If you’re subscribed to any number of Hololive virtual YouTubers, then you will have probably noticed that a lot of them are playing Undertale right. This is most likely a consequence of Cover Corp having to get permission from developers and publishers to stream games first, after which there is always a flurry of activity. Nevertheless, this recent Hololive Undertale craze appears to have caught the attention of creator Toby Fox, as he recently got in contact with third generation personality Houshou Marine.
Speaking on Twitter, Marine said that Toby Fox DM’d her to provide permission for streaming Deltarune (or at least the first chapter of Undertale’s in-development sequel) and clear up some questions she had about the game. More specifically, he advised that the ‘Cloudy Glasses’ item works well in the final battle against Sans and that Flowey’s voice line ‘Hmm… That’s a wonderful idea!’ was actually provided by him.
Don’t worry: she asked Toby if it was okay to post about this publicly.
言っていいって許可もらいました!!
なんとUNDERTALEの作者の、tobyfoxさんからDMいただきました!!😳✨
船長の配信見てくれたそうです😭✨
・DELTARUNEの許諾を貰いました！
・サンズ戦でくもったメガネは有効だそうです！
・フラウィの「ﾅﾝﾃｽﾃｷﾅｱｲﾃﾞｱ」はtobyfoxさんの声だそうです😂— 宝鐘マリン🏴☠️＠ホロライブ3期生 (@houshoumarine) February 24, 2021
Marine was arguably the one who kicked off this latest Undertale craze among Hololive streamers, beginning her playthrough on 15 February. Her latest stream on 23 February going through the Genocide Route (where she ran into trouble with Sans) has already clocked over 1 million views. No doubt as a result, both Tsunomaki Watame and Shiranui Flare are streaming it right now as of the time of writing.
Undertale is obviously a western game, but Toby Fox has always been strongly influenced by Japanese pop culture. He was involved in the EarthBound ROM hacking community before cutting his teeth composing music for Homestuck, and cites games such as Moon and Shin Megami Tensei as major inspirations. Lately, he has been very involved with the game’s localization into Japanese, tweets frequently in the language, and has even fronted events for Japanese companies such as Music Engine.
In many ways, both Toby Fox and Undertale have been absorbed into Japanese pop culture, regardless of their western origins. One can only imagine what a potential partnership with Hololive and Cover Corp might do for the series in the future, especially when Deltarune releases at some point in the future.