Boss: Flandre Scarlet's Forms

YouTube · Postby **bossedit8** » Fri Jan 31, 2014 2:51 pm

Flandre Scarlet's Forms is on the way. It is a very difficult boss like in Touhou 6 Extra Stage (noticeable).

Video:

Original YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Nako-Napbo

Download Flandre Scarlet's Forms here!

Graphical Credits:

Spoiler: show

Emral · Postby **Emral** » Tue Feb 11, 2014 11:25 am

Review: Flandre Scarlet's Forms
Do you believe me that I did it within 3 tries? Actually, I don't believe it myself. It looked way harder in the video and I'm fairly bad at SMBX.
I've actually looked up the original boss fight with Flandre Scarlet from Touhou 6 and I'm taking it into consideration while judging this.
This level is a recreation of the Touhou 6 Secret Batlle against Flandre Scarlet, I suppose, so I'll judge similarities and differences aswell.

When I first saw this boss fight I didn't pay much attention to it. Mainly because I couldn't see any boss you were fighting but that's actually kinda irrelevant since she wouldn't do anything, as I found out while watching both videos at the same time. When I watched them both at the same time, I noticed how clever you've been while designing her various forms, spells and attacks. Most of the attacks you made share many similarities to Flandre's real spells, while being incredibly more easy, due to the game engine and limits SMBX has got in terms of Enemy AI, directions in which projectiles can fly and movement. I was actually kinda baffled when I saw that you changed the Bullet Bills' patterns each time her normal attack changed a bit. You seem to also have adapted to the difficulty of each of them. The music just adds up to this. It's the original theme from the boss fight and it actually added a bit of tension to the battle. The more it looped, the more I liked it, aswell. So on trying to recreate a boss from a shooting game you did a great job. Especially considering we're talking about a platformer which we're playing this at. There's quite a gap between those genres.

The level design was pretty basic. You got a small transition between the Mario Universe and the world of touhou because you used the regular SMW castle tileset and music in the beginning (tileset's recoloured and fits Flandre's boss stage from Touhou 6, works well). In general, the missing background during the boss fight, the tense, but loveable music track and the colour of the level as a whole give this fight a slight, dark undertone. I don't know if that was intentional or not, but it's pretty cool.

Now I could do some nitpicking that you didn't restyle the powerups, the egg (bomb), rainbow shells, bob ombs, stone block, etc. to fit more with the touhou theme, but while coming up with this idea, that you could do that, I realized, that it'd end up looking stupid. Maybe you thought the same? I don't know.

Back to the forms! While most of the forms were really well executed and resembled the Touhou 6 variant in an almost scary way, one of them just left me thinking: Where's the similarity?
During the spell "four of a kind", I couldn't really find many similarities, since, originally, Flandre spawns 3 of herself. This is where the idea of having a visible boss, even if it is a rip from Touhou 6 and doesn't do anything but moving a bit, is actually pretty useful just to copy the original fight some more. Just a suggestion.

I think anything else I'd say about this level would be praising and nitpicking about the differences, so I'll get to the results straight away!

Graphics: 3/3 While there are some improvements you MIIIGHT be able to do, it'd be more likely these'd end up looking stupid. It's fine as it is.
Music: 2/2 Original track for a remake of the fight. Legit.
Gameplay/Recreation: 4/5 I'm sure you can improve here still. As I mentioned, "Four of a Kind" doesn't seem to really represent the original one. I think there might be more stuff I can nitpick about but no. Just look if you can improve here.
If you're not the worst person in calculating I've EVER met you should know by now that your final score is
9/10
Approved
Which is great!
I've actually watched another of your "---'s forms" videos, the one underwater with the amazing rinka formations, and I think an underwater area helps really well when trying to recreate these fights.

Fuyu · Postby **Fuyu** » Wed Feb 12, 2014 7:07 pm

I've seen this before on SMBX: Revived and I have to say I loved it, mostly now since you inspired me for a boss for my project, to which I really thank you.

Going with the level, this is very original, the fact that you made a boss completely from zero based on Touhou is simply amazing. I have played Heaven Bullet, but can't say I actually played Touhou, I'd wish I could play it sometime. In the meantime, your boss fight is really impresive, and might have took some time to get the events correct. Good work with this level, I think you're really good at this kind of levels, keep it up.