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“If I don’t play soon, I’ll die of boredom.”

Wednesday, June 12, 2019 at 12:47 pm Comments Off on “If I don’t play soon, I’ll die of boredom.”

Updated Scans & Bits with what you’d usually expect. More obscure Mario guff, rarities like some F-Zero and Landstalker manga, dumping raws on MEGA for the likes of Rockman ZX Advent, Ninja Turtles and Kirby, plus two new pages for game manuals and guidebooks.
Oh, and the officially licensed Shrek manga. Yeah, I had a double-take when I saw it existed too.

I had a case of the unwellies a few weeks ago which left me nigh-incapacitated… and it says a lot about my priorities that my first thought was, “now’s probably a good time to play Donkey Kong 64.” A debilitating flu really takes the guilt out of playing a nine thousand hour-long game!
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Some games I played in 2018

Monday, December 31, 2018 at 10:29 pm Comments Off on Some games I played in 2018

eyyy nothing better than updating your web browser only to find the newest version of my plugins stink and it now displays foreign language text in a needlessly bulky font, ruining my otherwise lovingly-spaced page designs. I dread to see what it’s done to the Bomberman shrine!

What’s new this month?
Scans & Bits has a bunch of stuff because I wanna see people translate this stuff already (I’LL COMMISSION), including all of the Super Princess Peach and Sonic Generations manga, plus the rest of the Sly Cooper in my possession because it got a lot of buzz for some reason.
Metal Slug: Missing in Action updated with some reader submitted bits and bobs, including hopefully more user-friendly methods of accessing Metal Slug Advance’s unused stages and debug dipswitches.
The Bomberman Shrine is just some junk I had lying around, though the Pocket Bomberman page is worth a goosey if just for its unused material, complete with .IPS patch so you can sample some of it yourself!

It’s that time again: writing thoughts about the media I gorged over the past 12 months. At this point this routine is just a formality for my ailing memory – I keep needing to remind myself, yes, I’ve beaten Star Fox Command and gotten all the endings, I can’t just keep making excuses to play it again!
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“Have a 腐臭 day!”

Monday, October 1, 2018 at 3:54 pm Comments Off on “Have a 腐臭 day!”

You’ll have to forgive me for still being on my manga research kick. It’s just such a novelty, y’know? I don’t know about the rest of the world, but I felt so starved for video game ephemera as a youngster it was a blessing to see any video game franchise as merchandise, as a comic, whatever. I’m not sure if we even had Nintendo comics published in the UK, Nintendo Power and Valiant being such American staples; the closest we got were the two Sonic the Hedgehog comics and the occasional surprise in other magazines such as Max Overload, but it was slim pickings.

And then you turn to Japan and it seemed like it was coming down in video game media – more than I can count in the ’80s alone! Whether or not they were good is a whole other matter, but seeing obtuse one-and-done games like Star Force or Pirate Ship Higemaru getting a manga treatment just seems wild… and they’re darn near undocumented online. I could argue they’re interesting little nuggets of history, but I think that’s just me trying to sugar-coat my big dumb obsessions.

Just on a lark, I figured I’d make a somewhat chronological list of serialised Mario manga from 1985 to the mid-2000; I’d already been keeping tabs on these in my notes for Scans & Bits, but there was no point making proper sections for them until I had actual material of my own to share. It wouldn’t surprise me if there’s more out there; if working on the Bomberman media section has taught me anything, the moment you think you’re 100% comprehensive, three more obscure manga appear out of the woodwork!
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Talkin’ ’bout manga peeps don’t know about

Saturday, April 8, 2017 at 2:25 pm Comments (1)

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.
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ONM Remembered – #458

Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at 11:00 am Comments Off on ONM Remembered – #458

“If things are getting tough and your Yoshis are being slaughtered, it’s time to call on a renegade band of mercenaries.”


from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 62 (November 1997)
(big ups to oldgamemags.com for the scans!)
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ONM Remembered – #457

Saturday, February 4, 2017 at 11:00 am Comments Off on ONM Remembered – #457

“Better known as Daisy in the UK, the pretty pink princess is good for nothing except whimpering and getting kidnapped.”







from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 56 (May 1997), issue 57 (June 1997), and issue 58 (July 1997)
(big ups to oldgamemags.com for the scans!)
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ONM Remembered – Pack-In Week, day 6

Friday, January 27, 2017 at 11:00 am Comments Off on ONM Remembered – Pack-In Week, day 6

“Biokinton is an enemy who throws flying chickens at Mario while floating around inside a cloud. Nobody knows what Biokinton looks like behind his cloud, not even Biokinton’s mum.”




from The Complete Mario Encyclopedia (pack-in with Official Nintendo Magazine issue 07, September 2006)

One of the later pack-ins, coming out after ONM had their big mid-2000s shake-up under new management, this was a more appropriate gift for the new millennium: a delightful little encyclopaedia to the Mario universe! Let’s face it, once the internet picked up groundswell there wasn’t much magazines could include on the cheap that seemed worth a damn; it was demo discs or bust.
Still, this is nicely bound and well printed and it’s just like The Mushroom Kingdom’s Mariopedia) except more tightly edited and not horribly unfinished. It’s a breezier read than trying to digest the Mario Wiki, and it has an entry for bloody Biokinton. They should win an award for that inclusion.

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ONM Remembered – Pack-In Week, day 2

Monday, January 23, 2017 at 11:00 am Comments Off on ONM Remembered – Pack-In Week, day 2

“Pelt the Mystery Ball to the right of Miss Warp 1 to expose Surprise Balls that lead you to a Warp Vase.”










from Yoshi’s Story Player’s Guide (pack-in with Official Nintendo Magazine issue 68, May 1998)
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ONM Remembered – Pack-In Week, day 1

Sunday, January 22, 2017 at 11:00 am Comments Off on ONM Remembered – Pack-In Week, day 1

Mario Kart 64 is the first N64 racing game to be released in the UK and, not surprisingly, it’s a cracker.”





from Mario Kart 64 Skids In! (pack-in with Official Nintendo Magazine issue 58, July 1997)
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ONM Remembered – #428

Thursday, November 17, 2016 at 11:00 am Comments (2)

“Move over Man Of Steel. The ultimate super hero is back!”


from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 07 (September 2006)

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