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Franchise: Mario
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One criticism that the 2023 film "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" received is that while composer Bryan Tyler collaborated with Nintendo veteran composer Koji Kondo to create a score that incorporates orchestrated rearrangements of iconic songs from the Mario franchise, there were too many moments of Illumination-mandated pop songs replacing the score in certain scenes. The most infamous example of this being the replacement of the original composition "Driving Me Bananas", a medley of songs from the Donkey Kong Country games, with a-ha’s "Take on Me" feeling somewhat out of context.

According to Jamey Scott, who worked in the film's sound department, Tyler fought hard to keep his orchestrated rendition of the Super Star theme in the film over the studio's suggestion of Van Halen's "Jump", and succeeded.
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Complaint, Multimedia Adaptation, Music
person NintendOtaku calendar_month October 25, 2023
comment Comment (0) | link Source
Sonic the Fighters
Sonic the Fighters (1996)
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The January 2024 IDW Sonic the Hedgehog comic mini series based on Fang the Hunter revolves around him, Bean the Dynamite and Bark the Polar Bear searching for the mysterious “eighth” Chaos Emerald. This is a reference to the 1996 arcade game Sonic the Fighters (Bean and Bark’s debut game), which erroneously featured eight Chaos Emeralds, each one owned by the eight playable characters.
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In-Joke, Mistake, Multimedia Adaptation
person NintendOtaku calendar_month October 21, 2023
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Pokémon Snap
Pokémon Snap (1999)
subdirectory_arrow_right Pokémon (Franchise)
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Attachment Early in the Pokémon franchise's life, the Poliwhirl line recieved a major push in marketing, comparable to that of series mascot Pikachu.

Mascot costumes were made of Poliwhirl for promotional events, the Pokémon Adventures manga featured Poliwhirl as one of Red's Pokémon, Poliwag was placed closely to Pikachu on the box art of Pokémon Snap, food and toy lines would near-consistently feature a member of the Poliwhirl line alongside Pikachu even when the pool of Pokémon was as limited as 3 or 4 (with exceptions primarily being ones that also lacked Pikachu), and, most famously, Poliwhirl appeared on the center of the cover of TIME Magazine's issue adressing the popularity of Pokémon.

This could be related to Poliwag being Pokémon creator Satoshi Tajiri's favourite of the original 151 Kanto species.
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Advertisement/Commercial, Mascot, Merchandise, Multimedia Adaptation, Theory
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month October 19, 2023
comment Comment (0) | Source
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Comedic video about bizarre Pokémon merchandise showing off many instances of Poliwhirl and Poliwrath merchandise - the nature of Poliwhirl's "mascot" status is discussed at the 13:06 mark:
https://youtu.be/Gri7-XW3no8

ResetEra thread about Poliwhirl that opens with multiple images of Poliwhirl memorabilia:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/pokemons-bygone-mascot.763622/

Video from a Kellogg's fan channel featuring box scans and commercials for Pokémon cereal with Poliwhirl:
https://youtu.be/4kEnxp0ihPI

Pop Tarts commercial featuring Poliwrath toys:
https://youtu.be/oKw6l1Skglc

Kraft Mac & Cheese advert featuring Poliwhirl:
https://youtu.be/Sj5lfgEz_bU

Video featuring a photo of a Poliwhirl mascot:
https://youtu.be/KR5oKvYi_PQ

KFC and Heinz commercials for promotions featuring neither, Poliwhirl nor Pikachu:
https://youtu.be/9HCDPTQGmrI
https://youtu.be/nNc1xl8uoMA

Tajiri talks Poliwag:
https://youtu.be/gplIo-J9Ttc?si=vXRHECazu6kGu4IQ&t=433
Super Mario Bros. Wonder
Super Mario Bros. Wonder (2023)
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One scrapped idea for a Wonder Flower transformation was an eight-heads-tall, life-size, live-action version of Mario that hummed to the background music and exclaimed "Boing" when jumping. This idea was pitched by series composer Koji Kondo, but was scrapped due to it being "hard to see the connection between pre-Wonder effect and during Wonder effect. And it's hard to imagine the gameplay changing much by having Mario turn into a live-action, human proportion version of himself." However, this did end up leading to the Sound Off? badge being created to keep the voice sound effects idea in the game. Incidentally, Kondo provided the voice acting for all of the sound effects included while wearing the badge.
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Development, Early Idea, Inspiration, Music, Real Life, Voice Acting
person NintendOtaku calendar_month October 19, 2023
comment Comment (1) | Source
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Resident Evil 4
Resident Evil 4 (2005)
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Attachment In Issue 206 of Nintendo Power, a joke claimed that the "true" identity of the Chainsaw Man from Resident Evil 4 was Toad from the Mario franchise.
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General, Hoax
person NintendOtaku calendar_month October 12, 2023
comment Comment (0) | link Source
Final Fantasy VIII
Final Fantasy VIII (1999)
subdirectory_arrow_right Bahamut Lagoon (Game), SaGa: Scarlet Grace - Ambitions (Game), Hanjuku Hero Tai 3D (Game), Hanjuku Hero 4: 7-nin no Hanjuku Hero (Game), Live A Live (Game), The Final Fantasy Legend (Game), Square (Company)
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Among Japanese RPG fans, there is a group of female characters that are generally disliked by the audience, being referred to as "The Three Great She-Devils of Square". The reasons why these characters are disliked varies, but largely revolve around them betraying the main hero(es) in some way. The two generally agreed-upon members are:

• Princess Yoyo from Bahamut Lagoon, the childhood friend of protagonist Byuu and set up as his love interest, only to instead get together with another character, General Palpeleos.
• Alethea from Live a Live, who due to the machinations of the chapter's villain Streibough, came to believe the protagonist Oersted (who she was meant to marry) had abandoned her, and commits suicide after witnessing him murder Streibough. This leads to Oersted becoming the game's overall antagonist, Odio.

There is some debate as to who the third member of the group is, but the list of candidates include:

• Mileille from The Final Fantasy Legend, who was introduced as the leader of a resistance group alongside her twin sister Jeanne, only for it to be revealed that she had been working for Byak-ko the whole time.
• Rinoa from Final Fantasy VIII, largely due to her personality and lingering feelings for her ex-boyfriend Seifer, though she ends up with protagonist Squall in the end. Note that this pick might be due in part because of how divisive the game is in general.
• Catholine from the PS2 Hanjuku Hero games, due to her ugly and obnoxious nature, as well as constantly forcing herself onto the hero.

The group term would later be referenced in SaGa: Scarlet Grace - Ambitions, which featured an enemy team named "Lady Power", that consisted of three female demons with names that reference Yoyo, Alethea, and Milielle (though the former two were known as "Jojo" and "Alicia", respectively).
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Complaint, Easter Egg, Inspiration, Real Life, Reference
person chocolatejr9 calendar_month October 10, 2023
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Super Smash Bros. Melee
Super Smash Bros. Melee (2001)
subdirectory_arrow_right Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Game), tobyfox (Company)
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Attachment Before his career took off as an indie developer, Toby Fox used to play Super Smash Bros. Melee competitively under the old username 'Radiation'.

He is currently the only known competitive Super Smash Bros. player to have a character he has created represented in the series. Alongside the release of Banjo & Kazooie as a fighter, a Mii costume based on Sans from his game Undertale as well as an original remix of the song "Megalovania" were both added to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on September 4th.
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Competitive, General, Music, Real Life
person LegacyTag calendar_month October 7, 2023
comment Comment (0) | Source
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There's not much info about Toby Fox playing competitive Melee as he doesn't talk about it publicly too often, the VoD provided is the only publicly-known footage of him playing a set to my knowledge:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzh3NUO4szE

According to people, he was known as a bit of a local celebrity due to his work on the webcomic Homestuck, though that is more hear-say than anything definitive.
Donkey Konga
Donkey Konga (2004)
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The European version of Donkey Konga contains a cover of the song Tubthumping by Chumbawamba. The lyric "Pissing the night away" is censored as "Kissing the night away", but "He drinks a Whiskey drink, he drinks a Vodka drink. He drinks a Lager drink, he drinks a Cider drink" remains uncensored despite the game's 3+ rating.
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Censorship, Music, Regional Difference, Regulatory Content Rating
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month September 29, 2023
comment Comment (2) | link Source
Alfred Chicken
Alfred Chicken (1993)
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Attachment In 1993, Alfred Chicken publisher Mindscape attempted a publicity stunt by having Alfred Chicken run for a seat in the UK Parliament in the 1993 Christchurch, Dorset by-election, having an actor in an Alfred Chicken costume appear at the British House of Commons constituency of Christchurch as votes were read out. The Alfred Chicken Party ranked at second last with 18 votes, exceeding the Rainbow Alliance (a party intent on abolishing Parliament) by 2 votes. The Alfred Chicken Party, and the "Buy The Daily Sport Party", were cited years later by the Liberal Democrats as a reason for increasing the number of signatures required for a party to get on a ballot.
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Advertisement/Commercial, General, Politics, Real Life
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month September 27, 2023
comment Comment (0) | link Source
Mortal Kombat 1
Mortal Kombat 1 (2023)
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Ed Boon revealed that he had hoped to include John Wick from the franchise of the same name as a guest character in Mortal Kombat 1, but that said plans didn't work out. While the exact reason why is unknown, it's worth noting that John Wick's actor Keanu Reeves had said in 2021 that he did not think the character was a good fit for the Mortal Kombat series.
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Development, Early Idea, Real Life, Unused Character
person chocolatejr9 calendar_month September 27, 2023
comment Comment (0) | link Source
Glover
Glover (1998)
subdirectory_arrow_right Glover 2 (Game)
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In 2018, an indie studio named Golden Mushroom claimed they were working on a sequel to Glover for the Nintendo Switch. However, it was soon discovered that they had only applied for the trademark to the name "Glover", and not the copyright, meaning they didn't actually own the rights to the IP. In reality, the copyright had been acquired by Piko Interactive, who had purchased it from Atari SA (the company that had purchased Hasbro Interactive in 2001).
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Copyright, General, Real Life
person chocolatejr9 calendar_month September 20, 2023
comment Comment (0) | link Source
Wreck-It Ralph
Wreck-It Ralph (2012)
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In late 2018, a trailer for the film's sequel "Ralph Breaks the Internet" premiered on TV as part of Disney Channel's "Movie Surfers" series. The first half of the trailer used almost 40 seconds of cutscenes from the 2012 Wii game based on the first movie, and used unreleased higher quality renders of these cutscenes rather than the compressed footage released in the game. This trailer also features a noticeably bad, ad-libbed narration from an unknown actor portraying Ralph; this actor does not sound like the original film's actor John C. Reilly, nor the soundalike actor used in the Wii game and commercials Brian T. Delaney. Considering the overall confusing cheapness of the trailer, it's not known why the show's producers chose to use unreleased HD renders of these cutscenes instead of footage from the first film, which they had to have had access to and would have matched the visual quality of the film's sequel better.
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Advertisement/Commercial, General, Real Life, Theory, Unreleased Content
person MehDeletingLater calendar_month September 11, 2023
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Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018)
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Attachment If the New Donk City Hall stage loops three times, or a music track from the game Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is playing, Captain Toad will cameo on the stage. This references Super Mario Odyssey where Captain Toad will occasionally appear.
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Bonus Content, Cameo, Easter Egg, Music, Reference
person Kirby Inhales Jotaro calendar_month September 9, 2023
comment Comment (0) | link Source
Baldur's Gate 3
Baldur's Gate 3 (2020)
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Baldur's Gate 3 was originally revealed with a CGI trailer at a conference for the Google Stadia cloud gaming service in June 2019 as part of an Early Access exclusivity deal that would ultimately be cancelled when Stadia was shut down in 2023. The game's director Swen Vincke touted the service at the time for its purported accessibility, and the potential for in-game community feedback to directly affect the game's development and playthroughs via Stadia's Crowd Choice feature. However, Vincke later expressed regret over having the game be revealed this way, calling it "a really stupid deal" due to the challenges of releasing an Early Access build to a second platform, but that "it allowed me to pay for the CGI."
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Advertisement/Commercial, Cancelled Release, Complaint, Development, Early Build, Early Idea, General, Trade Show
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month March 29, 2024
comment Comment (0) | Source
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Seaman
Seaman (1999)
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Development, Easter Egg, Filename, Music, Regional Difference, Secret, Title, Voice Acting
person MehDeletingLater calendar_month February 4, 2024
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Tekken
Tekken (1994)
subdirectory_arrow_right Tekken (Franchise)
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In an interview with Polygon, the series lead Director, Katsuhiro Harada, confirmed that King's motion capture was performed by Japanese pro-wrestling star and MMA pioneer, Minoru Suzuki. The wrestling star made King's fighting style with a mix of Mexican lucha libre and Japanese puroresu. Harada also said that Suzuki also invented original moves for King and Michelle (as well as Julia in future games). Harada also says that Suzuki also offered to choke him out, to which he said "Yeah, of course dude, I want you to choke me out" and that "it felt like taking a refreshing nap."

King's backstory was inspired by Sergio Gutiérrez Benítez, a catholic priest who moonlit as the masked wrestler Fray Tormenta to raise funds for his orphanage, while the character's jaguar mask design was inspired by Tiger Mask, a recurring masked persona first portrayed in real-life by mixed martial artist Satoru Sayama, and a character licensed out to Japanese professional wrestling companies from the 1968 manga of the same name by Ikki Kajiwara.
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Character Design, Development, Inspiration, Motion Capture, Moveset, Real Life
person DrakeVagabond calendar_month January 20, 2024
comment Comment (2) | Source
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Polygon video about Katsuhiro Harada interview snippet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibweoMXd5RI

Kotaku article featuring Tiger Mask:
https://kotaku.com/in-japan-wrestling-masks-arent-just-for-half-naked-dud-5845062

"Cheating Death, Stealing Life: The Eddie Guerrero Story" by Eddie Guerrero (page 91):
https://archive.org/details/cheatingdeathste00guer/page/91
Virtual Lab
Virtual Lab (1995)
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Attachment In an interview with the Bad Game Hall of Fame, Megumi Ayase, who programmed Virtual Lab singlehandedly, stated that the large-breasted woman who appears next to the playing field was based on the idealized image that she wanted to attain as a transgender woman. This is reflected in her name, Megu, a truncation of Ayase's given name. Ayase also stated that the decision to make Megu 13 years old was done without her consultation, and that she didn't find out about this until she read the game's manual, much to her surprise.
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Artwork/Illustration, Character Design, Corporate Affairs, Development, Inspiration, LGBTQ+, Real Life
person VinchVolt calendar_month December 26, 2023
comment Comment (0) | link Source
Final Fantasy V
Final Fantasy V (1992)
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Attachment The translation group RPGe's 1998 English translation of Final Fantasy V is considered to be one of the most widely-played and influential fan translations in video game history. It gained this reputation because it released before Squaresoft's first official translation in Final Fantasy Anthology in late 1999, and despite RPGe primarily consisting of inexperienced teenagers, it was regarded as a better translation than the official one, leading many Western players to first experience the game through it.

The first translation attempts stemmed from widespread confusion over Squaresoft not releasing three FF games in the West: Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy III, and FFV. Their decision to release Final Fantasy VII internationally under its original numbering after Final Fantasy VI was released in the West a few years earlier as the "third" game in the series also contributed to this.

The co-creator of RPGe, named Shadow, was inspired by an incomplete FFII translation by users Demi and Som2freak (the latter having later lent Shadow tools to work on FFV), and started translating FFV by making flashcards for which hex code corresponded to each Japanese and English character in the game's data. He promoted his efforts online using photoshopped FFV images and recruited other users to create RPGe, including translator David Timko, and a computer engineering major named Hooie who also asked Japanese instructors at his university to help translate some enemy names. RPGe's plan was to directly edit their English script into the text files of a ROM of the Japanese version, but their work was slow and tedious due to them having little experience with fan translations and being out of touch with fledgling emulation communities. This lead to technical issues with their text and sprite editing software, and English characters being poorly displayed under conditions that were originally designed for larger Japanese characters. The group also suffered from internal factionalism, and since Shadow promoted himself as the public face of the project, he found that he could not handle the attention and controversy that came from how seriously he took the project and RPGe itself, seeing the translation effort as a vital service to the Squaresoft fan community. After Demi published a lengthy post parodying Shadow, he "snapped" and left RPGe. The co-founders of RPGe would also eventually step down, but other users would take over and start their own work.

A user named Myria, who had argued against RPGe's hex editing approach to no avail, split off from their efforts beforehand to work on a separate translation. Sharing similar setbacks to them, she gradually parsed through the code used to handle the text files, and edited it so it could recognize English characters of different sizes and fit more in a dialogue box. Som2freak helped translate the script for a time, but then left the project after bringing on a new editor, named harmony7, who started heavily revising Som2freak's translations to his chagrin despite seeing several issues with it.

One of the most controversial aspects of the translation was the main character's name. Squaresoft's later English translation named him "Bartz", but RPGe's translation named him "Butz", which many joked sounds like "butts". Myria claimed that Butz was the most accurate translation based on documents and official merchandise using it "the way we'd written it" (for reference, the Romanized version of the Japanese name "バッツ" comes out as "Battsu"). However, Butz is used in real life as an actual German surname with a different pronunciation, the vowel being an "oe" sound like in the English words "put" and "good". Therefore, Bartz would make more sense to match up with the vowels in the Japanese name than Butz, and also fits better as a German first name since Bartz is a pet name for Bartholomäus (Bartholomew).

The bulk of Myria's technical work ended in October 1997, with harmony7 still working to revise the entire script until something unexpected happened. An early version of the fan translation mysteriously appeared on a Geocities website with others taking credit for it. This prompted RPGe to release their work up to that point as "v0.96" on October 17, 1997, with the final patch eventually being released in June 1998. The translation patch received acclaim for its technical aspects and near-professional writing quality, and influenced other players to become translators, including Clyde Mandelin who would later create the English fan translation for Mother 3. Squaresoft never contacted RPGe about the translation, and while their 1999 localization of the game was seen as inferior to RPGe's, Myria would later opine that Square Enix's 2006 localization in Final Fantasy V: Advance was better than theirs. Myria continued hacking and reverse-engineering games and eventually earned a job at an undisclosed major video game company.
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Cancelled Release, Complaint, Development, Emulation, Etymology, Fan Translation, General, Leak, Merchandise, Mistranslation, Modding, Name Change, Parody, Real Life, Regional Difference, Social Media, Technology, Website
person MehDeletingLater calendar_month December 24, 2023
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Super Mario Bros. 3
Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988)
subdirectory_arrow_right Super Mario Maker 2 (Game)
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Attachment Many international Mario fans were confused by the design of the Angry Sun in the New Super Mario Bros. U style of Super Mario Maker 2, noticing how it appeared more stern than angry. This is due to the fact that "angry" is not part of the enemy's name in Japan, just being called "sun", meaning that anger is not an inherent part of the character and giving it a different expression would make more sense without knowledge of its localized name.

The new design of the "Angry" Sun seems to be based on pre-colonial mythology based on the sun, most particularly the Inca sun god Inti, a design inspiration that seems to exist in anthropomoprhic suns from multiple other Nintendo games such as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Mole Mania, and Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters
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Character Design, Complaint, Inspiration, Name Change, Regional Difference, Release Difference, Religion, Similarities, Theory
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month December 18, 2023
comment Comment (1) | Source
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Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (2005)
subdirectory_arrow_right Gyakuten Saiban (Game)
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One early idea for the game involved Phoenix Wright being an anthropomorphic hamster character. Later versions of the character would give him a hamster as a pet, but this was ultimately cut in the final release.
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Character Design, Development, Early Idea
person Kirby Inhales Jotaro calendar_month December 17, 2023
comment Comment (1) | link Source
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