Author: rodneylives

News 2/16/23: Switch Online, Google Share Prices, MS v Sony, Toaplan

“We scour the Earth web for indie, retro, and niche gaming news so you don’t have to, drebnar!” – your faithful reporter

Welcome shlorbs and foobs to our mostly-weekly text-based internet news program! I hope you enjoyed our techno/bicycle horn fusion theme song! It’s the number one chart-topper on my homeworld, but admittedly my species doesn’t have ears. Images includes in this post are ultimately from Mobygames.

Emily Olson at NPR (swanky!): Google’s shares dropped by $100… (holds paper in front of eyes, reads twice to make sure I see it right)… billion after a disastrous AI demonstration. As a wise cartoon butler once said, “You people have too much money!” I guess we see where everyone’s looking for the next unsupportable tech bubble now that crypto’s in what I understand humans call “the crapper!” I never understood that saying personally. It isn’t the thing that craps!

Liam Doolan at Nintendo Life tells us that the game lineup on the Japanese version of the new Game Boy game collection on Nintendo Switch Online is different than the Western lineup. Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare replaces video mahjongg player Yakuman. Interestingly the article tells us that Japan-only classic For The Frog The Bell Tolls is coming eventually, although it doesn’t say if it’ll see U.S. release, let alone if it’ll come out on my planet, drebnar!

I’ll admit, Kirby’s Dream Land is pretty nice.
Just look at the smile on that bomb-throwing Poppy Bros. Sr. That’s not the look of a sane person.

Also, Andrew Webster of The Verge says that the addition of the Game Boy games make Nintendo Switch Online the ultimate retro subscription. I mean it’s pretty good, but how was it that Gameboy titles were what pushed it over the line?

Matt Bassil of Wargamer brings us the surprising news that Bank of America thinks that Hasbro is harming its business by over-monetizing Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. When a bank thinks you’re too money-grubbing you might want to sit down with some hot tea and reflect on your life.

Kotaku. Luke Plunkett. Sony claims before court that Microsoft’s request for documentation goes so far that it’s “obvious” harassment. I mean I am at a point in my blobular life that I don’t see anyone representing a corporation as saying a single syllable that isn’t mathematically calculated to four decimal places to improve their balance sheet, so who the hell knows if it’s true. Maybe it is? I am staying neutral in this fight. Acids and bases hurt my cell wall.

Metroid Prime

Oli Welsh of Polygon really likes the HD remake of Metroid Prime that Nintendo put on sale a few days ago, noting that it includes the pointing interface improvements introduced with the Wii rerelease.

Will Shanklin of Engadget tells us that a “Minecraft mad scientist” has recreated The Legend of Zelda in Minecraft, and in true mad scientist fashion is holding the work hostage, refusing to release it unless a video demonstrating it hits 5,000 Youtube likes. The article said it was at 500 likes; at our own press time it was up to 4.5K, so by the time you read this it should have enough. I will pass it along to Editorial as possible blog fodder (“blodder”) for Set Side B!

Ron Amadeo brings us the news that with the switch to monthly updates of Android 14, Google will begin just blocking apps on it made for versions of Android before 6. The reason given is security, but bah to that, old software and its preservation simply isn’t a priority for megacompanies like Google. Does anyone remember the days when it seemed like they might be a different kind of tech company? Me neither.

Nicole Clark at Polygon says Okami is the best Zelda-like. Sal Romano at Gematsu reveals that M2 is planning a collection of Toaplan shooters, including the infamous Zero Wing, the game whose U.S. translation brought us the “All Your Base” meme a 100 billion years ago. And Justin Carter at Game Developer reveals that Double Fine has made a documentary about the making of Psychonauts 2. Drebs out!

Randochrontendo

Chrontendo is, of course, Dr. Sparkle’s great and long-lived journey to document and discuss every Famicom and NES game. He’s made a lot of headway! He’s also doing Sega and PC Engine/Turbografx games!

We avidly, and a bit obsessively, link every Chrontendo episode as it’s posted. But what about the many days which don’t see a new episode?

On those days, you’ll just have to console yourself with Randochrontendo, on both Twitter and Mastodon, which posts random images from Chrontendo, usually screenshots, every thirty minutes. Sometimes you just want to look at a random 8-bit video game, and when those times arrive, Randochrontendo has you covered.

Randochrontendo on Twitter – Randochrontendo on Mastodon (botsin.space)

The Super Mario Bros (Movie) Plumbing Business Website

It warms the heart, as much as a cynical ad campaign for this year’s disposable cartoon media movie product can warm, to see that the Super Mario Bros. Movie made a website for the bros’ plumbing business.

And they made a commercial for them featuring a certain song that’ll certainly bring a smile to people who were kids in the late 80s in the U.S. I feel the spirit of Captain Lou Albano beaming down on us!

People who are familiar with the Deep Mario Lore will recognize the reference to Foreman Spike, from Wrecking Crew, in the Testimonials section, implying he’s in the movie:

The phone and text numbers on the site appear to work. If you text the number 9295562746 (the last five digits spelling MARIO), you can get this business card:

Why you want a graphic of a business card for a fake plumbing business created as a promotional tie-in for a movie based on a video game is your own lookout. I’m sure the website and the number, barring any original-Space-Jam style miracles, will stop working in a couple of years, so enjoy these pieces of electronic ephemera while they last.

Webdepths: Recipe for Meringue Mario Mushrooms

The World Wide Web is now over thirty years old. In that time, more content has vanished from it than remains now, but some of it can still be dredged up from the shadowy archives of the Wayback Machine. This is the latest chapter in our never-ending search to find the cool gaming stuff that time forgot….

Post date: February 12, 2009
Archive date: July 6, 2012
Wayback Link
Original URL: http://www.annathered.com/2009/02/12/valentine-meringue-mario-mushrooms/
Found through: the archives of Everlasting Blort

Anna the Red, self-described as bento and plush designer, current whereabouts unknown but went on to work for gaming company The Behemoth, posted instructions on how to make these adorable edible Mario mushrooms for Valentine’s Day back in 2009.

While the page that hosted the recipe is now only on Wayback, the image gallery that it drew from is still alive on Flickr. (Remember Flickr?)

So go look! Look and cook!

Sundry Sunday: The People’s Mario

Content warning: cartoon blood, violence against Goombas.

This one goes back a ways. I wonder how many people have viewed this in the past decade? It was popular enough once to get up to nearly half a million views, but who knows how many since its original upload in 2007?

A reference to the website of an ancient meme (it seems to have died in 2007), itself riffing on the white flag with a red star that goes up when Mario reaches a castle. This realistically-proportioned Mario ruthlessly smashes and crunches Goombas in a variety of ways, armed with the People’s Hammer, while stirring Russian choral music plays in the background. The video is a rendering of a Newgrounds flash animation, that seems to still be up, and even playable (I assume they’re just using a recording of a higher-quality rendering of the Flash file).

While Russia’s actions as of late are not a laughing matter (except perhaps in the sense of laughing at incompetence at war), we can separate the action in a 2007 meme from their current misadventures, right? Freedom for Ukraine!

Investigating Bootleg Battletoads

The Youtube channel of chirinea mostly hosts cover songs, but they just posted an interesting short video (about 13 minutes), both explaining the Brazilian NES game scene and figuring out why the author’s Battletoads cart skips level 2.

During much of the NES’s life, Nintendo has no distribution deal to release consoles or games in Brazil, leaving the market open for a legion of bootleg cartridge manufacturers. The video author had some of these games, which were usually straight dumps of the originals, but their version of Battletoads was not.

It had been slightly localized, with its intro text translated into Portuguese. But there were some other minor changes too. Players started with an extra life, and had infinite continues. But also, for an unknown reason, the game completely skipped the second level, the one right before the game’s infamous Turbo Tunnel.

Was it a change in the game’s code, or a malfunction caused by his NES hardware? chirinea had a bit of an adventure in figuring out how to get the code off of his cartridge into an emulator so it could be compared with the official release, and ultimately found out that yes, the code was different, and it was probably done to avoid problems with Brazilian bootleg NESes crashing on level two.

It’s an interesting journey, and worth the fairly brief runtime to find out how he did it.

What’s wrong with this Brazilian bootleg Battletoads? (Youtube, 13 minutes)

EDIT: Pronoiac offers this logo for the post and video, from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Logo Generator! You see, the internet is still full of things!

Nintendo Direct 2/8/23

Thursdays here at the moment are the domain of Edit the Frog, so we put off our overview of the Nintendo Direct until today.

While most sites have already regurgitated the news into your waiting beaks, this time we’re recounting the release dates chronologically, so you’ll know what order to expect everything. Specific games of possible interest to a hazy mirage that I imagine to be our readers are in bold:

FEBRUARY
8th: Nintendo Switch Online Gameboy & GBA Support, Fire Emblem Engage Expansion Pass, Metroid Prime Remastered
15th: Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Expansion Pass DLC volume 3
22nd: Metroid Prime Remastered on cartridge
24th: Octopath Traveler II, Kirby’s Return to Dreamland Deluxe

MARCH
6th: Dead Cells Return to Castlevania DLC
17th: Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon
20th: Spring begins. Releases for Spring: Splatoon 3 Expansion Pass, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe DLC Wave 4,

APRIL
11th: Tron: Identity
21st: Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot Camp
27th: Omega Strike

MAY
12th: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

JUNE
Some time in June: Harmony: Fall of Reverie
1st: Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection
2nd: We Love Katamari REROLL + Royal Reverie (what is it with the word “reverie” this month?)
21st: Summer begins. Releases for Summer: New Samba de Amigo, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster

JULY
21st: Pikmin 4
28th: Disney Illusion Island

AUGUST
29th: Sea of Stars

Some time in 2023: Fashion Dreamer, Decapolice, Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time, Professor Layton and the New World of Steam




Romhack Thursday: Simon Belmont in 8 Eyes

On Romhack Thursdays, we bring you interesting finds from the world of game modifications.

There aren’t many game series with the reputation that Castlevania has. While it’s always been very popular, the stature of the original game has only grown over the years, and it’s now seen as one of the very best games on the NES. We’ve talked about it here before, and about how badly the creator of one of the best-designed games ever made was treated by his company, but we’re not here to talk about sad things today.

You’d think Castlevania would have more imitators, but there aren’t as many as you’d think there would be? It has specific and definite ideas, some of them not obvious to a random player. Simon moves slowly and jumps stiffly, but it’s clear with repeated play that not only is the game designed around this, it’s even a better game for it! It’s a good example of how reducing a player’s abilities, relative to Mario-standard, can actually result in better play.

Some of the enemies were changed too. I don’t think this enemy was a skeleton in the original?

One of the few definite Castlevania clones that come to mind is Thinking Rabbit’s 8 Eyes. It could not be more obvious while playing it that its designer played a lot of Castlevania; its hero Orin’s movement is nearly an exact match for Simon Belmont, and it even has staircases that he can climb and hidden items buried in the walls.

It’s not as good a game as Castlevania, definitely, but it has its own ideas, and I respect it for adding some unique features. The player can determine what order the first eight levels are played in, and every time they finish one their attack power is upgraded. It has devious level designs that don’t always map cleanly on paper. It has a player-controlled drone character in the form of a falcon that can be deployed, and then flies around on its own, and can be commanded to attack and return and even has its own health. Most interesting of all, every level has hidden with it a clue, a piece of text that must be found and used at the end of the game to solve a logic puzzle to finally win.

Here’s one of those clues! Unlike the clue books in Castlevania II, every one of these is essential to solving the final puzzle.

There’s a lot of cool ideas in 8 Eyes. If it had some more design and development work put into it it could have been seen as a later highlight of the system. elbobelo has, for over fourteen years, been at work on a huge hack to put Simon Belmont into the game. In a forum thread they started long ago they mentioned that, while work has slowed, it’s still going. They haven’t issued a public release since an old beta in 2008, but there’s enough present in it to make one wonder how it’ll play when it’s finally released.

Here’s one of those clues. BTW, it’s not well known that 8 Eyes actually has eight quests. The game is mostly the same each time, but the logic puzzle is different!

Fortunately, the 2008 version of the hack keeps the cool ideas that 8 Eyes contributed, and it just adds features from Castlevania I and II. It keeps the falcon, the diabolical levels, and the clues and game-ending logic puzzle. Gone, however, is the player’s sword, replaced with Simon’s whip, which is a vast improvement. In addition to the falcon, Simon can find his usual subweapons, which don’t replace each other but can be switched between with the Select button. It doesn’t make the game too easy because 8 Eyes was a very difficult game. It just makes the challenge more reasonable.

Most levels have at least one puzzle that requires you to release the falcon somewhere on screen to fly around while you run to the door, so you can attack the switch with the bird then run in the door before it closes.

Best of all, it also keeps 8 Eyes’ weirdest aspect: after you beat each boss, you sit down and have tea with them! In the original the tea was brought by one of the boss’s flunkies, but in this hack one of the skeleton enemies brings it in. It’s surprisingly adorable!

8 Eyes – Playing as Simon Belmont (romhacking.net)

Many more games should show you having tea with the level boss after you beat them!

Galakong

Another LUA-based game hack from 10yard! This one’s a mashup of two perennial arcade favorites, Galaga and Donkey Kong. Each level has a chevron powerup somewhere in it. When Jumpman picks it up, he’s joined by the spaceship from Galaga. The jump button is also the fire button! Further, the ship’s shots are piercing, and can destroy more than one enemy with a single blast.

You’d think it’d make the game much easier, but the difficulty of the game has been subtly increased to make up for it, plus controlling the ship as well as ol’ Jumpy is a distraction, so it’s still pretty challenging.

In addition to Donkey Kong, the hack’s github page notes that it works in Donkey Kong Jr. as well!

Galakong (github)

AGDQ 2023 Selections #2: Tuesday & Wednesday

Some more selections possibly of interest from AGDQ 2023. Note that times given in the text are not the length of the run, but as according to our usual policy the run length of the video itself.

Ape Escape 2 (1:04):

Goat Simulator (34m):

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow Any% No 0HP race (42m) – at 19:40 in begins an extra Julius Any% run:

Super Mario Galaxy 2 four-player Any% race (3:27):

Jak II Any% (1:19):

Outer Wilds (53m):

Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal (1:35):

FEZ (35m):

Stardew Valley (58m):

Pokemon Yellow (2:24):

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (48m):

Stray (1:16):

Vector Kong

Please pardon the stuttering, evidently capturing the game at high resolution was a bit much for OBS to bear.

Vector Kong is not a romhack of Donkey Kong. Instead, it’s a LUA script, run through MAME’s plugin support, that makes the graphics display as if they were on a vector monitor.

It doesn’t leave the game unaltered otherwise: the only boards playable are Girders, and it also skips over the scene at the opening. Still though, it definitely looks sharp! Here’s hoping creator 10yard applies this treatment to the rest of it someday!

Vector Kong (github)

Sundry Extra: The Comic Bardo Thodol

CW: Not game related, which is why it’s up as a Sundry Extra. Also, has to do with Tibet, so I’m probably now making the Chinese government allergic to this post, yikes.

Some years ago, around the web went this interesting and entertaining comic condensation of the Bardo Thodol, a.k.a. the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It had fallen offline since then, although if one searches for it it might turn up again. (Ah, I see it’s up on ultraculture.org.)

The Bardo Thodol is a guidebook for those who have just died, detailing what worlds (Lokas) a soul will wander through, as well as their ruling entities (Buddhas) as it searches for a place to be reborn, unless it can become liberated from the cycle of rebirth, slipping between the cracks and not having to do it no more.

Well, as web observers may have noticed, different sites have different levels of staying power than others. The original was self-hosted, meaning when its creator Thomas Scoville stopped paying his site’s server bills it evaporated into residual electric charges.

While big tech sites tend to keep things around only for as long as it suits them (witness Geocities), Google tools that have had a substantive presence (other than Google Reader) seem to persist for a little bit. Por ejemplo, Blogger is still up and functioning, at least for now. Another thing within Google’s domain, at least until some bean counter decides the company can be made slightly more profitable by deleting it, is Google Sites.

So, with the permission of Thomas Scoville, I have put up the Comic Bardo Thodol in a corner of my Google Sites space. Please enjoy reading about all the wonders and horrors that await you after you pass away. And in particular notice which pop culture image was chosen for Yama Raja, the Lord of Death!