SNES – AgentAnnK

Spending the treasure that love cannot afford

Police Nuts

I finished my playthrough of Policenuts this past Sunday and have uploaded the entire collection of videos to my Youtube. You can check out the videos here:

I’m trying to get better at archiving my Twitch videos, so if you missed watching the stream live or if Twitch deletes the videos at least there’s a backup on Youtube. It will be fun revisiting this game in the future now that I have played thru it once, but for now, I want to focus on looking at other games and explore more Dank fun on the MSX. I do want to go back and look at a few of my favourites on the system such as Penguin Adventure, so stay tuned for more Dank Streams.

Back Issues

The last three issues of my Dank Zine are in my Dank Shop for those who have been asking. There are only limited copies of each one so if you are missing one in your collection get your orders in soon. Once I sell out of a zine’s run, it’s challenging to reprint them on demand so order them fast before they are gone. I’ve also updated things such as mugs and T-shirts if you want to grab those and help support the Dankness.

Get your DANK here!

Dank Art

I’m using my time to get caught up (store update should have been a give away) as I have been quite sick over the last few months. A lot of my time has been eaten up with doctor appointments and work, so it’s been a bit of a struggle to get started on the massive backlog of updating all my sites with my work as I refuse to quit doing art when I am sick.

Check out the streams: LordBBH, Aquas, Zallard1, Retrograde Tom, Macaw45, Omnigamer, PJ, Duke Donuts, Tondagossa, Goati, SQPat, Chuboh and CapnClever.

Indiana Jones for DOS

Comic Zone Sega Genesis

Star Wars SNES

Turtles in Time Arcade

Ken from Street Fighter II Arcade

Castlevania NES

Black Tiger Arcade

Earthbound SNES

Sub Zero Mythologies

BatMan NES

Yoshi’s Crafted World

Ninja Baseball Batman

Megaman

Dick Tracy Sega Genesis

Mr Driller Arcade

Poison Final Fight Arcade

Snake MGS2 MSX

Mike Tyson’s Punch Out NES

Snake MGS2 MSX

Metal Gear MGS2 MSX

Snake MGS2 MSX

FoxHound MGS2 MSX

Red Alert PC Engine CD

Snake MGS2 MSX

Fishing Games on Dreamcast

Addressing the Elephant in the room

I have made a few hints to my current health status on my streams and in my Discord. After months of visiting doctors and specialists, I now have a clear answer to what is going on with me. If you have been watching my streams, you might have noticed that I have lost an insane amount of weight and I have been a bit more absent from a lot of events, meetups and social activities. I have been struggling with Graves Disease since I was diagnosed back in 2010, which is an autoimmune disease that causes the Thyroid gland to be hyperactive. Though I have undergone medical treatment in the past and had everything under control, things started to become unstable again beginning in March. I’ve lost an astounding amount of weight and was having significant problems with my blood pressure, which resulted in a few hospital visits.
Medical stuff is tricky. You don’t always get an overnight answer to this stuff, and often you are left waiting and wondering what’s going on between visits. It’s not like you can check into a hospital and someone says “yeah you got this and were going to use this quick fix” and then forget about it. You get put into the system, and you wait your turn like everyone else. When I started to notice things were wrong, I focused on what made me happy, and that was making art for my friends and the people I follow to keep my passion going for the Zine. It was the grounding force that kept me sane for those months, so I need to thank the communities I am apart of for being there. Some of the best comments I get are “Your art makes me smile” and “Your work adds to the experience of this stream”. I believe in healthy communities, so I am glad I can give back to the ones who make me happy.
Now that I have an official answer to what is going on I’m starting my treatment and getting control over this stuff so I can get back to 100% again. Thank you for being there and understanding.

Stay tuned for more art, more Dank Streams and continued adventures in retro games!

THE RETURN OF THE DANK

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.

Screenshot 2019-02-04 22.59.15.png — OH SHUCKS I DIED!!!

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.

The Return of Dankness

Dank Art

Last Alert PC Engine ⁦@Macaw45⁩

Time Pilot ‘84 ⁦@LordBBH⁩

The Rumble Fish 2 ⁦@LordBBH⁩

Juggle Warfare (Amstrad) ⁦@Macaw45⁩

Slash out ⁦@LordBBH⁩

Marchen Maze ⁦@LordBBH⁩

Frontline (GBC) ⁦@Macaw45⁩

Australopithecus Mechanicus on Amiga ⁦@bouphe⁩

Axe of Rage on Amiga @Bouphe

Time Pilot ‘84 ⁦@LordBBH⁩

The Rumble Fish 2 ⁦@LordBBH⁩

Last Alert PC Engine ⁦@Macaw45⁩

Juggle Warfare (Amstrad) ⁦@Macaw45⁩

Slash out ⁦@LordBBH⁩

Marchen Maze ⁦@LordBBH⁩

Frontline (GBC) ⁦@Macaw45⁩

Australopithecus Mechanicus on Amiga ⁦@bouphe⁩

Axe of Rage on Amiga @Bouphe

Since May I have been going through a lot of changes. I have quit my job at the Apple Store and now I work in a video game store in my hometown. This is exciting news because not only does it mean video games are even more part of my day to day life but a lot of the stress that I was under at my old job is gone. It’s been a long time coming and I feel much better with these new changes in my life. It’s going to give me more chances to focus on what I like and try new things with my art.

I have missed out on a few things that came up in the past few months, but with a few weeks, I should be settled back into high Dank Art production. I have been working on a few larger pieces which I have returned to. My biggest challenge for the next few weeks will focus on managing my time with the new job, but lately, I have been feeling energized and less stressed out. Big things are on the rise again!

Nintendon’t

Hold onto your butts! Nintendon’t 5 will start today, Friday, September 14th at 12 noon EST and run all weekend. I will be taking part in this event as well as other streamers from all over the world in the Retro Community. Make sure you check the schedule to make sure you can catch all the games you love and want to check out. All the games featured during the marathon are all retro games that are not featured on Nintendo, so we’re talking about Sega, DOS, Arcade, Amiga, the other side of the Retro community. I will be showing off E.V.O.: The Theory of Evolution (46億年物語THE進化論) for PC-98 which I recently played thru in the summer and even did a little write up in my Dank Zine. I will be live on Saturday, September 15th at 9 pm EST so check it out!

Streaming Schedule

My streaming schedule will be changing! Most of my viewers are used to tuning in Sunday mornings, but with my new job, I now work Sundays. For now, I’ll need to stick to more spontaneous streams before settling into a day and time I can commit to.

I recently hit 2000 followers! Thank you so much for following my dank little stream and for all the support over the years. As many of you know I have been collecting and playing games for years and one of the best things to me is sharing that experience with people. I do plan to have a big streaming day to celebrate this achievement and I will announce it once I have the day (aka I figure a good day off to have it lol).

Dank Zine

Issue 18 of Dank Zine is out for delivery! This issue we feature an interview with Angrylanks, a record-holding speedrunner who also has a passion for music and streams not just his games, but his drumming as well. Nintendon’t organizer Goati has a feature about Fishing Games and a few of their accessories, and I wrote a piece about E.V.O – the Search for Eden and the differences between the PC-98 game and the SNES. There’s also a bunch of artists contributing to the issue making this another huge community effort. I should be having a packing stream where I will be giving away free issues, so make sure you are following me on Twitter or on Twitch so you can pick up a copy.

If you want to buy this or any past issues, make sure you head over to my Dank Shop. Once an issue sells out that’s it! I only print 100 issues for each month and once they sell out they are gone.

Bunches of Games Done Eventualy

After a few months of intense deadlines, new things in life and big changes, I am back with my weekly blog! A LOT of stuff has been going on in my life but I have made time to stay on top of all my Dank Art and Dank Zines. The blog however had been put on hold but now that things seem to be not as busy I am back at it with the Dankness every week! Let’s get caught up on all the stuff you missed:

SO MANY ZINES

E96F605F-0FE1-437B-898D-DD20673C6339 — Puri-Puri with his issue of Dank Zine #15

Have you been checking out my Dank Shop lately? I now have issues of Dank Zine for sale there so if you have missed an issue or only wanted to grab the issue of your favourite streamer. Remember issues are always cheaper when you subscribe.

The most current issue up for grabs right now is Issue 16 with an interview with Giby who is known in the fighting scene circles as well as his goonish appearance with the GameGoons who stream on Twitch. I got to sit down with him and talk about his fights in and out of competitions.

We also celebrate 10 years of Fangamer in issue 16 of Dank Zine with an interview with co-founder Reid Young where he reflects on his little game merchandise company that could. We touched down on how 10 years ago, Fangamer was operating out of Reid’s second bedroom in his apartment and how it’s grown to the size it is now. Sadly I wont be at Camp Fangamer taking place on July 20th, but it’s at that event where Fangamer will celebrate it’s official 10 year’s with the people who helped make it great, the fans.

I also want to welcome cartoonist and illustrator Shan Murphy to the team as she now will be featured monthly in Dank Zine with a series of comics that looks at the personal experience of playing video games. You can check out her work here to see more of her work. As the months go by and the Zine grows I hope to keep adding more content from quality content makers like Shan to the mix.

SO MUCH DANK ART

The pile of Dank Art that needs to be uploaded is too big! When I started to get busy, I started off with the intentions to put all the Dank Art in folders from the week so that when I got unbusy I could simply drop them all in. Yeah, that didn’t happen and now I am sitting a huge dank pile. I should be uploading more as the weeks go on, so do keep checking back to get more Dank Art.

SGDQ 2018

Over $2 Million dollars was raised in just one week during Summer Games Done Quick and I had the pleasure again to be there as it happened. I flew out solo but met up with a bunch of people at the event so I never really felt alone when I was there. It was great to see all of my awesome friends again and hang out with them even if it was all the way in Minneapolis.

I had the honour of sitting on the couch for both Aquas’ Mr Gimmick run with fellow speed runner Narshe along with his daughter as well as LRock’s Double Dragon run on the NES. You can check out both the vod’s here:

The BEST thing about going to a GDQ is to meet other speed runners and streamers and hang out with old friends as well as meeting new. I think I firmed up the next 5 issues of my Dank Zine in just three days of talking to people. Oh shucks, I was also super happy when I introduced myself people said “Oh yes! I know you and your Zine! I would love to be part of that!” I also had the pleasure of meeting Puwexil who I have been following for a while on twitter and ask him some questions about his Final Fantasy 6 speedrun as I am a huge fan of FF6 and his stream was going to be my highlight of the week. Make sure you sub to my Patreon or keep watching my Dank Shop and pre-order or back the zine if you want to read about that one as Puwexil really dove back into some GDQ history from its humble beginnings in some guys basement to the 4H club.

Special Delivery of all the things!

Dank Zines are in!

Dank Zines have all been shipped and are arriving to mailboxes across the globe! This months issue features streamer Chuboh with all of his delightful point-clickery, an in-depth interview with Omnigamer on his side of the “Dragster” high score fiasco, an article about the unreleased arcade game “Chimera Beast” by LordBBH himself and a 10 Questions with Neo-Antwon. There’s also a bunch of awesome Dank Art by not only myself, but from contributing artists CyRaptor, Dasyati and MakotTruth. All backers of the Patreon also got a free sticker sheet that features a few of Chuboh’s sub icons so if you still want to get your issue make sure you snap up a copy soon before they sell out of my new Dank Shop.

Dank Art

Black Queen from Battlemaiacs SNES @Macaw45

Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume @TheOmnigamer

Mazin Saga for Mega Drive @Macaw45

Splattoon 2

Q*Bert for ChibiUFO’s Birthday ❤

Splatter House 3 @Macaw45

Madly Monogatari Sega Mega Drive @Goatistream

Gourmet Sentai Bara Yarou @Macaw45

Bubble Bobble arcade @LordBBH

Earthworm Jim on Sega Genesis @Lrock

Terminator 2 on Sega Genesis @Macaw45

Death and Return of Superman @Macw45

Metal Slug X and

Rushing Beat Shura for Super Famicom @Macaw45

Altered Beast Arcade @LordBBH

Mario Odyssey on Nintendo Switch @TheOmnigamer

Hacha Mecca Fighter Arcade @LordBBH

The Incredible Hulk SNES @Macaw45

I’m starting to follow so many streamers on Twitch that every week I have piles of stuff that I am constantly working on. I’m not posting up all of the Dank Art now (as there is a lot now) but now I am focusing of showing off the best ones. Check them out and watch for them to go up for sale in my new shop soon or if you’re lucky you might score some freebies when I have giveaways on my streams.

Streaming Stuff

Right now I am trying to stream a bit more to take some time to focus not only on playing games I want to play, but to take a few hours out of my day to just relax and enjoy it. Sundays I am always going to follow my “Wake, Paint & Play” format, but if you want to catch my late night stuff I try to stream on Tuesdays, Wednesday’s and maybe Fridays if I don’t have something I need to do. I am currently obsessed with two games that I will go into a bit more detail here on my blog. One of them is a cute little Penguin game but before I get into that FRKINSEALLND thing, Le t’s talk Sega and Shining Force.

The North American Release

The back of the case

The Euro release had to be different and mirror the NA cover with different colours

The original Japanese Sega CD cover

Growing up I was a Sega girl and most of that is thanks to my father who felt that Sega was the far more superior system on the market at the time. For me, Sega was all about arcade imports, Sonic games, and a library of strange 2D platformers. My knowledge and experience with RPG’s didn’t start until I my friends started to play Earthbound on their SNES. After I discovered that what I called “Computer adventure games” could be played on a gaming system, I set off to find RPGs for the Sega systems I owned. This proved to be a bit of a problem.

The cover of the Gamegear release

Back of the North American box art

I would blame that because of where I live as my home town was a lot smaller than it is now. Because of the size of my community, the shops would only get the top-selling games for the systems and everything that was “strange” and “different” would either come in limited quantities or not at all. The shelves were always stocked with the latest and greatest hockey and sports titles, then followed by any and all cartoony platformers. I was very lucky that in my home town there was one video rental place that had not just a section for Gamegear rentals, but they also had Sega CD and Saturn rentals for a few years. That’s where I first got my hands on the Gamegear version of Shining Force II.

Shining Force Gaiden: Ensei – Jashin no Kuni he (シャイニング・フォース外伝～遠征・邪神の国へ～) was released for Gamegear in 1992 following up with Shining Force Gaiden II: Jashin no Mezame (シャイニング・フォース外伝 II ～邪神の覚醒～) in 1993 as the first portable Shining tactical role-playing game in the games series. Sega re-released The Shining Force Gaiden games later on for the Sega CD on what is called “Shining Force CD”, along with the secret games that you can unlock playing both games and meet certain conditions. The Gaiden series takes place 20 years in the future from the original Shining Force JRPG series that was featured on the Sega Genesis. Some of the characters come back or are the direct descendants of characters from the original series or as secret characters that you can discover in the game. For some strange reason, only Shining Force Gaiden II made an English release in North America where the first game has only been available in English via the Sega CD release. I’m unsure if that is the reason the Sega CD price is listed for around $150-75 complete, but it is one of the more desired games for the system and one of the only ways you can play the first game in English.

Gamegear

Sega CD

There’s a few differences between the Gamegear and Sega CD remake. The first thing you’ll notice is a huge overhaul of the graphics and the sprite animations. The Gamegear has its charm, but with the larger colour pallet on the Sega CD the designers could do a bit more and really pay attention to detail from gradients to small details such as Eric’s red nose pixel on his overworld character sprite. Levels have a bit more depth and in battle animations have more movement and casting healing spells now have cuter anime styled sprites as fairies over the smaller ones featured in the Gamegear games. The girl reading you the books at the start of the game has also changed drastically in appearance and is no longer a young maiden, but now much younger in age and appearance.

The biggest reason you need to get the Sega CD release is because of the soundtrack. They went full orchestra for the remake to capitalize on the CD sound playback of the Sega CD. It’s an amazing soundtrack and worth downloading on its own for your own enjoyment. Doing mundane things like catching the bus or grocery shopping have more importance when listening to the overworld battle themes. The Gamegear soundtrack is good on its own, but there’s no question that the arrangement on the Sega CD version is the better of the two.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L0dacYSgrk8

One of the drawbacks of having the Sega CD release is there are not enough save spots on the system to meet the conditions to unlock the extra two games included on the CD. The work around for that is using the Sega CD Backup RAM cart. This cart looks just like a regular Genesis game cart and connects right into the Sega Genesis. It was around $60 when it first came out, which was almost the same price as a full game.

If you are looking to play Shining Force CD and want to play on the original Sega CD you will NEED the CD Back Up cart. It should go for $25, but most places will demand that you fork over $40-60 for it. You can find 3rd party knock-offs that will work just as good. Do check that the battery in the cart us still good, if not you can always replace it. For some reason, my cart gives me a lot of issues and I can’t access my saved files half the time and almost always when I move my Sega CD system from room to room it somehow reformat the entire cart. Maybe I just have a bad back up cart. Because of this, I might recommend that you emulate the game first to see if it’s worth hunting down as with the backup cart you will be forking out around $200 to play. If you happen to be like me and get a bad backup cart this could be game-save devastation as part of the fun is unlocking all the games using your saves with the CD Back Up Cart.

Claude

Dawn

Luke

Shining Force Gaiden is a bare-bones early Tactical RPG and often when I stream it I have a lot of people who join in for the first time saying “This feels very Fire Emblem-y”. However, where in most Tactical RPGS they feature “permanent death” where if one of your characters dies in battle no amount of phoenix down or revive is going to bring them back. You are simply stuck loading from a save and re-doing the entire battle again losing all the experience you have gained. Shining Force Gaiden doesn’t have that and instead has a “buy back” feature where you can spend gold to get your characters back. Also if any of your characters die they still keep their levels and items that they have gained in that battle. This is helpful when you are trying to level up weaker characters. However, if your main character dies, not only will you need to restart the entire battle, but your money is reduced by half making raising the dead a horrible game of “Sophie’s Choice” if your funds are getting low. If you’re looking for a cosy Tactical RPG to get into I highly suggest picking up this collection of games. It’s rich with fantastic character personalities, a well thought out story, creative fantasy characters from Centaurs, Bird Men, Cat Mages and Zombies. It’s a must for your Sega collection and just overall one of my favourite game series out there.

//As a side note, I am leaving out the Saturn Shining Force Gaiden game for another review//

Lousy Smarch Weather

Dank Art

CHECK OUT MY KILLER TATTO Blood Warrior @LordBBH

Can’t go fast! Zero4 Champ RR SNES @Macaw45 @TheOmnigamer

Do you come with the car? Zero4 Champ RR @Macaw45

SD Gundam Psycho Salamander No Kyoui @LordBBH

Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume @TheOmnigamer

Draw me like one of your French Girls @Goati_ @Macaw45

Quick! To the Pachinko arcade! Zero4 Champ RR-Z @Macaw45

Being tempted by sweet lady Pachinko @Macaw45

More Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume @TheOmnigamer

It’s been a while since I updated! Here is a huge Dank Art Dump for you to enjoy. I’ve been a bit under the weather with a slight lung infection (gotta love winter) but still trying to do my best to ensure my work and deadlines are met. That just means extra stuff like my blog & social life suffer. I’ll be back 100% soon though with more updates & more Dank Art.

Chuboh in Dank Zine

Our favourite dungeon crawler Chuboh is our feature streamer of the month for the March Issue of my Dank Zine! If you are not already backing my Patreon you’ll have to wait for this issue to hit my Dank Shop. All backers will be getting a bunch of special Chuboh style stickers in with their zine featuring his sub emotes.

Mr Gimmick!

Hats off to my pal Eyes5 who I interviewed in a past issue of my Dank Zine for making such awesome and adorable plushes! This guy here is Mr Gimmick from that incredible NES game. If you follow Aquas then you know he’s got one as well as should anyone who’s a huge fan of the game. Mr Gimmick is very rare and only pops up in Eyes’ Etsy shop once in a while so the next time he make an appearance I’ll be sure to let you know. In the meantime, check out her store and see what she has currently.

Fixing the Blinking Light

My NES came to an untimely death a few weeks ago live on stream in a very frightening manner. In fact, that NES was a cheaper Retron that I was using because I couldn’t get my original NES to work without wiggling the cart all around.

As a child I never really had to blow into carts as I had a Master System (both a Master System 1 and 2) and often if the game wasn’t inserted properly I’d know because a Snail game would come up on my Master System 1 and Alex Kidd would play on my 2. It always seemed a bit odd to me that NES’s didn’t have a built in game like this. The other thing I liked about the Master System is that it was top-loading so I was usually sure I’d always be getting the game inserted the right way.

Over the years it has been proven that the North American “VHS” style NES has several design flaws and the biggest one was the whole “Pressing the game down” to play. These guys came up with an awesome solution to upgrade your old system to bypass this issue and get a clean connection every time you insert a game with what they call The Blinking Light Win. I was seriously on the fence with the fix at first as I figured buying another Retron would be an easier fix, but my boss talked me into it and I ordered one.

Here’s what the old pins looked like! Gross!!

It did take a bit as I do believe these guys are a humble and small operation but everything came packaged up nicely all wrapped in plastic with the most easiest instructions ever. They were even nice to include a few stickers as well. I got everything set up on the work bench at work ready to install it and before I could I got busy with a few customers. When I came back 10 minutes later my boss was screwing my NES back together with a laugh saying “That was easy!” Thank you, Tyler! You can’t leave a broken anything around that man when he’s in work mode and even though I was excited to do it myself he did it quicker plus he cleaned the layer of dust off my NES just because.

Dig out your old NES and get this fix! For the same price that it costs to get a Retron you could be fixing your old NES and get better results. You will not be disappointed and I cannot stress how happy I am with this amazing fix. The pins are a bit tight as new pins tend to be, but my last Retron was atrocious with how tight those pins were. Make sure you clean your games and keep your stuff dust free to ensure a long life of classic retro gaming in your place.

Countdown to a full year of DANK

Dank Zine Updates

I can’t believe I have been making Dank Zines for almost a year! Thank you so much to my backers and readers for a crazy year of dankness. I’ve come from a little one person operation making a little 30 paged Zine to expanding it to over 44 pages with a team of editions, writers and contributors. I couldn’t have done it without my team and my Patreon Backers so thank you all for making this project a huge success in its first year.

This month’s featured streamer is Bouphe who just recently was partnered! Congratulations, Bouphe as I know you have been working very hard to get partnership. For those who don’t know, Bouphe is an amazing girl who streams classic retro PC games for the Amiga, DOS and PS1 to list a few. She’s a delight to hang out with and has a solid backup team of kitties to help her along her quests and achievements in games. Bouphe was incredibly charming to interview and she really opened up about herself, the retro community and how streaming has had a positive influence on her life. If you are a Bouphe fan make sure to back the Zine before the end of the month.

7898033F-3469-4219-A9C9-EF5E92D289D4 — Zallard1 at AGDQ2018 where he played both Punch Out & Super Punch Out at the same time

Also featured for this issue is an interview with Zallard1. We sit down and take a closer look at his run at AGDQ where he played Punch Out and Super Punch Out at the same time using a cool controller rigged up by Omnigamer. It’s an interesting way to play a game and different then just playing a game blind for exhibition. Get a bit of a closer look at how Zallard1 came up with the idea to run both games at once.

Macaw45 is alsocreating a new written feature in the Zine called Obscure Games where he takes a closer look at some of the games you never heard about from back in the day in Japan. If you follow Macaw45 then you know he’s an endless source of information when it comes to classic games for old Japanese computers and he also frequently talks about the lore behind the games and the people who made them. For a while people have been asking if he could share those stories and I kept thinking they would make a great addition to the zine.

As always each Zine comes with all the art and articles as well as an included sticker pack. Since Bouphe is our featured streamer I made these custom retro PC Gamer stickers so you can dial-up to the Sexy BBS anytime! Put stickers of old computers on your new computer for added fun or stick them up around your community and feel a little dangerous for possibly vandalizing. Just remember to not blame us if you get hit with a hefty fine sticking these where you shouldn’t.

If you want to get your hands on the 12th issue of my Dank Zine make sure you are backing my Patreon at www.patreon.com/DankArt

Dank Art

Lrock– I met up with this Speedrunner at AGDQ2018 and we ended up hanging out a whole bunch on the Sunday. When I got home I promptly followed and got banned seconds after posting this Dank Art. It was all good, it was totally my fault for not making my link-posting shenanigans more up front. Most of my friends and followers know its me when I’m posting a link, but there have been a lot of bots over Twitch. I’m not upset or anything. We all had a good laugh about it and I got un-banned really quick. Lrock was working on some cute NES Disney themed games but also is working on other Speedrun attempts so do try to check out his stuff and give him a follow.

LordBBH had his Hard drive go down recently which means he’s trying his best to recover anything that might be left on it. That meant that he had a Monday without Mame Roulette but he managed to get things pulled together and was back up and streaming. The super big downer about all of this is BBH lost all his copies of Dank, Jank & fan art as well as his other files so he’ll have to start from scratch collecting them back. BBH was also working on a feature article for my Dank Zine for February but it’s going to be pushed back until he can see if it’s recovered or if he needs to start the story all over again from scratch. I hope BBH get’s his computer sorted out sooner than later but it is good that he’s still finding a way to stream.

It was also BBH’s birthday last Sunday and I just wanted to say Happy Birthday BBH! I made a quick Dank Art to help celebrate the occasion.

I featured ex-mortis in my most recent issue of my Dank Zine and he started streaming Popful Mail again after trying out a new game & kinda hating it. I’ve realized I haven’t played thru this game myself and I should make more of an effort to do so as its one of the better Sega CD games out there. Yes I am aware that this game first came out on the home Japanese PC’s before being ported to other systems, but the English voice dub is actually very well done for a Sega CD game and because it’s such a good game it fetches a huge amount on eBay. I’ll look into this and maybe you’ll see me Popin’ it like it’s hot on my stream soon.

Macaw45 is playing a whole bunch of what I call “Sooooour many tiny big dudes” Strategy games for the PC88 and PC98. That’s when all your little warriors and fighters fill up the screen doing the actual battling in real-time while you sit back and watch or actively control your main character around the playing board. There was also this crazy PC game that was a lot like Space Harrier but with an insane difficulty level to it as well as melee boss battles to switch things up. Yeah, it was hard as hell and had a very weird saving system where you could only save after every 2 levels? The big story behind this game is that it was so crazy hard that Macaw just figured no one was that stupid enough to actually finish it and set off to actually do so.