It’s a pretty depressing existence, when you look at it this way.
Super Hydorah: a fun Konami-style shmup on Steam
I’ve had this game on my Steam wishlist for a while, and as soon as it went on sale this month, I bought it. It has a “silver” rating on the Proton Database, but after installing it, I had no problems running the game at all on my Linux desktop, without having to make changes.
Super Hydorah is obviously inspired by Konami side-scrolling shmups like Gradius and Salamander, but doesn’t try too hard to duplicate these games. The game features simulated CRT scanlines that look nice. Usually I opt to not enable such a feature because it just doesn’t look right for some reason.
Right off, you can see that this is not exactly a Gradius clone. You can start the game in which shields protect you three times but you only get half a score, or a shield that protects you only once but you get full points.
As soon as the game starts, it looks exactly as you’d expect from a Konami-inspired shmup. Weapon powerups, however, are handled differently. You can slowly charge up your shot to become a double shot (fortunately it’s autofire), but don’t expect any bombs until level 2.
The first boss is a creepy eyeball with tentacles, fairly reminiscent of the first boss in Salamander.
After you clear a stage, it brings you to the Mission Select screen. Apparently after the second level, divergent routes can be selected.
Now you can equip your fighter with bombs and missiles.
The second level presents a twist: here are human buildings you must not destroy, lest you be docked 2,000 points per building! Space insurance must be at a premium.The bombs are launched along with your regular shot, so be careful. They take several hits before they are destroyed. Hold your fire and shoot only when you are clear to do so.
I’ve only played the game for about an hour, and have yet to get past level 2’s mid-boss. So far, it’s pretty great. I just noticed that the stupid mouse cursor shows up in these screenshots! Nuts.
My nerd cave late at night.
Here is my hobby room, late at night. This is where I keep my retro game collection, my plastic models and hobby bench, and my Linux desktop. You can see my Pac-Man lamps, my Dragon Quest Slime lamp, and on the wall my Pac-Man LED neon lamp. The pixel art is done with iron beads. The posters from left to right are: Puyo Puyo 2 (SFC), Cardcaptor Sakura Tetris (PS1), Bubblegum Crisis, Sakura Taisen (Sat), and Dead or Alive 2 (DC).
MOAR Galaxy Express 999 booze
I went ahead and ordered the Galaxy Express alcohol I was unable to find locally. I stopped by a large liquor shop in Maebashi called Yamaya that specializes in imports and even they did not have any.
Here we have Captain Harlock’s highball and IPA beer. I don’t even know what IPA stands for, so I looked it up: India Pale Ale. Well, okay.
The other two are the Maetel Weizen and Conductor’s Porter, but this time in beautiful, cobalt blue glass bottles. Neat.
Ballistic NG: the spiritual successor to the Wipeout game series on Steam
I’m a jibungous fan of the Wipeout game series. Soon after I bought myself a Playstation in 1996 or so, I played the first game and I loved it. Antigravity racecars on futuristic racing courses, picking up powerups for weapons, speed boosts, and defensive capabilities, firing at each other in an attempt to slow down the competition… I loved it. Then came the sequel Wipeout XL, which had faster action, the ability to eliminate competitors, and had a hard-hitting techno soundtrack. That game introduced my cousin and me to techno. It was famous for Future Sound of London and Chemical Brothers, among others. Then came Wip3out, the third game. The music had changed… it was trance rather than techno, with Paul van Dyk, Sasha, Orbital, and others. It’s not what I expected, but in the end I now listen to trance far more today. The graphics were sharper, and it introduced the afterburner button. In the first two games, you needed to pick up a powerup for a speed boost, but in the third you can use the afterburner to do this, at the expense of depleting your shield energy, which puts you at risk of elimination.
I had a friend in my college years in the last half of the ’90s. I met him on an anime BBS just before I discovered the internet. He went to DeVry, gradauted after 3 years, and had a condo in the San Diego area while I was still a student. In the summer I’d go spend 2 weeks at his apartment. Heworked, but he also took time off to do stuff together, and we’d attend the San Diego Comic Con together. That was back when you could just show up, buy a one day ticket and attend. While he was at work, I’d park my ass on his sofa and play video games. He had a shy cat that would stay under his bed all day, but eventually she got used to me and made friends with me. I played the crap out of Wip3out, setting out to get the gold metal for every racer on every track on every difficulty level.
I loved the aesthetic that remained consistent among these three games, as the graphic design and stylized fonts and such were all done by The Designers Republic. I tried emulating their style when I made the index page for my homepage, full of stripes, bold colors, incorporated decorational Japanese text, and futuristic fonts.
On the PS2 there was Wipeout Fusion, which really changed the game and everyone was disappointed. It was developed by a totally new team, and they failed to live up to everyone’s expectations. Then on the PSP they released two solid Wipeout games that were closer to the original. I have Pure, but I never got around to buying Pulse. In 2012 though, Psygnosis merged with another company and was no more.
Last weekend, on Steam I discovered a game called Ballistic NG. It is the spiritual successor to the Wipeout series, developed by just two fans of the series. One guy is the lead developer, and the other guy specializes in the Linux and Mac programming. They even call themselves Neognosis Games, a reference of sorts to Psygnosis. Ballistic remains faithful to the first three games, and particularly the third game because it has the afterburner feature. I bought the game for only about 900 yen or so Sunday night, then Monday evening I played it, got used to it, and love it. I’ve been playing it every day as soon as I get home, and will likely do the same this evening.
I even remember the names of the different racing companies from the Wipeout games: Feisar, Auricom Research, AG Systems, Qirex, Assegai, Piranha… The racers in Ballistic are extremely similar to those in Wipeout, and their stats and handling make them feel very familiar.
The graphics are greatly updated, yet they still have a bit of an earlier Playstation feel to them. There are options to add emulated CRT scanlines and such, but I prefer not to have them.
Ballistic NG is available on Steam OS, so it runs natively on my Linux desktop flawlessly.
I always thought it would be cool if there were plastic models of the racers in the Wipeout series. I did a search and found 3D print files for many of them! They’d require decals to look nice, though.
One last thing about the old PS1 Wipeout games: you know the BGM track “Body In Motion” by Cold Storage? There’s a part when a distorted voice says repeats “body in motion” repeatedly. From the beginning, I always heard it wrong and thought it was saying “Easter Bunny” repeatedly instead. I’ve shared this with people and they can now hear it too.
Nadia & Jean’s wedding that was never animated
This is what the Nadia movie should have been as a followup to the stellar TV series, but instead we got a crappy, poorly-written and conceived movie in which the character progression was reset for lazy reasons.
I expected the movie to either entail Jean and Nadia’s wedding, or to perhaps lead up to it, or maybe even be set after they were married. No, the movie has Nadia in England working for a newspaper, separate from Jean, their relationship sort of on hold, with Grandis and her two companions back to a life of crime. It’s as if the reset button was pressed on the evolution of the characters and their relationships with each other.
The movie features a new enemy who claims to be more powerful than Gargoyle, yet is completely forgettable and is defeated within the span of this movie. Oh, and it entails the characters helping a girl named “Fuzzy.” No, the story never even explains why the heck her name is Fuzzy.
According to the fantastic retro anime site Zimmerit.moe, despite the Nadia show being a huge success, Gainax did not have the rights to Nadia and did not make any revenue from it. They were given a 50 million yen advance from Toho, but in the end they were unable to make the movie and ended up not being able to give the money back. Oops. The movie was not done by Gainax and was not written by Hideaki Anno.
Of course, Anno is far more famous for his Evangelion series, but I don’t care for it because it’s psychotic and gross. Nadia is essentially Hayao Miyazaki meets Jules Verne, and to me that is fantastic. But I’m told that Anno didn’t like 1. working off of Miyazaki’s scraps and 2. being bossed around by NHK. His bizarre Evangelion’s nihilism is a bit of a response to Nadia, I’m told. That’s a shame, because Nadia is a far better story and it’s something I’d love to see more of. It would be wonderful to see Jean and Nadia’s children, etc. They are one of the few anime couples I care about.
On Yahoo Auctions Japan, I found a doujin manga called “We Love Nadia.” Yoshiyuki Sadamoto was involved in this even. Being doujin, I was afraid it would be some sort of hentai manga based on Nadia having sex on her wedding night. I am told by the seller that this is not the case, and that it’s a regular manga. I’d love to have it; it’s just a bit pricey. I cannot find scans of it online, so I’ll have to keep my eyes out for it.
A trip to Mandai in Takasaki
We were in Takasaki last night and we stopped by the Mandai there. A few months ago, Mandai relocated from its large two buildings into a smaller building, sharing the location with Gunma Leisure Land game center. It’s confusing, but Mandai is located on the first and third floors, while Gunma Leisure Land is on the basement and second floors. Mandai has its own area of UFO catchers.
There were xenomorph figures from Alien in one UFO catcher. I gave it one shot and gave up. Those larger, heavier boxes are difficult to grab. I went into the main store area to look at figures and models while Mayu checked out the dagashiya/candy store area.
Amuro Rey figure, apparently from Char’s Counterattack.
A figure of the Serbine. I’m currently working on the Serbine model by Max Factory.
Plenty of Gundam models. Unfortunately, my camera wasn’t focusing properly on some of this stuff.
Next I went to the third floor to check out the video game stuff.
Neo Geo AES and Mega Drive games.
Boxed Super Famicom and Saturn consoles.
Here are the Super Famicom Mini and Mega Drive mini consoles, plus plenty of handhelds: Neo Geo Pocket Color, Game Boy Color, Wonderswan, Game Boy Advance, etc. I bought my first NGPC for only 1000 yen about 21 years ago in a cramped shopping alley under the train tracks in Kobe called Motoko. This shopping alley stretches between Sannomiya Station and Kobe Station and is home to many used clothing, used appliances, junk electronics, antiques, and retro game shops. At least that’s how it was when I lived in Hyogo Prefecture at the time.
Check out the prices on these Saturn games. Crows 18,000, Twinkle Star Sprites 10,000, Hyper Duel 60,000, Castlevania SOTN 16,000 (I think), can’t make out the price on Radiant Silvergun, Rockman 15,000, Doom 10,000 (NOT worth it), and I see a loose HuCard Parasol Stars for PC Engine laying in front of Dodonpachi. I really wish I had the chance to get Hyper Duel back in the day, but now it is incredibly expensive.
I guess not all retrogaming is terribly expensive. Here are Arkanoid, Arkanoid II, and After Burner for the Famicom, cart only, for decent prices.
I decided to check out their anime soundtracks and found several records for sale: Castle of Cagliostro, Urusei Yatsura, Ashita no Joe, Macross, and Gundam. Pretty cheap, too. I guess the hipsters are leaving the retro record market alone.
At Leisure Land, I played some air hockey with Ulan. There are two lonely Sega Astro City cabinets in the back corner with Shanghai games running on them. 100 yen gives you two credits, so I played this one. Shanghai III was next to it, but an older woman there playing on it.
So what did I buy that night? I bought this nice figure of Mai from King of Fighters, loose, for 1700 yen. It was a fun night.
Dragon Quest ice cream at Baskin Robbins 31 in Japan
I didn’t even know about this until I was told by my friend in Canada of all places. Currently 31 Ice Cream has a Dragon Quest campaign. (As a side note, when I was a kid we called it “31 Flavors,” but then sometime in the ’90s they changed the name to Baskin Robbins. That never caught here in Japan, and everyone just calls the place “31” here.) My friend Jared sent me an email about this.
Oh look, it has soda-flavored gummy Slimes!
You can buy a limited edition box set and choose up to eight flavors, either regular or small scoops. If you get this box set, it comes with a set of cup coasters.
The store clerk was wearing a handmade Slime badge she made from felt.
So here is the box:
Here are the cup coasters it comes with:
And here is the “Slime Hoimi” ice cream itself.
In America, I never cared for gummy candy. However Japanese gummy candy is pretty great. This ice cream tastes good. Since my daughter’s birthday is coming soon, I bought this to celebrate in advance. Dragon Quest really knocks her out, and she loves the Slimes the best.
Based Asian woman is based
LOL! This really made me smile. She’s sick of perverts obsessed with oppression and wants to rocket them to the moon. Awesome.
Wild Guns Reloaded on Steam
I recently learned that Wild Guns on the Super Famicom by Natsume has been remade and is available on Steam. I haven’t played this game in over a decade. I have the SNES cartridge but was never able to get it for the SFC. Now it’s been remade with enhanced visuals and music, plus two additional characters (which are pretty meh). the original Clint and Annie are the best characters to play.
Cowboys vs. robots! Neon signs, disco rooms, steampunk contraptions. This is a pseudo 3D shooter, similar to Cabal. A button to shoot, a button to dodge/jump, and another button to ignite a bomb for heavy damage. Tap the shot button to lasso an enemy to stun him. Press the shot button on an enemy up close to activate a melee attack for bonus points.
Shoot bonus items to collect money and limited time shots, such as shotgun, heavy machine gun, bazooka, and this Ghostbusters-esque laser gun.
Cowboys vs. giant robots. Badass. So if Natsume is still around, it’d be nice if they could release their Pocky & Rocky/ Kiki Kaikai games on Steam. This game works flawlessly on my Linux desktop through the Proton utility.
