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kitsunebi's talking to himself again


kitsunebi

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On 7/19/2019 at 7:01 PM, kitsunebi77 said:

Are you guys ready to download a Street Fighter II guide featuring lots of exclusive artwork and a special section featuring interviews with the developers including various screenshots of early prototype builds?  Yeah, I thought so!  Just click on the following link and you'll get none of that and yet so much more!  This is Wizardry V, bi$%*.  You're welcome.

https://archive.org/details/wizardryvkouryakuhen

large.1878796895_WizardryVKouryakuHen.jpg

No street fighter? 😞

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"You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.”

OMFG it's a guide to the original Zork!

The game was first released in 1980, so you may be wondering why Japan published this guide in 1991.  You may also be wondering why the guide is 150 pages, since surely a text adventure doesn't need much more than a walkthrough that could be printed on far fewer pages?

I can't help you on the 1991 part, but once you get to the walkthrough, you realize the value of this guide.  They've arranged the walkthrough by location, and each location is given its own page, which, in addition to hints about what can be accomplished there, is also given an illustration (since the game itself can only describe those locations with text). 

https://archive.org/details/zorkihandbook

large.1585670300_ZorkIHandbook.jpg

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Zork 1, along with a handful of other Infocom adventures, were ported to the PC-98 in the early '90s by SystemSoft. These are impressive ports -- they've rewritten the text parser to take Japanese commands with Japanese grammar. Infocom's parser was never a simplistic VERB NOUN parser, and could handle complex commands with references to multiple objects, up to and including things like "TAKE ALL BUT THE BOOK THEN DROP THE CANDLE", and the Japanese one can too, which couldn't have been easy to implement. They're also commendable translations, and add a bunch of GUI shortcuts and things such as icon graphics for all objects. I didn't know about this guidebook, though - it's a fantastic find.

Zork 1 was ported a second time in Japan a few years later, to the PS1 and Sega Saturn. That release added different graphics, a dynamic menu system instead of text input, and music. It has its own strategy guide.

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Hey there, Nintendo fans.  Here's a nice guide for Game Boy Gallery starring those Mario characters you all love so much...like, really love, ifyouknowwhatImsayin.  I know.  I've seen your search history, you perverts. 

And hey, you better download it now.  Unlike everything else I've uploaded, this one got flagged as needing admin approval before it will derive (that's why there's no preview flipbook at the moment.)  I can only assume that's because they've had takedown orders from Nintendo in the past (for our Nintendo Powers, natch.)  The CBR can still be downloaded, though, so grab it while you can in case an admin shoots it down.

https://archive.org/details/gameboygallerywinningstrategyhisshoukouryakuhou_201907

large.663017691_GameBoyGalleryHisshouKouryakuHou.jpg

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10 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

Here's a nice guide for Game Boy Gallery...

Just realized this was called Game & Watch Gallery in the USA.  This is the first of 4 titles in the "Game Boy Gallery" series to be released in Japan, though oddly, there was a completely different game called "Game Boy Gallery" released a couple of years before this one, exclusive to Europe and Australia.

So confusing.

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Well, that Nintendo guide with lots of colorful Mario artwork didn't manage to spark any interest.   No one cares about Mario or Nintendo around here, a fact that's obviously plain if you see how few downloads our Nintendo Powers get.  No, what you guys REALLY like are obscure strategy games for Japanese computers.  And I'm here for you.   天下統一 (Tenka Touitsu) was released for the PC-98 in July 1989 and the Genesis in November 1991 (this guide is for the PC-98 version).

https://archive.org/details/tenkatouitsuhandbook

large.1462325212_TenkaTouitsuHandbook.jpg

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After my last upload, I was really in a bind. "Self," I thought to myself, "how can you possibly top that last upload?  What could you ever give everyone that could possibly outshine that Tenka Touitsu guide?"

And then it hit me.  There's only one thing in the world that's even better than a Tenka Touitsu guide.

Two Tenka Touitsu guides.

https://archive.org/details/tenkatouitsukongoubushouden

large.355182719_TenkaTouitsu-Kongbush-den.jpg

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Popful Mail guide now available.  This is for the 1992 PC-98 release, although most of you will be more familiar with Working Designs' port they did for the Sega CD in 1995.  But did you know that before handing the localization job over to Working Designs, Sega initially had plans to replace the character sprites with Sonic characters and release this game in the USA as Sister Sonic starring Sonic's long lost sister?  And then I guess they came to their senses.  Even now, over 25 years later and after nearly 1000 issues of Sonic the Hedghog comics and dozens of games, Sonic has yet to discover any long lost siblings.

What I wanna know, though, is...what the heck does "Popful Mail" even mean? And why is it "Popful," when the katakana is clearly written as "poppuru"?

https://archive.org/details/popfulmailhandbook

large.1143139149_PopfulMailHandbook.jpg

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On 7/24/2019 at 9:51 PM, kitsunebi77 said:

"You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.”

OMFG it's a guide to the original Zork!

The game was first released in 1980, so you may be wondering why Japan published this guide in 1991.  You may also be wondering why the guide is 150 pages, since surely a text adventure doesn't need much more than a walkthrough that could be printed on far fewer pages?

I can't help you on the 1991 part, but once you get to the walkthrough, you realize the value of this guide.  They've arranged the walkthrough by location, and each location is given its own page, which, in addition to hints about what can be accomplished there, is also given an illustration (since the game itself can only describe those locations with text). 

https://archive.org/details/zorkihandbook

large.1585670300_ZorkIHandbook.jpg

I absolutely love this. The first Zork is one of my most beloved adventure games of all time, and seeing the artist renditions of the different areas is really neat. Also fun for learning some kanji as well. Thanks, Kitsu-san! :)

*huggles*
Areala

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I scanned 7 mags today. 

I really wish "editing" meant "WinRAR the folder and change the extension to .cbr."  Sadly, that's not the case.😭  Skipping the editing part is really the only hope I could ever have of working my way through the mess of mags in my closet.

sigh.

7 down, about 1000 left to go...😩

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On 7/28/2019 at 8:55 AM, kitsunebi77 said:

What I wanna know, though, is...what the heck does "Popful Mail" even mean? And why is it "Popful," when the katakana is clearly written as "poppuru"?


Mail is the name of the main character, likely a reference to chain-mail, giving the idea she's some kind of knight or adventurer. "Popful" or "Pop'n" is a common name in Japanese video games of that era, and seems to describe games with bubbly cute settings and characters. Magical Pop'n (1995), Pop'n Music, Pop'n Magic, etc. I'm guessing this is a reference to popping bubbles, so cute/sweet. So the title means "Adorable and Sweet Mail".

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12 minutes ago, kitsunebi77 said:

Hey kids!  I'm not an admin, so I can't create a poll here, but that doesn't mean I can't make one offsite.  Not everyone is qualified to take this poll, but a whoooole lot of people are.😋

https://linkto.run/p/QVIYI6B0

O I am too stupid to check that I have scanned all the pages before throwing away the magazine.

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4 minutes ago, Ethereal Dragonz said:

O I am too stupid to check that I have scanned all the pages before throwing away the magazine.

I've never understood how so many of our old scans get flagged as having pages missing.  But I suspect it may have to do with people using flatbed scanners.  When you've got to open the lid, insert a page, scan, open the lid, flip the page, scan...etc, it's probably a lot easier to forget if you've already scanned both sides of a page or not than it is with an ADF scanning both sides at once.  Plus it just takes so damn long to scan a mag on a flatbed, it's probably hard to keep your mind on your task at all.

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For me I have a duplex scanner and unless I get a paper jam (which happens quite a bit), I generally assume that all of the pages went through.

What happened was I scanned a copy of Flux #1 and out being distracted or lazy, I did not actually count that I had everything saved. Well I created my "finalized" file, posted it and tossed a perfectly good magazine away.

I have not yet got over this emotionally. 🤣🤣

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It's hard for me to miss a page.

After scanning, I keep the loose pages piled in order.  I edit one page at a time, and as I edit each page, I pull that page from the top of the pile so that I can compare it to the editing work I'm doing in Photoshop.  After editing the page, I save a copy into one subfolder, then I move the original raw file into a separate subfolder.  Then I go to the next unedited file in the parent folder and work on that while again pulling the physical page out next to me for comparison.  Repeat ad nauseum.  Once all files in the parent folder are gone and all physical pages have moved from the edit pile to the discard file, I'm done. 

But even then, I don't throw the pages out until after the completed mag has been uploaded.  And since EVERYTHING that isn't food waste has to be recycled in Japan, and only burnable garbage (food waste) and plastic recycling gets collected at my home, paper is just one of the many types of recycling I have to load into my car and drive to the nearest recycling station to drop off.  Since that's a pain in the ass, I often have the loose pages around long after I'm done with them simply because I'm too lazy to drive to the recycling station very often.

So yeah, I don't expect I'll ever have the problem of missing pages.  Knock on wood.

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7 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

I'm not a fan of fighting games, myself, but for anyone fond of Darkstalkers, here's a guide to the first game in the series.

https://archive.org/details/allaboutvampirethenightwarriors

Ha! I was about to upload that. We have a lot of the same books. Be sure to check my uploads so we don't end up uploading the same things.

Also, the guidebook is part of a series called "All About" published by MICRO. I've only seen their Dark Stalkers guide.

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1 hour ago, JonnyCGood said:

Ha! I was about to upload that. We have a lot of the same books. Be sure to check my uploads so we don't end up uploading the same things.

It's archive.org.  Who gives a @#%$?

Seriously.  It's a dumping ground.  It isn't curated at all, for the most part, so multiple copies of identical files are rampant.  Their software even accounts for this - if you upload a file with the exact same name as a file already in their database, their system will automatically rename the url slightly so that both files can exist.

So apart from some wasted time, I suppose, it isn't anything to get worried over.

Retromags on the other hand -- Let's stay organized, people!!!

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3 hours ago, JonnyCGood said:

Also, the guidebook is part of a series called "All About" published by MICRO. I've only seen their Dark Stalkers guide.

I'm not sure about that.  I haven't investigated it carefully, but both of the "All About" guides I uploaded are published by Denpa Shinbun under the banner of Denpa Shinbun's MyCom Basic Magazine.

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