Melted Coins research.

 No, this doesn't mean a new book is ready for release, I've still work to do typesetting and editing. I just want to draw your attention to something interesting I've found.

One of the things you'll learn about when reading the Hardy Boys books is that 38 of the original stories were rewritten in the 1960's to remove outdated references (no more automats and roadsters) and the nixing of stereotypes (mostly people talking in accents). 

A few things got rewritten entirely and a few got, what I would call the directors cut, which is, a brief trim to cut out most flavour text and expressions. Previous example would be in the Hooded Hawk mystery is the culling of the Krait encounter in the woods near Chet's farm.

 The UK editions also got a few bits and pieces removed, mainly Americanisms, spellings and more importantly book order, which is radically different here than back in the states. There's a page here outlining what editions we received and when. 

In all there are five books which keep their original text here at the expense of their revised cousins. They are:

The mystery of the melted coins

The flickering torch mystery

The secret of pirate's hill

The clue in the embers

The mystery at Devils Paw.

What I found out and have seen nowhere is that these texts were also edited and condensed. So you lose bits and pieces to keep it to 160 pages overall. Having pdfs of the originals and all the UK editions to hand, help out immensely. I wouldn't have known that they had done this if I hadn't been typesetting the books and looking through the original text. You lose some Americanisms here such as all US coins, and a few bits and pieces of continuity are altered. In all its not bad.

And for good measure seeing as the remake has bugger all about Chet being conned by a shady summer camp and a lot more about Seneca Indians. I don't see why it wasn't released here.  Unless of course the story of the worlds dumbest counterfeiters are of interest to you. 

Whatever Happened to Byuu

 Whatever happened to me. That is for those not interested in old television, a link to the theme tune to the Likely Lads. 

Apart from being the correct way to spell Byuu, it has no bearing on this post, except to pose the question, what ever happened to Byuu?.

My second or so post on here was about the MSU1 unit for the SNES, at the time, ten years or so ago a way in the emulator BSNES to simulate the failed CDROM add on that Sony was developing in the mid 90's for the SNES.  

The author Byuu, was someone I've been following or so for years on forums, a mercurial chap best known for his work on the Emulators BSNES and its all dancing follow up Higan. The former a cycle accurate SNES emulator and the latter a expanded out into a multitude of systems taking in N64 during lockdown and when I last saw on the twatter, preliminary PS1 emulation (only Ridge Racer played if I recall correctly.)

Then, nothing, a few name changes from Byuu, to Near and Higan got rebranded as Ares, then bang, he deleted the whole thing. His site remain up although relevant emulation parts are archived,

 Seems like he moved to Japan and retired from the scene, I knew of the first as he regularly posted food and stuff on his twatter from Tokyo and places, but until looking into this never knew he'd retired from the scene. 

As someone who cannot program in any capacity I do kinda think he was cool even though I never got half the things he put up. but that whole scan and document every US / Euro SNES game to check for inconsistencies are what got me into doing the UK Hardy boys scanning project. Something barely documented and with a few inconsistent PDFs lying around the net. I could do better and this was the inspiration needed.

Whatever you do, big guy, I hope you have fun, and enjoy your retirement.

Edit: Seem s like he showed up on the twatter again, pushing a new re translation of Bahamut Lagoon for the SNES, ironically one of the first fan translations I ever downloaded back in dial up era. 

He's still retired from the scene, and it seems Higan has gotten a ZX Spectrum core to it now, which is cool. My words still stand though, nice retirement dude, keep safe.

Double Edit: Terrible news, seems that Near has passed on due to pressure from Kiwifarms of all places. Seems like there was a suicide attempt and no one can get in touch with him. I hope for his sake that he is OK and that he just wants time away from twitter, and it's not real. 

But if it's true then. Fuck....

Gypsy Girl and ads.

We've been attempting to digitize some old tapes via OBS screen recording program, with the main aim of getting some stuff that my aunty had digitized from 8MM film of various family bits and pieces onto disk or file, edited and put up on Youtube.

For a trial run decided to take a run at a tape that contains (Deep Breath,) Halloween H20 and Sky West and Crooked aka Gypsy Girl.  A star vehicle for Hayley Mills and a lot of old actors from TV, not limited to, Lovejoy's Ian McShane as a gypsy kid in love with Hayley. Catweazle aka Geoffrey |Bayldon as the vicar and Annette Crosbie as her mum, better known as Victor Meldrew's long suffering wife Margaret in One Foot In The Grave. Apparently up on Netflix, so give it a watch, it's worth your time.

Its a good film and proves that she could indeed act, she plays a sketchy, spacy mentalist type of girl obsessed with burying every dead animal in the church yard. There's a laugh out loud bit where she finds a dead bumble bee up a tree and presents it to the vicar for a Christian burial.

Ads itself are interesting too. There is a spot for Ebly a wheat alternative to pasta, something called BB Soda which seems to be the year 2000's version of Tab clear, (born 1992, died 1992) and a few spots for Southend on Sea and a your shout on Crown |Green bowling, by two lads from Streatham Hill.

We also have a tape from Channel 4's the human body from 1984 and the tail end of money matters which is cool. This is based on the book, Body Machine by noted heart surgeon Christiaan Barnyard, and seems to be on reproduction from what I've seen.

Will have to redo them though before I put them up. They seem to be using the laptops internal mic to draw sound rather than the TV itself, which is annoying as I can be heard commenting and at intervals, taking the piss. Maybe routing the sound through audacity may help, or more likely poking at the sound settings in OBS which maybe less a Heath Robinson way of doing it.

Edit. Turns out you can mute the internal mic and just have audio from the capture box instead.

The Final UnimPORTant

This is the final part of the UnimPORTant series, where we put up hypothetical games that could be ported to systems from another. This time its Commodores well regarded 16 / 32 bit home computer system the Amiga.

Clu Clu land. NES.

This is a weird one, as the name is romanized wrongly. It should be Kuru Kuru land where Kuru Kuru means something that spins, and that is indeed what this game is based on.  You are a small blubbery looking fish that has to avoid the sea urchins and uncover the gold by spinning around poles in a maze.

I would have put this in my home micro round up but I think the Amiga is basically a better fit. Can imagine this being done in something like AMOS or that for the 500. It's not a bad game.

Kickle Cubicle / Meikyuujima.

A favourite NES game from R*Type producers Irem.  More of a block shoving type of game, you have to get all the bags in the allotted time.  Quite a nice little game supposedly produced for the PC Engine but remains unreleased.

Can easily see this for either Amiga 500 or 1200 series of computers.

Oids.

This is some Atari only thrust clone which for some reason was only released for the inferior ST line of computers. A nice port for the Amiga would be nice seeing as we can't have them having all the fun.

Ducktales.

Part of Capcoms Disney line up of platformers.  Would love to see this ported to the Amiga even if it incurs the wrath of the house of mouse.  With gameplay that involves Scrooge McDuck being his greedy bastard self, and rather nice music, including the Moon stage which is what its known for. This along with a few other games such as Megaman are why Capcom could do no wrong back in the day.

So that is it, we'll get back to normal posting now. There isn't much left to say except that I'd love a port of protracker to the old physical keyboard Blackbastard phones. Also as this whole SARS 2 electric boogaloo is going down now, a brief note that there is ten years worth of bollocks masquerading as articles so if you're at a loose end why not have a trawl through.

The UnimPORTant part 4 Home computers

This is the fourth part of the unimportant port part. We focus this time on a slew of 8bit computers that were popular back in the day. Think Chinnyvision's channel on Youtube for the kind of stuff we're getting at. Amstrad to ZX Spectrum with a little CBM action thrown in. If the platform is not specified on the heading then the game port is for the main three computers  at the time I.E. CPC, Speccy, C64.

First up

Kurosu ZX81.

This is one of those puzzle games where you can't have more than two 0 or Xs next to each other in a row in a 6x6 square grid.

I would have said sudoku here as well but i'm really not sure if the unexpanded ZX81 has enough grunt to run a randomized 9x9 grid with the rules, unless you added 16k of wobbly add on ram.

Whereas a 6x6 grid I would imagine could be made to run in 1K of ram with ascii graphics, which is this computers limitations.

Crosswize Hewson C64.

A mate had this for his speccy and while a C64 owner back in the day, I guess I wanted this to come to the beige breadbin. Not that we aren't starved for side scrolling shmups on the C64 side. Just one of those games that never got ported to anything.


Lunar Rescue Taito

The original was on the Tatio legends CD round up of their old Arcade IP. As soon as I saw this late 70's obscurity I said, wow this has got to be an old Speccy game, as it just looks the part.

Looking around there is an actual unofficial port for the speccy, as well as a new remake. So I'll extend this out to Amstrad and C64 users too.

Ice Climber.

This is one of those games from the NES which aren't well regarded now. You have to climb a mountain, either clubbing the birds and seals until you reach the bonus round at the summit where you have to collect the vegetables and cop hold of the pterodactyls cock to escape (that's what it looked like as a kid.)

It's a fun game, that I'm sure could be ported to the home computers, even the poor little spectrum in monochrome mode without too much autistic screeching from Nintendo. Imagine this running with CPC colours or the more dour C64 palette.

The Pit. Spectrum.

One I got from reading Reverend Flat tops site a long time ago. Apparently its an old ultimate play the game title, where you have to go digging in a pit and avoid the robots. For a more up to date version and a list of all the suspected games that Rare before Rare put out on arcade platforms, then Rev Stuart Campbell has a good article here (see The Pit halfway down for more fun.).

The UnimPORTant part 3 NES family

The NES never really took off here, I guess it was a London thing mainly, but Nintendo was never big in the UK in the 80's, don't let the revisionists tell you otherwise.

I guess a mix of paying £30-40 for console games, and the fact we had a massive home computer market here meant that Nintendo was a distant 3rd place behind Sega and whatever home computer came first.  It doesn't help that nearly everything got a NES port back in the day so what I'm proposing here is a few games that are strictly European in flavour or obscure arcade ports.

1. Mr DO!

This was one of my favourite arcade classics growing up. Essentially a dig em up, you had to tunnel to get the cherries and drop apples onto the spawning dinosaurs and evil crocodile monsters.  Its probably the only glaring omission from the Famicom line up that could most definitely do with a homebrew port.

2. Manic Miner.

An unashamed, classic, euro platformer from back in the day. One of the classics of its genre with miner Willy having to collect keys and evade all manner of weirdo's to make his fortune.  There are hardly any single screen platformers on the NES where you die from falling a short distance (this genre was everywhere on home computer.). If you're a yank you could sub in Bounty Bob Strikes Back which is similar in execution but without having you attacked by toilets and the like.

3. Frogger

OK, there is the other obvious arcade classic that does not have a port to the classic homebrew platform. Can't believe Konami never ported this out as one of its first run of games in the system. You play as a frog who has to cross a notoriously busy road to make it to the banks of the swamp.

As a purist I'd love it to have Inu no Omawarisan in it as this normally gets skipped due to copyright concerns.

4. Bruce Lee

Never played this back in the day, this is another platformer, like the NES isn't overrun with them already. As I've never played this I will shamelessly copy from Wiki and put the synopsis here.

The plot involves the eponymous martial artist advancing from chamber to chamber in a wizard's tower, seeking to claim infinite wealth and the secret of immortality. There are twenty chambers, each represented by a single screen with platforms and ladders. To progress, the player must collect a number of lanterns suspended from various points in the chamber.

That and a vague memory of it getting a homebrew port for the Master System as well makes it my ideal candidate.

5. Match Day.

Almost all NES football (proper football) is abysmal in execution. With few exceptions, such as Nintendo World Cup and Soccer. I will NOT have the best football game on the NES, be Dino(saur) Dini's Kick Off. I also never played much in the way of sports titles as a kid, FIFA soccer was a good 8 years in the future when I first got my computer, and was terrible at the actual game itself.

But I think a good homebrew port of one of the 8 bit home computer games would be a fine idea.

Just don/t port Indoor Soccer. OK.

CSI Worlds End

This is the last post from this decade from me, I know I've been busy over the past few days, so it's time to relax and add a few more I missed out on over the past year and such.

Sigala Strings of Life.

I knew why I blocked this out so much as I knew it would not do it justice. Its an OK remake of a storming techno track. Stick to that Jackson 5 re edit thing he did that was better.

Aphex Twin Live London / Mancland.

Still working my way through Manchester but damn. these are two brilliant sets. The visuals make this alone with trippy RDJ faces and strobes to trigger an epileptic fit in all but the most hardy of viewers. The music is bang on too a mix of old school and live edits of some new shit, I can hear Abundance from Collapse EP there. Well worth it.

Feature presentation.

This is one of the episodes where Ray Langston (Laurence Fishburne) is boss, and centers on a kid found dead in a storm drain in the height of a storm.   He was excluded from school for being a racist and all round edgelord and pretty much despised by his whole year.

As the case goes on it becomes more and more clear that he is leaving the far right and striking up a friendship with the school caretaker a Rwandan refugee who teaches him about good and evil.  Until the final act pans out that the janitor dude was responsible for a massacre of Tutsi rebels back in 90's and fled to the states to take up asylum. 

It always struck me as a cool story this, there is not much on TV that shows someone as racist getting a non bad guy role. Let alone a redemption arc from the story, which this is.  They are either stupid or evil and it seems that everything in the current year seemed to have a rise of the black shirts, whether it was time travelling Fash in doctor who trying to stop Rosa Parks, to the bastard peaky blinders siding with Oswald Moseley.

There is a good and long talk on Youtube from Literature Devil from this sort of thing. It's called can a hero be racist and puts out the flaws. Looking at the episode itself, it seems that the character himself read a shedload of philosophy books and such like. Kinda like a Sargon does, though I don't see Locke for him to read. There are works by Jung and Heidegger and such like. 

Also with a general move toward non violent actions and such he was leaving the violent world of the Far Right behind. This remains one of my favourite episodes along with anything Lady Heather is in.

This would be Ray Langston's last season and I've still not seen the last episode he was in before handing over to Ted Danson as DB Russell.  Final note here Willows daughter, Lindsay, is really hot, as the school is putting on a show version of Crabaret (Cabaret).

Persian CD

Here is an oddity, we went to Westfield in Shepherds Bush yesterday in order to check out the MI Store. Xiaomi's equivalent apple store for their phones and stuff.  We wanted a decent phone case for the new phone but they didn't do cases at all. 

Being a wasteland of hi end luxxe stores and other unedifying stuff we decided to look out onto the main high street and see what charity stores there were.   I got a horrible synth pop album which I ended up turning off halfway through and this Persian boi.

Front Cover

CD

Back Cover

Inlay with performer list.

It seems to be a style of traditional, instrumental Persian music played on Arabic instruments and they are pretty damn cool.  Its both instrumental and sorrowful at the same time, also the tracks themselves are pretty long, nothing under 10 minutes here.  I don't know if would be traditional to do this but would definitely a vocal track in places.  Maybe a dude lamenting lost love, or woes in life.

There are four tracks here, so without further ado I'll add what I believe to be name, style, and list of performers.

1. Taknavazan NO. 169
   "Dashti"
Freydoun Hafezi: Tar
Hassan Ali Daftari: Setar
Mansour Saremi: Santur
Mohammad Mousavi: Ney
Jahangir Malek: Tombak

2. Taknavazan NO. 183
   "Shour"
Asadollah Malek: Violin
Reza Varzandeh: Santur
Mansour Nariman: Oud
Jahangir Malek: Tombak

3. Taknavazan NO. 184
   "Chahargah"
Freydoun Hafezi: Tar
Mohammad Mousavi: Ney
Mansour Nariman: Oud
Jahangir Malek: Tombak

4, Taknavazan NO. 185
  "Shour"
Javad Maroufi: Piano
Homayoun Khorram: Violin

Last Christmas

Hello this is the annual television round up of the year, a mix of hell and heaven and in the wider context of it all, a few words before going in.

A lot of things shut up shop this year.  Fabric discontinued their metal box compilations (more tomorrow) Solid steel closed after 30 years, Mark Kermodes' film review channel is now mothballed and A Dose of Buckley my near namesake on YT posted its last worst off before signing off. Oh and Terra Battle shut down its European wing and I can't be bothered to download the APK and make a US account.

So you'll need some good TV to give you a lift.

Christmas Tapes at The BBC.

The best laugh I've had on the BBC in ages.  They were sort of the precursor to Youtube Poop and a blooper reel, if you've ever seen the Rainbow twangers sketch, complete with ebaumsworld logo plastered over it, this is were it originates (well LWT really.)

Sentence mixing, nerdy clips, shots at management and a Dalek that says bollocks, something that could have been easily shown on BBC 2 instead of  BBC 4.

Dynasties.

A long form look at an animal in its environment, includes Chimps, Tiger, Wild Dog and Penguins.  Worth it just to see them struggle day to day, oh and scientists carving steps for penguins so they don't freeze.

The Undiscovered Kenneth Williams.

Victor Lewis Smith's masterful look at our Ken and bringing out some rare and unbroadcast material from the really quite unhappy bunny.  Not a lot from Carry on, but plenty from his diaries and a few college clips.  Also The Undiscovered Peter Sellers and a Stanley Baxter one to come.

Manson The Lost Tapes.

A look at Sharon Tate and the La Bianca murders, with generous helpings of home film shot by his extended family of onlookers.  Quite creepy in places, it boils down to Sex, Drugs and Mind Control. oh and Mansons shitty rock put out by one of the Beach Boys.  Stand out Yewtree revelation is that Manson had butt sex with a 14 year old.  So a massive nonce as well as mass murderer by proxy.
Possibly not on Youtube but if you see it for download any where then grab it.  Also as its ITV and hippies, there's quite a lot of tit and bum as well as willies too.

Digitiser The Show.

We'll add this here as its quite possibly the best thing, I've on the platform in ages.  It has Chris Gannon which I like, as well as Mr Biffo himself, his  rival as they bring to life the teletext series, into some fever dream of a show,  There are all the characters you remember, Mr T and his bins, The Mans Daddy, Chart Cat and Zombie Dave. There is always something in every show that will crack me up, whether it being lobbed up in a minute, Rampage remakes, or just the fact that it feels like a show from the 90's TV but from some obscure channel (ITV brown) at an odd time.

Vic and Bobs Big Night Out.

Forgot to add this thougn I still have to watch half of the episodes.  So far I've seen the man with the long stick, George Ezra and a heater fire, ghost busters and Mulligan and O'Hare.  No one spoiled their view mind, which was all right.

Miranda awards for TV hell.

Not a lot here that sticks out here in my mind.  There was the John Le Carre Remake that felt like a long good punch up, no for my award this year its the Cheddar Man Documentary that is total bollocks. Oh and a mixed bag Dr Who.

Cheddar Man is the blackest Briton ever recovered from Cheddar Gorge.  A blue eyed Thuderf00t look a like with burnt cork skin, blue eyes and weird skin.  I have no doubt in the genetics of  Cheddar Man, apparently he came originally from what is now Spain, but the show itself was a mess.  Also can remember the article in New Scientist pouring cold water on the genetic theory of colour.  I don't care if he's black to be honest its a shit documentary at best.

Edit. Dr Who goes here as well, not because it's terrible, in fact I liked Demons of The Punjab and the Rosa Parks episode despite what sounds like that whore Paloma Faith giving it a US ending (we shall overcome surely), nor is it the Dr Herself now.  I've grown on Jodie Whittaker, and knew they'd do her proud thanks to Missy as a female Master.  No its the return of politics which is bollocks as usual.  The spider episode with Not Trump as president shooting a big spider in homage to Resident Evil.  Or the Pkunk or whatever it was eating a medi ship alive, terrible episodes.  Which means that good episodes like the parallel world one with the Frog as ruler was few and far between,

Oh yeah them mentioning Raze and them playing shitty grime can do one as well.

Secret of the old mill post script.

This is sort of a follow up to last weeks post and yesterdays subsequent re edit of said post, about the original editions of the Hardy Boys detective series. 

I've decided to have a look and see if there are any pdfs or ebooks for download, and it seems that there are, sort of.  There are places where you can get the whole series or so as PDF files these are the late 50's reprints and are a good place to start.  I will warn you though that they seem  to have been formatted by an actual ape, such is the poor job they've done with it.  Chapter headings occurring throughout the story and some weird formatting makes it a chore to read. 

Worse some of the original stories are missing, this includes the original Secret of the Old mill, so it looks like I'm forced to type out a version from my own copy, and that's not getting me stated on tracking down the original version either via Amazon or EBay.

Looking at copyright here it seems to be a cluster fuck of differing lengths depending entirely on locale.  It covers ghost written works too so these books are totally covered.  Its 70 years here and 90 in the US, meaning nothing ever goes out of copyright, ever.  Which means depending on what version you have it maybe out of copyright or within the next 20 - 200 or so years.

In other words the:

*Short version if you're US based an would like a massive touch typing exercise and have access to a lot of Hardy Boys book including the original versions, then you could take on this exercise in futility and put a good quality copy out there for us.

*Long version is the Byuu option.  I track down and buy any of the original versions I can get, or at least will ship to us here in the UK.  Clean up the formatting of the PDF. files of what I have and then transcribe them out word for word in Libreoffice and host them somewhere for people  to download.  I have all the European releases and a few of the American releases too. 

*The other, other option is to grab the ebook files which is also going to be expensive, and is at the whims of the originals being deleted at any time. That is of course the worst ever option as I hate digital only, propriety media.

Comment below if you think this is a worthwile endeavour, or even a fools errand. 

Slides Done

Couldn't find the plane stuff so here's a BEA shuttle bus.

Finally done with scanning in all the slides and films, that my grandad and other relatives filmed over the years.  Found a fresh biscuit tins worth in the back room and these were the last of them.  A few bits from Kew and Syon Park, some shots of London and some of the lights on Oxford Street from 1963, oh and me as a toddler from 1978 (am old). I've added a few bits and pieces to Archive.org but I see no reason in not sharing them here.

Enjoy coke with a guinness and skol.

That's the movie and not the welsh wonder himself.

You can see the main problem I have with the scanner I own.  Namely it'll give out this insane light bloom in the corner which you can see in some of these shots. The original scans of these were mostly unusable due to this.  I had to quickly scan one at a time and then save and exit line up another slide and scan it like that.  I'll add some plane stuff for those that like that sort of shit, my grandad lived near Heathrow so you'll see a few planes and that.

Is that some hideous Yogi bear with Popeye.

Month Of Mario Closes

This is the final post on the month of Mario and we'll be looking at Pinball and Arcade games today.

First up the rules. A small pack of small games for a small price. No DLC, sprites only and emulation only when its really obscure, and as its the final post these rules are now codified.

Think of Pinball on the various Nintendo platforms and you'd be thinking of either Pokemon Pinball, Metroid's DS outing or the really old game for the NES, but that's not all there is.

Kirby's Pinball Land.

Must have played the GB original of this a dozen times, its Kirby as a ball being spun around an arena based on Wispy Woods, and some other places I can't remember.  I always wanted an updated version of this for current hardware, flinging the overpowered pink guy around some new areas and even have the platform ball saver to rescue you when you fell through the flippers.

Super Mario Ball.

Is the name of the disappointing pinball game for GBA, can remember it reviewing badly in Edge Magazine back in the day.  Would rather they had Super Mario Bros Mushroom World from Gottlieb instead.  Better still, instead of licensing pinball arcade from Stern, they should create their own Mario Pinball cab instead.

Link crossbow shooting Gallery.

Remember that bit in Link to the Past where you have the chance to earn rupees by shooting octoroks and not hands.  I would love a fleshed out version of this with risks and rewards. 

Nintendo Badge Arcade.

Can remember this was run by some skanky Duracell rabbit knock off.  You had to use real cash to gain anything in this, he was a corrupt cold hearted bastard along the lines of Tom Nook.  Lets have a proper non scammy version with proper crane toy mechanics.  Maybe with credits gained from playing the other games on the list.  Just a thought.

Pokemon Pinball.

Our final cab and as its seems to be based on red or blue.  Lets have a new version based on Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire.  I'm sure the new Mega Evolutions and such will be an excellent mechanic for this as well as the new Pokemon and areas too.

Skykid

A remake / emulation of this would be fine, as some sort of arcade cab you can play.

Arm Wrestling.

Never actually seen this in the wild can remember Punch Out where your  entire body was a wire frame when we went to Bemboms in Margate.  Would love to see this recreated here either as emulation or as a stand alone game.

Pit Boss.

For some reason I'd love to see the guy you buy tokens from, as Pit from Kid Icarus.  Either that or Metroid in full armour. Hope you enjoyed this month of Mario.

Month of Mario 5 The Free One.

This is perhaps the one that will never get fulfilled and such, being that it goes back to the 1970's, aka the earliest Nintendo vidya stuff ever made.  We saw on twitter a tweet dedicated to all things Disk Kun. the little mascot from Nintendo's Japan only disk system add on, which thinking about this, is possibly what this series should be thought of.  i.e.

A small pack of small games for a small price. No DLC, sprites only and emulation only when its really obscure, and yep we do amend the rules over time.

What I'm talking about is the various pong consoles that Nintendo produced in the late 70's wrapped up in one handy resource.

Though this and a remake / demake of Wii fit with Princess Peach, Samus Aran and Rosalia could have easily been in my last post about sports games based on early NES and Gameboy titles.  They are actually more like variations on Pong, like the old Binatone consoles back in the day.  The last ones are actually a break out variant and two player Othello game that was essentially an arcade board stuffed into a home console.  Oh and one is a car racing game with a really big steering wheel.

I  would love to see the pong games  as one entry, with extensive liner notes on what they cost, making of's and promo artwork. All "sports variants" colour and black and white modes and even cellophane overlays as a nod to old arcade games like Space Invaders.

Split racing 112 into its own part with classic and updated graphics (yes it can be the bike from Mach Rider if you so wish) and modes as well. You can add promo stuff and liner notes here too.

The Block Kuzushii can be its own entry too with an emulated version of Monkey Magic thrown in for good measure too.

Othello has to be its own entry too and have both emulated and remade modes too.

I'd like a small card game such as solitaire or Hanafuda with Murasamejo or Shin Onigashima designs as a tribute to their card making past.

A rework of Gyromite that uses two analogue sticks to simulate R.O.B. spinning the gyroscope and some extended level designs.

Finally have the love tester and ultra hand as bonus toys.  I'd love to see some sort of Ultra Hand grabbing game where you pick up stuff and grab items.

Month of Mario pt 4 sports.

The fourth part of our mammoth month of Mario is dedicated to sports games which Nintendo have revisited time and again. Whether it be Wii sports, the original baseball for NES or Mario VS Sonic at the Olympics it seems that Nintendo and sports have gone hand in hand for ages.  Incidentally this is the germ that sparked off my initial idea, seeing Donkey Kong Ongaku no Asobi scans on line via twitter and seeing that there was an unreleased bowling game for the Famicom as well.

But first the rules.

1. Graphics should be sprites, either inspired by the NES or SNES or in a more modern style like on the  GBA, definitely no Mii avatars or polygons.

2. No lazy virtual console emulation or ROMS. Unless they are of sufficient obscurity to warrant emulation.  Think Virtual Boy or Satellaview.

3. Do not charge full price and do not have in app purchases, these are budget games using obscure or unloved titles and should be priced as such.


Rules done lets begin.  The sports pack should have the most entries and really should reprise most of the earlier entries for the NES, SNES and Gameboy.  Possibly a 2D remake of Wii sports would be nice but I consider that lazy.  Here is my "Wii sports" collection.



Baseball.
The first game on our list of things is baseball.  Based on the super limited early NES release of the game or its Satellaview Kirby reskin. This basic Baseball is the version I'd like to see released on here.


Bowling.
Bowling is normally problematic, its too dull and limited to make its way into a full priced game, Wii sports was a pack in so that wasn't a problem with it. As part of a compilation again lets have it be a competent remake of what that unreleased NES game would be.

Boxing.
 Another Wii Sports favourite, this along with Punch Out is some of the best versions of the sport available.  Its still limited mind and Nintendo would just port Punch Out instead (minus Iron Mike Tyson).  Incidentally Hamster corp have released the arcade version for their emulation range.

Football.

This should be a remake of the NES game Soccer and not hand egg. This was one of the best football games for the NES which was plagued by terrible soccer games.  Above all this should be competent and with a few different cups to play for.  Would like to see them replace the national teams for some old unloved characters here, lets say add Toad from the Mario games and be done with it.


Golf.

Should you go for an updated version of the original NES Golf but with 18 holes based on the Mario Golf series and  none of the characters. Or go for a crazy golf mode like that Kirby game on the SNES mini.

Snooker Mario.
I am biased in adding this in, I've wanted this for so long after seeing an old TV ad on MTV for Mario Allstars with Mario in a Tux and thinking he looks like he's off to play snooker.  Or rather pool, if we are being universal here, with pipes for pockets and Bowser hustlin'.  Make it so

Tennis.
I don't know which version you would want here but I would love to see a revised Super Tennis complete with swearing and fudged names just for this entry.

Volleyball.
The last entry is the most meh of all.  This didn't make it out of Japan and can be thought of just to make the number up.  But yeah I would like to see a Mario reskin of this too if we can have Delfino Beach as location.

I know I missed a few things out for time and that (possibly a basketball entry and Ice Hockey too which would be nice) or over looked a few things cough Arm wrestling cough.  But this should be enough to get you going in the mean time.

 


 

Mario Day

Hello and welcome back to this month of Mario, and as we've just had Mario Day (Mar10) what better than to give up some of my ideas for the Brothers.  Our timing couldn't have been better, either, as there's an new Nintendo direct out focusing on Smash Brothers and a new Mario Tennis amongst others.

We of course are not looking at those gaems, as described last week, we are looking at remaking collections of Nintendo games from the earliest days with the following rules.

1. Graphics should be sprites either inspired for the NES or SNES or a more modern style like on the GBA, definitely no Mii avatars or polygons.

2. No lazy virtual console emulation, these are all new games not ROMS.

3. Do not charge full price and do not have in app purchases, these are budget games using obscure or unloved titles and should be priced as such.

Currently Nintendo would break rule two here as they would just reissue Super Mario Allstars for  the umpteenth time.  Look at the much maligned Wii release for the 25th anniversary of Mario and say that you wouldn't like something much better, or at least not a SNES rom and emulator for Wii.

Here's my switch ideas.

 Mario Brothers.
The first game has always been a bit of an oddity, if you treat it like the modern Mario games you'll fail as everything is fatal to the touch. You have to whack  them from below instead of jumping on them.  I'd love to see them do a release where they are brought right up to date like Donkey Kong for  Game Boy, had the first four levels then did its own thing.  A few more monsters from the various Mario games and bosses to fight all on a single screen and power ups too.  Maybe add more players in (4 player), or add a few side modes from the PC88 games such as Punch ball Mario.

Super Mario Brothers.

Nothing too drastic here, as everyone loves this.  Don't just  slap a NES rom on the cart and be done, but rather port across some of the more obscure variants of SMB.  Give us a port of the Arcade version (Kotaku cancer alert) or yet again another of the Hudson Soft conversions with Super Mario Special a flick screen conversion from the PC88.  Failing that remake it in Mario Maker.

Super Mario Brothers 2.

 Of all the games I'd love to see a return to Subcon.  Not the data disk add on for the Famicom Disk System but the reskin of Doki Doki Panic that we got instead.  Either a full blown remake of the GBA game complete with super egg unlockables and new bosses or a single screen game akin to Bubble Bobble.  

I had the idea for a single screen veg flinging game a while ago.  The fan game Cookout had the basics right, but what I really want is a single screen game, where you need to clear enemies with thrown veg and blocks, when its cleared you have to grab the key and go through a door to the next level.  Take too long and Phanto will chase you down.  There would be blocks and all the other power  ups from the original and maybe the return of some long neglected bosses such as Birdo, Mouser and Clawgrip too.

That Fruit Machine from the between stages of Mario 2
 
Failing that give us Toad's house from Mario 3 where we can play the match up game, the slot machine from Mario 2, the pairs game from 3 as well as a few other bits and bobs, such as a sound test.  You could even throw in the mini games from New SMB on the DS version too.  Call it Mario Box and we would be happy.

Month Of Mario PT1

I suppose you are familiar with the biscuit selection box you get at Christmas.  A veritable smorgasbord of treats in a commemorative box, even if half of them are pink wafers and proto Oreos that are included but no one likes.  Sort of based on Nintendo Land for the Wii U but much more like the old Game and Watch compilations that were for Gameboy and Gameboy Colour. 

I had the idea while out at work, for Nintendo to go to indie companies to make game compilations based on what was originally the earliest NES games (mainly the sports ones).  There would be strict rules for these comps mind.

1. Graphics should be sprites either inspired for the NES or SNES or a more modern style like on the GBA, definitely no Mii avatars or polygons.

2. No lazy virtual console emulation, these are all new games not ROMS.

3. Do not charge full price and do not have in app purchases, these are budget games using obscure or unloved titles and should be priced as such.

With the rules laid down I propose my first compilation pack is to be based on Donkey Kong.

Give me a Switch updates and reworks to the original Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jnr, Donkey Kong 3,and a re imagined versions of  Donkey Kong Maths and the unreleased Donkey Kong No Ongaku Asobi.

Donkey Kong.
You all know this by now, Jumpman has to get back Pauline from the clutches of Kong spread over 4 stages.  Give us a choice of characters from the Mario roster, make it gender neutral for once and have Luigi be rescued by Princess Peach for once.  No real extra levels or such but if this was made real as an unlockable bonus I'd be happy.

Donkey Kong Junior.

This is another game I'd like to see remade if only to finally put Wario in place of Mario as the bad guy.  I'd like a few more levels with this too as it doesn't get much love.

Donkey Kong 3

There is a PC6001 version of Donkey Kong 3 which has been recently preserved that should be the kind of level of obscurity I'm looking for to be as part of this collection. Along with Stanley himself who has languished far too long in obscurity. I'd love to see him come back in some  form. (Fun fact this is the only version I've not played as I had the originals under the Donkey Kong Classics range).
Give him a shooter all his own and an expanded game to play through which would  be nice.

Donkey Kong Maths.

Part of the original edutainment range of NES originals this taught you basic maths such as Addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.  This could be greatly expanded on with bits from the original and sequels too.  Love to see him pull on a series of puzzles that make maths fun.  The original was a vs game to see who could make the sum that Kong held up on a board, I'd love to see that expanded upon and given the full game treatment.

Donkey Kong Ongaku no Asobi.

The final unreleased gem,  supposedly to teach you music and such with a music quiz and a band to jam with.  It sounds like a weird version of a sound test, so lets go full Mario Paint maker for one half and allow you to jam along to a good selection of Nintendo tunes in 8 /16 bit style with various unlocks for how well you do on the other games on the collection and that would be the best thing ever.  

Oh and the final edutainment title involved Popeye teaching you English which is quite frankly bizarre.

Bradleya

Have been looking through the list of subjects for this years Bradleya yearbook in this quarters journal.  There is a few new things there that are quite interesting to me as well as a few things that are obscure enough for this blog of sorts.

For one a brief bit of history about Bradleya, its our cactus yearbook as I've already said, but also is much, much more technical than regular issue of Cactus world and for one about 4 times as thick.

If you like taxonomy and have the requisite smarts to work out the obtuse botanical language used (seriously, there's quite a few technical papers here detailing new discoveries) then its for you.  For the most of you, its not gonna be worth it to be honest.

First up is Cremnocereus a cliff dwelling cactus from Bolivia.  Quite odd flowering on this one, reminds me of some of the other short flowered Cereus types (believe its bat pollinated too). It does look quite impressive growing on a cliff face as well.

 I've read a little bit of the article via issu and its quite good.  Mostly its stuff on Crassulaceae with a few parts on Kalanchoe and some more on the taxonomy of the money plant (Crassula Argentea and Ovata). And some stuff on Tylecodon too including a new species.

As a mesemb man myself, there are a few articles to kickstart the old almonds.  Leaf structure in Conophytums, a treatise on the hypothesis of the evolutionary origin and polymorphism of Lithops (you see why we keep these in Bradleya now).

But mostly what I'm interested in is a new genus from the Western Cape called Roosia.  There's no information on line about it.  It sounds like it was part of the super group Ruschia (if you were a pink flowered and shrubby mesemb, chances are you were placed there) and split off when it was given a taxonomic revision.  As I don't have access to it I'll just have to troll around the net to see if anything is posted about it.  Ironically the only Bradleya I do have is the big taxonomic revision of Ruschia itself done by Heidi Hartmann.  If I ever get to read this I will post an update...

EDIT 2018.

What a difference a year makes? This article details just what Roosia was and indeed is.  Short version is, it wasn't a Ruschia at all but in fact, part of Esterhuysenia instead. Looks quite nice as well.

Edit 2025

With the listing of the new Bradleya is up. It pains me to say this that both Esterhuysenia and Roosia which were detailed above are now considered part of Lampranthus a genus I struggle to grow for love or money. Link to the paper detailing how Lampranthus is laid out can be read here. 

CBM Calculator vs Sanitary Product

This should have come out last week but our internet was down, so you'll have to read this now instead. We scrapped the PC in question below btw, and picked up another dell, a laptop this time. I'm just a sucker for pain sometimes

Have spent most of the day trying to rebuild an old Dell PC with all the added stupidity
that Dell bakes into every one.  This time they bolted the motherboard to the case so
couldn't do nothing with it.  To cap it all our internet is down and have to slum it
by surfing via the phone. 

We do have a few things from clearing out my aunts old place, and while we have mostly
books brought back and a few old photos and such these two are for the most bizarre.

First up is a Nikini Pocket sanitary towel holder, found along with the second item
its from the 60's I guess. When I got it home I did do a search for it to see if they
were still going and it seems that they aren't.  There is a Museum of Menstruation
dedicated to jam rag paraphenalia and such, though its closed for painters once a month.

My aunt used to be a health visitor so it may be connected with that and such, here are
some photos of it.


Second item is probably my uncles, an odd guy who was Canadian and used to paint. He
worked at the dye factory down near the tip and can remember my aunt picking him up
in her Skoda with me in the back reading.  Its a Commodore calculator, complete with
instruction manual.  CBM started out doing these before their line of computers such
as the PET, VIC 2O and later the C64 and Amiga line before going belly up in 1994.

When my C64 had to be repaired they gave us a commodore branded camera as a thank you
which is pretty cool, would love to see if it was a rebrand or if they really did go
into photographic equipment. Here are some pics of the calc and will when we get a
PC to run the printer, some scans of the manual.

Memories and the like

Continuing on from last week and thinking about last months Fortean times in particular.  Not this months edition which is 70 years of flying saucers but last month where they discussed Scarfolk and such. 

More specifically a look at the nebulous world of 1970's TV looking at things like Penda's Fen and the Apaches Pif / nightmare fuel source.  My own nightmare fuel source was the  Dark Towers serial from listen and learn from the early 80's. 

The thing that they underline time and again is that it was pretty much undocumented, no real home videoing and such so you rely on archives and faulty memories.  Its pretty much the same business for Sky stuff back in the mid to late 80's.  There are tapes of stuff from DJ Kat show and The Children's Channel back then but even though video ownership crept up back then probably not much has survived.  Would like to see some stuff from the adult channel back then as well as HVC the home video channel its direct to video film showing ancestor.  Would even like to see the cable vision magazine that we got every month that covered cable stuff but I guess that's long gone.

We had cable, as I've mentioned before, because our tv reception is utter shite. They had a set top box that looked like a small safe that you could turn to show various channels like Premiere (19), The Box (02) and Superchannel.  You could see German / Dutch ads for Pro Grainen (pro grain) cereal with a macaw that said pro grainen and Frolic on MTV or was it Sat 1. 

That's the problem, we had a video then (a Ferguson from my Grandad.)  but no one knew how to use it, generally it was a bastard to program back then no on demand streaming and no hard drives big enough for Sky Plus to be viable for another 15 years. 

I'll leave you on a happy note with a german Netto Advert (now no longer with us in the UK) from last year mixing two of my favourite things cats and synths.  Check out that feline version of Magic Fly.

Lamb Update

We've been going through a load of old magazines hoping to see what can be thrown away and what can be scanned for posterity. As well as mags we've also taken to task a few old cassette decks too including a nice Hitachi that simply won't play tapes and in fact chewed up our lamb tape a few times before being dumped.

So what's on the tape then.  Well its mostly recipes of Lamb as I've said before its a collab with Colmans Mustard and  there is a special treat too.  For some reason half of side A has been taped over with an old episode of Watchdog, you can tell its old as it has Lynn Faulds Wood and John Stapelton on it, no Anne Robinson here.  Mostly its concerning about a holiday scam set up as prizes but never going through.  The other bits are apologies concerning a sex line mix up and viewers in Scotland having to wait to the early hours to see the show itself (its pre iPlayer so you'll have to tape it instead).

Apart from Watchdog, it mainly contains well lamb and recipes of lamb and such.  There are a few musical interludes mainly generic Greek and Far Eastern library music for recipes on kebabs and pilaf rice but the rest is spoken word.  I can imagine this would be good for cut ups as well as lamb recipe fanatics too, there's quite a lot of talk about meat and such as well as slits and stuff. Will have to dump the audio when I'm done with records in general, though that may be in 2066.

Here is the entire inlay in case it rings any bells and such.

Also this is the last time I type Lamb for ages.