Catching up
Two years? Get out of here. That’s right- I’ve been making Dank Zine’s for two years now and to help celebrate making the world Dank I have made a special two-in-one issue which is coming out this week. It’s been a wild ride of ups and downs, especially in the last few months where I have been victim to the vices of the Christmas postal strike in my country. Whatever. The post can’t keep me down and I have been hard at work behind the scenes to ensure that things get fixed, found and sorted. Here are a few things that have been going on since 2019 started.
Omnigamer’s book, Speed Run Science, is dropping this late April and you can pre-order your copy of the book at Fangamer. I sat down with Omni last month to talk about some of the ups and downs of publishing a book about Speed Running and the interview is featured in the Jan/Feb issue of Dank Zine. You can pre-order the book HERE and features the fantastic artwork by the very talented Kari Fry. I’m personally excited for this book as the design by Tony Kuchar is bang on and the sheer amount of information in this book goes beyond my expectations of what a book on speed running is all about. We all had to wait a while for this one, but as we know good things come to those who wait so make sure you pre-order your copy today to add to your collection.
Fire Lancer
I have been watching Trap (aka Alex Marshall) tinker away at what I jokingly called “Trap Game” for almost as long as I have known the guy. This winter he finally made an official launch of his game, Fire Lancer, that is available for download HERE. It’s for (of all things) the SwanCrystal/WonderSwanColor. Trap is an amazing guy and has managed to make a fun shoot-em-up with a collective team of equally talented friends so check it out and read up on the interview in the upcoming issue.
DANK ART & DANK LIVING
I have been going back and forth between watercolours and digital work depending on where I am working as I am finding myself not in front of my desk as often as I would like in 2019. A lot of heavy life stuff went down as soon as 2019 started so I guess I’ll address what happened.
January was a month-long depression of me going to a lot of funerals, wakes and other unpleasant things that got me thinking hard on my own morality and the things that are important to me. I was also questioning my living arrangements around the end of January as a lot of weirdness was happening around where I live and something very creepy and weird was happening at my building where I live. I would tell you to not sweat it as I was able to find a positive solution in the form of my weeb neighbours who have been super supportive thru this time. They also like anime and make slime and fight each other with tiny plastic swords so that’s awesome.
My long term solution for this is to look towards moving though I have very mixed feelings about this. Setting a huge goal to “escape” is going to take a lot of time, money and hard work and to get there I have taken on more projects to plan this out though I am still unsure where I would go. Lots of things on my mind these days and a good chunk of me doesn’t even want to deal with this negativity. I’d rather just play video games…
…Like SD Snatcher. Yeah after months of struggling with emulation on my Mac I was able to get some help from my chat and got SD Snatcher to work. One of my huge gaming obsessions is Kojima’s Snatcher which was released for the MSX2 computer way back in 1988. SD Snatcher was released in 1989 and is a retelling of the original “unfinished” Snatcher game but with super deformed chibi characters and as a JRPG with interesting battle mechanics.
I did a huge feature on SD Snatcher in the January issue of my Dank Zine and got a lot of fun Dank Art from people in the chat. If I could get any of you to play a MSX2 game, PLAY SD SNATCHER. It’s a fun JRPG that has a lot of cool elements and follows a slightly different story to that of the other releases of Snatcher floating around out there. It will get you thinking about the MSX and what that little computer can offer. I’ll make it easy on you and ::cough cough:: post this here if you want to try without bashing your head against your desk trying to get the emulation and language packs to work.
COMING UP
I have a bunch of wild stories set up for 2019 along with a pile of new content creators who are working hard documenting their own adventures in the gaming community to share in the pages of Dank Zine. Next month I have a story with Kevin DDR and Aperturegrillz who are moving to Japan and who will be documenting the local arcade scene there thru photos and writing exclusively for subscribers. If you have ever dreamed of going to Japan then you will see it thru the eyes of these two Tetris Grand Masters as they discover the beauty which is Japan’s arcade scene.
If you are big into fighting games, Game Goon Giby is now on board writing from his experiences at all the exciting tournaments coming up. It’s going to be a rare behind the scene look of what is going on with the games, the people and how events like these happen and I am overly excited to be featuring these stories.
We are also looking into making a DANK BBS for my fam who’s into the old days of computers so if you want to come and post on our BBS and play Food Fight then you gotta keep checking in and seeing what we come up with.
I’m also looking at that flippin’ Dead Flip guy and what that pinhead pinballer in Chicago is up to cause he’s always working on so many crazy projects that even he can’t keep up with all of them.
KEEP US DOING DANK THINGS! Back the Zine and keep the writers writing, the artists drawing and help make the retro community special. We want to go to your event, we want to play the Dank Games, we want to make physical things that you can hold in your hands and enjoy that speak to the stuff that you love. Back the zine and be part of the Fam and help make things DANK in 2019.