April 5, 2014
[Comic] Yoshi’s Island update

So remember that Yoshi double feature from a month ago? Well the scans I mentioned in the N-Gang release also included better versions of some scans I already had. To my surprise, the Yoshi’s Island Special had almost a dozen extra pages compared to the version that had been hosted on nintendo-power.de. They were very quick to translate, although there was also word art-type stuff that my wife very kindly helped me recreate in English. I updated the download and added the new pages to my gallery (at the same time, I deleted the old ones because I renamed them, so sorry Leona I lost your favs). So if you already checked out the Island comic or downloaded it, go back and do it again, there’s extra content this time. It’s like DLC for your comics!

2:28pm  |   URL: https://tmblr.co/ZpvIwu1C8DxaU
Filed under: comic scanlation 
April 5, 2014
[Comic] N-Gang part 8 - The Easter Egg Situation (German Club Nintendo comic scanlation)

Like manna from heaven, we were recently blessed with an abundance of new scans. On the German Boerse forum, user hatehagen and others have been working together to upload the remaining scans of Club Nintendo (Germany’s official Nintendo magazine) that were not yet on the Internet. Thanks to their diligent efforts, I now have access to excellent scans of almost every comic they ever printed, including a few I’d never seen before.

N-Gang doesn’t get a lot of attention, it’s not as well-liked as the earlier CN comics. It’s the result of the new management that took over production of the magazine in 1999. Art was no longer outsourced to Japan and the format changed to the serialised adventures of gamer teens, solving problems in their lives with the help of characters or concepts from Nintendo games. It’s like, symbolic, or something. The comic lasted for 2 years (12 issues).

This marks the return of my collaboration with Caramelman, who found the scans for me. We went with this one because it’s previously been unseen, and is very topical for Easter. Otherwise we’ll try to keep them in order, because they seem to build off previous installments, with characters, relationships, and concepts being assumed knowledge. To help you out in this case, I’ll explain that the armadillo was introduced in the last issue, being shipped from South America. He thinks in Spanish sometimes. The bully who is encountered in this issue is part of a nasty rival group of teens that the N-Gang clashes with. The Reproducer is a machine that VIP invented to bring game characters to life. The idea is that later, when all issues have been translated, it will be natural to read through them in order.

This issue is about Easter, a time of celebration. Easter is about Jesus dying for our sins and his resurrection, showing his power over death. Apparently it’s also about eggs. In order to make nice eggs for school, the gang enlist the help of Yoshi and Cranky Kong. Everything turns out fine in the end. So enjoy the comic this Easter, whether you’re painting eggs or at church or whatever (although it’s hard to read comics while doing those things).

Web gallery version

Download verison

March 9, 2014
[Comic] Yoshi’s Island/Yoshi’s Story double feature!

Who likes Yoshi? If you’re like me, you’re looking forward to the release of Yoshi’s New Island next weekend. We don’t know whether Arzest’s work this time will be as flawed as Yoshi’s Island DS, but either way I’m getting excited for it. To celebrate the first new Yoshi game in 8 years, here’s a huge comic release from my scanlation division, the first English release of these previously German-only comics.

These two comics were published in 1995 and 1998, for the releases of Yoshi’s Island and Yoshi’s Story, in special edition supplements to the official German Nintendo magazine, Club Nintendo. The first, Yoshi’s Island, is a directly game-inspired primer for how the gameplay works, although obviously with a lot of chatter and humorous moments. If you’ve read my DKC2 translation, you should know what to expect (although there’s even more explanation of game mechanics in this one). The Island comic also includes a little preview page from the magazine before the main thing starts.

By the time of the Yoshi’s Story special, the comic supplement style had changed to include multiple short comics that, in this case, are pretty tangential to the game itself. More silly and surreal, closer to a lot of the comics printed in the magazine itself.

Story is the stronger package, because it’s more amusing and has new, wacky storylines. But Island is still good and focuses on the singular main Yoshi and his reactions to the various challenges that crop up on his journey. They’re an interesting contrast on how the style changed over the years.

This was a lot of work to put together. Both comics are quite long, and were done over a period of time (with a break in the middle). But I knew I wanted this done in time for the new Yoshi game. My old collaborator Caramelman started to help me translate Island, but got busy and I struggled through the rest. Later I got in touch with the coordinator of the awesome Supper Mario Broth, who is familiar with German. They translated Story very well for me, and even provided fresh, high-quality scans! They also provided some tips for improving Island. As always, my helpful wife did a spot of proofreading and drew the credits page art for Island. A part of Story also calls back to a previous Club Nintendo comic, which had been previously translated by Opentrain (now at opentrain.theyear199x.org). I pulled their translation pretty much verbatim for that part, so thanks very much to them.

Said part brings up some inconsistencies, like how the Yoshi in question was an adult but is now a child(?). Bet hey it’s just a comic, you should really just relax. You may also notice if you’ve ever played Island that the Chatterbox that plays the role of secondary character who advises Yoshi spouts some blatant lies about game mechanics. You can’t grab floating coins with your tongue, and coloured eggs won’t just break on a wall and release items! So don’t listen to him all the time.

If you’re playing the Holerö game at home, look out for a couple of examples here. It’s the secret word for these comics, essentially a kinda made-up greeting that is often said by various characters. If you haven’t noticed it before, look out for it.

Well that’s it, this is the biggest translation project I’ve released so far. A gift for Yoshi fans everywhere. If you like it, send me some appreciation here or at my twitter, twitter.com/Miloscat. Also check out www.suppermariobroth.com for some sweet Mario (and spin-offs) content. Thanks to them, and to Caramelman and Opentrain for making this possible. Share it around and enjoy!

UPDATE: I found new scans of the Yoshi’s Island comic. They’re not massively better quality so I’m leaving the originally translated pages, but there were also extra pages not present in the first scan. So now there’s 11 extra pages in the YI special!

Yoshi’s Island

Web gallery version

Download version

Yoshi’s Story

Web gallery version

Download version

February 3, 2014
Donkey Kong in: Banana Day 24 (German Club Nintendo comic scanlation)

Haha! Surprise, suckers! Who loves Donkey Kong? Who’s excited for Tropical Freeze in a few weeks? Me, that’s who! In honour of said game, I’ve retranslated this weirdo little comic, one of the few to prominently feature the Kongs. It starts with a similar premise of unnatural cold, but quickly veers off the deep end with a trip to Washington and then to outer space. Add this to the list of Kong space-travels, along with Jungle Climber, Barrel Blast, and… sigh, Jungle Beat. Also the whole moon-punching thing from Returns.

Anyways, this comic is a good one, and I’ve tried to do it justice. There’s a metric barrel-load of text squeezed into those little bubbles, but I couldn’t bear to cut any. I tried to spice it up where I could, while staying as true as I could to the original. For instance, there’s a few very deep German cultural references, which I’ve kept intact and tried to explain with annotations.

So enjoy this comic, and let it get you in the mood for Tropical Freeze! We even have Diddy, Dixie, and Cranky tagging along here, just like in the game! Unlike the game, however, Kiddy Kong is also here. We still love you Kiddy!

Special mention to Twilight Vestige, who ages ago translated this comic for the DKvine forums. I thought it deserved a high-quality scanlation though, no offence Twi! She just got the drop on me by a few years. And thanks for the likes!

Web gallery version

Download version

January 20, 2014
Wave Race Raiders (German Club Nintendo comic scanlation)

After Fairground Nonsense, I still felt the comics itch, so I decided to forge ahead with one I wasn’t too interested in while I was up for it. So here we have Wave Race Raiders, one of the few Club Nintendo comics not covered by Mario Wiki, because Mario is not involved. As in the Donkey Kong comics, this one features just the one franchise and is set in that world. It’s an interesting case because, seriously, Wave Race. I guess it was the only thing going in mid 1997? But it’s not exactly a character driven series.

Anyways, this comic posits that the four playables in Wave Race 64 are in some kind of crime-fighting jet ski club together. It can’t decide whether they’re called Wave Racers or Wave Raiders, so I think the title is a good de facto team name. They have to save the duaghter of their fictional town’s mayor. Our heroes are not named at all, though (except Ayumi), so I’ll tell you here that Ayumi Stewart is an American, the young black-haired guy is Japanese Ryota Hayami, the older black-haired guy with the prominent chin is a Canadian called Miles Jeter, and the fat guy is the American Dave Mariner.

The comic is ultimately a little anticlimactic, but it’s amusing to think that just like Captain Falcon, when the characters in the jet ski game aren’t racing they’re fighting for justice off the coast of their hometown. That’s not exactly what Falcon does but yeah. The comic is also much less silly and funny than the usual, although there’s a few humourous touches. I like that they felt able to change up the genre and the franchise every now and then. I’d also like to imagine there’s a small diehard community of Wave Race superfans who will be overjoyed by this comic.

By the way, the original German uses the phrase “Water Bike” to describe our Raiders’ vehicle of choice. I assume they were trying to avoid saying “jet ski” because that phrase is actually trademarked by Kawasaki but has become the de facto standard name for that type of craft, much like Band-Aid or Zamboni. However, Kawasaki actually sponsored the game and so it was probably fine. I went with “jet ski” anyway in the spirit of the game.

Web gallery version

Download version

January 16, 2014
Fairground Nonsense (German Club Nintendo comic scanlation)

Another Mario-centric comic from the good people at Club Nintendo Germany. I don’t think this is quite as good as some others we’ve seen but it’s straightforward and amusing enough. I mean, Mario gets pooed on by a bird and Luigi gets peed on by a pack of dogs. Juvenile but there you go.

Same process as last time so nothing new to report. I’m just ticking them off the list. Actually there’s only a few left to go! Of the non-N-gang CN regular comics, the ones that haven’t been translated to English are the Halloween special, Wave Race, some reprints, Mario’s Picross, and Terranigma (which is a sample of the Special Edition comic). Some others were done kinda amateurishly and deserve redoing, frankly. As a reminder, you can see a list of said comics and details at this handy Google Docs spreadsheet I compiled (hopefully that link works).

So here’s a little comic about Mario going to a fair and being sold a demonic Game Boy Camera. How they thought this would sell them I don’t know… This is actually a good one for Mario haters, as he gets punished something severe in this comic.

Web gallery version

Download version

January 9, 2014
Quick comics update

Hey dudes, Christmas has been a busy time as you might expect so I haven’t been on the bloggo so much. One of my current comics projects is stalled with an unwilling translator and another one I tried to start but had holidays to deal with first. I’m not feeling terribly motivated right now but it would really help if I got some enthusiasm and excitement over this busta comics find.

Abusuzuki is an Arabic scanner of video game manga, and boy what a scanner! I was linked here through some bad news unfortunately, as the Tanjou Rockman scanlation group has been semi-abandoned. The remaining member linked this site as a source of many raws, and I need to share this link because if you’re interested at all in video game comics, you need to check out abusuzuki.

They’ve scanned and uploaded a multitude of manga, maybe not too much super-rare but just having full scans of all these volumes is a treasure. You’ve got a lot of Rockman, a whole bunch of Mario (including Yoshi and Wario), some Donkey Kong and even a couple of Sonic. There’s 4koma collections from all the big names: Action, Enix, Koubunsha, Keibunsha. And a ton of Bombom’s preferred format, story adaptations rather than simple gag strips. Plus a few more unique ones here and there too. It’s like History of Hyrule is for Zelda, but without the nice presentation, just raw manga.

All in Japanese of course, but I think you can appreciate them well enough without knowledge of the language. Anyway just wanted to link that because hey, I never knew about it until now. And it seems the scanner has reached the end of their collection, so go grab it all before the links stop working (an all too common occurence when dealing with filesharing sites).

December 8, 2013
Super Mario in Aloha Hawaii (German Club Nintendo comic scanlation)

Well, I was between games so I took the time to translate another comic. As with Yoshi/Blast Corps, my translator is still busy so I did this as best I could by myself, using a few online translation dictionaries and services, as well as needing to research a couple of songs that they sing in the comic!

This one, from mid 1998, has Mario at his home in New York (!), being interrupted by Bottles from Banjo-Kazooie, who takes him to Hawaii. Then they play golf. It all ends in disaster, of course. I do love crossovers.

There were two instances in this comic of characters singing songs that would be well known to Germans but unheard of elsewhere. This is a challenge as a translator/localiser. In one case, Bottles is singing a traditional German folk song, “Schwarzbraun ist die Haselnuss”. Apparently it was popoular in the Wehrmacht and the Hitler Youth, but just taking it as a random song a character happens to be idly singing, I replaced it with the first English equivalent that came to mind: “She’ll be coming round the mountain”. Not very imaginative but there you go.

The other song was a famous show tune from the early days of filmmaking. In fact, the writer is known as one of Germany’s most famous lyricists, Bruno Balz. The song in question is “Das kann doch einen Seemann nicht erschüttern”, loosely translated “That won’t shake a sailor”, from the 1939 film “Paradies der Junggesellen” or “Bachelor’s Paradise”. I left this one but translated the words, as it’s important to dialogue and they replace “sailor” with “plumber”. Plus it’d be much harder to localise.

Oh I also forgot to change that one thing where the Americans say “rubbish collector” instead of “garbageman” or something. Oh well, just pretend they’re tourists.

Not much else to say, really. Please enjoy! Links for web gallery and download version are provided.

Web Gallery

Download

October 5, 2013
Blast Corps in Yoshi’s Bang Cookies (German Club Nintendo comic scanlation)

That was quick. After my last scanlation I started a conversation with Cryomancer, of Opentrain (opentrain.199xchan.org, hopefully his site will be back up soon). As a result I resolved to perform a scanlation by myself, without the need to rely on a translator. This is because I have a lot of free time, being on holidays for two weeks. I wanted to test how feasible the process is, and it seems pretty good. My only concern is possibly missing cultural references that only a native speaker could pick up on, but I think I did fairly well on this one, despite that.

I picked this comic for the crossover aspect, which I always love. It has Yoshi, the Blast Corps, and Dr. Light against Kamek as the villain and a runaway truck of Yoshi’s Cookies. Of course some details are a bit distorted: the cookies are generic rather than actual Yoshi’s Cookie cookies, Dr. Light is referred to as “Dr. Lightningbolt” (I blame Yoshi being ditzy), and the Blast Corps team featured appears to be some kind of B-team, with a female lead named Netty, and four similar-looking men, one of whom is apparently named Crusher—instead of Amber, Spike, Wesley, and Clark. They have mostly the same vehicles though.

Oh yes, this is fairly par for the course for the German Club Nintendo. It’s crazy, and that’s why we love it. The panel of the people going wacko on page 4 is especially amusing. My favourite part is (spoilers) the characters repeating a line the narration just said. Oh yes, and I have no idea how Netty already knows what “Bang Cookies” are.

Well just a little comic I suppose, but we’re closer to the dream of having all of Club Nintendo comics canon available in English. Special thanks to Supper Mario Broth, and Time Q of Super Mario Wiki, who had already done partial or rough translations. As usual, find the image gallery and .cbz download below.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/miloscat/sets/72157636196257794/

http://www.mediafire.com/download/w1obpkreznpxi7k

September 28, 2013
The Legend of Zerda: Link Spanish Quest - new Hobby Consolas comic scanlation

It’s been too long! Scanlating (translating a scanned comic) is a minor hobby of mine, and I’ve enjoyed the ones I’ve done in the past. Now I’ve finished another, with the help of a new collaborator, Kasplat from the DKVine forums, who is a great guy and very easy to work with.

Some background for the comic: it’s by no means an official comic. In fact, Spain got a little bit shafted by Nintendo of Europe, which focused mostly on Germany and France. That’s my understanding, anyway, who knows if it’s accurate. Anyway the magazine Hobby Consolas covers Nintendo, Sega, everything, and has been doing so since the NES days. At some point they started running a comic contest: their readers would draw some pages, send it in, and they would pick the best ones. The first contest focused on Dragonball, which was absolutely huge at the time. Later annual entries expanded into general video games.

This comic comes from the 1997 1st Grand Concurso of “Mangas & Videogames”, the name of the contest and also the book that many entries were printed in, that the magazine sold separately. The comics are so wacky and crazy, no rules at all. Some even have gratuitous nudity, swearing, violence. Anything goes with these Spanish teenagers. I picked this one because it was centred around Zelda I guess.

It was done by Jose Luis Platero Pérez. Watch out for the many cameos, and some of the jokes of course have to be explained, thus ruining them. I hope you enjoy it anyway.

Incidentally, I found the Hobby Consolas comics generally through the Opentrain scanlation group. Their website is down right now, but Cryomancer told me they were working to fix it. If you like this insane crap, go give them a look and a nice comment. (EDIT: It’s back at a new URL.)

You can either download this scanlation in .cbz format for comic readers (it’s really small this time), or view a web gallery on Flickr (probably not the best image site just for viewing, but I like it, it’s easy to use). Thanks for reading and spread the word!

http://www.mediafire.com/download/248j7od9ens25h9

http://www.flickr.com/photos/miloscat/sets/72157635910236275/

May 15, 2013
Donkey Kong Country 2 comic (German Club Nintendo) scanlation v2!

A while ago I posted a scanlation I had completed with the help of Caramelman for translation: http://miloscat.tumblr.com/post/39620620143 Well, that post is obsolete now. I got my hands on some way better scans (higher quality, larger, no watermark), and when I found them I decided to redo the whole release. There were a few other issues I corrected as well, with small typos, some additions to the credits page since I’d also got the original comic’s credits, and a much better speech bubble technique that resulted in better looking speech bubbles. This new blanking technique that I’d discovered also dramatically sped up the pace at which I could do this: doing it the original way all over again would have been a daunting task. As it is, I pretty much breezed through it.

So here, now I present to you, version 2 of the DKC2 comic! I won’t repeat all the background and details, check out my original post linked above for all that stuff. I’ll just link to the new one.

I want to try using Flickr instead of the new Google pictures thing. It seems very good so far. The pictures look a bit small, but by clicking on them to zoom, there’s then a button called View All Sizes and you can see the original. Also for those interested in quality or archiving or more convenient viewing, there’s the cbz file download. A cbz is easy to work with, it’s just a zip file renamed so you can easily extract the images or use comic reading applications (CDisplay is apparently good for Windows, I use Simple Comic on Mac).

This time, both sources use the highest quality pngs exported straight from my working files. Who knows if that is the right thing, they’re a little big but after seeing the text artifacts on my previous jpgs I don’t want to compromise on quality. Also Flickr scales them down anyway so I don’t think size is an issue if you don’t want it to be.

Well, I’m very excited that I was able to improve so much on this comic. If you’ve already read it, it’s basically the same but if you want to reuse it, cut out panels or whatever, it’s now much better for that. Also if you previously downloaded it, delete the old one and get this one. Trust me. Ok here’s some links:

Web galleryCBZ version download

March 8, 2013
DKU comics

I’ve been working on a rather large article for a while now, and it’s finally ready! I’m not posting it here though, because it’s hosted over at my favourite Donkey Kong fansite, DKVine. It’s a rundown of all the printed comics ever published that are DKU (provided they are available on the Internet, otherwise I don’t know about them). It’s got descriptions and highlights and then, you can even view the whole comics themselves under each paragraph! It’s amazing!

I should take a step back though. First, anyone who’s read this blog for a while will know I like video game comics. They’re a great way to expand on a game world, and while I like comics fine, they’re way better when they involve the established characters and worlds of video games that I’ve played. They also are an easy form of merchandise to collect and appreciate digitally.

Second, I like lists, spreadsheets, categorising and organising things. This article started as a rough list in TextEdit and a series of links to where you could find these comics on the Internet. I decided to expand it inot a hopefully-interesting to read article, in the hopes of helping anyone else who like me was on the hunt for DKU comics.

Third, some background if you are unfamiliar with the DKU. It’s a concept that describes a shared universe of video game characters, starting with the Donkey Kong Country series. Diddy Kong Racing expanded the Universe to include Banjo Bear (and all subsequent Banjo games), Conker the Squirrel (and etc), and Tricky the Triceratops (who makes all following Star Fox games DKU because it’s the same guy in Dinosaur Planet and DKR). That’s the basic gist of it but it makes for some interesting hypothetical interactions as it expands. The DKU is the guiding principle of the site DKVine (which even used to be called DKU itself, and before that Donkey Kong’s Jungle Vine).

The article really became a thing though when Matt (Waddle Dedede on the forums) asked me to follow through on a suggestion I made in a comic thread. It’s thanks to him that it got published and that it looks so damn sexy. Seriously, check it out, it’s got flippy tags and subheadings and expandable images and everything! He made it all happen and I am very grateful to him for what seemed like a lot of work.

Oh yeah, I should put the link. Here: http://www.dkvine.com/features/milo_investigates_dku_comics.html Also, if anything else comes to light, I will post about it in the linked forum thread (which I think you have to get to through the news announcement post; or just check out the DKU subforum). Actually, here: http://www.dkvine.com/interactive/forums/index.php?showtopic=8159

Why are you still reading this? Have you read the article? I’m really happy with it, I’d like for you to read it. It’s got a wide range of crazy and weird comics, most of them in English. Yep so that’s that.

January 25, 2013
Super Mario-kun Vol 12 Special Stage 1 scanlation (DKC)

My other latest project, a single chapter of Volume 12 of Super Mario-kun. I’ve posted before a series of 4koma strips from another volume, and now I’ve graduated to a proper story. This is a brief one-shot based on Donkey Kong Country, but not really retelling the game. Rather, it’s the story of Mario and Yoshi crashing their plane into Donkey Kong’s territory on New Year’s Eve. They then have to find the missing banana hoard (again), which is in the possession of a Rockkroc. It’s silly (to be expected of this manga) but a bit of fun, and a rare friendly interaction between the Kongs and Mario.

I started working on this when I realised the Zelda comic was going much quicker than my last. I was waiting for Caramelman to finish the translation but still had the comics itch, so I picked this up and translated it myself. I used Google translate mostly, and this site for the meanings of the various sound effects used. My sister-in-law, a Japanese linguistics student, helped a lot to refine the script after I’d done the first draft, also introducing me to Jim Breen’s online dictionary site. She then signed up to Twitter so I’d have something to put on the credits page. :)

I’m releasing this chapter alongside my previous 4koma translations, which come from Vol 14 of Super Mario-kun. If in future I scanlate any more SMk, I’ll update the archive and web gallery, to keep all of it in one place.

.cbz version (use Simple Comic on Mac, or CDisplay on Windows)

Web gallery

If you’re after more Super Mario-kun translations (not by me), there’s not a whole lot but I’ve found a few:

Chapters 1-7 of Volume 1 (Super Mario World) are hosted here, by various translators. A better version of some of these chapters is contained in this archive. A single short comic from Volume 19 (Yoshi’s Story) has been translated here, and a 4koma from Volume 35 here (Christmas-themed). Apparently another translator has done Chapter 9 and 12 of Volume 1 (12 in colour), links here and here, but the host is currently down so I can’t verify. Keep an eye on that one. Finally, a chapter from Volume 38 (Super Mario Galaxy) has been translated here.

Oh, and if you’re wondering where I got the raws from, well a while ago I stumbled upon a filesharing site folder full of very nicely scanned volumes, with no hint of who scanned or uploaded them. If you’re interested in the original Japanese or want to translate some yourself, have a look here.

If you know of any more around the Internet, let me know. And also, spread this DKC one around and enjoy!

January 24, 2013
Zelda Ocarina of Time comic (German Club Nintendo) scanlation

It’s a new comic scanlation! This one is not from a special edition, but from the regular print run of the magazine. It’s actually two separate comics, printed in issue 5 and 6 in 1998. They form a somewhat cohesive whole though, together with the two part comic in Special Edition #9, which has already been translated and can be found here.

They are called The Gate of Time (6 pages) and The Sleep of the Righteous (4 pages). The first is a weird story that involves Adult Link, Navi, and Sheik telling Child Link about all the stuff he’ll have to do, before he even speaks to the Deku Tree! It’s not really 100% consistent with many actual gameplay mechanisms, and feels like it’s breaking the 4th wall somehow. The second is more straightforward, and retells the beginning of the game pretty much, up to meeting Zelda. They can be seen as following each other, and the Special Edition comics are a prologue so it all works if you read it like that.

Unlike the previous Club Nintendo offering, I don’t know who wrote this one. But it was also drawn by Work House Co, from Tokyo. Again, big thanks to Caramelman who did the German translation, which was so good I didn’t have to do much to it. The original was a bit wordy in some parts, but I tried to preserve as much of the content as I could, since this comic was more about the dialogue and plot, especially part 2. Some of the speech bubbles are a bit squished as a consequence.

This one also had a lot less jokes and stuff, so the main draw here is just Zelda fandom. I was surprised to find this hadn’t been done already actually, as the translation community is fairly busy over there. Check out the History of Hyrule site for a ton of manga and other comics (although it’s a bit hard to navigate).

I also realise I’m stepping a little on Opentrain’s toes with this, as they have pledged to translate all the regular issue comics eventually. They’re being slow right now though, and this is the very last one before the lower-quality N-Gang shorts start up. I thought this was more important too, since it is quite close to the game, and a bit of an outlier really in the whole Club Nintendo canon, being fairly serious and true to the game (early Special Editions are like this too).

Anyway, for this comic I used a new technique which made my previous method look like the wild scramblings of a gibbering idiot. Basically, my new image editing program, Pixelmator, has a “magic eraser” tool that made blanking speech bubbles an absolute breeze. More accurate and so much quicker. It also has a good text manipulation mode, so I only needed the one program for the whole process. And I’m happy with how it turned out, I’ve learned a lot about fixing little things to make the text look better.

So that’s it. I’ve decided to just do one version of this, it’s jpegs, but the highest quality. It’s a little janky up close but I’m just a perfectionist, I’m sure it’s fine for most people. Enjoy, and share and whatever!

Download .cbz (to read .cbz, I recommend Simple Comic for Mac and CDisplay for Windows)

Web gallery

January 19, 2013
Club Nintendo comics database

I have some Club Nintendo-related stuff to share. For my own purposes, I made a spreadsheet a while ago to track the titles, issue numbers, character appearances, and availability in German and English of all known Club Nintendo comics. I felt it was worth publishing on the Internet in case there’s anyone like me hunting for these comics, so here it is on Google Docs.

The information here leans heavily on Super Mario Wiki, as most of the regular issue comics involve Mario or Mario series characters. A huge step in this process was the Opentrain translation project, who have completely translated the first four years’ print run comics, and are hosting an archive of almost all the raw German comics.

I will try to keep this updated if any new information comes to light, so if you want to know where to find any Club Nintendo comic, check here and I might be able to tell you. Oh and on that note, if you can add any information on where to find any of these comics, message me here or through my email (which I think Google Docs should tell you).

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