Random Hoo Haas

I’m a lazy bum and didn’t write blog posts for the last few updates, so let’s get it all in one go!

MS:MIA has a few bits and pieces here and there: some unused graphics, remnants of a debug dipswitch in Advance, translated bits from the Metal Slug Official Guidebook, and a bit of general maintenance, that sort of thing.
The Bomberman shrine sprayed a bunch of stuff  all over the place, mostly unfinished pages, but there’s some notable content like a translated interview!
I’m afraid Scans & Bits is my new jam for content-light research-heavy updates! There’s new pages for Comic Bom Bom (with Ganbare Goemon, Sly Cooper and Dr. Mario scans), CoroCoro Comic (Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Sonic the Hedgehog and assorted 4-koma), Shogakukan Learning Magazine (Super Mario Kun and Famicom Manga for Mario, Zelda 2 and The Goonies), Fami2Comic (Rockman ZX Advent and the rest of Go! Go! Mario Kart), and Dengeki Nintendo DS (Animal Crossing, Sonic the Hedgehog #6, #24 and #38), and English translations for the Star Fox Super Capture Guide, Wai Wai Wario and Klonoa manga courtesy of MiloScat, ReasonablePerson and Moonpie!).
Phew! (Continued)

Metal Slug: Missing in Action updated recently with some debug menu gubbins for 7 and XX. Still holding out for that debug menu in Metal Slug Advance! Anything to close the book on that game!

I’ve been playing a heck of a lot of Wild Guns lately, both the SNES original and the fancy-pants Reloaded edition. For some reason it’s simply pushing all my buttons, it’s the exact type of game I want to play at this point in time! It’s short, it’s sweet, it’s intense, and it pushes me to play better with every attempt. I’ve finished the game on the hardest difficulty with all characters in one credit on both versions now, and I’m still playing it… partly because I don’t know what to move on to next! Bot Vice, maybe?
I’m still kicking myself for short-changing the game’s new content in my last “Some games I played in 2017” post, though I’m shocked there still isn’t a good list laying out all the changes and differences yet. The game’s been out for over a year! Not that it’s a huge deal, the preview trailers do a decent job of showing the highlights, but I’ve been playing both versions so much I want to get it down just for posterity. (Continued)

Another year’s about to wrap up, so you know what that means – I write dumb opinions about media I barely remember! I know, I’m sorry too. I’d no intention of doing a full article, and even the abbreviated list for last year was just too boring to go through again… but I still had a whole bunch of dumb opinions on media I barely remembered that needed an outlet. So, hey, let’s talk about some comics I read! If the thought of writing more doesn’t lull me and the audience into a never-ending sleep, expect another post for games and movies too, maybe.

Star Fox (Nintendo Power)

I’d been keen to read this since my big Star Fox kick last year. My early years online drifting around tiny fansites suggested people found it more compelling than the games, portraying a darker and deeper take on Star Fox lore that, most importantly for fanfic writers, gave Fox a girlfriend, Fara Phoenix. (he can’t fuck Wolf and Falco all the time!)

It’s a breezy light-hearted space romp that paints a fun picture of the Star Fox world. I guess to a young audience it might seem slightly mature, what with Fox grieving over his lost parents and hating Andross so much he’s willing to go on a kamikaze mission, forcing Falco to pummel him senseless… but it’s just so breezy it’s hard to see it that way. The dialogue is jokey and full of dreadful puns, and Andross’ goofy schemes undermine any attempt at seriousness, including his Gundam-shaped living-battery android pig assistant, and his brilliant plan to work alongside a clone of himself is foiled when his clone gushes his love for Fox’s gal. It’s a 80-20 skew of cornball and melodrama, and I love it. (Continued)

Just uploading stuff that should’ve been uploaded months ago!
Metal Slug: Missing in Action has more concept art courtesy of Division 六‘s lovely scans from Neo Geo Freak. You’re best just browsing the directories to see what’s new, those thumbnails are a nightmare to navigate (and even worse to update!).
Scans & Bits also has some new content, including the City Connection manga, some Animal Crossing, plus more Peach’s Great Adventure, Go-Ketsu Wario and Sonic the Hedgehog.

I’m still writing bits and bobs on the side, though whether it’ll find a home on the site is up in the air. All this documentative gumbo scratches an itch, but I do miss a good all-purpose waffle. Sometime, hopefully!

Thanks to a reader submission, we now know there was a level select and sound test hidden inside the first Metal Slug! Now if only we could find a way of loading different objects – looking at those test stages shows some curious object behaviours I didn’t notice before. I’m also testing the waters to see if SNK really do poach my updates for Metal Slug Attack fodder. I’m not crazy, I swear.

The Bomberman site got a lot more stuff, but I couldn’t tell you if any of it is worth looking at; I just got tired of sitting on them until I had a bigger, fancier update to bundle them with.

I’ve been buying an obscene amount of crap from Japan the past few months. Most of it is “research material” (Bomberman books, natch), but I also pick up toys, manga, magazines and other doodads; whatever I can get away with saying “it’s for the website, honest!”
Some of the most interesting buys are magazines, if just for the sheer variety of content in them. I may have bought four issues of Gamest just for the prototype Metal Slug coverage in them, but they’re full of great arcade games I’ve never even seen before. Likewise, I picked up an 1986 edition of CoroCoro Comic just for the rare City Connection manga in it, but there’s stacks of bizarre crap in it like old toy ads, Famicom Rocky, and an short-lived manga that’s never been collected anywhere else, Solar Dog Zero (太陽犬ゼロ). I’ve been sliiiightly tempted to track down the rest of it, but I’m juggling enough foolish endeavours as it is. (a Bomberman website, really?!?)

One of my current focuses is trying to track down all the Bomberman manga, seven of which have never been collected into volumes of any sort, so I have to track them down in the original anthologies or magazines. I picked up an issue of Dengeki Nintendo DS recently (which you’ll probably know the name of if you’re in the Pokémon scene, it’s usually plundered for screens and reveals when a new game is announced) just for the Bomberman story in it, but I was surprised by the number of game-related mangas inside, most of them I’d never even known of before! Full-page A4-sized manga, too!
I thought I’d look them up and see how many are catalogued or even recognised on English fansites. Doing so only made me angry. There’s nada! Not a blip of information on most of ’em! It’s like they don’t even exist! (which is a bit understandable when only one of them got a collected edition) So just for a larf, I want to spotlight the manga in Dengeki Nintendo DS’ March 2011 issue and take note of what coverage they have online.

Hoshi no Kirby: Pupupu Hero
星のカービィプププヒーロー

A cheery bit of light-hearted Kirby fluff; in this story, Kirby teams up with Mr. Frosty against Dedede in a downhill bobsleigh race, though Lololo and Lalala block their path with an icecube maze. Kirby also makes these horrible kissy lips whenever he sucks stuff up and I hate it.
This ran from January 2008 to May 2013 [src], before reviving in Dengeki Bazooka!! as Hoshi no Kirby: Ultra Star Deluxe (星のカービィ ウルトラスーパーデラックス) for a run lasting October 2014 to April 2016. [src] It was also lucky enough to get its complete Dengeki Nintendo run collected in two volumes, though good luck finding them!

Kirby fansites have barely acknowledged this – Kirbytraum has a button for it but no link or info yet – though given how there’s eleventy-billion manga out there I can’t blame them. However, @hitotsunoneko‘s fansite Masked Knight steals the show – not only has it got scans of ten of the stories, it even has fan-translations for the first seven! This is a really good start for online recognition, but it’s gonna go downhill from here. (Continued)