Lost Property Control Organization (samidare/hoshibackyard)

"Mega Drive Super Heroes (1995), a fighting game where Mega Drive all-stars fight, was really fun!"

Mr. Splash! Developed by Hiroshi Inukai aka Polygon (2007, Famicom)

I finally made a reproduction cart of the elusive homebrew game Mr. Splash! I love it. Rather than using the official art (which I couldn’t find a good copy of) I designed my own label, going for a Game and Watch aesthetic. Read more about the history of Mr. Splash including my review of it on the blog!

Video Games That Maybe Only Exist in My Head, Part 3

Star Farm (Sierra On-Line, 1986).

Point of Origin: A Retrospective on Schadenbergiana

I’ve mentioned a few times over the years that I’ve not just cooked up entirely fictional games to go along with the music I write under my Gonkaka alias, but indeed an entire fictional company with it’s own history to go along with them, Nincom. After having a lot of fun putting together a retrospective for one of my ongoing Gonkaka projects, Efiáltis, I decided to dig deep into the back catalogue of work I’d done and do something similar for a Nincom game I had already finished writing the music for a long time ago; Schadenbergiana. Along the way, a point about the preservation of old games made it’s way in there too. This piece of metafiction was written for the 2018 Halloween Countdown over on Random Lunacy, and can be viewed there with embedded music players.

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Ever since day one, Nincom has been defined by it’s dedication to uniqueness and the fervent ambition- traits which have found the company in hot water more then once, and most famously before they even got their first game out the door. Theirs is an attitude described by many as “weird”, fewer as “punk”, and by their dedicated fans as something that “sets them apart from everyone else in the game’s industry”. The company has recently celebrated their 32nd birthday with a release that has been rather aggressively marketed through various online channels; The Nincom N-Sides Collection, a compilation of some of the companies rarest and most obscure releases, each of them painstakingly emulated as accurately as possible using emulators programmed in-house. In honour of this momentous occasion, we’d like to cover what was perhaps the hardest Nincom game to find in any capacity and even harder to get emulated correctly; Schadenbergiana.

Keep reading

Nightmare Busters Prototype Tracks, by Gonkaka

13 track album

Today, 103 Records presents a special treat: the long lost soundtrack to Nincom’s first ever game, Nightmare Busters!

More well known as an arcade-style 3D action game for Zony’s original FunCentre console, the game’s true origins date back to the mid-to-late 80s; Nincom, newly founded and hungry to prove themselves, set out to make a cutting edge, horror themed title centred around two brave toys named Copper and Little Red Hood, who had to save their owners from far more malevolent playthings still bitter about being abandoned many years ago. Unfortunately, the project’s scope far outweighed what technology was able to replicate at the time; the graphics and animations were too process intensive, for one thing, and the idea to have fully unique enemies in every level proved to be a strain on the memory. Even the music was somewhat hamstrung by ambition; this was the first time the various members of what would become Nincom’s in house band and sound team, Gonkaka, had worked with the Yomeha FY5212 sound chip- or any sound chip for that matter- and it showed in both the roughness of the sound programming, as well as the fact that almost every song used entirely different soundbanks and waveforms. The collapse of the project threatened to destroy the company before it even got off the ground, but thanks to a last minute developer partnership with Gesa North, the company was able to prove their worth (and learn some valuable technical insight) by aiding with the development of their surreal, existentially horrific space shooter “Schadenbergiana”. But you all know that story, surely?

Through our continued publishing partnership and working relationship with both Nincom and Gonkaka, we are able to secure the original sound files for the unproduced arcade version of Nightmare Busters, and are happy to present them for your listening pleasure; devout old timer or fresh face newbie alike, the origins of Gonkaka’s long career are an essential listen for any fan of the band!

Forever Nightmare (Nincom Logo)

We Loved, Once (Attract Mode)

The Busters (How to Play/Continue)

The Beatthings (Stage Introduction)

Nightmares Don’t Shuffle (Copper In-Game BGM)

Nightmares Can’t Disco (Little Red Hood In-Game BGM)

Bitter Beatthings (Regular Boss Battle)

Spiteful Beatthing (Final Boss Battle)

Nightmare Beatthing (True Final Boss Battle)

Tears for the Brave (Bad Ending/Name Entry)

Sweet Dreams, Old Friends (Good Ending)

Against the Dark (Stage Clear)

Perish Greatly (Game Over)

released August 21, 2017

project directed and concept art created by Decon Theed

music composed by Shinji Namiki, Fumie Saso, Takayuki Mitsuyoshi, and Denji Koshiro

cover designed and produced by Dio Maxwelle

DOWNLOAD INCLUDES: FULL RES SCANS OF THE SKETCH AND FINAL VERSIONS OF THE COVER, AN EARLY PIECE OF NIGHTMARE BUSTERS PROMO ART, AND 12 PIECES OF NIGHTMARE BUSTERS CONCEPT ART

2018

Splattle Sibsters

Happy splatfest! I played a bunch of Splatoon 2 today while also watching a stream of Battle Brothers. So here’s a mashup of those. Please enjoy tactical squid com-splat.

I’ve been enjoying Splatoon a whole lot. The core loop of ‘battle -> get cash -> buy clothes -> repeat’ is very enticing! I love a good dress-up game. I’ve only just started to dip my toes into Salmon Run, as my interest in the Turf War starts to wane (splatfests aside). I had very little interest in ranked until recently– I got really into ARMS’s ranked mode for a couple weeks, which has rekindled my interest in it for Splatoon.

Battle Brothers’ tactical-minis fighting seems pretty neat! Unfortunate that the  writing seems to be on that low-fantasy “it’s not realistic if women have agency” bullshit. All in all I’m happy to watch streams of it rather than play it myself.

As an aside– I think a splatoon tactics game could be really cool, although I don’t know that battle brothers’ approach is *quite* the right fit. Battle brothers is really focused on formations (as far as I’ve seen) while Splatoon has a big focus on using your colored turf to increase your mobility (swimmin’ as a squid, super jumps)

Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi: The Game (RPG Maker) This is a mockup I've had in my sketchbook for a while and thought it'd be fun to finally draw. I had it in mind when I first started watching the Files and by the time I got to #6 I was way too into the idea of a Shiraishi RPG :,))

The Labyrinth at Nishimori (西森の迷路) 1990, Nintendo Famicom

A graphic adventure horror game for Famicom. A group of friends become separated during a week-long hiking trip through a great forest called Nishimori. As one of the unlucky teens, you find that you’re more than lost–the forest itself has turned against you! When your friends begin to come back from the darkness of the labyrinth, you’ll wish they had stayed lost.

Gameplay takes place over five in-game days–wander aimlessly and you’ll run out of time. Can you solve Nishimori’s riddles and escape, or will you join your friends in the forest forever?