Did we miss a page? Or did Xob pull a super-villain cliché and slip out the back while Plok beat a hasty retreat the other way? I'm slightly confused...

Comment by Jo Li KMC, added Fri, 24 Apr 2015 01:35:57 GMT

What happened between Issues #75 and #76?

Comment by Guest StarBoy91, added Fri, 24 Apr 2015 01:59:02 GMT

Plok escaped from Zob at the end of #75, so Zob decided to take the queen off somewhere safe. Nothing funny happened between that one and this one.

Comment by Ste Pickford, added Fri, 24 Apr 2015 07:57:48 GMT

Lured? Who's this trickster? If it wasn't PLOK then was he framed? Gasp!

Comment by Guest Nick, added Fri, 24 Apr 2015 17:56:02 GMT

Or maybe Plok was sleepwalking. You know, for the sequel on N64 that never came. And thus forgot all about it. And then fainted back in his chair when Wetrix was going on.

Or did Plok do something before his game, but after Zob's game, that nobody wants anybody to know about, which is why he more or less murdered everybody else on his island for doing something as pointless as raising flags (although Rockyfella got better)?

Comment by Guest Nathan, added Fri, 24 Apr 2015 20:05:40 GMT

Zob is quite callipygous

Comment by Guest trance, added Sat, 25 Apr 2015 01:51:53 GMT

I'd love to be wrong with this, but somehow this episode, as well as the somewhat jolty and awkward jump to it from the last one, look a bit like a cop-out to just cut the story short at this point, and that we might not see any new episodes for some time...

Comment by Guest Guest, added Sat, 25 Apr 2015 10:19:08 GMT

I understand that you wanted to have some type of ending for volume 3 but I believe it would have been better if the last strip of that volume would have still taken place in the cave (for example like Plok and company fleeing from Zob). Because for the start of the next volume it wouldn't have felt as awkward if there had been a time jump. If it was necessary for Plok to be at his house so fast, you could have reintroduced the saw item which would have catapulted him to that destination in a jiffy (the slow Wubba would have obviously been left behind for some time, well you could have even added a smoking joke again). I'm sure this would have taken at least another eight panels to convey the plot but it would have been a more satisfying conclusion to the cave part.

The queen's body has changed - in the beginning it was kinda warty like the back of a toad and now the body appears more worm-like. For a queen she also appears to be rather dependent instead of being someone in charge...

I do like that Plok is shown in an as of yet never before seen angle.

I hope that my objections seem more constructive than harsh - the strip has been a nice little part of my life for the previous two years.

Comment by NameThatNobodyTakes, added Sat, 25 Apr 2015 11:37:14 GMT

It's definitely not about to end! We have the next two scripts written. I occasionally find I don't have the time or energy to draw a new strip some weeks, and I've not managed to get ahead with any strips pre-drawn yet, so if I slack off, we miss a week. I know that the designs of some of the characters have changed a bit, and it's sort of deliberate. Well, not deliberate, but I'm not trying too hard to avoid it. I think my drawing is improving slightly each week, and as I draw the characters again and again I'm finding little ways to improve them or refine them, and I don't want to stop that happening by limiting the look of each character to exactly how they looked the first time I drew them. I'm sort of giving myself some leeway to improve, if that makes sense.

Comment by Ste Pickford, added Sat, 25 Apr 2015 11:45:44 GMT

So, back on the subject of resurrecting the original Plok for a new generation:

As of yesterday, the fabled RPG Maker 2003 (the last one to use a Final Fantasy-style side-view battle system instead of a Dragon Quest-style first person one) finally saw an official English release on Steam. This might seem like a tangent, but reading through the forums brings something interesting to light:

This translation - and a huge number of accompanying improvements - was accomplished without ANY access to the original source code. In fact, while they don't use the exact phrasing, they admit that they HACKED THE EXE to implement the required changes.

So, basically, being in the EXACT SAME BOAT as Plok didn't stop them from not only releasing it in English, but making a BETTER VERSION. Keep that in mind. ;)

Comment by Guest Ryusui, added Sat, 25 Apr 2015 20:25:59 GMT

@Ryusui:

Nice find! I seriously hope the Pickfords take the initiative to re-release Plok on multiple platforms. I'd also like to see a Steam release, which I would pay for in a heartbeat.

Seriously, just contact ZSNES and bang out a ROM+emulator combo and release it on Steam.

Comment by Brad Silvia, added Sun, 26 Apr 2015 01:04:10 GMT

I just read somewhere, and found out, that you were actually part of Rare in the 80's and 90's.

I bet you guys were banging your heads against the wall for not staying with that (once) legendary developer, until 2002.

Comment by Guest Nathan, added Sun, 26 Apr 2015 07:20:01 GMT

@Ste

I think it's alright that you don't dogmatically force yourself to a certain design and leave room for future improvement - I just thought that the body change is quite drastic but I don't really disapprove of the new design (actually I think it looks better and is more fitting to the queen's head). It's also quite noticeable that the drawing has improved since the beginning - despite Plok being quite simple design-wise you still manage to come up with interesting poses for the character.

@Nathan

If they would have stayed with Rare I believe that Plok might only exist in concept drawings and in the unreleased Fleapit game. Also who would know the Pickfords today if they would stuck with Rare? The only people I know who worked for Rare are the Stamper brothers and David Wise. When I already mention David Wise - In an interview he did years ago he mentioned Plok's soundtrack as being inspirational to him:

http://www.vgmonline.net/davidwiseinterview/

Comment by NameThatNobodyTakes, added Sun, 26 Apr 2015 18:43:50 GMT

Or, had Plok been released had they stayed with Rare, it would have been a second-party Nintendo published title, and then become butchered by Microsoft 10 years later.

Comment by Guest Nathan, added Sun, 26 Apr 2015 18:53:08 GMT

NOW, will Suki appear in the next volume?

Comment by Guest Robbie Walker, added Sun, 26 Apr 2015 22:40:07 GMT

Okay, where did Rockyfella and Wubba gone? Did they left when Plok went into the boss battle? Hey, guys, where are you?! You could at least try to help Plok out. Even becoming a summon or a assist trophy for Plok would have help.

Zob first priority is to save the queen, he can catch Plok later...if he can.

@ NameThatNobodyTakes, wow, I didn't know about that. If they make the sequel to Plok would Dave Wise make the music for that game?

Comment by Guest WJC, added Mon, 27 Apr 2015 12:46:09 GMT

No.

Keep Tim and Geoff Follin. If they want to do a sequel to some obscure SNES game that was discarded due to horrible box-art, a dumb name, a main character that looks sort of like some Klansman, but painted yellow and red, as well as releasing at a time where Sonic clones were going left to right, and some people thinking that this game was another one, as well as a severe lack of advertising.

Despite the fact that this is one of the best SNES games of all time, but nobody plays it, and remains obscure.

Comment by Guest Nathan, added Mon, 27 Apr 2015 17:44:17 GMT

@Brad Silvia

Never use znes, it is horribly outdated and very inaccurate. Byuu who created Bsnes which was renamed to Higan, is the one you would want to contact for the most accurate snes emulator.

Comment by Guest VioletFox, added Tue, 28 Apr 2015 14:37:06 GMT

ZSNES, the one emulator which made one of the hardest levels in Donkey Kong Country 2, even harder, due to rotating barrels that never stop. Ever.

But Plok had no problems in ZSNES.

Comment by Guest Nathan, added Wed, 29 Apr 2015 00:03:57 GMT

Exactly. I played PLOK on zsnes at school for years. It's what kept me going...

Comment by Guest Nick, added Wed, 29 Apr 2015 00:58:57 GMT

@ Guest VioletFox:

Say that to Blizzard who contacted the ZSNES team to help them re-release Rock n Roll Racing. You can download it from their Battle.net website and check the credits if you don't believe me.

Comment by Brad Silvia, added Wed, 29 Apr 2015 03:39:57 GMT

I would love to, that is sad.

If you want bad audio emulation, go for zsnes. Yes zsnes was great at the time but it was overshadowed by better and still updating emulators long ago. It would be a waste to spend all the time licensing the snes plok, and then just use zsnes. Who knows what sort of errors could come about with thousands of people playing it. Doesn't everyone deserve to play Plok at it's best. Why settle for zsnes when higan is better in everyway, even if you don't have a great computer you can run snes9x.

I am not trying to be rude, I just don't understand why anyone would want a much more inferior emulator running their games.

Comment by Guest VioletFox, added Wed, 29 Apr 2015 06:10:40 GMT

@Nathan, I love for Tim and Geoff Follin to do the music for Plok again if they do a sequel. It would be great!

Comment by Guest WJC, added Wed, 29 Apr 2015 12:44:37 GMT

@ Guest VioletFox:

But how willing would the Higan/Bsnes team be willing to help out a developer who wants to re-release an old game?

Comment by Brad Silvia, added Wed, 29 Apr 2015 15:36:12 GMT

What exactly IS different about the ZSNES Plok compared to the SNES?

Besides the upscaled resolution (which is a plus and not a minus)?

Comment by Guest Nathan, added Thu, 30 Apr 2015 00:05:47 GMT

@Brad Silvia

Well Higan is licensed under GNU General Public License, so as long as the modified source code is released as well, it should be free to use for this. They could try contacting Byuu anyways, for help or other various things. It seems like the main problem is still, finding the current holders of plok on snes.

@Nathan

I assume you mean the difference between on snes and any emulator. Well in theory, nothing other than a higher quality video. With proper rgb cables or component cables on snes its pretty similar to emulators with bi-linear filters. Also lots of various features, like save states and cheat codes.

Comment by Guest VioletFox, added Thu, 30 Apr 2015 06:47:19 GMT

@Nathan

So funny that you mentioned that level in Donkey Kong Country 2. Back in my childhood I wasn't able to beat that level and when I played it as an adult on ZSNES I still wasn't able to beat it because I was totally unaware and/or forgot that the barrels weren't supposed to rotate ad nauseum. A few years ago I still managed to beat it and was so proud of it when I realised that ZSNES made that even harder due to inaccuracy.

As for Plok: I've beat it multiple times on ZSNES now and can't remember it being any different than the experience on the actual console but of course I could be wrong. I think this is the perfect incentive to play the game on higan again. (I always thought that the second Bobbins Brothers boss fight was absurdly difficult at that point in the game).

Comment by NameThatNobodyTakes, added Thu, 30 Apr 2015 07:44:54 GMT

@ Guest VioletFox:

As has been discussed in a past comic, the current holders to the copyright of Plok for SNES are the Pickfords :)

http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v1=1&ti=1,1&Search_Arg=Plok&Search_Code=TALL&CNT=25&PID=wKsUKUG4vlagwkvUuAABGr6jN7W&SEQ=20150430085949&SID=1

Comment by Brad Silvia, added Thu, 30 Apr 2015 14:00:14 GMT

@Brad Silvia

Oh I guess I missed this news, last I had heard someone else held the rights to the snes game. I know they own the plok character.

Comment by Guest VioletFox, added Thu, 30 Apr 2015 15:01:49 GMT

I just realized that the episodes spell out "You'll be sorry whoever you are!"

...Actually it's spelled "whover" in the chapters... lol

Comment by Goyangi, added Thu, 16 Sep 2021 20:55:33 GMT