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Big Guff Power Hour

Saturday, June 17, 2017 at 10:23 pm Comments Off on Big Guff Power Hour

Thanks to a reader submission, we now know there was a level select and sound test hidden inside the first Metal Slug! Now if only we could find a way of loading different objects – looking at those test stages shows some curious object behaviours I didn’t notice before. I’m also testing the waters to see if SNK really do poach my updates for Metal Slug Attack fodder. I’m not crazy, I swear.

The Bomberman site got a lot more stuff, but I couldn’t tell you if any of it is worth looking at; I just got tired of sitting on them until I had a bigger, fancier update to bundle them with.

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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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All I know is my own existence.

Saturday, July 16, 2016 at 10:48 pm Comments Off on All I know is my own existence.

There’s a few small pokey updates for the Bomberman Shrine and Metal Slug: Missing in Action. Don’t mind me, I’m just chucking up updates when I feel I’ve noodled long enough on something. I’m still otherwise farting about like I usually do!

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Indy Bomber and the Ring of Wishes

Thursday, April 14, 2016 at 8:29 pm Comments Off on Indy Bomber and the Ring of Wishes

Splurge! Metal Slug: Missing in Action’s got some relics from the first game’s development, plus some unfinished areas from Metal Slug 7. The Bomberman shrine has coverage for GB 2 and the DS game. As for Random Hoo Haas, there’s the penultimate chapter of the Zelda playthrough, and some waffling about the rest of the guff I watched in 2014.


ONM Remembered will also resume by the end of the month, updating Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, so I’ll probably use that as an opportunity to take a hike. I’m pretty sure this run will be the final leg for ONM, but I might unearth more stuff that just needs colour commentary, who the heck knows! I hope it remains enjoyable to read and not a horrible stopgap measure between updates!

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Give a squid a home

Monday, March 7, 2016 at 11:06 pm Comments (7)

No cash prize to hand out, I’m afraid – I went and found the unused Metal Slug Advance areas myself. There’s still a debug menu and a Slug Mariner to find, though, so if anyone in the audience has the hacking chops to find them, what are you waiting for?!


The past couple of weeks have been rough, full of work, stress and regrets. Still, it’s good to find the time to bust open MS Paint and make some fresh garbage. Thanks for sticking around, folks.

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Super Marco Brothers

Tuesday, February 16, 2016 at 12:37 pm Comments (1)

Metal Slug: Missing in Action finally saw an update after five years! Don’t get your hopes up, though – although a debug menu in MS6 was discovered, it’s not hiding anything wild or exciting. I’m still holding out for a debug menu in Metal Slug Advance to be unearthed, and I am seriously tempted to offer a cash prize for it. I mean, check out the newly rewritten debug menu page – there’s at least six unused areas waiting to be discovered!

Anyway, thanks to all the Metal Slug fans who’ve somehow held out with this outdated site for so long. This update wouldn’t have been possible without reader submissions – I’m struggling to emphasise the “your input means so much!” part, and not in a “I’m counting on you to do all the work for me” manner. When all the easy discoveries are done and the rest relies on hacking, I’m kinda out of my depth!

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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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“It is face astringent juice with two people”

Tuesday, October 27, 2015 at 5:23 pm Comments (1)

An update, huh? It’s been a while since we had one of those!

Because one person said they wanted to see more of them, I finished translating four more Otimusya pages (F-Zero, Wolfenstein 3D, Final Fight* and Hokuto no Ken) and two more chapters of the Zelda playthrough. And because nobody asked for them, there’s some Bomberman coverage and reviews of stuff I played in 2013 and 2014.
* just a head’s up that this one has some rape and transphobic jokes if you’d rather avoid those

Tomorrow happens to mark the tenth anniversary of Random Hoo Haas.
I’ll be frank, the fact I’ve been maintaining this place for a decade now is a little bit terrifying. I wouldn’t call it a surprise I’ve stuck with it this long – I’m a terrible man for bad habits! – but knowing it’s entertained and informed a few folks over the years does make it feel like all those evenings and afternoons weren’t for naught. Thanks for the chuckles!

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