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Puyo Puyo merchandise at Mini Stop convenience stores

So Ulan and I stopped by the Mini Stop convenience store to get their Korean cheese hot dogs a few days ago. Holy crap, those are fantastic. They’ve recently begun selling them again and they are SOFA KING delicious. Japanese conbini food is fantastic. The last time I went to America was in 2016 and I was reminded of how gross the convenience store food is there.

As we arrived, Ulan spotted this Puyo Puyo display inside. I love Puyo Puyo, although being colorblind makes me suck at it. Ulan really kicks my ass in Puyo Puyo every time. I can’t beat her even once. but you can’t just buy whatever items you want; you pay 770 yen to reach inside a box. But it doesn’t burn your skin off like the box in Dune, nor is it full of roaches like the box in Temple of Doom. You reach inside and grab a raffle ticket. What you receive depends on what ticket you get.

The grand prizes are this Puyo lamp and this plush Carbunkle doll. I have to say that I much prefer the character designs by Compile that stayed with the series until the 4th game and I don’t care much for the new designs that came after Sega bought the Puyo Puyo license and released Puyo Puyo Fever on the Dreamcast. But Carbunkle pretty much has stayed the same.

More plush.

Eye masks. I’m glad I didn’t get that ticket.

Hand towels! Here is Draco (left) and Arle (right) taking naps. How cute.

One of these acrylic mascot keychains would’ve been cool, but that’s not what I won.

My raffle ticket let me choose a hand towel. I chose Draco the dragon girl who wears a Chinese cheongsam dress. I think she was one of the villains in the original Madou Monogatari games that Puyo Puyo is based on.

So nice to see one of these raffle deals that is of interest to me. I mean, you can see Evangelion stuff at 7-11 and I’d be happy to get a figure of Rei or Asuka, but I’d probably end up with some dumb robot instead. With Puyo Puyo though, I thought this was worth a try.

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Mega R-Type: a fan/doujin R-Type game on the Megadrive!

Last night I played the demo of the fan/doujin port of R-Type on the Megadrive that shmuppers were deprived of back in the day! The Master System and PC Engine got ports of R-Type, but not the Megadrive… until now! It’s actually not a “port” per se, as it is being built ground-up by an Italian family guy living in China who goes by “TheRoboz” on YouTube. The MD-generated music is fantastic! I paid for the demo rom and gave it a shot. You go from stage 1 to stages I’ve never gotten to before. The game isn’t complete and it seems to be a bit too liberal with the 1UPs for some reason. You can play as the standard R-9 Arrowhead, but also the “Leo Prototype.” Don’t get too excited about the Leo though… it doesn’t have the dual force orbs that R-Type Leo has, but rather no force orb and each powerup gives you the instant special weapons. You can shoot the powerups to change their color, like a Cotton game does. It’s definitely the Leo though, as you can tell by the sprites that it’s a rendering of the ship from R-Type Leo, but on the Megadrive. Neat gimmick, but I think I prefer having the force orb.

R-Type Leo (Arcade)
Leo Prototype (Megadrive)

I used SimpleScreenRecorder in Linux to record playing as both ships. I did better the first try, but then I realized that it was recording audio from my webcam’s mic and not the actual game. So I re-did the video all over again and I ended up not doing as well. That’s what you see here. Stick around to the end… the music for the ranking screen is a fantastic MD chiptune!

(Gosh, it is a pain in the ass to embed Odysee links in WordPress!)

The site to buy and download the rom: https://theroboz.itch.io/mega-r-type

The creator’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@theroboz

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Devil Hunter Yohko is an avid video gamer

Retro gaming spotted in a classic anime! From Devil Hunter Yohko episode 2, here we see that Yohko is an avid gamer from the early ‘90s. You can spot an NEC PC Engine Turbo Duo-R, Sega Megadrive, Nintendo Super Famicom, a Sega Game Gear, and even an Atari Lynx! Oh yeah, and there’s some manga there too.

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1996: the summer I discovered 32-bit Atlus import games

Gunbird
Power Instinct 2

In 1996, the video game scene in the USA was heavily focused on 3D-rendered graphics and I was disappointed. I was not opposed to 3D, but I much preferred 2D pixel graphics. I had finally bought a SNES with my high school graduation money in the summer of ’94. But now it was two years later, and by then nearly everything seemed to be 3D.

I went to a place called Laser Quest with my friend Nathan, which is a Laser Tag type of place. In the lobby were several arcade machines. Two that stood out to me was Gunbird and Power Instinct 2. I was fearing that shmups were a dead genre, as everything on the dominant Playstation seemed to be focused on 3D gameplay. Power Instinct 2 was a Street Fighter-style fighting game, but with quirky characters and a Sailor Moon-style girl character that transforms into a chick on rollerblades.

Gunbird’s publisher was Jaleco and Power Instinct 2’s publisher was Atlus. I managed to track down an email for Jaleco and asked them if they could release the game on a home console. A Jaleco rep responded to me, who happened to be an import gamer. He told me that Gunbird did get a home port on the Sega Saturn, although it was through Atlus. This Jaleco rep was the first to tell me about how incredibly awesome the Saturn was for 2D gaming, and how there is a treasure trove of such games that was not being released for the domestic US Saturn, particularly 2D shmups. It was then that I knew I had to get a Saturn.

Atlus released both Gunbird and Power Instinct 2 in Japan for home consoles, however the latter was released for the Playstation rather than the Saturn. This is disappointing, because the Playstation could not handle the game like I am sure the Saturn could. Load times are atrocious for this game’s home port. Power Instinct 3, aka Groove on Fight, was released for the Saturn, but it just didn’t have the same charm, I thought.

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Sega pajamas at Shimamura

Since I’ve shown lots of cool Sega swag from Shimamura stores, I thought I’d share these images I found on my Flickr account. I bought the Saturn pajamas, but I wish I had gone into debt and bought the Megadrive and Dreamcast pajamas too. Drat.

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Princess Crown for the Sega Saturn is getting an English translation patch!

Oh my freaking gosh. CD Romance has released an ENGLISH-PATCHED image of Princess Crown for the Sega Saturn! I bought this game nearly 20 years ago. About 10 years ago I played up to the point where I slayed the dragon, but didn’t get further than that as I lost track of it. Now it is in ENGLISH! With my Japanese level, I was able to make sense of the game, but I didn’t catch the part of how Gradriel’s older sister is ill (which would explain why she was crowned queen instead of her sister).I don’t care for the font choice, but this is super-duper neat-o!

This game is the predecessor to Vanillaware’s Odin Sphere. I like how you can have the little girl pick up the kitty instead of the book.

I don’t care for the font choice, but this is super-duper neat-o!

It’s not a proper 1.0 version yet. Some text is still in Japanese, such as the labels to the doors. This will make it difficult for those who can’t read the moon runes. Plus it has some wonky text issues. Still, this is GREAT!

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Sega Megadrive T-shirt from Shimamura

By creating an account on Mercari, I’ve expanded my ability to buy neat crap. Something I missed out on at Shimamura is this neat Megadrive T-shirt. This shirt is brand new and still has the tag attached! The front breast has the MD logo, the 3-button controller, and under that it says “16-BIT.”

This neat little tag is on the sleeve.

This is on the back. Neat!

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Ramaya’s magic attack

Arabian Fight by Sega (Arcade, 1992)

This early ’90s brawler game has its charm. Arabian Fight‘s gameplay is not as polished as it could have been. Hit detection is disappointing and can be frustrating, but what’s unique about this Arabia-themed brawler is that at times you’ll see the enemies in the foreground and they leap into the playing field. When your selected character casts a power move/magic spell, he/she leaps into the foreground.

I recorded gameplay from RetroPie using Simple Screen Recorder (a Linux program) and created this animated gif through Shotcut (another Linux program).

Rama is the token female character. She has pretty boobs. I wish her hair was black, but she’s still cool.

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MAGAAAAA!

So I guess we’re pretty much at the point of WW3. Isn’t that fun. Apparently Israel’s “Iron Dome” has more holes in it and is more like a “iron colander” as one person put it. Mossad HQ was apparently obliterated, so I guess all the Epstein and P. Diddy blackmail dirt was destroyed along with it? I suppose now there are a lot of politicians and Hollywood types who are wondering if they no longer need to do whatever Israel tells them to do.

I’m rather nostalgic for the days when there wasn’t constant war, everything was cheaper, pets weren’t getting eaten, and I could enjoy MEAN TWEETS that were directed at specific individuals who were corrupt, degenerate, inept, or vicious… or a mix of all four—while the other side denigrates entire demographics of average citizens and celebrates the deaths of people in Georgia due to a bad hurricane.

I made this meme using FontMeme.com and running a CRT filter over the image.