Random Hoo Haasthe blog with the guff

Just what sort of world is Angel Land where Pit has adventures?

Thursday, April 30, 2020 at 2:37 pm Comments (0)

Metal Slug: Missing in Action updated with unused objects in MS7 and Advance among other things, sourced from reader submissions that have been sitting in my inbox for at least two years. I don’t know what I do to deserve this kind of support, but y’all might wanna reconsider. Why, you can drop this stuff on TCRF without having to wait on me to get off my keister!

I’ve been on an inexplicable Kid Icarus kick lately, for some reason. It’s a game that’s always stood out among the early first-party NES library, automatically earning a reputation as the counterpart to Metroid in some capacity. Paired with its Game Boy sequel and prolific appearance in the likes of Captain N, for years it felt like a franchise that was forever missing in action, at least until Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Uprising gave it a very anime makeover.
Unlike other NES titles of its time, it’s a game you don’t quite immediately ‘get’ within just 30 second of playing. Most folks’ impression of the game is largely based off of climbing for a bit, entering doors that lead to nowhere, then falling down a pit and turning the game off. Not quite as pick-up-and-play as the likes of Balloon Fight, is it?

I figured I’d finally give the game the time of day, and did so by playing the 3D Classic version on 3DS, which offers a new “custom” mode that eliminates Pit’s slidey movement and allows you to slow his descent while falling. It doesn’t undo all the game’s old-fashioned quirks, but paired with the digital manual, it made the game that bit more accessible to a total rando otherwise unacquainted with the game. The price is still something worth balking at (someone please put bricks through Nintendo’s windows until they re-evaluate their dodgy prices), but paired with the colourful new backgrounds it’s at least a better show than just a raw Virtual Console release with no extras.
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BHB: Big Honkin’ Bombs

Wednesday, April 1, 2020 at 7:17 pm Comments (0)

Updated with some Scans & Bits, including the last remaining chapters of Sly Cooper, the final episode of Mutant Turtles ’96, the missing episode of Crash Bandicoot Dance! Jump! Daibouken, a few more scraps of Dr. Mario-kun and Shogakukan’s Sonic the Hedgehog, and all but the intro of the short-lived Advance Wars manga.

Under the cut: waffling about the story of Bomberman games, and the one story that actually made a good impression on me. Riveting stuff, I know.
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Get lost on Zebes!

Sunday, December 15, 2019 at 8:16 pm Comments Off on Get lost on Zebes!

I’m falling behind on reporting site updates here, especially when that’s all my Twitter is for these days. Do people still use RSS for that type of thing? Are my RSS feeds even visible in this terrible layout? Well, whatever. Old habits die hard.

Metal Slug: Missing in Action updated with more unused object documentation and other bits and bobs. This one, like all its updates in the past years, is possible thanks to reader submissions like yours. Please send less of them.

The Bomberman shrine updated with new coverage for GB 3, GREE and the Taisen * series, plus updates to World, Saturn and Neo. It’s practically all about cameos! Taisen *’s littered in cameos! Saturn Bomberman was going to have more cameos, judging by unused voices in the data…!

More Scans & Bits, because it requires no thinking on my part. Sonic, Sly Cooper, Crash Bandicoot, Jak & Daxter and other guff. Also, do check out translations for Chou Soujuu Mecha MG and Sly Cooper!

For the past few months I’ve been posting gameplay videos on my YouTube channel every Friday, typically of fangames, mobile phone games, or stuff nobody otherwise wants to document. Some of them feature text commentary, where I get to bust out contextual titbits on the games’ development tools or fangame scene at the time, based purely on a few months of lurking in the early 2000s. This month I’ve been putting out two videos a week, mostly to burn through backlog, but also to free up time for a new project that’ll hopefully appear on the site in the new year. Get excited! Or don’t! Everything’s subjective! And you know what I’m like with premature announcements!

I’d gotten multiple requests (not they came from multiple people or anything) to document games from Metroid: Fan Mission, a now-expired fan game hub. Fan game projects have a terrible habit of going offline without anyone noticing, taking with them practically all evidence of their existence, and seeing a whole hub go down is a shame. I’m more miffed about the multiple Star Fox fangames that have completely disappeared without a trace, but that’s for me to fume about in my own time.
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Wild Guns: Live & Reloaded

Friday, February 9, 2018 at 9:02 pm Comments Off on Wild Guns: Live & Reloaded

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.
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Some games I played in 2017

Sunday, December 31, 2017 at 10:10 pm Comments (1)

Sneaking in a quick Bomberman update with Bomberman 2001, a game that barely existed as a game. Any chance of finding new information it via search engines had already been squandered when at least three forum threads sprung up about it, so I might as well chuck this up. If someone happened to have raided that E3 booth seventeen years ago and done a runner with its contents, maybe we’ll learn something!
Despite no intentions of another yearly review article, I still keep track of the media I consume. I played nearly sixty games this year and watched eighty-something movies… and I’ve, like, barely anything to say about any of them. I’ll try and squeeze out some thoughts on the noteworthy ones under the cut!
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More talkin’ ’bout manga peeps won’t care about

Sunday, May 7, 2017 at 1:39 pm Comments (2)

I don’t want to make this a routine, but you might have guessed (because I’ve become incredibly predictable ever since I exchanged my personality for nerd-ass obsessions) I bought another Japanese gaming magazine for the sole Bomberman comic in it: the August 2007 issue of Fami2Comic.

It’s kind of interesting comparing this to the Dengeki Nintendo I also acquired for the same silly reason; despite being an offshoot of Famitsu, the hot shot magazine whose reviews were taken as gospel for years until people realised, huh, they sure do like bribes, don’t they, Fami2Comic feels like the definition of “second-stringer”. You look at that other blog post and the games its manga were based off, and there wasn’t a game there that wasn’t some manner of international success. Fossil Fighters probably ranked higher than Bomberman during that period in terms of awareness and popularity! (during that comic’s run there was only ONE Bomberman game on shelves… in Japan, Europe and Australia only. welp!) There are four years between the two issues, mind – Dengeki’s lineup might’ve been trash when this one came out for all I know.
I thought it’d be amusing to do another quick looksie at the manga Fami2Comic has to offer, and it’s probably the only spotlight they’ll be getting on the English internet anytime soon, so why the heck not.
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Some games I played in 2016

Saturday, December 31, 2016 at 2:58 pm Comments Off on Some games I played in 2016

Wow, I’m punctual for once in my life! I admit after 2015 (which should be finished sometime soon-ish) I realised I’m running out of opinions even I could be bothered reading, so I figured a blog post with a few lines for each game would be enough. If there’s a game I really need to waffle about in detail, I’ll probably find an outlet for it, but until then, read on!
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Please consume my wares.

Saturday, May 21, 2016 at 9:30 pm Comments Off on Please consume my wares.

Chucking up some game reviews because it’s been a while since I’ve used the blog for bloggin’! That and I forgot how bare some of the ONM Remembered entries were. I finally began to highlight images without commentary to spare myself the trouble and hope it’d give the image some time to be appreciated… but it just looks like lazy content. Welp! The next couple of weeks are a bit wordier, talking about topics that are probably only interesting to me and nobody else. That’s what you come here for, right?
… anyway, here’s a rambly review.

A few years ago my brother was raving about Treasure Adventure Game, a freeware indie 2D platform game that just ticked all his boxes: it had a huge world to explore, all sorts of little details and activities to appreciate, a day-night system that dictated each NPC’s daily routine, and the simple thrill of just riding around in a boat. It was darn-near his favourite game! I didn’t get into it at the time (because jeez, unskippable intros, what a bore!), but I picked it up earlier this year to give it a look-see.
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ONM Remembered – #345

Saturday, April 30, 2016 at 11:00 am Comments Off on ONM Remembered – #345

“Enthusiastic voting by Andrea earned Tamagotchi World its chart position, proving once and for all that democracy is a dangerous tool.”

from N64 Magazine issue 13 (March 1998)
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ONM Remembered – #95

Thursday, May 2, 2013 at 11:00 am Comments Off on ONM Remembered – #95

“We don’t know how you stand on horse-based violence, but we can’t get enough of it. Man creeps up, horse boots him in the face, man dies. Repeat. Now we’re having fun.”

from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 148 (January 2005)
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