#90's games

[nineties-effect]

[oneinathousand]

After sitting on the idea for over a year, I've finally written a lengthy essay compiling the history of Gadget, the forgotten series from the 90's that was a partial influence on the characters and plot of Half-Life.

It's a 40-minute long read, I'm sorry, but I wanted to cover all the bases. I might try to make a companion video essay for people who can't or don't have time to read an essay themselves, but that all depends on whether or not I can make a satisfactory voiceover and can gather the footage I need and edit it, so don't assume that it's gonna be guaranteed. Even if I can't make the video, I at least have something to show for everything I've done.

If I make another essay, it's either gonna be about the F-Zero tie-in novel or it's gonna be about Drowned God: Conspiracy of the Ages. The former would certainly be easier to make, and I'm still trying to learn more about what's been going on with Drowned God lately, so the research for that is still ongoing.

[tamara-kama]

I've added the Nintendo 64 era logos to the side panels of my KI cabinet's control panel! 💜😁🕹️👍🏻

Looked too blank and incomplete without them IMHO

The most challenging thing about applying these is deciding upon the alignment

But I tried to make sure they are more or less symmetrical

I included a pic of a vintage KI cabinet for reference

[idrawprettyboys]

Cornet Espoir from the PlayStation JRPG Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure! This game is very dear to me.

[renaissanceofthearts]

[Rockman]

Mega Man, known as Rockman (Japanese: ロックマン, Hepburn: Rokkuman) in Japan, is the title character and the protagonist of the Mega Man series by Capcom.

Following treachery by Dr. Wily in which he reprogrammed most of Dr. Light's robots, Rock volunteered to be converted into a fighting robot to defend the world from Wily's violent robotic threats, thus becoming Mega Man. Mega Man is a side-scrolling action platformer.

In 1987 Capcom introduced what would prove to be one of its most popular characters worldwide - and despite what has been universally called the ugliest box art of all time, Mega Man began to catch on in the US, whose game market is decidedly different from Japan's. At the same time, Rockman was slipping onto Famicom systems in Japan - same blue underpants as Mega Man's but sporting a different name and a more attractive, or perhaps more marketable, cover. A robot built to fight for justice, Mega Man stood for intense, original action platforming on the Nintendo Entertainment System. True to form, Capcom has milked this series for all it's worth; it's a great one - and the company's most important pre-Street Fighter property.

[tired-old-soul]

N O S T A L G I A

[amuletduelist]

Series: Yu-Gi-Oh! (Duel Monsters? Kinda?) Artist: Kazuki Takahashi Details: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel MonstersGame Boy Game (Including box art, instruction manual and cartridge) Publisher: Konami Year Published: 1998 (JP only release) Source: Scanned from personal collection Other notes: Firstly. Bruh. Why did they Mike Wazowski poor Honda?! Show the man some respect! Secondly, this is an interesting case. Even though the game is titled Duel Monsters and features characters from the DM anime, as you can see, all the artwork is from the Toei anime. Given that the anime ran from April to December 1998 and the game was released in December 1998, I'm guessing they possibly tried to ride the wave of the Toei anime to draw attention to the game. Maybe? Just wild speculation on my part, to be honest. More info on the game itself can be found on the Yu-Gi-Oh! Wiki, including on how the game works. PLEASE DON'T DELETE THE ABOVE COMMENTARY!

[just-an-emily-existing]

Have any of you guys played “Putt-Putt Saves The Zoo” as a kid? I loved this game and it suddenly popped in my head today and I drew the silly purple boi lol

[smashing-pixel]

Lamento por no poner a Mega Man/Rock, no sabía en dónde ponerlo.

Y tampoco es nada relevante, pero tengo la idea de que a Sparkster le gusta la honestidad que les dicen las personas.

/

I'm sorry for not putting Mega Man/Rock, I didn't know where to put it.

And it's also not relevant at all, but I have the idea that Sparkster likes the honesty that people tell him.

[gren-arlio]

May as well redo this. Hey everyone, the name's Gren, and I'm here to translate an entire Puyo/Madou route because why not.

Waku Waku Puyo Puyo Dungeon to be precise.

(This one.)

Yes, you read that right, I'm here to make a solid attempt of translating as much of the game as possible. Like in my very first post, we Puyo fans are kinda starving to death right now with the stuff we're given, Quest can only do so much. So why don't we try to take things into our own hands and make our own food?

As of writing this, (June 13th 2023,) I'm almost done with Schezo's storyline, least from the videos I was able to find thanks to YouTube being nice. You can find them here, though be warned, I'm not fluent in Japanese, so mistakes are bound to occur. If you want to help revise some things, please do. Any help would be great.

So, sounds cool, right? Before I dive into the real meat and bones of this game, I should give some context. All of it will be shown in the Read More if you're interested. If not, thanks for reading from here.

What is Waku Waku Puyo Puyo Dungeon?

Some people may not know this game, and that's fine. It's a game from the COMPILE Era of the Puyo world (Madou,) and it follows our ARS Trio (Arle, Rulue, Schezo) as they go through an amusement park to solve their own lil' things.

These guys.

The game itself is sorta like Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, where every movement is a "Turn," and the enemies move along with you. Each time you attack also counts as a turn. You go through floors (5 Early game, then 10, then 100 for the final place.) and fight a Boss at the final floor. If there's 10 floors, then a miniboss will be on the 5th.

There's small side quests to get items you want, though you can typically buy from Momomo or Fufufu. You get this quests by going to the Bulletin Board in the Info Center (where Kimimora is) and checking around. Speak to Kiki while you're at it.

This game is unfortunately not translated, and there seems to be no English rom or any translations in the internet due to this games semi-poor documentation. That's where me and possibly you come into play. We'll be the ones documenting this game.

Why this game of all games?

Well, because it's so unknown compared to the other Madou games, least what I've seen. I've never really even seen people attempt this, so I may as well try to do a single route for the fans.

And what's the end goal?

There's a couple, actually. One of these is to get the information on the Puyo Nexus (I have an account on there, Greñ.) to let people see what this game has to offer for plot and what the characters have.

The other is just because it's fun. Knowing this game isn't translated is pretty interesting, so I'd like to try. I love the franchise, so I may as well give back to it somehow.

This one's simple enough. I wanna know more about the characters. There's so much to uncover. To give a few examples for Schezo's route alone:

Schezo kinda gives Serilly therapy and she becomes a more confident person by the end of the game.

Draco accuses Schezo of being interested in men. First Rulue, now her.

Skeleton-T is just kinda vibing

Kikimora plays a pretty big role as the usher who helps people.

Witch has a huge wish...to get Schezo's clothing. And she chases him the entire game for it.

Schezo gets blasted by a Carbuncle beam and lives.

And Succubus becomes a tour guide by the end of the game. Yes. Succubus.

Game's pretty damn silly and I'm all for it. If you want to do your own translation, go off! It'll be fun to see and also help other routes if you want.

And finally. The artstyle is cool as hell. (Taken from Puyo Nexus.)

I'm a huge sucker for the artstyle, love it.

What'll happen when you're done with Schezo's route?

Easy. I'll do Arle's route, most likely. Unfortunately, Rulue isn't exactly my favorite so she'll be the one for last. If I ever get to her.

Extra Short Questions:

How long does each translation episode take to finish?

About a week or two depending on length. Typically posting on Weekends.

How about credit for the translation?

As long as I'm mentioned, it's okay. If it's your own thing, don't add my name, I ain't selfish.

What if I miss something?

After the final episode, I'll do Extras. Things I missed, things people send me, etc. Stay tuned.

Favorite COMPILE characters?

Thought I'd add this. Lagnus, Schezo, Witch as the top 3. There's like 6 Lagnus fans in America.

How to contact me:

Tumblr DM'S are open, and I guess Discord too if you want that also. I'll give the name in the DM.

With that, thanks for reading. That'll be all this time. Thanks for tuning in.

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Toasty!

[nineties-effect]

[oneinathousand]

Mediocre Extras in Drowned God: Conspiracy of the Ages Re-release Leaves Price Questionable

Since the Epic Games Store doesn't let you review games and it's not on Steam yet (a release there is supposed to happen eventually), I'll have to make my review here.

Some of my followers may recall that when the 90's point-and-click adventure game Drowned God: Conspiracy of the Ages was illegally put on Steam for $15, I raised the alarm about it to get it taken down. As I came to learn later, this incident inspired the rights holders (producer Algy Williams, co-creator Alastair Graham, and creator Harry Horse's estate) to come together and produce a re-release that is currently on the Epic Games Store for $25.

Since the original source code was lost long ago, all the developers could do was polish it slightly to make it run better on modern computers and hopefully iron out the bugs, but to justify the price point the advertisements on the new website promised several enticing extras including: a new walkthrough, the original pitch documents, an all-new art book with never-before-seen art, and most exciting of all - Diary of a Plagiarist, the 11-volume tome Harry Horse created in the 80's that served as the inspiration for Drowned God but was thought to have been lost (well, not really lost, the guy Harry sold them to refused to sell them back).

When I brought up the illegal version of DG on Steam, I said then that the game by itself would not even be worth $15 even if it were an official re-release because 1. It's a short, linear point-and-click game 2. It's over 25 years old now. Do the extra materials make the $25 price tag worth it? I'm not so sure, right now I'm leaning towards "no, not really". I'll tell you what's in this package and you can decide for yourself.

First, the game, which is fundamentally the same as it was before. This is not a remake or a remaster, there are no subtitles to alleviate the often awful audio mixing, it's just the original game made easier to play now. The producer of the re-release said in a Q&A video on the DG Youtube channel that he thinks the audio mixing sounds a little better now than it did then, but I couldn't tell you because my Airpods broke recently and I had to play the sound through my potato laptop's speakers.

Well, at the very least, from what I've played of the re-release so far (I'm not planning on playing through the whole thing right now, I'm not strong enough to go through that goddamn 9 Men's Morris puzzle again, I'm sorry ;_;), it is indeed functional and the mouse sensitivity felt better from what I remember playing on my emulated version.

So the re-release delivered the bare minimum with the game, and if that's all you care about and don't mind spending $25 on it, have at it, but now onto the extra materials, which I feel are a mixed bag that wouldn't have been so disappointing to me if the advertisements had been more honest about what they contained.

I have no qualms with the new walkthrough and the original pitch documents. The former is made to look like a top-secret folder complete with bits of redacted text and handwritten notes, it's very cute. The latter is very interesting to those interested in the lore of the game, as it gives a very different picture about what the story could have been. There are many pieces of art and writing that depict very different scenarios for the player that were changed for the final release, such as a description of the original goal being to collect a key plus several pieces of a UFO to fly to Atlantis and raise it from the ocean, with no mention at all of Kether and Malchut.

As for the other main extras, I have my qualms. Firstly is the purported Drowned God Art Book, which isn't really a book at all but a booklet, a short collection of concept art and musings from Alastair Graham about Knights Templar and Mayan mythology that abruptly stops and mostly only shows art from the Binah section of the game.

Don't get me wrong, the concept art that actually is in there is great, but I was left wanting more. If those pieces of art that were there were all that the developers had managed to track down after all these years and they titled the collection something like "Drowned God Art Booklet", I would understand, but they oversold the art "book"'s contents by a long shot, I feel.

And I know for a fact that there's more artwork out there that for whatever inexplicable reason wasn’t included anywhere in this re-release, but I can’t go into more detail at the moment, I’m in the process of trying to find out what’s been going on with this topic and will hopefully be able to give an update on it in the future.

As for the "Diary of a Plagiarist", that was a straight-up lie. It's in fact just a handwritten letter from Harry Horse giving the premise, a few story details, explaining how and why he made the volumes, and apologizing that he couldn't remember a whole lot about what was in them because he could never get them back. Imagine paying 20-something bucks for what you think is a copy of Moby-Dick, only to open it up and just see a note from Herman Melville going "I think it was about a guy in a boat chasing a whale, I forgot, lol".

I'm glad we have these notes from Harry in this case because it's probably the most detailed information about DOAP that we're ever going to get, plus it has more concept art of what looks like an even earlier version of DG before the pitch documents. However, the ones who put this re-release together could have avoided pissing me and potentially other people off by just being honest about what it really was rather than pretending like it's the real deal on the website.

So what we've got here are a few pretty good pdfs that have been blown out of proportion in terms of their contents. If you think that plus the old game is worth $25 and you can spend that, go right ahead, but for the rest of you, I would recommend waiting for a sale.

I have a few ideas for what they could add onto the package in the future to make it more worth the price tag: 1. Include a text file of all the spoken dialogue and hard-to-read pieces of writing in the game for those who might need it. 2. Expand the art book to include interviews from the developers about the making of the game and put in those other pieces of art that weren’t there the first time. 3. Update the website and social media to be more honest about the contents of the extras. 4. If tracking down the creators of the game's soundtrack is feasible, create a new, remastered soundtrack that makes the music longer than the original short loops.

If they cannot add any of these things in the near future, then there is really no excuse for this to be $25. Other PC games that are about as old as Drowned God such as Fallout 1 and 2, Diablo 1, Half-Life 1, Quake 1, and more are not only much cheaper to buy, but have more to offer.

[tamara-kama]

An arcade is a structure made by enclosing a series of arches and columns. The word's roots go back to the Latin word "arcus," which means arc or bow.

Thusly the Video Game museum in Madrid, Spain is the most arcadey arcade that I know of!

[xx8199xx]

ｆｅｅｌ

[gleber74]