- Yes, him being the true villain absolutely is one big "the pigeon is the mastermind" joke. Him getting up and moving in the photo was another Ghost Trick reference meant to hammer that home.
- The general idea for the fight was to make a spiritual successor to 7NameSam's Star Trek V fight in SANICS, with attacks pulled from/inspired by a different set of bosses raocow's fought, that also served as a final exam boss for Pily's extended moveset. There's 6 phases, each cycling through a set sequence of attacks, and phases 2-6 all start with a "rage attack", which
--- for phases 2 and 3 (the accidental Sophia reference and deliberate Professor Largemustache reference), they repeat every other cycle.
--- phase 4 has two rage attacks that Hatsun alternates between (Glass Man orb and Owlboy's Hex Machine) for each cycle
--- phases 5 and 6 only do their respective rage attacks once (Marina's swords for phase 5, the entire Fire and Ice segment for phase 6)
- On that note, there is a final attack (technically two, but one last reference) that raocow managed to skip by finishing Hatsun off during the Fire and Ice sequence:
Hatsun creates a pair of lightning wings a la the Government emblem and alternates between two attacks from the second half of the Star Trek V fight until he's defeated
. I'll record a video of the full fight
tomorrow today or the 27th, including this last part.
- I knew from the start that I wanted ASMT Rumia to be the first reference attack; that fight was a huge early inspiration for me, and since she was retconned to Calleoca in disguise I was amused at the prospect of starting the penultimate boss of the Calleoca game sequel off with one big reference to her.
- the Gemerl attack is kinda the odd one out in that it's the furthest from its' inspiration; when I first implemented it, the attack worked pretty closely to how it does in Advance 3 -- Hatsun would dash at the player from the corner. But I gradually made tweaks to improve the telegraphing until it much more closely resembled an attack from a game raocow has
not LPed, thus the ? on the monitor.
- The El Stomacho attack happened because I wanted to include at least one attack based around the triple jump, and if I had more time it likely would've been a multi-attack sequence with the waves being just one attack, and another involving a lightning path moving across the arena to invoke the fire in My Heartburn's For You.
--- The waves lower after the player has bopped Hatsun three times, done enough damage to clear the phase, or survived for a set amount of time. In retrospect I probably should've either nerfed the waves, left no gaps between the bells, and/or dropped the attack entirely considering the difficulty raocow had with the double/triple jump in the relay.
- I hadn't seen Fire and Ice until the video for it dropped. The boss in it completely blindsided me and I scrambled to recreate Satan Cat's/The World's attacks in the Hatsun fight to both pay tribute to this surprise higher-spectacle lightning boss fight and replace a number of dropped attacks
--- The addition of the warning lines in turn prompted a number of last-minute telegraphing upgrades and other polish throughout the fight, most of which was done by Enjl while I handled a final polish pass for the epilogue.
- References/attacks that were planned but didn't make the cut include ELE-94, Bright Man, Gemerl's rocket-spawning air dash, and the DKCR chicken boss' egg attack.