I just played through both these potential Mega Man successors, Mighty No. 9 and Azure Striker Gunvolt, as well as their sequels and crossover titles. I had a lot of fun and wanted to commemorate the playable cast, some of whom have really cool designs. I love Ray a lot but her very complex look was difficult to pixellate!
The followup to Inti’s crossover Mighty Gunvolt expands on its predecessor in all the best ways, with more features, more complexity, and a style wonderfully beyond 8-bit.
This is one chapter taken from the Japanese children’s story/activity book, Mario no Boken Land (Mario’s Adventure Land). The book was written and illustrated by Ritsuko Kawai, the creator of Hamtaro. The scans come from Ragey once again. The book covers various games, from Yoshi’s Story to Wario Land 2, with Mario Party interstitials and also an adaptation of Super Mario 64 that brings Donkey Kong along for the ride. But the one I was interested in was this 10-page Diddy Kong Racing section, which tells a story related to the game through wonderfully cute full-colour art and simple puzzles.
Mario and Peach accompany Diddy on this adventure, and I’ve translated the whole thing into English. Some of the puzzles were kind of untranslatable, but I think the point here is seeing Wizpig the cutest he’s ever been. Read right-to-left, and please enjoy despite most of the puzzles already having been completed by the previous owner of the book! The answers are on the last page anyway if you’re having trouble ;)
I enjoyed the gameplay of Gunvolt 1 but struggled to engage with the characters and story. That goes double for the sequel, which is a very direct continuation.
Trouble again! This was a surprisingly fun and engaging show. Some good Star Wars stories and wacky shenanigans. I put 3PO and R2 in the middle, as they are often caught up in the middle of wild circumstances. On the left are masters and friends, with villains and foes on the right. Each row represents an arc of the show, or matched selections from a run of the comics.
More rare Benimaru Itoh comics for you, this time from Shogakukan’s Wonder Life Special guidebooks for the first three Picross games from Jupiter (Mario’s Picross (GB), Mario’s Super Picross (SNES), and Picross 2 (GB)). Again they are in full, vibrant colour and read left-to-right and with sound effects in English already, so they’re very accessible. Also I translated all the text from Japanese into English.
Also included are all the unique artworks that Itoh drew for the books, collated and cleaned up. I love his style! I also love Peach’s outfits, Wario’s absurd villain portrayal, and Picross puzzles being an integral part of the comic’s plot.
Thanks again to Ragey for the scans, and it’s worth checking out the raws because these books also contain a wealth of unique Picross puzzles in their pages. There are solvable puzzles during the comic, but some of them had been filled in already by the book’s previous owner. And I didn’t bother translating any text explaining how to solve Picross that appeared in the comic sections.
The game known internationally as Super Mario Bros. 2 is called Super Mario USA in Japan. Top left: the game’s cover as seen in the North American version of Super Mario All-Stars, top right: the cover in the Japanese version.
Bottom: Drawings of “American Mario” from the official Japanese guide for Super Mario All-Stars, based on the name “Super Mario USA”. Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Store | Source: see bottom of all images
And here’s another alternate depiction of “American Mario” (and American Peach!) from Futabasha’s Action Comics Super Mario 4koma Manga Kingdom volume 4, drawn by Harumi Shimamoto. It’s quite bizarre. The text says something like “Feeling very American” or if I were to put it in the common parlance of the youth, “big American mood”.
And let’s not forget “American Luigi” from the same comic as the original image (who Mario mistakes for Mexican Luigi).
The game known internationally as Super Mario Bros. 2 is called Super Mario USA in Japan. Top left: the game’s cover as seen in the North American version of Super Mario All-Stars, top right: the cover in the Japanese version.
Bottom: Drawings of “American Mario” from the official Japanese guide for Super Mario All-Stars, based on the name “Super Mario USA”. Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Store | Source: see bottom of all images
And here’s another alternate depiction of “American Mario” (and American Peach!) from Futabasha’s Action Comics Super Mario 4koma Manga Kingdom volume 4, drawn by Harumi Shimamoto. It’s quite bizarre. The text says something like “Feeling very American” or if I were to put it in the common parlance of the youth, “big American mood”.
I’m not normally one for 8-bit nostalgia, but since this was a freebie from backing Mighty No. 9 I checked it out. Besides, it was fun to see concepts and bosses from MN9 and Gunvolt demade into a simpler format.
Since I took on Dark Souls last October, I chose Bloodborne for this October. They’re built on the same template (in fact, many of the words in that review still apply) but Bloodborne makes several mechanical and stylistic changes, which result in a more streamlined and focused game.
Inti’s specialty is Mega Man-type games. While working on Mighty No. 9, they also put out this, a new IP with gameplay that could be considered a successor to their Zero and ZX games. It’s no replacement for me, but has some fun new core mechanics.
The comic scanlations from Mario guides keep coming, thanks to Ragey’s scans and Borp! The guides done by Ape Inc in particular are excellent, and have lovely comics like this one, drawn by Benimaru Itoh. Itoh, also known as Ashura, Benny, or Mitch, has done many Nintendo comics including the Mario World guide’s comic and a full Mother 2 manga, as well as the Star Fox and Super Metroid comics for Nintendo Power. His art style is distinctive and fun, especially when the comics are in full colour like this one!
The comic is also read left to right, so with this translation into English it’s very accessible. It tells the “story” of the original Mario Kart game in vignettes, with plenty of gags along the way. And look out for a whole bunch of cameo appearances on the first and second-last page by Mother, Zelda, and F-Zero characters among others!
A quick scanlation of a Rayman-themed 4koma, commemorating the release of Rayman 2 in Japan. From the pages of the May 2002 edition of Monthly Corocoro magazine. Written and illustrated by Hori Yoshikazu (this romanisation is a guess as this mangaka is fairly unknown, with few works to their name). Scanned by Ragey. @horseypope helped me translate it, I did the rest.
What a novelty to get a Rayman comic. Apart from some Rabbids-only ones later, the only other comic I know about is the 4-page short in Disney Adventures. Hopefully more will surface some day.
I’ve been reading comics from the excellent Shiftylook project, which was unfortunately wiped from the face of the Internet. Fans have backed up most of the material though! One of my favourites was the Valkyrie comic, especially Leigh Davis ( @jailbirdcomic )’s run. Their writing and art was so wonderful! I loved the humorous action with this fun cast of characters.
Playing some Megaman games is the perfect segue into Mighty No. 9, the spiritual successor that I backed and has been sitting on my Wii U hard drive for four years… oops.
