Demo Disc Vol. 24: World War Wumbo

While the concept of the "console war" in video gaming still exists to this day, it's arguable that nothing has ever truly reached the notoriety of the "16-bit War" between the Sega Genesis & the Super Nintendo in North America. In the region that I call home the 80s were mainly dominated by the Nintendo Entertainment System, a console that managed to revitalize the home video game console market following the Crash of 1983, though a big part of that domination was due to tactics & regulations from Nintendo of America that would later be called out as being monopolistically illegal, like literally prohibiting all third-party publishers from publishing games for the competition, at least for a certain period of time. This domination would change with the launch of the Sega Genesis on August 14, 1989 (which had previously launched in Japan as the Mega Drive on October 29, 1988), Sega's 16-bit console that had a slightly slow start but in 1990 would see stronger sales, and once Sonic the Hedgehog debuted in 1991 (& was bundled with the console, replacing Altered Beast) the "war" was truly on. The Genesis would consistently outsell the SNES across four Christmas seasons (1991 to 1994), with it even getting to the point where the Genesis would outsell the SNES 2:1, but in the end Nintendo would still manage to defeat Sega in the "16-bit War" for one main reason: Nintendo Played the Long Game.

The release of Donkey Kong Country in late 1994 would help start a surge in SNES sales, while Nintendo of America's continued support of the console for the remainder of the decade with major new game releases continued to entice people to buy the console during the era of the PlayStation, Saturn, & N64. In comparison, Sega of America's own massive disarray in the mid-90s prevented the Genesis from seeing quite as consistent late-game support (~150-ish games from 1995 to 1998, compared to the SNES' ~250-ish), and the Mega Drive's consistent lack of popularity in Japan certainly didn't help things (no more than just 10 games developed in Japan on Genesis from 1995 to 1998, compared to a little over 40 on SNES). Still, the Genesis vs. SNES "war" makes for some really fun storytelling...

As mentioned, in Japan the battle wasn't really between the Mega Drive & the Super Famicom, but rather was more between NEC & Hudson Soft's PC-Engine & the Super Famicom, and even then it was more of a battle for second place, as the Super Famicom handily outsold the PC-Engine. However, Sega has always maintained a cult following in Japan, and sometime in the mid-00s that resulted in something interesting. Around that time a writer by the name of Anastasia Shestakova (which could very well be a pen name; their real identity is unknown) debuted a doujinshi in the digital pages of doujin web magazine Red Road titled Aoi Sekai no Chuushin de/The Center of the Blue World, with art by adult doujinshi artist Crimson, who herself had previously worked with her brother under the name Carmine & today also works as a YouTuber; despite the pedigree, Aoi Sekai no Chuushin de is not an H-doujin. This doujin reinterpreted the various console wars as literal wars between warring fantasy nations, & over time around 200 chapters (including the various side story chapters interspersed between the numbered ones) were produced by Shestakova & Crimson across five "Parts", with the first 50 being collected physically across nine volumes between 2007 & 2009; officially the doujin is still considered ongoing, but hasn't had a new chapter since November 11, 2018. The success & notoriety of Aoi Sekai no Chuushin de would result in publisher Micro Magazine wanting to publish it as an "official" manga, & the duo would take this opportunity to revamp their doujin, implementing new additions, making some changes, & properly inking all of the artwork this time, minus some scenes, like flashbacks, solely for effect. This resulted in Aoi Sekai no Chuushin de Kanzenban/The Core of the Blue World: Complete Edition, which came out between 2010 & 2013, collecting all of Parts 1 & 2 across 10 volumes, including the ~15 chapters that the initial nine-volume run didn't.

It's with the Complete Edition that Aoi Sekai no Chuushin de would find its greatest notoriety. A three-episode anime adaptation of Part 1 would get announced in early 2012, which Crunchyroll simulcasted before Media Blasters would eventually release it on dual-audio DVD & BD in 2017, and in early 2013 Seven Seas announced that it had licensed the Complete Edition of the manga for official English release; all of these official English releases would change the title to the, admittedly catchy, World War Blue. Seven Seas' release schedule for World War Blue did look to be a bit inconsistent, regularly swapping between every two months & every three months for the first seven volumes, before taking the better part of an entire year to release Volume 8 in mid-2015... and then that was it! Yeah, Seven Seas just stopped releasing World War Blue after Volume 8, despite there only being two more volumes to go of the version it was releasing, and their webpage for the manga is even still up to this very day. Seven Seas actually did respond to a question about World War Blue's cancellation in 2016, citing poor sales, & not even Media Blasters giving the anime a physical release a year later made them revive it for a mere two books. Despite coming out at a time where digital releases of manga were becoming more common, the World War Blue manga was a print-only release (in English, at least), though in all fairness the books Seven Seas did release remain relatively easy to get a hold of at (more or less) the original retail price; still, the irony that a digital doujin is physical-only in English is ridiculously thick.

If you're fine with Japanese, the original doujin version is still available in full on its official website, all the way up through Part 5's current hiatus (Part 2's links are oddly broken & need the Wayback Machine to actually read, though), though for this Demo Disc I'll focus solely on the eight volumes that came out in English; that said, I'll rely on the official site for images here, for simplicity's sake. Was World War Blue deserving of its cancellation by Seven Seas a mere two books before finishing because it wasn't actually all that good, or was it just a victim of other factors beyond its control? Let's boot it up & find out!

Doing It "The Wrong Way": My History with Masami Kurumada's Works as an English-Speaking American Fan

Unlike (seemingly) most English-speaking anime fans, of any generation apparently, I kind of got into anime a little bit later in life. Sure, I watched some anime that aired for kids growing up in the late 90s & early 00s, like Pokémon & Digimon, I do vaguely remember seeing the likes of Voltron & Transformers via reruns in the early 90s, etc., & that era of both FoxKids & Kids WB was filled with anime, as it's how I first saw stuff like Ultimate Muscle, Shaman King, & even Escaflowne. But I didn't even know about Toonami on Cartoon Network until 2002 or so (i.e. my first Gundam was G Gundam, not Gundam Wing, Gundam Seed, or the UC-era stuff between all of those), and it wasn't until 2004 that I decided to really get into anime more in-depth, despite already owning a handful of official DVD releases by that point. Entering into mid-2004 I was already 17-going-on-18 & a senior in high school, about to graduate & go to college, a far cry from the young teens (or younger, even) that I tend to see most anime fans reminisce about how they got into the fandom, & I hadn't watched stuff like Sailor Moon growing up, rented anime VHS tapes or DVDs that rental stores really shouldn't have been renting out to kids, seen other anime-focused programming blocks like Anime on Sci-fi in the 90s or Anime Unleashed in the 00s, or engaged in tape trading & the like. For me, my start into anime was as someone who was entering young adulthood & discovering digital fansubs, while also buying official releases as well. Also, I live & have grown up in the United States of America all my life, having only traveled outside of the country a handful of times (namely Hungary & Canada, both to visit family).

In that case, it's kind of all the more bizarre that I became such a massive fan of Masami Kurumada & his works... because, from all indications, I shouldn't be.

Effectively the way "North of Mexico"
sees Masami Kurumada, as proven by history.

Honestly, I don't like to write about my personal life here, mainly because I don't think there's really all that much to say. I've done it before, sure, but that was because they were related to the only real times I had anything interesting to tell the story of, like that time I got published on GameStop at age 17, or that one year I made next-to-no-effort YouTube videos (relatively) early on in the site's life, or that "Proto-Blog" I did before starting The Land of Obscusion. I really don't consider myself all that special, so I don't find much point in writing about my past as a fan of stuff, because (in the grand scheme of things) I'm not really all that different from most people. My love of writing about obscure & forgotten stuff isn't all that different from stuff other people love doing; it's just a difference in specificity of the subject itself. However, this is one of those exceptions, because this is truly something that's honestly rather unique about me, when compared to other English-speaking anime fans. Considering where I live, how long I've been into anime as an earnest fan, & how little anyone really cares about him in English-speaking fandom, there should be no feasible reason why I am such a fan of Masami Kurumada. And, indeed, it often feels like I am utterly alone in that regard, because while there are English-speaking "Saint Seiya fans" who have been anime fans for much longer than me (& are much more notable & cooler than me, in every way)... I did not become a fan like they did, it's why I have always referred to myself as a "Masami Kurumada fan", and it's why I went as far as dedicate an entire year of this blog to a single mangaka for his 50th Anniversary.

Obscusion B-List: Video Game Ports That Shouldn't Have Been Possible... But Actually Happened... STILL Yet Again

Complete transparency here for this piece: This was not originally planned in any way. I had hoped for something else to be ready for the first half of November that's (to some extent) out of my control, and it unfortunately didn't come to pass. I'm under no obligation to provide new writings every week or two... but I like to try. Therefore, instead of the usual introduction I would give this kind of Obscusion B-List article, I've decided to be 100% honest & admit that this was literally started on the prior Wednesday; for stuff like this I try to give myself at least a week, just to think things out & take my time. Also, let's face it, after three prior entries of this subject it's honestly just getting hard to make an intro that's somewhat unique from the prior ones. At least it's been around two years since the previous version of this B-List, which just happened to be how I wound up pacing these, completely by accident. Finally, I just like making these lists, because this is a really fun subject to look into.

Anyway, let's go over still yet another six video games that were ported to hardware that, in essence, really had no reasonable right or reason to be playing them!

In theory, every new piece of gaming hardware needs a handful game types at launch, and I don't necessarily mean specific genres. What I mean is that a good hardware launch should have at least one killer app that makes people want to buy it, at least one title that'll keep people coming back for more over & over, & at least one title that can showcase what the hardware is capable of. For that last example a common direction used to be releasing a port of some sort, something that wasn't capable at all on prior hardware (at least, not without major changes) to show people that this truly was "next-gen". Both the ColecoVision & NES had Donkey Kong, the Genesis had Altered Beast, the SNES had Final Fight & Gradius III, and the Dreamcast & PS2 had SoulCalibur & Tekken Tag Tournament, respectively, among other examples. The Game Boy Advance had a bunch of hardware spectacles for its launch in 2001, showcasing the handheld's ability to handle things that the Game Boy & Game Boy Color never could, and there were also ports of older games. Most of these were ports of 16-bit classics, like Earthworm Jim, Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure, & the SNES remake of Super Mario Bros. 2/USA, but there was one GBA launch title (for North America & Europe, at least) that dared to go even further & show that the GBA was truly a 32-bit handheld: Rayman Advance.