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!
I keep writing drafts for subjects to waffle about in blog posts just to give a little value for money, and every time I’m totally dry. Whatever thoughts I have are barely enough to fill a tweet these days. I don’t think it says much for my imagination when the one thing I’m confident to write about on the blog is… chewing out older blog posts I made!
Ages and ages and ages ago I made some comment about Dino Babies, under the mistaken belief there were a couple of foul-named dinosaurs in an otherwise innocuous kids’ show. And I quote!
“Speaking of Dino Babies, I’d love to cover some of it on Random Action Hour – especially the episode where everyone rides on a big boat and there’s two characters called Dick and Butt. No, seriously, they show up just for that episode and I can’t even remember what they do, but they introduce themselves by saying, “Hi, my name’s Dick. This is Butt.” Keep it classy, 1990s!”
As luck would have it, there’s actually a fair bit of Dino Babies on YouTube now (there was a comparative dearth of it six years ago, at least of the English version!), and that very episode is on there. At six minutes into Jurassic Ark the two characters walk in and immediately introduce themselves. And I quote!
“Hi, I’m Bud, and this is Lou.”
Well, don’t I look a right arse. I don’t know what this says about my hearing, the audio quality of old VHS tapes that had been replayed into oblivion, or my dirty mind even as a young’un. As you might expect, the two dinos (who I’m sure appear in no other episode – prove me wrong, Dino Babies Wiki, which as of this writing is 100% not a thing!) are references to Abbott and Costello, complete with Lou Abbott’s pencil moustache and Bud Costello’s dopey disposition, though this was totally lost on 1990s me.
While I’m on a correction kick, let’s put my reading comprehension into question! In an ONM Remembered instalment where letter writer Andrew Mills clearly says they visited the N64 Magazine offices on work experience, I was under the bizarre delusion that they won a contest to get there. In hindsight, why the staff behind a games magazine would ever offer a visit to their Pot Noodle-scented office as a contest prize is a bit of a baffling notion, but thank you to Mr. Mills for writing in and correcting me! Should I ever get around to making an index for ONM Remembered you can probably expect corrections and annotations abounds.
Speaking of, what can we expect from Random Hoo Haas in future? Honestly, probably the same old documentative guff that’s been the norm the past couple of years – I have to wade through magazines, comics and Bomberman merchandise just to reach the computer, so I want those written about and disposed of. I’ve lots of ideas for stuff I would like to do, in no particular order…
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- A walkthrough for Congo: The Lost City of Zinj on SEGA Saturn. I mean, I already made heaps of notes for my video playthrough…!
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- A revamp of my sprite section and ripping tutorial, with per-game info and more tips for tools.
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- A guide for buying stuff from Japan? I’ve been doing too much of it!
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- Indexes for ONM Remembered and the mobile phone game / fangame videos on my YouTube channel.
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- Write some General Writings? A look at quirky boardgames, doing nerd-ass reviews, that old lark.
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- Updating the Puchi Carat shrine with new transcriptions, translations, art and gubbins.
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- Heck, maybe finally do something with those Ardy Lightfoot and Wario’s Woods shrines. Those things are ramshackle!
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- I keep forgetting I wrote Red Dwarf reviews yonks ago. Maybe pick that up again? I did read all the books a while back!
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- Maybe even new shrines for extra nerdy crap? Star Fox? Transformers?? F-Zero???
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- And while I’m making all these preposterous claims, maybe I’ll even get back to updating Random Action Hour with only the most obtuse no-one-asked-for-this bullshit. Who wants Fox Hunt!?
… but those self-indulgent ideas boil down to having the time, energy, interest or patience for it. And that varies! (I totally expect to look back at this list and laugh. This blog is practically an archive of plans I never get around to doing!)
Random Hoo Haas is coming up on 13 years old this October (oh no) and, self-imposed stress aside, I still enjoy working on it. I mean, it’s a big dumb relic of mid-2000s internet and my interests have gotten so niche even I roll my eyes at myself. I’m pretty sure the audience is in the single digits by now, but it’s a fun outlet for whatever nonsense I think folks will find informative or get a kick out of.
I wanna find time for other stuff once in a while, though. Get back into creative writing or dabble in art or maybe something completely different, who knows. I’d love to find out if my pixel art skills actually improved or if this Bowser I made a few months back was just a fluke!
