Tag: fighting games

Writing buddy

As I type this, my cat is curled up on the back of the couch near my head, snoring.  This entry goes out to her.

grimalkin, noun –  A domestic cat–particularly, an old female cat.

Learned from:  BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger (Playstation 3, Arcade, XBox 360)

Developed by Arc System Works

Published by Aksys Games (2008)

For fighting games, the BlazBlue series has always had a rather fleshed out story mode.  Granted, after a couple entries, it stops making much sense, but it certainly is deep.  A lot of the characters have extensive backstories that color their interactions with one another.  Ragna and Jin are extreme examples of feuding siblings, Litchi and Arakune were lovers back when Arakune was still human (at least, in Litchi’s eyes), and the once-great hero, Hakumen (who’s now a living suit of armor), hates the mad scientist, Kokonoe.  Kokonoe also happens to be a catgirl (because, Japan), which has earned her the derisive nickname of “Grimalkin” from Hakumen.  He doesn’t seem to hate any of the other cat-people in the game though, so at least he’s not a racist.

kokonoe

I should point out that Kokonoe has a split tail, technically making her a nekomata: a Japanese mythological creature that’s essentially a house cat that’s lived for a very long time.  So, maybe she’s older than she looks.

Happy Easter

As a kid, the whole Easter Bunny thing never made sense to me, because rabbits clearly don’t lay eggs.  As I grew older, their roles as symbols of fertility became clearer, which tie strongly into Easter’s pre-Christian roots, so it started to make more sense.  But in the spirit of my youthful confusion, here’s a word that references a completely different nonsensical belief regarding what hatches from what.

anatiferous, adj. –  Producing ducks or geese.

Learned from:  Skullgirls (PS3, Android, iOS, PC, PS4, Switch, XBox 360, XBox One)

Developed by Reverge Labs

Published by Autumn Games, Konami (2012)

Skullgirls has the distinction of being one of the quirkiest fighting games I’ve ever played, from its character designs, to its old-timey theater aesthetic, to the fact that every combo has an associated descriptor.  For example, a 7-hit combo is “Lucky,” while an 18-hit combo is “Barely Legal,” and so on.  For some reason, a 32-hit combo is “Anatiferous.”  It’s inexplicable in the game, and even the history of the word fails to shed any light on the reasons why it’s there.

See, at one point in time, it was believed that barnacle geese hatched from barnacles on the sides of ships.  As if that weren’t weird enough, people somehow got the notion that the barnacles themselves grew on trees, and dropped off into the water, before floating over to ships and attaching themselves.  Because geese hatching from barnacles hanging from trees would just be silly.  I marvel at what kind of worldview must have prevailed at that time, to not only come up with this idea, but to somehow make it stick.

barnacle_goose

Even the goose is unimpressed by its origin story.