Random crap.
I was at the Tilt game arcade in Arizona Mills in Tempe, AZ (formerly Game Works) with friends when I came across this neat Namco gachapon attraction. I didn’t give it a try, but it looked neat. Of course, I’m a sucker for anything Pac-Man. Apparently you have to slide the capsules into the holes to gain the prize inside.
I took this old Imai/Bandai Macross Glaug kit to work on while staying at the in-laws’ place for a 4-day summer holiday weekend. I figured that I’d get familiar with these older kits before building the new Hasegawa ones. But, I am a bit surprised. There are no bottom parts for the feet of this old Glaug kit! I can’t believe they made the kit like this. Seems a bit half-assed. Now I feel compelled to cut some Tamiya Pla-Plate to make my own feet bottoms. I’m also going to modify this with proper clear lens pieces as well as ball joints where I can.
This old Imai Glaug kit is from the ’80s. Bandai bought the Macross molds from Imai long ago and re-issued them under their name. Not all of them though apparently, since Bandai never once repopped the Armored Valkyrie kit I completed this year, or the Zentraedi recon ship. They repop the Zentraedi battle pod and Destroid kits every once in a while, and this one I have was released for the 25th anniversary of Macross. I paid only 1,020 yen for it about 12 years ago.
This game has been around for a while, but today I played it for the first time. I’ve seen it before at game centers. This would be more fun playing with other people. I was kicking ass, but the CPU still beat me. Oh well. Four players can play as Pac-Mans (Pac-Men?) in a survival match. You can bump each others into ghosts and even eat each other (cannibalism!). Whomever survives 2 out of 3 rounds wins. I was focusing on eating the ghosts rather than my opponent for points. I’ll change my strategy next time.
Recorded in the Apina game center in Iida, Nagano Prefecture.
I haven’t played Super Metroid for about 15 years or more. I love this game! It’s actually the only Metroid game I’ve ever played. This wireless gamepad is a recent purchase. There was no name at all on the package. I got it on Ali Express for something like 1500 yen. It comes with a dongle to plug it into the SFC/SNES Mini or you can take out the USB WiFi receptor and use it with your PC. Ali Express claimed that it’s compatible with RetroPie, but I couldn’t get it to recognize it. Steam didn’t like it, either. Maybe because I was using the wire? The wire is for charging the controller. Maybe it’s not meant for gameplay.
My goal is to hack this Mini console to add more games to it, especially shmups since it does not come with a single shmup! Not even Gradius III! I’m making a list of games like Area 88 and Macross to add to this. I found a page saying that the program used to hack it can actually be used in Linux, so hopefully I won’t have to get out my grodie Win10 SSD.
The Numata Matsuri is underway. I love lanterns and night photography.
Earthion was released late last night. It’s a new shmup for the Megadrive, available for download on Steam. I stayed up and played it a bit. I’ll do a write-up after I get more used to the gameplay.
These decals are crap. They slide off the paper very easily, even in cold water, but once they go down, they do NOT want to slide around on the model. Mr. Mark Setter seems to have no effect on their ability to be repositioned once on the model’s surface. I had to get them exactly right the first time, otherwise they’d be a PITA to move around. Not only that, but they broke easily and I’d have lots of air bubbles under them. I’m using Tamiya Mark Fit Super Strong and these decals do NOT want to conform. I’m having to make cuts with my hobby knife and even then they still do not want to cooperate. Driving me nuts.
The paint job is Testors Model Master Acryl Camouflage Gray, and the reflector dish, impulse engines, nacelle Bussards, and flux chillers were done with Gaia Notes’ Arpeggio line of glow-in-the-dark fluorescent lacquer paints. This should look pretty cool once I find my blacklights in my hobby closet of doom.
I’ll need to give this a Mr. Hobby semi-gloss, then paint the nav lights and such. I’ll use a black alcohol pen to color in all the windows to add that detail.
I posted before about how the Nadia movie was a real dud, especially since it reset the characters and failed to feature Jean and Nadia’s wedding in this post here although it was featured in a doujinshi manga I included scans of here. Well, I recently learned of this novel published by Tokuma Shoten called “Jean and Nadia’s Longest Day,” written by Hirotoshi Kobayashi and illustrated by Kazuhiro Miyake. I bought it from Rakuten rather cheaply. There are novelizations of the TV series in three books, but this one is under the “Nadia Stories vol. 1” category. Vol. 2 in this series apparently involves an older Marie and Samson. Maybe it’s a story about how they get married? It’s the same writer and artist team.
In this book’s prologue, it says that Jean and Nadia were married in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. I’ve only read the first page so far. It’s pretty easy to understand so far, with only a few kanji I had to look up. I’m sure the reading level will become more difficult though as this is an adventure story after all. By the looks of it, the antagonist in this story is some weird non-human with some weird Illuminati-style horns growing out of his forehead. Anyhow, it’s neat seeing Nadia a bit older. Aside from the full color images I’ve scanned below, there are some occasional black and white illustrations interspersed through the pages of the novel.
An older Nadia, apparently sewing her wedding dress?
Nadia as a happy bride. Yoshiyuki Sadamoto did not do the artwork for this book, but as I mentioned above it was done by Kazuhiko MIyake. Not bad. So now I’ll show you some of the black and white pictures from the book, namely the ones featuring Nadia.
The only nice thing about the Nadia movie were the older character designs, and the art i this book remains faithful to that image of an older Nadia.
OK, so apparently Nadia makes a re-appearance at the circus she was once the star of? She’s wearing the same clothes, but they’re getting a bit small since she’s no longer 14 years old. Her top barely fits her tits now.
Looks like Nadia’s not having a good day. She got attached to yet another Y-shape, although this time it’s some sort of wall recession. The guy at the bottom is the villain of the story.
I’ll give the book a shot, but I’ve no idea how far I can get into it as I am not fluent enough, even for this novel aimed at adolescents. Nearly 10 years ago, I got to the point where every new kanji started looking the same, and all the pronunciations started sounding the same.
This game is also known as Kujaku-Ou 2 on the Megadrive. I slightly modified this to improve her, giving her a carpet that matches the drapes.
Here they are. I had to buy more 2mm brass rod because the length I had in Asuka’s leg wasn’t long enough and she began leaning forward. I removed it and put in a longer segment and now there’s no more problem. I’m still thinking that I might paint the base and print out a custom decal for it.