Category: Games

The Sublime Symmetry of FF6's First Act

2013-07-18, 7:22 pm
Categories: Games, Stream of Consciousness

Well, Terra's turned pink and flown off toward Zozo, leaving me to consider the first five or so hours of FF6. In an era where episodic games are now common, it's striking that the game's first act would have made an excellent Episode 1. It doesn't just tell a satisfying story with a beginning, middle, and (cliffhanger) ending, it doesn't just introduce the premise and most of the major cast while still leaving the biggest stuff for later -- it also plays significantly differently from the rest of the game, and its plot and play beats form a brilliant mirror where the end of the act recalls its beginning.

The Empire invades Narshe, with Terra as a puppet. Terra encounters the frozen Esper, with explosive results. Terra regains consciousness and the ability to think for herself. Locke has to protect her in a battle with a tower defense element to it, with three parties defending from oncoming nonrandom monsters. Terra and Locke flee the Empire, gaining comrades along the way -- and then the party is abruptly separated. For the first time, you see events unfold through characters other than Terra -- and then everyone makes their way back to Narshe. The Empire invades, with Terra and friends defending the city; they have to defend Bannon in a battle with a tower defense element to it, with three parties defending from oncoming nonrandom monsters. Terra encounters the frozen Esper, with explosive results -- and even as she comes closer than ever to discovering who and what she really is, she loses her willpower again and becomes an unthinking beast.

Aside from that, there's the gameplay -- and, notably, a couple of things happen during this portion that don't happen again later.

First, there are the two tower defense-style battles. They're the only two in the game, which is just the right amount. The first one is easy and lets you get the hang of it; the second one's a more legitimate challenge.

There's also the "Choose a scenario" portion. While there are other parts of the game where the party is split up, there are no other occasions where you experience story developments from multiple perspectives.

And it's mostly great! Terra's scenario is pretty bland, but at least it's short. Locke's scenario is another unique piece of game; it's a puzzle that plays to his strengths as a th -- treasure hunter, and it's funny besides. Sabin's scenario is the longest and broadest of the bunch, introduces three new playable characters with tragic origin stories, and takes you through a tour of the game's various locations -- the Imperial Camp, Doma, the Haunted Forest, the Phantom Train, Barren Falls, the Veldt, and the Serpent Trench. Some of it feels half-baked -- the Forest is over in minutes, and the Serpent Trench is just a showcase for then-impressive Mode 7 animation where very little actually happens (and then you have to come back later if you want to get Mog's water dance) -- but a lot of it, like the camp sequence and the Phantom Train, is excellent.

And then there's the character balance -- this is a game that's famous for not having very much of that, but it's hard to tell in the opening act.

Each character has a unique ability -- at least, up until you get Celes and then you've got two magic-users and Terra hasn't learned Morph yet. And most of them are pretty well-thought-out.

Terra and Celes both play like Red Mages in previous FF games -- they can equip the best weapons and armor and cast both black and white magic spells, but they're not very strong as attackers yet at this point in the game, their offensive spells are middling, and their low max MP means they don't get much use out of them at any rate. Celes's Runic is pretty damned useful early in the game when she's the only magic-user in the party and it effectively nullifies bosses' magic; it's not until later in the game that it becomes basically worthless.

Edgar gets decent, but not crazy-high, damage against all enemies with the Autocrossbow. It's a pity the Bioblaster and Noiseblaster aren't much use.

Shadow gets solid-to-high damage depending on equipment, and occasionally will counter with Interceptor, which is the most damaging attack you've got at this point in the game but happens rarely enough that it's not spammy. And Shadow is squishy and dies easily. (And may randomly ditch out on you and make you restore from a save so he doesn't take that Genji Glove you put on him when he goes. That part I'm not so crazy about, but the unpredictable mercenary angle is a neat idea in theory, at least.)

Cyan is nominally a samurai but plays more like the previous games' Knight class: he does solid damage but excels at defense. Early on he's kinda like Edgar in that he's got one very good special attack and two others that aren't really much use most of the time.

Gau has immediate access to more powerful attacks and spells than anyone else in the party, but you can't control him and even if you pick a Rage like Templar that drastically boosts his defense and evade (in versions where the evade stat actually works), he's still pretty squishy.

And then there's Sabin and Locke. Who I guess, if nothing else, at least balance each other, since one is ridiculously overpowered and the other is, at this point in the game, not that damn good.

Sabin is the most overpowered character in the game. You can see where they were trying to make him something of a glass cannon like the Monks in the previous games -- he's got the high attack, high HP, can't equip good armor thing going on -- but even with weak armor he still does a pretty good job of soaking up damage, and he dishes it out like crazy. Aura Cannon is one of very few Holy-elemental attacks you get access to in the game, and it deals high damage to most enemies. And while, like Edgar and Cyan, his other two specials are inferior, they're still fairly useful -- Pummel/Raging Fist ignores defense, and he can suplex a fucking train.

Locke, by contrast -- well, he's decent enough later in the game, but early on he deals low damage, has low defense and HP, and his Steal command isn't worth using. It seems to fail about 75% of the time and, when it succeds, it's usually just a damn Potion that won't even heal the damage the party took while Locke was trying to steal from the monsters instead of killing them.

His scenario's fun as hell -- right up until the part where you start actually having to fight dudes, at which point it turns into Locke mostly being a liability while Celes does all the work.

But, Locke and Sabin aside, the characters' balance is really well-thought-out in the early going.

Course, by the time you leave Zozo you've got Espers and a chainsaw -- but that's a story for another day...

The Last Story: Flawed but Satisfying

2013-07-16, 6:35 pm
Categories: Games, Stream of Consciousness

So I finally got around to finishing The Last Story the other day. On the whole, I liked it.

It's certainly got a lot of the same old themes from Final Fantasy, as you'd expect from a game produced by Hironobu Sakaguchi where he appears to have literally just typed "Final Fantasy" into a thesaurus. There's a corrupt empire, an ancient threat from outer space, plants withering and the earth beginning to rot, a pair of starcrossed lovers from opposite sides of the tracks, and a focus on providing story explanations for game mechanics.

Many of Uematsu's themes, of the musical variety, return as well -- I heard hints of Terra, Edgar and Sabin, Gau, and Setzer in the ending alone, one of the final boss themes is a dead ringer for the FF7 boss theme, and the main theme recalls bits of Locke, Celes, and Aeris.

It's good stuff, though, and not too derivative; I'm probably primed to pick up all those little FF6 threads from all that listening to Balance and Ruin.

It's pretty standard High Fantasy genre stuff -- lots of horns and strings and timpani. It doesn't have the breadth or variety of Uematsu's 16- and 32-bit compositions, but that's a function of this game being a lot more tonally consistent than those were. I've talked in the past about how FF7 has more mood swings than a bipolar teenager. Last Story is much more steady -- there's plenty of levity to be had, but little or nothing in the way of racing giant birds or attending an opera.

For all that's familiar, it's a very different kind of game. It feels smaller in scale -- sure, there's still a cosmic threat that endangers all life on the planet, but the scope feels smaller. The game is centered around a single city -- the kind of thing that just wasn't done in JRPG's back in the '80's and '90's but which has become increasingly commonplace. More than that, the plot is intimately focused -- it's less about the events going on in the world than how they personally affect the handful of main characters.

Final Fantasy tends to focus on small ragtag parties who travel all over expansive worlds and eventually save the world. Suikoden focuses on small ragtag parties who participate in small regional conflicts and eventually gather large armies to overthrow dictators (and save the world). Last Story combines the intimacy of a Suikoden game's regional conflict with the intimacy of a Final Fantasy game's small, closely-knit party of player characters -- in a setting that's smaller than either. It's like what you'd get if a Suikoden game took place entirely inside the castle and its surrounding environs, or if Final Fantasy 7 had taken place entirely in Midgar.

And -- like a Suikoden game and unlike Sakaguchi-era Final Fantasy games -- it also creates the impression that there are more stories to tell in this world. The heroes save the world, the current threat is dealt with, but the Empire is still out there and who knows what else is going on in the world. This is the kind of game where there could be sequels set in this same world -- which is great, because that's still a rarity in JRPG's (except, recently, for Final Fantasy games that really, really don't need them, no matter how much I may have enjoyed Crisis Core), and both the main Suikoden series and the Ivalice series sadly seem to have stalled at this point.

At any rate, maybe I'll get into specific plot details another time, but for now I'm going to take a minute to talk about mechanics.

As for the gameplay, it's really quite enjoyable, but it has some warts, particularly in the boss fights.

The complexity of the combat is a good idea in theory. It's clearly designed to give a more satisfying experience than Fight-Fire-Cure.

In practice, boss fights tend to go pretty much like this:

  1. Wait for a party member to explain what the boss's weakness is.
    • They will either explain this only once, in which case you will probably miss it, or they will explain it over and over again constantly forever until you go into the menu and turn the fucking voices off.
    • Also, occasionally, the game will fuck with you by introducing a simple concept in a completely counterintuitive manner. Like explaining elemental weaknesses in a battle with an ice-elemental monster at a point where the only offensive spell your party has is an ice spell.
  2. Try to hit "A" at exactly the right moment to perform the action that you need to perform to make the boss vulnerable; hope and pray that you are facing the object you're supposed to be interacting with dead-on and the "A" button performs the action it's supposed to instead of just rolling you out of range.
  3. Repeat step 2 until the boss becomes vulnerable to normal attacks. (In my experience this usually takes about 3 successful presses of the "A" button at exactly the right moment and about 50 unsuccessful presses of the "A" button that make you roll out of range and have to try again.)
  4. And then the rest of the fight is just Fight-Fire-Cure.
  5. Unless by this point you've been whittled down so badly that Syrenne is dead and Zael is on his last life. In which case you'll need to play defensively.
    1. Run around the boss in circles like it's a turn-of-the-century shooter, except without any shooting.
    2. Whittle the boss's health down, agonizingly slowly, with your remaining mages.
    3. If you do get hit, lunge for the nearest heal circle.
    4. Hope the boss doesn't just straight up fucking one-hit kill you.

So yeah. Combat makes some interesting decisions that are really nice in theory, but really fucking tedious in actual execution. It's the sort of thing that I think really could be improved in a sequel.

And while the game uses save points (boooooo), for the most part they're employed competently; they're spaced pretty close together and the game also has checkpoint saves that are even more frequent.

In fact, this works out pretty well right up until the last boss gauntlet.

The last boss gauntlet is fucking bullshit.

It relies on hoary old JRPG artificial difficulty tropes like spacing save points too far apart. In one case, there's a series of three consecutive battles with no save points or checkpoints in-between. Die in the third one and you'll have to replay the first two. But if you give up and quit, then the next time you restore from a save you'll not only have to replay those first two battles, but the boss fight right before them, because there's no save point after the boss. There's a save point before the boss, but you can't backtrack to it after you beat him.

And the last boss gauntlet is long. From the Point of No Return where you can no longer backtrack or buy equipment (which is distinct from the previous Point of No Return, where you could no longer backtrack but could still occasionally buy equipment), it goes something like boss, save point, boss, cutscene, checkpoint save, gauntlet of tougher-than-average regular enemies, checkpoint save, cutscene, boss, boss, cutscene, save point, cutscene, boss, checkpoint save, boss's second form, save point, cutscene, checkpoint save, another cutscene that you can fast forward through but can't actually skip, boss with three forms.

And, in addition to the complaints above, the difficulty of the fights is adjusted upward by things like repeatedly splitting up your party for no real good reason, and adjusted downward by sticking those last two save points in rooms where you can indefinitely spawn monsters that are laughably easy and yield ridiculously high experience.

In short, it feels like the frequent Sakaguchi problem of a climax going out of its way to keep ratcheting things up and reminding you that this really is the climax, with actual gameplay seeming to be an afterthought.

And then the game still doesn't end. I think it's actually nice that there's something to do postgame (not just a New Game+ but an opportunity to go back to town and do sidequests or what-have-you), but by the end there really was a feeling of "Jesus Christ, when is this thing going to end?"

There is seriously another numbered chapter after the Epilogue. That is not how fucking epilogues work!

You know, I was going to do a bit here about what I liked about the plot, themes, characters, and so forth, but instead I think I'm going to go eat my leftover beer bread, watch Daily Show, and then play FF6. Suffice it to say, I like how almost nobody's pure good or pure evil. Maybe I'll come back to this later.

Guess I kinda did leave this on a gripefest. But that's misleading -- check the title! I thought the game was pretty good.

I'm the darkness, you're the starlight, and I'm burnin' up in here

2013-07-09, 8:12 pm
Categories: Games, Music, Stream of Consciousness, Tech

So here's what I've been listening to:

That's Balance and Ruin, a 5-disc collection of Final Fantasy 6 cover songs from OCRemix.

Now, I think it's still fair to say that Final Fantasy 6 is one of my two favorite games, though I suppose it probably needs an asterisk at this point.

Digression: While FF6 is a great game, it hasn't aged as well as some of its 16-bit contemporaries. Super Mario World, Mega Man X, and Super Metroid, for example, still stand as the pinnacles of their respective series and respective niches of the side-scrolling platformer genre; they're as close to perfection as a game's ever gotten, and, as years of remakes, sequels, and knockoffs have shown, are pretty damn difficult to improve on and shockingly easy to fuck up. In the Square family, I've always preferred FF6 to Chrono Trigger, but I think it's undeniable that CT's graphics and gameplay hold up better even if it's a shorter game with less-developed characters. And as for A Link to the Past -- well, that would be the other of my two favorite games, and it needs no asterisk.

The other thing that needs no asterisk? Final Fantasy 6 has my favorite video game soundtrack. Its depth and breadth are stunning; it's Uematsu at the top of his chiptune game. It's the only video game soundtrack I've ever bought, and if you name any of the 12 primary playable characters, Kefka or Gestahl, either of the airships, or for that matter most of the locations in the game, I could hum the tune off the top of my head. (And I could probably get either Gogo or Umaro, too, but I admit I might not be able to come up with both of them right away.)

Now, I love what OCRemix is but the truth is that in the past I've found their work hit-or-miss-but-mostly-miss for my tastes. The artists there, understandably, lean toward the techno/electronica style, and that's not my cuppa -- which I guess may be ironic coming from somebody who's checking out cover tunes of old video game songs in the first place.

Anyway, there's a good bit of that stuff on Balance and Ruin, but there's a whole lot else, too. There are plenty of orchestral arrangements here, and the soundtrack runs the gamut from faithful homage -- A Fistful of Nickels, by zircon, XPRTNovice, Jillian Aversa, and Jeff Ball, takes Shadow's Ennio Morricone influence to its logical conclusion with whistling, vocals, harmonica, violin, guitar, trumpet, and Jew's harp -- to riotous reinvention -- The Impresario, by Jake Kaufman and Tommy Pedrini, reimagines the Opera scene by way of Bohemian Rhapsody with a quick stop at West Side Story on the way -- to impressively effective minimalism -- Shnabubula and Gabe Terracciano cover the entire Ending Suite with nothing but a piano and violin.

At any rate, it's delightful, and the whole thing's a free download. Go to ff6.ocremix.org and you can grab a nice legal free torrent of the entire album in FLAC -- or MP3, if all this talk about SNES games has left you nostalgic for inferior 1990's technology.

You know what it makes me wanna do? Replay FF6. Random encounters and all.

But which version? The new Woolsey Uncensored Edition looks promising. On the other hand, I liked Slattery's translation quite a bit too; maybe I'll give FF6 Advance another shot. With the music patch, of course.

I should probably finish Last Story first. You know, the soundtrack's no FF6, but Uematsu's still got it.

Go, Ken, Go! -- Part 5: Settlement!

2013-07-08, 9:57 pm
Categories: Comics, Games, Politics, Stream of Consciousness

For my previous coverage, check out the Ken Penders tag. In particular, the first post has a relevant disclaimer that (1) I tend to side with creators over publishers generally and (2) I corresponded with Ken Penders in the 1990's and he was a nice guy.

Anyhow, looks like I'm a bit behind on this, but last week brought the biggest news yet: per TSSZ News, Archie and Penders have settled and the suit has been dismissed.

What I predicted in Parts 3 and 4 still holds: we'll learn some of the terms of the settlement in the coming months (we already know Ken is moving forward with The Lara-Su Chronicles so I think we can safely say he has the rights to publish original comics with Lara-Su in them); some will stay confidential. Penders v Sega and EA is still ongoing, though this puts him in a better position as it establishes that he does have standing to sue for infringement, even if it still has to be established that Dark Brotherhood infringes his copyrights.

I think it's also safe to say that Ken would be happy for Archie to continue using his characters and reprinting his stories -- so long as they pay him his share for that use. And that if, say, the echidnas stay lost in that warp ring, that's Archie's decision not to pay Penders, not Penders's decision not to let Archie pay him.

But I think there's something much bigger coming.

Penders wasn't the only guy freelancing for Archie's Mamaroneck office in the mid-1990's. And he wasn't the only guy doing it without signing a contract first.

There are potentially dozens of other Sonic alums who have been watching this case and waiting to see if they've got a shot at winning their rights back, too. Scott Shaw has already filed for copyrights on his Sonic work. He won't be the last.

Archie v Penders is over. But this is only the beginning.

Update 2015-09-24: And Penders v Sega is over too; it was dismissed in 2014. I discuss it more in Part 6.

As for Scott Shaw and other creators seeking to reclaim their copyrights in the same way that Penders did, I haven't heard any news on that front, though I suspect we won't; given how the Penders case turned out, Archie is unlikely to file any more lawsuits, and I suspect that if other creators raise similar challenges Archie will settle with them quietly without getting the courts involved. It is possible that this has already happened, though it's likely that we'll never know.

Summer

2013-06-21, 8:36 pm
Categories: Games, Stream of Consciousness, Tech, TV

Well, it's officially summer now. As opposed to three weeks ago when it wasn't summer, just a 113-degree spring.

Mostly indoors in the air conditioning lately, and catching up on TV and video games. Didn't realize I was so close to finishing Mario Galaxy when I quit playing it like 5 years ago.

Course, if it weren't for the backlog and money being a little tight at the moment, I'd be perusing the various Internet game sales on right now. GOG's got a big one, Steam has plenty of deals, the Humble Bundle has both a weekly bundle and an Android-themed bundle going right now, and Amazon has a bunch of stuff for cheap too. (That last one's an affiliate link; if you buy something through it I get a small kickback.)

I don't have the time to play the games I already have. But I picked up the free download of Torchlight and maybe I'll get to it one of these days. And I've had al little more time this past week, anyway.

The Zappas on Video Games

2013-06-18, 9:09 pm
Categories: Books, Cartoons, Games, Movies, Music, Politics, Stream of Consciousness, Tech

The benefits of being a pack rat:

Sharkey posted this on his blog in...according to the date stamp, November of 2002.

I remembered it a couple days ago and I thought, you know what? I bet I don't even have to dig through old hard drives to find it. I bet my obsessive process of backing up data and copying it over from old computer to new has survived two new computers, four different Linux distributions, and I don't even know how the hell many hard drives. (I am, after all, the guy who corrupted his hard drive when he installed Windows 98 and recovered the data in 2008.)

Anyhow, I was right. Sitting right here on my current computer, after all those moves.

(And then I get to thinking, "Wait...I've only gotten two new computers in the last decade?" But then I remember no, there's also the Mac Mini I used to have hooked up to my TV and now use as a backup server, the Win7 desktop I currently have hooked up to my TV, my laptop, my phone, my tablet, and assorted old towers that have managed to pile up in my office and get used occasionally for various purposes. Plus my wife's desktop and two laptops.)

You know, just the other day my coworkers were talking about Hoarders, and I commented that the nice thing about being a digital packrat is that the data I've been holding on to for decades doesn't take up a hell of a lot of space. My comic collection, on the other hand...

Anyhow, not the point. The point is, here's Innerview: The Zappas on Video Games, by Merl H Reagle, JoyStik, January 1983. Scanned by, and from the personal collection of, Scott Sharkey, and preserved through over a decade's worth of computer migrations by packrat Thaddeus R R Boyd.

Innerview, Page 1Innerview, Page 2

Interesting, but not altogether surprising, that games were already being scapegoated by politicians and the media for juvenile delinquency as far back as 1983.

I also love the story of Frank recording the noise in an airport arcade and then listening to it on the plane. I think he also tells the story in The Real Frank Zappa Book -- that or I've been misremembering where I read it for the past decade.

(Christ. An interview from 30 years ago which I've been copying from hard drive to hard drive for one-third of that time...)

Magic Fingers

2013-06-14, 10:00 pm
Categories: Games, Music

Speaking of covers that might not be as good as the original but can still be plenty of fun: Magic Fingers as performed by Katie Jacoby, Eric Slick, Eric Svalgard, CJ Tywoniak, and Matt Rothstein, posted by Eric Slick.

I'll be honest: it's a lot better than Ancient Stone Tablets.

Hyrule: Just Visiting

2013-06-14, 9:31 pm
Categories: Games, Stream of Consciousness

As I've said before, the upcoming Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds has me torn between excitement and cynicism. I see stuff like this

and there's a part of me that's giddy in spite of myself -- I feel excitement at how good this game could be, and trepidation at how mediocre it will probably be.

Jeremy Parish, who played the demo at E3, wrote a piece called Yoshi and Zelda Demonstrate the Trouble With Playing It Safe which articulates my concerns about the game perfectly: so far it seems to be running on nostalgia, a glitzy cover tune lacking in the genius of the original.

Could be it's just a professionally-created fangame.

So what happens when you do get a professionally-created fangame based on A Link to the Past?

As it happens, there is one: The Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets, a game for the Japanese Satellaview add-on.

It's about what you'd expect from a modestly-talented developer playing with the LttP engine: the pieces are there but they just don't fit together as well.

First of all, there's the exploration. Good big chunks of the world are covered by Fog of War as the game begins, and it doesn't feel like the world opens up naturally to you as you go so much as that you're ushered through it region by region. Part of this is simply the nature of its design -- it was designed to be played across four days, with each day revealing a different portion of the world map -- but, well, just because there's a design constraint giving it a good reason to feel confined doesn't make it feel any less confined.

Indeed, from pretty early on you're encouraged to make use of instantaneous travel rather than encouraged to hoof it across Hyrule before being given the keys to the ocarina.

But if the overworld doesn't seem to offer much that's new, the dungeons just seem perfunctory.

They're shorter, they're smaller, and they're a lot more straightforward. The puzzles are simple (though in at least one case the "push a block down a hole" bit is implemented much better than its original use in LttP's Ice Palace, one of the weakest, most convoluted puzzles in the game -- though it at least rewarded players for taking the levels out of sequence), and the thematic elements of the dungeons are gone, replaced with a weird sort of mishmash of different tilesets and bosses. Why the fuck does the Water Temple look like the East Palace inside, and have the sandworms from the desert level as its boss? Who the fuck knows?

It's not that I haven't had a bit of fun playing Ancient Stone Tablets. It's like a cover tune on open mic night -- it's fun to hear somebody new try out your favorite song, even if they're not as good as the original band.

But I haven't had any great urge to finish it, either.

Guess we'll see how the new game goes. Maybe it'll be a lot more ambitious than it looks.

Or maybe it'll be pretty much a remake with less-inspired level design. That would be a shame -- but it'd still probably be worth playing through once or twice.

Go, Ken, Go! -- Part 4: Bibliography

2013-05-21, 6:53 pm
Categories: Comics, Games, Politics, Stream of Consciousness

I think this'll round off my Ken Penders coverage for now -- maybe I'll post more when there's news; maybe I'll write a post about why I care enough about the rights to silly mid-1990's Sonic the Hedgehog comics to spend so much time and so many words on the subject, just as soon as I figure that out myself.

Anyway, here's a list of articles about Archie v Penders and the related legal disputes. I posted comments in many of these threads myself, and it's interesting (to me at least) to watch as I go from initial skepticism -- "Penders signed a contract, he had to have" -- to eventually realizing that the root of Penders's claim is that no, he didn't sign a contract, and then slowly come to believe that he's right and Archie really did forget to make him sign one.

Far and away the most legwork on this story has been done by Tristan Oliver of TSSZ News. TSSZ's coverage has been extensive, and I intend to link a few highlights here; please understand that this is by no means an exhaustive sample of everything Oliver and his associates have written on the subject. For a more thorough list, check their Penders+Copyright tag.

By the way, though: I would advise not reading the comments section on any TSSZ News story about the Penders case. The comments section is a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

(Also: My sister-in-law owns cats named "Tristan" and "Oliver". That's kinda weird.)

Ken Penders Presents... by Ken Penders, kenpenders.com, 2010-07-07. Ken's opening salvo, where he first claims that he owns or co-owns the copyrights to everything he ever wrote or drew for Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog, Knuckles the Echidna, and assorted related specials.

Has Archie Lost Rights to Sonic Reprints? by Johanna Draper Carlson, at her blog Comics Worth Reading, 2010-07-11. This is the first I heard of the story; Ken's name was a bit of a blast from the past and I was surprised to hear it in the comics news.

Ken Penders Claims Sonic The Hedgehog Rights by Rich Johnston, Bleeding Cool, 2010-07-10. The first of Bleeding Cool's long-running coverage of the case.

Archie v Penders thread at Brontoforumus, 2010-07-12 to 2013-07-09 -- this thread is assembled from all the posts I (and others, but mostly I) have written on the subject for the past several years across multiple threads. It makes for a good quick run-down to read it all end-to-end.

Archie Comics Files Federal Lawsuit Against Ken Penders, by Tristan Oliver, TSSZ News, 2010-12-01. While there had been legal wrangling prior to this, this is where the lawsuits actually started. And it is important to remember, throughout this discussion, that while fanboys continue to misstate the basic facts of the case, Archie sued Ken Penders, not the other way around. (Penders has sued Sega and EA -- we'll get to that in a bit -- but he has not sued Archie. Archie sued him.)

Penders Affidavit Offers Intimate Look At His Sonic Comics Tenure by Tristan Oliver, TSSZ News, 2011-03-03. Oliver looks over the affidavit. This is where the meat of the dispute starts to become clear: Penders is claiming he never signed a work-for-hire agreement; Archie has submitted documentation to the contrary but Penders is disputing its authenticity; Penders has other creators from the same period who back up his story. Money quote: "First, the signatures are not believed by me to be authentic."

Inside Ken Penders's Alleged Work for Hire Agreements with Archie by Tristan Oliver, TSSZ News, 2011-03-07. Oliver highlights the contracts Archie has submitted as evidence, and notices a number of discrepancies in them.

Ken Penders Files Lawsuit Against Sega, Electronic Arts by Tristan Oliver, TSSZ News, 2011-06-01. As the name implies, this is the filing of Penders v Sega and EA, over the game Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, which features characters who resemble the Dark Legion from Ken's Knuckles comics.

Inside Ken Penders’s Copyright Lawsuit Against Sega, EA by Tristan Oliver, TSSZ News, 2011-06-03. More detail on the suit, notably including Penders's allegations that BioWare approached him about helping develop Sonic Chronicles, which would certainly imply they were familiar with his work and the Dark Brotherhood's resemblance to the Dark Legion is not coincidental.

The Ken Penders/Archie Comics Lawsuit Continues by Rich Johnston, Bleeding Cool, 2011-06-24. More coverage of the contracts Archie submitted as an exhibit in the case, and Penders's claim -- with support from Scott Shaw and Elliot S Maggin -- that the contracts are illegitimate.

Coming Soon in 2012, by Ken Penders, kenpenders.com, 2011-12-01; Ken's statement of intent to publish his characters in his own comics, without Archie or Sega (or Sega's trademarks). At the time of this writing the thread has posts in it on up through last October; a lot of it is just Ken going in circles patiently trying to explain copyright and trademark law to his forum trolls, but if you can get through it there's a lot of edifying information on the claims he's making in the case and the legal tack he's taking with them.

Ken Penders To Publish Sonic The Hedgehog Characters On His Own by Rich Johnston, Bleeding Cool, 2011-12-04; a response to the above post. The comments thread had some interesting discussion and links related to how Archie handled the TMNT license; the TMNT Adventures comic ended around the same time the Sonic comic started, though unfortunately it's no longer up and only part of it is available on archive.org.

Inside the Archie v. Penders Pre-Trial Report by Tristan Oliver, TSSZ News, 2012-02-13. Notes some of the names on the witness list; a number of former Archie editors and freelancers were slated to testify and corroborate Ken's claim that Archie did not make him or other Sonic freelancers sign work-for-hire agreements.

Penders Case: Scott Shaw Claims Copyright to his Archie Sonic Work by Tristan Oliver, TSSZ News, 2012-03-20. Includes an affidavit from Shaw, as well as one from Maggin saying he never signed a work-for-hire agreement for an issue he did of Archie's Super Teens around the same time.

Ken Penders Stops Diamond From Distributing Sonic Collections by Rich Johnston, Bleeding Cool, 2012-09-14. This was an early sign that Penders's claims were causing trouble for Archie; in the months since Archie has continued to put out reprints of Penders's Sonic work through Diamond, but among other measures it's altered covers so that his characters don't appear on them.

Settlement Terms Reached in Archie v. Penders Copyright Case by Tristan Oliver, TSSZ News, 2012-12-04. For a minute there, it really looked like it was almost over.

Flynn Addresses Altered Sonic #244; Fans Look To Penders Settlement by Tristan Oliver, 2012-12-27. A recent issue of Sonic the Hedgehog has most of the Knuckles the Echidna supporting cast sent through a Warp Ring and effectively written out of the series indefinitely. Notably, the characters in question are among those Penders created and is seeking to claim copyright on.

Archie Fighting Proposed Dismissal of Penders Copyright Case by Tristan Oliver, TSSZ News, 2013-03-27. And then the talks broke down and Penders moved for dismissal. In one of my favorite legal filings ever, Archie's lawyer argues against dismissing the case with prejudice because this would be, and I quote, "greatly prejudicial".

Penders Counsel Asks Court to Ban Knuckles Archives #4 Sale, Related Material in Dispute by Tristan Oliver, 2013-04-19. Ken's tightening the screws and pushing for an injunction; the judge has not made a decision yet.

Archie Desperate To Settle, But Can’t Without Sega – The Latest In The Ken Penders Sonic Comics Case by Rich Johnston, Bleeding Cool, 2013-05-09. A fantastic transcript of a May 2 court session; the judge quotes Laurel and Hardy but the transcript reads more like an Abbott and Costello routine. Counsel for both Archie and Penders state that they want to settle but that they haven't been able to get Sega to sign off on their terms.

And here we stand -- there's been no news since. The judge granted both parties more time to bring Sega to the table to approve their settlement, and that's the last we heard; neither Bleeding Cool nor TSSZ News has posted any updates on the case since.

I suspect all sides are hoping to settle rather than go to trial. If they settle, most of the terms will be private. But if talks break down, the case will go to trial. And from there, probably an appeal by whichever side loses. This could stretch on for years more. But like I said yesterday, I hope it doesn't -- I hope it gets settled on terms that are favorable to Ken.

Of course, while that would close the book on Penders's case, it wouldn't preclude all the other Sonic freelancers from that era from coming forward with claims of their own. As we've seen, there are lots of creators making the same claims Ken has -- and if he gets a settlement, they'll be angling for settlements of their own.

Stay tuned...

Update 2013-07-09: Archie v Penders has been settled. Two more related links:

It's Over. by Ken Penders, kenpenders.com, 2013-07-01. Ken announces that he is moving forward with The Lara-Su Chronicles.

Judge Officially Dismisses Archie v. Penders Case by Tristan Oliver, 2013-07-02. TSSZ News confirms that the case has been settled and the suit dismissed.

Update 2015-09-24: I'm late on this, but I recently found out that Penders v Sega et al was dismissed (due to a mistake in how the paperwork was filed, not due to any decision on the merits of the case itself).

TheAmazingSallyHogan has the most thorough summary of both cases that I have seen to date; it is well worth reading in its entirety.