January 2025

Fresh in from England! Books, books, books!

A quick break from my movie-watching. As I’ve said in the past my favorite book publisher is Bitmap Books. I have a LOT of their books going back I don’t know how far. But my shipment of 3 new ones that I ordered a little while ago came! 3 Hardcover (I’m a sucker for a designed hardcover book) OH AND NONE OF THAT dustcover garbage. They use actual cardboard sleeves if they use a cover at all. True graphic design has no boundaries!

I believe I mentioned before that the company is a British company which is even better I’ve loved British graphic design since my teen years. Visiting there was amazing! At the time I was a young Jr. Art Director. And constantly stopping to look at posters on the tube walls! I was blown away!

But, I digress. I picked up as I said a few that were on a huge markdown sale at the time. They ship fast I ordered and the next thing I knew before the week was out I had my books. I’ve been a bit busy with life issues that have caused me delays in some articles. I’ll be posting pics of the books as well as page layouts in detail. The books I picked up were:

Run ‘n’ Gun: A History of On-Foot Shooters

Go Straight: The Ultimate Guide to Side-Scrolling Beat-’Em-Ups

The Art Of The Box (WANTED SINCE IT PUBLISHED!)

With coffee table books like these Bitmaps authors make it so it’s easy to flip through, stop and look, and maybe pick up the article. That’s how I read these books. I’ll flip through till I find a game that interests me and then read about it and move on. I do NOT read these books linearly. Except for the Metal Slug one I got on pre-order being that Metal Slug is in my top 5 series of games!

Stay tuned…

January 30, 2025 by .:Loot Crate:. 0

Raw emotion in a video game

For all my readers out there well the 4-6 of you. One of my all-time video game franchises is a series called Diablo. I’ve been playing it since it hit the scene in the mid 90’s. It took them 10 years from Diablo 3 to develop Diablo 4 which gets very mixed reviews. I am happy with the efforts and the quality of the game.

My main character is a Sorceress named Teela. She’s a FIRE-based sorceress. Meaning she scorches anything in her way. In the pictures below (click to make them larger as they are as dark as the game is). I have a pic of her in the character select screen. My other characters are on the left but you can’t see them. A picture of her and her Cinder Panther (a panther mount that flesh is burning, very befitting)Then a picture of her roasting everything in sight by setting fires.

What I wanted to get to with this article title is that within this game *SPOILERS* they use the character that you create (no matter how you make them look) everything from eye color to tattoos or markings, jewelry, the markings in blood I have on her skin to the blood red slightly bright eyes. all of it shows in the cinema scenes. I’m shocked that they can just create these HIGH-quality cinema scenes on the fly as they do with your character in them.

I have a friend who is a technical animator and he simply said the tech has come so far that it can do amazing things on the fly. Well, look at her disdain toward the character she is talking to up to when she is stabbed in the back. It’s amazing! *SPOILER* She gets the sword ripped out of her back and falls off a bridge into the water where you see her essentially die until she is revived by some old dude in the jungle.

But take a look at these cinematics in full screen if you can.

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January 28, 2025 by .:Game Reviews:. 0

The modification of my Atari Lynx v2.0 edition

So a long time ago (2-3 years) I purchased an Atari Lynx v2.0 model along with a slew of games from an online friend. He found it all in his parent’s house when he was cleaning it out. I didn’t want him to toss it so I made a fair offer and he sent it promptly.

The original screen was intact, working in all the ways it should, including the brightness wheel. However, being the first portable system to offer a color and a backlit screen. The quality back then was amazing but to play it today is virtually impossible. Even with the hood that goes over the screen to black out the light doesn’t help.

I was very lucky to get in on a special mod by Benn Venn a hardware modder out of Australia. This kit required no soldering permitting the original screen to be popped back in should I want to do that for some unknown reason.

Sure it was $75 but shipping from Australia made this a $95 part. While I normally would do all my modding I didn’t want to risk ruining a screen. I took it to a local store called One Up Games they can fix or mod anything you can think of video game-wise. They are amazing. I was quoted $80 to have it done based on the directions I provided. Much to my surprise it was done the next day when they opened! I knew the total cost was just going up but I figured well that’s what it’s going to take. I’ve only ever seen one of these Lynx on Mercari with a different person’s mod where they had to cut open the top of the case to get an output jack of some kind to sell for over $350 so perhaps it was a wise investment. But I have no desire to get rid of this thing. One big difference is I have the original screen in an anti-static bag so if I were to sell it the person buying can put the original screen back in!

The first handheld color gaming system was by Atari! I only knew one kid that had it and he was in like 7th or 8th grade and I was in like 5th or 6th we’d see him around the neighborhood and he was always cool to us so one day I asked if I could borrow his and he said sure! I was up playing Xenophobe A game I played the game in arcades whenever I saw it or once or twice on an Atari 5200 but it was garbage. The NES version was much better but for some reason that washed-out image on the Lynx v1.0 was the best version I had ever played. Yes, it’s in my collection!

My games look so good and crisp and like a modern system on this portable gaming console! See my pics of the before and after below. He won’t be making any more screens so I was very lucky to get in as soon as pre-orders became available!

Original Display Shot 1

Original Display 2

New Display 1

New Display 2

New Display Gameplay!

January 27, 2025 by .:Tech:. 0

Some funny Commodore 64 style modern ads!

These were posted on a Discord server I’m a member of. They are loading screens for modern products that are done in the style of the early 1980s Commodore 64 computer, which for those of you who don’t know would hook up to your TV! All I can find is the artist goes by: WK.

The poster on Discord didn’t credit the author or where they came from so if you know please drop me a line so I can properly credit the artist’s work! Make them large and read around the screens some funny stuff!

license-adobe-1984-photoshop-84-minutes-left-on-account-21-add-60-minutes-0001-btc-loading-wk

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January 26, 2025 by .:Pop Culture:. 0

Hand drawn officially licensed Mega Man Guide!

If you are into Kickstarter and helping great books get made jump onto this link and donate please I’d love to see Spot Color printing on the cover or extra art cards! The book was painstakingly given official license status from no other than CAPCOM the studio behind Mega/Rockman. All hand drawn it’s looking great. The book is called Hand-Drawn Game Guides: Mega Man.

My pledge level is very high and I got in on the second-highest tier before it filled up in about 15 min! The demand is high for this and as a HUGE fan of the Blue Bomber, I gotta advertise this because well I want it to be the best book it can be! They have surpassed their original goal by I think it’s over 50k enabling them to 1. Impress CAPCOM, 2. Possibly get them to create more for all of the Mega/Rockman games, 3. Higher-end printing!

That’s all folks

January 25, 2025 by .:Book/Movie Reviews:. 0
1980's Gamer!
A child of the 80's and 90's here to remember the good old days. A careless whisperer...with a REBEL YELL!!!

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My Video Game Collection