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Status report: situation snoozy

Saturday, October 7, 2023 at 12:17 pm Comments (2)

Hello! I’m still here.

I finally covered that Metal Slug Advance prototype that got leaked three years ago, and forced myself to give Metal Slug 7‘s early footage a proper write-up.
I overhauled the sprites section and added somewhere over 200 sheets to it, and also rewrote the sprite-ripping tutorial, now with less jaded snark and more insight into tools and alternate methods, like RAM editing.
I’m still editing my “games I played” reviews from last year, but there’s a couple dozen entries you can read already if you fancy. I also never blogged about the games I played in 2021 article from two years ago, so I’m blogging about it now.

I’m very tired. How about yourself?

This update is mostly just tackling stuff I’ve been neglecting to address for a while now. I tweeted about how I would’ve jumped at the chance to document a Metal Slug Advance prototype in the site’s prime — that game’s been an inexplicable nemesis of mine for close to two decades! — and yet when one finally leaked, I was quite content to completely ignore it until only a couple of months ago. Don’t expect another Missing In Action update any time soon, sorry!
Likewise, the old sprites pages were seriously old, janky, and needlessly vitriolic and opinionated for whatever reason. That and the PHP pages had given up the ghost, apparently; I’m very grateful to Dazz for coding those up for me back in the day, but I think I’m in my comfort zone sticking with plain ol’ HTML.

Speaking of stuff breaking, there’s a lotta funked-up WordPress entries! Em-dashes, foreign characters and other symbols across the board have been turned into junk, and I dread the process of repairing it all. It’s almost tempting to just convert them all into static HTML so they can’t fall apart when I’m not looking, but, well, we’ll see what happens.

Random Hoo Haas will turn 18 years old in three weeks, which is terrifying to think about. If you expect me to commemorate the event in any way, be aware I have an unfinished draft announcing its 15th year of operation, if you want an idea of my work ethic.
The last few blog posts have all expressed how wrecked I am after a demanding year, so you shouldn’t be surprised that remains unchanged! My health is not superb and the faintest whiff of warm weather is enough to Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis the heck out of me. I’m doin’ what I can to keep myself busy and make myself happy, but when that may manifest into online content is another story.

One of those days I’ll remember to write these blog entries before the update, and not after when I’m zonked and want nothing more than to hibernate for five years. Sorry for sounding like a sadsack in these blogs! Glad you’re sticking around, hope my guff entertains or informs or whatever it is folks get out of it.

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Some (belated) games I played in 2020

Saturday, June 5, 2021 at 7:11 pm Comments (1)

A phrase that’s been on my mind this past year is “use your words”. Whether it’s interpersonal communication or trying to get a point across, it’s a good mantra to remember. They might not be good words, but so long as there’s an understanding and a back-and-forth to bang those words into shape, then we can learn more from them than just saying nothing at all.

It’s on my mind a lot because so much of my website work lately is dry documentation: researching publication dates and stuff that’s cool to know and hopefully helpful to others, but a bit of a bore to write. That (and other petty reasons) have been why the Bomberman and Metal Slug sites have been lying dormant — there’s plenty there I’m eager to do, but just documenting guff is deadly. I wanna talk long-form, go on bizarre tirades about nonsense, or whatever — I wanna use my words!


My first step towards acting on that is fawning over Bowser’s various 3D models, so maybe that wasn’t a good idea. I’ll let you be the judge.

It’s months old by now, but I also finally cranked out all eighty-something-thousand words of thoughts about the media I absorbed last year. If ever there was a time to get needlessly verbose about Mario Party Advance, or try to understand the decisions behind the Mortal Kombat cartoon, it was last year, apparently. That sounded more pithy in my head.

Dinosaur Hunter Diaries has a little crappy hub page now, and I also updated old Kirby fangames post to include a couple of games that I was previously unaware had been archived — and also the fact the site is now operational again, rendering the whole post a bit moot. Oh well!
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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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A Correction 65 Million Years in the Making

Wednesday, September 19, 2018 at 9:54 pm Comments Off on A Correction 65 Million Years in the Making

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)

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ONM Remembered is OVER!!!

Sunday, March 26, 2017 at 12:31 am Comments (2)

Over five hundred entries over the course of nearly five years. I, uh, honestly wasn’t expecting this silly little column to run for that long! Somebody should probably have intervened.

Like I said all the way at the beginning, the idea to scan these came about as a first step to finally chucking the old things out… and all this time later, even after moving house, they’re still lying around. I think this column only made me more attached to the stupid things! They’re funny little relics, game magazines; a more tangible step into the past than the Wayback Machine can ever amount to, when people were hyped as hell over totally forgotten games or had no better ways of expressing their ill-conceived anger than writing it on paper and putting it in a letterbox. I could wax nonsense about “simpler times” but I’ve been putting off this epilogue for weeks – months, even! – and the last thing I need is more beating about the bush.
Official Nintendo Magazine and its ilk were a lot of fun to look back on, and I think it’s given me a complex about archiving old magazines now, so thanks for that. ONM Remembered was also a fun exercise in writing scheduled content and admittedly getting blood from a stone at times, but I tried to keep it a breezy mish-mash of content that hopefully didn’t get too by-the-numbers. Feel free to tell me how wrong I was.
On the subject of speaking your mind, what’s the verdict? Is scheduled blog content something you want to see more of, or do you prefer Random Hoo Haas when crap just shows up whenever? Not that I’m in a rush to go starting even more projects, but let’s throw the suggestion into the void, why not.

Hey! Metal Slug: Missing in Action updated! The crux of its new content is scans from old game magazines; how’s that for thematic relevance! I also finally finished off Some Games I Played in 2015 so you can read about how dismal Brilliant Bob is. I still have placeholder images in there, but I’m tired. I’ll replace them later.

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Blast away and go, go, go!

Thursday, December 29, 2016 at 1:35 pm Comments Off on Blast away and go, go, go!

Cramming it in before the new year, it’s a new Metal Slug: Missing in Action update! The real meat and potatoes is the overhauled concept art coverage, now serving as an art gallery for each game and sporting translations for a number of pieces, revealing factoids English fans otherwise never knew about. Or at least, it’s on a website now and not some long-buried forum post. It’s also made me realise we’ve been calling Duke Koudou “Parker” because that’s what Enomosiki called him all those years ago on the Metal Slug Database, and nobody’s thought to question it. Hmph!

I’ve probably said it before, but I’d like to include more general purpose Metal Slug information in the future, like a characters page, vehicle information, mission walkthroughs and other factoids – and try my best to cite sources on everything! I’d actually wanted this to be the first baby step towards that with a characters page, but I’d rather have something presentable than another horribly unfinished page lying around. Sometime, maybe! Until then you can check out the Metal Slug Wiki and ignore like 80% of what it says. Gimlet’s hobby certainly isn’t farting, I can tell you that for free.

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Can you escape from Robotnik’s island of traps?

Saturday, October 22, 2016 at 11:44 am Comments (2)

Here’s a pile of stuff – so much stuff I’m going to bust out some bulletpoints! It’s probably unnecessary, but what the heck!

I feel like I’ve said this multiple times by now (I last said it only six months ago!), but ONM Remembered will be wrapping up in a few months, probably around March. Only when it’s nearing the end do I realise there was stuff I wanted to highlight or topics I wanted an excuse to talk about! Ah well. It’s not like I have a blog where I can waffle about anything whenever I want.
I admit the schedule system is a double-edged sword – it’s rewarding to know I’ve got some form of content lined up for months ahead, but the unrelenting nature of its output is probably tough for folks to keep up with; I know if I weren’t writing it I’d find it hard to keep up. I haven’t checked on GameWTFs in ages because it’s like, crap, I missed a month! That’s gonna be a lot to catch up on! So rather than just popping in now and then or working my way backwards or something, I put it off until I have time to binge-read my way from where I left off to now… which only gets more monumental with each missed update. Someday, I swear!
The thought of doing more scheduled blog content in future sounds nifty, probably just a bi-weekly ramble on some topic or another. But that also sounds like hard work so I wouldn’t count on it.

That’s another thing – I meant to take a break from the site this year! I though it’d do me good to just focus on new projects and not worry about deadlines or pleasing an invisible audience… but then working on new projects was just too weird and stressful when farting about with Bomberman research is so much easier. I have bizarre comfort zones.
I always have stuff I’d like to be working on for the site: there’s plenty of Bomberman stuff I want to cover, which would also give me fodder for Random Action Hour. There’s some games I’d love to gush about; I’d like a hub for my game playthrough videos; I’m itching to give the place another makeover… but I’d also like to make time for other crap I wanna do.
I’m pretty sure I said the exact same thing last year and nothing came of that, but I like the illusion of giving myself options.

Until the next update!

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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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“Well he’s had his ups, he’s had his downs, he’s had his smiles, he’s had his frowns…”

Sunday, May 1, 2016 at 11:23 am Comments Off on “Well he’s had his ups, he’s had his downs, he’s had his smiles, he’s had his frowns…”

ONM Remembered’s up and running and will run on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Updates will come when I’ve got something to update with! I usually post something about potentially upcoming whatnots on Twitter, which is currently more Bomberman guff, animated Bomberman guff, old anime flicks and usually a botched joke I’ll delete in ten minutes because that stuff’s easier to live with when it’s on a website nobody looks at.


… in the meantime, who wants to read a dozen paragraphs about Limbo?
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I spent ten minutes trying to think of a post title (and all I got was this lousy update)

Friday, December 25, 2015 at 9:25 pm Comments (1)

Logged a couple of more chapters into the Legend of Zelda playthrough. I’ve finished the game already, so the final chapters are just awaiting a write-up. Expect to see them… sometime!

So, Random Hoo Haas turned ten years old a couple of months ago. I’m still not sure what to think about that! To be frank, I’m not even sure what my ambition with the website is these days. Am I trying to be funny? A reviewer? Informative? I’m no wiser than you are, pal. Leave a comment and clue me in!

I admit I enjoy just using it as a way to keep myself busy. An outlet for noodling away at whatever dumb project strikes my fancy. It’s not glamorous and it sure as heck ain’t consistent – who bets we’ll see more than three updates next year? – but I enjoy it when I treat it as a light-hearted distraction.
I, er, do apologise to everyone who’s bored stiff of Bomberman minutiae and my foggy recollections of games I play each year. Let me know what you want out of Random Hoo Haas, and I might take it into account when I’m not making foolish purchases!

I have zero plans for next year, and I might take an extended break or two, but there’s probably some dumb thing nobody asked for that I’ll just have to upload. Lookin’ forward to it!

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