Sort-of a middle ground between the original design and the current design from the upcoming game, because in my opinion, the current design is just silly. She doesn't look anything like the Dark Queen, she looks like a goth mad scientist.
INB4 "Oh, you're just critical of the less-sexy redesign because you're a neckbearded fedora-wearing incel who's mad that he can't fap to it."
Nope, because I can fap to practically anything if I really wanted to. And in this case it wouldn't even be that hard because it's not even a bad character design, I wouldn't have a problem with it if she were supposed to be an original character, like if The Dark Queen had a daughter between games or something, rather than the Dark Queen herself. The reason I and so many others, are critical of not just the Dark Queen, but the designs and artstyle in the next Battletoads as a whole, is because characters and their franchises have identities, and when you're adapting a character design or franchise, or rebooting it, then it's important to keep them within their identity, otherwise you really have nobody to blame but yourself when the already built-in fanbase rejects it.
If you ask me, not that anyone did, but IF you ask me, making a perfect reboot is a simple two step process (note: I said "simple," not "easy"):
Step 1: Do something fresh and new to make the new entry in the series stand out on its own
Step 2: Capture the spirit of the source material
There's this weird idea that whenever a reboot is criticized by fans of the original, that they're all just whiny babies who are mad that it's different, and I definitely believe that it should go without saying that reboots and adaptations should be different, they should stand out from the originals, otherwise you're just wasting time and funding making something that already exists. But it still has to feel like the original, otherwise there's no point in them having the same name. If everything was changed except the name, then why not just finish what was started? If someone made a reboot of Garfield where Garfield is a human, lasagna is replaced with drugs, and the narrative is a serious story about addiction and the big plot twist in the season one finale is that Garfield might have cancer and Arlene might be pregnant, but the child is actually Odie's and dealing with all that is gonna be the overarching plot of season two, could you actually, unironically, look me in the eye and tell me that that has anything to do with Garfield, and therefore has business being associated with it? Well that's basically what they're doing with Battletoads, as well as plenty of reboots before it and probably plenty more yet to come. (Well okay, not to that extreme, but still similar principle) For some reason, studios seem to stop at step one and forget step two. That's why it kinda confuses me that Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated and The Looney Tunes Show get as much flak as they do. They may not be perfect shows, nor the best iterations of their franchises, (debatably) but in my opinion, they are perfect reboots, because they actually do both of the things a good reboot needs to. The Dark queen is supposed to be a sexy character in a tough badass game franchise that revels in 90s-era attitude. Yeah, obviously the new one should be different, but if the Dark Queen can't be unapologetically sexy and the toads have to be cutesy and look more at home as Funko Pops than actual action figures, then she's simply not the Dark Queen, and they're simply not the Battletoads.
INB4: "Well it's not made for the original fans at all! It's being made for children, because the true purpose of a reboot is to introduce the brand to a new generation, so you're just a manbaby"
Nope. Remember, video games, movies, cartoons, comic books, pretty much all forms of media are products put out by corporations, and corporations have bottom lines. If the true purpose of reboots and adaptations was to introduce the brand to a new generation, then studios would have no reason to make them at all over just putting out a new IP, because children aren't going to tell the difference. Just the fact that reboots and adaptations exist is evidence that the real purpose is because an audience came preinstalled and the new entry isn't going to need to take time to build one up from scratch, while simultaneously still building up an audience of people this franchise is new to anyway, bridging the generational gap, doubling the audience, and doubling the money. And corporations want money. If a reboot only appeals to one of those demographics and not both, then it's not a good reboot. That's why I just can't help but be baffled when people working in the entertainment industry, you know, employees of these corporations, use that same "it's for kids" argument. If you're a filmmaker, your goal is to sell as many tickets as possible, if you're a TV show producer, your goal is to have as many people tuning in each week as possible, so how does it make any kind of business sense to be picky about who your audience is? It's even weirder to me when this sort-of anti-consumer sentiment gets expressed by consumers, like when you see adults who watch cartoons telling other adults not to be critical of cartoons. It's like, you like cartoons right? So how do you benefit from cartoon creators being allowed to make up excuses to not accept feedback? That's just gonna result in less good cartoons for you to watch. Remember when Kevin Smith said that his movie Jersey Girl "wasn't for critics" and then was rightfully roasted for it? Why are we letting people get away with basically that same thing now?
Really, target audiences as a creative concept first and a marketing concept second is kinda silly if you think about it. Like, imagine if I worked for a company like Disney, and I pitched an idea for a cartoon series about a princess who collects treasures, flies on a unicorn, and casts magic spells relative to what color dress she's wearing, and I asked who it should be written for. It would be pretty easy to say "Well little girls, obviously!" But wouldn't that result less in a good show for little girls and more in a show that panders to little girls? Would it not be a better idea to write this show with the intention of just being the highest quality it can be while still working within its base concept, then target little girls with the advertising because they're the demographic statistically most likely to come to it on their own? Like, yeah, media pandering to little kids without much substance to keep them coming back become successful all the time, but those kids will grow out of it, and another generation might come in to replace them, but that means you're only profiting from one generation at a time. Wouldn't it be more successful to make something good that they can grow up with and keep watching and buying merchandise of into adulthood rather than grow out of? You'd be able to keep profiting off them long enough to introduce it to their kids and then profit from both generations at once. That's how you milk a franchise for all it's worth. I know that has nothing to do with Battletoads, but when was I ever gonna get another chance to write that?
INB4: "Everything you just wrote was an excuse you made up for demanding that women in video games be sexy! You're still an incel!"
Then what if I told you that I didn't even design this hypothetical middle ground, but rather my sister did because she was critical of the redesign for the same reasons as me and gave me permission to do something with it?
INB4: "Your sister has internalized misogyny!"
And no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.
INB4: "Stop strawmanning!"
Make me.
INB4: "Oh, so you acknowledge you're strawmanning, but you're still doing it anyway?"
Your mom's a strawman.
INB4: "I'm YOU, you idiot! You're typing all my dialogue! You're arguing with yourself!"
...Well fuck.
INB4 "Oh, you're just critical of the less-sexy redesign because you're a neckbearded fedora-wearing incel who's mad that he can't fap to it."
Nope, because I can fap to practically anything if I really wanted to. And in this case it wouldn't even be that hard because it's not even a bad character design, I wouldn't have a problem with it if she were supposed to be an original character, like if The Dark Queen had a daughter between games or something, rather than the Dark Queen herself. The reason I and so many others, are critical of not just the Dark Queen, but the designs and artstyle in the next Battletoads as a whole, is because characters and their franchises have identities, and when you're adapting a character design or franchise, or rebooting it, then it's important to keep them within their identity, otherwise you really have nobody to blame but yourself when the already built-in fanbase rejects it.
If you ask me, not that anyone did, but IF you ask me, making a perfect reboot is a simple two step process (note: I said "simple," not "easy"):
Step 1: Do something fresh and new to make the new entry in the series stand out on its own
Step 2: Capture the spirit of the source material
There's this weird idea that whenever a reboot is criticized by fans of the original, that they're all just whiny babies who are mad that it's different, and I definitely believe that it should go without saying that reboots and adaptations should be different, they should stand out from the originals, otherwise you're just wasting time and funding making something that already exists. But it still has to feel like the original, otherwise there's no point in them having the same name. If everything was changed except the name, then why not just finish what was started? If someone made a reboot of Garfield where Garfield is a human, lasagna is replaced with drugs, and the narrative is a serious story about addiction and the big plot twist in the season one finale is that Garfield might have cancer and Arlene might be pregnant, but the child is actually Odie's and dealing with all that is gonna be the overarching plot of season two, could you actually, unironically, look me in the eye and tell me that that has anything to do with Garfield, and therefore has business being associated with it? Well that's basically what they're doing with Battletoads, as well as plenty of reboots before it and probably plenty more yet to come. (Well okay, not to that extreme, but still similar principle) For some reason, studios seem to stop at step one and forget step two. That's why it kinda confuses me that Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated and The Looney Tunes Show get as much flak as they do. They may not be perfect shows, nor the best iterations of their franchises, (debatably) but in my opinion, they are perfect reboots, because they actually do both of the things a good reboot needs to. The Dark queen is supposed to be a sexy character in a tough badass game franchise that revels in 90s-era attitude. Yeah, obviously the new one should be different, but if the Dark Queen can't be unapologetically sexy and the toads have to be cutesy and look more at home as Funko Pops than actual action figures, then she's simply not the Dark Queen, and they're simply not the Battletoads.
INB4: "Well it's not made for the original fans at all! It's being made for children, because the true purpose of a reboot is to introduce the brand to a new generation, so you're just a manbaby"
Nope. Remember, video games, movies, cartoons, comic books, pretty much all forms of media are products put out by corporations, and corporations have bottom lines. If the true purpose of reboots and adaptations was to introduce the brand to a new generation, then studios would have no reason to make them at all over just putting out a new IP, because children aren't going to tell the difference. Just the fact that reboots and adaptations exist is evidence that the real purpose is because an audience came preinstalled and the new entry isn't going to need to take time to build one up from scratch, while simultaneously still building up an audience of people this franchise is new to anyway, bridging the generational gap, doubling the audience, and doubling the money. And corporations want money. If a reboot only appeals to one of those demographics and not both, then it's not a good reboot. That's why I just can't help but be baffled when people working in the entertainment industry, you know, employees of these corporations, use that same "it's for kids" argument. If you're a filmmaker, your goal is to sell as many tickets as possible, if you're a TV show producer, your goal is to have as many people tuning in each week as possible, so how does it make any kind of business sense to be picky about who your audience is? It's even weirder to me when this sort-of anti-consumer sentiment gets expressed by consumers, like when you see adults who watch cartoons telling other adults not to be critical of cartoons. It's like, you like cartoons right? So how do you benefit from cartoon creators being allowed to make up excuses to not accept feedback? That's just gonna result in less good cartoons for you to watch. Remember when Kevin Smith said that his movie Jersey Girl "wasn't for critics" and then was rightfully roasted for it? Why are we letting people get away with basically that same thing now?
Really, target audiences as a creative concept first and a marketing concept second is kinda silly if you think about it. Like, imagine if I worked for a company like Disney, and I pitched an idea for a cartoon series about a princess who collects treasures, flies on a unicorn, and casts magic spells relative to what color dress she's wearing, and I asked who it should be written for. It would be pretty easy to say "Well little girls, obviously!" But wouldn't that result less in a good show for little girls and more in a show that panders to little girls? Would it not be a better idea to write this show with the intention of just being the highest quality it can be while still working within its base concept, then target little girls with the advertising because they're the demographic statistically most likely to come to it on their own? Like, yeah, media pandering to little kids without much substance to keep them coming back become successful all the time, but those kids will grow out of it, and another generation might come in to replace them, but that means you're only profiting from one generation at a time. Wouldn't it be more successful to make something good that they can grow up with and keep watching and buying merchandise of into adulthood rather than grow out of? You'd be able to keep profiting off them long enough to introduce it to their kids and then profit from both generations at once. That's how you milk a franchise for all it's worth. I know that has nothing to do with Battletoads, but when was I ever gonna get another chance to write that?
INB4: "Everything you just wrote was an excuse you made up for demanding that women in video games be sexy! You're still an incel!"
Then what if I told you that I didn't even design this hypothetical middle ground, but rather my sister did because she was critical of the redesign for the same reasons as me and gave me permission to do something with it?
INB4: "Your sister has internalized misogyny!"
And no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.
INB4: "Stop strawmanning!"
Make me.
INB4: "Oh, so you acknowledge you're strawmanning, but you're still doing it anyway?"
Your mom's a strawman.
INB4: "I'm YOU, you idiot! You're typing all my dialogue! You're arguing with yourself!"
...Well fuck.
Category Artwork (Digital) / Fanart
Species Human
Gender Female
Size 828 x 1280px
The art-style for the new game is straight trash but then what's to expect from an art director who raves about how much she loves soy milk on her Twitter.
Slight problem, the spirit of the orginal battletoads is captured quite well unless it's easy. If it's easy, it's not Battletoads, if it's hard as hell, then it's the same spirit of the same hard as hell Ninja Turtles rip off we had those years ago, minus a villain that looks like a Streets of Rage extra.
I prefer your version (Or the fucking Original design) then the crap we got!
I have a lot of problems with this new game, art style and otherwise. But it's annoying to me that, we only got a handful of Battletoads games in the first place. NES, Battletoads+Double Dragon, 1 Gameboy game, Battlemaniacs on the SNES and then the arcade game. It wasn't exactly a long running franchise, but even then you could see what they were going for in terms of style. Battletoads Arcade is like the perfect look for it, it's not exactly "realistic", it's still pretty silly, but it has that right look for what they were going for: silly, violent, grungy 90s. Making a new game that STILL does that would have actually been very well received I think, probably would have gotten just as much attention (good attention though) as that style would still stand out! This current art style looks a lot like a Behemoth game, which bothers me. I don't mind the Behemoth games, but they're aiming for a "sooo wacky" kind of feel/look, which doesn't really work with Battletoads, which are strange and weird in a different way.
But none of the old Rare employees are there, so no one who really had that original vision are still around to tell anyone anything. But aside from all of this art style criticism, my bigger issue is that what little we've seen of the game looks very slow and simple :T
But none of the old Rare employees are there, so no one who really had that original vision are still around to tell anyone anything. But aside from all of this art style criticism, my bigger issue is that what little we've seen of the game looks very slow and simple :T
I can understand, respect, and agree with your viewpoint. Also, I love it when people acknowledge that they're quarreling with themselves. It's hilarious
Well, this works for me. It's a better design than the one in the latest game. She looks more iconic here.
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