Monday, December 23, 2013

SMB1 Snow

I guess you can say this is somewhat fitting, considering Christmas coming within the next two days from when I'm typing this.

Here is a faithful reconstruction of the "Super Mario Bros. Snow Editon" featured as a challenge in NES Remix. I'm hoping this gets dumped and distributed online like what eventually happened with Donkey Kong Classic and Mario Bros. Classic. 

Anyways happy holidays.

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Wai Wai World: Minus a Kong and a Goonie

I know this blog doesn't get as many readers as others, but it's still fun writing up posts regarding some of the more insane stuff I come across.

If you couldn't tell by the title, this is in regards to Konami's Japan-only crossover platformer Wai Wai World, perhaps one of the earliest examples of a video game crossover, alongside the Famicom Jump games. Wai Wai World has since gotten quite an overseas following in the more recent years thanks to the whole console emulation boom, and even featuring two non-Konami guest stars, which (obviously pulled from Wikipedia) got included as Konami-developed games based around the two guest characters spawned years prior. These two characters were Mikey from The Goonies and King Kong from the film series of the same name, preferably the sequel "King Kong Lives" which was dubbed as King Kong 2 in Japan. Konami made two licensed games each for the two characters, with Mikey getting The Goonies and the video game-only sequel The Goonies II (the later being the only of these games to be released outside Japan) and Kong being granted both Yomigaeru Densetsu (exclusive to the MSX2) and the slightly more known Ikari no Megaton Punch. Seeing as Konami still held the rights to these two series, they decided to include the two in Wai Wai World, giving both Mikey and Kong their own respective stages and abilities. The "sequel", Wai Wai World 2 - SOS!! Paseri Jou (and I put that in quotes since it doesn't really play like the first game) didn't feature any guest stars, and stuck solely to Konami-based franchises. Very likely this was since Konami lost the rights to both The Goonies and Kong Kong between both the Wai's (or however you wish to call them).

Fast forward to 2006, when Konami began it's slew of porting their classic titles to mobile phones, with Wai Wai World included in the lineup. This version was altered in slight parts to remove any and all mention of The Goonies and King Kong, instead featuring Upa from Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa and Penta from Antarctic Adventure respectively. Since then I've been trying to look for good-quality screens or videos or even a playable/downloadable version of the Mobile version outside of the actual mobile version and not counting the screens on the official site, but sadly no such things exist. I'd be surprised (and excited) if someone ported it to the NES via excessive ASM and sprite hacking.

If anyone out there either has the Mobile port and can take decent screens or knows where I can easily get it without a classic mobile phone (not iOS or Android) I'd appreciate it.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

To all giant monsters and etc that eat people

This picture pretty much explains it.










The ultimate revenge to a carnivorous dragon/giant/kaiju that swallows you whole without chewing.

And no, mutating into a monster from inside the carnivore's stomach is not something I'd consider "giving out a message" to the monster's allies. Humans in the Attack on Titan canon are so small, I really want to see someone dig their way inside a Titan's body (a place where even a Titan itself couldn't reach) then climb around and slowly rip apart organ after organ as the Titan does its daily routine, slowly killing it.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

iOS Game "Orborun" Available Now

Hello everyone.

A while back I mentioned a game known as Orborun, a Super Monkey Ball-esque ball-rolling game that had an online demo available for some time. Since then, the full game was just recently made available, which contains many new improvements and environments.

Now where do I fit in all this? One of the characters in Aozora's Adventure, Ball-Kun, was used as the basis for an unlockable skin for the "Lightning Orbot" character, as shown below:

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Chinese Arkanoid- a Hack Preview

Greetings everyone. As you can see from the above screenshots I have decided to create a ROM hack of the NES port of Taito's arcade smash hit Arkanoid. This hack was constructed based on a Chinese translation (of the Japanese version) you can find online, and unlike Dragon Eye Studios' Dimension of DOH, this hack intends to feel more like an official game with proper difficulty, decent power-up capsule placement (so it feels randomized like mostly every other Arkanoid clone), and 32 levels created based on a Chinese theme. It was constructed thanks to the "Arkalavista" utility by Trax, whom I'm assisting with to further advance the emulator so it becomes more user-friendly and not as complex to use (especially compared to the original 1.0 release of the utility) by someone who's not familiar with hexes or ROM hacking in general.

I'll release this onto Romhacking.net once it's ready.

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Salaryman Champ: Emulation Talk


I wouldn't think I'd ever touch this game again after my failures to try and get it to run the first time. But after finally downloading all the necessary files for ePSXe and running Arkanoid R 2000, I got the motivation to finally try Salaryman Champ in MAME (since the game in question had a PSX port).

Let's just say it's not as satisfying as I had hoped. No it's not a bad game by any means, but if you want more explanation on the "not as satisfying" part, please read on.

Before I jump in, let me explain a bit of the game's backstory. Not the other "Bishi Bashi" games that predated Salaryman Champ but just this game in general. Each player takes control of one of three salarymen: Burning Red, Intelligent Green, and Cool Blue (their names according to the PSX intro) and competes in 27 individual activities that all utilize three buttons. Unlike other "party" games such as Daisu Kiss, all the mini games progress through a set order rather than being randomized, and some play almost identically to each other, leaving the game a bit short on variety. Players are given ranks based on the number of victories and defeats he/she gets in each mini game, with victories moving upwards and defeats moving down (any player that doesn't finish in either 1st or 2nd loses a life, and must insert another credit to continue through). There are two Top 10 leaderboards featuring those that finished the game, one for Best 10 and one for Worst 10.

In the world of home emulation... ho boy. Unless you want to spend hundreds of dollars to get a Japanese PSX and Salaryman Champ itself, get this: In MAME, the game only supports two players compared to the three that are normally featured, with Intelligent Green always being controlled by the computer, leaving human players only to Burning Red and Cool Blue. To my understanding, there are certain Bishi Bashi cabinets (in Japan) that run with only two sets of buttons instead of three (and considering how almost all Japanese arcade games are not given dedicated cabinets; they're all conversions into blank cabinets). The PSX port, to my knowledge, also only does two players (with Cool Blue now the always-CPU character) unless you have a multitap, from there you can link every controller to the console to present all the characters with someone to control them.

To get Salaryman Champ running in MAME, you have to get both the ROM, (I believe) a BIOS, and two CHD's. Then you put them into the ROMS folder just like you would a basic standalone game, run it, press the indicated buttons/keys when prompted. It will take some time to configure the controls. Configuring Burning Red's controls is easy, but Cool Blue's three buttons are mapped else ware to whatever is Player 1's Down, Left, and Right buttons in other MAME games. From there you shouldn't have to wait much for the game to load up after booting the ROM. Just insert your credits when the game enters attract mode, and there. You'll be playing Salaryman Champ against some of the most brutal A.I ever known in any party game.

I'm as of yet uncertain if the PSX port of Salaryman Champ has been dumped publicly; every download points to the Arcade version. Similarly, I'm trying to figure out how to set 3P Bishi Bashi cabinets in MAME so I can control all three characters with no computer players.

With that said, there's nothing really much left to comment on. As a little bonus, here's some stills of the playable trio. Use them for any purpose you desire.
FTR, yes I'm quite aware of the recently-launched Mighty No. 9.

Thursday, August 1, 2013

SMBC; with a touch of Special.

Yesterday the most recent version of Super Mario Bros Crossover, version 3.0, was released to the masses; the biggest update to the game thus far, adding in the entirety of Super Mario Bros. Special as well as Easy and Hard variations of it and vanilla SMB, quadrupling the number of maps in the game. Considering how much of a sucker I am for Special, I decided to list off some notes regarding the design choices.

*As expected, the game is built to run with SMB1/2J physics, not the choppy and crappy ones from the home computers.
*The Sharp X1 version's skin is the only available version of the two; the PC88 skin is completely absent even if just about all the needed resources for it exist on the Exploding Rabbit forums and the Spriters Resource. Restricted colors or not, I consider the PC88 version the most well-known incarnation of Super Mario Bros. Special.
*The levels are not 100% authentic recreations of the original's, however unlike the NES romhack, the level recreations are much closer and capture all the original charm, since SMBC does not run on the limits of how tiles in SMB1/2J could be placed. And the differences in the level design present are very minimal compared to those of the NES romhack, such as reversing the direction of an underground elevator platform, adding an extra 1UP into a castle level, and making a previously-invisible block now visible.
*Levels now take advantage of the extra map hight in SMB1/2J, 13 tiles high as opposed to 12.
*The unintentional traps of 4-2 and 4-3's major secrets have been ridden of. 4-2's supposed "Warp Zone" which was non-functional in the original, now leads to a secret room that wasn't in the original (or the Mari0 recreation from last year) with many coins spelling out "Exploding Rabbit" and a secret item that completely stocks up your character of all his/her weapons/upgrades, resembling the ER logo. As for 4-3's bonus room, it now exits to the proper pipe under the staircase of mushrooms.

You can play the game directly from this link. Or on its Exploding Rabbit page.

I crafted a skin

Further proof I have no life.

Sunday, July 28, 2013

A bit on the worse tips.

Hello everyone. I want to make this a quick post and say this.

Ever since about several months or so ago, I've been trying to keep these few controversial acts that I've sparked either intentionally or accidentally behind me and just try to look for smarter people I can get used to more easily. I don't care about very minor things like say, how many achievements you've won total across every game, or whenever or not you follow me on deviantART and the like.

Most people have asked me "hey, why don't you learn game-programing yourself? You're almost 20 and I know 13-year olds that can code!" Well, for the first part, not everyone is able to learn programing at such a young age compared to others. Second, due to my often lazy nature, the only way I could see myself actually programing in something would be to get a local tutor that knows c+ and allow him/her to physically train me.

Second, please don't abuse the block feature of a particular site (deviantART and Twitter come to mind) for absolutely dumb reasons like "Oh I'm spreading lies of you and have no way of backing up my claims of you" or "Hey I will never give up something that happened two years ago even if you've done the same". And don't even get me started on sending your biggest followers to white-knight when you go batshit on me doing the same.

Give a fair fight if you want one ; don't wuss out and block just so you can think you won without stating anything legitimate off the top of your head. Furthermore, just let it go, and I won't keep bringing up the thing(s) I may have against you. Don't get all two-faced over what I may draw or do either. Treat me like you'd treat everyone else regardless of what talent he/she happens to excel in. Because I've been starting to notice a lot of hypocrisy around these areas...

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

ATTACK ON KOOPA

TITAN SPOTTED IN MUSHROOM KINGDOM, REQUESTING IMMEDIATE BACKUP, PLUMBERS ARE GOING IN!

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Monday, June 24, 2013

Oh dear god

It's like Atsushi Ōkubo and Bryan Lee O'Malley collaborated.




Titles:
C-C-B 超サイバーボーイ
東京P.R.O

Monday, June 3, 2013

Character Source: Hiroki

For a bit of trivia, this was the original video where the concept for Keanu originated.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Sonic the Hedgehog Robotic Blasters Episode II

This will be an article for a particular Sonic the Hedgehog fangame that I'm sure nearly everyone will have seen or heard about: Sonic Team Junior's Sonic Robo Blast 2, a 3D platformer built on Doom Legacy's engine that has been in development for almost a decade and a half. And since it was based on Doom, it has FPS-inspired gameplay in multiplayer, where you use the rings you normally pick up in a Sonic game and lob them at opponents to damage them. It's quite a wild experiment and it will keep players entertained and addicted.

In a nutshell, the game is reminiscent of the original Sonic sidescrollers on the Sega Genesis. The single-player game takes the player through eight zones each with two acts and a third act containing a boss battle against Sonic's arch-nemesis Dr. Eggman, while the multiplayer contains things such as a cooperative single player (but locks out players from unlocking additional levels/modes), and several competitive game types, seven to be exact. While the online multiplayer is probably the one selling point I myself enjoy, there are a few issues I have to address regarding online multiplayer:

*Lag everywhere and delayed controls up the wazoo in some servers, making the game operate ridiculously slippery.
*Lack of three/four player splitscreen options.
*Lack of a third and fourth team option, the Green Team and Orange Team, represented by Jet the Hawk (or Bean the Dynamite if we're only concerned with classic Sonic) and Miles "Tails" Prower respectively.
*Use of CTF maps in Match and Team Match game types (they could work).
*Not able to use spin dashes and spin jumps as a melee attack against opponents.
*Not able to have non-admins host the server if they have the stronger connection with less lagging issues.
*The overall rudeness of some of the users that use the online mode. A particular group of individuals like to call me "Justin Bieber" (I've gotten over it, but still it aggravates me), and there's this one time where someone suddenly declared "whoever finishes this level fourth is getting raped" let alone me being unable to go quick since the server was laggy and the controls were slippery for my tastes. There's another person telling me to "get out" because I disagreed with someone playing on an overplayed map (Meadow Match) or gametype (CTF). People in the game are so rude IMO, but then again I was a bit rude with that statement. -_-
 *Speaking of Options, the inability for me to assign controls to my keyboard, mouse, and gamepad with 100% freedom, much in the same way MAME does. For instance:
  *Reversing the conform/cancel options in the menu (so Joy 2 accepts and Joy 1 cancels)
  *Pure analog controls when using an analog joystick/gamepad, so the less you tilt the move/look sticks, the slower it goes.
  *When playing with analog controls ON, tilting the joystick that's intended to move the camera horizontally instead makes your character run left/right respectively, rather than just turn the camera.
 *Additionally, a way to modify the manual game resolution and switch between windowed/fullscreen mode directly through the in-game options menu.
*Server admins pausing the game because of lags. Pausing does nothing to help lags, from what the SRB2 Wiki showed.
*Server admins putting their RP servers in "Standard" instead of "Casual".
*I noticed the mystery monitors in Race mode by default don't regenerate several moments after being hit. I believe they should respawn, but only in circuit maps.
*Before starting a new round, players should always be distributed into the teams based on their scores in the previous round (scoring is based on successful attacks and flag captures).
*Whenever I intend on joining a game with mods, there is a good chance the download will die halfway through with big downloads or in a few cases, not even start at all.
 *Let's not forget 4shared's brutal methods of flaking adds everywhere and requiring registering just to download a mod for a game.
*When attempting to join a game, any wads/cheats should be disabled/deactivated before loading/viewing the server list.
*Auto-aiming doesn't work as well (IMO) as say, Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch. This especially considering how I'm using a gamepad to make the platformer parts a little easier and not as teeth-grating. But then again this is Sonic and Sonic has been known to out-run gunshots in the canon Sonic titles, and there are some good snipers in net play I encounter on occasion. I think I may bring this up since it only seems to do auto-aiming at a very close range.
*Maps? Everyone seems to have a fetish over the "Meadow Match" level. Nevermind it's small and very simple with not too many spots to gather rings for more ammo and to keep yourself alive. You're always out in the open, you can run, but can't hide.
 *Capture the Flag is easily the most played gametype in multiplayer, and it's quite sad how half the maps available aren't really the best for that gametype.
  *Cloud Palace Zone is okay. Not as good as LFZ, IFZ, and TTZ since there's bottomless pits everywhere, but still playable once you get used to it.
  *Silver Cascade Zone only has one path to the other team's base, through a narrow underwater tunnel. What easily makes this map brutal is getting into the hideouts where the flags are stored, which require a well-executed jump from the edge of the waterfall. Don't forget when carrying the flag, you're unable to thok/fly/glide, making entering your own base to capture the enemies' flag more tedious. There also need to be spawns outside the area where the flags normally spawn, since let's just say some opponents really love camping at your team's spawn zone.
  *Nimbus Ruins Zone. Pits everywhere. One hard hit and you're guaranteed to be knocked off and bumped back to your base. And what if you're only a few steps from capturing the other team's flag? Too Bad! Time to capture it again!

As for the single player, I do not have a lot to talk about. All I will say is this game seems to have a sick fantasy with cramming in as many instant-death traps as possible and whenever there's a body of water lying around, you can bet half the time there won't be a bubble generator, especially with two particular bodies of water in Green Flower Zone 2 and Deep Sea Zone 2, the later having no escape through a spring or zoom tube.

Any consideration on Time Trial for Race maps?

I was going to say the Special Stages are broken in multiplayer. If one person dies in a Special Stage, it shouldn't boot all the players out of the Special Stage; the level continues on until either the timer runs out, or all the players are dead. Players that die do not respawn. Then I remembered the Special Stages were going to be replaced by new NIGHTS special stages. In that case, I only hope there's a Time Bonus along with the Link Bonus, so the faster we do the level, the more points we get.

I find Castle Eggman Zone both difficult and (theme-wise) inappropriate for only the fourth world. If moved to Zone 6 after Red Volcano but before Dark City, it'd be a bit more of a fitting time for a dark castle level with pits and crushers everywhere. I'd also like to see a ice-themed zone somewhere along the final set of levels, maybe following RVZ, or a beach-themed zone between Techno Hill and Deep Sea, as a warmup for Deep Sea's ever-so-present underwater gimmick. There was also this single-act zone I played about a week ago; it was a space level where you navigated across a temple with rainbow pathways and lots of pits, and in one of the levels of the levelset it originally came from, you fought Eggman about two levels later, in a similar environment. Perhaps these could be templates for a single-act zone to link DCZ3 and ERZ1?

The only things with graphics; a new graphic for the fireballs in RVZ, so they're not the bland Mario Podobos, and the Sonic 3 non-italic HUD font in place of Sonic 2's.

Green Flower Zone 1 & 2 are fine the way they are. All they need is more bubble generators (especially with the lake at the end of GFZ2, plus a transparent surface) Don't take in a particular fan-concept to add raised land before the first bridge, thus making it impossible for Sonic players to immediately return to the top and instead have to walk all around the river just to try again if they miss). And don't take out the straightaway where the second checkpoint is located and replace it with this:


It's only the first level, and I best assure you many newcomers won't be able to clear this easily, especially before they discover the existence of analog controls in the options menu. Just stick with the straight path with a single bed of spikes. That was a fine obstacle.

Another recommendation I have is in regards to Techno Hill Zone. For being only the second level, there are quite a lot of OHKO traps (I'm hoping they get nerfed in Version 2.1 with the addition of the bouncy gel), especially all the pits and crushers. With Dark City Zone. I do not like the fan-created version from SRB2-Rock (which uses Sonic Advance's Egg Rocket's theme for DCZ2) since it was very lacking and bland. What I think would be the most appealing template for DCZ is the fan-made Drowned Downtown Zone from the levelset "Tortured Planet", while Sunshine Atoll from the same levelset would be the template for the beach zone described in the last paragraph. I'm still up for a "Final Battle Zone" that can only be accessed with all the Chaos Emeralds after defeating the boss of Egg Rock. The final thing I have regarding stages; you know how in the Game Gear games how the third act was not only a boss (ala 3D Blast), but before the boss there was a small pathway to the boss where you could get supplied with rings and find other secrets (like shields) before facing off against Eggman?

In conclusion, I'm not demanding or expecting these make it into the game. These are only my ideas to try and expand on the single and multi-player, making the difficulty for the campaign maps more consistent and wider in variety, and making the multiplayer more enjoyable.

Friday, March 22, 2013

SJB now on Skype

Title is self-explanitory.
Username is Superjustinbros.

Second Wave

Yes I know this blog hasn't been updated in a month, but that's because I've been caught up in quite a lot of disputes. Though in reality, it's only of my concern. You all are in the clear, though considering how easily I seem to be building up anger, I need a bit of downtime from productive stuff.














However I did create this small bust shot of Aozora. Why you ask? Well, let's just say I got aware of a particular game'e existence after three years of it's original release. I'm of course talking about Sunday VS Magazine, which is very much in a nutshell a rival of sorts to Jump Ultimate Stars, which of course I can't resist giving it a massive upgrade (Aozora's Wars, mentioned previously.) to improve on it with movesets, a wider span on supers, and an in-depth campaign with tournaments and endurances. All with probably the most playable fighters ever in a fan-based video game idea second only to MUGEN. So obviously finding out about SVM means Aozora's Wars gets an expansion pack with all those characters and their respective fighters and supporters? (especially not making sense with a game idea that doesn't exist in playable format of all things)

Take a wild guess.
AOZORA'S WARS: SECOND WAVE

So after your brains are done processing the absolute confusion and/or whatever, let me fill you in that again, this is only a game idea. And it'll stay like that until I learn how to code and crap. Of course considering how people have crammed the message "start with small projects" and I can't sprite big sheets of stuff like what's depicted in Jump Ultimate Stars, don't expect it to be the very first project I set my focus onto. Especially when you're cramming 180 total playable characters into one frankengame that's intended to be a holy grail for anime/manga geeks and fans of fighting games.

No ship.


For the record, not all these guys are from Weekly Shonen Sunday or Weekly Shonen Magazine.

Did I mention before I wanted to do a recreation of Mario Kart 64 with the same guys listed above?

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Meet Orborun



















If anyone out there is a die-hard Super Monkey Ball fantic (or any other game involving rolling balls), I'm sure you'll get an immense kick out of Tiny Lab Productions' latest upcoming concept Orborun. It's a game where you do nothing more but steer a ball down a slope as it moves automatically. It does pose a great challenge and I find myself rocking back and forth just racing down the tracks.

You can try out Orborun's ten-level flash demo on Newgrounds, or download betas on other platforms at the Orborun IndieGoGo page. I'm sure you'll have a blast.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Atari 2600 Wiz-Man

Yep, that one game from Game Center CX 2 if it was on the good old Atari 2600.

Maybe this could become a reality as a homebrew cart? (though I'd have the copyright on the bottom replaced with modern info, since here it's done as if we had Wiz-Man instead of Pac-Man, and 1980 (the year of Pac-Man's debut) was Wizman's debut, with the port to the NES/FC (Game Computer in the GCCX world) coming four years later in Japan in 1994 and as a 1995 launch title in other countries).

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Cars & Clocks in Asia


What's directly above you is Next-A-Class doing a promotional video the way we geeks like to see it best.

(EDIT: I know this animation has a big history behind it, as all shown on the site Kotaku, but I'm in it more for the action.)

What's below is MESAI, a Korean indie animation team transforming an everyday alarm clock into the biggest nuisance that wants to see you exhausted to the point of passing out.

Monday, January 14, 2013

Not Pac-Man x8 and x8+8

From the creator of A0zora and the Mari0 SJB Mod comes an expansion of StabYourself's newest game Not Pac-Man that will have you on your ankles till the day you succeed.

I'm proud to present, Not Pac-Man x8! Now featuring the four forgotten ghosts, Sue, Funky, Kinky, and Spunky, joining the original ghostly quartet!

Can't defeat the game with so many ghouls running rampant? Thanks to fellow forum member Qcode, you can now play Not Pac-Man x8+8, a special version that adds an additional four Power Pellets to the maze.
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Get it here, and happy chomping!
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/101251006/Not% ... n%20x8.zip 

You need LOVE (0.8.0) to run this mod.