Platformation Time Again: Bubsy Has Somehow Returned… AGAIN

I was writing this post just to make clear i WILL tackle the entire Bubsy series now that LRG has given a release date, September 7, so pretty soon, and i will eventually (waiting for a sale) get it on Steam since i already have there the 2 new ones they did back in 2018 or something like that (there was a rerelease of Bubsy 1 and 2 on Steam already, Bubsy Two-Fur, but it wasn’t quite legal and nothing more than an SNES emulator using ROMs that anyone already could run, i forgot the details)….

and then some days ago Atari drops the trailer for Bubsy 4D.

We ain’t getting Crash Bandicoot 5 or a new Spyro, but we are getting a new full 3D platformer with Bubsy, now basically a 30 going 40 dude that wants to relate to the kids and to stay positive despite still having PSTD from Bubsy 3D…. so already an improvement over being an annoying teenage edgelord personality-wise, and the game looks honestly decent, might even be the first good Bubsy game ever made.

So, i’m gonna clutch my pearls and wring them in hope of a Jumping Flash collection, why not?

Though with my usual luck we would get a Awesome Possum Kicks Doctor Machino’s Butt remaster instead.

Regardless, look for an eventual full coverage of Bubsy… sometime in the future.

Kangadawa Jet Girls [ANIME+OVA REVIEW] | There Is More To Racing Than Tits

There are many of these niche multimedia projects in the “anime sphere”, and sometimes they do get fairly big and well known even if they are still dedicated to relatively fringe, very specific audiences, like Girls Und Panzer, but most often than not these are fanservice heavy, borderline soft porn-adjacent… and while some of you might have thought of Valkyrie Drive (we’ll get to that, eventually), yes, i can see why, but this is NOT that Marvelous project.

This is the one with the jetskis anime girls, again a Marvelous co-produced multimedia affair, and unsurprisingly Senran Kagura’s producer (well, ex-Senran Kagura producer, nowadays) Kenichiro Taniguchi, is involved with Kandagawa Jet Girls too, there are anime boobs involved, after all.

I planned to review both the anime series (with its OVA) and the PC & console videogame, but due to schedule woes, we’ll have to tackle the game at later date, maybe next year.

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Daimaijin (1966) [REVIEW] | #giantmonstermarch

Told you we were gonna talk about Daimajin sooner or later!

Nevermind it tooks at least 4 years, but we’re at least giving sense to the old announcement wish i did about reviewing Arrow Video releases, because they did release the entire Daimajin trilogy in a cool boxset some years ago, and i highly recommend it, but for time constraints and to make space for other entries this Giant Monster March, today we’re just gonna look at the original 1966 film, simply called Daimajin, which translates to “Great Demon God”.

Back before they went bankrupt and death-farted themselves out of business with the final Gamera film, Daiei Films did compete with Toho in the “big frigging monsters” market and were pretty aggressive/active, as they pretty much commissioned and filmed all three Daimajin films back to back and released them in the span of mere months in 1966, which is impressive.

But also probably why they did eventually go bankrupt, to some extent, since they were pumping out tokusatsu features and Gamera films like there was no tomorrow… which eventually got them there, but hindsight makes everyone sounds wiser, so whatever, but the Daimajin did start out as the first foe to battle Gamera, inspired by 1936 Le Golem, but obviously that idea didn’t pan out.

While the crew was the same for all 3 films, the directors were not, and also due to this insane schedule, it’s not surprising they have similar plots involving the titular kaiju, the Daimajin, this kabuto clad stone golem demon god, to whom people come praying he saves their village by some invading warlords or something along these lines.

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Ye Old Remaster Wsihslsti (for Saint Nick)

A bonus round, meant for the previous “draught”, but it still isn’t Christmas, as Mr. Wright would point out, so enjoy!

Since the industry is experiencing the inevitable resource creep and is eventually forced right now to reap what they sow, as the new consoles “have no games” because mainstream big budget videogames have pigeonholed themselves into a situation where is too expensive and takes too long to even make one of these (emulating the big budget cinema industry they wanted so much to be to a tee), remasters have been the way too go.

Old crap with new paint or fixes to the rope itself takes still less than making a new game from scratch, is easy as you can cater to the evergrowing nostalgia market (due to the gaming populace aging because natural entropy is a thing and your flesh will fail you, eventually) longing for ages long gone, be it the Atari early days or the mascote platformer craze of the 90s, you can safely bet on an already established name, and the market is big enough that even obscure shit like Felix The Cat videogames of yore and Bubsy can get a collection with improvements, quality of feature, and shady publishers like Piko Interactive can publish in 2022 (on Steam at the moment, with console releases coming) a somehow buggier, worse looking version of Glover than when it launched on Nintendo 64. In 1998.

Be it collections of enhanced ports or remasters that just update the graphical side of things, the public craves and buys these for a variety of reasons, publishers are more than happy as it cheaper all together, so in the spirit of the time i will be dotting down my own wishlist of remasters/ports/re-releases that i would like to see.

Order is casual, btw.

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[EXPRESSO] Metal Slug Attack Reloaded STEAM | Freemium Free

So, yeah, this was unexpected, not unprecedented, but definitely unexpected, especially due to how quickly modern SNK put out and closed these free-to-play Metal Slug spin-offs.

But yeah, now the second tower defense Metal Slug title (Metal Slug Defense was a bit too old and kinda left unsopported for years, so it made sense to bring this one out of the freezer) is back as a 10 bucks single purchase, no microtransactions, timers or limited energy to play, none of that.

I’ve actually played quite a bit of the game when it was free-to-play on iOS, so it’s both kinda cool and weird to see it back as an actual game, you know, the ones you pay once and are actually meant to be played without the serpent of Eden asking for your credit card info.

I find it’s actually playable now, as the original release was notable worse in fighting anyone that didn’t wanna pay up, incredibly aggressive, a lot worse than Metal Slug Defense was, too.

Still, it’s a fairly mindless tower defense title, somewhat enjoyable despite very little strategy and little depth to it (which was also true of Metal Slug Defense, btw).

That said, it’s not a remake and it serves as a testament that nothing is actually free in free-to-play, because the design is untouched, meaning that the game is still unbalanced, heavy on difficulty spikes and grinding, holdovers that make littles sense without the F2P monetization, like the gacha to recruit units for which you’re given a fuckton of what was the “premium currency”.

Kinda odd as they also kept in the PvP online battles, but i guess why not, it’s not like they were gonna even try to balance this thing, it would have required pretty much making a new game from scratch.

P.S.: This review was made after playing the game a little after launch, pointing this out because this review has been (coincidentally) posted just before SNK announced in late November a vague free update coming in the future.

Grabbed By The Ghoulies (Rare Replay) XBOX ONE [REVIEW] | Analog Monster Bash

How i didn’t cover this one here yet i don’t know, but the spooky-ookie climate is here and now i feel there’s no escaping it, as a self-confessed Rareware/Rare nut, so time to dust off the X-Box One , insert Rare Replay in, and giving it another go after a literal decade and more since i’ve played and completed the game on the original X-Box. I’m not bustin that one out of its drawer/tomb, sorry.

Grabbed By The Ghoulies it’s more than the fairly obvious choice for the “Halloween game” feature review, as its still hails from the disastrous era when Nintendo simply sold Rare to Microsoft, killing a lot of the company’s projects…. or in this case making them shift the originally intended platform (in this case the Gamecube, as one could guess), as this one was actually the first Rare game to be shipped under the X-Box banner, and honestly i’m kinda sad that i pine for that era of Rare games nowadays, but i do, especially considering the post-360 stuff they did… or didn’t.

For better historical context, it was also the early 2000s, and more specifically, it was that brief period in gaming where – for whatever reason – action games wanted to implement a different control scheme for combat, as in, trying to simplify and skip the old way of combined button imputs to do moves… by making you control the melee combat with the right analogic stick, which since inception had been created to control the camera, a usual problem many 3D games had.

Actually, scratch that “for whatever reason”, as it was probably this game to kick off this short lived trend, since the very next year we had a Jet Li game, Rise To Honor, implement a similar control scheme, then in 2005 the Tekken spin-off Death By Degrees did too… and later Too Human, and also Neverdead, because some lessons are never to be learned by certain people.

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[One Piece: Side Pieces | Retrospective] Sanji’s Food Wars manga [REVIEW]

Unlike some of the collaboration works with other Jump authors (Boichi one not-withstanding), Sanji’s Food Wars get an entire tankobon/volume worth of material, and conceptually it’s a no brainer, makes perfect sense in terms of people involved and the crossover itself.

And unlike most of the spin-offs/one shots/collaboration treated in this retrospective, i have no real first hand knowledge of the main series it borrows/uses for the One Piece crossover, i’ve heard some opinions on it,seen some pages out-of-context, but i’ve never read or seen Food Wars, honestly never cared too much to begin with… so keep this in mind.

Ironically i’m a lot more familiar with Yakitate!! Japan, an older Jump series about the culinary arts.

Sanji’s Food Wars also feature the collaboration of chef Yuki Morisaki, with both Shun Saeki and Yuto Tsukuda (respectively artist and writer for Food Wars itself, as it would make sene) returning to make a series of small episodic stories about Sanji’s prowess as a cook and gentleman, all inserted as a “side story” inside the established One Piece canon, going from Alabasta to the 2 years timeski, with the Baratie ones being fittingly as the opening and closing acts.

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Wario Ware: Move It! NSWITCH [REVIEW] | Even Smoother Moves

To my delight, Nintendo decided to make more Wario Ware games after the welcome but kinda disappointing Wario Ware: Get It Together, and i gonna indulge myself, so the new installment, Wario Ware: Move It!, released very early last November, and it’s getting a full review as well, even if far, far later i originally planned, you can’t stop the garlic fueled madness after all.

So let’s WAH!

At least if you have either a normal Switch or its OLED revision, because Nintendo has decided this one you’re gonna play with the joycon detatched from the Switch, or you’re not gonna play at all.

So yeah, don’t bother with this one if you have a Switch Lite, you won’t be able to play this one at all, it straight up ain’t compatible…. except it is, kinda, you’ll have to buy or own extra Joy-Cons and use the screen of the console in “table mode”, which also means the multiplayer modes are completely off as they require the console to go into TV mode, which the Switch Lite can’t do.

And i don’t see them patching some kind of buttons and analogic control scheme later, because this is basically a follow up to the Wii iteration of the series, Wario Ware: Smooth Moves, as it built and depends upon motion controls, heck, it even forces to put the switch straps on the Joy-Cons as some minigames actually have you deliberately drop, place them on a surface or have them hanging around your wrist…. so yeah, this will rightfully enrage a lot of people.

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One Piece Pirate Warriors 4 – DLC Pack 5 PS4 [DLC REVIEW]

Before the final reveal in december, i honestly hoped this would have been a One Piece “Film Villains “DLC packs, but nope, the “reveal” (the silhouette gave it away since we knew of the this second Season Pass existing in trailer announcement form) of Uta was simply to indicate this was gonna be a One Piece Film Red DLC characters pack.

Which makes sense, since Film Red was beyond successful at the box office, it was arguably the goddamn best One Piece film since Film Z, and it also big a vehicle for j-pop singer Ado helped it making it the 6th grossing anime (and japanese) film of ALL TIME so far, so yeah, you bet your ass the production committees and suits were gonna push it into related One Piece products.

Still, it’s a shame because i do think a One Piece film villains DLC characters pack would have also sold really well if it picked some fan favourites like Zephyr or Shiki, but alas, this is not the case. Maybe in Pirate Warriors 5, whenever will that materialize.

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The Flying Luna Clipper (1987) [REVIEW] | Laserdisc Vaporware Of Yore

Think there is little to new variety to the blog, maybe lamenting i don’t review stuff like Walerian Borowczyk’s filmography? Too many occasional ninjas, exploitation flicks, or ninjaxploitation flicks? You’re wrong, but for the sake of it, we’re going into proper obscure, cult classic weird territory with The Flying Luna Clipper, the best intro movie to a game that doesn’t exist.

Imagine an obscure japanese point and click game heavy on surreal imagery of moon faced TV presenters, birdmen and anthro fruits, all natively dubbed in nearly “engrish” fashion, but instead of having to solve inventory puzzles or explore or witness dream scenarios while Osamu Sato tunes play in the background… minus the gameplay aspect.

Because this was never meant to be a game, but a showcase of what the MSX line of 8-bit computers could accomplish, an art film distributed by Sony and directed by Ikko Ono, the graphic designer mostly known for the cover artworks of MSX Mazagine, also having a column in the magazine itself for various illustrations, Ikko’s Gallery, that would later be featured in this film, presented by/as “Ikko’s Theathre”.

And it’s the very definition of forgotten gem, since it did receive various releases on home video in Japan at the time, but it was basically only salvaged from the darkness in 2015 when Matt Hawkins found a copy of its Laserdisc release in a thrift store, and uploaded it to Youtube, and ever since growing its niche popularity, to the point it’s definitely one of the main inspiration for what would later become the “vaporwave” art scene, itself stemming from the music style of the same name.

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