DANK ART

Every now and then I do some amazing Dank Art’s that just stand out more to me than others and that goes for the Riot City Dank Art I made for Macaw45’s stream on Friday of last week. Usually great Dank Art like this happens when I am in a great art mode or when I have done so much work I can just power out effort like it’s nothing. I need to bank in a lot of drawing time to get to that level, but it’s something I strive for when I do make Dank Art. I want to be in that zone as much as I can be and the only way I can get there is if I spend hours perfecting my skills. It’s a lot like when an athlete trains to always stay in top form or why speedrunners need to constantly be trying runs of the same game over and over to keep up the consistency.

Macaw also played thru a bunch of Sega CD FMV games as well on Monday morning and did an entire playthru of Masked Rider which I have never seen before as well as muddling around with a few others including Time Gal. I am a huge fan of Time Gal and that game alone sold me on a Sega CD as a kid (though I never did save up my money for one). Today the Sega CD is the bastard of collection as I own the least amount of games for it. Sega CD games are hard to come by and demand insane prices for most of the good games online so often I stick to emulating the games I want to play. It’s a shame because the system was never very popular in my country yet I was obsessed with it as a small child. I do own a copy of Shining Force CD which is quite possibly the best collector game for the system, but key titles such as Time Gal and Snatcher will forever elude me for their scarcity and high listed prices.

I think Fighters History Dynamite is quickly turning into one of my more fave fighting games as everyone is picking it up and having fun rediscovering it again. I think Murph owns the actual arcade board for this as well so it’s even more interesting when he streams it. Fighting games & me have a very strange and sorted history as I was always the one who wanted to go after games like these though I never had any friends who were totally into them. Everyone played Street Fighter II and I had a few friends who were into Mortal Kombat, but outside of those games no one else in my circle was willing to go that far for fighters. I’m not a pro but I LOVE two player games no matter what they are. Even if you have one friend who totally sucks at games theres nothing like a fighting game that you can pick up and start playing right there in the room. I once had a crazy Street Fighter birthday party where all we did was play Street Fighter for hours eating cake and drinking beers until 3am and everyone had a great time even if they didn’t know all the combos and buttons. The only negative thing about most two person fighter games is after 3 rounds thats it and if you have a friend who is really bad at playing them they might feel a bit cheated when their turn comes up. This is why I really like Beatem’ups as I find that first time players can usually just pick them up & take their time getting used to things as they make progress in the game. Not all my friends are the best at games, but they are good enough friends that they will try something outside of their comfort zone just to make me happy.

 

LordBBH has surpassed 1100 games now on his Monday Mame Roulette streams and announced on Monday that his Viewers Choice Extravaganza will take place this Saturday, the Passover/Easter long weekend. Nothing like a moving holiday to really mess up your fun! Since my family isn’t very religious and my parents are retired I was able to move our family lunch to Friday so I’ll have all the time to paint Dank Art on Saturday. You might be thinking that’s a bit much but for me it isn’t. My family is very laid back and I’m the product of my father so when he asked why I wanted to move it I told him I was making Dank Art & the old guy just laughed and said “I understand.” My dad is probably the only man in my life to really get that about me as he’s seen me do it time and time again over the years he’s raised me.
Now with BBH surpassing 1100 games in Mame you’re probably wondering if he’s ever going to run out of games at this rate. Not on your life because there are THOUSANDS of games ripped for Mame and it’s going to take him a long dang time to get thru them all. Sure the cheesecake-porn arcade games are kinda mediocre and really over glorified gambling games, but they are a game and they were created with a purpose to take your quarters just like every other arcade game out there. In Canada we used to have soft-core porn movies play on stations such as City TV & the french stations after a certain time when I was a kid growing up. We’d call these “Blue Movies” or “Baby Blue” for some strange reason- but mainly because thats what the intro for them was called. I wasn’t alive in the 70’s at all, but I do remember that on channel 07 you’d see a lot of brief nudity and adult behaviour after 11pm at night. Don’t act like you didn’t know cause I always knew this but played dumb at recess when kids would talk about the totally naked people and F-Bombs that were dropped on the TV last night. I remember how sad some kids were when they said they were not allowed to watch TV at all and how we just made up TV shows and over-glorified all the violence and sex we saw just to watch them go “Gosh really?? Wo-o-o-ah.”
I guess it depends on your upbringing how you see sex and what you deem appropriate or not- I had a very laid back up bringing but I think my parents were totally cool with me watching sexy stuff on TV & in movies with the hopes that I would get most of my information from that & not bug them about having that talk later when I’m 13. FYI when I turned 11 my dad started buying me every damn video game in the discount bin he could for me as “IT KEEPS HER HOME WHERE I CAN SEE HER” as he would shout. Good play, dad, good play.
Don’t believe me when I say City TV used to air porn? Here’s the intro from the 70’s I found online.

Happy Birthday to Clover & Sealife! I made you this beautiful Dank Art to make you smile and to tell you how special you are. My boss thinks you make the best music and I have been 100% behind your adventures in music since the very beginning. Remember when you wanted to DJ at our cabin in Lake George all those years ago and we needed an extension cord? I yanked that crap so fast out of the public arcade room causing 5 machines to be “Out of Order” that weekend cause I wanted to dance to your grooves. It was a tiny thing, but we danced and danced and had so much fun and I’ll never forget it. Please go get some chiptunes in your rotation and cast your lucky clovers into the sea HERE

 

ADVENTURES IN THE SIX

I would get dragged around Toronto as a little kid by my father as he’d be on the hunt for his classical music. I have these very early memories of going into these tiny record stores that were nothing but bins of wax with a few posters on the wall. All the buildings were old, stone and decaying all around us and you felt safe. Toronto used to be like that for me.

These days they are tearing down most of what I liked about Toronto. The music shops are almost all gone and huge lots of buildings are being knocked over to make way for condos. Union station has been under construction for over two years now which has been a huge problem when I come in for visits. Nothing stays the same and it’s weird mulling around when things are in this weird change transition all around me. All the old comic book stores, record shops and arcades I used to frequent as a kid are being bought and sold for condos.

I wanted to go check out a different retro game shop when I was downtown but it seems as if the one place I wanted to see was closed on Sundays, so Sarah & I walked over to that place we visited in January instead. I am glad I did as they made changes to the store from the last time I was there and now when you walk in they have a beautiful glass display case with all the systems they sell. They also had a LOT of Turbo Graphix 16 consoles and PC Engine’s there. I thought 2016 I had never seen so many TG16’s but thats already surpassed what I have seen recently in resell shops alone. Someone also offloaded a bunch of very rare Nintendo handheld Game & Watch stuff which was very interesting to me as I never had seen some of those in the wild before. Some were going for $500+ which is cool but way out of my price range.

We walked over 16km’s that day all over my old stomping grounds and passing by places I used to work, old apartments of past friends, rotting buildings and strange people. I got Sarah a copy of my new Dank Zine and she was very excited when she was looking thru it. I told her everyone who’s seen it made a huge smile when looking thru it, so I guess I am doing something right. It’s always a great time when you get together with your best friend.

I also picked up a copy of McKids! Expect some crazy streams of this to happen soon and let’s see how far I’ll get :p