well this has been a long time coming. way back when the Test Icicles were still together, I discovered an extremely obscure handheld games console with an amusing name, and started writing something about it for this site. that something turned into the makings of a fairly massive feature, which lay mostly untouched and unfinished for two years after my old bastard host deleted all my files - every so often i'd add something or bugger around with it, but never to any great extent. until last month! when for some reason i finished the bloody thing up. so, finally, neofuji 2008 presents the handheld that time forgot (because its games were all crap) - The GAMATE!!
i've amassed a bit of information about the Super A'Can from various sources, which is now here. i'm just uploading it in this state because i don't plan to do anything with it, but some of it seems to be stuff that isn't online anywhere else, so there it is.
well it's 2008, not much has changed, i've been updating the simple list when the mood takes me, and i'm fighting a losing battle against spam on the message board. but, as usual, i feel obliged to mention that i've been working on some stuff, which might end up on the site at some point. see you in 2009!
I've changed the board software from Kareha to Electron Board, which is an updated version of something I wrote two years ago. Back then I didn't know what I was doing, and now I still don't know what I'm doing... but I've cleaned it up a bit and got some of the bugs out in the past couple of weeks, so I want to give it another shot. It's not quite ready for a public release (the HTML in particular really needs sorting out) but hopefully it won't break this time.
something for the people interested in the simple series (probably most of you, considering I don't have much else on here) - simple series forum!. certainly worth joining if you're a fan of that sort of thing.
as for site things, i'm maintaining the simple list, 505 Games is almost slightly interesting again (no thanks to the Raw Danger haters at 505 UK), and I've got some other stuff in the works, but I'm still too lazy to finish any of it up. business as usual, really.
I'm no longer updating the list of 505 Games games, because the company is now boring.
Okay, finally got around to putting this thing back up. To quote the temporary page, since that's still the situation now -
I don't really know what's going on at the moment. My host claimed that the site had been hacked and deleted all my files, then asked me if I'd like to cancel my account or just reupload everything after making sure it's all clean and all scripts are updated to the latest version. I chose the latter, but I haven't heard back from them in over a week.
Just replace "week" with "month" there.
Anyway, nothing's been lost, except one comment on the second to last news post (sorry, poster of aforementioned comment), and a bunch of stuff that I was working on but hadn't made public yet. Again. Bollocks.
Seems like Wild Western isn't the last of Taito's random arcade game remakes - Nintendo's latest Wii release schedule includes Pop'n Pop and Elevator Action from 505 Games. Pop'n Pop will probably be the same as it's always been (pretty much a cross between Space Invaders and Bust-a-Move), but Elevator Action... Well, I'm intrigued to see what they'll do with it. I'm hoping it isn't just a mislabelled Virtual Console release, anyway.
I don't usually post frontpage updates about things like this, but I found something interesting on 505's Italian distributor site - "Wild Western" for the DS by Taito, seemingly a remake/sequel of their 1982 arcade game. The thing is, it hasn't been announced anywhere else, even in Japan. So I've got a bit of an exclusive here. Woo.
Translated from the Italian, vaguely:
Wolfy is a bounty hunter who has dedicated his life to justice. Now the moment of being able to capture the most dangerous outlaw in the West is at hand. In a wild world, using the stylus, the player must help Wolfy to complete the most dangerous missions.
made some changes behind the scenes, probably won't make any difference to anyone using the site - a few things are just a bit easier for me to maintain now. of course there's always the chance that I fucked it up, so if anything's broken, let me know. actual content updates coming soon, i swear!