Random Hoo Haasthe blog with the guff

Tales from storage: Gravis gamepad grumbling

Friday, February 7, 2025 at 1:53 pm Comments (0)

Back before it got revamped (however many revamps ago that was…!), the Games I Own section really was about having something to say about every possession I owned, from DVDs to action figures to video game controllers. Gamepads are fascinating to me, if having a blog tag dedicated to the things weren’t already a clue.
If I ever need a bit of frivolous and unwarranted retail therapy, I often think: why don’t I treat myself to a nice new controller? Having a different doohickey to wrap my paws around is a neat way of experiencing the same games in a new light, whether it’s trying to play Metal Slug on a flight stick, or running through Sonic Adventure on a d-pad. Look, I didn’t say it was a good use of my time, but sometimes you just want to scratch a silly itch.

At one point picking up controllers for the express purpose of reviewing them was something I wanted to do, and I can only imagine that’s why I came into possession of the Gravis Eliminator Gamepad Pro (it’s easier to accept that than remember how dour the USB gamepad market was at the turn of the millennium).
I, uh, don’t know what this controller is trying to accomplish though. Gravis were seemingly a big name in the early days of PC gamepads, at least when it came to wares that were inspired by console controllers, designed with platformers and arcade games in mind… however many of these there were at the time. So why on earth is this secretly an analogue joystick?!
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Tales from storage: card collecting and counterfeiting

Saturday, November 23, 2024 at 8:33 pm Comments (1)

I’ve exposited plenty of times on this blog about how I was very much swept up in Pokemon fever — my brother and I bought the games, watched the cartoon, collected the figurines, amassed whatever other dumb trinkets and doodads that were available, so it’s only natural we also picked up the Trading Card Game as well.
I… don’t think we ever actually played it. I don’t know anyone who did back in the day…! As much as the franchise invited discussion and shared activities among kids, I get the impression we feared being robbed more than daring to share activities among our peers. I feel like there’s an allegory in there, but I’m too tired to pursue it.

What I’d almost forgotten about were these print-outs my brother and I must have made of the then-recently announced Generation 2 starters, presumably pasted on top of energy cards. They were already woefully unconvincing back in the day, and look even more diabolical after a couple decades worth of water damage. Can’t say it isn’t Aesthetic™ though, especially on the Croconaw card.

Looking at these card kind of feels like a childhood captured in amber: all the idle whims and silly notions, the short-sightedness and lack of thinking behind the activities you get up to, because you’re young and have no responsibilities. I might’ve been bitter thinking how much was spent on things I never used, only to be chucked in a shed and left to rot.
How did we get some stinkin’ many? Were they sold at the local newsagents? Were we picking up packs every time we went to Toys R Us? There were close to two hundred or more of these bloody things, and yet I simply have no memory of how they fit into our hobbies and habits back in the day. We sure as hell didn’t play or trade them! That would’ve required a social life!
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Some games I played in 2024: Spud!

Wednesday, October 30, 2024 at 11:02 am Comments Off on Some games I played in 2024: Spud!

The games I played in 2023 review is done with the addition of Lois & Clark and Combo Rangers. Hopefully I can freakin’ write some different things for a change! In the meantime… uh, more dumb game reviews, sorry.

Have you ever played a game, read a book or watched a TV show forever ago, left it unfinished, and wondered how it panned out in the end? And if you do decide to finish it long after the fact, is there any hope of it matching your expectations…?

Spud! is a game my brother and I were bought in the early days of PC gaming, a point-and-click adventure where you’ve got to rescue Santa Claus from the evil Dr. Chillbane with the help of toy gnomes and fluffy bunnies. Its first-person perspective for its point-and-click puzzles is really unique, offering 360 degrees of panoramic view at every waypoint, though perhaps to the point of excess — does even your inventory need to be a sprawling dome of shelves…?
It’s decidedly off-kilter, between its questionable depictions of Santa’s reindeer and the kooky characters you meet on a tropical island, not to mention its penchant for bloody violence — if you don’t send out the gnomes or bunnies as human shields (or the species equivalent), Spud is liable to come a cropper via a spear through the eye!
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Tales From Storage: The VCR Fandango

Thursday, August 15, 2024 at 11:03 am Comments Off on Tales From Storage: The VCR Fandango

I finally dragged myself across the finish line for Some Games I Played In 2022, and the one for last year is close to being done too. Did I ever mention that was published? It still needs some editing but you can read what’s done, if doing such a thing is something you would do.

The sprites section got updated, featuring stuff for Black Tiger, Block Legend DX, Brutal: Paws of Fury, Dino Quake, Escape Goat, HeroQuest, Looney Tunes Collector, Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, Neutopia 1 & 2, Rampage, Saint Seiya on PSP, Snow Bros., Trog, Wizorb, and a bunch of Bomberman games.
I think I might’ve made some minor tweaks to the sprite tutorial too? It’s due some updates to better explain some of my processes (and probably repair some links knowing ROMhacking.net is going offline shortly, oh no), but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

In between fatigue and crises and other fun surprises, I’ve been trying to do some spring cleaning this year! Ostensibly in the hopes of making a push on all the guff I need to scan and get it out of the house (with the unspoken intent to probably sunset my scanning ambitions, because I’m too exhausted to keep up this line of work!), but just having less crap in the house doesn’t hurt either.

One of the things I uncovered was an NTSC VCR I’d imported from the States, and you better believe I wrote several thousand words tangentially related to that subject.
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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.

#goodcrocs & #goodkraids

Sunday, October 31, 2021 at 5:46 pm Comments Off on #goodcrocs & #goodkraids

We’ve got two new General Writings at once! It’s almost like I’ve been delirious with flu for the past month and been spending my time inappropriately! Enjoy my attempt at sussing out what Croc 2 tried to do and why its attempts fell short, and endure my overly wordy manic episode about why Kraid’s neat and I like him.

Smaller updates include adding the last chapter of CoroCoro’s Spyro manga to Scans & Bits, and a couple of translated interviews I had sitting around for the Bomberman shrine. Both sections have to-do lists that have grown to intimidating lengths, and whittling them down is still on the agenda… just whenever I feel up to it, y’know?

One of the frustrating things about doing stuff is… you’re typically expected to do more stuff. I’ll churn out an update so I don’t have to think about that section for a while — and instead it makes people think about it and expect more from it? That’s not how it’s meant to work! That’s gotta be cheating somehow, right?!

So do forgive me if you really want to see the Metal Slug section get new content, or the myriad of Bomberman findings get documented, or even for Dinosaur Hunter Diaries to resume. I’m still keen on all those projects! But this past couple of years have been tough (never mind this past couple of months), and I am grabbing any bit of relief I can get. If said relief involves writing about fat dragons, or ignoring the site and all online responsibilities for months at a time, then I’ll take it. Look after yourselves, everyone.

And So The Blathering Begins

Monday, August 23, 2021 at 9:22 pm Comments Off on And So The Blathering Begins

I wrote nearly 13,000 words about Croc. I threatened to do it back in 2016, and because nobody stopped me, here we are now. Look, the internet needs its overwrought defence of Croc, and like heck it’s gonna be a video essay. I wanna hear someone sell me on the merits of Ape Escape but without having to actually listen to them!

The summer heatwave totally drained me, which wasn’t much fun because I like to do things during my waking hours besides sweating and vegetating. There’s a lot of things I wanna be getting on with, it’s unearthing myself from beneath my mountain of responsibilities and procrastination that’s the tricky part. Thanks to folks writing in, apologies for not replying, all that good stuff.

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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Talking about RPGs because I don’t know!!

Monday, October 19, 2020 at 9:59 pm Comments Off on Talking about RPGs because I don’t know!!

I dread being asked what my favourite anything is. I’ve a whole lotta favourites! Literal stacks of favourites that I shuffle between depending on the mood or time of day! It’s like asking what my favourite pair of socks is — I cycle them! You can’t ask me to rank one pair of socks above the other! They’re all the same colour! And it’s at that point the analogy begins to fall apart. Not unlike my socks, actually.

This stinks because I sure would like to engage with folks on Twitter a bit more often, but unless it’s a multi-tweet thread about a topic that’s of interest only to myself and no one else living or dead, then I typically don’t wanna do it. I do appreciate folks daring to tag me in tweets, but it invariably results in a week of hand-wringing whether I’ll respond or not… and then not responding anyway because to reply after waiting a week just feels rude. Rest assured I read all emails, DMs and correspondence, and I appreciate it and give them a lot of thought, and then rarely actually put those thoughts into a reply. I don’t think that’s very reassuring, actually. My apologies.

Whatever point I was trying to make, I assume it applies to when pal herrDoktorat tagged me in naming iconic RPGs I’ve played in my life. There’s maybe a dozen I’ve played long enough for me to say with confidence I have played them, but RPGs aren’t really my strong suit…! To name off three game titles without context doesn’t gel with my brand of being needlessly fucking verbose, so let’s just rattle off all the RPGs I’ve played enough to have a tangible opinion on. I never said they’d be good opinions, so I’m throwing myself on the mercy of the court! You’re talking to a man who associates Mario with RPGs more than flippin’ Dragon Quest…!

Final Fantasy VII

My introduction to RPGs! A friend of my dad’s just gave the game to us for whatever reason, and it was unlike anything we’d played before. I, as a dumb youngster, was put off by the fact you couldn’t jump. Why have all these detailed 3D environments if you can’t jump!? But watching my brother play it was fascinating, seeing the story play out through text and many varied setpieces and environments. When Shadows of the Empire on Nintendo 64 was as cinematic as a console game had gotten in our experience, this was a whole other kettle of fish.

Because Europe missed out on so many iconic JRPGs, this was probably how most folks were introduced to the genre? Without Chrono Trigger or the like, the only alternatives were obscure Game Boy titles or flippin’ Rings of Power on Mega Drive, I don’t know. Even in America it seems like the first RPG to take on mainstream success, thanks to its big-budget advertising campaign.
As such, it’s kind of resulted in a lot of people reading the game the wrong way; for your first RPG to tackle a complex narrative and themes of unreliable narrators and withheld memories is going to cause some complexities, even before you factor in its iffy translation. I should be the last person to judge people for reading a story the wrong way, (Dok will attest to my lousy reading comprehension), but it’d be nice if people got their personalities right once in a while. Aeris is meant to be spunky!
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The lost fangames of Kirby’s Rainbow Resort

Thursday, August 27, 2020 at 8:40 pm Comments Off on The lost fangames of Kirby’s Rainbow Resort

Because I’ve already gotten a headstart on being a very wordy bastard, Some games I played in 2020 is up, though unfinished, as you might expect. Check back in four months and I might have some shockingly tepid takes on Persona 3! Though it’s likely I’ll have more to say about Croc 2. You know what I’m like.

And of course, Scans & Bits updated with the last missing episode of Crash Bandicoot Dance Jump Daibouken, some more CoroCoro Sonic, and also links to more scanning and translation efforts, as well more MEGA uploads of Fami2Comic and Dengeki Nintendo. My scanner’s currently on the fritz, so I can’t tackle the stacks of magazines I still need to scan in full. If there is a hell, that is absolutely not among the list of tortures, but darn it, I’m upset.

I assumed my internet connection was just being dodgy, but it seems longtime ClassicGaming-era fansite Kirby’s Rainbow Resort has finally shuttered this year. There’s still a gateway page, but almost all of the pages have vanished — not even replaced with a 404 error, but simply blank white pages! The forums are still accessible, though largely abandoned and plagued with PHP and MySQL errors… yet some of the site’s oldest pages are still alive, strangely.
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