Versus Mode, Round 1 - The Legend of Dragoon vs Legend of Legaia, Ready? Fight!

Warning: The following presentation contains major spoilers, reader discretion is advised.

In the first edition of Versus Mode, Tiger and Rabbit will go head-to-head in an all out grudge match. Only one can survive, which game will prevail? Originally released on PlayStation in 2000, The Legend of Dragoon has become a cult classic with numerous requests for a sequel. Legend of Legaia got its sequel but the original released for PlayStation in 1999 remains a fan favorite.

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Rabbit: I feel we need a “suit up” montage like Sailor Moon or Ronin Warriors. Where the video shows us each donning the armor of our prospective game choices. You could wear Rose’s armor and I could wear Terra because we all know she’s the coolest Ra-Seru.

Tiger: And have one of those Drakengard 3 battle theme songs playing in the background.

Rabbit: Hai-yah! Karate chop-u-head-off!

Tiger: Welcome everyone to our first Versus Mode segment. The rules are a little different than with Q Attack. First off, instead of a yes/no question, we pose an either/or scenario. We pick sides right off the bat and duke it out-

Rabbit: In no holds barred battle to the death!

Tiger: Now who’s the violent one? I would totally whip you in a real fight.

Rabbit: Why do you think that?

Tiger: I have claws, you have… fuzzy ears.

Rabbit: My secret ultra special move is the Super Fuzzy Earhilator Power Punch that can be combined with my Ultimate Form Spinning Cotton Tail Tornado of Doom!

Tiger: *rolls eyes* Getting back to Versus Mode, we each pick a side and then battle it out to see who can reign supreme. So our first Versus Mode has us choosing between two PlayStation era JRPGs, The Legend of Dragoon and Legend of Legaia.

Rabbit: ^raises hands^ Oh! Oh! Legend of Legaia is the best!

Tiger: No way! It’s too cartoonish. The Legend of Dragoon is the better game; those CGI cut scenes, man!

Rabbit: Looks aren’t everything and Legaia has the better gameplay with the Tactical Arts combat. You basically accrue Art Points (AP) by dealing physical damage or taking damage, when you’ve saved up enough points you can unleash your Arts moves. You don’t just select the fight button like some other game I know but you actually input your moves using the d-pad to make combos. It’s like a turn-based fighting game. It’s definitely not a static experience like Dragoon.

Tiger: Hold your horses. While Dragoon is a turn-based JRPG too, it also doesn’t have you sit there and watch the action unfold on screen. In The Legend of Dragoon, your characters eventually obtain Dragoon Spirits which allows them to transform into their armor forms. In this form, they can use Spirit Points (SP) to unleash powerful attacks. Using these attacks bring up the Additions combat system which is kind of a like a quick-time event. It actually gets pretty hard to pull off the more powerful combos so practice is needed.

Rabbit: Well Legaia also has magical attacks and a “gotta catch ‘em all” gameplay mechanic. Once your three party members obtain their Ra-Seru partner, that is the cool little alien like spirit monster thingy, you can then cast magical spells. But these aren’t just your standard hocus pocus spells, with every Seru you fight in battle and defeat, you have a chance of absorbing their powers and acquiring a new spell. So you aren’t just limited to having a healer or a spell caster, all three party members can acquire the same spells, so you can balance out the healing load.

Tiger: That is another reason why Dragoon is better than Legaia.

Rabbit: What is?

Tiger: Legaia only allows you to use the same three characters throughout the entire game. In The Legend of Dragoon, you can choose your party members from a group of nine. Some of the best characters show up later in the game and sometimes you just want to have different spells or attacks on your team. Why would you want to be stuck with the same three characters the entire game?

Rabbit: Because they’re awesome! Vahn, the main protagonist, is so cool and calm under pressure. Noa, who is my favorite, is cute and spunky! Then there’s Gala who is a fighting monk, who doesn’t love that?

Tiger: With Dragoon you get to choose your characters though! You always have Dart, the protagonist, in your party as well as Shana and Lavitz Slambert early on. Shana isn’t that great so I always swap her out for Rose, who is absolutely amazing. Lavitz is the best until he dies. *sniffles* Then you get stupid Albert who sucks. But having a choice in which characters you use is the best.

Rabbit: The story is cooler in Legaia. The world gets covered by this mysterious Mist that turns the Seru into human leaching bad guys. As Vahn, your village is attacked and you get your Ra-Seru that allows you to use magic. You eventually met up with Noa and Gala who also have Ra-Seru. Then you band together to revive Genesis Trees, which nullifies the Mist, and destroy the Mist Generators across the land.

Tiger: Lame! As Dart, your village is not only attacked but destroyed by the Black Monster. There’s also a huge civil war going on and plots galore! I don’t want to go into too much detail but Dart obtains a Dragoon Spirit which allows him to transform into an awesome winged-armor wearing Dragoon. The music in The Legend of Dragoon is so much better too.

Rabbit: But can you fish?! Huh?! Huh?! Fishing is amazing in Legend of Legaia! That right there makes it the number one game!

Tiger: *laughs* Alright, I give up. We’ll let the readers decide which game they think is better.

Rabbit: See’mon Qbbits! Help me beat Tiger and her crazy band of Qgers!

Tiger: Before we wrap this up, we have a Bonus Round! Get ready!

Rabbit: Oh I'm ready, bring it!

Versus Mode Bonus Round – Rose vs Noa, Ready? Fight!
Tiger: This hand of mine glows with an awesome power; its burning grip tells me to defeat you!

Rabbit: The School of the Undefeated of the East!

Tiger: The winds of Kings!

Rabbit: Zenshin!

Tiger: Keiretsu!

Rabbit: Tempa Kyouran!

Tiger & Rabbit: Look! The East is burning red!

Tiger: Oh my gosh! I can totally picture you as Master Asia riding Fuunsaiki.

Rabbit: I could so rock that horse.

Tiger: For those of you that have no idea what just happened here, that was from Mobile Fighter G Gundam and I apologize for starting that whole thing. I wanted to do a quick bonus round about our favorite characters from this Versus Mode. Mine is Rose from The Legend of Dragoon. I can’t go into too much detail about why she is so awesome because it would spoil a major portion of the game, but she is so cool. Always serious and a bit cold, Rose is an absolute badass when she first joins your party. She is a rapier master, which makes her one of the stronger and faster characters in the game. She can also use vampiric magic and the only in-game character that has stronger abilities is the protagonist. Astral Drain baby!

Rabbit: My favorite character from Legend of Legaia is Noa! She’s an orphan who is raised by an awesome wolf named Terra. She’s a goofy and fun-loving person who fights with claws. I’d have to spoil the story to talk more about her but I love the way she looks. Her dark pink hair is awesome and she really becomes a great ally to the other party members. My favorite move of hers is her Super Arts called Triple Lizard, so awesome! She’s just a super fun character and really brings some laughs to the team.

Tiger: Alright, that’s it for our first edition of Versus Mode! I hope you enjoyed it and that you’ll continue to read TvR!

Tiger & Rabbit: These hands of ours are burning red! Their loud cries tell us to grasp happiness! Erupting burning finger! Seki! Ha! Love-love ten! Kyou! Kennnn!!!!!!!!

Random Happy Time, 4 O'Clock! - The Origins of Tiger and Rabbit!

Rabbit takes the time to chat about the origins of TvR and how their character designs came to be in this issue of Random Happy Time! Tiger and Rabbit also discuss the anime, Kekkaishi.

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Rabbit: Welcome back TvR faithful! Today’s topic is about the origins of cute ‘iddle Tiger and happy baby Rabbit where we will discuss the backstory of how we came to be. So Tiger, why don’t you start by telling us how you got your name.

Tiger: I got the nickname of Tiger from a couple of fellow Tae Kwon Do students back in the day.

Rabbit: You really are dangerous. U｡･.･｡U

Tiger: It was a play on my name, if you must know. (=ＴェＴ=) It didn’t have anything to do with my so-called violent nature.

Rabbit: I actually gave myself my name. I was tired of being mistaken for you all the time and wanted a name that stood out. So I used my Chinese zodiac symbol as my name!

Tiger: We are kind of identical.

Rabbit: Nope. I’m so much cooler than you are. ^sticks out tongue^

Tiger: Hardy har har.

Rabbit: Do you know why we chose the colors we did?

Tiger: I do, it’s from the sealing beads of Madarao and Hakubi from the Anime, Kekkaishi.

Rabbit: Yes, Madarao has purple beads and Hakubi wears green beads. Doesn’t this seem a little backwards to you though?

Tiger: How so?

Rabbit: Well I picture you to be a lot like Madarao, he’s the older of the two and he’s more sarcastic. Whereas Hakubi is the younger and more energetic one yet you’re the color of Hakubi and I’m the color of Madarao.

Tiger: Well we chose the colors of our favorite character and Habuki is mine. He also fights alongside the Yukimura family, which consists of my favorite human character in Kekkaishi, Yukimura Tokine. Plus, he says “honey” a lot which is so cute!

Rabbit: That’s funny. I like how cool Madarao is, especially when he transforms back to his true form. My favorite human is Sumimura Yoshimori, he’s funny.

Tiger: And you are a lot like him too.

Rabbit: You think? (´･_･`)

Tiger: Well you both sleep a lot, you're kind of naive, and you both tend to just jump right in without thinking anything through.

Rabbit: (,,#ﾟДﾟ) Hey! That’s not true. Anyway, as for our looks, I know we worked with Dan the Artist quite a bit on our designs.

Tiger: He nailed my character the first time, with only a minor expression change. Yours was harder though. You went through a few iterations before he got how you wanted to look down on paper.

Rabbit: What can I say? He wanted perfection with me, you were just an afterthought. （⌒▽⌒）

Tiger: （；¬＿¬) You definitely are a piece of something. Before we go, don’t you have a teaser?

Rabbit: Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Listen up Qgers and Qbbits! Tiger vs Rabbit has a special guest coming later this year who will sit down with us and talk video games. For now, we will just refer to him as “The Partner.” (◉Θ◉) If you have any questions, send us an email or message us on Twitter and we’ll pick one for our TvR Tag Tournament topic! Look forward to it!

Q Attack, Round 3 - Will the San Jose Sharks Make the Stanley Cup playoffs?

In this entry of Q Attack, Tiger and Rabbit veer off course for a little hockey talk. After a stellar regular season that ended in one of the worst playoff exits in hockey history, the San Jose Sharks have a lot to prove in this upcoming season. Will the San Jose Sharks make the Stanley Cup playoffs? Tiger and Rabbit both have their own opinions on the matter.

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Tiger: So I was contemplating whether or not we should do a non-video game centered Q Attack this early. With us being in October and with the new hockey season about to begin, I figured it was now or never to discuss the future of our beloved hockey team.

Rabbit: Yes, I think this is great timing to talk hockey. We might want to give a little backstory for our Qgers and Qbbits that don’t know anything about hockey. You should probably discuss last season especially, that is, if you can handle it.

Tiger: Effing LA.

Rabbit: You’re not supposed to swear on the blog!

Tiger: I’ll edit it all out when I type it up. Stupid purple sucking-

Rabbit: Okay, as you can see, Tiger and I are both hockey fans. Tiger’s the bigger hockey fan, ^whispers^ she takes it a lot more seriously than I do.

Tiger: You’re a pretty big fan yourself; we did watch all the games of the 2013-2014 season together.

Rabbit: That is a fact! Another fact, our favorite team is the San Jose Sharks! Chomp!

Tiger: Located in lovely San Jose, CA; the Sharks are usually a very dominate regular season hockey team and then they turn into a minor league team in the playoffs. They have an inability to win when it actually matters and they implode on themselves like a bunch of-

Rabbit: Souffle! Cause if you bake it wrong, it will collapse.

Tiger: Last season was no different with the Sharks looking like a team that could win the Stanley Cup in the regular season only to fall to the LA Kings in the first round. They were up three games to zero-

Rabbit: A Stanley Cup playoff series is a best of seven, so the team that wins four games, wins the round and can move on to the next series.

Tiger: San Jose made history by letting the freaking Kings win the last four games and take the series.

Rabbit: Tiger cried when it happened.

Tiger: That’s a lie!

Rabbit: Oh no, you cried, I totally saw you.

Tiger: *glares*

Rabbit: We got to spend the rest of the playoff hockey season watching the LA Kings go all the way to win the Stan-

Tiger: Please don’t finish that sentence or I really will cry. *sniffles*

Rabbit: Aww, poor Tiger. ^pats Tiger's head^ There’s always next year. I know this summer was a tough one. Other teams around the league were getting new players and making additions to help them succeed all the while, the Sharks just sat there doing nothing.

Tiger: They did get John Scott who is probably the worst player in the history of forever. That’s a bonus, right? They also stripped our captain of his letter. Oh, and then there’s the Ice Girls, adding sexy cheerleaders to the games because that will make a huge difference.

Rabbit: But it’s a new season! New possibilities! New opportunities!

Tiger: For them to fail.

Rabbit: This was really rough on you, wasn’t it?

Tiger: Why did it have to be against LA?! *raises arms* Out of all the teams, why?! I could’ve handled the Nucks, Chicago, heck even Anaheim would have been better.

Rabbit: We’re also flying down in February to see the Sharks host the Kings at Levi’s Stadium. This will be the first outdoor game the Sharks have ever played in.

Tiger: Ugh, I can’t even think about that, I don’t even think I can handle watching the first game of the season either.

Rabbit: The NHL was especially cruel this year. When the Stanley Cup winner opens at home for the first time in the new season, they have a banner raising ceremony and pass out the Stanley Cup Champion rings to all the players. In this case, LA’s first home game just happens to be the Sharks first game of the entire season…

Tiger: … I can’t… I can’t handle this. *cries*

Rabbit: We have so much to look forward to this season! They have a new direction with a new leader and a new purpose. We’re also going to see our first professional hockey game in ages and an outdoor game to boot!

Tiger: Please just put me out of my misery. Do you think the San Jose Sharks will make the Stanley Cup playoffs?

Rabbit: I say yes because I believe in them but mostly because they didn’t make that many changes this summer. Yes, they did lose a few players and are moving who I consider to be a key forward back to defense in Burns, but I still think they have the drive and talent to make it into the top eight teams from the Western Conference. The young players on the team have the heart to help them overcome the challenges that this season will bring. I also think that they can really use last season’s defeat as fuel for this upcoming season. Light that fire and show them what you’re made of, San Jose Sharks!

Tiger: Oh how I hope you are right but I truly think there’s just too much drama surrounding this team right now. The summer of uncertainty, the fact they keep throwing around the word “rebuild” when they talked about the team, and then they didn’t make any changes at all! Plus, they want to change the culture in the locker room yet they maintain the same people and expect the Sharks mentality to somehow evolve? A part of me is excited for the season. I love watching the game of hockey. It’s fast, it’s fun, and it’s easy to follow once you know a few basic rules. I just feel like the Sharks, no matter how good they start, will have the stigma of blowing a three game lead in the playoffs hanging over their heads for the entire season. I don’t know if they can ignore that much pressure. Why did we even pick the Sharks as our team?

Rabbit: Um, because they were the only team we could watch on TV after ESPN stopped showing hockey?

Tiger: *hangs head*

Rabbit: Alright Qgers and Qbbits! You’ve got your answer, thanks for reading this slightly depressing entry of Q Attack! We’ll get back to video games next time, until then!

Will the San Jose Sharks Make the Stanley Cup playoffs?
Tiger     vs     Rabbit

Random Happy Time, 3 O'Clock! - Twitter and Toast!

Rabbit is back in control with this edition of Random Happy Time! She takes this opportunity to shamelessly plug TvR’s social media accounts and to discuss a very important topic with Tiger.

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Rabbit: ／(=⌒x⌒=)＼ Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening Qgers and Qbbits! Welcome to another edition of-

Tiger: Wait. Just stop. Σ(-᷅_-᷄๑) I've been meaning to ask, what is with the Qgers and Qbbits?

Rabbit: I thought we needed to come up with a catchy name for our fans. Since our main theme here is answering questions, ala Q Attack, I came up with those two names. Tiger’s fans are Qgers and my fans are Qbbits. Clever, right? It’s like they’re our own version of the QForce!

Tiger: Not really and you’re assuming they want these cutesy names.

Rabbit: They are awesome names, I’m sticking with them. (ﾉ´ヮ´)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

Tiger: I thought you were going to quit using the emoticons too.

Rabbit: ^pauses^ ☆*･゜ﾟ･*\(^O^)/*･゜ﾟ･*☆

Tiger: (ﾉ｀Д)ﾉ:・’∵:.┻┻

Rabbit: |ω･)و ̑̑༉ You missed me! So as I was saying Qgers and Qbbits! TvR is now on Twitter! We’ll be posting updates on our account but the main reason why we created one is so that we can have a new segment called Quick Q Attack! You can ask us a yes/no or either/or question via Twitter and we’ll give you an answer in 140 characters or less! Amazing, right?

Tiger: When did we decide to do this?! *shakes fist at Rabbit* You can’t just come up with these things without telling me first!

Rabbit: ^whimpers^ You told me I could run the Twitter account. I thought it’d be fun to do.

Tiger: *sighs* Fine, you can do your little segment. Just don’t go all emoticon crazy again, okay?

Rabbit: Yahoo! Thank you! 〜(^∇^〜） 〜(^∇^）〜 (〜^∇^）〜

Tiger: (－‸ლ) You’re welcome, honey.

Rabbit: We also have a an email address now where you can send us your own Q Attack questions or Versus Mode scenarios and we’ll answer them in future blog posts. You can find us on Twitter @TigervsRabbit and email us at TigervsRabbit@outlook.com!

Tiger: Seriously? You used a Microsoft email address for our almost entirely PlayStation focused blog?

Rabbit: ^pouts^ It was already taken on Gmail. Anyway, I’ve got an important topic to discuss in this Random Happy Time!

Tiger: Okay, shoot me with it.

Rabbit: ~(＾◇^)/ Toast.

Tiger: Oh no, not this.

Rabbit: Yes, this. I want to talk about our love for toast. I love toast so much that I use a ton of blankets on my bed.

Tiger: What does that have to do with toast?

Rabbit: Because I want to be toasty all the time. I want to be one with the toast.

Tiger: *hangs head* I shouldn’t have asked.

Rabbit: I love toast so much that if he asked me to marry him today, I would do it in a flash.

Tiger: Oh my. *shakes head* It is true that toast is pretty awesome. It’s easy to make, you can put almost anything on it, and it goes with everything.

Rabbit: I’m in love with Mr. White Bread who likes to wear Nutella and strawberries.

Tiger: Wow, that sounds super sweet. I’m on a plain old sourdough toast with a little butter kick right now.

Rabbit: Such a simple choice. You just don’t have the refined palette like I have.

Tiger: You better wrap this entry up before I bop you on the head.

Rabbit: ｡･ﾟﾟ･(>д<)･ﾟﾟ･｡ Wai! You’re so violent!

Tiger: *shakes fist*

Rabbit: Thanks Qgers and Qbbits! Make sure to send us your questions via @TigervsRabbit on Twitter or email us at TigervsRabbit@outlook.com! I hope to see you again soon! That is, if I survive Tiger's fury! ／(=ｘェｘ=)＼