Kero Blaster: Unused Elements and Hidden References!

Apr 13, 2015 at 3:00 AM
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This video literally took me all weekend to make :o Editing is hard work people!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nvnuSZoFOc

Please let me know if you learned anything new in this video, I really hope you do!
Hope you enjoy as well! Thanks for watching!
 
Apr 13, 2015 at 3:20 AM
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can I get a transcript
 
Apr 13, 2015 at 3:30 AM
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Sure, I'll write one up give me maybe 15 minutes.

Edit: Transcripts are harder to write than I thought, should be done within another 15 minutes
 
Apr 13, 2015 at 3:45 AM
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It's kind of nice. Seems like you were going for a Did You Know Gaming style. The sound balance could be adjusted a little further and the section that compares music could be a bit more concise, among another little things, but it's a good video all around in my opinion. ^.^
 
Apr 13, 2015 at 4:06 AM
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Transcript for Noxid
Did you know? Kero Blaster initially started development under an entirely different title, under which it was called 'Gero Blaster'
Only one trailer for this game has ever been seen, which was it's initial release trailer, and it was intended for a Spring 2013 release. The game featured an entirely different story that seems to revolve around aliens kidnapping cats of some kind.. though there's not much to go off of

As we can see in the trailer some kind of electicity mechanic was in use at some point, as enemies seem to drop small yellow lightning bolts which are stored and counted at the bottom of the interface The only other screens of the game that were shown beyond the trailer were posted on gamespark.jp on May 28th, 2013, and showed the game had progressed in the two months since the trailer
We'll get to looking at these images in just a couple minutes.
In an interview with Destructiod, Daisuke Amaya said the following: *I read part of the first paragraph verbatim* However this isn't exactly true, (in reference to the weapons being completely different) a look at the trailer shows that the upgrades in-fact were different, but the base weapons appear to be the same: The Peashooter, the wide, the flame, and the bubble.
In another screenshot from Gamespark, we see another weapon, which appears to be a type of missile launcher. This, however, is actaully in the data for Kero Blaster as well, and can be obtained by the use of editing scripts *I say that I did a video on it and put an annotation up for it.*

Another thing of note in this screenshot is the protagonist appears to be standing in some kind of shop, and interestingly enough, there doesn't seem to be any coins, so there's a good chance that the electricity is the currency of Kero Blaster
*Some game footage plays*

Now we're going to be looking at the internal files of Kero Blaster and seeing what kind of unused content we can find, and wether or not they have any relation to Gero Blaster.
*footage stops, cuts to image with a lot of entities on it*
This file appears to be what Daisuke Amaya used to set entities when he was finished building maps. In the third column on the seventh row we see a UFO, which appears very similar to the one in the Gero Blaster trailer. Two rows below that, we see an enemy that appeared in Gero Blaster, and is likely the most basic form of alien as many of the other alien designs appear to be based off of this one.
There are many other usused entities in this file, such as the weird looking lizard thing on eleventh column's sixth row, but it would take too long to go through them all. *Next image* This file once again contains the most basic alien enemy, and we can see some alternate forms of it as well. *Next image* Here's a quick screenshot of the trailer, showing the enemy in action. *Next image* In this image we see the unused, finalized image of the missile launcher, and it does differ from the one in the Gero Blaster screenshot a slight bit.

*Next image* In this file, there are projectile sprites for the missle launcher both level 1 and level 2. *Next image* If you look to the right of the center of your screen, you'll notice some green flames, which very well could've been a fourth level upgrade for the flame weapon. *Next image* Upon closer examination of the file, we see a weird looking purple version of the wide weapon, and I'll get to more on that in a minute.

*Next image* This file contains a TON of interesting things in it. In the top left corner we see the sprite icons for each level of the weapons. It could be that Daisuke Amaya intended for each weapon to have four levels, or they could merely be placeholders. Perhaps more interesting is that the Pea Shooter was intended to have a fifth level. It's sprite can be seen here below the one for the Lazer Uzi, and when shot it shoots a purple colored wide projectile, which explains why that's in the last file.

*I talk about how I made a video on how to get it blah blah blah*

This file also has many leftovers from Gero Blaster, as it has a key, umbrella, and what appears to be an older version of the jetpack (the blue one) The final thing of note in this file is the green-haired girl next to the life jar. *Next image* She actually appears in one of the Gero Blaster screenshots posted on Gamespark, and altough she has purple hair, they're both likely the same person.

*Next image* This file contains some more leftover material from Gero Blaster, such as a UFO, a green spaceship with two small figures inside, and a red spaceship with a bunny-looking figure inside. *Next image* In this screenshot of Gero Blaster, we see that the spaceship was used on the world map, probably as a way to move the protagonist from the small blue planet to the large one in the center. There's also a chance that the red ship was going to be used to move the rabbit figure from the small red planet to the larger planet, though this is just my speculation.
*Next image* It's also likely that the bunny figure is one of these.. bunny looking things. With the protagonist stuck in jail, it's likely these bunnies were antagonists of some kind.

*Next image* In this final file we see more leftovers from Gero Blaster. The weapons icons are from a much ealier stage in development, and we once again see the umbrella and jetpack, as well as two electricity items show in the trailers. We also see some enemies from Gero Blaster, some which were repurposed for Kero Blaster, and some that never ended up being used.

*I talk about musical references* *Then I play a bunch of songs* *Colors indicate relation if you wanted to know*

That's all I have for music, but I do have one more interesting thing to say. Pink Hour, a demo for the game released a month prior, had the names of the stages in the files of the game While the names lined up otherwise (see OXOX Hotel and White Laboratories) the name 'Tip of the Iceberg' is seen instead of Heichiki Plateau, which suggests it was changed very late in development *End card* Rate subsribe whatever THE END
 
Apr 13, 2015 at 4:32 AM
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I just wanted to say that the unaltered trailer music for Gero Blaster can be found in the earlier release of Pink Hour.
 
Apr 13, 2015 at 4:45 AM
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you seem to have misplaced your enter key so I took the liberty of adding newlines for you
 
Apr 13, 2015 at 5:34 AM
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Noxid said:
you seem to have misplaced your enter key so I took the liberty of adding newlines for you
Thanks, I did use my enter key a lot actually, then when I copied it out of my notepad and pasted it all my spaces were gone and I was too lazy to add them back in, sorry about that
TheVinylCheese said:
I just wanted to say that the unaltered trailer music for Gero Blaster can be found in the earlier release of Pink Hour.
Oh really? That's interesting, thanks for letting me know!
Polaris said:
It's kind of nice. Seems like you were going for a Did You Know Gaming style. The sound balance could be adjusted a little further and the section that compares music could be a bit more concise, among another little things, but it's a good video all around in my opinion. ^.^
Thanks! It was my first 'high quality' video (ie took me over 12 hours to edit) so I only can get better, I will definitely work on those things next time!
 
Apr 13, 2015 at 8:54 AM
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I posted this as a comment on the video, but I figure I might as well as post it here too:

"Gero" in Gero Blaster is with a hard G, not a soft G. And you said it soooo many times ("Jero Blaster").

The "Train station" song is similar to Cave Story's "Quiet", but the Chord progression is quite different. They carry a similar mood, but as somewhat of a music buff, it's a bit of a stretch to say the "Train station" song is a reference to "Quiet". Nice find on the unused song next to it though.

The "Zombeat" song in Kero Blaster may be referencing "Zombie" from Cave Story, but it is much more similar to the fully fleshed out version seen in Guxt, which is the theme song for the Hidden Boss:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Sc47Pg7Rho
You'll see they're near identical, except that Kero Blaster's version has more percussion.

Also, people watching your videos are probably going to be more interested in the facts rather than hearing the actual songs (if they access them on their own), so I'd recommend you demo said songs for a shorter period of time.
 
Apr 13, 2015 at 12:24 PM
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GIRakaCHEEZER said:
I posted this as a comment on the video, but I figure I might as well as post it here too:

"Gero" in Gero Blaster is with a hard G, not a soft G. And you said it soooo many times ("Jero Blaster").

The "Train station" song is similar to Cave Story's "Quiet", but the Chord progression is quite different. They carry a similar mood, but as somewhat of a music buff, it's a bit of a stretch to say the "Train station" song is a reference to "Quiet". Nice find on the unused song next to it though.

The "Zombeat" song in Kero Blaster may be referencing "Zombie" from Cave Story, but it is much more similar to the fully fleshed out version seen in Guxt, which is the theme song for the Hidden Boss:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Sc47Pg7Rho
You'll see they're near identical, except that Kero Blaster's version has more percussion.

Also, people watching your videos are probably going to be more interested in the facts rather than hearing the actual songs (if they access them on their own), so I'd recommend you demo said songs for a shorter period of time.
Oh shoot I had no idea it was a hard G at all, thanks for letting me know

I felt like the Quiet reference was somewhat safe after finding that unused song, even if chord progression was different, but maybe I'm totally wrong

And yeah I knew about the song being in Guxt, but I wanted to use the very first use of the song, although you're right I probably should've used it

Music did drag on a bit longer than I wanted it to, so I'll note that in the future.

Thanks!
 
Apr 13, 2015 at 1:34 PM
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Bramblestar1227 said:
and what appears to be an older version of the jetpack (the blue one)
According to words.txt there are three items built for air travel: "傘" or "Umbrella" as Google likes to translate it, "Jetpack", and "2 だんジャンプ" or "Double Jump" (Google again). The blue one is probably the Double Jump.

Also to best read words.txt drag it into an open browser window/tab and change the encoding to Shift_JIS. You'll find it is much easier to navigate with linebreaks and without mojibake.

Bramblestar1227 said:
I felt like the Quiet reference was somewhat safe after finding that unused song, even if chord progression was different, but maybe I'm totally wrong
Yeah I'd imagine that Pixel was going to use station_b somewhere else rather than as a station_a alt. I cannot hear anything even remotely similar between the two songs. Quiet is a personal favourite of mine, so if there was any link between the two then my ears would hear it. Plus station_b is more upbeat than Quiet, while station_a is much slower and really, really doesn't sound at all like Quiet.

station_b was a neat find though.
 
Apr 13, 2015 at 3:10 PM
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I totally forgot about it possibly being the double jump, I really should've considered that.

And I'll do better on the words.txt next time.

And you really don't hear anything similar? That's interesting, because for me the recognition was almost immediate. I was playing Kero Blaster when it came out and I was thinking, "I've heard this song before..."

And thanks, I found it maybe last August and kinda didn't think about until I decided to make the video.
 
Apr 13, 2015 at 9:56 PM
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alfasketer said:
I watched the video and wow you DID put a lot of work into it. :) Good work as always.
Thanks so much!
 
Apr 13, 2015 at 11:34 PM
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Isn't the umbrella an obtainable item you can hack in?

I swear I heard someone mention putting the umbrella into Pink Hour back when we were all hacking it before Kero Blaster released... I might be wrong though...

EDIT:
Doors said:
You can give yourself at least the umbrella by modifying the save file. It crashes your game of course, but it's still interesting.
Well nevermind.
 
Apr 30, 2015 at 5:47 PM
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Thanks for the information, good video. :3
 
May 2, 2015 at 7:43 PM
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Worth the watch, well done.
 
May 18, 2015 at 3:06 PM
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Now do this with Pixel's other games!
 
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