Random Hoo Haasthe blog with the guff

Capping off the year with bad opinions: a Random Hoo Haas tradition

Tuesday, December 31, 2019 at 11:39 pm Comments Off on Capping off the year with bad opinions: a Random Hoo Haas tradition

I’d intended it to just be another blog post, but then it spiralled out of control and I figured I might as well give it its own page.

And – you won’t believe this – the old Games I Own page got updated with some scattered whatnots! I had some old reviews lying around and figured I’d chuck them up. I’ve no idea what I’m doing with that page these days — apparently I began crossing off games I no longer own? But the Other Games section is still dedicated to games I never owned or only owned temporarily…? — and the temptation to restructure the whole thing would be strong if I gave that much of a toss. We’ve all got bigger fish to fry, surely!

People are making a big hubbub about the new decade and it’s making me anxious. It’s just a Wednesday, folks. Whether that Wednesday sucks remains to be seen, but we’ll take it from there and see what happens. Maybe we can ask for a refund if it doesn’t live up to expectations.
I’m working on a project that I hope to roll out in a month or two, and I’m looking forward to see where it goes. I’ve a terrible track record with hyping up projects that inevitably go nowhere, so I’ll try not to jinx myself!

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.
(CONTINUED)

Always never not timely

Friday, August 9, 2019 at 12:20 pm Comments Off on Always never not timely

So I played a bit of Taisen! Bomberman back in 2016, recorded some footage and made the barest of notes, but I wasn’t desperate to cover it. I figured, hey, it’s an Android game! You don’t need access to a Japan-exclusive phone service just to play these games, so what’s the rush? It’s not like the game’s gonna disappear anytime soon and I’ll have to rely on the dodgiest of second-hand accounts to even learn what the game was about. Perish the thought!

Well, guess who’s frantically researching the game after hearing it’s getting delisted on August 26th. The 2014 game and 100 Man Bomberman Battle have already been delisted when I wasn’t looking! Both games can no longer connect to their networks and thus won’t progress past the title screen. I’ll let you know how that crow tastes.
Until then, please read the Taisen! Bomberman coverage, where Bomberman trades his shoes made of bubblegum for some corporate-branded running shoes.

“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!
(CONTINUED)

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad (Bomberman) World

Thursday, March 21, 2019 at 9:21 pm Comments Off on It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad (Bomberman) World

The Bomberman Shrine Place updated with coverage on Bomberman World, featuring a look at its quirky regional changes and smorgasbord of unused stuff, and also a translation of an interview from the Bomberman Maniax book. This game has been long, long overdue some coverage on the site, and it came about because I wanted to get into the ol’ map-making lark again. Nobody had made any for it yet!
(CONTINUED)

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!
(CONTINUED)

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)

The box of words

Saturday, March 31, 2018 at 10:33 pm Comments Off on The box of words

The Bomberman Shrine Place updated recently with a big pile of merchandise coverage and a neato cameos article aided by pal Steamy Jimmy, and Scans & Bits has some new manga: Go! Go! Mario Kart #3 and #4, Kaze no Klonoa, Oshiete! Kinipio, and Hichako no Game Taiken-ki.

I keep thinking of the most inane possible subjects to ramble on at length about, like the fragile nature of internet history or the secret merits of Sonic Labyrinth, yet when it comes to padding out a blog post my mind’s a total blank. Maybe sometime I’ll have it in me!

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.
(CONTINUED)

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!
(CONTINUED)