Robot Claw

Happy Birthday Game Boy!

April 21st, 2019

30 years ago today Nintendo released their first portable game system: the Game Boy.

That’s a very early Japanese advert touting the ‘handy game machine’ (being played by young boys obviously lost/abandoned in the Australian outback)! As you see the system was very much marketed at children, but as we know now went on to become beloved by players of all ages.

The Game Boy went on to sell almost 120 million units in the fourteen years it was sold, and directly led into the followup Game Boy Advance and then DS series. Many competing handheld consoles came and went, but none made much of a dent in a market absolutely dominated by Nintendo’s Game Boys.

I’ve loved this device since it was released, and to this day handhelds (especially Nintendo ones) are my favorite game systems. Between the Game Boy and it’s followups I own over twenty pieces of hardware and over six hundred games! Needless to say the release of the Game Boy 30 years back had a direct effect on my life 🙂

I’ve written about my (original model) Game Boy collection before. You can read that here (and yes I misspelled the console name throughout). In preparing this post I dug out my collection for another look-see. Here’s a shot of a portion of the game boxes I mentioned five years ago:

And here’s another shot of all five of my Game Boys (all of which still work):

I was looking for a particular game to feature, and found these four Japanese release Pokémon games I bought to play since I couldn’t wait for the USA releases:

(Yes I ended up buying all the USA versions as well, except for Pokémon Card 2 which was never localized!)

And since my original post I’ve added a few more games to my collection, including two more beautiful Wizardry games:

And this guy, bought for ¥100 in Japan last January:

I fired up the above just now on one of my Game Boy Pockets just for some nostalgia…

It was terrible 🙂

The Game Boy may be ‘obsolete’ now, but it will never be forgotten. It’s legacy includes not just numerous followup systems, but also a library of amazing games many of which are still great fun today. The systems themselves are notoriously robust so if you’ve got one in an attic somewhere why not get it out, pop in some batteries, and fire up Tetris again for some late 80’s gaming nostalgia?

Posted in Collecting, Games, History, Otaku, Retro, Tech | Comments Closed

Eggstravaganza

April 20th, 2019

JK visited today, and even though we all know she’s here mostly to see Zoffy I felt as a good host I needed to have an activity planned. And with tomorrow being Easter the obvious choice was this:

I don’t remember ever dyeing eggs at Easter, so I bought some of these inexpensive kits to try it. It’s very easy, toss a tablet into a mix of water and vinegar and dip a hard-boiled egg in. The kits come with crayons that you use to write on the eggs to keep portions undyed.

Naturally I went with the obvious design: Gudetama. My first attempt was a bit experimental:

But I got better with my second (see later). Other issues arose with the coloring for my Grimace egg:

And the fact that I dropped my K-Pop egg (that I had done for Bernard):

But overall it was fun and the eggs came out better than I expected!

We made a few each and here they all are. What do you think?

In case you’re wondering they won’t be wasted. KLS and I aren’t boiled egg fans, but JK will take them home and turn them into sandwiches 🙂

Posted in Art, Crafts, Food, Miscellaneous | Comments Closed

Her Name

April 18th, 2019

Some of you asked about Zoffy’s name. It’s not original; she was named after this guy:

That’s Zoffy, inhabitant of The Land Of Light, a Space Garrison Commander and leader of the Ultra Brothers. He was Ultraman’s supervisor in the original series, and only the second Ultra Soldier to appear in the very long running franchise (now 53 years and counting).

Zoffy’s a cool and enigmatic dude, but even greater than his style and accomplishments is his epic name.

I’ve been using it for years in various games, and it wasn’t until after Yossie crossed the bridge that I realized ‘Zoffy’ satisfied our cat naming convention: two syllables ending with ‘-ie’ or ‘-y’ sound.

That realization planted a seed in our minds. Weeks before we met little Zoffy I even drew and sent myself the above postcard (which alas never arrived). Even then I think we’d chosen the name of our next kitty.

And a fitting name it is, carrying with it the prestige and mystery of the M78 Nebula Space Garrison! Little Zoffy has big shoes to fill, but I think her potential is limitless 🙂

Posted in Cats, Otaku | Comments Closed

Zoffy Update!

April 12th, 2019

We’ve had little Zoffy for two weeks now and she is settling in well.

About a week ago we let her out of the room she first stayed in and into the entire house. She was a bit nervous at first but in a day or so had finished exploring every conceivable nook and cranny and had claimed the house as hers.

Of course this means she’s now met Emi, and I’m happy to say that while they’re not fast friends yet, there’s no major disagreements between them. Zoffy is more nervous of Emi than vice versa though, and tries to avoid getting too close.

Zoffy is quite tall for a young cat, and one of her tricks is to stand up and look at things like a meerkat! (Yes that’s me napping on the couch…) Look at her cute stubby legs…

She loves lazing on the bed, or even sleeping in the laundry baskets…

But more than anything right now she loves playing with the myriad of toys scattered around. This includes things she shouldn’t touch (such as toys on my work desk!) so I have to keep a close eye on her to make sure she’s not getting into trouble.

She’s very active, very hungry and loves attention so never runs from a pat. The only quirk that I hope she grows out of soon is she is terrified of the TV 🙂

Needless to say she’s filling a void with her cuteness and our smiles 🙂

Posted in Cats, Family | 1 Comment »

Perfect Cell

April 6th, 2019

I haven’t posted about a model kit in a while, so here’s the latest I’ve made:

This is a character from Dragonball Z (a Japanese manga) done as a plastic model kit! Here’s the runners showing all the colours:

Much like the recent Miku bust I’d made the instructions were bilingual which I suppose makes the kit more accessible. But as usual the almost-completely pictorial assembly guide made it an easy build despite some tiny pieces.

Notably the kit includes a ‘muscle building’ system which just means his mottled skin is made by overlaying a lighter piece onto the darker background:

The precision is as usual for Bandai – excellent – and this works very well.

The head contains about 20 pieces alone and the final kit probably a couple of hundred:

It’s quite large and very posable, although as usual I chose not to display it in battle mode with energy ball attack.

Overall a fun build that looks great. If I was a bigger DBZ fan I’d certainly buy more from this range.

Posted in Crafts, Miscellaneous, Models, Otaku, Toys | Comments Closed