet-hell game: the abilities and backstories of the bosses you fight are almost always integrated into the bullet patterns they use against you.

An ice fairy freezes bullets in place, a possessed drum fires waves of bullets in time with the music, a politician from the moon names her attack after the moon landing, a necromancer uses her zombie follower as a meatshield, and so on.

Bullet-hell games (and shmups in general) aren’t usually known for their lore - you might get a bunch of stuff in the manual, but that’s about it - and on that point, Touhou is truly special.

The underlying lore itself also became pretty unique, once the series went on long enough to start developing an actual world. Despite the intense nature of the gameplay, the stories are a curiously laidback mix of trash talk, wry humor, philosophizing and social commentary, the likes of which I haven’t really seen elsewhere in gaming. (Folks have compared it to the works of Terry Pratchett, which seems on-point enough.)

And, as mentioned, ZUN allowing free rein with the IP means there’s a ton of creative fan content to dig through, spanning a multitude of genres and tones. It’s almost an open-domain series, and as someone who feels extreme distrust of big corporations and brands, that means a lot to me.

StingX2

So I was told you have an interesting diet, what kinda diet do you have?

CobaltZeroni

My folks have gotten interested in food preservation in recent years, so we often eat fermented or freeze-dried foods we’ve made ourselves. Aside from that, it’s a pretty normal-type diet - although we’re kinda snobby about the quality of our coffee ☕

StingX2

So you do something called the Grand Tour? What is it exactly and why do you do it?

CobaltZeroni

If you’ve been on RA long enough, you’ve probably noticed that each game’s page on the site has a number ID, starting at 1 for the original Sonic the Hedgehog. Pretty much as soon as I arrived at RA, I decided it’d be fun to try and master every game in numerical ID order…this didn’t last very long, as mastering games is hard. 😓

Eventually, I settled on collecting at least one achievement from every set, in order. In a sense, I’m touring the entirety of RA, hence the name “Grand Tour”.

On a basic level, it’s a good source of free points and easy dopamine :V However, it also allows me to try a lot of new games I’d never think to touch otherwise, and helps me find old forgotten sets that might need repair work. This isn’t the first time I’ve attempted a project like this, either; when I was young and playing Flash games on Kongregate, I actually managed to collect every single “easy”-difficulty achievement that existed at the time.

StingX2

Do you miss Kongregate?

CobaltZeroni

To some extent, yeah. Flash games were a cool scene, and it’s sad to see it die out. Flashpoint exists for archival purposes, but there’s no external achievement system there…a good reason to get Flash support for RA someday, perhaps?

StingX2

What are some hidden gems you discovered during the grand tour?

CobaltZeroni

Some selections thus far:

  • Battle Clash and its sequel Metal Combat: Falcon’s Revenge (SNES) are great mech-themed lightgun shooters that nobody seems to talk about.
  • Altered Beast (MD) wound up being surprisingly enjoyable to master, despite its seeming simplicity.
  • Ardy Lightfoot (SNES) is a creative and surprisingly cinematic mascot platformer which got somewhat lost in the shuffle of the 90s
  • El Viento (MD) is a completely bonkers anime-style action-platformer. It’s very messy, but there’s a lot of creative

StingX2

Well is there anything else you’d like to tell the RA community?

CobaltZeroni

As a new member of staff, I’d like to improve the RA experience as much as possible, for everyone - staff, developers, and regular users alike. Please feel free to ask me about ideas or concerns, and thank you for your support!