Thursday, October 23, 2014

Inspirations: Mega Man part 1

Hello fellow dreamers,
    Do you remember your first dream? How about the first thing that made you dream? I don't know exactly what it is, but the longest dream was thanks to a little game known as Mega Man II... for the Gameboy. The first character I can remember designing was based off Magnet Man, because magnets were awesome!!! The idea of levitating thanks to magnetic powers or sticking to surfaces so I can fight steadily were ideas I had back then and I wasn't even in school yet. However, those dream characters I made back then faded away fairly quickly due to interests in Pokemon and Star Wars, and also since my brother rarely let me play Mega Man II.
    The main glory Mega Man would obtain in my imagination came in the form of a misunderstanding but still in awe. It was when I saw the cover for Mega Man X. Mega Man in a cool white armor! It actually wasn't until a few weeks ago that I finally played this game. Back then, I didn't know what different consoles meant, I didn't know that there were already 3 generations of consoles of which I had none. My first experience with the X franchise was perhaps my favorite Gameboy Color game called Mega Man Xtreme. It actually was the first Mega Man game I ever beat, and I beat it over and over again (as well as unlock that glorious white armor and "Hadouken!").
    I'm guessing at by this point, you all have realized that X is the inspiration for the character Xagem. To this day, Xagem has been the core of my stories the longest, even though he was initially separate from the Neostriker universe. I probably went through maybe 5 revisions of Xagem before I finally incorporated him thanks to the development of "forms." Another fun fact is that Xagem was also the first story I ever wrote as a little kid. It's short and horrible, but it was mine and I loved it.
    There is so much I can talk about with how Mega Man (Rockman in Japanese) helped me and even more so with the character Xagem, but I'll leave those details for another time. I hope you enjoyed this insight.

J, D. Nyle

P.S. If you have any fanfiction on Neostriker, don't forget that you can send it to my email at jnyled@gmail.com for a chance to be uploaded on this blog.

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Inspirations: LEGOS

Sometimes the best source of inspiration is the access to creative tools. Playing with Legos led to many different ideas I implemented in Neostriker. For example, both Celonret and Gnugger were characters I first made out of Legos to play with. Gnugger and his transforming ability came from playing with a lego star wars set and adding wheels and playing with different shapes. Eventually I was able to design a humanoid figure that was perfect for use in Neostriker. However,  I also liked the jeep design so I kept the transform idea.

P.S. I'll be busy for a while so there won't be any updates for the next two weeks.

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Inspirations: Digimon Part 1

    When I started Neostriker, there were three main series from which I took inspiration. In the end, only one maintained its significant impact at the core and that was Digimon. Many of the ideas I implemented where so core that I didn’t realize how much it had influenced me until I began to look back. Part of this is seen in chapter 18 with Sunflare as it effectively “digivolved.” However, that was perhaps the most explicit reference.  This is because everything else I implemented was later refined by other series like Mega Man.
    The first development beside the “evolution,” was probably the use of neocards. This came from Digimon Tamers. It developed further due to Yu-Gi-Oh at first, but most of those developments were removed. The further advancements came thanks to Mega Man Battle Network. This where I took the idea of Neocard Combos, as well as some weapon designs.

    Perhaps the most substantial inspiration was Forms. While it looks a lot like Cross Fusion from Mega Man NT Warrior, I was playing with the idea long before I even heard of it. In fact, trying to watch Digimon Frontier is how I came to learn about Rockman EXE before it came to the US as Mega Man NT Warrior. I could go into more detail but I believe that is enough for today. I hope you enjoyed learning where many elements came from.

J. D. Nyle

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Inspirations: Dragonball Z

When I was a lot younger, I remember Dragonball Z when it was airing on Toonami. Now, this series did not impact Neostriker too much. This was more of a side series that I played around with separate from the Neostriker precursor. The main element that I would attribute is the hunt for the Elite Stones similar to the Dragon Balls. However, I think you might agree with me that it was a weaker aspect of the story. For my next story, I have new plan based off the developed nature Elite Stones. That's all I have for today and I'm currently planning my next post so it should not be a long wait this time.