In Reality, I'm a Bitter Partisan Hack.

I don't arrive at my hackiness too easily. I take the time to study an issue from several angles to come to my own opinion. However, I am not so embittered that I can't change my mind. If new facts, or old facts surface, life experiences, or maybe I just made a mistake to begin with can make me reevaluate my opinion.

One of the things I had to change was tone of the partisanship in the comic. In 2004 I made the decision to go from making comics for just me to publicly displaying them. I had to decide on whether to continue doing current event politically themed stuff like I had been doing back in the 90's, or to try and to get as wide a spectrum of audience as possible.

I made the decision to keep political leanings to myself.  No shouting about how I'm a conservative Republican because that would drive away all the liberal in the audience. No shouting that I'm a progressive Democrat because that would drive away all the...the... hmmm. Okay, seriously doubt there's a whole lot of Republicans reading a comic strip about a guy trying to hook his wife up with another woman. (There's several names I could drop as a joke, but hey, by the time this is posted, who will remember?)

Several things made up my mind to be non-partisan and to avoid commentary on current events with the comic. If you look back through the blog there is a lengthy article about how politically themed comics quickly become irrelevant. People come and go so quick that everybody tends to forget about them. I don't want people reading though the archive to have to click on Google to find out what it is I am talking about. (I do realize that in the Army Comics I used a lot of jargon, and I'm thinking of adding a quick reference dictionary to some pages so people will know the difference between a M9, M16, and a M916. (I also realize that in most cases Google can't even help figure out what it is I'm saying.))

There are two comic strips I occasionally read: Doonesbury and Mallard Fillmore. Both of these are fine comics, though I do like Doonesbury better. Both of these comics are published in the Op/Ed section of my local paper. That right there tells me everything I need to know about them. (Take a wild guess as to which side of the page each is printed on.) There is more you need to know. While both come from opposite ends of the political spectrum, they share several faults.

The first most obvious fault: the almost relying on current events for story fodder. While poignant at the exact moment in time, it can really bite you in the ass in short order. That happened to Doonesbury a couple of years ago. A series of comics were published about how a soldier was chaptered out of the Army for being gay. A short while later Don't Ask, Don't Tell was repealed. Nice timing.

This next one is mostly Doonesbury and not Mallard, and only because Mallard has one main character. Most, if not all, of the permanent characters tend to share the same opinions as the cartoonist. While Doonesbury has very well thought out and developed characters; and massively well scripted story lines; I just find it odd that soldiers in Iraq watching a Don Rumsfeld press conference are reacting to it the same way Michael Doonesbury would.

My memory is of only one soldier I knew running on and on about Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld.The rest of us were rolling our eyes and thinking: "Quit your bitching. It's a 130 degrees, we're in full battle rattle, and the incoming mortar alarm has just gone off. You're not doing anything to help the situation. How about complaining about those two trailers out there? You know, the one that has a couple of flat tires and the other has blown hub seal and no flat tire?"

This one fault is shared by both in boatloads: characters that have a point of view that disagrees with the cartoonist are stereotypical caricatures of the real people and their opinions. It's like, “Instead of going and getting the information from the person first hand, let's just copy/paste what other people say about them.”

I look at this and try and to figure out how to avoid it. Do I succeed? Once in awhile. I try to interweave my personal opinions into my characters without it seeming like I'm making a blatant political statement. I try to instil some complexity by adding some opinions that I may disagree with, but not be stereotypical about it.

An example of this will be coming up in a another month or so. A character of mine will be saying some things that are rather not good about anime. While writing it out I thought about conversations I've with people who didn't like anime. Why didn't they like anime? What was it that turned them off. What was the stuff that I saw that I didn't like? I tried to mix it all into to a character that had only seen an episode or two. (Those episodes had to be Dragon Ball.)

I try my best, I admit that I often don't succeed. I have a lot going on inside my head that I never get a chance to fully explore in the comic. Often as I'm pasting together a comic I'll have a dozen other ideas and I have to decide which ones are worth doing. I often choose the wrong ones. If I don't write it down I'll forget. (I have a voice recorder that I use for my ideas. I can now remember all the good ones, I also now remember all the bad ones.) This will lead to many inconsistencies bordering on in coherent. But hey, life is inconsistent and incoherent.

I have to admit that I desperately need to write up a character bible. I can't rely on what's inside my head. That would solve about 99% of all my problems. I know I really, really need to get to the point much sooner than I do. Jeeze, the time frame of the comic is still the week before the 2009 Daytona 500; and I need to get to the big reveal of the rather odd marriage arrangement between the staunch Irish Catholic David Bell and the rock-ribbed Southern Baptist Penny Bell.

Is it me or did the temperature just go up a degree or twelve?

Zook the Hero Z.

Korea has been in the news a lot lately. With the death of Kim Mentally-Il to the rise in power of Kim Jong-Unstable. I think about the friends I knew over there: Lee, Lee, Lee, Kim, Lee, Lee, Kim, Lee, Oh, No, and Ju (This poor guy got that “Achoo” line from Robin Hood: Men in Tights said to him all day long. I loaned him my tape so he would know what was going on.)

I'm not too worried for them. I worked along side many a KATUSA they do get very good training. I have also been privileged to witness the regular morning PT session with the ROK Army. I'm glad I'm on they're side. I have confidence that when push comes to shove, Korea can handle its own.

Let's slide away from that political stuff there.

I learned many a lesson while on my Korean vacations: One, keep a hand on your drink at all times. A drinky girl will come by and gulp it down causing you to have to buy another one. Never buy a drinky girl a drink unless she is on your lap. They will gulp down their glass of fruit juice real fast and demand another $5 or $10 drink. (I'm so far removed I don't remember how much they were.)

Always, always, test drive that video game before you buy it.

Lot's of games to be had, but did they actually work? I did buy a few PSX coasters. Those 100 in 1 carts? Mostly Bomberman, Mappyland, Pacman, Popeye, Tetris, Dr. Mario, Yoshi's Cookie, etc. That would be the first twenty five games with English titles. The next set of 25 would be the same games with Japanese titles. Then 51-75 would be in Korean and 76-100 was in Chinese. Same boring games. “No Repeats!” As the box would say.

Most stores would let you test drive the games. If they didn't, I would just hand it back. I made sure that bootlegged copy of Rockman Complete Works 4 was good. (By the way, that is the only one in the set I have been unable to buy a legit copy of. Actually, I think I do have it on Gamecube or X-Box. The PSX version is better though.) Wow, that really is Mario in Tiny Toons Adventures; and in Sonic the Hedgehog. I bought that one.

This was a real treat:

Then one day I found this:

“Oh, so they think they can trick us with a badly edited label of Rockman 4 pasted over Rockman World 4?” Not so. I opened the box and was surprised to see an instruction book. I flipped through it and was very shocked to see it was in English. For an English instruction book, it was very detailed and in color to boot! I wasn't going to be fooled. I stuck the cart in my Gameboy that I always carried with me on these trips downrange. I was very, very shocked to see Zook the Hero Z boot up. It had a long drown out prologue, and rather outstanding graphics for a homebrew bootlegged gameboy game.

At this point I would like to give a full on review of the game, but I can't. I have been unable to locate the game in storage. I haven't had any luck locating a rom image on the net. All I have are my memories of this thing from a long time ago. I do recall never completing it because halfway through the six maverick stages you have to fight through a sub fortress. Two thing would always happen: there's a long section with few badguys to kill for power refills, and lots of electric beams that will hit you no matter what. So you run out of life and die. Or. There's spike pit you have to air dash over and grab the ladder. I missed the ladder most of the time. When you die in this stage, you went back to the beginning. I always died about three or four minutes in. Pretty frustrating to have to replay all that again and again and again. I usually had something better to do.

I do remember being pissed at Capcom over Megaman Xtreme. This professional company that has millions in backing made a game crappier than some homebrew bootlegged gameboy game? The only thing that MM Xtreme had on Zook Z is that I was able to complete it. Hell, Zook's sprite set was better than X's.

I can't find the cart, but, I have had the instruction book staring me in the face all this time. I have been meaning to talk about on the Capcom forums for ages, then all the big Megaman sites, and even mine since I first started it back in 2004. However this place called “outside” beckons. Filled with a substance called “fresh air.” Everything is brightly lit by this thing called “The Sun.” What's that over there. Is that a woman?

I gets distracted really easy.

Any-hoo, here's some scans of the instruction book. My little contribution to what little conversation can be found.

 Wake up you misbegotten metal miscreant. Mr. Mean is making mayhem!

 From what I've read elsewhere, the Chinese characters for "Zook" can be translated as "Luke." I've noted how some places will call this Luke the Hero 2. As in the number two. I don't have the foggiest where anybody gets the number two from the letter Z. It is clearly shows up as "Z." 

If this is Luke 2, what about Luke the Hero 1? Is it like Leonard Part 6? Is the first game such a national treasure that it has to be kept a secret?

We've all seen this before. In about every damn game.

 Wait, what's that? Can we get a closer look?

 The Only Mega Man X game I've played since 7 is the PSP version. Can anybody tell me if X has ever been given this ability?

I gots nothing to say about this.

The programmers kinda gave up at this point and spliced in whatever they could find.

What do you do when Golem gets wrinkly?

 What is it with Asians and putting buckets on the heads of snowmen?

The Huh? Files: Megaman 3.

When I first got Megaman 3 I was very disappointed in the game. It wasn't as good as Megaman 2. The graphics were darker. They weren't as bright and cartoony as the second game. The sound effects were bland. The same sound was used over and over for several weapons. Music was just blah. Why couldn't at least the battle music from 2 have been used in the Doc Robot stages? Was that his name? Fighting Doc Robot was harder than the castle bosses. Castle bosses didn't have an invulnerable period after being hit. So if your controller had a turbo button on it... Or you can just use Top Spin. Works really well on the first, third, and final bosses.

No prologue. In Megaman 2 that really helped set up the game. Megaman 3 needed one. To explain that Dr. Wily had turned good. Or what's going on with the excruciatingly long stages with some junk heap robot using the powers from Megaman 2. Just what was the deal behind Breakman/Protoman anyway?

Long term views: It's not a bad game. I still enjoy it to this day. The music has grown on me. Looking back with experience in other games I now see many innovations started in this game. The 8-4-4 game layout got its start here. 8 regular stages, 4 Doc Robot/sub castle, and 4 Wily stages. (I know that there are technically 6 Wily stages, but can you really count those last two?) Introducing Rush and the slide really opened up possibilities in stage design not possible before.

Overall I rate this game as the third best of all the NES Megaman games.

So what have I possibly found out in this game that hasn't already sniffed out in over 20 years? What could all the big Megaman fan sites and some video game oddities sites missed? Plus a couple dedicated to totally ripping apart the code of not only Megaman 3, but Rockman 3, and even the prototypes. (Yes I did my fact checking on this. I have no doubt that somewhere locked up in a forum or blog post is an article detailing this, but has long since been pushed way back to beyond obscurity in a Google search. 
Just a couple clicks above me.)

This is what all of us in North America saw at the end of the first Wily Stage. There's nothing suspicious about this what so ever.

Years later I would finally get my hands on a copy of Megaman: The Wily Wars. This was back in the days before widespread use of the internet. In those days you had to call up every game reseller in a video game magazine to beg and plead for them to order in a game from Japan or Europe. You paid out the nose for it too. Made worse because after cutting the slot edges in my Sega Nomad to get the game to slide in, It wouldn't work! It was a PAL game. I had to wait another week for for a PAL adapter to come in.

The Wily Wars is defiantly worth going out and getting. The overall experience is great and leaves you wondering why Megaman 4, 5, and 6 have yet to get even this treatment. Though I had a feeling throughout that this wasn't the best that could have been done with the Genesis's graphics and sound. It felt like the new graphics and sound were just overlaid onto the original game program. There are many instances of a badguy's weapon passing through the very top of Megaman's head. Right about where the top of the original Megaman graphic would have been. Megaman's weapon shots would do the same.

Playing all the way through Megaman. (No pause function that allows you cheat.) Playing all the way through Megaman 2. (The original NES sound effects were cooler.) Then playing all the way through Megaman 3 I found this:

I thought: "Odd. Why did Capcom change that? They didn't change any this else in any of the other stages." I finished up the game and got distracted playing the bonus Wily Tower stages. (Boy is that Metal Blade useful.) Then I got out of my room and went to a strip club. Got a really invigorating lapdance from a raven haired beauty.

(If you are detecting that I'm about to rabbit trail off into some unrelated topic, you're right.)

Buddy of mine, Heath, was always bragging about how "in" he was at De Ja Vu. That he was always talking the ladies up to his room. John called bullshit, along with the rest of us, and bet a $100 that Heath couldn't get even one of the strippers before he ETSed. A couple of weeks later Heath grabbed up a bunch of us perverts and and showed us this video of a De Ja Vu girl in his room. I said "Hey I know her! She gave me a lapdance." You should have seen the sour look on his face.

Later he admitted that he never did never anything with her (to her he wouldn't say, thank God.) He never collected on the wager. He was a nice guy. Too nice as I would find out a couple of years later in Kentucky.

When you get a group of soldier bullshitting, two topics will always come up: What units were you in and did you know so-and-so. I was talking about all the fun times up in Seattle when Billy asked if I knew a guy named Heath. "Let's see, Specialist type, one each? Loves bragging about going to strip clubs and bagging the ladies?" Yep we knew the same person. Billy had spent a couple of years in Hawaii and it turned out Heath went to Hawaii after I went to Korea. I then told Billy about the whole De Ja Vu thing and Billy told me that Heath had paid through the nose to get that stripper over to Hawaii with him. Just to get dumped. That's Heath.

I was always amazed how it was that on posts of tens of thousands that a couple of guys from differnt sides of the county could meet up and know a third guy.

Heath should have gone to Korea with me. Would have been much more fun. Those Korean and Philippina chicks were sooooo hot. On top of that you could go downtown and buy your very own bootlegged copy of the Rockman 6 in 1 Famicom game cart.

(Wondering how I was going to get back on topic? Hello? Hello? Anybody there?)

About 99.9999% of the game I saw were all bootlegged. Almost all the Famicom, all the PSX, Saturn, Genesis, etc, etc all forgeries. (That .0001% and "almost all?" Super Mario Bros. Ironically all those cartridges were originals.)

Playing all six Rockman games at once you notice a few things. Like, there really is no difference from game to game. Aside from the Japanese script there really is no graphical difference between Rockman and Megaman.

Except here:

So as it turns out the Wily Wars wasn't changed at all, it was the American version. Why?


The Huh? Files: Megaman 6.
Ever play Megaman 6 and Rockman 6 and not warp through the prologue?

Ravy 2011 Pg. 50.

Click

I've lamented about this in the past, I will do so in the future, and I will do so right now. Comics based on current events get to be irrelevant rather than irreverent.

I got to read an issue of Mad Magazine from the early Seventies. (A long time ago I lamented about having to say the 1920's instead of the Twenties. I'm sure that I can still say the Seventies and most people will get that I mean the 1970's. Just so happens I caught that episode of House in which he went to an 80's Party. He dressed up like the 1780's.) In this particular issue was a bit with photos of a Nixon press conference with thought balloons added. It was about if Little Big Horn happen during the Nixon Administration.

I didn't get one bit of it at all. It was all because I'm too far removed from the events of the 70's. All I know about Nixon is what I read in history books and what comedians impersonating his voice say. Though I have to say a joke like this can be recycled for any president.

That's why I've tried to avoid making much hey over current events. They make a comic even more irrelevant than it already is. Years ago I did a number of comics involving gays in the military and people may stumble across them and go “Doesn't he know that Don't Ask, Don't Tell has been repealed? Becky can just go and hug and kiss her girlfriend coming back from Afghanistan.”

The problem is made worse (by me) because I paste together my comics months and years in advance. With the comic on this Monday is one of those that will have people wondering what it is I'm thinking, more than usual. This comic was done six months ago. I did a similar joke a year earlier, which got posted six months later. (You still with me? God I hope so 'cause I'm not.)

This story got all kinds of play in the Massachusetts New York press, and I found blurbs in the Politico and Huffington Post. Why did I jump on this? Because I am so sick of that stereotype of southerners being nothing more than a bunch of inbred hicks. Finally one of those overpriced universities filled with faculty that look down their nose at all of us got hit upside the head with this stupidity. (By the way, I know the old saying, “you don't get to be a stereotype for no reason.”)

By the time I got around to making the first comic about this news story it had long since run its course and I had to type in some pretty descriptive terminology into Google to even find any articles about it. That told me it was time to kill that joke. Dan Quayle's “potatoe,” Al Gore's excessive sighing, and now Massachusetts New York in a “family way” are all jokes that I have officially declared dead.

Behind Wily's back? Full throttle on that one.

Here.


Emergency update: Comes to my attention that I screwed up. I'll explain later. Which Will ppear above this article.

Way Back Machine: The almost way too coolest net tool ever.

I found out about his a few weeks ago. What it is and archive of websites going back ten and fifteen years ago. It is mind blowing.

Note the title has the word almost in it. It's kind of buggy.

Right in the eye catching middle of the page is a search box. You type into it and are taken to the current site. Not an archived site, the one that is there right now, not the archive. The actual archive search is in teeny-tiny box in the no so eye catching upper left corner of the page.

You need to know the exact URL. No guesses allowed. You would think that Web Site #9 would be website#9.com or something. Nope. Fortunately The MSTing Mine still has a dead link right on the front page.

Sites are not fully archived. You get bits and pieces on one date, and different bits and pieces at a different date. Some sites don't get archived at the right time. Web Site Number 9 only got archived after in was taken down. I did manage to save a couple of fanfics that are not available elsewhere. Video Night at Mako-chan's and the Misery Senshi Neo-Zero Double Blitzkrieg Debacle. However I didn't save La Bleu Sammy. I only regret having read it.

When sites are saved by the Way Back Machine, sometimes the original coding is messed up a bit. Like CSS documents aren't saved and such. Things like frames and scroll bars are scrolled way off where you can't see them.

Bookmarking is a bitch. I can't seem to bookmark individual pages like a normal site. Sometimes it won't work, other times it will take me back to the Way Back Machine's homepage. Once in a while I'm lucky enough to at least be able to bookmark the home page of the site I found.

The Way Back Machine's archive is not searchable by Google. A real major draw back.

One major bug is that sometimes there is confusion of an old snapshot with a current one. Once in awhile the hacked version of The People's Sprites will show up in 2006.

Speaking of which, y'all might find this interesting. I don't put a lot of weight behind that declaration. Remember that the Deccus Wily Sprite had been removed. I imagine for a reason. Too bad the sheet itself isn't there. None of the other snapshots have it. Like I said, it's buggy.

I did look up mine. Interesting, I had forgotten a lot of tings. Like when I was posting a bunch of comics. I was truly mystified as to when certain ones went up. Now I know. I have been wanting to change from calling them seasons and go with the year of publication.

(Yikes! As I write all this out, I am looking at many different pages at once, one of them is mine, (of course.) I just noticed a mistake in the comic posted and promptly fixed it.)

I did go through earlier snapshots and have to constantly wonder why this was saved and not that. I'm not going to comment on the construction; because unlike other comics that annoy me when the cartoonist digs up old comics to (A) apologize for his work, (B) make us feel sorry for him, or (C) brag about how great he is now and we all should bow before his greatness. I try not to be that annoying. I'm mildly satisfied by annoying people by pointing the boney finger of indignation at what annoys me about them.

Weren't we talking Deccus a few paragraphs ago? Here is Those Beyond Time dot com. Yes it really did exist. Unfortunately 2003 wasn't archived. So the actual comic is lost except to those of us that manged to find it originally. You can at least read Warped Reality the way Deccus had intended.

(By the way, if you Google Those Beyond Time you will find a blog about an elf chick who likes to draw elf chicks. Interesting.)

Now I am not at all pissed, ticked, annoyed, or anything negative emotionally at all the bugs the Way Back Machine has. These are people spending what little spare time they have and what little money they have in a labor of love. The archivers are having to deal with over 15 years of thousands of different styles and evolutions in web coding. Trying to make it all work in current browsers that are constantly being changed.

I am happy enough to have finally found Shadey Theatre.

I am currently going through and doing what I should have done 8 years ago. Too bad there's only a handful of comics saved.