#snes classic

LIVE

The theme of this project was how 90s trends are cool nowadays

#90s fashion #90s kid #sneakers #90s shoes #pizzalover #pizzaparty #snes classic #super nintendo #gaming #retrogaming #cool stuff #artstuff #illustration #colors #moodboard #skateboarding

@Art of mallowboo

Fri, 10 Nov 2017 21:57:08

#nintendo #nintendo entertainment system #nes classic #super nintendo #super nintendo entertainment system #super nes #super nes classic #snes classic #scalpers #nintendo ny #nintendo nyc #new york #new york city #cancerchaser #sellout #nintendo world #nes mini #super nes mini #snes mini

@walhartonsclub

Mon, 29 Oct 2018 06:49:26

The year of 2017 is quickly wrapping up and what a year it has been. I’m sure many of us experienced a roller coaster of ups and downs this year and for a few more there may be a genuine feeling of anxiety or even dread moving towards 2018. Things this year were hard, there’s no doubt about that–and while it seems everything this year may have somehow turned controversial or toxic one thing is for sure; we had some great escapism in 2017. People love to list off “the best of [x]” any given year, but in 2017, I think it matters even more, because if we can’t even find hope in our escapism what is there left?

So here’s my list of my “favorite” anime and video games of 2017 along with some other nice surprises the year has given us. Before we begin I’d like to state a few rules I given myself so we’ll all be on the same page. I’ve opted to keep continuations such asMarch Comes in Like a Lion(a superb show you should go watch RIGHT NOW), Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju, and My Hero Academia out. By that same logic I am also not counting sequels like the fantastic Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond, nor long running shows as well such as Super despite it having a great run this year.

Every anime and video game are listed in alphabetical order. I didn’t put anything into best and worst per se. This is just a list of what I enjoyed the most this year so it really isn’t a “contest” so to say. Remember: obviously I can’t watch every anime that aired in 2017 and/or play every game released in 2017, so I might have just missed something. And without farther ado, I’ll start with my anime list.

FAVORITE ANIME OF 2017

ACCA: 13-Territory Inspection Dept.

This was a surprise hit for me. I came in blind and just picked it up because Funimation was dubbing it and since I try to get the most out of my subscription there I started up episode 1, but oh boy did this pick-up ever pay off. ACCA-13 expertly mixes 3 distinct genres together–politics, family slice-of-life, and traveling narratives–to create a unique show unlike many others.

The real hook of the show (besides the awesome OP theme) is that the main character, Jean Otus, is part of a government branch that is responsible for inspecting the 13 autonomous kingdoms that make up their fictional nation. So we watch Jean travel across many different and interesting kingdoms each more creative than the last while uncovering a hidden government conspiracy all the while trying to balance his own family life which has taken a downward turn from all the traveling his job puts on him. If none of this interest you than maybe the fact that the source material was written by the great Natsume Ono of House of Five Leaves fame will.

Currently streaming subtitled on Crunchyroll and dubbed on Funimation.

Akiba’S Trip: The Animation

Hey look, it’s a play-on-words for Akiba Strip, as in Akihabara, and the main characters strip clothes off girls too! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Please don’t stop reading this right here and now!!! Akiba’s Trip is a video game series where you rip clothes off vampire girls to expose them to the sun in order to defeat them. I got a chance to review the second game of the series on PS3 (Undead and Undressed) a few years back on Siliconera and I thought it was gonna be cringe city at the time but instead found it was actually a fun albeit campy beat-em-up game with a self aware sense of humor.

This anime is much the same. It never pretends to be anything other than a celebration of nerd culture, ignoring any of the previous games’ stories and instead just tries to capture the spirit of those titles with its own original cast of characters. Each episode features a different hobby like building a computer or playing a trading card game, and just runs them into the absolute most insane extreme it can. Wanna see a show where a dude kills vampires by “getting gud” at Street Fighter? Well here you go!

Is it cheesy? Yes. Is it cheesecake? Probably. Is that so wrong though? I guess it depends who you are. This show may not be something I would openly show to everyone but this was definitely a guilty pleasure of mine and way better than it had any right to be.

Currently streaming subtitled on Crunchyroll and dubbed on Funimation.

Atom The Beginning

A modern Osamu Tezuka prequel property that doesn’t suck?! Yes, color me surprised too (PSA: Avoid Young Black Jack like the plague). Atom the beginning is … well the beginning of the story of Atom (aka Astro Boy) showing the two genius doctors Umatro Tenma (Astro’s creator) and Hiroshi Ochanomizu (Astro’s Savior) as University Graduate Students working together on creating the first true, self aware AI which cumulates in their co-creation a106 (pronounced A-Ten-Six), a robot that can kind of be seen as a predecessor to Astro.

Really though unlike Young Black Jack that just tried to tell Black Jack stories but in a College setting (and did so poorly) Atom the Beginning really goes to great strides to establish how these two genius scientists were once colleagues and even friends, until their own ideals eventually conflicted and lead to what we know would happen in Astro Boy.

However the real star of Atom of the Beginning is not the two returning characters from Astro Boy but A106 himself. The writing for Six (as he’s affectionately called) is superb. The staff did a great job of showing a machine slowly learn to become self aware. Six isn’t doesn’t nearly have the same amount of “free will” as Astro, or is he able to properly process and feel emotions like Astro but he’s able to understand them, and more importantly Six can make his own decisions based off his own judgments and even learns to value humans and other robots not because he’s told to but from his own experiences. It’s fascinating writing that I can (and kind of want to) honestly do an entire blog post about.

Currently streaming subtitled on Amazon’s Anime Strike.

Knight’s & Magic

Yes, that’s the title. Yes, I agree the author probably didn’t have a good grasp on English grammar. But what Knight’s & Magic lacks in proper apostrophe usage it makes up for in pure mecha goodness. I must confess, I honestly have a hard time getting into modern mecha anime, for my own personal reasons, and when I read the description for Knight’s & Magic I really didn’t even think it would be any good at all. A programming ace at a tech company who is of course also a huge mecha anime nerd dies in a car accident and is reincarnated as a beautiful androgynous-looking boy in a fantasy world where giant robots are real and fight medieval monsters. That sounds like such a mess!!! So how did this become my favorite show during the Season it was airing?!

Well, the main character Ernesti isn’t just any “isekai” protagonist. He’s a mecha nerd to the extreme just like me (and I hope you too!). A lesser anime would just play this off as a joke or a 1 dimensional character trait and that’s it but this isn’t what happens here. When you’re truly passionate about something it really shows, and I got a feeling much of the staff had just as much passion about the mecha genre as our protagonist. So much attention is given to the robots and so much of the process behind creating them and researching how these things would work with real world physics is on display here. This is less about being just another fantasy world escape, and more about creating the ultimate love letter for mecha.

This is a story about finally getting to build and pilot the giant robot of your dreams just like all the mecha protagonists we’ve watched for all these years. Of course it helps that the show also has a strong supporting cast full of likable characters (this isn’t just some harem show like so many other isekai), the animation is beautiful with some great fight scenes, and the world it’s set in has ongoing consequences such as how Ernesti’s mech building pushes the surrounding kingdoms into an arms race and leads to an eventual war. Knight’s & Magic at its core though a treat for anyone who grew up wishing they could pilot a giant robot.

Currently streaming subtitled on Crunchyroll and dubbed on Funimation.

The Laughing Salesmen NEW

The Laughing Salesmen (Warau Seerusuman) is a classic dark-humor/horror manga series originating from the late-60’s, and, believe it or not, created by the same duo that made Doraemon. The series is episodic and follows Moguro Fukuzo, a salesman, but not an ordinary salesman, no what he deals in is souls, human souls.

Moguro will find whatever chump he can at the start of every episode and promises them some contraption or scheme to get out of whatever is bothering them, all free of charge. At first everything will work out great for our “victim-of-the-week” but said solution has some huge caveat: there’s something attached to every solution that Moguro warns his target they must not do, and so of course they always do just that and everything falls apart in the worse possible life ruining way. Cue Moguro pointing out that week’s moral, laughing maniacally, and walking away with a huge smile.

Laughing Salesman is just such a fun series, and there’s something so fascinating about Moguro himself, as he’s just this short, fat, unassuming looking ugly dude with a goofy big grin on his face. He’s weird looking but far from menacing which makes him super creepy somehow. I love series like this and NEW is a nice and refreshing 12 episodes in length, while remaking some classic stories from the late-80’s/early-90’s anime and telling new stories too.

Currently streaming subtitled on Crunchyroll.

Magical Circle Guru Guru

Back in the 90’s Magical Circle Guru Guru (Mahōjin Guru Guru) was a popular gag series that parodied Dragon Quest. I still remember reading the manga when I was much younger and tracking down poorly translated subtitles of the 90’s anime series, so imagine my surprise that in 2017 they created a brand new anime that looks almost like the 90’s series! The artwork is fantastic and doesn’t change anything dramatically from how it looked originally, I really can’t praise Production IG enough for how true to the original time period they made the show look.

Plus Guru Guru itself is just as funny and heart warming as the original manga. And this time they even finish the story! Granted it was only 24 episodes so they had to speed ahead, but much like Ushio & Tora, they do an expert job at adapting what they need to from the source material. Watch this show if you like Dragon Quest! Prepare to have your gut bust multiple times at how much they run classic JRPGs into the ground.

Currently streaming subtitled on Crunchyroll.

Tiger Mask W

While technically a show that started in 2016, it still ran for quite some time into 2017 and honestly I want to talk about it considering how criminally underrated it is. Tiger Mask W is the best show no one saw. A fun action series with hits that you can actually feel while watching it! I can’t even count the number of times I audibly groaned and moaned as I saw a good hit land on the characters fighting in this show. When somebody is hit in this, you feel it. The fights look real, the collusions impactful, and this separates it from so many over-the-top superhuman fighting in a lot of other battle anime nowadays.

But the real fun of Tiger Mask W is that it stays true to the spirit of the original Tiger Mask from the 70′s and almost feels like it actually came from the same era of anime. I haven’t seen a modern anime ape the feeling of watching a retro show nearly as well as this probably since Tomino’s G-Reco hammered the feeling of watching classic Gundam so well. Tiger Mask W is campy and goofy as all hell with great moments such as this played entirely straight, as well as this amazing meme, but that is why it’s so much fun. Plus it has so many great moments with a cast of really interesting characters. Characters that usually seem like they’d just be “challengers-of-the-week” and thrown away keep coming back, and as it goes on you get really invested in a lot of these wrestlers. Just do yourself a favor if you enjoy retro anime or fighting anime and watch this. Nobody else did. I don’t even like wrestling and I loved this.

Currently streaming subtitled onCrunchyroll.

BEST SURPRISE ANIME RELEASES OF 2017

Hidive launches and brings with it the much anticipated Legend of the Galactic Heroes.

Hey remember Anime Network? It started as a pay-per-view service from ADV Films (remember them?) and more or less kept running up until 2017 as Section23/Sentai Filmworks’ streaming portal for all their shows. Now they’ve shutdown Anime Network and created Hidive as its replacement and it’s actually pretty good. Hidive is still in its beta phase but it has almost every Sentai show on it, subtitled and dubbed, but perhaps my favorite thing about it is the classics.

Sentai licensed the seminal sci-fi classic Legend of the Galactic Heroes years ago, way back in 2015, but stayed silent until now where they finally released it for streaming on Hidive. This is the first time I’ve gotten around to watching this classic and it lives up the the hype. What a fantastic show and I’m so glad to finally see it this 2017. Besides Galactic Heroes though Sentai is also streaming some Tomino classics like Blue Gale Xabungle and Space Runaway Ideon too!

Space Battleship Yamato 2199 actually has a good American release finally and a fantastic Funimation dub as well.

Okay, nobody saw this coming! The 2012 remake of the 1974 epic sci-fi anime Space Battleship Yamato (Uchū Senkan Yamato) is finally getting its second chance after the license disaster and canceled release that Voyager Entertainment tried a few years back. Now we have true to the original Japanese subtitles (no Americanized Star Blazers terms here) and even more surprising a true to the Japanese dub that doesn’t change any names from Funimation of all companies and it’s fantastic too!

So in conclusion: I never thought 2017 would give me all these classic anime sci-fi and I love it!!!

FAVORITE VIDEO GAMES OF 2017

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadow of Valentia

This remake of the original Famicom Fire Emblem Gaiden is such a fantastic return-to-form after Fates went a-little-too-heavy on the formula that made Awakening such a smash hit. This is pure old school Fire Emblem fun with the modern convenience of some easier options and some of the prettiest presentations the 3DS has to offer from great 3D to absolutely gorgeous artwork and some fantastic voice work (almost the entire game outside of NPCs being voiced is a huge plus too). While I enjoyed all 3 of the 3DS’ “Fire Emblem Trilogy” I think I would recommend Echoes the most to someone who just wants to play only 1 of these titles.

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Breath of the Wild and me have some complicated feelings, as I don’t think I like it as much as everyone else nearly does. In fact I would probably take the other major Nintendo Switch game this year–Mario Odyssey–over Breath of the Wild any day of the week, but that’s partly because Odyssey is just so good too. While I still have some reservations and even some complaints about this bold recreation of Zelda, I did end up pouring many hours into this title and found my own enjoyment in it, even if it’s not nearly as much as I apparently should have judging by everyone else’s reactions. The world and atmosphere is top notch, music is fantastic, and Link works surprisingly well in blue.

But the biggest thing about Breath of the Wild for me is that it’s such a bold departure. I really want to see more from“this” Nintendo. Such a dramatic recreation of a classic hasn’t been seen since Kid Icarus Uprising, and the stakes weren’t exactly high in the Kid Icarus fandom (did it even have a fandom then?) so I’m excited just thinking what “this”Nintendo can do with some more properties.

Super Mario Odyssey

Super Mario Odyssey is the magnum opus game of the Switch right now. There, I said it. I’m all in on the Mario Odyssey hype train. From the moment I started playing it I could not stop. This was a game I wanted for almost 20 years. It was like magic, I felt the same as I did as a kid with Super Mario 64, and this wasn’t just because of a nostalgia grab like the Wii U Mario games. This was better; this game is just really good. In fact it is easily my favorite 3D Mario entry now. The open sandbox level designs, beautiful graphics and bombastic orchestral soundtrack, not to mention the first vocal songs in Mario’s history: there’s just so many things I can list that are perfect.

This game is pure enjoyment in every sense of the word and even after you beat it you keep coming back. I love Odyssey. I will treasure this game for years and years to come, even decades probably. A true love letter if ever there was one to 3D platformers and the Mario legacy itself.

Tales of Berseria

The Tales series has seemed to have the hardest time lately. Most of the PS3 entries have been hit-or-miss with its fans and critics alike and the previous entry (which Berseria is a prequel to) Zestiria was a victim of a huge controversy with its own fandom and was hit with some majorly poor reviews to boot. But Berseria feels like it’s the game to “take Tales back”. This game fixes many of the game play issues with its sister game Zestiria, not to mention builds upon the story of Zestiria and makes that game’s narrative even better because of it. Berseria has the series’ first ever “true” female protagonist and writes Velvet Crowe stupendously, she really is one of my favorite Tales characters now in fact.

This darker take on the Tales franchise is such a well written and fun game that I can easily suggest it to anyone who wants to get into the series but might have been put off by the cartoony, brightness of some previous entries. You can easily play Berseria without Zestiria although I do have a soft spot of the latter too despite some “growing pains” it suffers from as a result of the devs obviously learning how to make an open world game; but playing both does create one grand experience. Whether you play both these games, or just the fantastic Berseria is up to you, but whatever you do though avoid the Tales of Zestiria anime! Please! Don’t even! I’m dead serious. It’s that bad.

XenoBlade Chronicles 2

After the first XenoBlade on the Wii and its spiritual successor on the Wii U, I assumed we pretty much saw all we would from the XenoBlade series, but Nintendo and Monolithsoft set out to prove me wrong! (thank God) While I’m still playing XenoBlade 2 as of this writing thanks to its Dec 1 release date, unless the ending of the game somehow sours me to it, I think I feel confident in adding this to my list. XBC2 is the Switch jRPG any Nintendo fan has been waiting for with all the signature aspects of the XenoBlade series on display here: great characters, rocking guitar music that the series is famous for, and a huge open world you can get lost in for hours (trust me, I’m the MVP of getting lost in XenoBlade) but now with a lighter tone and easily the most new user friendly play system the series has had yet.

Then there’s the unlockable blades you summon at random. Is it like a lot of phone games? Sure, but at least I can get my addictive gambling experience without crazy cool-down times or paying real world money. I love the blades, and I dream that I will get Kos-Mos one day which means it will never happen, but the dream keeps every draw alive and exciting.

HUGEST VIDEO GAME DISAPPOINTMENT OF 2017

Persona 5

Persona 5 is what you get when you sell-out. Fight me if you want, I can’t express how utterly crushing and shallow Persona 5 turned out to be.

The first five Persona games (P1, P2 Innocent Sin, P2 Eternal Punishment, P3, and P4) may not have had perfect writing, but they all have a lot of heart. They’re stories about growing up and learning to create a healthy psyche while also balancing some cool SMT like stories on the side. But P5 seems to be created solely to make money. It’s shallow. The characters? They’re all blatant redos of past popular Persona characters. The story? It’s a cheap knock-off of the two Persona 2 games’ stories without any of the substance or clear message those games had.

I really love kaitou (phantom thieves) and mystery stories too, but that’s at most just flavor added to P5 and it lacks any substance that those “inspirations” it took from had. Did they actually read the stories the personas were based on? I agree there’s some silly things about Arsene Lupin, sure, but he certainly wasn’t as stupid as our protagonists are. These are some of the worst kaitou ever written in fiction. And don’t even get me started on Goro Akechi. He doesn’t deserve to have that name–he shouldn’t be put in the same category as the great Kogoro Akechi. This supposedly bombastic and plot twist heavy battle of the minds between him and our group of heroes is pretty much just a wet fart between two groups of idiots, ultimately.

It’s sad that Persona 4 is somehow a better mystery game than Persona 5 and that wasn’t even the point of Persona 4 which took more inspiration from classic Japanese folklore and not European “rogue” stories like Persona 5 claims to.

Is Persona 5 a bad game? No. The Persona game play has almost been perfected in this title, and is tons of fun. The battles, negotiation, and stealth aspects to the dungeon are great. The fantastic “acid jazz” soundtrack is also one of the highlights of the entire series and Persona has always had extraordinary music. It’s just such a shame that these great aspects are attached to the most shallow, money-grabbing entry in the series, that rather just half-ass repeat all the previous popular stories and characters of past Persona games with none of the heart.

Persona 5 feels like the epitome of executives forcing down previous popular things that worked in the series before. It’s just a made-by-assembly-line game.

That’s why Persona 5 is my biggest gaming disappointment of 2017.

Rant over.

BEST VIDEO GAME SURPRISES OF 2017

The Nintendo Switch becomes a “thing” and is actually popular.

After the end of the Wii’s life cycle and the entire life of the Wii U it feels almost surreal to see so much positivity for a Nintendo console again. Even the fantastic 3DS didn’t draw nearly this much love from everyone. But Nintendo is riding high right now and I can’t be happier for it. A strong line of great titles for the first year of the Switch certainly helps too. Let this momentum keep up in 2018, I say!!!

The SNES Classic is a JRPG Dream Machine.

Considering the runaway success the NES Classic was, there was no doubt that Nintendo would want to repeat that with the Super Nintendo, but what was surprising to see was how many great JRPGs landed on this micro-console. Now the SNES is a seminal JRPG machine no doubt but I never would have thought the SNES Classic would give us Earthbound, or Final Fantasy VI. What a time to be alive!

Well, that’s all I have for anime and games. I hope you all have a great 2018, and feel free to share what you liked the most this year too!

#video games #new years ramble #my ramblings #acca 13 ku kansatsu ka #akibas trip #atom the beginning #knights magic #laughing salesman #magical circle guru guru #tiger mask w #fire emblem echoes #legend of zelda breath of the wild #super mario odyssey #tales of berseria #xenoblade 2 #nintendo switch #snes classic

@zerochanges

Sun, 31 Dec 2017 22:54:26

This set of three images were created to go alongside Chris Scullion’s review of the SNES Mini Class

This set of three images were created to go alongside Chris Scullion’s review of the SNES Mini Classic console, which landed just last week!

In the main header image, I wanted to invoke a sense of a group of pals getting back together to play some games, after a long time apart. There’s a bunch of Nintendo characters in there that I’ve either never drawn before, or drawn very little of! This image was used in Chris’ main review here - https://tiredoldhack.com/2017/09/27/snes-mini-review/

In the second image, I wanted to play on the concept of a high-school style yearbook, ‘Most likely to…’ feature. Some of these franchises have went to some amazing places in the 20 years since the SNES, so I thought it’d be funny to imagine what they were doing now!

The final image was me testing a three panel comic layout. Back in the 90s, there was a pretty fierce rivalry between the SEGA Megadrive and the SNES - something Chris and I were all too aware of.

Both these images were used in a tips and tricks article by Chris, which you can read (and chuckle) at here https://tiredoldhack.com/2017/09/30/snes-mini-tips-special-90s-style/

Post link

#illustration #tiredoldhack #snes classic #snes mini #snes games

@Jonathan Traynor

Tue, 03 Oct 2017 11:01:40