Neat Junk Archive

Old Japanese Magazine Ads

One thing we needed for our latest (currently unannounced) book was the earliest example of English appearing in Japanese media that we could find. I scoured auction sites looking for old Japanese magazines from the 1960s and 70s, and I found a few neat things. None of these examples ended up in the book, and it’d be a shame for these photos to go unseen.

Attack of the Giant Package from Japan!

A big batch of goodies arrived from Japan today, hooray! Pretty much all of it’s going to be used for Legends of Localization stuff eventually, some sooner than others. Many thanks to Dr. Fedora for being the middleman for it all – it would’ve cost probably twice as much if it weren’t for you, so thanks again!

I used to have a Japanese PS2 that I hardly ever used, but when I went to try it out a few months ago it suddenly died in a bad way 🙁 So unfortunately I can’t check out the Japanese Gitaroo Man just yet.

I thought I could play the Japanese Symphony of the Night on my American PS3, but alas, I was wrong about that – it gives me a lame region error.

So it looks like I’m going to have to bite the bullet and get a Japanese PS2 someday, the only problem is that they don’t manufacture them anymore. Weird modchip/disc swapping stuff is another option too, but that seems like a hassle and unreliable. Emulation is another option too, but my computers aren’t very good and I was never very happy with the state of PS1 emulation the last time I checked.

I dunno – if anyone has any suggestions, let me know!

Finally, thanks to everyone who’s donated so far – my recent progress meter experiment has been pretty interesting and promising, and it’s a big reason I’m able to pick up stuff like this and eventually share the gooey goodness of the info within it all. So thanks a million!

(Seriously, give me a million dollars please)

– Clyde

Generosity: Zelda II Famicom Disk and Booklet!

A kind fellow by the name of Eric recently sent me a copy of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link for the Famicom Disk System for free! Thanks a ton, man! Here’s what he sent:

I’ve never seen a Famicom Disk System manual in person (well, I probably have, but just never paid attention), so I was surprised to see how tiny they were. Here’s a peek inside this one:

And here’s a closer look at the disk – I’m still shocked that the disks didn’t come with protector things on them 😯 Hopefully this disk still works after all these years…

Anyway, Zelda II is an absolute must-do project for me, so there’s no doubt I’ll get to it at some point. I think I want to do a few other small comparison projects first, though. I don’t want to end up focusing entirely on one franchise or series, you know? But I can’t wait to do Zelda II so I can move on to III and beyond. Man, those are gonna be some majorly fun projects too 😀

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out my detailed analysis and comparison of the first Zelda game here!