Goddamn Transformers...!!!

Today I bought Kettou Transformers Beast Wars for the Gameboy Color for the second time, because my first copy didn't load past the 'Nintendo' screen, and guess what? It doesn't work either!!

This copy although it manages to make it past the 'Nintendo' screen, it gets stuck on the 'Takara' screen instead...Maybe this is God's way of telling me not to bother with this game lol.

Although to be honest, I'm still gonna buy it if I see it again...Third time lucky maybe...

Anyway, to those curious about this game it's a 2D fighting game. I have a lot of really fond memories playing Takara's ports of SNK games on the GameBoy, in fact my first ever post on this blog was about the KOF96 port, so I enjoy tracking down their GB games.

You can check out some footage of the gameplay on the video below;

Monster Hunter 4G / 4U Announced (3DS)

Pretty much out of nowhere, Capcom has announced both the release of MonHun4G and the Western release as 4 Ultimate.

Apparently the save data from the Japanese of 4 will carry over to 4G, though I'm not sure if that means your entire character carries over or (IIRC) like in the older PSP games you can only carry over a limited set of items.

Also seems like a desert area is making a return, which may mean a return for some of the desert based monsters.

Anyways, 4G has been announced for an autmn or late 2014 release, whereas the Western release of 4U will be out sometime early 2015.

I only just stopped playing recently after about 300 hours game time, so great news. :D

A Quick Look at SVC CHAOS Extreme Encounters Mook - The King of Monsters & Animals / Backgrounds

Following on from the previous post about the SVC Chaos Mook, next up is a few pages featuring the King of Monsters & Animals section of the mook. From what I understand each of the characters if hit by Red Arremer or Athena with a super at the end of match will turn into a monster or an animal respectively. 

 

Not quite as interesting as the Midnight Bliss transformations in my opinion. 

Also although I can understand the choices of monsters/animals of a few characters, I completely don't understand others at all. Maybe there's some kind of in-joke or reference I'm missing.

But anyway, apologies for the sideways pic of the backgrounds stage.
I never really thought about it in great detail but although the backgrounds in SVC are beautifully designed, there isn't really much fan service in terms of background appearances from other characters or anything like that.

I remember reading a rumour that SVC Chaos was rushed out to fulfill the end of the contract between the two companies, so it's a shame that it wasn't really as polished as it could have been.

A Quick Look at SVC CHAOS Extreme Encounters Mook - Sweet Bliss Colliseum

 

It's been a while since I've done a proper write up about goods or mooks, I've picked up quite a few during the past two years in Japan but because of having trouble settling in to a new country as well as being busy with work I haven't had the chance. 

I'm going to start a quick write up of the SVC Chaos Extreme Encounters mook which I picked up a few weeks ago for the bargain price of 105yen at a Book Off near one of my part time jobs. 

As I'm never going to get around to doing a proper write up of it all in one go, I'm going to break up the write ups into smaller ones. So first up I'm starting with just a quick look at the Sweet Bliss Colliseum section of the mook. 

As you can see from the pics, basically this shows the characters after they've been hit and transformed by Demitri's Midnight Bliss super. Even though I'd played SVC a fair bit in the arcades and console, I never played as Demitri so it was pretty interesting for me to look at these.

Violent Ken's eyebrows a pretty crazy though right? lol.

As some of you may know the transformation of Goenitz is to the infamous Goeniko character, I'm pretty sure I have a doujinshi of her back in the U.K. lol...

I'm not quite sure what it says about Hugo's transformation, seems like it can mess up sometimes and you just get Hugo with boobs.

I did quite like that Orochi Iori turns into Miss.X from the Gal Fighters game, and it looks like Kyo turns into Kyoko. 

I'll try and get some more pics and get those up soon, there's still a load of other mooks and a few All About books that I wanna do write ups on at some point too.

Project Y - Megadrive/Genesis and Dreamcast

Just saw whilst browsing Bordersdown's forums that a new scrolling beat em up is being produced for both the Megadrive (Genesis) and the Dreamcast.

Apparently it's by the same guys who made the new RPG for the Megadrive a few years back, called Pier Solar.

The interesting point of this seems to be the RPG elements they want to include in this game.
In any case, you can read more details about it on Magical Game Factory's website.

Dragon's Crown Amazon & Elf Figures

Just saw over on myfigurecollection that the Amazon figure from MegaHouse is due for release in July this year, and will cost 9250Yen. Bit expensive for my liking but knowing from past purchases of MegaHouse's figures it will be a good quality figure.

(If anything at least the Amazon's butt looks robust lol.)

Playasia has the preorder for the figure up at the moment, as well as the Elf figure which is due for release in June.

Check out Playasia's preorder page of the Elf for more pictures.

The King of Dragons (Super Famicom/SNES)

 

It's been a while again since I've last posted.
Was a bit addicted to playing Monster Hunter 4, and I've been a bit busy being back at work again.

Below is my guild card in case you where interested, haven't played for a few weeks but might play it again this weekend since I found out there are some new event quests. 

Went back to London over Xmas and picked up the English version of Dragon's Crown, so have gotten back into playing through that again. Been going through it a bit slower than I did the first time I played the JP version, probably because I've done it before so I'm not as motivated.

Also whilst I was back I decided to bring back a couple of retro games to Japan with me, one of them being The King of Dragons on the Super Famicom.
Although I've owned this game for quite a long time, I have really made much of an attempt to playing through it properly. As I've been getting more and more into playing scrolling beat 'em ups lately, I've decided to play this a bit this weekend.

It's quite nice dipping into the old Capcom beat 'em up games to see where the influence for Dragon's Crown came from, particularly since (IIRC) George Kamitani had previously worked on the D&D games at Capcom.

It's a pretty fun game, and worth checking out. Even if it's just finding the rom and playing it on emulation. Fairly long in length as well, managed to scrape my way up to the boss on the 14th stage and found out after on Google search that there's actually another two more stages!!

Below is my latest score on the game, only wrote my name as 'A' because it doesn't save the score onto the cartridge anyway. (And was a bit pissed off I died tbh.)

Anyways also be sure to check out the Capcom Database website for loads of artwork of the game, have put only a couple of examples below but there are plenty more of great images on that site.