Flying Expresses.

 Been a bit of a shit week so far. Both my parents have had their SARS2 Jab and I got busted by the litter fascists and have to pay a fine. Which sucks. But I've managed to cobble together two more books for you.

The Mystery of the Flying Express is the absolute poster child for a great original story and a terrible rewrite.

The remake concerns a hydrofoil trip that is being sabotaged by unknown nefarious actors and has Chet Morton take up Astrology as his hobby of the week. 

The original is about a spy ring operating via the Flying Express, a coast to coast crack* train, and the disappearance of  a Professor Morse, a linguist professor from the Bixby university. There is no Astrology here, though Chet does make an appearance.

The remake has Chet in drag and a few other goofy stunts, this shouldn't be the reason to drag it down, but the overall, astrology bit, does. Its integral to the plot, in fact its integral to the main villain, which is dumb. The only plus side is that Iola and Callie get a fair bit of space dedicated to them in this. If no actual sleuthing done.

The original though is pretty good, the train theme works well, as does the spies speaking in strange, clipped English. There are a fair few accents in this, which range from western style English complete with the obligatory hoss mention, to the old African American porter speaking in obs and dems.  Definitely not allowed nowadays.

There are a few more outdated stuffs here, Frank has a watch with a Radium dial. There is also a plane trip that is scheduled more like a bus ride, hopping from small airfields to small airfields out west, near the Rockies. 

Anyway you can read both the original and remake here and here. 

* This comes from Steve Reich of all things. The Different Trains album which explained that, back in the forties, an express was known as a crack train. Thought it too good to pass by in this context.

Zig Zag Puzzle For Windows

 

Windows Zig Zag Puzzle.

I've gotten to a point in scanning this bastard, where I've got a bunch of ads for increasingly obscure games from the mid 90's. This puzzle game, literally, is from Vic Tokai but my dog level Japanese can make out Hummingbird Soft and Nippon Ichi in there as well. 

Having a brief search online turns up this info. It seems its entirely Nippon Ichi's baby, with releases on SNES and Playstation, with various rereleases on later PS Hardware. 

I've still a way to go in scanning this, I'm about a third of the way through and apart from various nice ads and news bits. Can safely say, be glad when this is done and put up on Archive.Org for you.

Other bits I've found is, 

A preview of Giten Megami Tensei, 

Something about Neo-Geo World.

And a load of ads for EA or Electronic Arts as they were back then. Also a big wodge of stuff from Koei there too. So fans of ROTK and Angelique are catered for.

SARS2 electric boogaloo.

Well its finally happened, someone in my bubble has come down with the coof. Apparently asymptomatic for most of the week, he started getting symptoms by the Saturday. Praise science that I don't do overtime or for the most part sit close to him anymore. If this was a month earlier though, I'd be sat directly opposite, rather than in my old spot against the wall where I sit now. This, though is the closest I've come to catching it and really don't want to.

The upshot of this is everyone he came into contact with needed a SARS2 electric boogaloo test. And the only test centre there is, is at HQ so it means a trip in the van with everyone else, in a stuffy mask for a nasal swab to see if we're infectious.

For those not yet at the joys of doing this this is the outline of it all.

You'll get a card with a barcode stuck on and two to hand over to the people conducting the swabs.

You'll be shown to a swab station where:

You'll be asked to take a tissue, blow your nose.

Apply sanitizer to your hands, and will be offered a nasal swab

You will need to stick this in the back of both your throat and deep up your nose. And yes you will gag and experience a bit of pain. Its not the most pleasant thing in the world. 

Put it in the holder the nurse offers you.

Fill out your details from the URL / QR code on the card provided. It takes about 30 minutes to an hour to get your test back via Email or Text.

I got both negatives, which I'm well pleased with.

The downside is the look of horror on the faces of the office staff as we queued through the hallway to get our tests. Complete with a horrid bitch with massive tits, looking on us, as if we're from Dawn Of The Dead. I hope my mate gets better

Melted Coins and such.

 So here is a thing. My first three way book file split. The Melted Coins or The Mystery of the Melted coins to give it its UK title, exists in three versions.

The Original unrevised version.

A remake that is totally different, to the original.

A UK version that is basically a condensed version of the original, sort of how parts of the original canon was edited and modernised in the 60's, to update and revise the text. 

There are five versions released for the UK market that are basically condensed versions of the original text, and I don't think that anyone has noticed that they were condensed, either, just the originals, instead of the revised editions.

The main plot of both the original and the UK edition is the same. A man is found out in the street, who has lost his memory and all he knows is the curse of the Caribbees and Hardy. Meanwhile Chet Morton has found buried treasure whilst digging a ditch for his father, and it escalates from there with stolen gold, and valuable coins stolen to be melted down for raw gold value. As you do.

It's not bad, but makes very little sense, as surely the coins are better off being sold for their value rather than gold content.

The revised edition is actually rather better. Chet has an application from Zoar College, shady summer school. While tracking down these jokers the boys stumble across a mystery involving Seneca Indians, a tribal deity / chief called spoon mouth, and after nearly being run off the road, a coin collection belonging to the Rideaus, a retired couple.

It's one of those that are better than the original and a shame we never got it, back in the day. 

Incidentally, there actually are False Face ritual masks used by the Seneca peoples. So if you'd like to know more go here.

New year and Login.

Happy new year everyone. Hoping 2021 doesn't suck balls like 2020 did. I have a final recommendation before I get into the main topic. 

Omitted from the best music of the year and released actually at the end of 2019, but with a further release on R&S records last year is... Special Request. A.K.A. Paul Woolford. I know he had a bit of a commercial success and hope he did well out of that but for me Family Doggo was the better track.

Also don't overlook Zero Fucks EP either. With it's expert filleting of commercial rap, with drum n bass. Epic.

Login Magazine aka ﾛｷﾞﾝ 

Something I got a long time ago from a long defunct bootsale. It was free, if I recall right. as it was all in Japanese.  I got a few things from bootsales that way back in the 90's paid cheap too. 

Anyway I have scanned bits and pieces from this a long time ago for posting elsewhere but have decided to scan the whole thing at 400dpi. Its going to take ages as its huge, but should be worth it.

It was produced by the ASCII corp as a PC gaming magazine from the 90's covering all of Japan's main computers and genres. Mainly the PC98 line and dealing with the whole spectrum of porn games and RPG's that that platform seemed to generate. 

My edition is April 96 and it seems that Windows had finally supplanted the various weird and wonderful home micros that Japan used, with a few hold outs for FM Towns and PC98 stuff.

I'll leave you with something from the old scans I did (not comprehensive, just things I found interesting)

Hopefully much better scanned now.