These are plush tissue covers I bought on discount at Shimamura, the Mega Drive and Dreamcast. There was also an SG-1000 tissue cover, but I passed on that because I have no emotional attachment to that old console.
One more Mega Drive bath towel!
This is a blanket of a pixelated Neo Kobe skyline from Konami’s game Snatcher I bought on Ali Express. My wife is holding it up for me to take this picture. It is so soft that Ulan got jealous. So, I got her a Dragon Quest Slime blanket from Ali Express for her as a Christmas present. Snuggly girl is snuggly.
You may not have ever heard of these two girls from Scotland, but Strawberry Switchblade made a HUGE impact on Japanese pop music and culture in the ’80s. Resembling something like dime store doll versions of Siouxsie, these two girls harmonized wonderfully to make cheerful New Wave pop music, infusing bubblegum sweet melodies with lyrics of melancholy. That android from Robot Carnival immediately comes to mind when I see their clothes. When you watch them, you can see their impact on ’80s J-pop and Harajuku fashion echoes their cute, punk rock doll aesthetic to this day. I see where Strawberry Switchblade heavily influenced the J-pop singing duo Wink in the ’80s. I can definitely see how their fashion aesthetic was a precursor to the “goth loli” fashion which sprang out of Osaka 20+ years ago.
While I was building the KUKQ playlist I mentioned in my previous post, their video for “Since Yesterday” kept showing up in my recommendations on YouTube. I finally clicked on it and loved what I heard. Then the more I thought about it, I unlocked a forgotten memory. I remember hearing a song by them on KUKQ when I was in high school, which was probably this same song. I remember hearing the name of the band and thought that they were so cool, but since I didn’t write it down and I never heard them again on the radio, I forgot all about them.
Their song “Since Yesterday”:
What’s up with the weird people under the stage?
“Poor Hearts” (I particularly love the chiming guitar in this song, and it reminds me of a cross between Siouxsie & the Banshees and Kitchens of Distinction.
A brief history on Strawberry Switchblade:
Interviews on Japanese TV:
Super neat stuff. I bought their CD, and hopefully it will arrive sometime this week. You can see how deeply they inspired the J-Pop band, Wink.
I’ve been on a retro music odyssey for the past month and a half, going back to so much of the music I loved in high school. I’ve bought CDs from R.E.M., The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Tears for Fears, and Echo & The Bunnymen. I’ve already gushed about my love for this old radio station and its impact on my teen years in my various Greg’s Life essays, so I won’t reiterate all that here. But these are the bands that were played on this legendary AM radio station. I found a few KUKQ playlists on YouTube. One was good, while two others were very short and limited (apparently one was a huge Cranberries fan). I was inspired to make my own playlist. At this moment, I am just short of 400 songs. Of course, there are no songs by Pearl Jam or Nine Inch Nails.
I snagged the KUKQ bumper audio from a file provided on the KUKQ fan page.
I’d sing my precious little daughter to sleep every night with this song when she was a toddler. Now she is 15, and she still remembers me singing this to her. However far away, I will always love you. However long I stay, I will always love you. Whatever words I say, I will always love you, my precious daughter.
I’m working on an iron beads work of Rei from Evangelion with Nano Beads. She’s proving to be difficult! The source has irregularly shaped pixels. This non-uniformity is really forcing me to fudge and guess a lot, making this time consuming. I’m using 1/4 size Nano Beads rather than the full-size Perler Beads, which also makes things difficult due to their tiny size. I’ve run out of the blues and skin tones, so I’ll have to wait for my shipment from Yodobashi Camera I ordered tonight to arrive before I can proceed much further. Here is the original sprite I found on Pinterest:
At this point, I’m unsure if I want to stop at Rei’s head or go ahead and do the rest of her. Her boobs are so pretty, it’d be a shame not to.
This is the original, non-pixelized image. Someone must have run this image through a pixelization filter to get the image above.
The first one I saw was of Asuka Langley, apparently by the same artist. However this one too is not true sprites as the pixel sizes are not uniform. If you zoom in you’ll know what I mean.
Update 1, Dec. 5th. I’ve had to order the fleshtone and blue colors for her hair. They’ll arrive tomorrow.
Update 2, Dec. 6th. Last night I finished most of her hair. Her skintone should be easy. Just dump the beads and nudge them onto the pegs. I’ve decided to go ahead and do the whole image. I’ve sort of gotten used to the pixels being wonky. I’m able to improvise more and not worry so much about complete accuracy because it’s impossible anyway.
Update 3, Dec. 7th. Her face is now complete!
Update 4, Dec. 8th. I have to wait for more peg boards to arrive now before I can continue…
Update 5, Dec. 10th. Almost there… Now I’ve had to order more Gray colored Nano Beads as well as one more peg board. They’ll arrive Tuesday perhaps.
Update 6, Dec. 12th. I finished the beads! Next will be ironing. I hope it goes well. Not in the mood for that tonight.
Update 7, Dec. 16th. I finished Rei at last! Unfortunately there was a bit of a mishap on the right side where her shoulder is (and a little where her breast is), but I was able to salvage and rescue the project.
I went back to Shimamura a few days later and found Sega towels on sale! They were all discounted from their regular price. For each of the Megadrive, Saturn and Dreamcast, I bought hand towels, face towels, and bath towels. The hand and face towels are a two towel set.
Here are the hand towels:
Here are the face towels:
And here are the bath towels:
BONUS! Here is a set of Urusei Yatsura’s Lum-chan face towels I also bought:
Shimamura has come through again, this time with block cushions. This time I was late, as these were released in September. I learned about these by doing a web search. Like those Sega pillows I bought last year, these are detailed on the underside and since these are block cushions, the sides are detailed too.
You may need to click each image to see the images in a larger scale to truly see the effect, since WordPress tends to shrink images to fit.
For scanlines/shaders, you’ve gotta go into RetroPie Setup. From there, Configuration/Tools -> Config Edit -> Config Basic libretro emulator options. Now here you can choose to apply the shader to ALL of the emulators (option 0) or do it for individual emulators. I’m using Final Burn Alpha, so I went to Configure additional options for fba. Option 3 is Video shader enable (3). Click that and enable “True.” Next is Video shader file (4). I chose crt/crt-hyllian.glslp . You can choose it with the glow (crt/crt-hyllian-glow.glslp) to add that aged CRT look. I think there are others that will mimic a curved monitor’s surface. Tinker around and see what you like.
