Episode 1: Disco Volante

The Gospel of John begins with one of the most famous biblical passages: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Star Beasts: Asteroid Version is basically the same thing, except instead of the Word there's a ghost and a little spiky dude, and instead of God there's Wacky Workbench "P" mix from Sonic CD (JP/EU OST).

Not really sure what's up with the music choice, but it's only a very small clip of the song before we transition to the main title screen. The animation plays out basically the same as the classic Nidorino and Gengar one. Here we also get out first look at the Super Game Boy border for this game. It looks good! I honestly was not expecting an SGB border so this was a pleasant surprise. We've got an amusing selection of critters here: They look suspiciously Grass, Fire, and Water themed, so my guess would be that these are our starters.

The title screen is exactly what you'd expect in terms of format: Our protagonist and a cycling display of various creatures. But how about that protagonist! What a great sprite and character design. It doesn't feel like a Pokémon protagonist design, it feels like someone else trying to make a protagonist for "Pokémon but cooler", which is so perfect for this kind of game. They've definitely got some very modern day feeling androgynous swag, which is arguably a bit anachronistic if this is trying to feel like an old bootleg. But I think it works out alright. Plus it means the devs didn't have to worry about programming in two different hero designs to cover different gender options. Work smarter, not harder.

I tried to avoid waiting for the demo reel to cycle through all the new critters since I would rather see them in context, but the one shown here did briefly catch my eye before I pressed Start. This dragon lookin' dude rocking the fuck out on the drums. Look at them they're so happy! Look at the little music notes!! I really hope I can use this thing on my team, I'm already a big fan. Oh, and the music here is the title theme from the Pokémon Trading Card Game game for Game Boy Color: Definitely a fitting and catchy track although not exactly an inspired choice.

Professor Cherry is the name of our guide through the introduction. Her dialogue has a much more bubbly feel than Oak's did, but the beats she covers are more or less the same. Of course, this world is populated by mysterious creatures called Star Beasts, not Pokémon. She clarified that "most people just call them Starbies", which is handy because "Beasts" is kind of hard to say really fast. The one she shows you here is the same spikey fellow from the intro, which checks out.

The name options for our protagonist are all appropriately space-themed. Which is cute, but it does make me wonder if there's any lore behind Star Beasts actually coming from space in this game. Maybe the museum in Pewter City will have something about this? Guess we'll see. For now, I decided to just go with Stella, since it was the first option and felt like a good name. And I'm glad I did too, because I'm fairly certain this bit is exclusive to you selecting Stella as a name:

Good lord, what a pull. Apparently this is what Cherry learned my full name was, but "That's. That's a lot.", so she's just going to call me Stella. This is likely completely inscrutable to most viewers here, but I do actually happen to know what this is a reference to: It's this decade old YouTube video about a man on a couch reviewing a toy violin, with some delightfully horrible translation on its packaging. (And the Angry Birds theme). It's a great video, but this absolute non sequitur gag in the first minute of gameplay really caught me off guard. This is so delightfully ROM hack. I didn't exactly find this funny, but it did make me very confident that I chose the right game to play for this. This is gonna make for great TV.

Here's the timestamped clip, incidentally.

Our rival name is only slightly less eventful. Rather than forgetting his name, Cherry asks "What name is he going by now?" which implies some exciting things about this dude. The real money is in the middle of the three name options here.

Varik is the name of the protagonist of 1991 PC-98/FM Towns RPG Brandish. More relevantly, that character's name and design were repurposed for the main character in Toby Fox's infamous "EarthBound Halloween Hack". That hack is most well known for being the origin of Megalovania, but it's also pretty widely known to have some... questionable content of its own. I am unshakably certain that this is why the name is an option here. In the vain hope that choosing it will trigger exclusive dialogue of an NPC calling me the F-slur, I went with Varik for the rival's name.

With that, the journey begins. The player's room is pretty much unchanged from the original, the only different flavor text I could find was "Pokémon books" being replaced by "Star Beast books". In general, if I ever don't mention text as being different, assume it's the same except with "Pokémon" replaced by "Star Beast" or "Starbie". I was really hoping the game console would be something different, to be honest. Still just a SNES here, though.

The only actual gameplay element in this room, the PC, actually does have a change that sticks out though: In addition to giving you a Potion, it also gives you an Antidote. This bodes... ill. Feels like the kind of thing they had to add in playtesting due to something being really obnoxious with poison. Guess we'll see.

Our mom continues to leave our gender vague. Whether this is a "purposefully ambiguous so you can project onto them" situation or a "this character is strictly nonbinary" one is not something I'm sure we'll ever learn definitively in-game. All three suggested names definitely have a more feminine feel than a masculine one, but the space theme also makes them all believable as names most of the NB people I know would think were cool.

Speaking of!

Well if there was ever any doubt about the Varik thing before, the TV's flavor text reading "A child is attacking a skeleton wearing a blue jacket. Where have I seen this before?" pretty much seals it. Kind of crazy that the film adaptation of Undertale in this setting is the Genocide route and not True Pacifist. Idk, maybe it's a spinoff show or a special or something. Does seem like the kind of episode they'd air reruns of a lot either way, so it airing right now checks out. It was also at this point that I decided to go and check the settings to turn up the text speed, and was met with a very amusing setting: There's an option for "Difficulty" but the only option is "Yes". So I guess this playthrough will be played on Yes Difficulty.

Pallet Town is about the same as ever. I don't recognize the music here, but it's quite pleasant. The "Technology is incredible!" guy is here and accounted for, and lets you know that this game has a Run button, certainly a welcome feature. The one other outdoor NPC of real note is this lady, who asks if we found our "lost dog". I do happen to know that, in the original Shi Kong Xing Shou, your dog is transformed into a Star Beast and becomes your starter, so that may be what this is referencing? Maybe these fellows on the SGB border aren't the starters after all.

Rather than a sister, our rival has an actual parental figure, although he doesn't say much of interest. The big draw here is the map on his wall, which confirms that the world is mostly just the familiar Kanto region, although with a couple additions. I tried not to really pore over every special area so as to preserve some surprise, but I did catch a glimpse of a couple names that got me pretty excited.

Before long, we step out into the grass and are stopped by the Starbie Prof herself. They did do a good job with her dialogue, it's the same broad strokes as Oak but she feels much younger and more energetic. She also says "geez" like two or three times throughout the whole next series of cutscenes, which is pretty amusing. Here in the lab, we've got our choice of three Star Balls, just as you'd expect. I guess our dog will stay lost for now.

Our options are...

The name here is pretty amusing, and all but confirms this is a creature from the original game. I don't know why you'd name this Quincy if not for it being a literal translation.

This is the one of the most "this was made for a Pokémon-like game by someone who didn't really get Pokémon's design sensibilities" designs I've ever seen. Leads me to beleive all three of these starters come from Shi Kong Xing Shou, which makes sense since the original creatures didn't come until later in the project's life.

Poor guy! How could you poach such a polite looking fellow. I decided to choose Jelleye, I think they've got a winner's spirit and a positive attitude which are essential for winning battles.

Full transparency, I'm writing this all up two days after I played through this segment of the game. With that in mind, I have genuinely zero recollection of how my brain led me to name this creature after American experimental rock group Mr. Bungle. But that's what I did. So welcome to the team, Mr. Bungle!

Funnily, Varik goes out of his way to choose the starter that beats ours here, so we know he's canonically a tryhard. Important characterization! Then we're off into our first battle.

Our starting move set perhaps gives away why that Antidote was in the PC at the beginning of the game: The rival battle being able to Poison you sounds kind of miserable. But we have that on our side this time, and it gives us a super-effective move against Quincy. Lot of good that type matchup is doing you now, buster!

Unfortunately, this did not work nearly as well in practice. Poison Sting has a measly 15 base power, so even when doubled due to the weakness it's only dealing 30 base power: Less than our opponent's Pound. Quincy also starts with Harden, which makes our Stings even more flaccid. Even when landing two(!!) critical hits, we still had to use the Potion to win the match, but win it we did. And our reward for reaching Level 6 could not have made me more excited.

At this point I was begging and pleading on my knees. Please please please let this game have unmodified RBY Wrap mechanics. I'll spoil for you now: It does, and I'm absolutely thrilled. Wrap is so funny in RBY, and the computer opponents aren't gonna get annoyed at me wasting their time like OU ladder players, so this is the perfect chance to use it. I'm not sure how fast Mr. Bungle is, but if I can build some paralysis support into this team and find a couple more Wrap users, we might just be off to the races.

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