The Land of Obscusion's Twelve Favorite Posts of 2023 & 2024!! Part 2

While 2024 on this blog was meant primarily as a year to celebrate Masami Kurumada's 50th Anniversary, I did also make an effort to finally write about a number of subjects that I've long wanted to do, and the same is true of that in 2023. Some example of pieces I've had intentions to do for literal years but didn't get to until the past two years, which didn't make the cut for either part of this list, include reviewing both of the anime originally released in 3D on the ill-fated VHD format, going over the sort of bizarre history of Kazuya Minekura's Bus Gamer, pitting the movies Zzyzx & Zyzzyx Road against each other simply because of their similar titles, going over the original four One Piece TV specials, covering Takara's entire Nettou/Deadheat Fighters series of Game Boy fighting game ports, doing an overview of Koei's short-lived Crimson Sea duology, reviewing Face's odd overhead arcade shooter named after Nostradamus, & covering the "Atypical Alchemists Associate"-branded games that NEC Home Electronics released as its final ever video games. Some of these maybe didn't quite come out exactly like I was hoping they would, hence why they didn't make the cut for this list, but I'm glad I finally made the time to cover each & every one of them, and I definitely still have plenty of subjects that I've been wanting to write about for years; I just need to make the time & get motivated enough to start them.

Make no mistake: I'm not bereft of stuff to write about here at The Land of Obscusion. It's simply a case of whether or not I feel that it's still worth going forward, considering how few actually do read 99% of the stuff I write here. But enough of that talk, let's see what else from the past two years I feel shined the brightest.

A Complete Overview of the PS2's GunCon 2 Rail Shooter Decet (November 9, 2023)

Being born in 1986 I think I managed to be lucky when it came to technology, because I grew up during a time when tech itself was advancing very quickly, sometimes by what felt like leaps & bounds, but at the same time I was able to fully grow up with & appreciate the tech & products that came before. Rotary phones were something I still used a few times early on, major TV networks were still airing decades old cartoons and B&W programming alongside the then-new stuff, VHS was still the standard home video format before DVD truly took hold in the early 00s, computers & the internet were still establishing themselves as required for society throughout the 90s... and the TVs everyone used were made using cathode-ray tubes, a.k.a. CRTs. That last one is important here because once TVs that didn't use CRT tech (LED, plasma, OLED, etc.) starting becoming ubiquitous in the 00s it meant that a specific genre of video game became effectively lost to time: the light-gun rail shooter. The PlayStation 2, by technically still being designed primarily for display on CRTs, would become the final console to really see something resembling "regular" support for light-gun games, though even then it was only 16 games, in total. In 2021 I did an overview of Capcom's Gun Survivor series, something I could only properly cover due to me luckily having a mid-00s CRT TV to play the PS2 games with via the GunCon 2. However, I still wanted to cover the remaining light-gun rail shooters that supported the GunCon 2 at some point, and in 2023 I finally took the time to do just that.

The Land of Obscusion's Twelve Favorite Posts of 2023 & 2024!! Part 1

It's Boxing Day, once again, and it's been two years since the last "Favorite Posts" list, so here we are; yes, I've been very busy this month. As of this piece I'll have been doing The Land of Obscusion for just over 14 whole years, and since I turned 38 this past June that means that I'm roughly 38.5 years... which means that I've spent roughly 4/11 of my whole life doing something with this blog, or roughly 36.36%, which is a totally rational number; this is the kind of dumb humor you should all come to expect from me, after all these years. Next December will mark 15 years, and when that happens I'll bring back the old anniversary post I used to do across the first 10 years, but needless to say I think there are really only two explanations for the longevity of The Land of Obscusion: Either I'm too stubborn to accept the simple fact that barely anyone really cares about the majority of the stuff I write about... or I'm too dense to realize that I should probably stop & just move on, as I've already spent over a third of my life on this already.

To be fair, it's likely a little bit of both... but in for a penny, in for a pound, am I right? Anyway, let's see what 12 posts/subjects I've written (about) over both 2023 & 2024 have given me the warmest feelings when I think back on them!

An "Overdosed" History of Manga?! Translating & Examining the Yarisugi Manga Timeline (January 9, 2023)

For all its faults as a company, & there's plenty to say there... there's a ton of weird things you can find for sale over on Amazon, especially the Amazon Marketplace. In late 2022 I was looking up something (I honestly can't recall what, as I am wont to look up random things) & one of the results was a listing over on Amazon. While looking over the listing I happened to notice something in the related results section of that page, specifically a Japanese book about manga. If you look carefully you can find all manner of Japanese-language books on the North American Amazon webstore, some with listings in English but various others listed in Japanese. In this instance it was a book from 2015 titled Yarisugi Manga Retsuden: Legend of Overdosed Comics by Nobunaga Minami, and it was being sold by a Marketplace seller based out of Japan for only $20.29 (with free shipping!). After looking it up & seeing that it was a book covering a variety of wild & crazy manga that "overdid" things in some way, including titles like Ring ni Kakero & Team Astro, I decided to order it through Amazon, since it was a very reasonable price. It eventually arrived, and while I obviously couldn't properly read the book itself, as my knowledge of written Japanese isn't good enough for long-form prose, I did come across something interesting when I saw a massive two-page chart across Pages 16 & 17.

Ya Boy Kongming!: Awwww, Shibuya! Don't You DARE Be SOUR! CLAP for Your WORLD Famous War Tactician, & FEEL the POWER!! (of Music)

Born in the year 181 CE in what's now Yinan County, Shandong, China, Zhuge Liang Kongming grew up during the tumultuous final years of the Eastern Han dynasty, as various generals & warlords started claiming areas of China as their own, eventually resulting in the Three Kingdoms era during the 200s. Kongming was orphaned at a young age & wound up being a bit of a traveler in his early years, all while indulging in his love of reading, slowly growing his intellect while living a mostly carefree life. It wouldn't be until warlord Liu Bei visited him three times between 207 & 208, after the recommendation of Xu Shu, that Kongming would finally decide to side with someone in war. He decided to stay true to Liu Bei as the two would go on to establish the Shu Han in 221, with Kongming becoming Imperial Chancellor/Prime Minister before becoming regent following Liu Bei's death in 223. During all this time Kongming would become renown throughout all of China as a brilliant tactician, being nicknamed "The Sleeping Dragon" due to his initial reclusiveness, and after the passing of his close friend Kongming would try his hardest to ensure that the Shu Han would become the ruling kingdom of all of China. Unfortunately, in the midst of a stalemate during the Battle of Wuzhang Plains with the Wei that went over 100 days, Zhuge Liang passed away in camp sometime between September 11 & October 10, 234 at the age of 53. The Shu Han continued to fight to achieve their beloved chancellor's dream, but eventually would be conquered by the Wei in the latter part of 263.

However... what if this wasn't truly the end of Kongming's story?

In late 2019, writer Yuto Yotsuba (Elly Golden and the Mysterious Switch, The Casual Chronicles of a Great Saint) teamed with artist Ryo Ogawa to debut the manga Paripi Koumei/Kongming of the Party People in the digital pages of Kodansha's manga app Comic Days. The manga is a variant of what's now generally called a "reverse isekai", i.e. someone from another world (or, in this case, time period) comes to our world/time, with the concept being "What if Zhuge Liang reincarnated in modern day Japan, specifically Shibuya, & became part of the nightlife/EDM industry?". Yotsuba & Ogawa's manga would become a hit in Japan, so much so that Kodansha would even move it from Comic Days to the physical pages of Weekly Young Magazine in late 2021, where it continues to run to this day alongside titles like Minami-ke, Kaiji, MF Ghost, Under Ninja, Tawawa on Monday, & many others; as of this review the manga currently has 19 volumes released in Japan. Even prior to this move Kodansha USA licensed the manga for English release, renaming it Ya Boy Kongming!. To help promote this planned move to physical serialization, a 12-episode TV anime adaptation of Ya Boy Kongming! was announced a few days prior to the first physical chapter, one that would debut on April 5, 2022 & be animated by P.A. Works; from what I can tell, this adapts through most of Volume 4. Despite some initial decrying from hardcore P.A. fans that the studio had "sold out" due to this being the first ever manga adaptation from the studio, despite it already having a history of adapting visual novels, prose novels, & even smartphone games, the anime would earn itself widespread praise once it started simulcasting over on Hidive, both for its excellent animation as well as its catchy array of songs. On March 1, 2024 a compilation movie titled Ya Boy Kongming!: Road to Summer Sonia debuted in theaters in Japan, before getting streamed on Hidive as well. There was also a 10-episode J-Drama adaptation in 2023 (with a theatrical film sequel just recently announced for 2025) & a stage play in 2024.

Normally an anime this well known & recent wouldn't be something I'd cover here on The Land of Obscusion... but this wasn't by my own choice. Instead, I have once again decided to be a part of Anime Secret Santa, this time being run by the Taiiku Podcast, and for this year I asked my Secret Santa to give me picks that would be "outside my usual". Therefore, I was recommended Ya Boy Kongming! (for its music & historical focuses), Flying Witch (as I don't tend to watch many iyashikei & slice of life anime), & Akiba Maid War (for its usage of maids & moe). In all honesty all three were very good options for me, but I decided to go with Ya Boy Kongming! for one main reason: I actually had already planned on doing a few Romance of the Three Kingdoms-related anime pieces for 2025, and this is a perfect tie-in to that, due to it starring one of Romance's most iconic characters. So, as recommended by Vintagecoats (who I actually was Secret Santa for way back in 2014), it's time to hit the dance floor, ask the DJ to "let it play", & see if the Ya Boy Kongming! anime is a true "Party King".

Ring ni Kakero, in Masami Kurumada & Others' Words: The Author's Notes & Afterwords (feat. shmuplations) Part 3: Volumes 19-25

As we reach the end of 2024, the year marking Masami Kurumada's 50th Anniversary as a mangaka, I think it's only appropriate that we see the third & final round of author's notes & afterwords from the original 25-volume tankouban release of Ring ni Kakero, which came out between 1978 & 1983 in Japan. Just as with the prior two rounds back in January & June these translations come by way of shmuplations, & while the first round featured mostly afterwords written by professional boxers (with only a couple of mangaka), & the second round was mostly mangaka (with only a couple of boxers & even an actor), this final round is nothing but mangaka, most of which either were already or would become icons of the industry! Of course, we also see the last remaining author's notes from Kurumada himself, and since we only have seven volumes to go over this time around I've also added in a bonus afterword from Kurumada that was written nearly 19 years after the final tankouban of Ring ni Kakero saw release in Japan.

So let's see what Kurumada had to say one last time, as well as how a veritable hall of fame of manga legends (for the most part, at least) felt about the man himself back in the early 1980s!

Volume 19 of Ring ni Kakero came out on November 15, 1981, roughly a month after the final chapter, the first one in Jump history to be published entirely in color (in this case, full color opening pages & red-toned pages for the rest), and it's the only tankouban to see release during the interim between RnK's finale & the debut of Fuma no Kojirou a few months later. Also, as you can see to the left, around this point Shueisha started including what looked like a proof of purchase of some sort in the bottom left of a tankouban's dust cover's inner front flap, next to the author's note, featuring the blue outline of an apple with "LOVE" written on the inside (*cue Haddaway*). For this volume's author's note we see Kurumada describe life itself as being like that of a poem, and that one should aspire to live their life as though it was poetry:

"For men, their life itself is a poem.

Poetry is an aspiration. When the anger, joy, sadness, and passion of the heart are embodied in our actions, without embellishment or pretense, it will surpass any great poem in the world.

I hope to write good poems that will touch your hearts and convince you."

Volume 19's afterword comes from Yoshihiro Takahashi, best known today as the creator of various dog-related action/drama manga, most notably the Ginga Series (Ginga - Nagareboshi Gin, Ginga Legend Weed, etc.). However, back in late 1981 Takahashi was still two years away from debuting Gin, though his OG dog manga, Shiroi Senshi Yamato, was still running in Monthly Shonen Jump. Instead, by this point he had completed his first hit manga, baseball series Akutare Giants, the year prior & was about 16 or so chapters into his next Weekly Jump series, the fishing manga Aozora Fishing, which he drew for writer Hiroichi Fuse; sadly, this series would end in mid-1982 after only 42 weekly chapters across five volumes. For this afterword Takahashi looks back on when he risked missing the deadline for the very first chapter of either Akutare Giants or Yamato, as they both debuted in the same year & Takahashi just says his "first serialized manga", so his editor sent over some scrappy little artist to assist him so that he wouldn't be late: Masami Kurumada. This would likely be in early 1976, after Sukeban Arashi's cancellation in late 1975, but before Ring ni Kakero's debut in early 1977 (& also before Kurumada's one-shot Mikeneko Rock, which appeared in Monthly Jump at the end of 1976), and is the only proof I've ever seen of Kurumada being an "assistant" to Takahashi, though it seems to have only been for a single chapter:

Obscusion B-Side: Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog: Yose (Endgame)

Previously on Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog:

"And with that... we've finally come to the end of Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog! All 50(+1) officially released cartridge games in order of release date (more or less), and I hope through this series you've come to better understand the kind of life the Atari Jaguar had, because I sure as hell had... That being said, though... the overall official (cartridge) catalog is actually shockingly better than you'd expect!"

Make no mistake: The Atari Jaguar was an unmitigated failure of a console that was produced by Atari Corporation, a company that was clearly unable to continue operating like it once did, i.e. being forced to return to consoles as its primary focus after its focus on computers had stopped being profitable. At only around 250,000 physical units produced it is now one of the harder to acquire video game consoles for most people to try its catalog on, though today there are other options out there, like the well regarded & constantly enhanced & updated software emulator BigPEmu by Rich Whitehouse, which first appeared in Digital Eclipse's celebrated Atari 50 collection in 2022 & even plays games better than the actual console ever could. So, after taking about 3.5 years to cover the entire official (cartridge) catalog for the Atari Jaguar, what have I learned... and how do the games rank for me, personally?

The Jag Was Screwed From Day One

Let's be totally frank here: Atari Corporation was never truly a well run company. While there were certainly flaws to be found back in the OG Atari, Inc. days run by Nolan Bushnell, arguably enough so that he needed to sell the company to Warner Communications just so that the VCS/2600 could even become a reality, there's no doubt that Jack Tramiel was not the right person to run an "Atari". While he inherited the console gaming side of things he showed no interest in it until the NES had hit it big... and even then he relied on outdated tech to compete, as the 2600 was nine years old when it got revived in 1986 as a budget-priced option, while the 7800 came out two years too late (tech-wise, at least); these endeavors were, at best, successful enough to break even. Meanwhile, Tramiel was already an infamous name in the personal computer industry from his time with Commodore, so while the PC side of things was still somewhat viable when Tramiel formed Atari Corp. his bad reputation put a glass ceiling on it, and when that started to underperform we got dumb ideas like the Atari XEGS (which actually sold even worse than the Jag, at only around 100,000 units!). Things weren't much better with the handheld Lynx in 1989, with Atari Corp. generally considered to have purposefully messed around with Epyx precisely so that Atari could have full ownership of the handheld itself, which in turn only made it easier for Epyx to eventually declare bankruptcy, rather than use the Lynx to help keep Epyx around to benefit both companies.

Obscusion B-Side: Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog: 1997 to 2001

Previously on Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog:

"When I first started Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog a little over three years ago I honestly wasn't 100% sure how long it'd take for me to finish it, or even if I would actually finish it. However, we're now down to the final stretch... and while all prior parts of this series required multiple entries to cover a single calendar year, our next & final part will kind of feel like a whirlwind."

In 2021 RetroHQ released the Jaguar GameDrive, a microSD card-driven flash cart that allowed one to play just about any game ever released for Atari Corporation's final console, including Jaguar CD games without needing the actual accessory (though compatibility still isn't quite 100% there, last I checked), opening up the console's catalog to anyone who owned an actual Jaguar console but didn't want to spend the exorbitant prices for many of its more cherished & rare titles. Since I happen to own a "Jag" I decided that the GameDrive would be perfect for me, turning my console into essentially an "All-in-One" device... and that put a thought into my head. Inspired by much more talented people than me, namely the likes of Jeremy Parish's "Works Series" & PandaMonium's "PandaMonium Reviews Every U.S. Saturn Game" (which both tackle console catalogs in chronological order of release), I decided to take a look at the Atari Jaguar's own catalog release history; at only 50 officially licensed games it felt reasonably doable. Instead of tackling it one release at a time in immense depth, like Parish or Panda, I decided to bundle them together in batches of four or five (& later a couple of trios, due to later changes in release order being unearthed), which I felt was fair enough. Starting with my look at the original test launch line-up in late 1993 on June 6, 2021 I have since spent the past 3.5 years occasionally returning to this series, and while I initially planned it out as an 11-part series, some later revelations about a more accurate release schedule made me change it into a 12-part series (& it'll technically be 13, since there'll be a final thoughts piece after this), but I have finally made it to the end.

Atari Corporation may be long dead (at least, in the form it was when it first launched the console), but the Atari Jaguar itself has continued to live on to this very day... so let's prowl the catalog one last time & see how things fared between the years 1997 & 2001.

When we last left off, JT Storage (the steward of Atari Corporation's lifeless husk, at this point) made a deal with liquidator TigerSoftware on December 26, 1996 in order to just sell off & get rid of the remaining Jaguar stock that was left over, i.e. ~100,000 unsold consoles & a variety of unsold games & standalone controllers. Well, come the next issue of TigerDirect's catalog in January 1997 people could mail order a special Atari Jaguar bundle that contained the console, one standard controller (i.e. the OG model with only three face buttons & the keypad), and the trio of Cybermorph, Checkered Flag, & Kasumi Ninja (what a roster...), all for just $59.99, "a $300 value"! Meanwhile, an additional standard controller was available for $19.99, while four different three-game bundles were available for $29.99 each. Said packs were Iron Soldier, FlipOut!, & Tempest 2000 (a pretty damn good deal), White Men Can't Jump, Doom, & Attack of the Mutant Penguins (a bizarre combination, for sure), Defender 2000, Super Burnout, & Missile Command 3D (a solid bundle, at least), & FlipOut!, I-War, & Supercross 3D (easily the worst bundle). Even then, though, the tradition of "stretching the truth" when it came to the Jag was maintained, as Tiger labeled it "The World Most Advanced 3-D Game System!", despite the Nintendo 64 already being on the market by this point, at least in Japan & North America. From what I can tell there's next to no real info as to how successful TigerSoftware was at selling the Jag via mail order catalog, but I will admit that being able to buy the console with the first & third bundles (i.e. nine games) for around $120 honestly wouldn't have been a bad deal; toss in the second bundle (if only for Doom) to make it $150 & it'd still be a solid enough deal.