Naruto: Battle for Leaf Village

After a hurricane and power outage, we now return to a regularly scheduled update.  Just in time for Naruto's return to Toonami/AS, here's the best Naruto game Cartoon Network ever put up on their website:  Battle for Leaf Village.

Play Naruto: Battle for Leaf Village @ Toonami: Lost Data

(Select one of many levels.)

This is one of Toonami's more complicated games.  Each level has its own XML config file which controls enemy waves and map tiles.  Another file controls enemy and player stats such as maximum amount of health and the amount of damage attacks cause.  Naruto can collect different weapons for a more powerful attack, but with a downside that the weapon must recharge before reuse.



(Snakes. Why'd it have to be snakes?!)

If Naruto proves a success in the new Toonami, then in four years we may get new episodes. And then who knows? Maybe a new game... that's not on a PlayStation or XBox.

Naruto: Ninja Survival

Naruto and the gang return for this near exact duplicate of Star Students.  The only real difference is that the game takes place later in the series during the forest test sequence.

Play Naruto: Ninja Survival @ Toonami: Lost Data
(Sakura: somewhat more competent than Naruto.)

There's not much to say other than it was difficult to upload due to the FTP program screwing up the file transfer.

Naruto: Star Students

The Naruto series received four web games or so, nearly matching the likes of Dragon Ball Z, Justice League, or Samurai Jack.  However, since Naruto came later in Toonami's life, it's games were relatively more complicated and consisted of multiple files (Flash SWF, MP3s, and XML config files) as opposed to lone Shockware DCR files.

Star Students is a vertical scrolling action game.  Choose from Naruto, Sasuke, or Sakura.  Collect blue orbs in order to use special attacks.  Fight Haku and Zabuza.  Play the almost identical sequel:  Ninja Survival.

Play Naruto: Star Students @ Toonami: Lost Data

(Naruto keeps his hands stiffly at his side while three ninjas attack him. This is probably why he had such problems passing tests.)

And don't forget to watch new episodes of Naruto on Cartoon Net... er... Disney X... er... DVD!  Support both the creators, VIZ Media, and the straight-to-DVD market!

Gauntlet of Doom

Superman and Batman team up to take down some sort of menace... alien twins who may or may not be from the comics.  They definitely aren't from the cartoon shows.

Given that Superman is super-humanly strong and nearly invincible, it seems a little unfair to make Batman fight polar bears.

Help Batman punch polar bears @ Toonami: Lost Data

(Superman could probably squash these into red paste.)

Use the Bat-computer @ Toonami: Lost Data

(Superman does not think highly of Bruce's Bat-computer.)

It's not necessary to play every episode of the game.  Nothing is shared between them.  The choice of hero doesn't even seem to matter.

Bring Back SVES

I tried to make my own Toonami, but my obsession with gambling and Craigslist prevented me from completing the project.  Also, I have difficulty keeping track of anime and such on YouTube.

Perhaps I should switch to trying to make my own SVES.  It never had an online component such as Toonami Reactor or Jetstream, but there's no time like the present...

QoS Player Update

I've still been working on the QoS Player and there have been some improvements:

• Tool tips on Graphical User Interface, including time code on progress/video bar.
• Large enough to be readable on HDTVs.
• Clicking on the progress bar now works correctly.
• There was an error when clicking on earlier time segments of the video.  It was basically impossible to use the progress bar.
• Rewrote code to make it easier to maintain/develop.
• Everything works better due to use of events and listeners as opposed to flags and loops.
• Controls now resize correctly/easier.  scaleX/scaleY are used to make sure the controls are correctly sized.
• YouTube quality control changed to a stepper since the combo box didn't resize correctly.
• Autoscrolling on the playlist pane now works correctly.
• The playlist pane now also shows the length of videos (in HH:MM:SS format).
• Flash quality can now by set by right-clicking on the progress bar when video is paused.
• May add its own stepper later.
• Delay publishing of videos with a PHP file.
• A watermark can be added and displayed over videos.
• Will open a URL when clicked upon.
• It's almost in a workable/releasable state.

 Check it out:  http://lostdata.comuv.com/~qosplayer2/~index2.html

New Archive File

Since MegaUpload went down, a new game archive file has to be posted somewhere.  It doesn't include just games anymore, but anything Toonami or Cartoon Network-related.  Most items were found in the Internet Archive, but an English copy of Hi-Hi Puffy Treasure Island and a Megas XLR game were retrieved from foreign Cartoon Network websites.

Mediafire should be a good host for now: 
http://www.mediafire.com/?rbmt9kfblep72wl

Some new content in the archive includes:
Batman & Superman Adventures:  World's Finest:  Gauntlet of Doom.
A Megas XLR game (Final Battle -- from a non-U.S. Cartoon Network website).
A Moltar comic (from http://nightmare-hq.com/Toonami/).
A Transformers game from the Toonami UK website (Battle for Megatron).
A Teen Titans game (Battle Blitz).
Hi-Hi Puffy Treasure Island and Ninja Rock (Not Toonami, but some fun games).
Scuba Jo-Jo game from the Powerpuff Girls.

Plus any non-game content that wasn't included in the earlier version.

QoS Player

I've been working on a custom YouTube player as an improvement over YouTube's default player.

Its purpose is mainly to make watching video (subtitled or not) easier. The left and right arrow keys rewind and fast forward by ten seconds, respectively. This differs from YouTube's default player settings of rewinding/fast forwarding by ten percent of the video's length.

This might be used in a revived Reactor, but it needs a lot of work to get it to that point. Inserting Toonami interstitials by some method shouldn't be too hard, but keeping track of everything is difficult. The solution may be to simplify it by putting the interstitial/bump code in JavaScript.

The title comes from Quality of Service. It attempts to avoid some of YouTube's more annoying problems. It tries to force YouTube to devote more bandwidth by restarting the video if it loads too slowly. It currently can't be turned off, so this might be a problem for slow connections.

Future features may include: alerting the user when a video finishes loading or allowing the video to fully load before playing (or load to some point before playing).

See keyboard controls and embedded player test @ Lost Data.

(It's surprising that Shinya Arino can beat some of the hardest games ever made, but still fails at the occasional Mario game.)

Mystery Possibly Solved

A while back, I posted some images of an apparent lost level of Toonami Lockdown. I've come to the conclusion that they weren't a lost level, but a completely new game bearing the name "Toonami Lockdown".


(Not seen in the U.S.)

The UK received an airing of the Lockdown event, but it apparently got its own custom version of the Lockdown game. Unfortunately, I never played this game, few if any U.S. viewers played it or were even aware of it, and UK Toonami fans didn't visit Toon Zone or any other common U.S. Toonami hangouts.


(Cool equipment not available in the U.S.)

There's no trace of the game files in the Internet Archive, so the likelihood of recovery is non-existent.

The only other possibility is that these screens are only mockups. These were produced as previews for Cartoon Network to see what kind of game they would be buying. If so, the finished product was quite different.

Google lists Playerthree as a United Kingdom website, so the first hypothesis is probably correct. Playerthree most likely adapted Lockdown's art assets into an action game rather than a turn-based, RPG-like game.

The Playerthree website recently went through a redesign and any mention of Lockdown was removed. Unfortunately, the Internet Archive didn't pick it up either, so these images and my previous post are all the evidence that remains of the alternative Lockdown.