Joguo -- Complete history of the character, 2001-2021

I just realized a month or so ago that it's been a whopping twenty years since I made up the character we now know as Joguo Gouen-Zu.  Though he's nowhere near as long-running as the characters associated with my old Supernum stories (who go back to 1994-1995 in many cases), or even the Bok's Expedition crew (who first showed up around 1996-1997), twenty years is still a pretty long time to keep drawing and writing stuff involving the same character.

So I figured I'd write a post on here about Joguo and the changes the character has gone through over the years before eventually settling on the current version.

Nine years worth of Joguo drawings.  The main change since 2008 seems to have been his hair. 😂

2001

Joguo's history starts in 2001, with a never-finished OHRRPGCE game project that I had titled Spuduf Splorchers.  The game's main character was a bug named... um, Bug... who found out that he had the power to  communicate with strange little spirit-thingies known as "Spuduf" (which made him a "Spuduf Splorcher" -- to "splorch" was to fuse together with a Spuduf and gain some of its powers) shortly after his forest home was burned down by the evil Emperor Zheewguu.  I'm pretty sure this was the only game idea I've ever had that involved the "hero's hometown gets burned down or otherwise destroyed" trope, funnily enough.

Anyway, as mentioned above, Spuduf Splorchers was never finished.  Joguo didn't actually appear in the parts of the game that I had finished, though he was planned to appear in a later part of the game and his graphics and stats were already programmed in.

The few surviving Spuduf Splorchers hero sprites

The image above is all that's left of the hero sprites from Spuduf Splorchers.  While nowhere near as good as the ones appearing in... well, any game I attempted to make from 2005ish onward... they were a massive step up from the garbage-quality graphics that I had rushed out for previous game attempts.  The humanoids are pretty shaky, but Bug actually looks semi-decent to me even now.

Joguo is the guy who appears enlarged on the right, of course.  This is the very first Joguo design, and it's... well, pretty generic-looking.  At a glance, you probably wouldn't guess he's the same guy as the blue-haired ninja from Alleghany Hell School.  The fact that his shirt says "SS" on it seems like a bit of an "oops" looking back, but I'm guessing it was intended to be short for "Spuduf Splorchers" -- the Nazi connotations of those initials were definitely not intentional.

In the game, Joguo was the leader of a group known as the "Goueng-Zu Splorchers" -- three other members of which are on the same row as Joguo's sprite.  There were a couple other members who apparently never got sprites, a guy with black hair and darker tanned skin and a robot for some reason, but I guess I either never finished their sprites or they were never intended to appear as playable characters in the game (I can't remember which for sure at this point, since I lost the game file ages ago.)  Joguo and the robot (whose name I can no longer remember) were the only ones among the Goueng-Zu Splorchers' ranks to not be based directly on anyone I knew in real life.

From what I remember of the plan I had for the game, Joguo was going to be playable temporarily in a part of the game where Emperor Zheewguu decided to attack the Goueng-Zu Splorchers directly, fighting the Emperor on his own to hold him off while the others escaped.  This early version of Joguo would end up dying after his first moment in the spotlight, sacrificing himself to keep Zheewguu from getting to the others.

So... yeah, originally "Goueng-Zu" was not Joguo's last name, but rather the name of a team of splorchers he belonged to, which seemed to be named after the small island where their base of operations was located.  He also was very much not a main character, only playable for a brief segment before dying.  He also wasn't officially a ninja at this point, though some of his abilities sort of had a vaguely ninja-like theme -- he had access to darkness magic and some martial-arts-like physical attacks, could summon Spuduf that sort of matched a ninja stealth/tools theme such as the Shadow, Bomb, and Net Spuduf, and so on.

I'm not entirely sure how I came up with the name "Joguo" originally.  I notice that it has the same sort of sound to it as some Nummorrian names, particularly those I came up with in this time period -- names like Tanduo and Teyguo, for example -- and I did tend to give a lot of characters I made up back then vaguely Khurbyish sounding names even if they were totally unconnected to Nummorro or the First Nherbi, so I figure it was similarly just made up off the top of my head.

"Goueng-Zu," on the other hand, I actually do remember a specific origin for.  I remember back around the time I was making this game, I was in the basement of a particular church in Clifton Forge at least once a week for Boy Scout meetings, and on one wall of this basement was a huge map that had a lot of locations in China clearly marked (it probably did the same for other countries, but China was right near a spot in the room I often ended up standing on sitting near for some reason.)  I'm pretty sure "Goueng-Zu" started out as a modified version of "Guangzhou," the name of a city that appeared prominently on that map.

2004

After Spuduf Splorchers, Joguo didn't show up again for a while.  He was not planned to appear in the 2003 Fnrrf Ygm Schnish game, and didn't show up at all in the Crappy World comics I was drawing around that time either.

Looking back, it's almost kind of odd that he wasn't reused, considering that Bob (the guy with the wide eyes and brown clothes in the image above), the other Goueng-Zu Splorchers (except for the robot), and the unnamed armored girl all made appearances in Crappy World at some point, in one form or another.  Of course, the Crappy World cast was pretty huge already, and didn't really focus that much on the "regular human" characters (revolving more around the Question Marks and Master Fartbean earlier on, and then shifting toward the Damuru-J/Damuru-F/Rupoo storyline), so even if he had appeared he likely wouldn't get to do a whole lot.

Three years passed, and in the summer of 2004 I started working on another game, this time using RPG Maker 2003.  This game ended up being titled Uggy Barfoo, after a nonsense phrase that my younger sibling Jules said while we were goofing off.  I've always been kinda terrible at coming up with titles for things, so I pretty much just threw those nonsense words on the title screen and then came up with a meaning for them much later.

An in-battle screenshot from Uggy Barfoo including Joguo.

Joguo was the second playable character in Uggy Barfoo, randomly joining Enduo (now known as Eddie -- 2004 was a time when I wasn't using the same first or last names of any characters based on real people, including myself!) in order to investigate a meteorite impact to the south of the town of Nifclont where they both live.  This was the first game where his last name was given as "Goueng-Zu" rather than not being mentioned one way or another.

Joguo in Uggy Barfoo was... pretty generic and vaguely defined, just like in Spuduf Splorchers.  In other words, he still wasn't a ninja yet (he didn't even get access to the Ninja class using the game's Orbs which served as a Final Fantasy 5-ish class-change system!), and basically had no particular role besides "random guy in town who joins you early on."  This game was the first to give him the dark blue hair that he's become known for, and also influenced his later designs -- though he's never looked exactly like the edited RPG Maker 2003 default thief sprite that he borrowed an outfit from here, he has kept pretty close to a green-and-blue (and sometimes a bit of white) color scheme in pretty much every appearance since.

Funnily enough, it does seem like his strong points stat-wise have stayed pretty consistent from this game onward -- he's tied with Enduo for the highest base Defense stat out of all the main characters, and he's the second-fastest character.  So I guess Uggy Barfoo's generic Joguo did have some lasting contributions after all.  Unfortunately, in every other area he's either tied for weakest or second-weakest.  On top of that, he had no special techniques in his normal state, only a few super moves that could be used with specific weapon types (just like everyone else in the game had)... so unlike some characters like Robert there was pretty much no reason to ever not change his class to something other than the default using his Blue Orb.

Joguo as a Swordfighter, Gunner, Warrior, and Wizard (the Trainer class didn't get a unique sprite.)

Speaking of his Orb, he had access to the classes Trainer (basically a low grade summoner, based on Pokémon Trainers), Swordmaster, Gunner, Warrior (the game's heavy-armor "fighter" type class), and Wizard (which gave him access to light, darkness, and water magic -- similar to his setup from Spuduf Splorchers but trading the wind magic he used there for water instead.)

There's not a whole lot else to say about the version of Joguo in Uggy Barfoo.  He kinda just fills up a space in the party, never really being the strongest in any particular area, and usually being the first to get swapped out for one of the optional characters once you start to gain access to them.  Even the one part of the game where he's supposed to be the main character ended up revolving more around someone else, the mysterious Anrijue.  Or at least, it would have if I had ever finished it.

2006

After I had pretty much given up on finishing Uggy Barfoo after getting stuck in a rut partway through the game's second half (what was it with early-2000s-era me insisting on games having a "second half" introducing new enemies out of nowhere, anyway?), I ended up starting on another OHRRPGCE project for the first time in a while.  This was the second attempt at a game titled Fnrrf Ygm Schnish, following the 2003 one that never really went anywhere.

The 2006 Fnrrf Ygm Schnish did at least get to a point where the early parts of the game were... somewhat playable, albeit horribly incomplete since it was only the intro sequence that took place at Alleghany High School and even that wasn't finished -- mostly due to the school maps being very incomplete, with hardly any rooms accessible.  Since only the intro was even partially finished, this game ended up being just like Spuduf Splorchers for poor ol' Joguo -- his sprites and stats were programmed into the game, but he never actually appeared.

Joguo's battle sprites from the 2006 Fnrrf Ygm Schnish game.

Joguo's design in this game seems to be a blend of the previous two -- his hair is blue like the Uggy Barfoo version but with the super short style he had in Spuduf Splorchers, and his clothes have the white/green/blue color scheme of the Uggy Barfoo version but with the original's long blue pants.

In terms of his abilities, this Joguo is definitely closer to the Uggy Barfoo version.  He does finally have a few special moves, but they're nothing too flashy -- he can do various fairly ordinary things like dodge enemy attacks, steal items, trip enemies to stun them briefly, or counterattack.  Stat-wise, he still specializes in Defense and Speed, having the third-highest out of the game's oversized cast in both categories.  His other stats are a bit better this time around, though -- his Attack is fourth-highest out of the main cast, his HP is only third-lowest rather than being near the bottom, and even his lower stats aren't that far behind the other characters.

This game establishes knives as his weapon of choice, with some of his arsenal including familiar items like the Steak Knife, Chef's Knife, and Poison Knife.  His strongest weapons are the "Ninja Knife" (its sprite resembles a kunai) and the hilariously named Murderiffic Knife (which deals extra damage against humanoid enemies, in addition to just plain being stronger than his other weapons.)  None of his other equipment is really worth a mention, since pretty much every character had the same armor in this game rather than having their own specialized gear.

I honestly can't remember what Joguo's role would've been in this game or when he would've been introduced, so I'm guessing it would've been a similar situation to in Uggy Barfoo -- generic guy who happens to be around when something happens, so he joins the party "just because."

Sheesh.  Joguo was kind of boring in these old games! He's come a long way since then.

2008-2012

2008 was the year that I originally started working on Fnrrf Ygm Schnish: Alleghany Hell School, though due to several discouragements and distractions (two of the major distractions being spending a bunch of time working on other games like Okédoké and Puckamon) it wouldn't be until much later that I actually released a demo of that game to the public.

This was the game where Joguo finally started to get some actual character development, backstory, and connections to the world that the game takes place in -- rather than just being some random bystander who basically just gets roped into everything by virtue of being in the right place at the right time and just kind of inexplicably manages to keep up (sort of) with the other characters despite not having any superhuman abilities as far as anyone ever mentioned.  In Alleghany Hell School, Joguo being able to put up a fight actually makes sense -- he even mentions early on that he's had ninja training, and demonstrates the ability to jump down pits roughly 20-30 feet deep and land flat on his feet without being the slightest bit inconvenienced by the fall.  He's not just some random guy who picks up a knife and starts blindly stabbing at whatever giant bugs or monsters get too close, he's the heir to the leadership of the ancient Goueng-Zu Ninja Clan, trained in ninjutsu since he was a little kid... even if he has slacked off in his training a little bit during the high school years (and thus doesn't start out way ahead of some of the other characters.)

Joguo's FYS:AHS sprites -- 2008 original, 2010 upgrade, and final.

It was in this game that his design pretty much settled into its current form -- slightly scruffy blue hair, light blue-green shirt, dark blue pants, brown shoes (though they briefly turned into white tennis-shoes when I redid the sprites in 2010... oops!), and a green scarf that flutters in the wind behind him even when there... isn't any wind behind him.  Secret ninja technique, probably.

His abilities in this game were similar to the version from the 2006 Fnrrf Ygm Schnish, except now he was fully ninja-themed.  Rather than just having steal, dodge, and trip attacks he also performed flying jump-kicks, threw shuriken, and could use sealing ninjutsu to prevent certain enemies from using their special attacks.  His weapons include both knives and swords, and his lineup of protective equipment includes a variety of scarves on top of the standard jackets, bulletproof vests, and ninja suits you would expect.  The "Shiznit" stat (which basically functions like a Luck stat) introduced in this game lets him keep up with the other characters pretty well, giving him a randomized chance to get extra hits with most of his attacks -- so instead of just throwing one shuriken at an enemy, he might fling out two or even three in rapid succession.  After landing a jump-kick, he might bounce off and land a second one right away.  And so on.  Despite having relatively weak attacks (at least compared to some of the stuff characters like Bridget and Damuru-J become capable of later), the high chance of getting multiple hits makes him feel pretty effective throughout the game, especially if he can keep finding stronger weapons.

In terms of his game stats, he's basically just an upgraded version of what he's had in the previous two games.  He has the best Defense out of any playable character, this time by a pretty decent margin considering that he can also equip most of the best armor in the game.  He's still one of the faster characters, only falling short of Bridget and an optional character who hasn't appeared yet in the current demo version.  His Shiznit is also second-highest, once again behind Bridget -- but Joguo probably benefits more from it, since nearly all of his attacks can get additional hits as his Shiznit gets to a high enough level.  He only ranks last place in one stat this time around -- his Wisdom suffered a bit when he slacked off in his ninja training to pursue sports and girls during the earlier high school years, of course. 😅

2013 - 2021

Joguo's most recent appearance as of 2021 is still the (as of yet unfinished) Fnrrf Ygm Schnish: Alleghany Hell School... which I will hopefully be working on more at some point this year, now that my depression/anxiety issues have calmed down a bit and I might eventually be able to dredge up the motivation to work on some of my game projects again.  But even though he hasn't had a "new" game appearance, I've continued to develop his backstory and come up with more and more information revolving around his family and their history.

As of 2017, Joguo became the only character to have a family tree that's fleshed out enough that it covers three whole generations, then skipping back a few generations to focus on Joguo's great-great-great-great-great-grandparents.

Joguo's family tree going back to his great-great-great-great-great-grandparents, drawn in 2017.

During these years, I came up with the whole backstory of the Goueng-Zu clan, explaining why the heck there's a family of freaking ninjas living in middle-of-nowhere Virginia all the way over in the United States, far outside of what you'd usually think of as the ninja's natural habitat.  It all started with a guy named Gaitou Goeung-Zu...

...Who happens to be Joguo's great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.

Red scarf, not green. Is that relevant? ...Maybe someday.

In the year 1798, Gaitou married a young girl whose name has now been lost to history, perhaps only recorded in the personal archives of the Goueng-Zu family and not spoken of outside their walls.  One year later, the two of them had a child -- who would turn out to be their only son.  A year after that, Gaitou's wife stumbles upon an unusual stone while exploring some remote region of Japan... an unusual stone which turns out to be a powerful artifact known as the Uggy Barfoo.  She picks it up, planning to take it home to Gaitou as a present, as people tend to do when they find neat rocks out in the woods.

Though depleted of most of its power, the lingering traces within the Barfoo are still more than enough to lead to disaster.  Something within the stone clashed with an unknown power within the girl who found it, and this clash within her caused a horrible transformation.  She was rapidly driven to insanity, unleashing strange powers that had previously laid dormant within her and rampaging across the country.

The unfortunate young wife, now only known as "the demon Arkusazzo" (presumably a name bestowed upon her by surviving villagers who managed to escape her rampage, or perhaps one she chose for herself after the clash with the Barfoo's power caused her to snap), was now barely recognizable as her former self.  She was almost entirely silent, her eyes went blank and glowed red, her nails grew to claw-like length, her hair moved on its own and sometimes was known to suddenly extend to unnatural lengths and strangle those unfortunate enough to get too close.  Three years pass before members of the Goueng-Zu Clan are finally able to track her down, and after a prolonged battle, it is Gaitou Goueng-Zu himself who stops her rampage -- by sealing her away within a tree using the Goueng-Zu Clan's most powerful sealing ninjutsu.

Despite being the ones responsible for stopping Arkusazzo's rampage, the Goueng-Zu Clan are the ones who are blamed for all the destruction.  It was, after all, one of their members (albeit one who joined the clan by marriage rather than by birth) who was responsible.  They are shunned, and several years later they end up leaving Japan, uprooting the Goueng-Zu Clan (along with literally uprooting the tree where Arkusazzo was sealed so they could take it with them) and eventually settling down far across the sea in a mountainous area which would eventually become the town of Clifton Forge, Virginia.  From this point onward, the Goueng-Zu Clan began a new life, secretly continuing their ninja training (because Arkusazzo would eventually break free of the seal placed upon her, there must always be a Goueng-Zu ninja capable of returning her to her prison within the tree) and mostly keeping to themselves.

Always watching the tree for any signs of the demon's escape, the Goueng-Zu Clan were responsible for putting a stop to her escape in 1862 -- making sure the Civil War was the most significant historical event of the 1860s rather than being a mere footnote in the "those years when an ancient Japanese demon laid waste to the country" chapters of the history books.  Each time, it seemed that she escaped a bit more quickly and caused a bit more damage -- in 1908, she nearly killed several members of the Goueng-Zu Clan but was stopped and sealed away just in time for all those involved to be saved.  In 1966, she killed Moriko Hosuda in a surprise attack and wore her husband Akinosuke to exhaustion in a prolonged battle afterward -- he would pass away as a result of his injuries not long after she was sealed.  The elderly Bairei Goueng-Zu was forced to step in to perform the sealing ninjutsu, as his son Ran was not yet ready, but the strain of the technique caused his life to give out in the process.  This led to the surviving children of the Hosuda branch of the family distancing themselves from the ways of the ninja, moving away from Clifton Forge and pursuing a "normal" life somewhere in the midwest instead.  Akinosuke's signature green scarf and collection of ninja tools were left with the clan in Clifton Forge, where they would eventually be passed down to Joguo.

Arkusazzo's most recent escape from her tree prison was in 1993.  Before she was sealed away again, she killed Joguo's older sister Kiyoko, who had attempted to confront and seal the demon on her own but was not yet fully prepared for such a task.

2021 and Onward

Around 2023, I decided to drop the second "G" from Joguo's surname -- you may have noticed that I've edited the opening paragraph to use the spelling "Gouen-Zu," despite using the old spelling throughout the rest of the post.  This was done to make the name sound closer to something that could be an actual Japanese name (since Joguo's ancestors are supposed to be a ninja clan who came from Japan); the "-ng" sound is something you see in several other Asian languages, but not in Japanese.

Speaking of making the name feel more like an actual Japanese name... I also poked around with figuring out how to write Joguo's name in Japanese, both in hiragana and kanji.

じょぐお (JIo-GU-O)
ごーえんず (GOu-E-N-ZU)

I wrote down multiple ways of writing both Joguo and Gouen-Zu in kanji, but I don't think I ever decided for sure how I was going to write Joguo's first name -- only the "Gouen-Zu" part.

砂椽鶴

The kanji used to make "gou-en-zu" here mean "sand," "porch," and "crane/stork."  Considering how surnames very often relate to something in the distant past of the family (like how a lot of English surnames are stuff like "Baker," "Smith," and "Cooper" which were the jobs done by one of their ancestors centuries ago when surnames first started developing in that language), the ancestral home of the Gouen-Zu clan would probably be someplace with sandy ground and near a river where large water birds like cranes or storks might be sighted, and the home of the first to have the name "Gouen-Zu" probably had a porch that stood out from the houses around it.  Or maybe there was a crane that would regularly land on or near their porch? Something like that.

I'm not sure when, or if, I'll have a chance to actually include all of the ninja clan backstory stuff in one of my games.  It's at least vaguely referred to here and there in Alleghany Hell School, but since the game takes place almost entirely inside the school and the plot doesn't revolve around the Gouen-Zu Clan's history at all, there's not a lot of room to fit this stuff in.

Maybe someday Joguo will get a game, or story, or something that focuses on him for once.  I don't know when or how at this point, but it's definitely possible, especially since I've already put so much thought into his family's history and everything that comes with that.  It's kinda crazy that Joguo now has more extra stuff revolving around him than most of the FYS:AHS cast, considering the bland, generic secondary character that he used to be back in the early 2000s!  At this point he's probably the one character who is most likely to get his own spinoff/sequel game in the future, considering that I already had the idea that after the end of the FYS:AHS story he'd start devoting more of his time to ninja training and end up traveling to the homeland of his ancestors back in Japan.  Lately I've had the thought that maybe he'd travel to various harsh environments as part of his training, with one of them being the Australian outback (hot, dry, remote wilderness, everything is poisonous) in a mirror of how Joguo's solo portion of Uggy Barfoo had him land on the Australia-equivalent "Kangaroo Island."

Looking back at Uggy Barfoo (part 16 of 16)

Yep... we've made it to the end.  Last time we left off with the final city in Robert's solo segment of the game...

 ...Regeek, where the citizens have been bullied into destroying their ancestors' temples and also giving up the vast majority of their food supply to an endless stream of daily feasts for Obesius, who's been claiming that he's the "God of Obesity" (on top of his usual claims of being a dragon.)

 

 Robert and Fredd confront Obesius... and Fredd's scanners are apparently calibrated to confirm claims of godhood.  Wonder how that works.

 

 

 And of course, they can also detect if something is actually a dragon or not, which makes a bit more sense considering that actual dragons made an appearance earlier in the game (and they were not far from the place where the airship landed.)  There were also Cheese Dragons on the moon where the airship was originally built, though I never encountered one in this playthrough.

Also, for some odd reason Obesius' go-to insult (basically the only one he seems to know) is "dumb frogs."  I'm not sure why, since even a dumb frog would almost certainly be smarter than Obesius.

 

 He might actually be right about this particular claim -- the typical dragon certainly can't launch dozens of meteors from the moon to Earth with enough precision to shoot down an airship in mid-flight even when trying evasive maneuvers.

(Still doesn't change the fact that he's not really a dragon, of course. XD)

 But apparently the thing that really pisses him off is not denying his godhood or his dragoniness, but calling him "fatass."  Even though his name is basically a pseudo-Greek/Latin version of "Fatass." XD

 Under normal circumstances, Obesius has the potential to be a ridiculous hard boss.  He's got a truly absurd amount of HP (twice as much as Yenrab Nebozu, if I'm remembering right) and massive attack power, and he's able to go berserk as well as launching powerful fire and earth-elemental attacks.

Like most bosses in the second half of the game, however, he's foiled by the use of barriers -- though he does have some single-target attacks that can hit un-barriered characters, and if I hadn't poisoned him with a booger attack early on he probably would've berserked and done a lot more damage.  Unlike some of the 2nd-half bosses (like Goatsu), he isn't harmed by his own attacks, so you still have to do most of the damage yourself even with a barrier up.

 Thankfully, the combination of Berserk Fredd, Robert's booger-based super moves, and Crunk's psychic and cheese attacks manage to do plenty of damage, and eventually Obesius is defeated.

 

 Obesius isn't done for just yet, though.  He's weakened but not mortally wounded, and immediately starts shaking the temple, bringing down rocks and slamming them down on Robert and company.  After knocking Robert back onto the stairs, though...

 ...Fredd steps forward to defend Robert (and Crunk, I guess, but he only seems to be really concerned with protecting Robert.  Probably because Crunk is optional, of course.)

 

 

 Fredd somehow manages to summon up enough strength to plow through Obesius' attacks, and after a while, he gets right up next to the raised platform where the self-proclaimed God of Obesity is hanging out.

 

 

 

 Obesius might be weakened, but he's still too much for the also-weakened Robert and company to handle, especially in the enraged state he's currently in.  So Fredd goes for the last-ditch plan: self-destruct and take Obesius down with him.

 

 Unfortunately, the explosion graphic somehow ends up weirdly off-center, even though I'm pretty sure I made several attempts to edit it so that it would show up perfectly lined up with Fredd and Obesius rather than being off to the side like that.

Lots of screen-flashing and shaking and kaboom sounds follow, but...

 ...it's not quite enough to kill Obesius...

 ...but fortunately, it is enough to cause him to run away in a blind panic, meaning that Fredd has succeeded in defeating Obesius (for now) and also in saving Robert.  And Crunk, I guess.

 

 Random priest girl then shows up, causing the town's usual music to start up again (the temple was left in total silence after Obesius fled the scene and the "Fredd sacrifices his robot life to blow up Obesius" theme song ended.)  She has no idea there's been an epic battle going on in here just before she arrived -- which is odd considering that Obesius was bringing down the temple's roof and spitting meteors around, both of which should've made tons of noise -- so she's confused and panicked that Obesius seems to be late for his own daily feast.

 Robert explains what happened, and she's (understandably) a bit freaked out.

 

At first Robert just mentioned that Obesius wasn't really a god.  She immediately thought that meant that he was an actual dragon... but Robert has to correct her on that front, too. XD

 She runs off to inform the whole town, which leads to a fade-out, followed by...

...a scene from later that night, where the feast is being held not for Obesius, but in Robert's honor for freeing their city from Obesius' flabby iron fist.

 

 Two thoughts on what Obesius actually is -- either he's just a mutated Yenrab who's grown to unusual size (and strength), or he's a "Moronism dragon," basically a being spawned from humans' superstitious ideas of what dragons are like (the whole "huuuuuge spiky evil lizardmonsters that do nothing but eat and hoard shiny things" deal.)

I'm leaning toward "delusional mutant Yenrab" at the moment.

 

 Robert tells the story of how Obesius was defeated, and mentions at the end that as awful as Obesius was, he thinks he's met someone worse -- none other than the Lord of Moronism, Ma-Du Nebozu.  But fortunately he's dead now..

 

 ...or is he?

 

 Yep... the "Nebozu running for president in the US-equivalent country" plot comes up again here.  Even all the way across the world, people have heard the name "Nebozu."

 

 And here's where Robert figures out what the Yenrab back at Estan Unin were talking about when they said that there'd been an imposter Nebozu going around.

 Yep.  A fake Nebozu with the power to transform into Barney.  After this, Robert gets pretty urgent about continuing his journey and asks if anybody's seen the airship around....

 ...and it turns out that people in Regeek saw the crash happen, over in the east in Urket.  That's basically "Turkey" rearranged and with the Y removed (the city is actually present on the world map, part on the Europe-like continent and part on the Asia-like one, separated by a bridge), but I actually really like how the name sounds so I might reuse it at some point.

 

 

Robert's about to rush off to Urket first thing, but then he remembers he's actually pretty hungry.  Bring on the food!

 

 I don't think Obesius ever mentioned being a member of the Arkolo in Robert's segment of the game, but he was shown in the Arkolo's introduction scene back at the end of Part 1 so I guess these narration segments are from the player's perspective more than from the characters'.

 

 

Apparently the Hudawuda tribes are not just an American thing, but a group that can be found spread out all across the world, even as far as Australia.  These Australian Hudawudas seem pretty far removed from their American equivalents, though -- no orbs or ancient super-technology, just... regular ol' desert town with wooden houses and twitchy old people.

 The elder here literally JUMPED backward two steps when Joguo suddenly appeared in front of him.  See? Twitchy old people.

 And apparently the town is called Wakamomo...

 ...and the Australia-equivalent continent is called Kangaroo Island.  No actual kangaroos can be found, however.  There's even an NPC who tells you that you probably won't see any because they usually avoid humans.

 Here's the world map around Wakamomo.  There's... not much to see, besides desert and mountains

 And then there's Kabutt, which is further south a bit and apparently located in the Outback...

 ...and everyone here pretty much just talks about how disappointed they are that some rich guy who had promised them an Outback Steakhouse never actually held up his end of the deal.

 Yep... drunken kangaroos.

 Of course, there's a reference to soccer being called football in... basically everywhere except the United States.  That and drunken kangaroos are both things that came up in my high school physics class, where my teacher was a guy who'd lived in Australia for a period of time and had picked up a lot of lingering Australian-ness from it.

 Some newish enemies.  For some bizarre reason, one of them is Orange Chicken -- yes, like the Chinese food.  I'm assuming they would've also shown up in the China-equivalent area, if I had ever gotten as far as making that part of the map.  They self-destruct on you, for some odd reason.

And there's the world map on the lower-right corner.  That town, cave, and island jungle village visible on the map are all inaccessible, unfortunately... though I did start working on the mapping of the town (called Schned) before abandoning the game.

Yep... Joguo's solo chapter is pretty incomplete.  Basically nothing story-relevant happens, just random encounters and wandering through random towns where nothing really significant is going on.  I can't remember exactly how things were going to go from there, but I do remember one thing for sure...

Remember the nameless narrator girl from the "choose a character" parts?  If not, here's her status screen:

That's right -- she's not just a placeholder and narrator, she has actual stats, and even starting equipment.  And she just happens to be just above the "high 50s, low 60s" range of levels that everyone in these solo segments (well, except Nancos who started out way up at level 85) happens to be at.  Just like how every character back in the early game was randomly around 5-10 levels higher than anyone else when they first joined the team.

Yep, nameless narrator girl was actually going to join the party at some point.  She had an actual name, too -- Anrijue -- and even her own set of special attacks... all of which hint at her true nature long before the game would've revealed it up front.  Oh, and "at some point" was going to be during Joguo's segment, by the way; she would have met him... somewhere (my guess is either in the town of Schned or in that mountain cave that I never even started working on, though Schned doesn't have any NPCs in the most recent version of the game file so it's hard to say) and provided him with a means of transport to the mainland.  Probably by way of another ancient Hudawuda teleporter device hidden in that mountain cave, which she would be able to energize using her powers.

Which would make sense, considering that her actual identity was eventually going to be revealed as the power of the shattered Ajrien Crystal that has taken on a humanoid form.

(If you didn't shatter the Ajrien Crystal by giving it to the Kuarudo queen and then defeating her while she was drawing power from it, it would've been explained that it was broken during the meteor swarm that smashed up the airship, which also conveniently explains why all of your items except the ones you had equipped at the time vanish from one half of the game to the next.)

Here's a random drawing of Anrijue from the 2006-2007 time period.
I actually still really like her design, even though this picture is so old...
Maybe it's something about the way I drew her eyes?

Like Fredd, however, Anrijue wasn't going to be a permanent member of the party.  She and Joguo would've come across Deathio at some point (presumably in the China-equivalent area, considering that I was already thinking up Chinese-food-themed enemies), and rather than stopping after summoning some random monster, he was actually going to step in and fight them personally.  With Joguo already weakened from fighting off the summoned monster, Deathio himself was going to prove to be too much for him, and this would've been one of those "you can't really win" battles where it's not a "Game Over" even if you lose, and winning is near-impossible.  Afterward, Anrijue reveals who/what she actually is to Joguo, and decides to unleash the full power of the Ajrien Crystal all at once to take out Deathio.  Unlike Fredd blowing up on Obesius, I think this one actually was going to work -- at least, I don't remember having any further plans for Deathio after this point in the game, and he was always kinda the forgotten member of the Arkolo in my drawings and such around the time (well, not as forgotten as the Demon-Baby, but the Demon-Baby was just a generic three-eyed baby with devil horns whose only line in the whole game was something along the lines of "GYYYAAAAAAH!" so that's understandable.)

All I remember of the plan for Jakarjo's solo segment -- which I never even actually started working on in anything other than the vague ideas in my head back in 2005 or so -- was that he would've started out in the Japan-equivalent area, and rather than a lot of traveling his story revolved around a lingering mental issue that had developed as a result of the battle with Tuham Yigro way back in Part 1.  Tuham Yigro wasn't just vaguely Cthulhu-esque -- it actually did have that whole "can drive people insane" thing going on about it, and Jakarjo was the unlucky one among the orb carriers who clashed with the big tentacle-worm-thing in the city of Bubarubas.  I'm thinking that a big part of his story would've been going through a hallucination caused by Tuham Yigro's lingering presence, then coming out of it in an insane asylum, which of course he would've broken out of.  The world map of the Japan-like place is pretty small, so I'm guessing he would've sailed off to someplace else not long after escaping.

And with the end of Jakarjo's solo segment, the groups would've started to come together -- obviously there were Enduo's and Mejuai's groups both ending up at Swont-Ghina just in time to interrupt Nebozu's evil plans to rig the election and become President (the Nebozu battle looks like it would've been pretty easy by 2nd-half standards, as his stats are barely any better than the imposter Nebozu's were in the "Nebozu and not-really-hypnotized Mejuai" battle), but Joguo and Jakarjo would've also met shortly after the endings of their respective segments of the game.  Robert would've continued his solo (or "with random allied Yenrab" if you happened to get Crunk to join) adventure a bit longer, reaching Urket and finding the robots in the process of repairing the airship.  I'm guessing there might've been a "find some missing airship parts" quest at some point around here but I'm really not sure as I don't clearly remember my plans for this bit.  The one thing I do remember, though, is that Joguo and Jakarjo's journey after meeting up in China would've led to them reaching the airship as well, and the two of them plus Robert would've flown off to track down Enduo and Mejuai's groups after that.  Not sure if Crunk would've stuck around, though I do know that Junk and Gunk would have been very much temporary party members if you convinced them to join and would've chosen to stay behind in a bar somewhere rather than tagging along as permanent characters.

As the White Orb's presence suggested, there was another character hidden in the game just like Julia with the Red Orb in the first half.  This was Sarah the psychic cat, though I can't remember where the heck she was going to be hidden.  I'm guessing Robert could've found her in Urket or somewhere else on the European-equivalent continent, since he's the one who had the ability to find her orb.

Speaking of hidden things on the European continent, there was actually an entire optional dungeon built into the game that's impossible to access currently since only Robert and Fredd (and Crunk) can reach Naldrie.  If you came back with someone class-changed into a Psychic (which means Enduo or Julia... or Sarah the cat, of course), there's a hidden stairway in the basement of the Kartol church, which leads down into the sunken Gehhkeh swamp palace.  It's populated by random encounters and also the wandering souls of dead Gehhkeh, who tell you about all kinds of random things.  Some random details include the fact that the Gehhkeh pretty much stopped being bad guys after Karptic defeated them, but the humans kept killing them afterward anyway, partly (but not entirely) due to the influence of Buhtt McPharten.  Speaking of Buhtt McPharten, the Gehhkeh name for him was "Butmekkhf'ton," and he was apparently a demon unleashed upon the world by Nebozu (during his original time on Earth, I assume, since he'd been active longer than Nebozu had been released from the crystal prison that had been holding him on the moon.)  Reaching the bottom of the Swamp Palace would reward you with one of the game's hidden legendary weapons, the Moojwhammer, which was a giant golden hammer that was the only way in the game to inflict "Holy" damage (which heavily damaged evil beings of all types.)  It's also the only hammer in the game, oddly enough, and due to its oddball category it could only be equipped by the Warrior and Summoner classes... meaning that Enduo and Mejuai (and Bob, and Sarah, and all of the non-orb-using optional characters) would never be able to equip the thing.

This was only one of many secret weapons I had planned for the game.  One of the others, the Excalibooger, could be earned by defeating King Ratpoo (it turned out that the "source of the chaos" puzzle I couldn't figure out before was absurdly simple -- there was exactly one rock in the room that wasn't symmetrical with the rocks on the other side.)  I made an attempt at this during my Robert playthrough...

 

 

 

 ...but as you can see from these screenshots, I did not succeed. XD

The unique thing about the Excalibooger is that it counts as both a sword and an axe for the purposes of Robert's super moves, allowing him to use both Booger Ray and Boogery Ooze without switching equipment.  It's also the third-strongest weapon in the game (Moojwhammer mentioned above is the fifth-strongest) and has a chance of poisoning enemies hit by it.

The other super-weapons? Well... there was the Noop Knife for Joguo, which had a 1-in-3 chance of instantly destroying any enemy it touched (making it a lot more effective than its low attack power -- in the range of Kirbium equipment, rather than being Snozzorium-level or above like most of the other ultimate weapons -- would suggest.)  It's basically the only way for Joguo to ever use his "Death Cut" super move, since after the very beginning of the game every other knife-type weapon would be ridiculously weak.

Mejuai's exclusive weapon was the Yagyurang, a boomerang that damaged all enemies at once and (for some bizarre reason) was programmed to count as a knife-type weapon rather than a boomerang... I'm guessing that was the result of copying the Noop Knife's item slot, not an intentional decision, as the knife-type designation would prevent Mejuai from using her boomerang-exclusive super move Thunder Slash.

Enduo's super-weapon was, of course, the Numnum Sword -- which was the strongest weapon in the game by a good margin with an attack power of 200 (a standard Kirbium Sword was only 90, and even a Snozzorium one only had an attack power of 130.)  Aside from boosting all of his other stats slightly, the Numnum Sword had no special attributes aside from insanely high attack power.  I can't remember where the Noop Knife, Yagyurang, or Numnum Sword would've been hidden, though I assume Yagyuoo were involved with the Yagyurang just going by the name.

Jakarjo's weapon was simply named "Tentacle" -- and it actually was not connected to Tuham Yigro at all, but to another tentacle monster known as the "Eye of Fnrrf" which would have been an optional boss at the bottom of a dungeon beneath Antarctica.  In addition to having the second-highest attack power in the game, the Tentacle could also induce poison, stun, or insanity in enemies struck by it.  Finally, Julia and Sarah share two claw-type superweapons, the Dragon Claws and Demon Claws.  The Demon Claws are a bit stronger, stun enemies about a third of the time, and have a higher critical-hit chance... but they lower the wielder's defense, have lower accuracy, and are cursed.  The Dragon Claws, on the other hand, provide a boost to defense (and also a higher speed boost than the Demon Claws), in exchange for no stun and lower attack power and critical hit chance.  Julia always gets critical hits anyway, so it seems like the Dragon Claws' defense/speed boost and not-being-cursed-ness make them the better option for her.  Oddly enough, Sarah (yes, the cat) actually has higher attack power than Julia, but without the automatic critical hits she might need more of an attack-power boost to do a lot of damage anyway.

Finally, there were a few other super-weapons not exclusive to any one character, in addition to Moojwhammer.  There was the Lightning Spear (originating in The Story of Supernum as Jade's strongest weapon), which combined the attack power of a Snozzorium Spear with a speed boost, lightning-elemental damage, near-perfect accuracy and a chance of paralyzing enemies on contact.  Weirdly, it seems that it was exclusively equippable by the Trainer and Warp Mage classes, meaning Robert and Julia could never equip it.  There was also the Staff of Parupoo, originating in the never-finished OHRRPGCE game of the same name, which was both the 4th-strongest weapon in the game and provided a huge boost to the wielder's magical powers.  Last (and least) of the superweapons is the Plunkodon Club, an ice-elemental spiked club that had a chance of stunning enemies and boasted a relatively puny attack power of 92.  Like the Lightning Spear it had an odd array of classes able to equip it -- Warriors (okay, that one makes sense, heavy-armor/heavy-weapon guys using a giant spiked club), Summoners (...eh?) and Foodfighters (...WHUT!?)  This, of course, meant that Enduo and Mejuai could never equip it... and that chances are good that nobody else would either, unless Robert (or Bob) was a Foodfighter and you didn't have the Excalibooger for Robert yet.  I'm guessing this one would've been fairly easy to find in comparison to the rest.

...okay, got a bit side-tracked with the talk of Uggy Barfoo's lost super-weapons.  Anyway...

Once the team was  reunited, I can't really remember my full plans for the rest of the second half of the game.  I do remember that another character, named Bob, was going to be introduced -- at first as a sort of "third party" opposing both the heroes and the Arkolo, but later joining up with the heroes.  Bob was a hobo who carried the Brown Orb and had a limited selection of classes (just Foodfighter, Ninja, and... something else I can't remember, maybe Summoner?) rather than the full list that the other major characters got.  It was at this point that the Uggy Barfoo -- as in the title -- would have actually become involved; Bob was going to steal it at some point, while the Arkolo are trying to track it down so that Burije can absorb its power into her spaceship and use that to conquer the world unopposed.

Once the orb holders are reunited, of course, that means Nancos wants another fight with the combined group -- and at that point she would've revealed that she actually did absorb the Black Orb, contrary to her claims to Enduo that she had abandoned it entirely.  Before she could actually attack, however, Burije appears unexpectedly, distracting Nancos and actually making her seem a bit worried for the first time in the entire game.  Burije proceeds to extract a lingering fragment of Tuham Yigro from Jakarjo's mind, then fuses it together with Nancos, creating a freakish monster that basically looks like a Tuham Yigro mermaid with a naked (aside from weird buggy-parts and growths covering her boobs) Nancos as the upper body.  Oh, and Tuham Yigro heads instead of arms, of course.  My sister and I both drew versions of this fusion at some point, but unfortunately I can't find any of them anymore -- if I could I'd post one here.  Maybe I'll go back and do that if I ever stumble across one and scan it in.  The game already has a boss battle theme set aside for the Tuham Yigro/Nancos fusion, but of course it went unused because that fight never happened in the parts of the game I got finished.

Speaking of unused themes, there's also one that was planned to be used for Burije's Barfoo-infused ship, which would've been the final dungeon.  Probably including rematch battles with Goatsu and Obesius before the final battle with Burije herself, ending up with her fusing with the Barfoo and her ship to become this freaky-looking thing with a giant Burije head with tentacle-hair and glowing eyes, and also two giant floating claws and lots of tentacles sprouting out from all over the walls.

Oh, and it turned out that the "Guard Donut" item was the secret to surviving the fight(s) with Burije, as it provided resistance to claw-based attacks.  She would've used the same Death Claw move as Julia, of course (as well as probably some others), which would do pretty heavy damage and cause some nasty status effects such as paralysis and insta-death, so having a way to resist this would've been pretty vital.  I sort of repeated this in Okédoké, with the Guardian Donut providing resistance to physical attacks that made it the only way to survive Bridget's Death Claw (which caused 999 damage if you had no resistance to it, but only around 100 if you were resistant to it... and the only way to resist it was with the Guardian Donut.)

And now, I'll end off with a random funny thing I discovered when poking around in the game's programming... if you try to use Frog Juice while Nancos is with you, she refuses, saying the following: "No way am I drinking hallucinogenic frog slime."