Softimus Prime and Slumblebee

While I was on holiday, I saw a crane-game machine containing Softimus Prime and Slumblebee transforming cuddly toys. ^_^

I took a photo and would have uploaded it but I still don't know where my card-reader is, so I can't. So I've posted links instead. I didn't win one; the machines were cheating! ¬_¬

Space Adventure Cobra

I'm currently playing through the Space Adventure Cobra videogame that came out for the Sega Mega CD. There's a review of it here with a small gallery here. It contains more fanservice and nudity than is usually seen on console games these days, but then again, Sega seemed more relaxed about this than either Nintendo or Sony etc are. It's perfectly welcome to me to see naturally proportioned people after starting to watch Code Geass...!

It's a very linear story; it forces you to follow each possible option - especially at the start of the game - before it forwards on the story, and there seems to only be one single path through the story. (There are a few instant death options in battle, but in those cases you just continue a little further back in the story with no penalty)

It's the story about three identical triplet sisters... so I guess it's the same as in the movie I saw on videotape a few years ago. I don't know whether it compares to the anime series or the manga because I haven't read any of the manga and I only just started watching the anime (ILA have fansubbed it).

EDIT: Maybe there are games for consoles with equal amounts of fanservice these days, it's just that none of the character designs in things like Playboy The Mansion are particularly attractive, so I forgot about it.

Anime Buses

Well, I was reading a forum thread about some anime decals seen on cars at comiket, and that's interesting, I guess, but I then got to looking for full professional jobs - fully painted bus advertisements.

I found more than I'd seen before and they're kinda cool so I thought I'd preserve the links here.

There are lots on http://zbzbm.hp.infoseek.co.jp/kikaku/moebus/

Chiyo-chan and many other Azumanga Daioh buses

Gunslinger Girl bus

various anime and manga advertised on this bus... 2x2=Shinobuden, Azumanga & Yotsuba to, Onegai Twins etc

DearS

Fushigiboshi no Futago Hime

Lucky Star bus #1

Lucky Star bus #2

Lucky Star bus #3

Sister Princess bus

Futakoi bus

Dragon Ball Z bus

Precure Splash*Star (argh! my eyes!)

the Rozen Maiden Shinku Liner ^_^

and....

the Pokemon Jet

and the Ultraman train!! (ok they're not buses)

recent videogame purchases

Well, I went round a lot of 2nd hand shops and a car boot sale last week and came away with a load of cheap games. Here they are:







Yoyo's Puzzle Park is a strange little game, it's by irem (I was just playing R-Type Final too..) and is unusually named after the bad guy! It's very much in the style of old 2D single-screen platform arcade games such as Snow Bros and Bubble Bobble, and has these extraordinarily cute characters wandering round jumping on bombs to kill monsters, and saying "Nanoda!"

I, too, was going round saying "Nanoda!" for ages, afterwards.

Fighter Maker is a beat-em-up-construction-kit. It makes 3D fighter games to the level of... well, my brother thought Dead Or Alive (1) looking at the graphics, but then we agreed it was more Last Bronx when we looked at the game in motion.

Rox (which I suspect must be called that because of the Japanese number 6) is a puzzle game that makes NO SENSE at all if you try folowing the in-game instructions. It makes a bit more sense if you read the instruction manual, but by that time I wanted to try another game (nanoda?!). Watch some in-game footage and see if you can work out the pattern. Makes just as little sense in English as not being able to read Japanese. What you have to do is trap the same number of blocks in between matching numbers as is on the matching pair. e.g. you have [4][1][2][3][5][4] and they'll disappear. Or [3][5][4][1][3] and they'll disappear. does that make sense? Yes? No? It seemed too much of a brain-ache to be fun, to me.

Treasures Of The Deep is a game by Namco that gave away a free demo of Point Blank. But mine is missing that. Apparently it's a pretty good game, but I haven't tried it yet.

Last Battle is a Hokuto No Ken game for Megadrive, but has had all the Hokuto No Ken-ness removed from it, like many of the graphics, the names, the story, and the blood / exploding heads. I'm not sure which Hokuto No Ken game it was as there are so many of them, I picked it up because of the novelty value and because I felt a loss at not being able to play Fighting Mania. It could do with better collision detection.

Spider-man is actually "The Amazing Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin", but it doesn't say it's that one.

Flashback is a classic platformer with really nice fluid animation for the main character, reminding me of Impossible Mission and the 1st Prince Of Persia game. Unfortunately, my copy just has a copyright notice and then I get a black screen. T_T Apparently Fade To Black is supposed to be the sequel, though. I guess my copy is ahead of itself, as fading to black is all it does! T_T

Revenge Of Shinobi is cool, that's why I got it. ^_^

The 3 Gameboy carts there are Magical Drop (GBC), Doraemon Kart 2, and the game with the torn label is Holy Magic Century. Although there's an RPG called Holy Magic Century for N64, this game for GB is quite obviously a rebranded clone of one of my all-time favourite arcade games: Mr. Do!, though it's not as good because the ball you throw doesn't bounce off walls, and you can't turn round immediately and fire when you need to. I got it for free, though, the lady at the stall I got it from just gave it to me as a gift when I asked if she knew what it was.

And finally, I got a cart of Sonic 2; during my mis-spent days at university I played the Sonic games a lot with a close friend of mine, using a rom on a megadrive emulator called Genecyst. It was always graphically glitchy on the levels containing liquids, and that was annoying. I have this game as part of a few compilations for later consoles, but I wanted a copy for the actual Megadrive now I own one of my own.

House Of The Dead 4

I didn't play many arcade games at all on holiday this year (sigh), though I had a go at House Of The Dead 4 - two credits for a pound. I got as far as the 2nd chapter.

I'd upload a photo if I could just find my flash-card reader... T_T

Here's some in-game footage, and here's the official site.

It was a bit annoying having a submachinegun and having to reload so soon, it was a bit annoying having to put off your aim to shake the gun around (it's not motion detection so much as you hear something rattling back and forth in the gun), and it was annoying that *all the zombies seemed to be immortal while on the ground*, as in, there were plenty of times that zombies were visible, you'd shoot them and the hits would not register until they were fully standing up.

And the players seemed to keep turning around while there were still zombies in front of them! And it hardly ever seemed to matter...? Like, oh, zombies are really nice, they won't attack anyone who's not facing them...!

There was one line in it that the main character said:

"It's all happening again. But it's much worse this time."

and hey, that's just what I was thinking too as I was playing it.

Back from holiday

I was off on holiday last week, same old seaside holiday resort as every year, but this year... oh, so much had been lost! T_T

So long, Saturn Palace, where I first played Super Mario Bros, APB, Bubble Bobble, and so many other arcade games.
So long, Crystals, even though you never had any real arcade games other than Track And Field for the last few years.
So long, Mazan: Flash of the Blade, oh arm-tiring fun where I somehow remained in the top ten ranking from one year to the next.
So long, Ninja Assault and your strangely-pronounced English from an all-Japanese cast.
So long, Last Bronx, though you were broken last year and I expected you to go.
So long, Bang! for 10p a go.
So long, Hyper Bishi Bashi Champ, although you were broken for years I liked to see the shell of a classic machine.

and most of all,

So long, Fighting Mania, from every arcade in Hemsby and Gt Yarmouth, and gone from Meadowhall too, beloved Hokuto No Ken game, I will miss you even though I never once beat "normal" mode.

Sealed Game Heaven

I read last week's posts on Insert Credit - one of them is pointing out a community of sealed videogame collectors.

This post was one of the first I looked at, and... I'd never have thought that looking at a very-almost complete collection of Japanese Dreamcast games would make me feel so saddened and slightly sickened.

NONE OF THESE GAMES ARE OPENED!

[cries]

It's wrong! It's so wrong!

It's no good cheerfully denying a videogame its right to be played, and sending it to Heaven before it's born... the idea makes me sad... T_T

Top 100 independant games by Game Tunnel

Someone brought to my attention this list of Game Tunnel's top 100 independant games reviewed over the past 3 years:

Top 100 independant games by Game Tunnel.

I already have too many games to be getting on with at the moment, though. -_-;;

Sega Mega CD

I got myself a Sega Mega CD on ebay. It cost under £60! and came with a load of games! ... and then I had to spend £10 on a composite cable so I could connect it to my monitor because I don't have any RF inputs. ^_^;;

But!

I now have a Sega Mega CD. Model 1! ^_^





Wow, Cobra Command is a terrible game...! *_*

Arina Tanemura Interview

It's been a week and I'm still eating watermelon. ^_^;;

I just started reading Full Moon o Sagashite recently so I was glad to see that ANN have posted an interview with Arina Tanemura. It's a pretty pointless interview, though. They didn't really talk about any of her work at all. ¬_¬

Tales From Earthsea

I went to a local cinema on Friday evening with my boyfriend, and we wathed the new Studio Ghibli film Tales From Earthsea (or Gedo Senki).

It's based on a series of books by Ursula K. Le Guin who I remember my dad mentioning before as a SF writer. I haven't read any of her work though. Apparently she wasn't entirely happy with the film, and I knew that the film had not been well received in Japanese reviews either. I decided to go to see it anyway because it's rare to see subbed anime in the cinema.

It was alright, not nearly as terrible as I was led to believe it would be. But then, I haven't read or feel any attachment to the original books, and my expectations for the film were low (due to the reviews and perhaps because I don't think Ghibli movies are better or more special than other anime movies).

I got this feeling that the storytelling was being affected by that thing where the makers don't explain something big because they think thay're too cool. ¬_¬

It still has the old Ghibli cliche of *befriend weird things!* and *heroic girl!*, but in this film they're both the same character and she's not the main character, but I get the feeling she'd like to be.

It also has the *be environmentally friendly* ethic, as always.

It was a Goro Miyazaki film, rather than his father's work, though I noticed at the end of the film that it said the film was "inspired by" a Hayao Miyazaki manga called The Journey of Shuna / Shuna no Tabi.

So this film tried to serve two masters. Perhaps that was another of its problems.

Nintendo DS flashcards on Amazon

I was really really surprised to notice that Amazon UK sell the M3 and
R4 devices. As in, my eyes popped out of my head.

They're flashcards for the Nintendo DS that let you play homebrew, movie files, MP3s, and downloaded .nds roms! Just stick the files onto a micro-SD card, put it into the flashcard, and play.

They're very popular items, too. The M3 is ranked #16 in the NDS bestselling list, and the R4 is #43, at the moment.

I didn't think Amazon would dare to sell such things. Especially not directly with free shipping (which is what they offer for the M3).

I suppose Amazon could argue it's like selling MP3 players. You might play music from some download shop, or you could be playing illegal MP3s. Or maybe they just don't understand what the product does and why it's popular.

Meanwhile, today's news is that there's been a huge crackdown on US mod chip sellers! It seems customs were doing the raids, so maybe it's just for imported modchips; the ones developed within the US were ok? [shrug]

recently watched

I've recently watched:

* The first episode of City Hunter

* The first two episodes of Code Geass

* The first episode of Cutey Honey

City Hunter is SO COOL! *_*

The first two episodes of Code Geass made me go OMG!! at the end of each episode. *_*

I can't decide whether Cutey Honey is bad or good. It's started like like any other old Go Nagai show. Family dies at the start. Hero shouts stuff, robot throws its adornments to attack. Beats baddies. Actually, it's more like the old Devilman series than the robot shows. But with more gratuitous female nudity. The episode is 25 mins long and finishes at 20 mins! The full-length end theme is played, and there's a really long episode preview. Maybe I'll give the next episode a go... or I could watch more of the other *really cool* shows... hmm...

EDIT: I decided to watch more Cutey Honey. I've also decided that she's now my favourite Go Nagai mecha. ^_^;; She's far less evil than any of the other Go Nagai heroes I've encountered, after all.

I'm still not sure how Go Nagai manages to make scenes that ought to be erotic just plain bizarre. Or rather, maybe I'm just not sure *why* he does it. Maybe he prefers it that way. O_o