Post by goldmaster11 on Mar 17, 2018 10:27:00 GMT -5
Original source: forums.blayzegames.com/index.php?threads/kirby-star-allies-and-the-elaboration-of-my-modern-gamer-history-to-the-present.6422/
The Goldmaster Diary - Entry #2
Kirby Star Allies and the Elaboration of my Modern Gamer History to the Present
Author: goldmaster11 aka Kirby[insert Copy Ability here]
To be published on: Blayze Games Forum and Kirby Informer
Version: Final Draft - Images Omitted
Publish date: March 16, 2018
Note: to fully understand the post, context has been provided in the previous entry, A New Year’s Resolution - My History as a Gamer and Entering My Hero’s Journey. Please read the later parts of this post (http://forums.blayzegames.com/index.php?threads/a-new-year%E2%80%99s-resolumy-life-) that mention the cradles of my gamer life, Kirby, Wings of Duty, Bullet Force, and Forward Assault if you are new to this series of posts. In-depth, supplementary context will be provided after the introduction.
Play the music in the video links as you read to set the tone of this post. These videos will be embedded in the final draft, which is to be posted on the Blayze Games forum.
——————————————————————————————————————
Introduction
Greetings, Kirby fandom!
Greetings, Warriors of Bullet Force!
Greetings, Forward Assaulters!
Greetings, Wings of Duty pilots!
I would like to introduce a new series of posts, The Goldmaster Diary. This is the evolution of my New Year’s Resolution post from January of 2018. It is a new series of posts to dump my (and eventually others’) thoughts, designed to bring powerful, inspiring, posts out to the world for all to read, dissect, and enjoy. Welcome to a symbolic, second-to-none day in my gamer history!
You are about to enter a diary of sentiments.
Pretend you are in my shoes and play the soundtrack “Dream Is Collapsing” from Christopher Nolan’s Inception as you read the introduction. Composed by Hans Zimmer.
As I clench, tremble, and stare at my new Nintendo Switch and pre-ordered copy of Kirby Star Allies, game apps on my iPad Pro’s screen shaking, each with an “X”, hellbent on choosing one out of 3 games to be death sentenced, eyes twitching, blacking out, tears falling off in weeping joy, -while the GameStop employees process the purchase and hand it over to me-, I face one truth, now needless to prove, self evident in my eyes, obliged not to stare away from the Switch console and the game box with the Kirby Star Allies boxart...
That Kirby is the most critical, essential component of the gaming aspect of my history... that it is a long, binding rope to all my current other game interests. However, it is not necessary that I bear interest in any games outside the realm of Kirby. In one way or another, it connects all the major powers together in harmony.
“What are these major powers?”, you’ve may ask. These other powers are games I am also very interested in. These are Wings of Duty, Bullet Force, and Forward Assault. None have successfully overthrown Kirby, but times have come and gone when this love of Kirby was reduced to a barely hanging thread. So many mistakes on different levels have caused deep divagation from my original intents of the declaration of the beginning of the Kirby era, the modern era of my gamer history, in April of 2014.
In the days, weeks, and months between the unveiling of Kirby Battle Royale and the name of the then-tentatively-titled Kirby for Nintendo Switch and the launch day of Kirby Star Allies and the dawn’s early light on that launch day that marks and symbolizes this great transition, Kirby has become something to express myself with. In the wake of my exponential rise to the top to the highest echelons of Blayze Games, beginning with becoming a dev in Forward Assault, the change of my Discord nickname in the Forward Assault Discord server to KirbyMirror marked the beginning of the subtle signs of a bright future of my gamer history. Soon followed the introduction of Kirby-related avatars for my Discord account - the Yo-Yo copy ability and a cropped portion of Kirby Battle Royale promotional artwork -. As the year turned to 2018, and the frequency of updates on Kirby Star Allies rose by a gigahertz, I realized that, reflecting back, all signs up to now pointed to a new beginning. In one way or another, resurgence of my interest in Kirby, once believed to be futile, was being conspired for and helped by Blayze Games.
Kirby Star Allies revealed itself as an irrefutable answer against the most infamous inner demons in my gaming history up to the present time. The greatest one, Wings of Duty, for the countless mistakes its devs made in updates, was Star Ally turned Soul Boss.
Undying, revitalized interest in Kirby and its fandom has tirelessly warded off centrifugal forces that would otherwise throw down my gaming history into anarchy. It supersedes the benevolence that the people Blayze Games, with its mobile FPS games, Bullet Force and Forward Assault, have done many a good for me in return for the hard work I put into their games, now allied to my heart’s content, helping to put an end the heated conflict and civil war between Kirby and Wings of Duty and the seven-year depression and grant my wish to re-return to Dream Land once and for all!
Let’s flash back to the anarchy period of my gamer history in the first quarter of 2014, the pilgrimage to Dream Land that would change the course of my history forever, and all pertaining to my gamer history, good and bad, other than articulated outside factors in the previous New Year’s Resolution post.
————————————————————————————————————————
Context - Backstory
To some extent, depending on what portion of the audience you originate from, full understanding of the context has to be gained by reading parts of this context. Read the parts of this context, of whose histories that you are unfamiliar.
2014
January, 2014. Angry Birds was overthrown from my sphere of interest, setting the stage for warring anarchy. Attempts to reinstate Pokémon to the throne as it once been turned into a complex nightmare. Three bitter months of anarchy followed. From March to April of 2014, a Nintendo consortium to the throne of my gaming interest was proposed with the purchase of a copy of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Little traction had been gained, doing little to defuse the predicament I was already in.
On the last week of April 2014, however, an unexpected turn for the betterment of the situation occurred. I suddenly gained the urge to learn all about the Kirby game series. Kirby inhaled the power vacuum; now he himself was now the entirety power vacuum. I immediately read the Wikipedia pages relating to the Kirby games and much of the dedicated Kirby Wiki on Wikia in my free time. I also watched many Kirby-related YouTube videos as well. The first “Scramble for Kirby” had begun.
One of my first objectives in the scramble was to get introduced to playing the games starting with the newest Kirby game at that time, Kirby Triple Deluxe. It was not long before it released in North America on May 2, 2014. In a mere 11 days after the release, I bought it at my local game store, Data Blitz, (I was still in the Philippines at this time as said in the preceding post). It was the fastest time I ever got a physical copy of a newly released game.
Not long completing Kirby Triple Deluxe 100%, I saw the unveiling of Kirby and the Rainbow Curse at E3 2014. Financial restraints prevented me from getting the game.
The announcements of Kirby Fighters Deluxe and Dedede’s Drum Dash Deluxe from Japanese sources was the beginning of my exposure to the native, Eastern side of the Kirby series. All in all, as I was much more impressionable at the time, most, if not all, related announcements would simply satisfy me. Conservativeness was an obstacle to getting both on the Nintendo eShop because I was close minded to the digital distribution of products outside of the iOS App Store.
Peaceful, homeward expansion in Dream Land, now earning its place as pilgrim’s pride to me, led me to purchase and play many earlier Kirby games. The most notable of the purchases were a copy of Kirby’s Dream Collection: Special Edition and Kirby’s Return to Dream Land. These two purchases gave me a huge frontier with plenty of room for adventure and settlement of places that I had feeble understanding of. The new frontier, however, never got completely settled. A new front opened up on the foreign soil of a completely different kind of game.
My passion for military aviation carried over and survived through my childhood, leading me to that new front.
That was Gunship III, a combat flight simulator. I discovered the game on the App Store in November of 2014. Gunship III marked the start of my liberalization. I became open to online chats, aliases, and fully open to online multiplayer. Some of the old players of Phanotek’s gaming communities consider Gunship III to be the prime of the series. 2014 was a great time to be fan of this game. Like every other online multiplayer game, of course, you were to expect trolls and the like, but the vast majority of the players I met were very civil and made quality roleplay that was relevant to the game’s theme.
As part of my liberal reforms, I registered on the old forum for that game, which was powered and hosted by ProBoards in December 2014. A decision I viewed, foresight out of the window, as an extravagant prospect. Years before I began posting on forums, I contemplated how already-existing games could be improved. The most memorable of posts from the time were in long private messages that were given to all the best of the forum members. The aura of power was now in me to make a difference in the game’s development.
I learned as much as I could about the history of the game and the Phanovatives company (now Phanotek). Two future projects caught my eye: a World War II combat flight simulator and a Korean War game that wasn’t too far-off. The Korea game, Gunship III: Heroes of MiG Alley, seemed so important to me as it had the first planes I ever flew in video games. Now I could relive those memories from my childhood days of virtual flight.
During the winter break from school in December 2014, a circle of friends formed among me and my fellow pilots. We played nearly every single day. Some new online friends came along the way during that time, one of them carrying on in the same community to this day.
It does sound very odd to add a drastic shift from Kirby to Gunship III, but I have so much to deliver off my head, of which so much information is relevant to the full understanding of this declaration that I am to make. Apologies that I never fully informed everyone, but the previous post in the New Year’s Resolution foretold another long post to digest. The audience from that post should be somewhat familiar and may skip some parts provided they posses substantial knowledge in certain histories linked to parts of this context. Be warned of more drastic shifts; this is a near-chronological context.
2015
I met all the liberal reform that happened in only a matter of a couple months with great ecstasy. Not long, as the year turned, on January 24, 2015, I extended my liberal reform decrees to Kirby. I joined the now-defunct forum, The Kirby Club, on that day. I was welcomed with enthusiasm by most of its experienced members, moderators, and administrators in spite of my average intro. My next few posts are what I now would call astonishingly awkward. I got warned for advertising by a moderator, known as the Great Benefactor. This warning was the first of many foundations that would mold me into who I am today.
The ProBoards forum for Gunship III shut down just a week later after its announcement over a month or two ago. The forum gang, as I would refer to, made goodbyes to all the others on the ProBoards forum. We migrated to vBulletin for a couple months. Memories of what were then-future developments came from there, and then, 2 months later, we migrated to Simple Machines Forum software due to slow loading times on vBulletin, which serves as the community’s forum to the present day.
Over time, I assimilated into The Kirby Club’s community and became a very active member. Many posts came and about, which I would even now be ashamed to look at again. However, never again was I to be warned on the same scale as before.
In February 2015, I called myself to a mission alongside many vigilant Gunship III players. A “cheating scandal” erupted in the game’s community. Players were using the {} symbols in their usernames, once a bug unknown to even the developers, to render their name tags invisible. A group of skilled players formed a virtual squadron, “Ghost Hunters”, to combat the cheaters by any means but cheating. I joined the bandwagon to fight against the cheaters. February was a bitter month for the Gunship III community. Little did I know that this was an omen foreshadowing the dark days to come.
After the creation of the now-renamed Phanotek Inc.’s forum, powered by SMF, the World War II game was nearing. The project name was re-iterated (it was revealed in March 2014 on the old ProBoards forum), Gunship III WW2. As every announcement passed, screenshots of the new game posted, questions answered, me and the gang were hyped to our hearts’ content. We posted all about what we’re excited for in that game. What are we flying? What’s your favorite WW2 fighter plane? What maps are we looking forward to see? “Woo! War Thunder on mobile devices!” A game rivaled by none in its genre on the App Store/Google Play!
Fragments of memories from my days on The Kirby Club still glitter in my mind. Perhaps I should recall to the extent of my ability some of those moments. All occurred in the same or similar quarters of the year.
I confess to an awkward act that would only go on to show my immaturity. The thread title I cannot remember, but I most certainly recall my post in that thread got criticized by a fellow member. It was criticized for stereotyping people who play games of a high rating such as M for Mature and the like. The user who corrected me was a knowledgeable fan of the Kirby anime, Kirby: Right Back At Ya! (known as Hoshi no Kaabii in Japan). I now view this as one of the foundations that lead to my character of the present day.
Moving through time to the last week of May 2015, the final name of Gunship III WW2 was announced - Wings of Duty -. I held my breath at the announcement of the post, voraciously typing if the game was submitted to Apple for review and approval. All the screenshots of the game built for me a tenacious desire to earn my wings, not mattering what nation I was going to fly for. Whether it was defending Pearl Harbor in my P-40, escorting Heinkel bombers in my Bf 109, defending Britain in my Spitfire, or putting up a magnificent display of the samurai spirit single-handedly in my Zero, I was all-in for everything to come.
Embedded video. Wings of Duty’s first ever gameplay video, June 2015.
In June of 2015, the first gameplay video of Wings of Duty was uploaded to YouTube. I had chills as I saw living, moving proof of the concept at first glance. The music at the carrier takeoff brought my excitement for the game to an apex. For how limited the players’ mobile devices were expected to be and the small size of the dev team, I had been impressed at this achievement. I could not fathom what was to come in the years to follow, believing in an over-optimistic outcome for the game. Little was it known how erroneous were the beliefs on the game of me and the forum gang.
I promise with uttermost honesty that all I post in the context is to get a precise point over. I imagine that, all games talked about considered here, that my history may be very unique to me. There’s volumes or relevant information to pass over to whoever reads this chapter. I posses expertise and thus must use that expertise to the benefit of the audience. Bear with me.
Similar time as last mentioned. I began to browse Reddit more frequently. To consume for an insatiable appetite of Kirby content, I started checking the subreddit, r/Kirby, nearly every day. Much information from the Kirby Wiki and WiKirby at the time could now be utilized of the top of my head, giving me tons of opinions to offer on the posts. A living Kirby encyclopedia.
In the meantime, Wings of Duty came out on July 10, 2015. We took to the skies with the developers. The game had so many funny glitches in its earliest releases. One of them was having your aircraft’s health increase after getting damaged by flak! In one of our earliest matches, we were in grave predicament while attempting to take off from a Japanese aircraft carrier because of numerous issues with the spawn system. The game inspired me to learn a lot about WW2 aircraft.
The forum community of the game’s official forum developed a very optimistic mentality for the game. Usually, complaints were met with optimism, that the developers would address every issue. The Wings of Duty forum conformed to this assumption and would use it as a trump card against complaints later in the 2015 onwards.
Coincidentally, disaster struck for Nintendo fans around the world. Satoru Iwata, Nintendo’s former president, died. For me, this was the final nail in the coffin that made me join Reddit. My very first Reddit comment was solely purposed to pay tribute to him. Like many of the other fandoms, r/Kirby users grieved, partly on the contributions he had made for the Kirby series.
I became a very active user on the Kirby subreddit for over a year. Commenting on self post discussions was a routine. Submitting links interesting Kirby YouTube videos was done at my pleasure. Fan art was usually the most upvoted type of post, so I scrambled to find good pieces of others, properly credited, to share.
These were the good, old days... when Kirby and Wings of Duty had very amicable, tranquil relations within my sphere of interest, co-existing without the slightest sense of suspicion of the other.
Warriors on the forum that this is to be published to, be ready to hear about that mobile FPS game y’all love!
August, 2015. I found a new FPS game in development while browsing the iosgaming subreddit. On multiple instances, a user by the name of “nxtboyIII”, posting screenshots of his new work-in-progress FPS game. Out of several names, Bullet Force was chosen as the final name of the game. The following month, I was led into the Bullet Force subreddit and asked nxtboyIII for access to the TestFlight closed beta. He agreed.
Bullet Force, as I viewed it at this time, with any and all preliminary info given by the dev after questions, was just like another FPS game for the time being. The game was planned to be paid and not have in-app purchases. Multiplayer was not initially planned. I thought in my mind that not having multiplayer would undermine the massive potential it could have. Unrealized potential that not even its creator realized yet.
Day after day, for the next few months, I paid attention to every detail I could scrutinize, passing feedback to the developer as I pleased.
Another Kirby fan, who was also familiar with the Kirby anime, told me about a fan site called Meta Naito. I immediately looked for the site and found it. There, I browsed all the works that had been put. Much trivia was well-documented. There were pictures of the webmaster’s Kirby merchandise he got during his LDS church missions to Japan. Although there were many incomplete pages, I would say that the site, given all the trivia, fan works, and videos, was of great value to fans of the series.
December 2015. Fast forward to the final heartbeats of The Kirby Club forum. The administrator, Patchy, made a long post stating why the forum would be shut down. To fund his college education, he deemed it a necessity to shut down the forum by cutting off the hosting and domain budgets. Additionally, he also criticized the active members of the gang who profoundly contributed to the toxicity in a private section of the forum for discussing contentious topics. The Great Benefactor were also declared guilty of excessively patrolling the forum. In white text, on the banner, white text appeared, stating how many days it was until the forum would shut down. “EVACUATE! EVACUATE! CRITICAL ALERT!....” < - - If my mind served me correctly, this warning appeared approximately 30 days from the date of shutdown.
Sometime later, I received a random private message on my Reddit account from ReservedJV. He wanted to talk to me on Skype. I downloaded Skype and made an account. There was a mod project that he had been doing for Kirby’s Return to Dream Land. He wanted to use this mod project as the basis for reviving The Kirby Club. The Kirby Club would become the host for the site.
From Skype chat history on my iPad Air 2, I salvage for you all the details of this proposal:
Reserved pointed out three major flaws of The Kirby Club’s forum. Firstly, he commented that the interface was “confusing” and “hard to use”, which is why Reserved didn’t register. Secondly, the forum needed simplified names. Thirdly, the forum needed an improvement recent posts feature. Fourthly, the forum was “outdated” and “poorly conveys information”. However, he acknowledged some of these problems wouldn’t be easy to fix.
He went on to reveal he was a Kirby modded making a mod for Kirby’s Return to Dream Land. Just as with Smashboards, which housed Project M, a Super Smash Bros. Brawl mod, a rebooted Kirby Club, as he envisioned, would host his mod. Users would discuss about and provide feedback for the mod. Activity and traffic would have gradually rise over time and time. He believed it was a win-win situation.
A fresh breed of staff members to moderate and/or administrate the forums would solve the problem of the current staff, some of who had been accused of compounding the toxicity and drama on the forum.
Two circles of thought emerged. One agreed to Reserved’s proposal with reason or optimism, while another disagreed with a plain, “No”. Perhaps the latter left us to think for ourselves. Patchy likely had implications in his lengthy announcing the shutdown of the site.
End of proposal
At around a similar time, Bullet Force and its creator were getting up on their feet and making substantial progress. Multiplayer was added in one of the TestFlight, and I met the developer, Lucas Wilde in-game, and a tiny but passionate group of players. One of them was BeachBanana, who would go on to become on the great pioneers of the Bullet Force community on YouTube. Ah, the days of unlimited match time and easy noscoping with snipers.
The webmaster of Meta Naito private messaged all the major members, me included, about his upcoming forum that would take the place of The Kirby Club. I am led to make yet another confession. I revealed it without permission, and I could not edit my posts in the section of the forum of the thread I posted it to. I came to the Great Benefactor to edit it out for me.
2016
At the turn of the year, the Meta Naito forum publicly launched. I took to the Kirby subreddit to promote the newborn forum. These promotional efforts attracted members from the subreddit, although for short times at most. Around the same time, the webmaster offered me and a longtime follower of the website the moderator role. We accepted. This was my gateway to “modship” - my first-ever experience in moderating an online community.
The Meta Naito website and r/Kirby quickly came into friendly terms. The subreddit and website fans shared common blood in their love of Kirby but (usually) expressed this love differently. We had two kinds of users: one flung posts onto the front page with the click of a mouse, while the other took thought into writing his threads. For the former kind, seeing a toxic fan was a rarity in either the subreddit or forum. During the time of Meta Naito’s forums, every single monthly discussion thread posted on the subreddit by Cardboard_Boxer (the lead mod of r/Kirby) was also posted to Meta Naito, some of them modified as a version for the Meta Naito site. If one question asked for subreddit feedback, it would be modified on the Meta Naito forum to ask for site feedback. I was the Friend Bridge for communication between the website and subreddit.
There was another pivotal Kirby fan site that is deserving of mention: Kirby’s Rainbow Resort. It was founded by “kindarspirit” in 1999. It was a ripe, old website with tons of historical Kirby information, some portions that had fallen into disuse. Still, it held the greatest value of any Kirby fan site ever made outside of Japan. So much history the site had that any Kirby fan should revere it as heritage. For years, registration on the forum had been closed to counter spambots. Without warning, new members could now flock in, ushering the “KRR Revival Era”.
I was one of the earliest members to register on Kirby’s Rainbow Resort. Rather than introduce myself, I immediately took to recently-updated and pinned threads to express my opinions. As with the case of the subreddit, the newly revived Kirby’s Rainbow Resort and Meta Naito peacefully coexisted. Regardless of who was native to what site, nobody initially turned their backs on each other.
The slogan of the revived KRR forum read, “Hello, Kirby fans. We missed us.”
The Kirby Club shut down on January 21, 2016. Most of the forum’s gang save AquaCirrus (an admin) and SuperStarKirby (a moderator) evacuated to the Halberd on or before this day.
The following month, little of notability occurred, as far as I can recall, to me pertaining Kirby community hubs that would hold relevance to this publication.
Wings of Duty, however, was growing with its updates. Most players still had or retained a very positive outlook on the game’s future. My birthday on that day was of significance. I frantically joined the others who already were in the TestFlight closed beta build. To fly the early-production model of the F4U Corsair, although I was waiting for the late-war variant, was my main reason for joining. I vividly remember a formation flight we did and have a recording of it.
Hype built up in r/Kirby for the March 3, 2016 Nintendo Direct. Near the end, the speaker announced one final game to look at. New cutscene footage showed cutscene footage of Kirby fending off an invasion on Pop Star. Gameplay footage showed a new core mechanic of the gameplay: a mech suit, known as the “Robobot Armor”. This newly announced Kirby game, Kirby Planet Robobot, was bound to release on June 10, 2016 in North America.
r/Kirby started gaining subscribers tenfold after the initial announcement of the new Kirby game. Never did I have to sift through as many self and link posts as in the renewal period, just last year. Prior, there were occasional droughts of discussion, maybe at least a couple new posts, partly attributed to low subreddit traffic and popularity of the topic the sub had been dedicated to. The announcement sparked a growth spurt that would lead to more intelligent discussions and higher activity.
As the weeks passed, leading up to April 28, the release date of the game in Japan, we looked for every single update on the game. Videos on the Japanese Nintendo YouTube channel, CoroCoro scans, and GameXplain’s commentaries and analyses of upcoming gameplay footage were the gold mines.
April, 2016. Mobile gaming YouTuber iChase held a Bullet Force livestream starring Lucas Wilde, the creator of the game. iChase asked if the game was going to be pay-to-win. To the relief of the audience, Lucas said, It’s [absolutely?] not gonna he pay-to-win. The statement was a major victory for the players. Many prominent first-person shooters on the mobile market, most prominently Modern Combat 5, had pay-to-win elements infused into their gameplay. Now shall the day come when Bullet Force releases, that it shall have dominion over all mobile FPS games!
ReservedJV, who had wanted to revive the now-defunct Kirby Club, began his rise to prominence. Two days before the official release of Kirby Planet Robobot, the ROM was leaked... both in English and Japanese.
In May, the Wings of Duty Battle of Britain update came out, giving the amplified fresh feels of the times the game first came out. Most of the bugs from the original release were ironed out. The miniature tumors that would grow to later transform the game were left untreated. Spitfire spam filled the skies with roaring Merlins and .303 bullets. We fended then off to the best of our ability in our 109’s.
It was not long after that I would feel at home again with the release of Kirby Planet Robobot on June 10, 2016. Upon beating the game, I considered it to be the best Kirby game. The lore was deepened, containing many callbacks to previous Kirby titles. Discussions on the Kirby subreddit became more in-depth. The Robobot Armor gimmick was never required to beat the game, giving players much freedom of choice whether to play the game the classic or modern way.
It was at this point when the Wings of Duty community was starting to undergo its most drastic changes that would culminate into its current state. Signs of flaws in the gameplay became more and more obvious. Imbalance in the tech trees became more and more apparent, leading me to break away from conformity to much of the playerbase’s ways. I should be glad to break off early on. The brakes could still be hit to take the game in the right direction. Virtual squadrons, which I initially viewed as something that would bring prosperity to the community, were formed.
Save the talks for these so-called squadrons later...
Same could be said for Bullet Force. Likewise, tumors that would become the plague grew. Some early maps, such as removed island map and beta Woods map, contained numerous exploitable glitches, that the only practical solution, as Lucas decided, was to remove the maps. Around July, the first hacker was spotted. Later, the 40-player lobbies demonstrated the limitations of the game servers (those game servers were more expensive. Eleven thousand a month. They had to downgrade quality for sustainability.).
In spite of all these issues, my loyalty for Wings of Duty and Bullet Force and their respective communities held together with deep integrity, still unshattered. My vocality for these issues rose as a reactionary tool... I initially thought it would suffice.
Enough with the details! Hustle for the important details. I’ll tell you some short facts that go into play, with a little elaboration, that shall come into play.
October, 2016. Breaking point of rapid decline of my interest in Kirby. As I previously stated in the New Year’s Resolution post, Wings of Duty and Bullet Force became the dominant forces in my gamer history.
I expressed implicit interest to become a moderator in Bullet Force. In one memorable match, where Lucas used his powers, I asked if he may be looking for more moderators. The following game, I suddenly noticed the shiny, green [MOD] tag.
Bullet Force soft launched in Singapore to test purchases in a production environment on November of 2016.
Kirby’s 25th Anniversary began to be celebrated in December of 2016 when the Twitter account, @kirby25thjp, began posting official artwork.
Bullet Force released worldwide for iOS and Android early on that December.
Last but the most important of all these, a place for all things Bullet Force that I’ve been advocating for: a forum. On December 2/3, 2016, the Blayze Games forum launched. It ran on XenForo, a forum software of which I read a comment of praise from the Great Benefactor in my early days of Kirby fandomship. But the felicity from this addition was short-lived.
3-4 weeks after the release of Bullet Force, Lucas began developing “New FPS”. This would later become his first FPS since Bullet Force. It was going to be based on CS:GO.
Tear a new page for the next year. I’ll speak my mind.
2017
Supplementary Background
Disclaimer: Not all of you may be interested in hearing these volumes of explanations. You may want to skip to the “Turning Point” section for the action if so.
Bear through this supplementary background. Ah yes, it does feel like I’ve deviated from a personal story, but all said shall tie back later.
2017 was the most bitter year in my gamer history. Wings of Duty and Bullet Force, the two small gaming niches I loved and actively involved myself in, were driving on the wrong highway. Let’s summarize the grave predicaments Wings of Duty and Bullet Force faced throughout this year.
The circumstances of Wings of Duty are peculiarly complex. Not one individual, nor one virtual squadron, nor a single reason, nor the devs themselves could be blamed alone, for all parties, in a way or another, made profound contribution to the decline of Wings of Duty.
Since 2016, the balance disparity in nations’ tech trees was prominent. The Japanese aircraft roster was left neglected to face superior American planes. A6M3 Zeroes and Ki-61’s are forced to stack up against late-model F6F Hellcats, P-47 Thunderbolts, and F4U Corsairs. Germany and Britain, although not as unbalanced in comparison, still had some disparity with the Bf 109G stacked against the early-war Spitfire Mk V.
Most of the skilled players who loved to fly Japanese planes gradually hit the saturation point and left... at least, it was what I heard in the forum discussions.
In addition to these, the planes, particularly American ones, went unrealistically fast, up to 500mph for high-tier American planes, compounding to the aircraft roster problem. A certain mindset recommended for a total rework of all planes’ flight models, which I was a very avid supporter of.
An egotistic mentality developed in the in-game playerbase.
The game lacked matchmaking (this was later somewhat solved with tier system in arcade mode in an update), forcing newbies to fight more seasoned players, who may have acquired high-tier planes.
Historical inaccuracies were also complained about by some forum members. To list these things is redundant to this post.
Wings of Duty’s community became degenerate, with immature kids dominating the main menu chat, with offensive language, pointless banter, squadron politics/drama, trivial roleplay, among other things. The game lacked in-game moderation. I wonder if anyone abusive was legitimately reported as banned by the devs. Still, the devs had failed to develop countermeasures just as they had left balance issues between the nations unaddressed. I have no one particular individual or squadron to jump the gun on. Many are guilty; everybody who contributes to the drama loses in my book.
Another pivotal fact. Since a few months after the first release of Wings of Duty in 2015, I dedicated ample time to deliver news updates in the game’s respective Everyplay (a video sharing website for mobile games) community’s discussion section in addition to uploading video of the game. When I had the time, I always gave articulate answers to each and every user who would post questions. I also gave opinions on many suggestions about Wings of Duty when they were brought up by whoever. The Everyplay community, like the forums, had humble beginnings, with many of the original gang from Gunship III making some of the earliest, most enthusiastic discussion posts. The Everyplay community was overrun by these ferals; I left partly to move on somewhat with life but also thanks to the profound impact this mob left on the place where I once left my marks all over.
For some time, the Wings of Duty forum became one of the last strongholds from the pervading cancer these ferals were spreading. For a time, it held, in spite of its one active community moderator. However, even life caught up to that moderator, and soon, the forum became yet another hotspot of the cancer. The experienced forum members engaged in banter with some of the squadron members who were known to ruin in-game chat.
Bullet Force, while on the other side of the fence, shared similar problems with Wings of Duty.
Players were free to use offensive language; there was no chat filter. It was not surprising considering the large size and amount of player traffic the game had. GeneralAlex eventually posted on Twitter and gained support for his request to have an option to disable in-game chat.
Likewise, Bullet Force faced weapon balance issues. However, nearly every gun’s balance was spot-on. In the early post-beta releases, 870MCS shotgun a sniper in the guise of a shotgun; it could kill players easily across the map.
Blayze Games forum, not surprisingly, was infested with the same cancer that had plagued Wings of Duty. When the Blayze Games forum launched, user traffic exploded, and unrest erupted, with fairly frequent argument that came with abuse of XenForo’s post rating system. Some people who had upheld higher standards of moral values were downvoted with negative “dislikes” and “dumb” ratings for expressing their stance on offensive language. The forum lacked any staff members to enforce any rules or code of honor.
Later, Blayze Games forum went under maintenance. It took over a month to get the site back up. The forum population dwindled like Detroit. However, this turned to be a cure for the cancer that it had been infested with. More mature folks came along the way. Came four framers of the forum I revered highly: xLGNDx, xKuro, FabulousMrToad, and Rip73. I call them the framers of the Blayze Games forum, who all played parts molding it into what it is now.
As time passed on, Lucas focused an emphasis new and new weapons and maps. Meanwhile, the moderation team believed in the prioritization of anti-cheat systems and patching of map glitches over all else. Lack of testing in the earlier updates proved fatal. In one update, glitches opened up in the Outpost map, and many players began exploiting. Moderators regularly performed massive purges of player accounts that were found to be guilty of exploiting these glitches with a permanent ban (We could not temporarily ban at this time).
The one major key issue, in which Bullet Force diverged in its similarities with Wings of Duty, was hackers. The game was not ready to defend itself from attempts to hack. Security vulnerabilities were exposed on a popular site, iOSGods. Initially, even the most basic forms of MySQL code injection attacks could work against the game. A few smart hackers knew much of their field, and one of them could exploit these vulnerabilities to access the game server’s data. The hackers got at least a couple steps ahead of us. Only later when a new dev team took Lucas’ place that our counterattacks were launched.
Don’t think of these games as total failures. I love them and write all this out, showing how much affected I was by all these incidents.
I and many others to take a part in the fight to end or, at least, mitigate these problems.
Turning Point
Unfortunately, I neglected my moderator duties.
I was removed from the mod team in March for inactivity.
However, I began to help the Blayze Games forum, answering players’ questions, inspired by a user that went by the alias “xLGNDx”.
Now meet the turning point that would change my history forever!
April, 2017 I took to the Bullet Force subreddit to convince Lucas to restore my overdue lost mod tag, with persuasive reason. Among the major reasons was nobody was on the forum to take of the hackers reported there. He replied, “I gave you your mod tag”.
I saw a hacker report and told the reporter I could ban him. A mod by the name of ViperConcepts direct messaged me with an invite link to the moderators’ private Discord server.
Begin the music!
Experienced moderators greeted me with enthusiastic welcomes, mentioning me on their mod. A few days later, I thanked them for the warm welcome.
The job was completely volunteer. You did it out of your own heart. Nothing in return.
(Pause at 0:14)
Little did I know of the fortunes to come from this job, especially in respect to my interest in Kirby. Despite Kirby’s 25th Anniversary celebrations, my love for the pink puff was barely hanging by a thread. All the signs pointed that Bullet Force, now that I was associated with its mod team, would only eliminate the already-slim chances to truly resurge that love. More Kirby-related facts to come to relevance. Keep an eye peeled as things unfold.
(Resume music!)
Now that I possessed the power to bring change, I began to furiously ban cheaters reported on the forum’s hacker report section. I made sure to not leave one hacker behind among newly reported ones.
In recognition of their work, Lucas made xKuro and FabulousMrToad forum moderators and later in-game mods.
In one update, Outpost suddenly opened its pores, allowing players to get out of the map. All this did was to increase my tolerance of rigor and heighten my resolve to perform at my peak. The workload would go on to serve me benevolently in my future responsibilities.
June 2017 - Kirby for Nintendo Switch was announced on E3 2017. To me, no big bells rang. It seems to me I would let it pass like I did with Rainbow Curse back during the Wii U’s days.
Not only did I ban hackers, I answered many players’ questions and participated in discussions about suggestions for the game.
Yes, I often spoke smack about Bullet Force and Lucas’ development decisions but refused to budge under the pressures of the cheaters and other problems plaguing the game.
A member by the name of EXTINCT1ON joined the Blayze Games forum, and he made very noble contributions and suggestions for the game and community as a whole.
By August 2017, I made a post amounting to my several sentiments and persuaded Lucas to make me an administrator of the Blayze Games forum. He was convinced. Proper sections for discussion of games and other things in general, non-Bullet Force related, were constructed.
Lucas “New FPS”, Forward Assault, came out on the iOS App Store on September 6, 2017. I had been in contact with a moderator-turned-developer, then-known as Rain (now Isaiah Flores). I passed issues to Rain, of which I could not resolve. These usually were receipts from players whose purchases of gold failed.
Rain eventually offered me to become moderator in Forward Assault. I gladly accepted it. This was living that my moderation experience from Bullet Force and Blayze Games forum paid off.
September 13, 2017- as I previously explained in my New Year’s Resolution post, my fourth attempt to restore my interest in Kirby began and was still ongoing. The title for the Kirby Switch game was announced - Kirby Star Allies -.
I showed to Forward Assault’s staff that I would be worthy of this second mod tag.
“I will work harder!” Echoed Clover’s words from Animal Farm subconsciously. Nearly every day in my free time. New hacker reports are surfacing in the reports channel! Go to go! Burn those heretics at the stake! Blacklist has new hackers. Catch up to them and ban. Doesn’t matter if they’re “evading the ban”. Respond to this DM! That DM!
(One of the most major, glaring issues in Forward Assault was the lack of effective customer support. The same applied to Bullet Force.)
I rose to exponential heights. I gained Senior Moderator role in just a week. By the end of the second week of October, I became an admin. On the last week of October, a customer support developer.
As a developer, I faced new challenges that hit me hard as a bullet train. Admittedly, I was feeble-minded when it came to telling RPM and damage hacks in Forward Assault. Familiarity in the competitive scene was lacking for me; I had to deal with a dispute that was too difficult to resolve on my own, of which I had nothing to do with. I frequently had to get help from the moderators. People messaged me and other mods if I would make them Discord moderator on the FA server or in-game mod. This lead to meeting some new great faces, but I later learned I didn’t have the authority.
On the other front, in order address longstanding problems in Wings of Duty, I began making Q&A interviews with the devs via their customer support email. These questions were shared on a forum thread. Mixed feedback came from the forum gang, now with some new faces since then. Words came out of their replies, but when would they come to fruition?
In December 2017, Mavrik, one of the people working for Blayze Games, offered me a paid job after sending so many players’ customer support inquiries about unreceived gold/items. Never had I expected all my efforts as a moderator to push me into the highest echelons of Blayze Games. I informed my parents of it, but they became skeptical and advised me not to take this online job. A grave battle ensued to keep my job as a mod. Eventually, I approached Clint Wilde, Lucas’ father, and he called my parents in his free time. As I put it in my prior post, this was a “saving grace”.
(Pause music at 2:28!)
During those times I heard his voice talk to my parents on the phone, I felt dopamine overload. Fancying thoughts raced through my brain at the prospect of funding the purchase of a Nintendo Switch and a copy of Kirby Star Allies with my compensation, yet to come.
On to the year of fortune!
2018
January 5, 2018. I began to receive on-the-job training from Mavrik and BrizzleMcFizzle, the community manager of Bullet Force and head of the content creator program.
(Resume music from 2:28!)
I went to work on the support tickets. I was battle-hardened by the rigors I’m catching up to pages of hacker reports on the forum at times in addition to responsibilities in the Forward Assault theatre. Day by day, me and BrizzleMcFizzle crunched down on these tickets, one by one. We eventually caught up and could rest for just a moment o oN laurels.
Just a mere six days after I started racking up hours on the job, the Nintendo Direct Mini came. The third Kirby Star Allies trailer, which showed a couple new Copy Abilities, skyrocketed my morale. It would be a bitter more two months, but I knew from my heart that light is finally being shed. Blayze Games has my wish secured, that I would be assured restored interest in Kirby by catching up to the latest titles. Updates on the game started to come much more frequently.
On February 3, 2018, I pre-ordered Kirby Star Allies. The manifestation of my destiny was set for inevitable outcome. As long as I kept my commitments.
It was no surprise that setbacks struck back on me. My responsibilities in Bullet Force undermined my activity as a customer support dev in Forward Assault. I was removed from the dev team on basis that I no longer made substantial contribution and was officially staff for Bullet Force.
Demand from the voices of Wings of Duty’s forum and Facebook group member were still unresolved by any means. We asked for a proper matchmaking system, so low-tier planes could be enjoyed, but the devs pressed on to add one more top-tier abomination. The late-war variant of my favorite WW2 fighter, the F4U-4 Corsair, was unveiled in screenshots on a forum thread. That was the final nail in the coffin. The outrage compelled me to partly write this document you are all now reading along with my removal from the Forward Assault dev team.
Also, check out this message as a precursor to this... if you dare: wingsofduty.com/forum/index.php?topic=4825.msg80354#msg80354
Work. Work. Work. On the support tickets. Interact with the Bullet Force fans. Beta test secret beta builds. Give tournament prizes. Check out the forums. I pressed on no matter the pressure.
At the end of February, as preparations to begin the fabled “Operation Star Allies” were close to completion, the final, revolutionary phase of this history, Wings of Duty’s devs showed seeming defiance again with the addition of the P-47N Thunderbolt in the closed beta.
Last setback. BrizzleMcFizzle left the Blayze Games dev team. Would not damage my morale one bit.
A wish in my Febuary Q&A for Wings of Duty got granted, making a turn for the better. Not much but still better than none. The Ki-84 was added to Japan’s tech tree in Wings of Duty, causing me to reconsider my stance.
I scrambled to complete this post despite pressure of outside factors, so that I would keep the promise of the launch my symbolic post on the day that Kirby Star Allies would come out.
Kirby Star Allies came out worldwide on March 16, 2018.
Back to the present.
————————————————————————————————————————
Declaration
March 16, 2018
Skip to the 4:15 time mark before reading and start playing
You are all gathered here to witness the manifestation and unfolding of a self-evident truth.
I, in genuine authenticity, hereby declare this self-evident truth. That the Kirby Star Allies purchase, to be done today by me, revered Bullet Force developer and moderator and then-best pilot in Wings of Duty, who had lost his connections with Kirby, entails colossal and unrivaled importance in my history. That it exceeds the combined importance of the impact of the makings of Wings of Duty and Bullet Force amalgamated on me.
The specialty that this purchase holds to my heart has been profoundly contributed to by Bullet Force and Forward Assault’s communities, the respect from regular members, Discord moderators, moderators and developers. Of all the thousands whose lives were made a difference, one man stands upon all to make this moment so special. His name is Clint Wilde.
Mr. Wilde gave the most benevolent contribution after these 11 months of my toiling as a Bullet Force and Forward Assault moderator and developer... to fund this purchase with via my paychecks. A gift I wished never.
Oh say I can see
As the dawn’s early light rises
That game I so proudly hailed
As the clock ticked right to release
Whose charming puff gave off a big smile
His friends riding the rainbow galore
And the logo decked out in yellow and blue
Gave proof through the night
That this very moment would shed light...
(Time mark 5:54. Pause until 6:21)
O Kirby Star Allies! I implore my pre-ordered copy to reveal itself! I proclaim myself ready to face this self-evident truth as I make these final steps to the store with a stoic look on my face!
Let it be known that the seven-year depression of my gamer history, stemming from the Angry Birds era, and the recessions in the years between, shall finally be put to an absolute end by an absolute resolution!
May this declaration be a cure to the crippling depression I have been afflicted by as Wings of Duty, Bullet Force, and Forward Assault dove downhill at times. Melt the hearts of the culprits of the cancerous communities in that trio. Melt those of the top-tier plane spammers. Confound those virtual squadrons’ politics! Bring the unfair glItchers and all hackers to justice! Enlighten the hearts of those who bash the devs of Forward Assault, so they may realize the valor the devs are deserving of. Keep Bullet Force at the top as it already is. Make Phanotek truly learn from its mistakes to drive Wings of Duty in the right direction. Let the fans of Wings of Duty finally have their voices heard so that game may become a game for and by the people, just as Bullet Force and Forward Assault already have. May one day that sense of simulation and immersion be brought back and dominate over the egotistic mentality of winning and winning and winning alone, topping the leaderboards, and using only the best of he best. For this post is more than just about Kirby Star Allies, I write this on behalf of my diverse audience!
I foresee criticism of the the topicality of my above statements. Now let’s move to the real deal!
Make me relive the memories of the simpler times, before all these affairs that I am now entangled in, came out and about. Give me a break from my direct messages, support tickets, new forum threads, and the tiring tilts of my accelerometer with my hands. Let Green Greens and other renowned Kirby melodies swell the spring breeze once again. Boss fights shall go and go uphill and will release feelings of excitement as much as dueling against a fellow ace in Wings of Duty. Bring chills to my spine with the deep lore and themes. Restore my passion to fiery hot over time. HAL could not fail to deliver with new releases, especially this very one.
(The music enters its climax and final crescendo.)
I profess with utmost confidence that Kirby Star Allies fully addresses the entirety of this declaration, beyond any reasonable doubt. All the signs showed it from subtle to obvious. This self-evident truth has manifested!
I get flashbacks of compliments. Many thanks to all who make this moment so special.
“Welcome goldmaster11 ”
- HiT and Doc Holiday, upon my entry into the Bullet Force mod server
“Have fun and enjoy yourself Goldmaster. I will do my best to make you proud and keep the forums alive and well, and I know for sure that FabulousMrToad will be doing the same!”
- xKuro, during my two-week semi-hiatus in July 2017
“Whoa! When did you get admin? Congratulations!”
- FabulousMrToad, upon my promotion to Blayze Games forum admin
“Congrats on your promotion [to Senior Moderator in Forward Assault], you deserved it.”
- Evilpanda
“congrats master of Gold”
- HiT, upon my promotion to admin in Forward Assault’s Discord server
“Congratulations on your promotion. Now the [customer] support of forward assault would be significantly improved.”
- Preet, upon my promotion to dev in Forward Assault
“Was wondering if you'd be interested in helping take on BF customer support (tickets) as a paid position.”
- Mavrik offering me a paid job in Blayze Games
“Everything you did from day one was to help both BF and FA in any way you can. You never looked to be famous. You just do your job. I respect that about you.”
- HiT, when I announced in Forward Assault’s private staff chat about my job
“He’s been very reliable person... I think we can trust him with a paycheck.”
- Clint Wilde during a call with my parents. Attempted reconstruction of two quotes.
“I’m very happy to hear that you have been given such a paid position. You should feel honored.”
- The Kirbinator, upon the announcement to my old circle of friends in the Kirby fandom on the WiKirby Discord server
“very eloquently written your name makes so much more sense now I always thought it was a bit of a meme but it was built on a genuine love of Kirby.”
“Thank you Kirby I remember you were the first mod I ever met on bulletforce and I in turn will miss you all.”
- Both from Vapenord. First is a response to my New Year’s Resolution post. Second is reply to my farewell to him as he was leaving Bullet Force’s mod team
“Wow! Thanks for all that extra detail...”
- Clint Wilde
“Glad to finally have you on board!”
- Clint Wilde
“I appreciate you maturity and thoughtfulness...”
- Mavrik, in Skype private messages
“...and I appreciate your proactivity”
- Clint Wilde, Skype private messages
“Hello goldmaster! Excited for March 16th?”
- XenoBlayze
Now shall this declaration be ratified!
————————————————————————————————————————
Special Thanks and Address to the Wings of Duty Developers and Community
Now that I have completely addressed and ratified the aforementioned Declaration, I proclaim this post is more than solely my personal story as a Kirby fan and why Kirby Star Allies is my most important video game purchase in my history. It is my response to my Discord direct messages related to requests for upcoming content for the Wings of Duty game and lending of hands to gratitude to all who made this desired outcome an absolute certainty or those who contribute to their own respective venues.
I would like to thank many good friends from the Kirby fandom, my fellow Wings of Duty players, good friends and those who have contributed to the making of the monthly Q&A’s in any way they could, all the Discord and game mods and developers of Bullet Force and Forward Assault. Let us drop all our differences and appreciate one another with undivided harmony as we listen to this masterpiece’s closing words.
Frankly speaking, I have been seldom replying to players asking questions for me to pass to Phanotek, Inc., the development team of Wings of Duty. Some of the requests felt unrealistic considering the current situation of the game, playerbase demands, and the company’s history of its failure to deliver promises on time. Phanotek showed more than enough of these failures in many Wings of Duty updates, of which I am not going to elaborate anymore on here. I wanted the players to start thinking for themselves.
Without further ado, let us begin to hear the names of all who deserves the credit.
Special thanks to The Kirbinator, who I had been referring to as the Great Benefactor, for the most part. He started my maturation process, leading to the start of my slow, gradual rise from nobody to Bullet Force dev team member. That warning you gave me is something I’ll forever cherish, my old friend.
Special thanks to Clint and Lucas Wilde, father and son. Lucas started it all. He started the game and company that became the greatest benefactor yet to my current standing. In the midst of high school and the pressures of his ever-nearing church mission, Lucas persevered to make one of the greatest FPS games on mobile to date, Bullet Force. Clint now carries on his legacy and holds the position of CEO of Blayze Games. Bullet Force has made a difference for millions of gamers around the world and built YouTubers’ channels from the ground up, most prominently BeachBanana’s during its beta days. Me included under their umbrella; Clint talked to my parents and made me cross the bridge to where I am now. He is the main contributor to why today Kirby Star Allies purchase is so special.
Special thanks to Cardboard_Boxer, head moderator of the Kirby subreddit. His knowledge of Kirby and how he’s used it speaks to hills of volumes of him. You and your mod team strive to give us near-immediate updates on news relating to the series. Most recently, I could fathom that the mod team played a pivotal role to spare people from Star Allies spoilers. They are the fabric that holds the Kirby Reddit community .
Special thanks to Mavrik, a staff member of Blayze Games. After tirelessly passing over countless customer support-related requests to him, he offered me a paid position at Blayze Games. During the resulting battle of conflict of interest between my parents and Blayze Games, Clint’s intervention by talking to my parents on the phone resulted in an emancipating victory on my side. Mavrik also gives me great advice and informs me on Blayze Games’ official policies when I make a mistake.
Special thanks to Fubaka, WiKirby’s most dedicated editor. His voluntary toiling through loads and loads of WiKirby pages brought a dream true... a dedicated, non-profit Kirby wiki for and by the fans. All from pure heart without material compensation in return.
Special thanks to HiT, one of the grandfather moderators and the lead moderator of Bullet Force. HiT’s words of wisdom guided me and many other moderators through our respective careers as Bullet Force moderator. Among those words, Rome wasn’t built in a day is my favorite of them all. I recommended HiT to be given admin-level permissions to Mavrik and have a paid position in Blayze Games.
Special thanks to Eliza and Torkirby of Kirby Informer. There may never be a Kirby fansite that may relive the old glory of Kirby’s Rainbow Resort. However, Kirby Informer’s activity, credibility, and enthusiasm gives us living proof of a “Kirby Renaissance” era. I have not received an answer but deal with the predicament with great patience, as I have with faraway game releases and updates. Keep that site running you two and your fellow Discord server’s staff!
Special thanks to Isaiah Flores, the project manager of Forward Assault. We share histories in common. He started out as a moderator in Forward Assault. I am in belief that he and I shared determination to better the respective games we served in. Isaiah, like HiT, spoke volumes of wisdom. He nourished my understanding of professionalism and work. Every day, he works despite the pressures from the cancerous community of Forward Assault. His willpower to triumph through struggles is the trait I most appreciate of him.
GeneralAlex, on the same basis as with the former two people, I thank you as well.
Special thanks to Philip Phan, the creator of Gunship III and Wings of Duty and CEO of Phanotek, Inc. Philip, I know I’ve spoken so much smack about Wings of Duty lately. Please forgive me for this. I did all this out of pure love for you and your game. Maybe I am asking too much from you in my Q&A’s. I want to give you a wholehearted thank you, despite the outcry, for adding my favorite World War II fighter plane to Wings of Duty, the F4U-4 Corsair. Ever since the reveal of the US Navy tech tree May of 2015, I had been waiting to fly it. To at least also have the Ki-84 Hayate in the same update grants from wholehearted gratitude to you and your small team.
But Phil, please listen to the intellectuals on the Wings of Duty forum. They know the stark reality that plagues Wings of Duty. The majority of the playerbase of Wings of Duty is bringing ruin to this beloved game every day. They have enlightening ideas to fix the game, but they could mostly never get their own ideas off the drawing board. Might it be that the proposals are beyond the reach of your resources? Communicate with us players more. I have heard news that you are banning someone who exploited an unfair glitch. That’s very good of you. I hope that goes for all Now is the time to act on all issues surrounding the game!
Special thanks to xLGNDx (KingPrevail), EXTINCT1ON, xKuro, Rip73 and FabulousMrToad for being the founding fathers along with me of the dream of an actively staffed Blayze Games forum.
Others from the Kirby fandom I thank, not aforementioned:
Googie2149
roselli49
TToonLink, for his Kirby manga and 20th Anniversary Artbook translations
JediwilliW
SYZekrom, for pointing out symbolism and cultural references in Kirby
ketchupcat
vgbhnj
Meteorz
TheSkullKid
Antdude
DifferentKindOfGeek
GreenFuzzTiger
Anime1542
Pocket (Kirby Club forum member)
Major Catastrophe
... and many more
These other Bullet Force and Forward Assault mods, former and current, I thank for providing me insights to make informed decisions:
Preet
Dzcmaster
GeneralGore
Zorrow
4tress
CreepyOverlord
xKuro
Villlain
Macabre
T1M3L3SS
Jeff (ForNax)
Æ Quavo
and many more...
Many regulars from Bullet Force and Forward Assault I thank for their support.
Kirby, surprisingly, is welcomed in the foreign land of Bullet Force. Today’s live roleplay of the Kirby Star Allies purchase on the official Bullet Force Discord server, as it unfolded, can be called a day.
The people from the Strike Fighters mobile games community shall be thanked for their support to me in spite of their games holding trivial relevance to this story:
RB33_101AS
Pugfool
Antimissile
VAL
najmicreative
girvanmogot1010
Leha the Fighter Pilot
Weeniewater895
Wolfulgur
...and many more
From the Wings of Duty community I thank:
Storm
Kibbles
Cropduster
Elvis
YodasEyeTwitches
Delmar
NoGoodGamesLeft
Lazy Eye
Conn6M
Obsitos
vLUCKY
Kiowa40
Bros Films
Waraftermath
Rodriguez
hellshock
BlueEagle
Turtle von Bismarck
Mo ‘Gas
Matt
...and many more
The list lasts an eternity.
We all shall learn something from this history lesson of me and this very declaration. Know what you’re fighting for, and exercise advocacy in any civilized, morally favorable method. Even I, the historian of my history, would still learn from my own masterpiece. Best wishes for Bullet Force and Forward Assault to reap prosperity in the updates to come. I have long dreamed of an free-to-play FPS like those two, with enlightened devs who listen to and interact with the community, taking suggestions practical to implement with their available resources. The same to Wings of Duty and its players, that most, if not all, may one day become enlightened people, realizing the cancerous footprint they left, not playing to win but for fun and immersion into the world of aviation. The wisdom I gained from witnessing these histories unfold shall serve as my weapon in the event of a repeat of history or the arrival of new threats and challenges. I’ll be prepared my interest in Kirby in the event I must wage a new war in my history. Whether I shall regularly interact again, however, with the people on that venue one day is still a question. May this history lesson play a pivotal role in driving said games and their respective communities I love for the better onward.
That being said, I’ll hold an AMA right here!
Leaving this video here for your enjoyment.
The Goldmaster Diary - Entry #2
Kirby Star Allies and the Elaboration of my Modern Gamer History to the Present
Author: goldmaster11 aka Kirby[insert Copy Ability here]
To be published on: Blayze Games Forum and Kirby Informer
Version: Final Draft - Images Omitted
Publish date: March 16, 2018
Note: to fully understand the post, context has been provided in the previous entry, A New Year’s Resolution - My History as a Gamer and Entering My Hero’s Journey. Please read the later parts of this post (http://forums.blayzegames.com/index.php?threads/a-new-year%E2%80%99s-resolumy-life-) that mention the cradles of my gamer life, Kirby, Wings of Duty, Bullet Force, and Forward Assault if you are new to this series of posts. In-depth, supplementary context will be provided after the introduction.
Play the music in the video links as you read to set the tone of this post. These videos will be embedded in the final draft, which is to be posted on the Blayze Games forum.
——————————————————————————————————————
Introduction
Greetings, Kirby fandom!
Greetings, Warriors of Bullet Force!
Greetings, Forward Assaulters!
Greetings, Wings of Duty pilots!
I would like to introduce a new series of posts, The Goldmaster Diary. This is the evolution of my New Year’s Resolution post from January of 2018. It is a new series of posts to dump my (and eventually others’) thoughts, designed to bring powerful, inspiring, posts out to the world for all to read, dissect, and enjoy. Welcome to a symbolic, second-to-none day in my gamer history!
You are about to enter a diary of sentiments.
Pretend you are in my shoes and play the soundtrack “Dream Is Collapsing” from Christopher Nolan’s Inception as you read the introduction. Composed by Hans Zimmer.
As I clench, tremble, and stare at my new Nintendo Switch and pre-ordered copy of Kirby Star Allies, game apps on my iPad Pro’s screen shaking, each with an “X”, hellbent on choosing one out of 3 games to be death sentenced, eyes twitching, blacking out, tears falling off in weeping joy, -while the GameStop employees process the purchase and hand it over to me-, I face one truth, now needless to prove, self evident in my eyes, obliged not to stare away from the Switch console and the game box with the Kirby Star Allies boxart...
That Kirby is the most critical, essential component of the gaming aspect of my history... that it is a long, binding rope to all my current other game interests. However, it is not necessary that I bear interest in any games outside the realm of Kirby. In one way or another, it connects all the major powers together in harmony.
“What are these major powers?”, you’ve may ask. These other powers are games I am also very interested in. These are Wings of Duty, Bullet Force, and Forward Assault. None have successfully overthrown Kirby, but times have come and gone when this love of Kirby was reduced to a barely hanging thread. So many mistakes on different levels have caused deep divagation from my original intents of the declaration of the beginning of the Kirby era, the modern era of my gamer history, in April of 2014.
In the days, weeks, and months between the unveiling of Kirby Battle Royale and the name of the then-tentatively-titled Kirby for Nintendo Switch and the launch day of Kirby Star Allies and the dawn’s early light on that launch day that marks and symbolizes this great transition, Kirby has become something to express myself with. In the wake of my exponential rise to the top to the highest echelons of Blayze Games, beginning with becoming a dev in Forward Assault, the change of my Discord nickname in the Forward Assault Discord server to KirbyMirror marked the beginning of the subtle signs of a bright future of my gamer history. Soon followed the introduction of Kirby-related avatars for my Discord account - the Yo-Yo copy ability and a cropped portion of Kirby Battle Royale promotional artwork -. As the year turned to 2018, and the frequency of updates on Kirby Star Allies rose by a gigahertz, I realized that, reflecting back, all signs up to now pointed to a new beginning. In one way or another, resurgence of my interest in Kirby, once believed to be futile, was being conspired for and helped by Blayze Games.
Kirby Star Allies revealed itself as an irrefutable answer against the most infamous inner demons in my gaming history up to the present time. The greatest one, Wings of Duty, for the countless mistakes its devs made in updates, was Star Ally turned Soul Boss.
Undying, revitalized interest in Kirby and its fandom has tirelessly warded off centrifugal forces that would otherwise throw down my gaming history into anarchy. It supersedes the benevolence that the people Blayze Games, with its mobile FPS games, Bullet Force and Forward Assault, have done many a good for me in return for the hard work I put into their games, now allied to my heart’s content, helping to put an end the heated conflict and civil war between Kirby and Wings of Duty and the seven-year depression and grant my wish to re-return to Dream Land once and for all!
Let’s flash back to the anarchy period of my gamer history in the first quarter of 2014, the pilgrimage to Dream Land that would change the course of my history forever, and all pertaining to my gamer history, good and bad, other than articulated outside factors in the previous New Year’s Resolution post.
————————————————————————————————————————
Context - Backstory
To some extent, depending on what portion of the audience you originate from, full understanding of the context has to be gained by reading parts of this context. Read the parts of this context, of whose histories that you are unfamiliar.
2014
January, 2014. Angry Birds was overthrown from my sphere of interest, setting the stage for warring anarchy. Attempts to reinstate Pokémon to the throne as it once been turned into a complex nightmare. Three bitter months of anarchy followed. From March to April of 2014, a Nintendo consortium to the throne of my gaming interest was proposed with the purchase of a copy of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Little traction had been gained, doing little to defuse the predicament I was already in.
On the last week of April 2014, however, an unexpected turn for the betterment of the situation occurred. I suddenly gained the urge to learn all about the Kirby game series. Kirby inhaled the power vacuum; now he himself was now the entirety power vacuum. I immediately read the Wikipedia pages relating to the Kirby games and much of the dedicated Kirby Wiki on Wikia in my free time. I also watched many Kirby-related YouTube videos as well. The first “Scramble for Kirby” had begun.
One of my first objectives in the scramble was to get introduced to playing the games starting with the newest Kirby game at that time, Kirby Triple Deluxe. It was not long before it released in North America on May 2, 2014. In a mere 11 days after the release, I bought it at my local game store, Data Blitz, (I was still in the Philippines at this time as said in the preceding post). It was the fastest time I ever got a physical copy of a newly released game.
Not long completing Kirby Triple Deluxe 100%, I saw the unveiling of Kirby and the Rainbow Curse at E3 2014. Financial restraints prevented me from getting the game.
The announcements of Kirby Fighters Deluxe and Dedede’s Drum Dash Deluxe from Japanese sources was the beginning of my exposure to the native, Eastern side of the Kirby series. All in all, as I was much more impressionable at the time, most, if not all, related announcements would simply satisfy me. Conservativeness was an obstacle to getting both on the Nintendo eShop because I was close minded to the digital distribution of products outside of the iOS App Store.
Peaceful, homeward expansion in Dream Land, now earning its place as pilgrim’s pride to me, led me to purchase and play many earlier Kirby games. The most notable of the purchases were a copy of Kirby’s Dream Collection: Special Edition and Kirby’s Return to Dream Land. These two purchases gave me a huge frontier with plenty of room for adventure and settlement of places that I had feeble understanding of. The new frontier, however, never got completely settled. A new front opened up on the foreign soil of a completely different kind of game.
My passion for military aviation carried over and survived through my childhood, leading me to that new front.
That was Gunship III, a combat flight simulator. I discovered the game on the App Store in November of 2014. Gunship III marked the start of my liberalization. I became open to online chats, aliases, and fully open to online multiplayer. Some of the old players of Phanotek’s gaming communities consider Gunship III to be the prime of the series. 2014 was a great time to be fan of this game. Like every other online multiplayer game, of course, you were to expect trolls and the like, but the vast majority of the players I met were very civil and made quality roleplay that was relevant to the game’s theme.
As part of my liberal reforms, I registered on the old forum for that game, which was powered and hosted by ProBoards in December 2014. A decision I viewed, foresight out of the window, as an extravagant prospect. Years before I began posting on forums, I contemplated how already-existing games could be improved. The most memorable of posts from the time were in long private messages that were given to all the best of the forum members. The aura of power was now in me to make a difference in the game’s development.
I learned as much as I could about the history of the game and the Phanovatives company (now Phanotek). Two future projects caught my eye: a World War II combat flight simulator and a Korean War game that wasn’t too far-off. The Korea game, Gunship III: Heroes of MiG Alley, seemed so important to me as it had the first planes I ever flew in video games. Now I could relive those memories from my childhood days of virtual flight.
During the winter break from school in December 2014, a circle of friends formed among me and my fellow pilots. We played nearly every single day. Some new online friends came along the way during that time, one of them carrying on in the same community to this day.
It does sound very odd to add a drastic shift from Kirby to Gunship III, but I have so much to deliver off my head, of which so much information is relevant to the full understanding of this declaration that I am to make. Apologies that I never fully informed everyone, but the previous post in the New Year’s Resolution foretold another long post to digest. The audience from that post should be somewhat familiar and may skip some parts provided they posses substantial knowledge in certain histories linked to parts of this context. Be warned of more drastic shifts; this is a near-chronological context.
2015
I met all the liberal reform that happened in only a matter of a couple months with great ecstasy. Not long, as the year turned, on January 24, 2015, I extended my liberal reform decrees to Kirby. I joined the now-defunct forum, The Kirby Club, on that day. I was welcomed with enthusiasm by most of its experienced members, moderators, and administrators in spite of my average intro. My next few posts are what I now would call astonishingly awkward. I got warned for advertising by a moderator, known as the Great Benefactor. This warning was the first of many foundations that would mold me into who I am today.
The ProBoards forum for Gunship III shut down just a week later after its announcement over a month or two ago. The forum gang, as I would refer to, made goodbyes to all the others on the ProBoards forum. We migrated to vBulletin for a couple months. Memories of what were then-future developments came from there, and then, 2 months later, we migrated to Simple Machines Forum software due to slow loading times on vBulletin, which serves as the community’s forum to the present day.
Over time, I assimilated into The Kirby Club’s community and became a very active member. Many posts came and about, which I would even now be ashamed to look at again. However, never again was I to be warned on the same scale as before.
In February 2015, I called myself to a mission alongside many vigilant Gunship III players. A “cheating scandal” erupted in the game’s community. Players were using the {} symbols in their usernames, once a bug unknown to even the developers, to render their name tags invisible. A group of skilled players formed a virtual squadron, “Ghost Hunters”, to combat the cheaters by any means but cheating. I joined the bandwagon to fight against the cheaters. February was a bitter month for the Gunship III community. Little did I know that this was an omen foreshadowing the dark days to come.
After the creation of the now-renamed Phanotek Inc.’s forum, powered by SMF, the World War II game was nearing. The project name was re-iterated (it was revealed in March 2014 on the old ProBoards forum), Gunship III WW2. As every announcement passed, screenshots of the new game posted, questions answered, me and the gang were hyped to our hearts’ content. We posted all about what we’re excited for in that game. What are we flying? What’s your favorite WW2 fighter plane? What maps are we looking forward to see? “Woo! War Thunder on mobile devices!” A game rivaled by none in its genre on the App Store/Google Play!
Fragments of memories from my days on The Kirby Club still glitter in my mind. Perhaps I should recall to the extent of my ability some of those moments. All occurred in the same or similar quarters of the year.
I confess to an awkward act that would only go on to show my immaturity. The thread title I cannot remember, but I most certainly recall my post in that thread got criticized by a fellow member. It was criticized for stereotyping people who play games of a high rating such as M for Mature and the like. The user who corrected me was a knowledgeable fan of the Kirby anime, Kirby: Right Back At Ya! (known as Hoshi no Kaabii in Japan). I now view this as one of the foundations that lead to my character of the present day.
Moving through time to the last week of May 2015, the final name of Gunship III WW2 was announced - Wings of Duty -. I held my breath at the announcement of the post, voraciously typing if the game was submitted to Apple for review and approval. All the screenshots of the game built for me a tenacious desire to earn my wings, not mattering what nation I was going to fly for. Whether it was defending Pearl Harbor in my P-40, escorting Heinkel bombers in my Bf 109, defending Britain in my Spitfire, or putting up a magnificent display of the samurai spirit single-handedly in my Zero, I was all-in for everything to come.
Embedded video. Wings of Duty’s first ever gameplay video, June 2015.
In June of 2015, the first gameplay video of Wings of Duty was uploaded to YouTube. I had chills as I saw living, moving proof of the concept at first glance. The music at the carrier takeoff brought my excitement for the game to an apex. For how limited the players’ mobile devices were expected to be and the small size of the dev team, I had been impressed at this achievement. I could not fathom what was to come in the years to follow, believing in an over-optimistic outcome for the game. Little was it known how erroneous were the beliefs on the game of me and the forum gang.
I promise with uttermost honesty that all I post in the context is to get a precise point over. I imagine that, all games talked about considered here, that my history may be very unique to me. There’s volumes or relevant information to pass over to whoever reads this chapter. I posses expertise and thus must use that expertise to the benefit of the audience. Bear with me.
Similar time as last mentioned. I began to browse Reddit more frequently. To consume for an insatiable appetite of Kirby content, I started checking the subreddit, r/Kirby, nearly every day. Much information from the Kirby Wiki and WiKirby at the time could now be utilized of the top of my head, giving me tons of opinions to offer on the posts. A living Kirby encyclopedia.
In the meantime, Wings of Duty came out on July 10, 2015. We took to the skies with the developers. The game had so many funny glitches in its earliest releases. One of them was having your aircraft’s health increase after getting damaged by flak! In one of our earliest matches, we were in grave predicament while attempting to take off from a Japanese aircraft carrier because of numerous issues with the spawn system. The game inspired me to learn a lot about WW2 aircraft.
The forum community of the game’s official forum developed a very optimistic mentality for the game. Usually, complaints were met with optimism, that the developers would address every issue. The Wings of Duty forum conformed to this assumption and would use it as a trump card against complaints later in the 2015 onwards.
Coincidentally, disaster struck for Nintendo fans around the world. Satoru Iwata, Nintendo’s former president, died. For me, this was the final nail in the coffin that made me join Reddit. My very first Reddit comment was solely purposed to pay tribute to him. Like many of the other fandoms, r/Kirby users grieved, partly on the contributions he had made for the Kirby series.
I became a very active user on the Kirby subreddit for over a year. Commenting on self post discussions was a routine. Submitting links interesting Kirby YouTube videos was done at my pleasure. Fan art was usually the most upvoted type of post, so I scrambled to find good pieces of others, properly credited, to share.
These were the good, old days... when Kirby and Wings of Duty had very amicable, tranquil relations within my sphere of interest, co-existing without the slightest sense of suspicion of the other.
Warriors on the forum that this is to be published to, be ready to hear about that mobile FPS game y’all love!
August, 2015. I found a new FPS game in development while browsing the iosgaming subreddit. On multiple instances, a user by the name of “nxtboyIII”, posting screenshots of his new work-in-progress FPS game. Out of several names, Bullet Force was chosen as the final name of the game. The following month, I was led into the Bullet Force subreddit and asked nxtboyIII for access to the TestFlight closed beta. He agreed.
Bullet Force, as I viewed it at this time, with any and all preliminary info given by the dev after questions, was just like another FPS game for the time being. The game was planned to be paid and not have in-app purchases. Multiplayer was not initially planned. I thought in my mind that not having multiplayer would undermine the massive potential it could have. Unrealized potential that not even its creator realized yet.
Day after day, for the next few months, I paid attention to every detail I could scrutinize, passing feedback to the developer as I pleased.
Another Kirby fan, who was also familiar with the Kirby anime, told me about a fan site called Meta Naito. I immediately looked for the site and found it. There, I browsed all the works that had been put. Much trivia was well-documented. There were pictures of the webmaster’s Kirby merchandise he got during his LDS church missions to Japan. Although there were many incomplete pages, I would say that the site, given all the trivia, fan works, and videos, was of great value to fans of the series.
December 2015. Fast forward to the final heartbeats of The Kirby Club forum. The administrator, Patchy, made a long post stating why the forum would be shut down. To fund his college education, he deemed it a necessity to shut down the forum by cutting off the hosting and domain budgets. Additionally, he also criticized the active members of the gang who profoundly contributed to the toxicity in a private section of the forum for discussing contentious topics. The Great Benefactor were also declared guilty of excessively patrolling the forum. In white text, on the banner, white text appeared, stating how many days it was until the forum would shut down. “EVACUATE! EVACUATE! CRITICAL ALERT!....” < - - If my mind served me correctly, this warning appeared approximately 30 days from the date of shutdown.
Sometime later, I received a random private message on my Reddit account from ReservedJV. He wanted to talk to me on Skype. I downloaded Skype and made an account. There was a mod project that he had been doing for Kirby’s Return to Dream Land. He wanted to use this mod project as the basis for reviving The Kirby Club. The Kirby Club would become the host for the site.
From Skype chat history on my iPad Air 2, I salvage for you all the details of this proposal:
Reserved pointed out three major flaws of The Kirby Club’s forum. Firstly, he commented that the interface was “confusing” and “hard to use”, which is why Reserved didn’t register. Secondly, the forum needed simplified names. Thirdly, the forum needed an improvement recent posts feature. Fourthly, the forum was “outdated” and “poorly conveys information”. However, he acknowledged some of these problems wouldn’t be easy to fix.
He went on to reveal he was a Kirby modded making a mod for Kirby’s Return to Dream Land. Just as with Smashboards, which housed Project M, a Super Smash Bros. Brawl mod, a rebooted Kirby Club, as he envisioned, would host his mod. Users would discuss about and provide feedback for the mod. Activity and traffic would have gradually rise over time and time. He believed it was a win-win situation.
A fresh breed of staff members to moderate and/or administrate the forums would solve the problem of the current staff, some of who had been accused of compounding the toxicity and drama on the forum.
Two circles of thought emerged. One agreed to Reserved’s proposal with reason or optimism, while another disagreed with a plain, “No”. Perhaps the latter left us to think for ourselves. Patchy likely had implications in his lengthy announcing the shutdown of the site.
End of proposal
At around a similar time, Bullet Force and its creator were getting up on their feet and making substantial progress. Multiplayer was added in one of the TestFlight, and I met the developer, Lucas Wilde in-game, and a tiny but passionate group of players. One of them was BeachBanana, who would go on to become on the great pioneers of the Bullet Force community on YouTube. Ah, the days of unlimited match time and easy noscoping with snipers.
The webmaster of Meta Naito private messaged all the major members, me included, about his upcoming forum that would take the place of The Kirby Club. I am led to make yet another confession. I revealed it without permission, and I could not edit my posts in the section of the forum of the thread I posted it to. I came to the Great Benefactor to edit it out for me.
2016
At the turn of the year, the Meta Naito forum publicly launched. I took to the Kirby subreddit to promote the newborn forum. These promotional efforts attracted members from the subreddit, although for short times at most. Around the same time, the webmaster offered me and a longtime follower of the website the moderator role. We accepted. This was my gateway to “modship” - my first-ever experience in moderating an online community.
The Meta Naito website and r/Kirby quickly came into friendly terms. The subreddit and website fans shared common blood in their love of Kirby but (usually) expressed this love differently. We had two kinds of users: one flung posts onto the front page with the click of a mouse, while the other took thought into writing his threads. For the former kind, seeing a toxic fan was a rarity in either the subreddit or forum. During the time of Meta Naito’s forums, every single monthly discussion thread posted on the subreddit by Cardboard_Boxer (the lead mod of r/Kirby) was also posted to Meta Naito, some of them modified as a version for the Meta Naito site. If one question asked for subreddit feedback, it would be modified on the Meta Naito forum to ask for site feedback. I was the Friend Bridge for communication between the website and subreddit.
There was another pivotal Kirby fan site that is deserving of mention: Kirby’s Rainbow Resort. It was founded by “kindarspirit” in 1999. It was a ripe, old website with tons of historical Kirby information, some portions that had fallen into disuse. Still, it held the greatest value of any Kirby fan site ever made outside of Japan. So much history the site had that any Kirby fan should revere it as heritage. For years, registration on the forum had been closed to counter spambots. Without warning, new members could now flock in, ushering the “KRR Revival Era”.
I was one of the earliest members to register on Kirby’s Rainbow Resort. Rather than introduce myself, I immediately took to recently-updated and pinned threads to express my opinions. As with the case of the subreddit, the newly revived Kirby’s Rainbow Resort and Meta Naito peacefully coexisted. Regardless of who was native to what site, nobody initially turned their backs on each other.
The slogan of the revived KRR forum read, “Hello, Kirby fans. We missed us.”
The Kirby Club shut down on January 21, 2016. Most of the forum’s gang save AquaCirrus (an admin) and SuperStarKirby (a moderator) evacuated to the Halberd on or before this day.
The following month, little of notability occurred, as far as I can recall, to me pertaining Kirby community hubs that would hold relevance to this publication.
Wings of Duty, however, was growing with its updates. Most players still had or retained a very positive outlook on the game’s future. My birthday on that day was of significance. I frantically joined the others who already were in the TestFlight closed beta build. To fly the early-production model of the F4U Corsair, although I was waiting for the late-war variant, was my main reason for joining. I vividly remember a formation flight we did and have a recording of it.
Hype built up in r/Kirby for the March 3, 2016 Nintendo Direct. Near the end, the speaker announced one final game to look at. New cutscene footage showed cutscene footage of Kirby fending off an invasion on Pop Star. Gameplay footage showed a new core mechanic of the gameplay: a mech suit, known as the “Robobot Armor”. This newly announced Kirby game, Kirby Planet Robobot, was bound to release on June 10, 2016 in North America.
r/Kirby started gaining subscribers tenfold after the initial announcement of the new Kirby game. Never did I have to sift through as many self and link posts as in the renewal period, just last year. Prior, there were occasional droughts of discussion, maybe at least a couple new posts, partly attributed to low subreddit traffic and popularity of the topic the sub had been dedicated to. The announcement sparked a growth spurt that would lead to more intelligent discussions and higher activity.
As the weeks passed, leading up to April 28, the release date of the game in Japan, we looked for every single update on the game. Videos on the Japanese Nintendo YouTube channel, CoroCoro scans, and GameXplain’s commentaries and analyses of upcoming gameplay footage were the gold mines.
April, 2016. Mobile gaming YouTuber iChase held a Bullet Force livestream starring Lucas Wilde, the creator of the game. iChase asked if the game was going to be pay-to-win. To the relief of the audience, Lucas said, It’s [absolutely?] not gonna he pay-to-win. The statement was a major victory for the players. Many prominent first-person shooters on the mobile market, most prominently Modern Combat 5, had pay-to-win elements infused into their gameplay. Now shall the day come when Bullet Force releases, that it shall have dominion over all mobile FPS games!
ReservedJV, who had wanted to revive the now-defunct Kirby Club, began his rise to prominence. Two days before the official release of Kirby Planet Robobot, the ROM was leaked... both in English and Japanese.
In May, the Wings of Duty Battle of Britain update came out, giving the amplified fresh feels of the times the game first came out. Most of the bugs from the original release were ironed out. The miniature tumors that would grow to later transform the game were left untreated. Spitfire spam filled the skies with roaring Merlins and .303 bullets. We fended then off to the best of our ability in our 109’s.
It was not long after that I would feel at home again with the release of Kirby Planet Robobot on June 10, 2016. Upon beating the game, I considered it to be the best Kirby game. The lore was deepened, containing many callbacks to previous Kirby titles. Discussions on the Kirby subreddit became more in-depth. The Robobot Armor gimmick was never required to beat the game, giving players much freedom of choice whether to play the game the classic or modern way.
It was at this point when the Wings of Duty community was starting to undergo its most drastic changes that would culminate into its current state. Signs of flaws in the gameplay became more and more obvious. Imbalance in the tech trees became more and more apparent, leading me to break away from conformity to much of the playerbase’s ways. I should be glad to break off early on. The brakes could still be hit to take the game in the right direction. Virtual squadrons, which I initially viewed as something that would bring prosperity to the community, were formed.
Save the talks for these so-called squadrons later...
Same could be said for Bullet Force. Likewise, tumors that would become the plague grew. Some early maps, such as removed island map and beta Woods map, contained numerous exploitable glitches, that the only practical solution, as Lucas decided, was to remove the maps. Around July, the first hacker was spotted. Later, the 40-player lobbies demonstrated the limitations of the game servers (those game servers were more expensive. Eleven thousand a month. They had to downgrade quality for sustainability.).
In spite of all these issues, my loyalty for Wings of Duty and Bullet Force and their respective communities held together with deep integrity, still unshattered. My vocality for these issues rose as a reactionary tool... I initially thought it would suffice.
Enough with the details! Hustle for the important details. I’ll tell you some short facts that go into play, with a little elaboration, that shall come into play.
October, 2016. Breaking point of rapid decline of my interest in Kirby. As I previously stated in the New Year’s Resolution post, Wings of Duty and Bullet Force became the dominant forces in my gamer history.
I expressed implicit interest to become a moderator in Bullet Force. In one memorable match, where Lucas used his powers, I asked if he may be looking for more moderators. The following game, I suddenly noticed the shiny, green [MOD] tag.
Bullet Force soft launched in Singapore to test purchases in a production environment on November of 2016.
Kirby’s 25th Anniversary began to be celebrated in December of 2016 when the Twitter account, @kirby25thjp, began posting official artwork.
Bullet Force released worldwide for iOS and Android early on that December.
Last but the most important of all these, a place for all things Bullet Force that I’ve been advocating for: a forum. On December 2/3, 2016, the Blayze Games forum launched. It ran on XenForo, a forum software of which I read a comment of praise from the Great Benefactor in my early days of Kirby fandomship. But the felicity from this addition was short-lived.
3-4 weeks after the release of Bullet Force, Lucas began developing “New FPS”. This would later become his first FPS since Bullet Force. It was going to be based on CS:GO.
Tear a new page for the next year. I’ll speak my mind.
2017
Supplementary Background
Disclaimer: Not all of you may be interested in hearing these volumes of explanations. You may want to skip to the “Turning Point” section for the action if so.
Bear through this supplementary background. Ah yes, it does feel like I’ve deviated from a personal story, but all said shall tie back later.
2017 was the most bitter year in my gamer history. Wings of Duty and Bullet Force, the two small gaming niches I loved and actively involved myself in, were driving on the wrong highway. Let’s summarize the grave predicaments Wings of Duty and Bullet Force faced throughout this year.
The circumstances of Wings of Duty are peculiarly complex. Not one individual, nor one virtual squadron, nor a single reason, nor the devs themselves could be blamed alone, for all parties, in a way or another, made profound contribution to the decline of Wings of Duty.
Since 2016, the balance disparity in nations’ tech trees was prominent. The Japanese aircraft roster was left neglected to face superior American planes. A6M3 Zeroes and Ki-61’s are forced to stack up against late-model F6F Hellcats, P-47 Thunderbolts, and F4U Corsairs. Germany and Britain, although not as unbalanced in comparison, still had some disparity with the Bf 109G stacked against the early-war Spitfire Mk V.
Most of the skilled players who loved to fly Japanese planes gradually hit the saturation point and left... at least, it was what I heard in the forum discussions.
In addition to these, the planes, particularly American ones, went unrealistically fast, up to 500mph for high-tier American planes, compounding to the aircraft roster problem. A certain mindset recommended for a total rework of all planes’ flight models, which I was a very avid supporter of.
An egotistic mentality developed in the in-game playerbase.
The game lacked matchmaking (this was later somewhat solved with tier system in arcade mode in an update), forcing newbies to fight more seasoned players, who may have acquired high-tier planes.
Historical inaccuracies were also complained about by some forum members. To list these things is redundant to this post.
Wings of Duty’s community became degenerate, with immature kids dominating the main menu chat, with offensive language, pointless banter, squadron politics/drama, trivial roleplay, among other things. The game lacked in-game moderation. I wonder if anyone abusive was legitimately reported as banned by the devs. Still, the devs had failed to develop countermeasures just as they had left balance issues between the nations unaddressed. I have no one particular individual or squadron to jump the gun on. Many are guilty; everybody who contributes to the drama loses in my book.
Another pivotal fact. Since a few months after the first release of Wings of Duty in 2015, I dedicated ample time to deliver news updates in the game’s respective Everyplay (a video sharing website for mobile games) community’s discussion section in addition to uploading video of the game. When I had the time, I always gave articulate answers to each and every user who would post questions. I also gave opinions on many suggestions about Wings of Duty when they were brought up by whoever. The Everyplay community, like the forums, had humble beginnings, with many of the original gang from Gunship III making some of the earliest, most enthusiastic discussion posts. The Everyplay community was overrun by these ferals; I left partly to move on somewhat with life but also thanks to the profound impact this mob left on the place where I once left my marks all over.
For some time, the Wings of Duty forum became one of the last strongholds from the pervading cancer these ferals were spreading. For a time, it held, in spite of its one active community moderator. However, even life caught up to that moderator, and soon, the forum became yet another hotspot of the cancer. The experienced forum members engaged in banter with some of the squadron members who were known to ruin in-game chat.
Bullet Force, while on the other side of the fence, shared similar problems with Wings of Duty.
Players were free to use offensive language; there was no chat filter. It was not surprising considering the large size and amount of player traffic the game had. GeneralAlex eventually posted on Twitter and gained support for his request to have an option to disable in-game chat.
Likewise, Bullet Force faced weapon balance issues. However, nearly every gun’s balance was spot-on. In the early post-beta releases, 870MCS shotgun a sniper in the guise of a shotgun; it could kill players easily across the map.
Blayze Games forum, not surprisingly, was infested with the same cancer that had plagued Wings of Duty. When the Blayze Games forum launched, user traffic exploded, and unrest erupted, with fairly frequent argument that came with abuse of XenForo’s post rating system. Some people who had upheld higher standards of moral values were downvoted with negative “dislikes” and “dumb” ratings for expressing their stance on offensive language. The forum lacked any staff members to enforce any rules or code of honor.
Later, Blayze Games forum went under maintenance. It took over a month to get the site back up. The forum population dwindled like Detroit. However, this turned to be a cure for the cancer that it had been infested with. More mature folks came along the way. Came four framers of the forum I revered highly: xLGNDx, xKuro, FabulousMrToad, and Rip73. I call them the framers of the Blayze Games forum, who all played parts molding it into what it is now.
As time passed on, Lucas focused an emphasis new and new weapons and maps. Meanwhile, the moderation team believed in the prioritization of anti-cheat systems and patching of map glitches over all else. Lack of testing in the earlier updates proved fatal. In one update, glitches opened up in the Outpost map, and many players began exploiting. Moderators regularly performed massive purges of player accounts that were found to be guilty of exploiting these glitches with a permanent ban (We could not temporarily ban at this time).
The one major key issue, in which Bullet Force diverged in its similarities with Wings of Duty, was hackers. The game was not ready to defend itself from attempts to hack. Security vulnerabilities were exposed on a popular site, iOSGods. Initially, even the most basic forms of MySQL code injection attacks could work against the game. A few smart hackers knew much of their field, and one of them could exploit these vulnerabilities to access the game server’s data. The hackers got at least a couple steps ahead of us. Only later when a new dev team took Lucas’ place that our counterattacks were launched.
Don’t think of these games as total failures. I love them and write all this out, showing how much affected I was by all these incidents.
I and many others to take a part in the fight to end or, at least, mitigate these problems.
Turning Point
Unfortunately, I neglected my moderator duties.
I was removed from the mod team in March for inactivity.
However, I began to help the Blayze Games forum, answering players’ questions, inspired by a user that went by the alias “xLGNDx”.
Now meet the turning point that would change my history forever!
April, 2017 I took to the Bullet Force subreddit to convince Lucas to restore my overdue lost mod tag, with persuasive reason. Among the major reasons was nobody was on the forum to take of the hackers reported there. He replied, “I gave you your mod tag”.
I saw a hacker report and told the reporter I could ban him. A mod by the name of ViperConcepts direct messaged me with an invite link to the moderators’ private Discord server.
Begin the music!
Experienced moderators greeted me with enthusiastic welcomes, mentioning me on their mod. A few days later, I thanked them for the warm welcome.
The job was completely volunteer. You did it out of your own heart. Nothing in return.
(Pause at 0:14)
Little did I know of the fortunes to come from this job, especially in respect to my interest in Kirby. Despite Kirby’s 25th Anniversary celebrations, my love for the pink puff was barely hanging by a thread. All the signs pointed that Bullet Force, now that I was associated with its mod team, would only eliminate the already-slim chances to truly resurge that love. More Kirby-related facts to come to relevance. Keep an eye peeled as things unfold.
(Resume music!)
Now that I possessed the power to bring change, I began to furiously ban cheaters reported on the forum’s hacker report section. I made sure to not leave one hacker behind among newly reported ones.
In recognition of their work, Lucas made xKuro and FabulousMrToad forum moderators and later in-game mods.
In one update, Outpost suddenly opened its pores, allowing players to get out of the map. All this did was to increase my tolerance of rigor and heighten my resolve to perform at my peak. The workload would go on to serve me benevolently in my future responsibilities.
June 2017 - Kirby for Nintendo Switch was announced on E3 2017. To me, no big bells rang. It seems to me I would let it pass like I did with Rainbow Curse back during the Wii U’s days.
Not only did I ban hackers, I answered many players’ questions and participated in discussions about suggestions for the game.
Yes, I often spoke smack about Bullet Force and Lucas’ development decisions but refused to budge under the pressures of the cheaters and other problems plaguing the game.
A member by the name of EXTINCT1ON joined the Blayze Games forum, and he made very noble contributions and suggestions for the game and community as a whole.
By August 2017, I made a post amounting to my several sentiments and persuaded Lucas to make me an administrator of the Blayze Games forum. He was convinced. Proper sections for discussion of games and other things in general, non-Bullet Force related, were constructed.
Lucas “New FPS”, Forward Assault, came out on the iOS App Store on September 6, 2017. I had been in contact with a moderator-turned-developer, then-known as Rain (now Isaiah Flores). I passed issues to Rain, of which I could not resolve. These usually were receipts from players whose purchases of gold failed.
Rain eventually offered me to become moderator in Forward Assault. I gladly accepted it. This was living that my moderation experience from Bullet Force and Blayze Games forum paid off.
September 13, 2017- as I previously explained in my New Year’s Resolution post, my fourth attempt to restore my interest in Kirby began and was still ongoing. The title for the Kirby Switch game was announced - Kirby Star Allies -.
I showed to Forward Assault’s staff that I would be worthy of this second mod tag.
“I will work harder!” Echoed Clover’s words from Animal Farm subconsciously. Nearly every day in my free time. New hacker reports are surfacing in the reports channel! Go to go! Burn those heretics at the stake! Blacklist has new hackers. Catch up to them and ban. Doesn’t matter if they’re “evading the ban”. Respond to this DM! That DM!
(One of the most major, glaring issues in Forward Assault was the lack of effective customer support. The same applied to Bullet Force.)
I rose to exponential heights. I gained Senior Moderator role in just a week. By the end of the second week of October, I became an admin. On the last week of October, a customer support developer.
As a developer, I faced new challenges that hit me hard as a bullet train. Admittedly, I was feeble-minded when it came to telling RPM and damage hacks in Forward Assault. Familiarity in the competitive scene was lacking for me; I had to deal with a dispute that was too difficult to resolve on my own, of which I had nothing to do with. I frequently had to get help from the moderators. People messaged me and other mods if I would make them Discord moderator on the FA server or in-game mod. This lead to meeting some new great faces, but I later learned I didn’t have the authority.
On the other front, in order address longstanding problems in Wings of Duty, I began making Q&A interviews with the devs via their customer support email. These questions were shared on a forum thread. Mixed feedback came from the forum gang, now with some new faces since then. Words came out of their replies, but when would they come to fruition?
In December 2017, Mavrik, one of the people working for Blayze Games, offered me a paid job after sending so many players’ customer support inquiries about unreceived gold/items. Never had I expected all my efforts as a moderator to push me into the highest echelons of Blayze Games. I informed my parents of it, but they became skeptical and advised me not to take this online job. A grave battle ensued to keep my job as a mod. Eventually, I approached Clint Wilde, Lucas’ father, and he called my parents in his free time. As I put it in my prior post, this was a “saving grace”.
(Pause music at 2:28!)
During those times I heard his voice talk to my parents on the phone, I felt dopamine overload. Fancying thoughts raced through my brain at the prospect of funding the purchase of a Nintendo Switch and a copy of Kirby Star Allies with my compensation, yet to come.
On to the year of fortune!
2018
January 5, 2018. I began to receive on-the-job training from Mavrik and BrizzleMcFizzle, the community manager of Bullet Force and head of the content creator program.
(Resume music from 2:28!)
I went to work on the support tickets. I was battle-hardened by the rigors I’m catching up to pages of hacker reports on the forum at times in addition to responsibilities in the Forward Assault theatre. Day by day, me and BrizzleMcFizzle crunched down on these tickets, one by one. We eventually caught up and could rest for just a moment o oN laurels.
Just a mere six days after I started racking up hours on the job, the Nintendo Direct Mini came. The third Kirby Star Allies trailer, which showed a couple new Copy Abilities, skyrocketed my morale. It would be a bitter more two months, but I knew from my heart that light is finally being shed. Blayze Games has my wish secured, that I would be assured restored interest in Kirby by catching up to the latest titles. Updates on the game started to come much more frequently.
On February 3, 2018, I pre-ordered Kirby Star Allies. The manifestation of my destiny was set for inevitable outcome. As long as I kept my commitments.
It was no surprise that setbacks struck back on me. My responsibilities in Bullet Force undermined my activity as a customer support dev in Forward Assault. I was removed from the dev team on basis that I no longer made substantial contribution and was officially staff for Bullet Force.
Demand from the voices of Wings of Duty’s forum and Facebook group member were still unresolved by any means. We asked for a proper matchmaking system, so low-tier planes could be enjoyed, but the devs pressed on to add one more top-tier abomination. The late-war variant of my favorite WW2 fighter, the F4U-4 Corsair, was unveiled in screenshots on a forum thread. That was the final nail in the coffin. The outrage compelled me to partly write this document you are all now reading along with my removal from the Forward Assault dev team.
Also, check out this message as a precursor to this... if you dare: wingsofduty.com/forum/index.php?topic=4825.msg80354#msg80354
Work. Work. Work. On the support tickets. Interact with the Bullet Force fans. Beta test secret beta builds. Give tournament prizes. Check out the forums. I pressed on no matter the pressure.
At the end of February, as preparations to begin the fabled “Operation Star Allies” were close to completion, the final, revolutionary phase of this history, Wings of Duty’s devs showed seeming defiance again with the addition of the P-47N Thunderbolt in the closed beta.
Last setback. BrizzleMcFizzle left the Blayze Games dev team. Would not damage my morale one bit.
A wish in my Febuary Q&A for Wings of Duty got granted, making a turn for the better. Not much but still better than none. The Ki-84 was added to Japan’s tech tree in Wings of Duty, causing me to reconsider my stance.
I scrambled to complete this post despite pressure of outside factors, so that I would keep the promise of the launch my symbolic post on the day that Kirby Star Allies would come out.
Kirby Star Allies came out worldwide on March 16, 2018.
Back to the present.
————————————————————————————————————————
Declaration
March 16, 2018
Skip to the 4:15 time mark before reading and start playing
You are all gathered here to witness the manifestation and unfolding of a self-evident truth.
I, in genuine authenticity, hereby declare this self-evident truth. That the Kirby Star Allies purchase, to be done today by me, revered Bullet Force developer and moderator and then-best pilot in Wings of Duty, who had lost his connections with Kirby, entails colossal and unrivaled importance in my history. That it exceeds the combined importance of the impact of the makings of Wings of Duty and Bullet Force amalgamated on me.
The specialty that this purchase holds to my heart has been profoundly contributed to by Bullet Force and Forward Assault’s communities, the respect from regular members, Discord moderators, moderators and developers. Of all the thousands whose lives were made a difference, one man stands upon all to make this moment so special. His name is Clint Wilde.
Mr. Wilde gave the most benevolent contribution after these 11 months of my toiling as a Bullet Force and Forward Assault moderator and developer... to fund this purchase with via my paychecks. A gift I wished never.
Oh say I can see
As the dawn’s early light rises
That game I so proudly hailed
As the clock ticked right to release
Whose charming puff gave off a big smile
His friends riding the rainbow galore
And the logo decked out in yellow and blue
Gave proof through the night
That this very moment would shed light...
(Time mark 5:54. Pause until 6:21)
O Kirby Star Allies! I implore my pre-ordered copy to reveal itself! I proclaim myself ready to face this self-evident truth as I make these final steps to the store with a stoic look on my face!
Let it be known that the seven-year depression of my gamer history, stemming from the Angry Birds era, and the recessions in the years between, shall finally be put to an absolute end by an absolute resolution!
May this declaration be a cure to the crippling depression I have been afflicted by as Wings of Duty, Bullet Force, and Forward Assault dove downhill at times. Melt the hearts of the culprits of the cancerous communities in that trio. Melt those of the top-tier plane spammers. Confound those virtual squadrons’ politics! Bring the unfair glItchers and all hackers to justice! Enlighten the hearts of those who bash the devs of Forward Assault, so they may realize the valor the devs are deserving of. Keep Bullet Force at the top as it already is. Make Phanotek truly learn from its mistakes to drive Wings of Duty in the right direction. Let the fans of Wings of Duty finally have their voices heard so that game may become a game for and by the people, just as Bullet Force and Forward Assault already have. May one day that sense of simulation and immersion be brought back and dominate over the egotistic mentality of winning and winning and winning alone, topping the leaderboards, and using only the best of he best. For this post is more than just about Kirby Star Allies, I write this on behalf of my diverse audience!
I foresee criticism of the the topicality of my above statements. Now let’s move to the real deal!
Make me relive the memories of the simpler times, before all these affairs that I am now entangled in, came out and about. Give me a break from my direct messages, support tickets, new forum threads, and the tiring tilts of my accelerometer with my hands. Let Green Greens and other renowned Kirby melodies swell the spring breeze once again. Boss fights shall go and go uphill and will release feelings of excitement as much as dueling against a fellow ace in Wings of Duty. Bring chills to my spine with the deep lore and themes. Restore my passion to fiery hot over time. HAL could not fail to deliver with new releases, especially this very one.
(The music enters its climax and final crescendo.)
I profess with utmost confidence that Kirby Star Allies fully addresses the entirety of this declaration, beyond any reasonable doubt. All the signs showed it from subtle to obvious. This self-evident truth has manifested!
I get flashbacks of compliments. Many thanks to all who make this moment so special.
“Welcome goldmaster11 ”
- HiT and Doc Holiday, upon my entry into the Bullet Force mod server
“Have fun and enjoy yourself Goldmaster. I will do my best to make you proud and keep the forums alive and well, and I know for sure that FabulousMrToad will be doing the same!”
- xKuro, during my two-week semi-hiatus in July 2017
“Whoa! When did you get admin? Congratulations!”
- FabulousMrToad, upon my promotion to Blayze Games forum admin
“Congrats on your promotion [to Senior Moderator in Forward Assault], you deserved it.”
- Evilpanda
“congrats master of Gold”
- HiT, upon my promotion to admin in Forward Assault’s Discord server
“Congratulations on your promotion. Now the [customer] support of forward assault would be significantly improved.”
- Preet, upon my promotion to dev in Forward Assault
“Was wondering if you'd be interested in helping take on BF customer support (tickets) as a paid position.”
- Mavrik offering me a paid job in Blayze Games
“Everything you did from day one was to help both BF and FA in any way you can. You never looked to be famous. You just do your job. I respect that about you.”
- HiT, when I announced in Forward Assault’s private staff chat about my job
“He’s been very reliable person... I think we can trust him with a paycheck.”
- Clint Wilde during a call with my parents. Attempted reconstruction of two quotes.
“I’m very happy to hear that you have been given such a paid position. You should feel honored.”
- The Kirbinator, upon the announcement to my old circle of friends in the Kirby fandom on the WiKirby Discord server
“very eloquently written your name makes so much more sense now I always thought it was a bit of a meme but it was built on a genuine love of Kirby.”
“Thank you Kirby I remember you were the first mod I ever met on bulletforce and I in turn will miss you all.”
- Both from Vapenord. First is a response to my New Year’s Resolution post. Second is reply to my farewell to him as he was leaving Bullet Force’s mod team
“Wow! Thanks for all that extra detail...”
- Clint Wilde
“Glad to finally have you on board!”
- Clint Wilde
“I appreciate you maturity and thoughtfulness...”
- Mavrik, in Skype private messages
“...and I appreciate your proactivity”
- Clint Wilde, Skype private messages
“Hello goldmaster! Excited for March 16th?”
- XenoBlayze
Now shall this declaration be ratified!
————————————————————————————————————————
Special Thanks and Address to the Wings of Duty Developers and Community
Now that I have completely addressed and ratified the aforementioned Declaration, I proclaim this post is more than solely my personal story as a Kirby fan and why Kirby Star Allies is my most important video game purchase in my history. It is my response to my Discord direct messages related to requests for upcoming content for the Wings of Duty game and lending of hands to gratitude to all who made this desired outcome an absolute certainty or those who contribute to their own respective venues.
I would like to thank many good friends from the Kirby fandom, my fellow Wings of Duty players, good friends and those who have contributed to the making of the monthly Q&A’s in any way they could, all the Discord and game mods and developers of Bullet Force and Forward Assault. Let us drop all our differences and appreciate one another with undivided harmony as we listen to this masterpiece’s closing words.
Frankly speaking, I have been seldom replying to players asking questions for me to pass to Phanotek, Inc., the development team of Wings of Duty. Some of the requests felt unrealistic considering the current situation of the game, playerbase demands, and the company’s history of its failure to deliver promises on time. Phanotek showed more than enough of these failures in many Wings of Duty updates, of which I am not going to elaborate anymore on here. I wanted the players to start thinking for themselves.
Without further ado, let us begin to hear the names of all who deserves the credit.
Special thanks to The Kirbinator, who I had been referring to as the Great Benefactor, for the most part. He started my maturation process, leading to the start of my slow, gradual rise from nobody to Bullet Force dev team member. That warning you gave me is something I’ll forever cherish, my old friend.
Special thanks to Clint and Lucas Wilde, father and son. Lucas started it all. He started the game and company that became the greatest benefactor yet to my current standing. In the midst of high school and the pressures of his ever-nearing church mission, Lucas persevered to make one of the greatest FPS games on mobile to date, Bullet Force. Clint now carries on his legacy and holds the position of CEO of Blayze Games. Bullet Force has made a difference for millions of gamers around the world and built YouTubers’ channels from the ground up, most prominently BeachBanana’s during its beta days. Me included under their umbrella; Clint talked to my parents and made me cross the bridge to where I am now. He is the main contributor to why today Kirby Star Allies purchase is so special.
Special thanks to Cardboard_Boxer, head moderator of the Kirby subreddit. His knowledge of Kirby and how he’s used it speaks to hills of volumes of him. You and your mod team strive to give us near-immediate updates on news relating to the series. Most recently, I could fathom that the mod team played a pivotal role to spare people from Star Allies spoilers. They are the fabric that holds the Kirby Reddit community .
Special thanks to Mavrik, a staff member of Blayze Games. After tirelessly passing over countless customer support-related requests to him, he offered me a paid position at Blayze Games. During the resulting battle of conflict of interest between my parents and Blayze Games, Clint’s intervention by talking to my parents on the phone resulted in an emancipating victory on my side. Mavrik also gives me great advice and informs me on Blayze Games’ official policies when I make a mistake.
Special thanks to Fubaka, WiKirby’s most dedicated editor. His voluntary toiling through loads and loads of WiKirby pages brought a dream true... a dedicated, non-profit Kirby wiki for and by the fans. All from pure heart without material compensation in return.
Special thanks to HiT, one of the grandfather moderators and the lead moderator of Bullet Force. HiT’s words of wisdom guided me and many other moderators through our respective careers as Bullet Force moderator. Among those words, Rome wasn’t built in a day is my favorite of them all. I recommended HiT to be given admin-level permissions to Mavrik and have a paid position in Blayze Games.
Special thanks to Eliza and Torkirby of Kirby Informer. There may never be a Kirby fansite that may relive the old glory of Kirby’s Rainbow Resort. However, Kirby Informer’s activity, credibility, and enthusiasm gives us living proof of a “Kirby Renaissance” era. I have not received an answer but deal with the predicament with great patience, as I have with faraway game releases and updates. Keep that site running you two and your fellow Discord server’s staff!
Special thanks to Isaiah Flores, the project manager of Forward Assault. We share histories in common. He started out as a moderator in Forward Assault. I am in belief that he and I shared determination to better the respective games we served in. Isaiah, like HiT, spoke volumes of wisdom. He nourished my understanding of professionalism and work. Every day, he works despite the pressures from the cancerous community of Forward Assault. His willpower to triumph through struggles is the trait I most appreciate of him.
GeneralAlex, on the same basis as with the former two people, I thank you as well.
Special thanks to Philip Phan, the creator of Gunship III and Wings of Duty and CEO of Phanotek, Inc. Philip, I know I’ve spoken so much smack about Wings of Duty lately. Please forgive me for this. I did all this out of pure love for you and your game. Maybe I am asking too much from you in my Q&A’s. I want to give you a wholehearted thank you, despite the outcry, for adding my favorite World War II fighter plane to Wings of Duty, the F4U-4 Corsair. Ever since the reveal of the US Navy tech tree May of 2015, I had been waiting to fly it. To at least also have the Ki-84 Hayate in the same update grants from wholehearted gratitude to you and your small team.
But Phil, please listen to the intellectuals on the Wings of Duty forum. They know the stark reality that plagues Wings of Duty. The majority of the playerbase of Wings of Duty is bringing ruin to this beloved game every day. They have enlightening ideas to fix the game, but they could mostly never get their own ideas off the drawing board. Might it be that the proposals are beyond the reach of your resources? Communicate with us players more. I have heard news that you are banning someone who exploited an unfair glitch. That’s very good of you. I hope that goes for all Now is the time to act on all issues surrounding the game!
Special thanks to xLGNDx (KingPrevail), EXTINCT1ON, xKuro, Rip73 and FabulousMrToad for being the founding fathers along with me of the dream of an actively staffed Blayze Games forum.
Others from the Kirby fandom I thank, not aforementioned:
Googie2149
roselli49
TToonLink, for his Kirby manga and 20th Anniversary Artbook translations
JediwilliW
SYZekrom, for pointing out symbolism and cultural references in Kirby
ketchupcat
vgbhnj
Meteorz
TheSkullKid
Antdude
DifferentKindOfGeek
GreenFuzzTiger
Anime1542
Pocket (Kirby Club forum member)
Major Catastrophe
... and many more
These other Bullet Force and Forward Assault mods, former and current, I thank for providing me insights to make informed decisions:
Preet
Dzcmaster
GeneralGore
Zorrow
4tress
CreepyOverlord
xKuro
Villlain
Macabre
T1M3L3SS
Jeff (ForNax)
Æ Quavo
and many more...
Many regulars from Bullet Force and Forward Assault I thank for their support.
Kirby, surprisingly, is welcomed in the foreign land of Bullet Force. Today’s live roleplay of the Kirby Star Allies purchase on the official Bullet Force Discord server, as it unfolded, can be called a day.
The people from the Strike Fighters mobile games community shall be thanked for their support to me in spite of their games holding trivial relevance to this story:
RB33_101AS
Pugfool
Antimissile
VAL
najmicreative
girvanmogot1010
Leha the Fighter Pilot
Weeniewater895
Wolfulgur
...and many more
From the Wings of Duty community I thank:
Storm
Kibbles
Cropduster
Elvis
YodasEyeTwitches
Delmar
NoGoodGamesLeft
Lazy Eye
Conn6M
Obsitos
vLUCKY
Kiowa40
Bros Films
Waraftermath
Rodriguez
hellshock
BlueEagle
Turtle von Bismarck
Mo ‘Gas
Matt
...and many more
The list lasts an eternity.
We all shall learn something from this history lesson of me and this very declaration. Know what you’re fighting for, and exercise advocacy in any civilized, morally favorable method. Even I, the historian of my history, would still learn from my own masterpiece. Best wishes for Bullet Force and Forward Assault to reap prosperity in the updates to come. I have long dreamed of an free-to-play FPS like those two, with enlightened devs who listen to and interact with the community, taking suggestions practical to implement with their available resources. The same to Wings of Duty and its players, that most, if not all, may one day become enlightened people, realizing the cancerous footprint they left, not playing to win but for fun and immersion into the world of aviation. The wisdom I gained from witnessing these histories unfold shall serve as my weapon in the event of a repeat of history or the arrival of new threats and challenges. I’ll be prepared my interest in Kirby in the event I must wage a new war in my history. Whether I shall regularly interact again, however, with the people on that venue one day is still a question. May this history lesson play a pivotal role in driving said games and their respective communities I love for the better onward.
That being said, I’ll hold an AMA right here!
Leaving this video here for your enjoyment.