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kitsunebi's talking to himself again


kitsunebi

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BTW, don't be shy about commenting if you've played any of these games and have something to say.  This is "kitsunebi's downloads and discussion," not "kitsunebi's list of links"

Anyway, Shining Force CD is a remake of Shining Force Gaiden I&II (originally on the Game Gear) for the Sega CD. 

https://archive.org/details/shiningforcecdofficialguidebook

large.1075958735_ShiningForceCDOfficialGuideBook.jpg

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16 hours ago, kitsunebi said:

BTW, don't be shy about commenting if you've played any of these games and have something to say.  This is "kitsunebi's downloads and discussion," not "kitsunebi's list of links"

Anyway, Shining Force CD is a remake of Shining Force Gaiden I&II (originally on the Game Gear) for the Sega CD. 

https://archive.org/details/shiningforcecdofficialguidebook

large.1075958735_ShiningForceCDOfficialGuideBook.jpg

Lovely stuff - I'm playing through Shining Force CD at the moment, so I really appreciate this upload. Thank you for your continued contributions to the community :)

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Does anyone else find it odd how Japan markets its bishoujo stuff?  They always start out with porn games, and then if they're successful enough, they spin them off into all-ages anime and game adaptations...

It would be like if superheroes were initially just characters in porn films, and only later were the successful ones turned into comics and cartoons aimed at kids.  Or instead of porn parodies being made of MCU films, the MCU was actually just a bunch of all-ages films based on pornos...

What a strange world we live in.🤔

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So the pathway to success is paved with tentacles in Japan? Hmmm...maybe I too should start pitching eroge content in the hopes of creating the next MCU out of all the thrusting and grunting? 🤣

*huggles*
Areala

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It's so weird to read a magazine like Dengeki G's, which is basically cover to cover coverage of all-ages console ports of the same porn games being covered in the adult mags.  And to realize that every popular adult game has its own all-ages TV anime series (where presumably the protagonist doesn't #%$@ everything that moves.)  It's like pervert training wheels or something.😆

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Any old-school UK gamers out there?  Care to tell me what the deal is with Elite?  All indications from the UK press in the 80s are that it was the best game ever, but it didn't make any kind of splash in the USA.  As someone who loves space sims like Wing Commander, Descent Freespace, the X-Wing series, etc., I've also got a soft spot for spaceflight trading games like Privateer, and Elite seems to be just that sort of game.

So is it really as amazing as the UK press made it seem?  No offense, but I've come to distrust UK magazine reviews from the 80s/90s for the numerous times they've heaped praises upon games the rest of the world acknowledges as mediocre.  But Elite seems to have a strong rep with people even today, so I suspect there might actually be something there.

Anyone out there with fond remembrances or other opinions to share?  I'm wondering if it would be worth checking out (keeping in mind that I have no nostalgia to cover for any deficiencies).

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*raises hand*

I think it's worthy of praise, though I've never played it as it's not my idea of a good time. The main thing about Elite was that it was a trailblazer for procedural generation, and by using it they managed to fit their entire "universe" (8 galaxies, 256 planets) in the minuscule portion of the available 32KB RAM. The gameplay was interesting with a fair amount of depth in the trading and missions, though I'm dubious how novel that aspect was. Some claim that it laid the groundwork for open world games.

I am slightly too young to have played it myself at the time, but I was aware my folks played it on our Acorn Electron (a BBC-comaptible whose version of Elite was slightly neutered). At the time it made a huge splash, the UK scene was on fire at the time and this was one of the best games to come out of that period. I don't know if it'd hold up today, when there are more modern sequels or alternatives to be played. *shrugs*

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So now in addition to the hundreds of dollars I've spent in order to acquire scanning equipment and magazines to be able to contribute, I just bought a book in order to complete a gallery and database...🤔 

Yomigaeru Famicom Hisshoubon is the kind of book anyone who visits this site should be interested in - a book about a video game magazine.  In this case, it's a history of the titular Famicom Hisshoubon - one of the 4 major Famicom publications in Japan (the other 3 being Family Computer Magazine, Famicom Tsuushin, and Marukatsu Famicom).  It began as a series of mooks in 1985 and continued publication until 1990, after which it was rechristened Hippon Super! with the arrival of the Super Famicom.

I bought this book so I could get scans of the (many) covers which I couldn't find anywhere online, as well as accurate dates in order to complete the DB, but it seems like it would be an interesting read for anyone who grew up in the 80s reading this mag. No full scans forthcoming, though - this book was published in 2017 (so in 2032, maybe😋.)

large.828878334_YomigaeruFamicomHisshoubon.jpg

 

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I'll admit, my first experience with Sim City wasn't until the SNES port two years later.  Still, aside from being forced to use a D-Pad to control a game designed for a mouse, I think the SNES port is actually better in a lot of ways.  Of course, all future Sim City games would be great on PCs and garbage on consoles, so the SNES port being decent may have been a fluke (or the fact that Nintendo themselves handled the port).

Here's a guide to the PC-98 version:

https://archive.org/details/simcityguidebook

large.1986880592_SimCityGuideBook.jpg

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11 minutes ago, kitsunebi said:

 Still, aside from being forced to use a D-Pad to control a game designed for a mouse, I think the SNES port is actually better in a lot of ways. 

The SNES version actually had a soundtrack and has some of my favorite songs from that console. You can find YouTube videos of orchestras playing themes from it.

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1 minute ago, Ethereal Dragonz said:

The SNES version actually had a soundtrack and has some of my favorite songs from that console. You can find YouTube videos of orchestras playing themes from it.

Yeah, one of the big advantages that 8/16 bit consoles had over PCs was their dedicated sound chips.  PC games didn't even utilize sound cards till 1988, and even then very few people owned them, since the sound card alone cost more than a console at the time.

I, too, remember really liking the opening theme to Sim City SNES.  It's funny, though - listening to it now, it's really just a very short piece looped over and over.

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OK, so everybody knows that Dragon Quest is a Big Deal in Japan, and Dragon Quest III might well have been the Biggest Deal.  We all remember reading in Nintendo Power about people lining up around the block to get a copy (the first time we'd ever heard of such a thing), and heard the rumors about how afterwards, laws were put in place not allowing future Dragon Quests to be released on school days to avoid having kids play hooky (totally baseless, btw).  In Famitsu's most recent reader poll for top 100 games of all time (conducted in 2017), Dragon Quest III came in at #2, and was the only game in the top 5 more than a year old (I guess nostalgia doesn't affect Japanese gamers).  So yeah, big deal.

No more apparent was this to me than it was as I went about creating the database for Famicom Hisshoubon - one of the major Famicom mags back in the day (one that preceded Famitsu).  Dragon Quest III appeared on the cover not once, not twice, but 19 issues in a row.  Seven of those times were just the title on the cover, but for 12 issues in a row, the cover image was dedicated to Dragon Quest III as well.  It graced every cover from September 18, 1987 to June 17, 1988  - 3/4ths of a year.  (Dragon Quest II made the cover 8 times, btw)

(the first 5 and last 2 covers shown here only include the DQ3 title on the cover)

large.1879099465_FamicomHisshoubonIssue031(September181987).jpglarge.602893788_FamicomHisshoubonIssue032(October21987).jpglarge.2145310491_FamicomHisshoubonIssue033(October161987).jpglarge.168042280_FamicomHisshoubonIssue034(November61987).jpglarge.1318226203_FamicomHisshoubonIssue035(November201987).jpglarge.214939237_FamicomHisshoubonIssue036(December41987).jpglarge.367859174_FamicomHisshoubonIssue037(December181987).jpglarge.1725903310_FamicomHisshoubonIssue038(January61988).jpglarge.1202631055_FamicomHisshoubonIssue039(January221988).jpglarge.2109661427_FamicomHisshoubonIssue040(February51988).jpglarge.1508364120_FamicomHisshoubonIssue041(February191988).jpglarge.533141101_FamicomHisshoubonIssue042(March41988).jpglarge.2094224424_FamicomHisshoubonIssue043(March181988).jpglarge.914771929_FamicomHisshoubonIssue044(April11988).jpglarge.359177204_FamicomHisshoubonIssue045(April151988).jpglarge.1077604457_FamicomHisshoubonIssue046(May21988).jpglarge.867288174_FamicomHisshoubonIssue047(May201988).jpglarge.1845760508_FamicomHisshoubonIssue048(June31988).jpglarge.1238781006_FamicomHisshoubonIssue049(June171988).jpg

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5 hours ago, ml0045 said:

Any chance they somehow get to the internet archive via someone named "Fox Day"? 😁

Nope, not a one.  I've got too many mags that can be uploaded here to waste time supporting that other site with exclusive scans.

Btw, I see what you did there, but your translation is off.

It isn't 狐日, it's 狐火.

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39 minutes ago, kitsunebi said:

Nope, not a one.  I've got too many mags that can be uploaded here to waste time supporting that other site with exclusive scans.

Btw, I see what you did there, but your translation is off.

It isn't 狐日, it's 狐火.

Well, it was worth a shot.

I always thought your name was a holiday like 子供の日. I guess it was "St Elmo's Fire."

Thanks anyway.

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I love Japan.

But I hate Japan. 

I have many reasons for the former.  I try not to dwell upon any reasons I might have for the latter.  I live here, after all, so there's no reason to obsess over the negative.  But sometimes Japan just sneaks up behind me when I'm not looking and smacks me over the head with its big ol' "HATE ME" stick.

Right now is one of those times.

I was looking through the magazines in online shops to update our databases with the latest issues, and was looking at several of the titles from Kadokawa, publisher of almost all game mags in Japan, including Famitsu and all of the Dengeki titles.  There is a title called Dengeki Moeoh which I was familiar with, which is primarily an illustration magazine full of anime girls in varying degrees of undress.  It's essentially a cheesecake art magazine.  Here's the latest issue - go ahead, it's fine to judge this book by its cover:

81nw+VBpWnL.jpg

OK fine, whatever.

Then I saw a newer addition to Kadokawa's lineup.  Dengeki Kodomo Moeoh.  The added "kodomo" means "child" for those of you who don't speak Japanese.  Now, I'm not gonna post any pictures here, because fuck you if you want to see them, and fuck Japan for publishing them in the first place.  There's no nudity, but lots of suggestive poses, panty shots, and "oops, I was eating this vanilla ice cream and it melted all over my body" pictures of girls who appear to be 8-12 years old (and just in case you wanted to be sure, many of them are in possession of the traditional "randoseru" backpack that is only used by elementary school children.)

As someone who works with kids this age, I have to once again say..."Fuck you, Japan."  Just last month, a senator in Australia called for a review of all anime and manga released in that country to be reviewed by the classification board to filter out works that glorify child sexual abuse.  A lot of foreign "otaku"-types are gnashing their teeth in response, afraid that censorship could hurt their access to a hobby which they're passionate about.  But guys - this is real.  By any international standard, Japan DOES publish lots of manga/anime and other artworks that would be classified as child pornography, even if there's no actual sex involved (spoiler alert - there IS plenty of sex involved most of the time - there are manga publications which specialize in nothing BUT underage children having sex, usually with adults.)

So hrm...I DO still love Japan.

But I also hate it so fucking much...

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  • 2 weeks later...

BWA-HAHAHA!!!🤣

OK, just so everyone is clear...just about every file I've ever uploaded to the Internet Archive is a CBR file (maybe ALL of them...?).  So if you download any of my uploads there, you MUST DOWNLOAD THE CBR...NOT THE PDF!!!!!

The Internet Archive automatically generates a PDF file any time a CBR is uploaded, but the PDF is for OCR purposes ONLY.  A 100 MB CBR will become a 5 MB PDF because the only thing it's preserving is the text - the images are all compressed to the point that they're just blobs of color.  These files should NOT be downloaded.  The CBR is what you need.

I bring this up because I just noticed that someone recently swiped all 170+ of my IA uploads and uploaded them to one of those other sites that likes to mirror files...except they copied the PDFs by mistake 🤣  So now they have 170+ files that look like dog$#!+ cluttering up their site! 🤣

Sigh...😂 Well, that's their problem, I guess.  But I'd hate to think that any of you guys might also make such a dumb mistake, so again: for any and all files you see linked to in this thread, leave the PDFs alone and

DOWNLOAD THE CBR, BIATCHES!!!🤣

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Well, it seems they got my message. 😉  Whoever copied the entire contents of my Internet Archive page (over 170 files) and uploaded the ass-tastic PDFs to RetroCDN by mistake has perhaps seen my personal message to them (now permanently emblazoned at the top of my Internet Archive account page) to DON'T DOWNLOAD THE PDF, STUPID and has correctly uploaded all 170+ CBRs to their site, just in case, y'know, the Internet Archive closes down, so they can be a backup.😂

Actually, I've given up trying to figure out what the purpose of their site is.  When I criticized them in the past for taking files from Retromags, I was told that they needed them locally for some purpose or other having to do with Sega/NEC sites they operate which I'm unfamiliar with.  But since very little of the stuff they took from my Internet Archive account is remotely related to either Sega or the PC Engine/Turbografx, I think it's fair to say they just like uploading anything they can find.  Hell, some of the stuff they took wasn't even related to games at all, like manga/anime artbooks and the like.  Whatever.  I guess if the Internet Archive ever misplaces its millions of dollars and has to close shop, the good folks at Retro will be happy to host their 100 milllion googolplexes of data for them.😋

I suppose everyone could just cut out the middleman and we could all just upload our files directly to RetroCDN in the first place.  Whattaya say, Phillyman?  Kiwi?  Let's just close our sites and make RetroCDN the new Intenet Archive.  At least until someone from the Internet Archive copies all the files from there as well.  So incestuous, this Internet thing...😆

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11 minutes ago, Habanero said:

The fewer eggs we have in one basket, the better. You should see how fast my uploads are mirrored onto Japanese filesharing sites when I upload artbooks, guidebooks, etc.

Hahaha.  That might be true if we were backing up insignificant sites like RetroCDN onto the IA, but not the other way around.  Massively-funded sites like that don't just disappear. 

At any rate, since Retro managed to copy and upload everything I've ever uploaded in a single day, I figure they're better suited to uploading things than me, so I've decided to stop uploading things from now on.  Retro can find the files and upload them themselves from now on.  I've got nothing to gain by making it easy for them.  It will also allow me to dump the 85GB of books and mags which I have no interest in and was only keeping around till I could find the time to upload them.  Saving space and saving time.  I'm like Dr. Who or something.😋

9 minutes ago, JonnyCGood said:

does hubz post here? They are uploading fantastic content, but they're doing it via raw files in a zip then several pdfs. Wouldn't it make more sense to upload the zip as a cbz and forego the pdfs?

If they uploaded a CBR, the IA would auto-generate shit-quality seachable PDFs anyway.  Then stupid people will download those PDFs (many people aren't familiar with the CBR format, so they see "PDF" and think that that's the file they should download).  That's exactly what happened above, when someone at RetroCDN tried to dupe all of my files but copied the PDFs instead of the CBRs because they were so busy copying and uploading everything in sight that they never bothered to open any of the files and look at them to notice how poor the quality of the PDFs was.

That's the tradeoff when uploading CBRs to the IA - it's pretty much guaranteed that a bunch of dumb people will download the auto-gen OCR PDF instead.  But that's their problem, I suppose.

Me personally, I would never download something uploaded as either TIF or 600dpi from the IA, especially in an unedited state.  I don't want to waste space storing such large files, especially when they're in unfinished condition.  So those files are better left alone and just looked at via the IA's built-in browsing window.

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26 minutes ago, JonnyCGood said:

does hubz post here? They are uploading fantastic content, but they're doing it via raw files in a zip then several pdfs. Wouldn't it make more sense to upload the zip as a cbz and forego the pdfs?

https://archive.org/details/ngnamcocommunitymagazinemonthlyissue14dec1987600dpi/page/n1/mode/2up

MigJmz usually edits his stuff to post on our site. Hubz is mainly interested in scanning as high a quality as possible to the IA so that it's saved somewhere.

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19 minutes ago, E-Day said:

MigJmz usually edits his stuff to post on our site. Hubz is mainly interested in scanning as high a quality as possible to the IA so that it's saved somewhere.

I would vehemently argue that an unedited file is not and never will be "as high a quality as possible."  An edited 300ppi file looks leagues better than an unedited 600ppi file.  Kind of like how a finished film looks better than the raw dailies.

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