Remember Game Review #1: Kirby: Squeak Squad, one of our first ever articles on the blog? Of course you don’t; The quality of articles didn’t get to “memorable” levels until about two days later. (So memorably, in fact, that we can still feel the waves of the Pretty Cure Content Flood of Summer 2017 to this day; At this point, we might as well give Cure Marine her own pillar/merge it with the Sailor Moon one…)
So what separates that simple, humble review of a Kirby game from our many great articles after it? Well, what if we told you it was an awkward, early article that suffered from being rushed? Sure, the game-play part of the review turned out okay, but the critical research failures within the review were about the game’s LORE.
Yeah, that’s right; Kirby: Squeak Squad‘s lore is a lot deeper than it looks, and -like the original article mentions- is not very noticeable in the game, for you see… Everything’s actually in Squeak Squad‘s manga adaptation!
Yes, it’s real, and some of it’s even been scanned/translated by fans before. (Keyword here being “some.” The sites and their manga sections have been inactive for years, so I wouldn’t expect more to pop up anytime soon…)
First off, the manga goes over time and time again that Kirby is not evil. For example, -rather than being up everyone over cake- here’s Kirby spreading the wealth of Maxim Tomatoes and Invincible Candies with Dreamland’s residents, making every man a king comparable to the likes of Dedede in the process.
Speaking of King Dedede, Kirby also offers the great king parts of the plot’s strawberry shortcake if he helps look for it; Kirby sure is a straight up honest guy!
For a game commonly nicknamed “Kirby’s Fucking Pissed”, the manga is somehow a lot calmer; Even the “treasure chest that contains the cake/villain” part of the plot is more sugary-sweet than what one would’ve seen in the game!
[Pictured: What Kirby keeps assuming what happens to the cake every time anyone takes it.]Of course, we know what you’re really here for; RATS. Don’t worry, they make plenty of appearances throughout the manga adaptation of the game they star in.
Even Kirby himself liked Squeak Squad’s very own rat clan enough to try and join them at one point in the manga!
He already had the Rats Mix-tape; Joining the Rat Clan was only the next logical step!
There still might not be any Escargoon in the game’s manga, but to say that Kirby: Squeak Squad doesn’t have a lot of lore for a Kirby title is simply a mistake; Squeak Squad has as much of a story as any other title, you just have to know where to look for it!
This article was brought to you by Fivebuddz: Buttbuddz-quality freelancing for only $5 of the Buttbuddz budget! (Or, alternatively, over 500 jelly beans.)
For as long as there’s been SpeedChat Plus, there’s been Toon Valley. Despite having gone through many names over the years, it’s become an infamous staple of Toontown Online; Whether one has always known it as Nutty River, or Vibrant Valley, everyone can always agree that it’s almost like a state of mind among the game’s player base.
And despite Disney’s noblest intentions with implementing the chat system, nobody has ever used SpeedChat Plus for it’s intended purpose; Actually planning things.
However, with Toontown Rewritten‘s newest 2.0.0 update and the game finally leaving beta, one of the many changes the team made to current build of their Toontown remake was renaming all of the districts again. What was wrong with names like Colorful Canvas, Stencil Steppe, and Acrylic Acres? Those were perfectly fine district names!
A hopefully-intended side effect of renaming the districts was getting rid of the Vibrant Valley residents; Well, it worked. Sort of. They got rid of Vibrant Valley, but they couldn’t get rid of the Vibrant Valley; It’s just been displaced from its home-district once again, now wandering around from Blam Canyon to Zoink Falls in search of its new namesake and home.
So what’s Toon Valley’s latest incarnation then? Problem is, it’s a lot tougher than normal to find out, as its former populous is currently split up among Toontown’s many districts. Just as quickly as they’ve been displaced, though, they’ve just as quickly narrowed their choices down for their newest home.
First off, they’re not gonna pick a SpeedChat-only district; That would completely defeat the point of being Toon Valley. After all, one can’t make clans or invite people to one’s lousy game show with the default SpeedChat. This means that we know for certain it’s not Boingbury, Gulp Gulch, or Whoosh Rapids; You can’t become Toon Valley if you don’t have the chat system needed for Toon Valley to begin with!
However, you can buy the “I wish I had Speedchat Plus” phrase from the catalog for 100 jellybeans.
Another clue to figuring out which district would be the newest incarnation of Toon Valley is its color: Blue districts are barren worlds, free from the influence of the Valley, and -luckily for us- make up the majority of the districts. (Because how many people are on Toontown at any given moment, really… Maybe a few thousand at most?)
…As for the one red district that always seems to show up in game, well… There’s a reason it’s considered “full”; It’s currently being used as Toon Valley! Think of as the game doing you a favor by not letting you into, for an example based on the screencap below, Bounceboro, at that very moment.
This is an accurate reflection of how Toontown districts work in game.
Another thing to keep in mind is what time you’re playing the game as well; If it’s too early in the morning or too late at night, not a lot of people are going to be online, and as a result, it would be harder for Toon Valley to keep a stable hold on a district; At worst, maybe you’ll just find a small pack of brutes, but you WON’T be finding any massive brute-conventions that end up covering most of Toontown Central.
If -for some unknown reason- you actually want to go to Toon Valley, the afternoon and evening would be your best bets on finding its newest host district. (Do keep in mind that both the game, AND this article are following American time zones, so going in the afternoon/evening might not work for everyone, everywhere.)
With all of that said, you have successfully found the newest incarnation of Toon Valley! …Or, at least in theory, you would have found it; The real question is whether or not it holds up in practice. Yeah, that’s right; We’re gonna go to Toon Valley!
…Oh god, we’re gonna go to Toon Valley.
For our mission, we’re gonna be sending a RAT, a protector of Toontown Central’s streets, to the newest incarnation of Toon Valley.
We were gonna send in the Rat Clan’s giant rat, but he’s been MIA for awhile…
You see, Rat Jack is already experienced in dealing with Vibrant Toons; He and his boss, Giant Rat, have encountered cats, and even a hacker before! If Jack’s dealt with some of the worst Vibrant Valley had to offer, then surely he can navigate his way through its newest incarnation, right?
…Wait, what do you mean that Bounceboro’s TTC, the only red district in the game at the time, was completely barren!?
“Normally, you’d see toons all of the toons meet up in the middle, but nobody’s here today.” – Rat Jack, after teleporting back to Buttbuddz HQ.
We sent another one of our toons, Peony, to the other playgrounds that Rat Jack was unable to cover, and as it turns out… The reason Bounceboro’s been red all day was because of a an all-day beanfest located in Donald’s Dreamland!?
Well, at least I’m finally getting paid to write articles.
But when all hope seemed lost, it turns out that Toon Valley was in actually Thwackville (a green district) at the time! Rat Jack couldn’t believe it; the Vibrant Valley he knew before was still alive. Perhaps not as alive as it once was, but it certainly was alive.
Seeing how quiet it was at the time, I don’t think you missed anything.
When Rat Jack returned to the Buttbuddz HQ a second time, he did mention that Thwackville/Vibrant Valley was a little calmer than it would’ve usually been, which he found kind of odd. However, -as mentioned earlier in this article- the removal of the Vibrant Valley district had been causing more than a few issues for its residents. Or perhaps, maybe Rat Jack just showed up during a calmer moment for the reconstructing community, and it was/became FUCKING TERRIBLE before/after his brief visit to the district.
This article, though, is about proving Toon Valley still exists, not about the Toon Valley experience itself. If you’re reading this article, you’re already likely familiar with what the district in its many forms -including its currently-nomadic one- is like; We don’t need to, or even WANT to go over it again.
Pictured: Two of Thwackville’s cats confirming that our theory is indeed correct.
In conclusion, you can take Vibrant Valley district out of Toontown, but you can’t truly take the Vibrant out of the Valley. Now whether or not Vibrant’s toons will stick with Thwackville, or eventually settle onto another district, only time can answer that… In the meantime though, be careful when going into red and green districts, especially if you’re located in Toontown Central; You’ll never be able to truly know if the district you’re moving to is actually just Toon Valley!
Also, subscribe to the Buttbuddz for more quality investigative journalism like you just read in this article, as well as many other exciting types of articles you won’t want to miss!
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