msx – 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!

I’m getting too old for this Dank!!!

I finally finished MXS2 Snatcher two weeks ago checking off another game in my classic Kojima game playthroughs. I had been trying to play the MSX2 version for a while, but due to limitations to my setup, the translation patch would always breakdown mid-game causing large dumps of garbled text. With my new set up I wanted to see if this same issue would come back and I am happy to say I have fixed all the problems retaining to my MSX emulations.

I now only have the PC-88, PS1, Saturn and PC Engine CD versions to play through. One of the most significant variations you’ll find between games would be the musical arrangements between each system. I own the vinyl record release of Snatcher, but hands down the original PC-88 has the best sound despite the PCE CD arrangement having that CD sound quality. Check out a few differences here:

The translation I was playing was a bit broken (funny at times, but still broken) however, if you want to see a better-translated version of MSX Snatcher I recommend watching Awesomebrand’s video of his playthrough of Snatcher to get a feel of how this game played out on the system.

But hey- enough Snatcher for a few weeks. It’s only natural after playing a lot of Snatcher that one would dive right into Kojima’s other classic Sci-Fi drama Policenauts.

Policenauts

Policenauts is another game that has eluded me for years due to my at-home setup and the fact it never got a proper English localisation. It was initially released in 1994 for the PC-9821 in Japan after four years of development and conceived when Kojima was working on Snatcher. It’s got a high-cinema style production, and it’s got a lot of throw-backs to American Buddy-style cop dramas, mainly Lethal Weapon. There were plans to make a Saturn localisation for the Sega Saturn but cancelled due to technical limitations. Policenauts came out for the PC-9821, 3DO, Playstation and Sega Saturn in Japan only, but if you want there is a fan translation for the game made in 2009 for both the PS1 and Sega Saturn.

If I had my way, I would play the PC-982 version; however, there doesn’t seem to be a translation for it yet. I have also seen that emulating this game is a bit of a trick in itself, though Macaw45 recently played thru the game on his stream using updated patches in Mame to get the sound/mouth events working. Still, there were a few audio issues and crashes that did seem to break the game in some areas, however hopefully in time many of these issues will get cleaned up so people can enjoy how this game.

I’m playing through the PS1 version which has many differences from the original PC-9821 version and added animated cutscenes. It has a different look and feel to it, and some would argue it’s a tad uglier vs the original. For me, I am obsessed with playing thru fan translated games just for a glimpse of what these games had to offer and to share in the fun of experiencing the game’s story.
Playing Policenauts has been a two-year desire for me, but yet again, my at-home set up was holding me back. I wanted to play thru the game way back in February after I finished SD Snatcher, but I couldn’t get the disks to work. As I have switched to windows set up, I got help from my buddy Fantasic_Plannet and was able to get things moving forward.

I plan to write a full review/feature about Policenauts in an upcoming article after I finish the game, so tune in Sunday morning when I dive back into the game and see if I can finish it!

Zine Updates

Oh boy. Where do I even start?
The zine is going to be late this month due to the worst customer service from the new printers. I stress that WAS part as I never want to work with these people ever again. What happened was I submitted my order July 16th and asked for three-day shipping to my place, and they kept ignoring and dodging my phone calls, emails and instant messages in regards to my order. TL;DR I had to escalate my frustrations with Paypal to get them to either finish my order or refund my money. This whole thing took an entire month, and I am beyond enraged. Good news! I have zines, and they are shipping out this week, so thank you so much for your patience.
This issue features a story by the fantastic Giby who was at Combo Breaker this summer and his adventures taking part in the event. He got to meet up with a lot of great players, people and checked out a lot of awesome games. I also started featuring a new segment where I dive into unboxing of older games, so be sure to check out the images from that. I also have some great art by Dasyati and yours truly, and overall it’s a good issue despite the lateness of the printing.

Dank Art

Missed the Dank Art? Check it out here! I’m always sketching and working on art from the games streamed by people I follow on twitch. As always, I enjoy people who play retro, classic and obscure PC games, and I try to promote everyone I follow. Check out the streams: LordBBH, Aquas, Zallard1, Retrograde Tom, Macaw45, Omnigamer, Duke Donuts, Tondagossa, Goati, SQPat, Chuboh and CapnClever.

Joe and Mac 3 SNES – Macaw45

Punch Out NES – Zallard1

Beasts of Horror DOS – Macaw45

Edge PC-98 – Macaw45

Joe and Mac 2 – Macaw45

Innocent Until Caught DOS – RetrogradeTom

Bio Menace DOS – Macw45

Journey to the West for DOS – Macaw45

Policenauts PS1 – AnnK

Briganty PC-98 – Macaw45

Gothic 2 Gold – RetrogradeTom

Nightmare Busters SNES – Macaw45

Policenauts PC-98 – Macaw45

Secret PS2 Stream – Duke Donuts

Joe and Mac 2 – Macaw45

Aqy Moo!

Battle Zeque Den SNES – Macaw45

Red Zone Sega Genesis – Duke Donuts

The Destroyer from Jail Arcade – Macaw45

Pinball Dreams Deluxe for DOS – CapnClever

NFL Blitz 200 Gold Edition Arcade – LordBBH

The Destroyer from Jail Arcade – Macaw45

My Eyes! PC-98 – SQPat

Belzerion for 3DO – Macaw45

Woody Woodpecker Sega Mega Drive – Goati

Suikoden II – Omnigamer

Red Zone PC-98 – Macaw45

Castle of the Winds for DOS- CapnClever

Who Has Time for Time Off These Days?

Adventures with the MSX

Since I got Windows working on my Mac I have been going back to some of the translated versions of games that I love for the MSX, mainly Snatcher. When I was trying to play thru this game before on my Mac set up I was using an emulator called Coco things were running smoothly until the text started to muddle and layer all over itself. Guys. pro tip: the easy fix for a lot of emulation problems on a Mac is to run Parallels and play games using Windows. For years I have been pulling my hair out trying to get older games to work on my Mac with not great results so breaking down and getting Windows was my last resort. I’m not even mad.

The first game I am re-looking at on the MSX is Snatcher which came out in 1988 by the infamous Hideo Kojima. Earlier in the year, I played through SD Snatcher on my Mac and talked a lot about the JRPG mechanics and differences between that and the later Sega CD port. Playing the game now I get to share how the game was originally intended to play as a dramatic film noir visual novel. When you compare MSX Snatcher to the later ports there are a lot of similarities as it was an almost direct port however a bunch of things were changed or censored due to graphic violence, overtly sexual themes and copyright violations.

I’m playing a strange translation of MSX Snatcher that really needs a re-edit. You might think that’s a high negative, but the Engrish is a whole new level of entertainment when I stream it. It’s unfortunate that this game will most likely never see a re-release and get a proper translation so that means its emulation and fan translations all the way.

Another interesting thing we discovered in my playthru of the game is the arcade gun tests modules the human faces look exactly like my pal and speedrunner Zallard1. Now I have more incentive to not shoot the humans as I don’t want to shoot my buddy Zallard1.

Dank Art

Lots of older stuff with newer stuff this week! I’m scanning in a bunch of these for the next issue of the Zine and touching up a few of the pieces where I rushed thru to get them done for the chats.

I try to share everything that I make for streams the best I can, so if you don’t see something here it’s because I have most likely forgotten or I just make so much Dank Art I’m saving it for an upcoming post.

Night Slave PC98

Alens vs Predator SNES

Burning Dragon PC98

The Tick SNES

The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse SNES

Alens vs Predator SNES

Giga Wing

Bonk III for TG16

Zavas 2: The Prophecy of Mehiltae PC98

Thunderforce 4 Sega Saturn

Bouphe plays Dizzy Games on Amiga

Strider

Comando on snes

Knights into Dreams Sega Saturn

Punch Out King Hippo

Squirtle sqPat

Air Alert 2 PC98

The Death and Return of Superman

Quest for Glory

An adorable Pokemon wants to snuggle! Hug it!

Old Japanese PC98 Computer Games

Rags to Riches for C64

Plok! for snes

My Hero on arcade

Tugboat for Arcade

Beasts of Horrors

Pocky and Rocky SNES

UnBoxing Boyz!

A strange yet wonderful package arrived this week with a lot of cool gifts. Thank you so much to the anonymous gifter for this wonderful surprise package full of everything that I love. For those who are not in the loop, I have not been in the best of health the last few weeks and I have been in and out of the hospital. When I went to go check my mail this week I almost fell over with excitement at the sight of a strange package in there. I cannot thank you enough and I will make good use of it in future streams and feature a lot of the contents in future UnBoxing photo features in the Dank Zine.

For those who don’t know, I’ve started a new feature in the Zine where I feature photo spreads of some of the cool stuff in my collection that I have acquired over the years. It’s almost like doing an exciting unboxing online but 2D (lol).

UPDATES

It’s the long weekend which means I’m stuck working this Sunday. Don’t worry, my cosy Sunday stream will be moved to Monday and I should be going thru a bunch of fun games that day. I do want to go thru and play a bunch of stuff from my actual systems so if you have the day off Monday, come spend it with me and we will go thru a bunch of fun stuff in the comfort of my cosy apartment.

As I mentioned earlier, I have been quite sick. Many of you might have noticed that I have dramatically changed in a very short time. It is a little scary, but a lot of it has to do with my thyroid and I have been working a lot with my doctors to figure out what the next step will be. I will keep you all posted on what is going on as I don’t want to alarm anyone if I have to step away for a bit. All I can say is please don’t worry because it is what it is and I’ll do my best not to let it slow me down.

The Zine should be arriving Tuesday so stay tuned for giveaways, updates and chances to get free Dank stuff!