~10 years later Bumbles: Yuji Naka was convicted of trading Japanese Government secrets with a terrorist group. As for way he did, he wanted more money for his game and movie studio “Baka Naka Studios”.
@@baileywalker2478 A Greek God of, among other things, prophecies. However it's a common Tumblr joke that when someone manages to correctly predict the future with a joke post, Apollo hits them with a dodgeball, to the point that I've now seen posts with reblog comments and tags about Apollo readying the dodgeball when Tumblr users make more joke posts about the future.
What pisses me off about Streetbeat is that they could have made his issue social anxiety. It was RIGHT there, but instead they made him an apathetic loner like it's 2006.
Or heck, Make it so he was going to go to a dance competition with a friend, but said friend lied about being sick. Streetbeat is obviously sad but decides to go check it out to pick up a few moves, And sees his friend up on stage doing their routine as a solo act.
hell there's another game that does the apathetic loner & make it work. TWEWY's Neku Sakuraba. His whole character arc was, thanks to the rules behind the Reapers Game, basically being forced to work with people in order to not die & slowly realizing "oh I actually WAS the problem & people don't suck"
And then he gives into his negativity and transforms into his monster form; *_Donkey Kong!_* He doesn't look a thing like DK, he just named his monster form that out of a misplaced hatred for the ape.
@@GreenEyedPsycho He only looks like Aran Ryan in mainly the head and face though. Like the other nega-bosses, Donkey Kong is a warped chimera of all the cast members found in Jack's stage. Which in this case, means he's made of Aran Ryan, all the worst transformations from Project: Altered Beast, and has a bionic wife arm.
crazy how initially chess guy was shit on for having the pettiest reason for entering the wonderworld, then you read the book and shits take an 180° turn
@@addison_v_ertisement1678 he is world champion, he loses, he gets so angry at losing he tries to win it back, ignoring his dying wife, she dies, and he loses his mind
Imagine if the third act had been from the perspective of the bosses instead of Streetbeat. How they feel seeing someone deny what happened to them (from their perspective) and how it makes them feel seeing him not be tied down like they are. How they do their hardest but it just doesn't work. How he refused to open up to them and now he's trying to reject them completely. In other words, imagine a good book
I really can't get over how having a dead wife and having maids talk behind your back are equally bad to Ballan like the wonder world came from the pain of the human heart HAVING MAIDS TALK BEHIND YOUR BACK IS NOT A TYPICAL HUMAN PROBLEM
I mean, feeling isolated is a real trauma. It's a common trope for the well meaning rich kid to be shuned by most because they are judged for being rich, while those who are kind might just be after their money. In that scenario you'd start to be cynical or shut people out entirely because it's easier than trying to trust people and getting hurt. Of course that's a tried and true trope spawning from compatant stories, so this game doesn't actually do that. They were simply throwing a surprise party, and Ema had no prior reason to suspect them. God I love character arcs.
@@tailsspin621 Not just for well meaning rich kids but really anyone with a particular quirk or interest or two that no one else cares about. You could be the nicest most helpful person in the world but it's hard to want to talk to or open up to people about stuff-interests or not-when it feels like no matter what you do people would rather ignore you than give you the time of day. At that point why wouldn't you feel isolated and alone and consider opening up to people a waste of time and energy? Perhaps if the game or book leaned more into an angle like this they would've been somewhat decent but alas that's not what we got.
I mean it isn't really a contest, people have different problems, the theatre only comes up when people have trauma/problems that prevents them from continuing their life normally, like they need to go in there to help them find their missing piece. The main characters had to have easier stuff to deal with so that they wouldn't be too tempted by Lance to defend their stages, even then one of them got trapped by Lance, the other one managed to fight against their trust issues before even getting to the Lance fight. It is basically like group therapy, like how the stage masters created objects that others could interact with costumes from their stages, you are supposed to imagine their interactions like that, like a puzzle.
To be fully honest? Kinda is. Being talked about behind your back in front of you can be VERY isolating... especially when you KNOW it's about you. It makes you feel alone in a group of others, it makes you mistrust people you are close to, and I don't think that was Emma's first time dealing with that feeling. Anyway Street Beat is a damn brat.
I know this series is 3 years old, but it very quickly pivoted from "Lets talk about the bad 2021 game made by some of the makers of sonic!" to "Lets talk about the crimes of a real Japanese man in his efforts to gain money after failing a well known game making studio in making a videogame, and how he had not changed from the closeted bad person his coworkers knew he was 34 years ago in 1990!"
By the 12th installment of this thrilling serie, Bumbles will either start remaking the game from the ground up, or start to enjoy it. Both option are terrible
Was “if you can’t read, get someone else to read it for. It’ll make a lot more sense then” an intentional reference to Skyrim because that was word for word.
I love how chess guy went from the guy they used as an example of how lame some of the reasons are, to the go to for "Oh, you think YOU have problems?" The game did this man dirty. Or possibly the book gave him a glow-up, one of the two.
Kirby honestly is the best example when it comes to story and how Balan failed with that. Kirby Stories usually are very simple, especially at the beginning: Bad thing happened, Kirby is there to have a fun little adventure. Usually the story (or the twist) comes around at the end of the game, where the final boss shows its face. You usually get some simple cutscenes, sometimes few textboxes, or even in Forgotten Lands, voice over in most supported languages so that children can understand what is going on. But everything is kept short and simple, because the story at the end doesn't matter - you wanna play a fun little game first and foremost. However, if you wanna dive deeper, the game usually has ingame textboxes to explain stuff (like in explaining boss-lore in the pause menu). Balan however tries to explain a more complicated story with even less things Kirby-games do. Of course they're going to fail like this, there was no winning hand in this. Especially when they tackle things that aren't explained easily (or at all, like how Chess-Guy's wife died appearently? That is never shown in his cutscene. All we see is him being salty about his first loss.)
Oh no! King Dedede ruined the fountain of dreams and is using it as a swimming pool! Go collect all the pieces of the Star Rod to fix it and let everyone dream again! Oh no! Meta Knight is here to stop you! Wow! Meta Knight looks just like Kirby?? And he's giving you food?? Congratulations, you got all the pieces of the Star Rod! Oh no! King Dedede was actually keeping an evil monster called Nightmare trapped in the fountain, and by fixing the Star Rod you freed him! You defeated Nightmare! Congratulations! Also the star rod was made by an ancient civilization that no longer exists and also this is the start of King Dededes character arc of becoming a hero and also Kirby is a reincarnation of the god of this universe and also-
Robobot in particular is one of my faves of this. Entry level is that evil tech company is terraforming Dream Land which is just ruining EVERYONE'S day then the endgame bit is that the boss is trying to power up a super computer so he can do all this even better then the mid fight twist is that the super computer is another one of those wish granting things from a previous game then post game & boss fight pause screens reveals that the boss lost his daughter & lost his mind while trying to get her back without ever realizing that this amnesiac secretary WAS his daughter & the wish granting supercomputer fully corrupted his mind with that powering up scene from right before the final fight leaving his body a shell for it to control with the superboss version having distorted versions of his screams when you damage the core & who left this bowl of onions here
It is kind of strange to have “I lost my family in a tragic accident and I’m afraid to love again” and “the other kids think I’m weird for liking bugs” treated as roughly equal problems.
@@thomasd3104to be fair, bugsy is babey and being bullied at that age for your hyperfixation is rough. The artist lady is wild though, like ah damn art block sucks I guess?
I agree that the whole "Lance gaslighting everyone into staying in the Wonderworld & turning them into monsters" part is a good starting point and I feel like they should've had Soshi work more closely with the team on the game. If Kirby can work with just a little text, why can't Balan? Also, I swear Balan day was a different day last year...
He did work with them in making the game, there is a Famitsu interview with Ohshima and the Arzest director where they said that Soshi helped them work with the game story, like they had ideas for the chapters, 20-30 were proposed, they had to cut down some of the darker ones and they wanted 12 stories to match the happiness clock. This makes more sense when you look through the game files, I found out that Lance's stage is called chapter 20, maybe they managed to test out some other stage ideas too, it reminds me a bit about the missingnos in Pokemon gen 1. There is also some test stage that is not in the game, it might have been Streetbeat's stage, there is only one file in folder where the stage is, a cubemap that contains the name Venice Dawn, maybe the irl place that Highland Island is located in could be Italy? The meteor shower mentioned in the book is called the Eltrandos, after translation it seems to come from Esperanto, "coming out", which sounds like italian I guess. Attilio Caccini(Pensive Pierrot) is also an italian name too, I don't think they mentioned how far they had to travel to reach Streetbeat's irl city.
It sounds like the biggest issue for the book is that this structure only really works for like... maybe 3-4 character's total. A smaller number would have been way less repetitive and given us a lot more time to tell a story beyond describing the game. 12 was too big a number, but because they didn't want to ignore any of the characters in the game we got 3-4 times more characters than we could afford. Obviously we also need things to happen during those chapters, i alluded to that earlier. The issue here is the game didn't give us enough to work with for our protagonists.. They can't just be saving the others, they need to grow. Ideally they should face their own demons throughout the journey, but that would not only require their demons to somehow have similar core elements to those they help, but it would also require their trama to not be stupid. The girl is *better* because the rich kid feeling lonely because everyone assumes they are out of touch or have no problems and thus judge them harshly is an easy story that can interact with a few others already present. The boy is just selfish and dumb, and it doesn't sound like he's even facing himself in this book. He's upset because other people exist, he should be called out for that bs. TL;DR, even the parts of the book that are poorly written are likely written like that because of the game.
Not saying that this would definitely have been better, but why couldn’t this book have been an anthology about the WonderWorld Theater? Instead of just a play-by-play of the game, we could follow each character as they live their lives on their personal stages. To give it a formula: we start the chapter with the character in question waking up in their WonderWorld stage, they don’t have any real memories, but they do have a specific goal/want. They then go on a little adventure in their stage to achieve that goal. Every character would have their own goal (which could help alleviate at least some of the repetitiveness), and they could even be tied to each character’s specific trauma. Bugsy could find a strange butterfly that she’s never seen before, and in her attempt to chase it, she winds up lost in a forest alone. Checkerd King attempts to save his queen from an enemy faction. Skygazer searches for parts to build his flying machines. At the end of each mini story, Lance appears to the character in question, and gives them glimpses into what led them to the theater in the first place (this is where we learn their backstory). Suddenly, everything goes dark, but only for a moment, as they wake up on the center stage, only to be greeted by these kids calling themselves “Fighter” and “Street Beat”. The chapter then closes out with its specific character trying to make peace with their past. In between these episodes would be sections that tell the underlying story of Balan and Lance, which would lead into the final battle at the end of the book. This probably sounds way too much like a fanfiction, it would require a lot of fine tuning to make work, and if I was writing it, it probably wouldn’t even be that much better than what we got, but I just wanted to put my two cents in. Also, yeah, please remove that plot point about Clockwork and Poirot, that’s weird.
the funny part is, because Peirott is just, a dude who loves a woman, and said woman is a kid he knew in the theatre, which he didnt know is that woman, and the kid doesnt know him until the theatre, because she is from the past, and when everything is solved, she either A. bettered herself to end up being the woman Peirott loves and not even knowing these events were predetermined and its all a coincidence, or B. fell in love with Peirott... as a child, remembered him when she went back to her time, realised they are the same age in the currentflow of time, and made sure she would become the Park Princess so she could date him when he becomes the man she met as a kid in the theatre
Man, can't wait for "Balan Wonderworld - A Fifth Look: I see him in the walls, I see him in my dreams, Balan is all there is and will ever be, Somebody please help me! [Bumbles McFumbles]"
"Trauma isn't something you beat, it's something that stays with you for the rest of your life and you just have to learn to deal with it." THANK YOU. I've met so many people who think you can just move on from trauma. No!!! It stays there forever.
Hey, this book actually sounds pretty interesting as a character-driven story about trauma and unhealthy coping mechanisms. I bet this would make a great video game adaptation :)
What outside resources should do is add more weight and world building than what the original story was able to tell, convey or include. Doctor Who’s story novelisations and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of The Sith by James Luceno comes to mind. Persona 5’s story for its’ faults can be understood fully. If I wrote a tie-in novel to it, I’d either detail the stories of the characters that’s only alluded to in dialogue or expand on the tidbits from the game that we don’t get much info on like the backstories of the Palace Rulers including the fifth ruler that we were to get in Royal through the Will Seeds but were cut from the final product.
@rayvenkman2087 Heck, even the Fnaf novels did this at first. They gave you a story about one of the dead kids family. You got to know more about the spirits inside the animatronics, and the name of the killer. Then it devolved into the mess of Fnaf lore it is today.
I hope you know that reading the Balan book for Balan day part 4 is the 2nd step on a journey that ends with you reading the FNAF books for "Jack complains about the FNAF timeline" part 2.
42:33 so Clock Tower fell in love with Pierrot when there was a 10 year age gap, then when she returned to her time where they would be roughly the same age and so she worked to get herself to a point where she could fill the role of the Park Princess and then have Pierrot be emotionally traumatized enough to go into the Wonderworld so that she could meet him as a kid to allow her to fall in love with him as he is in love with her as an adult but doesn't know so they could then meet up in the real world after they both grew up but he was already grown up when he entered and left but then they left wonderworld and she was waiting for him after having kept the memories of what happened in the world to herself for 10 years to plan for this final meet up after she waited for him to meet her from the past in the future as a child. And then they got married. I'm glad I am already used to time travel causality shenanigans from Homestuck, or else this would have caused the brain aneurysm that finally killed me.
Yea honestly from how Bumbles tells it, it seems like Pierrot is not in the wrong. He only went to Wonderworld *after* falling in love with someone his own age, and then he happens to meet and befriend a young girl who happens to be her (while also forgetting IRL stuff so "He only liked this little girl because she's like the girl he likes" doesn't work unless they mention the similarities). Heck depending on how it's framed, the young girl might not have even been doing it out of love and just "Oh yea, I know where my friend will be in 10 years, I'll try to meet him then" only to then fall in love now that she sees him as an adult... though notably both of these interpretations may not actually be how it's presented in the book so it could be creepier than I'm hoping for. I also have experience with time travel causality shenanigans in media so I'm willing to at least give it benefit of the doubt until I see it in person.
I was expecting anything but balan wonderworld using weird time discrepancies to hook up a child and someone ten (?) years older than her. this book cannot be real
Im really happy theres an actual balan book to tell its story because balan is a game i want to love SO MUCH, it has so much potential and fucks it over so hard its trip and fall looks like a tony hawk trick.
Honestly the book makes it sound a lot better than it turned out. It's sad how it came out, and I hope some people can make a fan game that's better like Project 06.
Bumbles is becoming a certified Balantuber. EDIT: On the Kirby lore thing. Kirby's storytelling is simple, concise, and engaging. Even if you do have questions, receiving them would give a sense of "Oh, that's what it is." Not "Wait... Seriously?" Another EDIT: There's an MtG card called Balan, Wandering Knight. That cat's not gonna recover from that one.
@@mr.unsmiley8656 ah... I see. Yeah, sometimes, that's the cheapest way to increase a character's appeal. Granted, it's part of an anime art group of cards. But still, a cheap way to make her appealing. Poor Balan.
Iben (the ice lady) feels like she should’ve been the last stage before the final boss in the game, maybe just because her problem is easily the most serious and dramatic.
@@woobgamer5210I mean balan fanfic writers aren’t crazy or anything. It would be interesting for talking about the mix of nights fans in the fandom tho
Can't wait for next year's Balan Day, with Jack revealing to have gotten the Speedrun World record and that Yuji Naka got arrested again for hacking the Pentagon
I was expecting you to do a review of the new Princess Peach game this time round, comparing how it succeeds where Balan failed. But this was much more interesting.
43:42 i think its a case of "if i tell him I fuck up the timeline so bad we all might just straight up die and nothing happens but also everything does"
"Being put in a dream theater only to be coddled and made to pretend they don't have a problem is the start of a great story" I agree and I think it allready exists, it's season one of the mini series Infinity Train. As you were describing this books story I couldn't get the idea out of my head that this feels incredibly similar to the themes of season 1 of Infinity train, that of trauma/life issues being pushed aside for other things but eventually facing them and healing. All the while there is something off about the person running the show only to then be revealed that they are not the true master. Seriously go Watch Infinity Train, I skipped a lot of details so go watch it.
The thing that will forever make me insane about Balan’s presentation and story is like They DELIBERATELY CHOSE for the framing device of their ENTIRE NARRATIVE to be *Musical Theatre* They got a few ACTUAL WEST-END PEOPLE to help with the soundtrack They have a story here that *actually would have worked pretty well as the plot to a Musical*, with spots for individual character songs and ensemble numbers and everything And then they did NOTHING with ANY OF THAT????? It’s just BAFFLING??????? It’s an absolutely bizarre creative decision, why would they do this!!!
Something which also links with the Kirby comparison you made - the Kirby series has 30 light novels itself, regularly making the best sellers list in Japan. So the Pink Puffball beats Balan on that front as well.
Your narration style is peak, I use your Pizza Tower vid to get to sleep easier bc I loved the detail and humour of that review so much. Keep it up man 😊
Ok,so uh,I wanted to take a shot at rewriting street beat and fighters back stories in a way that makes them both connected.so here: Emma/fighter: Her mother is a famous and torch dancer,who goes on expensive parties ,acts in movies,teaches classes,seemingly everything except actually interacting with her daughter. Emma was an accident of whom her mother was ashamed of having,leading her to neglect her and barely acknowledge her existence,only speaking actual words to her when absolutely necessary. Emma,sad and desperate for her mother’s love,decides she’ll take up dancing,thinking that the reason her mother loved her was because she wasn’t good enough. So she trained every day and night,sacrificing meals any chance at making friends simply because of her desperate need for her mother’s love,isolating herself to practice a hobby she has no passion for simply because of a mother that couldn’t care less about her. She eventually enters a dancing competition,of which she wins first place,but the judges noting that if they could,they would give the second place girl the trophy,since the way that Emma danced was immaculate,but soulless. She also looks into the crowd to see that the spot reserved for her mother was empty. Then queue her walking out,seeing a Tim,and encountering Leo in front of the theatre. Leo/streetbeat: Leo grows up in a lower middle class home with a single father. He has a real passion for dancing,but isn’t really the best.he and his father are at odds on the topic of dancing. Leo wants to be a professional dancer but his father doesn’t think that’s a substantial career,passively trying to steer Leo away from dancing and instead trying to fire act his towards a more…stable industry. So Leo enters the same dancing competition as Emma after making a deal with his father that if he won,his dad would accept dancing as his sons career of choice but if he lost,Leo would need to quit dancing,abandoning his passion just because of his father. he ends up dead last,and,unable to face his father,he ends up in the wonder world. This gives both our protagonist clear arcs and parallels and a unifying theme of passion. Idk if these are better but the canon backstories confuse me so I threw in child neglect and familial disagreements in there to spice things up. Thoughts?
To think that NiGHTS into Dreams, a game released in 1996, managed to explain mental struggles in only a couple of voiceless cutscenes better than this game could in its entire runtime. NiGHTS into Dreams doesn’t require you to buy an entirely separate book to understand, and unlike Balan Wonderworld, is a game that is actually worth playing.
Balan Blunderworld really is one of the craziest pre and post-production video game stories of all time. Square Enix only giving Yuji Naka "one chance" The absolute terrible reception of the demo The game bombing so hard Yuji Naka went scorched earth and tried to take Square Enix down with him Square Enix retaliating saying Yuji Naka did insider stock trading, so he GOES TO PRISON The Balan books containing all the missing context that made the cutscenes unintentionally hilarious Yuji Naka getting out of prison and IMMEDIATELY going after Square Enix's throat again.
Genuinely been looking forward to Balan day. Digging deeper into this rabbit hole more and more is something I never knew I wanted this much. Also, you did amazing on the book review! I already love the way you analyze games and shows (Seriously, "The Tester" reviews deserve way more views, they're so damn good), so seeing a different medium tackled by you was great to see.
Considering this is a Squeenix property, it feels like Streetbeat was trying to be a Cloud Strife or a Neku Sakuraba without understanding what made those characters engaging instead of annoying They're both also very secluded people but they work much better because their entire story forces them out of their comfort zone and has them gradually open up to the people around them Often times their rougher personality traits ends up coming back to bite them and that's something they have to reckon with Streetbeat is just kind of allowed to be an asshole
Reminds me of how Mary Skelter: Nightmares was criticized for making the exploration team from the tie-in book be the reason you progress through the final dungeon. Unlike Balan, the series managed to find a workaround for this in the very next game- they made the members act as NPCs in a prequel and developed them there for game only fans. The fact that Mary Skelter 2 unlocks a Nightmares remake and 2 and Finale are miles better than Nightmares is also a nice bonus.
![Balan Wonderworld - A Third Look: The Yuji Naka Story [Bumbles McFumbles]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YviNbvY2pEM/mqdefault.jpg)
![Balan Wonderworld - A Third Look: The Yuji Naka Story [Bumbles McFumbles]](/img/tr.png)
![Pizza Tower - It's Pizza Time! [Bumbles McFumbles]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Wyc9u0R1eGU/mqdefault.jpg)
![[TH] VCT Pacific - Playoffs - Knockout Round // TS vs T1 | PRX vs TLN](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/23EjntCWm_g/mqdefault.jpg)
![[UNCUT]ท้าแม่เด็กเชื่อมจิต!! พิสูจน์ความจริงบนศาล ดึงสติคน อย่าหลงเชื่ออภินิหาร I คนดังนั่งเคลียร์](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/81x4JGTqvUA/mqdefault.jpg)
![Silent Hill Ascension Is The Worst Silent Hill Thing [Bumbles McFumbles]](/img/n.gif)
Bumbles and Balan are like a abusive couple who WANT to divorce but they would rather keep hurting each other
Well if they finalize the divorce, who will they have to make fun of anymore?
But the second look does show that when asked by peers why he would get with Balan, he defends himself by saying it wasn't even as bad as they say
Sounds about right
Who's afraid of Yuji Naka?
ahh so tom and jerry rules
GO TO THERAPY.
What the Fuck
NUH UH
Men will literally make 4 videos on Balan Wonderworld instead of going to therapy
He really needs it, after all the trauma of looking into Balan for forth time
@@Crabgar Men and their Balans, am I right?
Jack please blink twice if balan is holding you hostage
Balan please blink twice if Jack is holding you hostage.
I'd let Balan hold me hostage
He blinked 20 times what does this mean
@@hawttub_2265 they are holding his family hostage
@@hawttub_2265 balan stroke
~10 years later
Bumbles: Yuji Naka was convicted of trading Japanese Government secrets with a terrorist group. As for way he did, he wanted more money for his game and movie studio “Baka Naka Studios”.
Apollo is readying that dodgeball.
@@SakuraKotoni Who’s “Apollo”?
@@baileywalker2478 A Greek God of, among other things, prophecies.
However it's a common Tumblr joke that when someone manages to correctly predict the future with a joke post, Apollo hits them with a dodgeball, to the point that I've now seen posts with reblog comments and tags about Apollo readying the dodgeball when Tumblr users make more joke posts about the future.
@@SakuraKotoni Ok then. I thought you were talking about “Apollo Legends”
What pisses me off about Streetbeat is that they could have made his issue social anxiety. It was RIGHT there, but instead they made him an apathetic loner like it's 2006.
Streebeat can be summed up with one thing
*I'VE BECOME SO NUMB*
Or heck, Make it so he was going to go to a dance competition with a friend, but said friend lied about being sick.
Streetbeat is obviously sad but decides to go check it out to pick up a few moves, And sees his friend up on stage doing their routine as a solo act.
hell there's another game that does the apathetic loner & make it work. TWEWY's Neku Sakuraba. His whole character arc was, thanks to the rules behind the Reapers Game, basically being forced to work with people in order to not die & slowly realizing "oh I actually WAS the problem & people don't suck"
jack is in the wonderworld. youtube is his stage and his title is bumbles mcfumbles. his trauma is looking at balan wonderworld for too long
It makes too much sense
And then he gives into his negativity and transforms into his monster form; *_Donkey Kong!_*
He doesn't look a thing like DK, he just named his monster form that out of a misplaced hatred for the ape.
@@blackheartzerotheundergrou3225his monster form actually looks like Aran Ryan.
@@GreenEyedPsycho
He only looks like Aran Ryan in mainly the head and face though. Like the other nega-bosses, Donkey Kong is a warped chimera of all the cast members found in Jack's stage. Which in this case, means he's made of Aran Ryan, all the worst transformations from Project: Altered Beast, and has a bionic wife arm.
We need streetbeat to save him now!
crazy how initially chess guy was shit on for having the pettiest reason for entering the wonderworld, then you read the book and shits take an 180° turn
I aint reading all that
Lore synopsis?
@@addison_v_ertisement1678 he is world champion, he loses, he gets so angry at losing he tries to win it back, ignoring his dying wife, she dies, and he loses his mind
@@woobgamer5210 Ah, thanks.
The best thing the book did tbh
Imagine if the third act had been from the perspective of the bosses instead of Streetbeat. How they feel seeing someone deny what happened to them (from their perspective) and how it makes them feel seeing him not be tied down like they are. How they do their hardest but it just doesn't work. How he refused to open up to them and now he's trying to reject them completely.
In other words, imagine a good book
I really can't get over how having a dead wife and having maids talk behind your back are equally bad to Ballan like the wonder world came from the pain of the human heart HAVING MAIDS TALK BEHIND YOUR BACK IS NOT A TYPICAL HUMAN PROBLEM
I mean, feeling isolated is a real trauma. It's a common trope for the well meaning rich kid to be shuned by most because they are judged for being rich, while those who are kind might just be after their money. In that scenario you'd start to be cynical or shut people out entirely because it's easier than trying to trust people and getting hurt.
Of course that's a tried and true trope spawning from compatant stories, so this game doesn't actually do that. They were simply throwing a surprise party, and Ema had no prior reason to suspect them. God I love character arcs.
@@tailsspin621 Not just for well meaning rich kids but really anyone with a particular quirk or interest or two that no one else cares about. You could be the nicest most helpful person in the world but it's hard to want to talk to or open up to people about stuff-interests or not-when it feels like no matter what you do people would rather ignore you than give you the time of day. At that point why wouldn't you feel isolated and alone and consider opening up to people a waste of time and energy?
Perhaps if the game or book leaned more into an angle like this they would've been somewhat decent but alas that's not what we got.
I mean it isn't really a contest, people have different problems, the theatre only comes up when people have trauma/problems that prevents them from continuing their life normally, like they need to go in there to help them find their missing piece.
The main characters had to have easier stuff to deal with so that they wouldn't be too tempted by Lance to defend their stages, even then one of them got trapped by Lance, the other one managed to fight against their trust issues before even getting to the Lance fight.
It is basically like group therapy, like how the stage masters created objects that others could interact with costumes from their stages, you are supposed to imagine their interactions like that, like a puzzle.
To be fully honest? Kinda is. Being talked about behind your back in front of you can be VERY isolating... especially when you KNOW it's about you. It makes you feel alone in a group of others, it makes you mistrust people you are close to, and I don't think that was Emma's first time dealing with that feeling.
Anyway Street Beat is a damn brat.
I know this series is 3 years old, but it very quickly pivoted from "Lets talk about the bad 2021 game made by some of the makers of sonic!" to "Lets talk about the crimes of a real Japanese man in his efforts to gain money after failing a well known game making studio in making a videogame, and how he had not changed from the closeted bad person his coworkers knew he was 34 years ago in 1990!"
“I can’t be a guy named Greg”
Well, not with that attitude, Greg
You know I was JOKING with that "fourth look" comment last time.
Don't give him ANY ideas.
Give him ALL the ideas.
@@alu2901 The duality of man.
By the 12th installment of this thrilling serie, Bumbles will either start remaking the game from the ground up, or start to enjoy it. Both option are terrible
Or: third option, he'll make an enjoyable version of Balan Wonderworld!
Next time he should look at speedruns
It'll be his own Project 06
Was “if you can’t read, get someone else to read it for. It’ll make a lot more sense then” an intentional reference to Skyrim because that was word for word.
27:35 is also a reference
I love how chess guy went from the guy they used as an example of how lame some of the reasons are, to the go to for "Oh, you think YOU have problems?" The game did this man dirty. Or possibly the book gave him a glow-up, one of the two.
Fun fact: The Sun's small print includes the statement "Not rated for more than 10 billion years of continued operation"
Ah. Balan Day. My favourite holiday.
Aside from Turbo Christmas, of course.
Kids gather around! It's Balan day!
4/20/24
I look forward to it yearly at this point
*BY GOD THE MAN IS QUADRUPLING DOWN*
HE IS BALANING DOWN, HE IS INSANE!
One Balan Wonderwold related video a year: Part of a fair and BALANced breakfast.
Someone needs to release a Balan Wonderworld sequel so he doesn't have to suffer in a time-loop.
Kirby honestly is the best example when it comes to story and how Balan failed with that. Kirby Stories usually are very simple, especially at the beginning: Bad thing happened, Kirby is there to have a fun little adventure. Usually the story (or the twist) comes around at the end of the game, where the final boss shows its face. You usually get some simple cutscenes, sometimes few textboxes, or even in Forgotten Lands, voice over in most supported languages so that children can understand what is going on. But everything is kept short and simple, because the story at the end doesn't matter - you wanna play a fun little game first and foremost. However, if you wanna dive deeper, the game usually has ingame textboxes to explain stuff (like in explaining boss-lore in the pause menu).
Balan however tries to explain a more complicated story with even less things Kirby-games do. Of course they're going to fail like this, there was no winning hand in this. Especially when they tackle things that aren't explained easily (or at all, like how Chess-Guy's wife died appearently? That is never shown in his cutscene. All we see is him being salty about his first loss.)
Oh no! King Dedede ruined the fountain of dreams and is using it as a swimming pool!
Go collect all the pieces of the Star Rod to fix it and let everyone dream again!
Oh no! Meta Knight is here to stop you!
Wow! Meta Knight looks just like Kirby?? And he's giving you food??
Congratulations, you got all the pieces of the Star Rod!
Oh no! King Dedede was actually keeping an evil monster called Nightmare trapped in the fountain, and by fixing the Star Rod you freed him!
You defeated Nightmare! Congratulations!
Also the star rod was made by an ancient civilization that no longer exists and also this is the start of King Dededes character arc of becoming a hero and also Kirby is a reincarnation of the god of this universe and also-
Robobot in particular is one of my faves of this.
Entry level is that evil tech company is terraforming Dream Land which is just ruining EVERYONE'S day
then the endgame bit is that the boss is trying to power up a super computer so he can do all this even better
then the mid fight twist is that the super computer is another one of those wish granting things from a previous game
then post game & boss fight pause screens reveals that the boss lost his daughter & lost his mind while trying to get her back without ever realizing that this amnesiac secretary WAS his daughter & the wish granting supercomputer fully corrupted his mind with that powering up scene from right before the final fight leaving his body a shell for it to control with the superboss version having distorted versions of his screams when you damage the core & who left this bowl of onions here
Balan Day 2025 should be a "Trauma Tier List" because "Chess Man lets his wife die alone" is such a fucking turn
It is kind of strange to have “I lost my family in a tragic accident and I’m afraid to love again” and “the other kids think I’m weird for liking bugs” treated as roughly equal problems.
@@thomasd3104to be fair, bugsy is babey and being bullied at that age for your hyperfixation is rough. The artist lady is wild though, like ah damn art block sucks I guess?
And Apparently, Lady of the Midnight Sun has it WORSE.
@@Jacob_G9 Both of her parents died on the day of her wedding, or something along those lines, so yes, she has it pretty bad.
@@mauricioalvarezpino1818 Damn, She really got it rough.
🎶It's the most Wonderworld time of the year🎶
I agree that the whole "Lance gaslighting everyone into staying in the Wonderworld & turning them into monsters" part is a good starting point and I feel like they should've had Soshi work more closely with the team on the game. If Kirby can work with just a little text, why can't Balan? Also, I swear Balan day was a different day last year...
He did work with them in making the game, there is a Famitsu interview with Ohshima and the Arzest director where they said that Soshi helped them work with the game story, like they had ideas for the chapters, 20-30 were proposed, they had to cut down some of the darker ones and they wanted 12 stories to match the happiness clock.
This makes more sense when you look through the game files, I found out that Lance's stage is called chapter 20, maybe they managed to test out some other stage ideas too, it reminds me a bit about the missingnos in Pokemon gen 1.
There is also some test stage that is not in the game, it might have been Streetbeat's stage, there is only one file in folder where the stage is, a cubemap that contains the name Venice Dawn, maybe the irl place that Highland Island is located in could be Italy? The meteor shower mentioned in the book is called the Eltrandos, after translation it seems to come from Esperanto, "coming out", which sounds like italian I guess. Attilio Caccini(Pensive Pierrot) is also an italian name too, I don't think they mentioned how far they had to travel to reach Streetbeat's irl city.
One of these years, he’s gonna release a remade version of Balan just to prove it could’ve been better.
tbh i wont be surprised if people are working on a balan mod for steam to, include custom cutscenes that tell the book's story
So the bad guy pretends to be good, except he isn't, and the good guy is actually a clone of the bad guy from when he wasn't not good
It sounds like the biggest issue for the book is that this structure only really works for like... maybe 3-4 character's total. A smaller number would have been way less repetitive and given us a lot more time to tell a story beyond describing the game. 12 was too big a number, but because they didn't want to ignore any of the characters in the game we got 3-4 times more characters than we could afford.
Obviously we also need things to happen during those chapters, i alluded to that earlier. The issue here is the game didn't give us enough to work with for our protagonists.. They can't just be saving the others, they need to grow. Ideally they should face their own demons throughout the journey, but that would not only require their demons to somehow have similar core elements to those they help, but it would also require their trama to not be stupid. The girl is *better* because the rich kid feeling lonely because everyone assumes they are out of touch or have no problems and thus judge them harshly is an easy story that can interact with a few others already present. The boy is just selfish and dumb, and it doesn't sound like he's even facing himself in this book. He's upset because other people exist, he should be called out for that bs.
TL;DR, even the parts of the book that are poorly written are likely written like that because of the game.
Not saying that this would definitely have been better, but why couldn’t this book have been an anthology about the WonderWorld Theater?
Instead of just a play-by-play of the game, we could follow each character as they live their lives on their personal stages.
To give it a formula: we start the chapter with the character in question waking up in their WonderWorld stage, they don’t have any real memories, but they do have a specific goal/want. They then go on a little adventure in their stage to achieve that goal. Every character would have their own goal (which could help alleviate at least some of the repetitiveness), and they could even be tied to each character’s specific trauma.
Bugsy could find a strange butterfly that she’s never seen before, and in her attempt to chase it, she winds up lost in a forest alone.
Checkerd King attempts to save his queen from an enemy faction.
Skygazer searches for parts to build his flying machines.
At the end of each mini story, Lance appears to the character in question, and gives them glimpses into what led them to the theater in the first place (this is where we learn their backstory). Suddenly, everything goes dark, but only for a moment, as they wake up on the center stage, only to be greeted by these kids calling themselves “Fighter” and “Street Beat”. The chapter then closes out with its specific character trying to make peace with their past.
In between these episodes would be sections that tell the underlying story of Balan and Lance, which would lead into the final battle at the end of the book.
This probably sounds way too much like a fanfiction, it would require a lot of fine tuning to make work, and if I was writing it, it probably wouldn’t even be that much better than what we got, but I just wanted to put my two cents in.
Also, yeah, please remove that plot point about Clockwork and Poirot, that’s weird.
the funny part is, because Peirott is just, a dude who loves a woman, and said woman is a kid he knew in the theatre, which he didnt know is that woman, and the kid doesnt know him until the theatre, because she is from the past, and when everything is solved, she either A. bettered herself to end up being the woman Peirott loves and not even knowing these events were predetermined and its all a coincidence, or B. fell in love with Peirott... as a child, remembered him when she went back to her time, realised they are the same age in the currentflow of time, and made sure she would become the Park Princess so she could date him when he becomes the man she met as a kid in the theatre
Man, can't wait for "Balan Wonderworld - A Fifth Look: I see him in the walls, I see him in my dreams, Balan is all there is and will ever be, Somebody please help me! [Bumbles McFumbles]"
Bumbles, you need to let go. The accident wasn't your fault.
He's not gonna help you fight Lance. Leave him be and let's go save the others!
1st time, shame on you
2nd time, shame on me
3rd time, this has become a bad habit
4th time, I'm leaving and taking the kids with me.
Omg balan day already?
"Trauma isn't something you beat, it's something that stays with you for the rest of your life and you just have to learn to deal with it."
THANK YOU. I've met so many people who think you can just move on from trauma. No!!! It stays there forever.
Hey, this book actually sounds pretty interesting as a character-driven story about trauma and unhealthy coping mechanisms. I bet this would make a great video game adaptation :)
So the story of _Balan_ is more or less "What if we reverse engineered a mediocre _Infinity Train_ from a bad video game".
Got it.
Mat Pat was right when he said you shouldn't need outside resources to understand a story
What outside resources should do is add more weight and world building than what the original story was able to tell, convey or include. Doctor Who’s story novelisations and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of The Sith by James Luceno comes to mind.
Persona 5’s story for its’ faults can be understood fully. If I wrote a tie-in novel to it, I’d either detail the stories of the characters that’s only alluded to in dialogue or expand on the tidbits from the game that we don’t get much info on like the backstories of the Palace Rulers including the fifth ruler that we were to get in Royal through the Will Seeds but were cut from the final product.
@rayvenkman2087 Heck, even the Fnaf novels did this at first.
They gave you a story about one of the dead kids family. You got to know more about the spirits inside the animatronics, and the name of the killer.
Then it devolved into the mess of Fnaf lore it is today.
Jack, I think you finding the rights for Balan in that gas slicked dumpster has been more of a curse than anything
Balan Day on my birthday?! What a gift!
I hope you know that reading the Balan book for Balan day part 4 is the 2nd step on a journey that ends with you reading the FNAF books for "Jack complains about the FNAF timeline" part 2.
oh but the first one got a single view so he’s never talking about FNAF again.
The trauma tier list is wild
Why is it called Balan Wonderworld when Balan Wonderland rolls off the tongue smoother
Prediction: Part five is a Princess Peach Showtime review.
THERE IS NO WAY! I HAD JUST RECENTLY THOUGHT "Wow, it'd be crazy if Bumbles made another Balan video and named it "a fourth look".
Thankfully I finished my Balan Day Study Guide before the big day
42:33 so Clock Tower fell in love with Pierrot when there was a 10 year age gap, then when she returned to her time where they would be roughly the same age and so she worked to get herself to a point where she could fill the role of the Park Princess and then have Pierrot be emotionally traumatized enough to go into the Wonderworld so that she could meet him as a kid to allow her to fall in love with him as he is in love with her as an adult but doesn't know so they could then meet up in the real world after they both grew up but he was already grown up when he entered and left but then they left wonderworld and she was waiting for him after having kept the memories of what happened in the world to herself for 10 years to plan for this final meet up after she waited for him to meet her from the past in the future as a child. And then they got married.
I'm glad I am already used to time travel causality shenanigans from Homestuck, or else this would have caused the brain aneurysm that finally killed me.
Also it's implied she accidentally caused the death of Lady of the Midnight Sun's parents.
Yea honestly from how Bumbles tells it, it seems like Pierrot is not in the wrong. He only went to Wonderworld *after* falling in love with someone his own age, and then he happens to meet and befriend a young girl who happens to be her (while also forgetting IRL stuff so "He only liked this little girl because she's like the girl he likes" doesn't work unless they mention the similarities). Heck depending on how it's framed, the young girl might not have even been doing it out of love and just "Oh yea, I know where my friend will be in 10 years, I'll try to meet him then" only to then fall in love now that she sees him as an adult... though notably both of these interpretations may not actually be how it's presented in the book so it could be creepier than I'm hoping for. I also have experience with time travel causality shenanigans in media so I'm willing to at least give it benefit of the doubt until I see it in person.
@@karmicrespite5737 It is still a bit *fucked*, but more in the sense of "what the fuck, writer" and less so "what the fuck, character"
Excuse me what?
I was expecting anything but balan wonderworld using weird time discrepancies to hook up a child and someone ten (?) years older than her. this book cannot be real
"If you can't read, get somebody to read it to you! It'll make a lot more sense then." *skyrim flashbacks intensify*
balan book report....
40:23 That's why he didn't turn into a Boss Monster: his trauma is so non-existant it can't change him.
Im really happy theres an actual balan book to tell its story because balan is a game i want to love SO MUCH, it has so much potential and fucks it over so hard its trip and fall looks like a tony hawk trick.
Honestly the book makes it sound a lot better than it turned out. It's sad how it came out, and I hope some people can make a fan game that's better like Project 06.
Bumbles McFumbles viewers know only 2 holidays: Turbo Christmas and Today!
Bumbles is becoming a certified Balantuber.
EDIT: On the Kirby lore thing. Kirby's storytelling is simple, concise, and engaging. Even if you do have questions, receiving them would give a sense of "Oh, that's what it is."
Not "Wait... Seriously?"
Another EDIT: There's an MtG card called Balan, Wandering Knight. That cat's not gonna recover from that one.
After the alt art, Balan's not recovering from anything.
@@mr.unsmiley8656 How so?
@@kennydarmawan13 Because they turned Balan into an anime catgirl
@@mr.unsmiley8656 ah... I see.
Yeah, sometimes, that's the cheapest way to increase a character's appeal. Granted, it's part of an anime art group of cards. But still, a cheap way to make her appealing.
Poor Balan.
Yeah, this ones going straight into the sleep playlist
Iben (the ice lady) feels like she should’ve been the last stage before the final boss in the game, maybe just because her problem is easily the most serious and dramatic.
For the fith look, you should look at the Speedruning community, it has some interesting things to talk about
the sixth look should be fanfic writers
@@woobgamer5210I mean balan fanfic writers aren’t crazy or anything. It would be interesting for talking about the mix of nights fans in the fandom tho
Balantology is a dying field, we must preserve Balan Day for all the next generations to realize how awful Yuji Naka is
Balan Wonderworld is a zombie ex that keeps showing up at Bumbles's door on their anniversary.
Completely overlooked the fact it was 4/20 today
Can't wait for next year's Balan Day, with Jack revealing to have gotten the Speedrun World record and that Yuji Naka got arrested again for hacking the Pentagon
I was expecting you to do a review of the new Princess Peach game this time round, comparing how it succeeds where Balan failed. But this was much more interesting.
I should probably seek medical help for how excited I got when this popped into my subfeed...
Very excited for the costume tier list next Balan Day.
Man got more use out of this franchise then square enix themselves
43:42 i think its a case of "if i tell him I fuck up the timeline so bad we all might just straight up die and nothing happens but also everything does"
"Being put in a dream theater only to be coddled and made to pretend they don't have a problem is the start of a great story" I agree and I think it allready exists, it's season one of the mini series Infinity Train. As you were describing this books story I couldn't get the idea out of my head that this feels incredibly similar to the themes of season 1 of Infinity train, that of trauma/life issues being pushed aside for other things but eventually facing them and healing. All the while there is something off about the person running the show only to then be revealed that they are not the true master. Seriously go Watch Infinity Train, I skipped a lot of details so go watch it.
Someone should- only if they actually still care at this point- make an edit of Leo dancing to Cameo's "Word Up". I'd watch it!
It took four looks to do it, but I finally got what I wanted from this Balan Wonderworld series: a trauma tier list
The thing that will forever make me insane about Balan’s presentation and story is like
They DELIBERATELY CHOSE for the framing device of their ENTIRE NARRATIVE to be *Musical Theatre*
They got a few ACTUAL WEST-END PEOPLE to help with the soundtrack
They have a story here that *actually would have worked pretty well as the plot to a Musical*, with spots for individual character songs and ensemble numbers and everything
And then they did NOTHING with ANY OF THAT?????
It’s just BAFFLING??????? It’s an absolutely bizarre creative decision, why would they do this!!!
> to the tune of 100 million yen sold
In fairness, that's, like, $47.
Happy Balan Day, the most day of the year.
bumbles now officially knows more about balan wonderworld than anyone who worked on anything related to balan wonderworld.
This man is the only person keeping Balan and Yuji Naka in the public eye
Something which also links with the Kirby comparison you made - the Kirby series has 30 light novels itself, regularly making the best sellers list in Japan. So the Pink Puffball beats Balan on that front as well.
YESSS!
I was tired of rewatching the first 3 looks over and over again
Balan when i use a lightbulb to power my hamster launching machine gun to kill him ("An unexpected foe is the strongest," -Da Vinci)
Who painted the Mona Lisa?
@@segadoeswhatnintendont balan
Baa lan???
This man makes Balan Day a national holiday.
Your narration style is peak, I use your Pizza Tower vid to get to sleep easier bc I loved the detail and humour of that review so much. Keep it up man 😊
Okay, fine, I’ll rewatch all your Balan Wonderworld videos again
Ok,so uh,I wanted to take a shot at rewriting street beat and fighters back stories in a way that makes them both connected.so here:
Emma/fighter:
Her mother is a famous and torch dancer,who goes on expensive parties ,acts in movies,teaches classes,seemingly everything except actually interacting with her daughter.
Emma was an accident of whom her mother was ashamed of having,leading her to neglect her and barely acknowledge her existence,only speaking actual words to her when absolutely necessary.
Emma,sad and desperate for her mother’s love,decides she’ll take up dancing,thinking that the reason her mother loved her was because she wasn’t good enough.
So she trained every day and night,sacrificing meals any chance at making friends simply because of her desperate need for her mother’s love,isolating herself to practice a hobby she has no passion for simply because of a mother that couldn’t care less about her.
She eventually enters a dancing competition,of which she wins first place,but the judges noting that if they could,they would give the second place girl the trophy,since the way that Emma danced was immaculate,but soulless.
She also looks into the crowd to see that the spot reserved for her mother was empty.
Then queue her walking out,seeing a Tim,and encountering Leo in front of the theatre.
Leo/streetbeat:
Leo grows up in a lower middle class home with a single father.
He has a real passion for dancing,but isn’t really the best.he and his father are at odds on the topic of dancing.
Leo wants to be a professional dancer but his father doesn’t think that’s a substantial career,passively trying to steer Leo away from dancing and instead trying to fire act his towards a more…stable industry.
So Leo enters the same dancing competition as Emma after making a deal with his father that if he won,his dad would accept dancing as his sons career of choice but if he lost,Leo would need to quit dancing,abandoning his passion just because of his father.
he ends up dead last,and,unable to face his father,he ends up in the wonder world.
This gives both our protagonist clear arcs and parallels and a unifying theme of passion.
Idk if these are better but the canon backstories confuse me so I threw in child neglect and familial disagreements in there to spice things up.
Thoughts?
To think that NiGHTS into Dreams, a game released in 1996, managed to explain mental struggles in only a couple of voiceless cutscenes better than this game could in its entire runtime. NiGHTS into Dreams doesn’t require you to buy an entirely separate book to understand, and unlike Balan Wonderworld, is a game that is actually worth playing.
This should be a drinking game at this point
Balan Blunderworld really is one of the craziest pre and post-production video game stories of all time.
Square Enix only giving Yuji Naka "one chance"
The absolute terrible reception of the demo
The game bombing so hard Yuji Naka went scorched earth and tried to take Square Enix down with him
Square Enix retaliating saying Yuji Naka did insider stock trading, so he GOES TO PRISON
The Balan books containing all the missing context that made the cutscenes unintentionally hilarious
Yuji Naka getting out of prison and IMMEDIATELY going after Square Enix's throat again.
For the fourth time in a row, you have made a video on Balan Wonderland very close to my birthday. I love this.
Genuinely been looking forward to Balan day.
Digging deeper into this rabbit hole more and more is something I never knew I wanted this much.
Also, you did amazing on the book review! I already love the way you analyze games and shows (Seriously, "The Tester" reviews deserve way more views, they're so damn good), so seeing a different medium tackled by you was great to see.
Alright everyone see you again next year for when Bumbles goes into excruciating detail on the Balans wonder world speed running history!
Balan Day has come and gone and I didn’t even get the chance to decorate my room for the occasion.
Another awesome birthday present, thank Mr. Bumble McFumble
Thank you merciful bumbles for another video
Bless you Jack, you'll need it to protect you from the hell that is the (re)descent into Balan o7
What I got from this video is that Balan Wonderworld wanted to be Psychonauts and failed horribly.
eh more like NiGHTS.
One must imagine McFumbles happy
I just watched every video you've made on Balan and what a journey it's been. I can't wait for Balan Day 2025!
Jack has turned turned the dead horse into an unrecognizable slurry at this point...and I'm here for it!
Considering this is a Squeenix property, it feels like Streetbeat was trying to be a Cloud Strife or a Neku Sakuraba without understanding what made those characters engaging instead of annoying
They're both also very secluded people but they work much better because their entire story forces them out of their comfort zone and has them gradually open up to the people around them
Often times their rougher personality traits ends up coming back to bite them and that's something they have to reckon with
Streetbeat is just kind of allowed to be an asshole
I love the malaphors you use in these videos man. I always get excited to see your videos on my TH-cam channel!
Oh my god it’s Balan Day. And Lucina’s Birthday. And Yelan’s birthday. And-
11:48 ah yes, a Skyrim reference. Incredible work Jack.
NEW ALMOST HOUR LONG BALAN VIDEO JUST DROPPED!! I gotta saves this for a good meal.
I love these videos lol excited there's another to add to the saga
I've been looking forward to this the whole month
Reminds me of how Mary Skelter: Nightmares was criticized for making the exploration team from the tie-in book be the reason you progress through the final dungeon.
Unlike Balan, the series managed to find a workaround for this in the very next game- they made the members act as NPCs in a prequel and developed them there for game only fans. The fact that Mary Skelter 2 unlocks a Nightmares remake and 2 and Finale are miles better than Nightmares is also a nice bonus.
Happy palindrome day of 4202024 and happy balan day!
I was just yesterday thinking about rewatching the first balan video, thanks for saving me
I’ve been waiting all year for this