A reality/talent show on SimTV having to do with discovering stand-up comic talent. The audition process is filmed where the judges make fun of bad comedy acts in a one-on-one interview after the fact. Anyone can audition for the show, as long as they have some stand-up comedy experience, however only 12 contestants are selected. Each week after auditions are over, a challenge is held, wherein the contestants have to write comedy and are graded based upon their performance. The challenges are various, though a stand-up act before a live audience is usually required. Roasts, greeting card slogans, and comedy writing for sitcoms has also been used as challenge material. The show has been running as part of SimTV's Sunday night "Virtual Reality" programming block since its debut 9 seasons ago.
Standing for "Brady Olson Software Company", BOSC is a developer of professional creativity tools for personal computers and tablets. It is analogous to Adobe and its name is similar to Jasc.
An industry-standard photo editor and illustration program for personal computers made by BOSC. It is analogous to Adobe Photoshop.
A social networking microblogging site, located at cheep.ly. Analogous to Tumblr, only without the transphobia.
Pronounced "k'sally", this is a budget electronics manufacturer, known for wristwatches, calculators, and musical instruments. Analogous to Casio and named after Gerald and Robert Casale of DEVO.
A budget electronic musical keyboard, intended for children and people learning how to play the piano. It features 600 instrument sounds including 16 drum kits and can accept new samples from an SD card. It is capable of storing up to 5000 MIDI events in 5 user song banks, each with 5 tracks. It is roughly analogous to the Yamaha PSR-290 and Casio LK-280 personal arrangers. "JR" stands for "Jerry & Robert".
Main article: AMS: Fellows
A reality show/social experiment on SimTV. 12 contestants are sequestered inside a house and their movements and conversations are monitored. During the first season, the contestants all believed they were on holiday at a luxury resort; however, this deception was never used again. From series 2 onwards, contestants are chosen based upon an interest inventory and are explicitly told they will be participating in the Fellows reality show. Also, the first series was stacked in such a way that the final two contestants were a man and a woman, and when the last beds were removed from the house, a singular queen-size bed was installed in the women's bedroom. The intent here was to make the last 2 contestants fall in love with each other, but this did not work. The final contestants were DaQuan Anderson and Ashante Morton, and DaQuan yielded the bed to Ashante while he slept on the couch. This jeopardy was attempted again next season, but dropped in every season thereafter. The first series proved extremely lucrative for SimTV, as the network was able to put popular contestants onto other shows. Runner-up, Tyrone Young, was given a late-night talk show, called Tyrone; and a court show called Bro Court. Winner, DaQuan Anderson was made host of an ill-fated reality show, Muscle Tower; and replaced Pritchard Locksley as the host of Fellows from series 3 onwards.
A manga by Shinobu Tezuka and Noriko Sasaki, translated by Sarah Gardiner. The title could be translated to "Best Plan", but Tezuka was adamant that the overseas release continue to be called Ichiban Keikaku. The manga is the story of a secret society of people with extrasensory perception, led by a 12-year-old boy named Karl Franklin (Hiro Nakamura in the original Nihon). An anime has been produced of Ichiban Keikaku, but it has not been released outside Nippon. This is sort of a generic manga concept, based somewhat on Dragon Ball and Naruto, but not closely enough to either one to be analogous to them.
Styled as "JennaDoll" in the branding, Jennadoll is a popular line of poseable dolls, doll accessories, and playsets for girls. While the series has its own canon and characters, licenses with popular films, television programmes, cartoons, and games are fairly common. Roughly analogous to Barbie, except Jennadolls are fully articulated.
A toy line marketed toward girls. Little Loonas experienced a sudden burst of popularity when a teen pop idol wore a Little Loona licensed teeshirt to a concert. Their popularity skyrocketed them to the forefront of pop culture for a couple years before dying out completely after a cartoon was made that completely ignored the series' established canon. The line ended when the creator went out of business after a disastrous partnership with CryptoCoin and the universally-panned introduction of LoonaCoin. Little Loonas are analogous to Labubu in the real world.
An actor from Miniopolis. After failing to score any leading roles in film or television there, he auditioned for the host of Fellows on SimTV in Simcinnati. After hosting the show for 2 years, he found a niche in voice acting and now works as an in-house voice actor for Fofoff Productions. Pritchard was originally seen in The Urbz: Sims in the City for Nintendo DS and GBA, where he was a fairly low-ranking member of the Artsie group.
A computer software development company responsible for the creation or marketing of several high-profile software programs. They are also the principal developers of the Glassdoor PC operating system. Macrotalk is analogous to Microsoft.
Part of the larger Macrotalk Hyperspace suite, Hyperslide is a slideshow generator. Beginning in Hyperspace 8, Hyperslide gained some powerful shape editing and text manipulation options. Certain graphic designers have noted Hyperslide 8's abilities to create and manipulate 3D geometric primitives, control colour gradients, and apply text effects are easier to use than BOSC Darkroom. It is commonly used in schools and businesses to prepare slideshow presentations of collected data. It is analogous to Microsoft Powerpoint.
A suite of software tools for desktop publishing and business data management. Available in several different permutations, the entire suite contains...
• Hypewriter: Word processing
• Hyperslide: Slideshow production
• Hypersheet: Spreadsheets and equation-based maths
• Hypermail: Email client synchronisation
• Hyperdata: Database
• Hyperprint: Publishing and printing
• Hyperpage: Webpage development
• Hyperchart: Notetaking and flowchart generation
• Hyperspeed: Project management
• Hypersync: Collaborative filesharing and chat
• Hyperclass: Remote classroom management
It is analogous to Microsoft Office, with the reintroduction of Microsoft Classroom and Microsoft FrontPage as discrete programs.
Commonly shortened to "M&M", Monsters & Mythos is a popular tabletop roleplaying game. It is analogous to Dungeons & Dragons, though with classes more informed by the works of JRR Tolkien.
An island nation across the ocean. The demonym for things from Nippon is Nihonjin and the official language is Nihon. It is analogous to Japan. In fact, the names "Nippon" and "Nihonjin" are Japanese for "Japan" and "things of Japanese origin". In Japanese also, "Nihon" is an alternative spelling of "Nippon"; here it is a short form of "Nihongo", meaning "Japanese language".
A Nihonjin musical instrument company known for synthesisers. Their name is Japanese for "hello". Ohayo is analogous to Yamaha, only without the motorsports division.
The trailblazing digital synthesiser, released in 1984. Using FM synthesis instead of the traditional transistor ladder design allowed the DS9 to imitate mallets, strummed instruments, and bowed instruments more realistically than had been possible up to this time. The DS9 is the only instrument of Ohayo's to be continuously manufactured without interruption since its introduction in the '80s. It is analogous to the Yamaha DX7. Its name comes from "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine".
An electronic piano produced by Ohayo. Featuring a full keyboard, it uses whole-step samples of a grand piano, harpsichord, electric piano, and pipe organ. It also uses acoustic modelling synthesis to imitate a strings ensemble and orchestral brass section. It is capable of storing 1200 MIDI events in a single user-definable song. It is analogous to the Yamaha YPP-50. "EPS" stands for "Electronic Piano Synthesiser".
A young adult novel written by Esther Hogan, adapted into a film by Hogan and director, Chris Calabasas. After the film's surprising upset at the box office over the summer blockbuster, Deeper, the novel saw increased presence in schools with children as young as 9. The story chronicles the tale of a young girl, Gretchen, realising she does not wish to be a girl anymore and runs away from his abusive parents to live with his cousin and her husband as Gregory. The film starred Kyra Dayley as Gregory's cousin, Taylor, and Deirdre Dawson as Gretchen/Gregory, two Studio Town up-and-comers. Dayley was better known as Elspeth Sloane in Sea of Thieves: Pirates of the Dark Water and Dawson as Arcadia Shay in Castle of Magic. The screenplay having been written by the novel's author, the film held fairly close to the source material, except for the addition of a love interest in the character of Heidi Merrick, whom Gregory admits having feelings for and sends letters to after running away. In the post-film printings of the novel, Hogan added Heidi to the story. She had been considering Heidi for the original printing, but decided she was superfluous until seeing how people reacted to her presence in the film. Perpetual Stew for the Weary Traveller has no direct analogue, but the title is a modification of Chicken Soup for the Soul, and the overarching idea was inspired somewhat by The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants and The First Wives' Club, with a pro-transition message.
Formerly a software research and development company, PisaPy Technologies worked with several high-profile companies to produce software and keep records. The company's last-ever project was a Voice over IP service called Headphone, which cost a great deal to implement and was unreliable due to its reliance on infrastructure that was owned by Airstream Telecom, their main competitor in the VoIP market. Eventually, the system became too expensive to maintain and PisaPy's executive sold the company to Airstream who shut the service down and downsized 15 offices. It has no real-world analogue.
An open-world exploration, building, and mining game for personal computers. It is analogous to Minecraft.
Colloquially known as PS-123 (pronounced "P.S. one two three"), this primary school services a number of different towns and unincorporated communities in the Simcinnati area; including Sunshine Acres, Newcrest, Willow Creek, Perry, and Miranda. From its establishment in 1959 to the school system restructure in 2005, it offered Kindergarten classes in addition to grades 1-6; however after 2005, kindergarten was discontinued and it took over junior high school duties from the newly-defunct PS-547. Its secondary level is HS-119, located a mile away to the north. PS-123's mascot is the Roadrunner and it shares a rivalry with the PS-257 Coyotes. It is analogous to my own elementary school, whose mascot was also the Roadrunner. The name "PS-123" comes from the PlayStation series and its first 3 consoles.
A web host for stories, quizzes, polls, and microblogs located at quotever.net. While originally intended as the creator's final project in his university web development course (whereupon it was known as What.Ever, pronounced "what dot ever"), he subscribed to a server host and opened the service up to the entire internet, renaming it "Quotever". It was quickly found by pre-teens and children and became an alternative social network for those whom the bigger social media sites considered too young to join their sites. While originally this was the result of the creator (whose name is not known) forgetting to set any terms and conditions for use, this was quickly rectified. While anyone of any age was entitled to create an account on the site, new registrants were required to give their birth year, and existing users were required to employ a "not safe for children" label to any blatantly sexual content they had already written. Having a birth-year on file allows the database to automatically screen out NSFC content on a user-by-user basis. The only downside to this arrangement is that unregistered users are no longer able to access any of the site's content. Quotever is analogous to and named after Quotev, a similar "Tumblr with training wheels" website.
A large city park in Newcrest, adjacent to the Line 9 rail trail. It features large greenspaces, picnic shelters, park grills, a playground, tennis courts, a basketball court, a volleyball pit, and softball fields arranged in a cloverleaf formation. It is analogous to the Peanut-Shaped Park where I often go to walk.
A childrens' art program for Macrotalk Glassdoor and PEAR Anjou. Apart from brushes and markers, the program also features stamps, animated stamps, a Rainbow Brush with customisable colour spectra, and the ability to make stamps out of any shape currently drawn on the canvas. Only 3 revisions were released before the project was released to open-source. It has since been integrated into the E-Zel kids drawing tablet. It is analogous to KidPix or KidWorks 2.
An erotic, mostly-pornographic fantasy story written by Gina Fletcher and uploaded to Quotever without an NSFC marking. It was blocked and deleted 3 months after publication for breaching the terms of use. Gina created the account "StrippersfollyX86" specifically for uploading this story as she was concerned about its content causing her to lose followers on her main account. It has no real analogue.