2. Crystalis Feels safe to call this one of the most refined and fun Zelda-likes of the 8-bit generation, it's really good! Fast action, good music and visuals, complementary RPG stuff, and a story that punches higher than you might expect make it easy to see why this is held in high regard still

THE GUARDIAN LEGEND COMPILE 1989 NES

For years you have been asking: Who is Ray Gunn? This is Ray Gunn speaking. I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who has deprived you of plot details or cast information and thus has destroyed your world, and if you wish to know why you are speculating, you who dread surprises, I am the

Every Transformers toy should have "Converts from robot to [alternate mode] and back" on the package so people will know that the Transformer won't be permanently stuck as a car or jet or whatever.

Clockwork Aquario for TWO DOLLARS? Everybody buy it. Also Cannon Dancer, Air Twister, Shadow of the Ninja Reborn, a bunch of Cottons...there's a lot of good stuff for cheap.

The Capcom Secret Files have a lot of really cool art pieces, though. A standout is this Lego mockup for Strider 2. I think that's pretty neat

GameFan did not always grant covers wisely, though I'm not sure if any of these top Rise of the Robots or Mortal Kombat Mythologies (the latter of which also got a GameFan cover).

8th Man is an important work in North American fandom - it's one of the first titles to hit US TV following Astro Boy and Gigantor, airing in 1965. The title was important enough to warrant an episode guide mapping in the first-ever issue of Fanta's Zine.

I really think this is the year everyone will start saying YO! HOW'S YOUR BRAIN? as a general greeting.

WHAT VALKYRIE PROFILE'S SOUND MODE HAS A GOSH DARN SPECTRUM ANALYZER IN IT

All right, a translation for my favorite version of one of my favorite RPGs that never got an official English release! Time to update my recent post about it. www.kidfenris.com/2025/11/emer...

The most important releases of 2025 1. Ridge Racer 2. Super Dimension Fortress MACROSS II 3. The Outfoxies 4. VS Tower of Babel 5. Mach Breakers 6. Dead Connection 7. Marchen Maze 8. Nebulas Ray 9. Gee Bee 10. Castle of Dragon 1/12⬇️

I sold Al Snow a copy of Shinobi for the PlayStation 2. I hope he liked it.

I'm too lazy to take the holiday decorations down (and apparently too lazy to get the date right on this image the first time lol), so let's check out some Christmas multimedia leftovers TOMORROW at 1pm CT! Just how festive can we make this PCem setup? twitch.tv/rescue_cat

(me after seeing three characters in any context whatsoever) Well well well if it isn't Fast But Weak, Slow But Strong, and the Normal One Nobody Ever Uses

In Zelda 2, a woman appears in each town, beckoning Link into her home. They disappear inside and Link's health begins to refill. One reddit user recently asked if this scene was *intentionally* suggestive. While that seems very unlikely, I thought I'd look into it.

New blog post! I wrote about Father Christmas, the weirdly barebones Japan-exclusive CD-ROM game based on the British storybook. It's... not very good, so I didn't have much to say, but I *did* find some interesting stuff in here anyway. cdrom.ca/games/2025/1...

MERRY CHRISTMAS! Premiering live NOW is a magical present for all you, NOEL'S FANTASTIC TRIP, presented with its English dub, scanned in 4K from a 16mm print! This is the 1st time the vibrant music video anthology has ever been seen in high definition! youtu.be/QUmvzxs62xw

Oh yeah. This and Tokyo Godfathers are my mandatory Christmas specials.

Compile indeed ruled. They're one of my favorite old developers, and I even considered collecting all their games until I realized how expensive many of them are and how much obscure Japan-only material Compile put out. Even Godzilla here is a $30 game.

バトルマニア #ドット絵

Did you know that Doki Doki Panic was actually Final Fantasy IV in Japan and subtitled A New Hope so the first movies are the fourth, fifth, and the TV series ending but the dub changes it so he goes to the Home For Infinite Losers and they made all the blood green and changed the aliens to robots?

New release! The Orphan Fansubs team have put out an anime film previously only available on VHS, IT RAINED FIRE (1988), scanned by us from a 16mm print. It's based on the gut-wrenching tale of the Fukuoka firebombing in 1945. nyaa.si/view/2057163

Can anyone help? If Rygar mobile wasn’t released, it was at least advertised! Tecmo went kinda hard on mobile games at the time but this era is terribly preserved.

These are amazing. It's like someone watched the movie and then just described Totoro to a toy manufacturer over the phone.

But my favorite game devs all went out of business before 2003 or became offices where the president just checks his email and approves the occasional port of a 20-year-old game.

Neo Tokyo is about to come and take me by the hand

Need epic gaming on the go? Willing to look past a war crime or two? Don't mind scraping some flecks of blood off a shell made of repurposed border wall sentry guns? Then dive right in to our referral link and check out what we're pretty sure must be the only way to play Game Boy games in 2025

I can't emulate Fish Dude unless I know the device has blown up at least one children's hospital

This thing is astoundingly gross, and so is reporting on it with just a little "oh hey, it's a wee bit controversial" at the end. "This new FascisTech Atari Lynx made from old concentration camp signs might not be to everyone's taste, but..."

The official canon for everyone covers what's said in the attract mode but also gives more details too Did you know Bernard is an ex-CIA agent & naturalist who would never harm an animal? Presumably Dweeb is excluded or maybe he's not reached M in his big book of animals to know what a monkey is🤔🐵

Fantasian is pretty neat if you want something directly evolved from the PlayStation-era Final Fantasy games. The hand-made model stages are neat and so is the battle-delaying feature, yet it has the comfy, straightforward feel of an RPG you'd preorder at Software Etc in the winter of 2000.

Cookie's Bustle - English Translation (PC) Added

History of the Sega Saturn: Epilogue

I salute the prop makers who fashioned Rika's giant mechanical arm for about five seconds of screen time. www.kidfenris.com/2022/10/phan...

I love how the Outfoxies cast is divided between sneering murderously and not even caring about that freaking chopper that just exploded. youtu.be/IZ0PotsMMO4?...

Hell yeah, Outfoxies! It's one of the big ones among those arcade games that never got a proper home port. I don't think it even got a comic on that Shiftylook site.

One of my last and favorite interviews of the year. Ryuichi Nishizawa might be my hero? www.gamesradar.com/games/i-feel...

As much as I love buff badass lesbian Samus, I also really love the version of her from that one Super Metroid gag manga where she's this weirdo obsessed with round objects and hiding in small spaces

And the Nominees for Game of the Year are... -Trouble Shooter 2 -Battle Mania Daiginjoh -Battle Mania Dai Gin Joh -Battlemania Daiginjo -Trouble Shooter Vintage

This may be a controversial opinion that makes no sense but I blame Gainax's closure entirely on them never making Route 20: Galactic Airport. youtu.be/hPJhxco5QWQ?...

We are the E E E E E E

The Moeru Oniisam game for the Famicom came to North America! Sorta. Toho changed it into Circus Caper for the NES. youtu.be/ABhiSHe5ayg?...

In 1986, Studio OX drew the art for a G.I. Joe picture book which features Flint smoking, and Gung Ho flipping you off. “Strongest Expert Team on Earth: G.I. Joe, Big Illustrated Encyclopedia”, English translation. (Exporting remainder of translated G.I. Joe from previous account) 1/2

I wonder if this enhanced version of NES Jaws finally delivers that giant mock-up shark from the Sears Wish Book.

"AI is the asbestos in the walls of our technological society, stuffed there with wild abandon by a finance sector and tech monopolists run amok. We will be excavating it for a generation or more." This piece on AI by Cory Doctorow is spectactular. pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/p...

Don Bluth once remarked that kids can handle dark stuff as long as there's a happy ending. But Don Bluth didn't make this.

When it comes to big Transformers, I'm always more interested in the weird little dudes that come with them. Even as a kid, I thought Metroplex was cool but not as cool as this guy: