This Week’s Topics:

• Natalie’s Plump ROM Hole
• TSF Showcase for Chari & Cassie!
• Tencent’s Techland
• Capcom’s new cane
• The rise of 𝕏
• A bad collection that made Natalie slightly less sane

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Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Natalie’s ROM Hole

So, what has Natalie been doing instead of writing her damn novel? Filling up her spiffy new 4 TB NVMe drive with ROMs. What kind of ROMs? Mostly for games that are old, not reasonably available, that I currently own, or are published by Nintendo, because screw Nintendo.

Why have I been doing this? As a contingency plan, mostly. While ROMs are currently widely available, that might not always be the case, and I’d rather have these files than not have them. Does that mean I intend on playing these games? Eh. Not really. I already have a lifetime’s worth of games in my Steam library, and I know I should stop playing games outright. As my friend Cassie said, I’m “too old for games.” (For the record, I’m 28.) However, you’re never too old to collect crap.

Now, downloading games is one thing, but actually playing them is another matter entirely. I tend to take a more ‘old school’ view on emulation, where I manually open up each emulator via Windows Explorer. But in recent years, people have become invested in things like Retroarch and Launch Box. GUI front-ends that make the act of accessing these games more intuitive to certain users, and makes the experience more engaging. I think these are great conceptually… but by default, their GUI kind of sucks.

It just feels clunky and unrefined in a way that a lot of these ‘hacky media player softwares’ feel. Where, rather than trying to refine the experience or make something that feels polished, like GOG Galaxy or Steam, they go with something that is acceptable, but supports a lot of themes and options. A genre of software that I have some experience with after turning MusicBee into a bootleg iTunes in 2014, but have increasingly less patience for as I become a seasoned old bitch.

As for how I got these ROMs… it was easy until it wasn’t. I love torrents because they are one of the fastest, most reliable, and bullshit free ways to share large files. And game-likers are dedicated enough to keep torrents alive for years… If the games are large enough and modern enough. Things get trickier with older titles, and while you would think there would be 5 or so different massive torrent archives for every major gaming system, I don’t think there are.

I would have hoped that the torrents offered by one incredibly important file site would make the act of downloading gaming libraries as simple as a checklist. But they seemingly do not update its torrents after the user’s initial upload. Meaning if the user uploaded 1,000 files, but did it in batches of 100, then only the first 100 files would be included. …So I had to go through less scrupulous sites to get some ROMs… before eventually getting fed up with the process of looking for Wii and 3DS ROMs.

So, what did I do for Wii and 3DS stuff? Well, I started using something I saw recommended on Reddit called JDownloader. A downloader utility that offers slightly improved speeds from the incredibly important file site. I normally feel bad about downloading several gigabytes from them, so I threw in a $25 donation for the trouble.

All other Nintendo stuff I could find on a DOPE website that really puts the EDGE in emulation, and another that puts the COCK DOMINANCE in romance.

Also, I decided to figure out how the Super Mario 64 PC port worked. It took me like an hour to figure this out, as there are so many different choices and names floating around, and I initially chose the wrong one. This one is the right one by the way, even though it has user-hostile flashing UI. But I figured it out, and played the game for twenty minutes.

That game… has aged with a shocking level of grace, but there are three things about it that just seem strange considering how polished the overall experience is. Movement is smooth, except for when you are turning, as, while walking Mario cannot do a 180-degree turn without walking in a little circle. Swimming has inverted controls and you propel forward by pressing the A button, instead of… just moving forward by pressing forward. And the camera is finicky in a way that is strange in an era where camera controls have been so standardized.

That being said, as someone who didn’t grow up with this game (blame my uncles) and only ever played the DS version for a couple hours… I can easily see why people consider it one of the all-time greats. There is an intrinsic joy to just moving Mario about, hearing him utter those iconic sound clips, the worlds are these big chunky sandboxes to explore and toy around with. The controls, while a bit clunky, give the player a lot of control over Mario, so much so that I could immediately tell why people loved speedrunning this game. And while I think the game looks a bit squiggly with its original blurry texture filtering and low poly models… It is a thing of beauty with the Render 96 model and texture packs.

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TSF Showcase #2023-21
Mahou Shounen Majorian by Ishida Atsuko

Hm… Should I make TSF Showcase a weekly segment? Assuming I have enough content, I don’t see why not. It gives TSF fans something to look forward to with every Rundown, and these things only tak an hour to produce if the work is shorter. …But this is a three volume manga, so it took me four bloody hours.

Mahou Shounen Majorian ran from 2005 to 2008 that went largely untranslated for over a decade, before Natalie.TF mainstay and TSF historian, ChariShal, translated it back in August 2020. …She didn’t actually post it anywhere until earlier this year, but she sent me a copy of it back then.

Honestly, I didn’t think too much of it back then, but the comic later went on to cause “damage” to my good friend Cassie, who recently bought physical copies of all three volumes. …Even though she’s on universal credit and cannot read Japanese. What can I say? She’s an ojou-sama kyuubi in the body of a poor trans girl.

The initial pitch for Mahou Shounen Majorian is that it’s a magical girl series where the protagonists are two elementary school boys. Iori, a timid, effeminate boy who has grown up quickly due to his family life and his single mother’s demanding career. And Masaru, a brash and sporty boy with a hectic family life, being the youngest in a family with three older sisters. Masaru is Iori’s bully, using him as a vessel to vent his frustrations and assert dominance, but their relationship quickly begins to change after they meet two alien bunnies who make them both magical girls.

Well, ‘magical girls’ is a bit of a misnomer. Rather than turn them into female versions of their 9-year-old selves, they’re aged up into fully grown women, who go by Lio and Lu Masa. Initially, I thought this was just an excuse for ecchi crap involving prepubescent boys with voluptuous bodies. But the story mostly uses it as a way for these two little boys to become adults, become girls, and also become… different people.

However, the story also is not truly about the two’s roles as magical girls, or their brief encounters with aliens. Instead, it is far more of a character driven story, where the hook is seeing Iori and Masaru’s relationship go from antagonistic to loving. In learning more about their backgrounds and troubles. In watching them grow and develop a stronger sense of self. And getting to know the characters more through a scattering of side characters.

Everything related to the magical girl hoopla is more of a tool to initiate this growth, which is clear just from the naming structures. They fight monsters and get keys that let them open more gates, which contain tools that let them fight bigger and more imposing monsters. Trade in gates for doors, or closets. Realize that the monster designs are often objects, exaggerated versions of something banal, or giant animals. And consider that keys can themselves have multiple interpretations, and you get the idea.

Now, this all sounds rather promising, and the story has no shortage of potential. It actively wants to explore its protagonists in a variety of ways, push who they are as a person, and tell a narrative with a strong emotional core and even stronger themes. It is a story filled with impactful moments, wonderful ideas, warm and soft vibes, and oodles of potential. If one were to find this story at an adolescent age— like I did with my beloved Girl in My Dream and Trans Venus— I could see it being a personal favorite of theirs.

However, I felt that the glue that held this story together— the through line, build-up, and payoff of what it was trying to do— was kind of weak when I first read this story. And now, three years later… I still think it leaves something to be desired. For all the ideas and drive from its writer, the end result just feels a little too scattered. It feels more like a first draft, or a story that was written without a detailed outline, leading to the introduction of a lot of superfluous elements that probably should have been expanded upon, or outright cut. …Which I say as a writer who has done exactly that.

For example, there are four female supporting characters in this story. Masaru’s three older sisters, and a female classmate of the protagonists. Each of these four have a love for Iori/Masaru or their Majorian counterpart, and from an outline perspective, are good characters to have. However, the story struggles to find things for them to do more often than not, while also insisting on using them as part of its climax. Making them all feel important… while also being pretty one note and tropey as characters.

As for the two bunny partners… I don’t even want to try to explain what their plan was supposed to be.

I should also note that this comic was drawn by Ishida Atsuko, a highly acclaimed animator who worked on a bunch of dope stuff from the 80s and 90s, and her experience shows here. There are times when the comic can be gorgeous, with lovingly detailed full body illustrations, excellent framing, and character expressions that hit extra hard. It looks great at times, but it also strikes me as a comic where the artist has to rush to get certain things done and meet a deadline. It has a lot of extreme closeups, sketch-like illustrations, and a few page layouts that don’t flow as well as they should. Generally high quality, but with a few blemishes.

However, my biggest criticism of this work has to be its ending, which is a one-two-punch of… what? The emotional climax of the manga sees its two 9-year-old protagonists have sex. Which… no. Just no. And despite being trans as heck, the comic keeps Iori and Masaru as boys, but implies that they get together and have kids as adults… sort of. It reads like an ending that had to work around an editorial mandate, or the work of a creator who didn’t want to commit to a queer ending.

With that all in mind, would I recommend Majorian? …Absolutely, yes. It’s rough around the edges and in the details, but it has a lot of ideas and concepts that I would love to see other creators explore, and offers a sweeter and more innocent take on TSF.

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Techland’s Dying Light of Independence
(Tencent Will Acquire A Majority Stake in Techland)

2015’s Dying Light was a phenomenal success that warranted over seven years of support, was popular enough to be the zombie game for a generation, and sold over 20 million units. And to think Deep Silver could have published the game, but instead they made Dead Island 2. A safely designed action RPG that had to cost at least $100 million to develop across three different studios over the span of a decade. …Honestly, that was one of the worst decisions in gaming since Nintendo sold Rare.

It was so big that Techland put pretty much all their eggs into Dying Light and started production on Dying Light 2: Stay Human, which had a more tumultuous history. The game was announced at E3 2018, got delayed until coming out in February 2022, and while it sold 5 million units in its launch month, it does not appear to have made that huge of a splash. However, it is difficult to judge games like this.

Dying Light (2015) was met with a lot of sevens at launch, but it kept growing with routine and substantial updates. So the same might have been the case for Dying Light 2, but I don’t know how to determine that. That’s kind of the problem with judging these more communal sorts of games. You might think you should ask the community, because they are what really matter, but that’s not always the case.

Success is a multi-facet and fickle thing, especially in an immature industry like gaming. And I like to boil this complex thing down to four core components. Commercial success: how much money a game makes, and how many units it sold. Critical success: how big the Metacritic number is and what mainstream publications thought of the game. Communal success: what the fans of the IP or work itself think of the game, and how the broader gaming community perceives the title. But also corporate success. What the corporation(s) behind the title think of the game and how it will shape the future of the studio. You might think that is just an extension of commercial success, and they are most often directly proportional. But that is not always the case, as corporate politics can get complicated.

The adage goes that, as a company gets bigger, operations need to be formalized, things need to be made more secure, and more management needs to be appointed. The risk of failure and closure becomes greater, more long-term planning needs to be done, and the act of operating the business gets harder.

Now, I don’t strictly agree with that, as bigger companies tend to have a lot of money, and money is a safety net that smaller companies lack, but I digress. Techland has grown from a peddler of Eurojank (a term I say with love) into being a major AAA developer with what I can only assume to be big plans for expansion. After all, if fellow Polish studio CD Projekt can grow to one of the biggest AAA games studios, why can’t Techland?

…Well, for one, they need a lot of money to facilitate an expansion, and the ‘era of free money’ is over, as interest rates and inflation have risen so much over the past years. Techland needed an outside investor, and you know who’s always down to buy whatever? Tencent. So now Tencent is the majority shareholder of Techland.

Normally, I would posit if Tencent plans on bringing their IP over to the Chinese market, but you can’t put zombies in games in China, so… I kind of doubt that. Instead, I’m guessing it’s just to strengthen their western AAA line-up.

Also, as is a cliche at this point, Techland claims that things will not change under this new ownership.

“We will retain full ownership of our IPs, maintain creative freedom, and continue to operate the way we believe is right.”

I understand why executives say things like this… but if one company owns the majority of the other, they can do whatever they want. If they want to take Techland’s IPs, they might need to ‘buy’ them, they can. If they want to lay off the entire staff for whatever reason they come up with, they can. And if Tencent wants to go against their typically ‘hands-off’ management style, they can. Sure, they might not do it now, they might never do it, or they might wait until the studio produces a flop. But they have the power to do something, and I think that is a problem in and of itself.

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Tencent Bought One of the Most Important Visual Novel Developers of All Time
(Tencent Acquires Visual Arts and Key)

…MOTHERFUCKER. Well, Tencent decided to strike for another developer that I care about. At least on a more historical and symbolic level. Key is one of the premiere visual novel developers who did wonderful things for advancing the medium. Most notably producing the works like Kanon (1999), Clannad (2004), Little Busters! (2007). Though, my only experience with works was 2004’s Planetarian, which was among the first ‘kinetic visual novels’ to see widespread acclaim.

They are still producing high quality visual novels to this day, having just released 2021’s Loopers, on Steam this past month. However, they haven’t been the best at localizing their works, which I think is always a big mistake. Say what you will about English being the dominant language in the world, but if you have products with any global appeal, you should release them in English.

Now technically, this acquisition was of Key’s parent company, Visual Arts, who operates as a developer/publisher duo. Key makes the visual novels, while Visual Arts handles the distribution, administrative, and brand management affairs.

So, why would Visual Arts want to sell themselves to Tencent? Well, the Visual Arts president, Takahiro Baba, was pretty candid about the reasons why in his announcement post. It’s not because Visual Arts is struggling. In fact, they just had their highest earnings in their 33 year history. It’s because Baba is getting old, is concerned about his health, and recognizes the risks of keeping all shares of Visual Arts within his family. He wants to make sure that, even when he dies, the studio will be in a good place. He considered going public with the company, but believes that would not work with the “easy-going management” of Visual Arts. So, instead he looked into selling to an established company, and looked through various options.

…Yet he chose Tencent, because it was “the world’s number one entertainment and game company.” Now, that makes some sense, but… I wish they went with any other option. Because while Tencent might be pleasant to work with now, the bigger a company is, the less you should trust them.

…But if Tencent’s money helps them do releases in Japanese, English, and (maybe) Chinese simultaneously… I guess this isn’t that bad of an acquisition.

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Capcom Snagged a Snack!
(Capcom Acquires Swordcanes Studios Co., Ltd.)

Moving from two major acquisitions, let’s talk about a minor one. Capcom acquired Swordcanes Studios Co., Ltd. Who are Swordcanes? Well, they are an animation modeling and animation studio who has played a role in a number of major Japanese games over the past four years. Including Monster Hunter Rise, New Pokemon Snap, Hi-Fi Rush, Final Fantasy XVI, and Street Fighter 6.

They’re not a particularly unique breed, have less than a million dollars in total assets, and are pretty much a studio with two options. Either continue to grow and take on more/new clients. Or offer to sell their assets (but mostly the skilled staff omitted from their balance sheet) to a larger company with a need for animation and modeling support. Capcom decided to be that larger company, and now Swordcanes will probably be consolidated within Capcom.

Like I said before, these are the healthiest and best acquisitions you can hope for. One existing company buying up a tiny company they have an existing relationship with. This probably won’t have any significant changes to Capcom’s line-up, and is really not too different from Capcom hiring a small team of artists while paying an upfront hiring fee. For those at Swordcanes, this is probably a good deal, as they will have a more consistent stream of work, and might get better employment perks, as Capcom is a bigger company.

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Screw Social Media, Make RSS 3.0!
(𝕏 Is Here, And I Stopped Caring!)

Well, I thought that Twitter couldn’t have taken a bigger L this past month after they started locking out non-users and imposing hash limits. But then Meta’s Threads dropped a few days later, and got a hundred million users in 5 days. Things were already looking bad, but this past week, the wretched scumlord who screwed himself into being forced to buy Twitter decided to destroy even more of the platform.

On Monday, the logo for Twitter changed from that of its iconic blue bird symbol into an X. More specifically a “mathematical double-struck capital X,” or 𝕏. A generic unicode symbol that replaces something that has become a global icon over the past 15 years.

It looks bad. This rebrand from Twitter to 𝕏 is one of the most obviously terrible decisions I have ever seen from a billion dollar company, ever. And seeing it made something click in my brain and actually accept that Twitter’s just over now. The name is going to go away soon enough, the iconic terms of tweet and retweet are going to go away, and I’m sure a BUNCH of integrations are going to be broken as a result of this change. Meaning that I really should just flat out stop using posts from that website on my website. Because they’re going to break sooner or later.

It also means that I have stopped using TweetDeck, because seeing the brand change so jarringly and suddenly… made this site feel different. I deleted my bookmark on Tuesday before going to bed, and as of publishing this Rundown, I have not gone back.

Now, leaving Twitter behind is not an uncommon move, but most people who do have migrated to another platform. Mastodon, Bluesky, and now Threads are all vying to be the next Twitter, along with a bunch of others. Why? Because Twitter is a pretty simple platform, and tech companies want to amass a large user base, so they can make money by selling ads and data.

Creators have been flocking to these platforms rapidly and sharing their links. But all of this has made me feel so… irritated by the way the modern internet is constructed. Irritated by the fact that it is so inundated with platforms you are supposed to use, when the actual content being offered here is so heavily standardized at this point.

Video is video, images are images, text is text, and arrangements of these things are meant to be easily transposed. So why exactly do people need to post on a platform? Why do people need to go to platforms? Why isn’t there some generalized content feed, similar to a newsfeed? Something that can collect posts from the… 250 or so people whose work I follow?

Well, the internet already figured out how to do this over 20 years ago, and it’s through this magical little technology called RSS. Which was supposed to be the best way to accumulate updates to various websites across the internet, but has been regularly dismissed as being ‘dated.’ However… the more I think about it, the more I realize I JUST want a more robust RSS feed.

I just want one thing that combines the people I follow on YouTube, Nebula, DeviantArt, and Pixiv. All content posted on Gematsu, Siliconera, r/DragaliaLost, the four Tumblr accounts I still follow. And a summary of ResetEra posts and (some) Discord activity every two hours. I’d pay $10 a month for that, easily.

Now, my RSS reader, Feedly, currently does some of that, but YouTube and DeviantArt only want people to use RSS feeds for individual users, not a ‘following’ list. And even then, it can take hours for the updates to go through. Pixiv has no RSS support, and what I want from ResetEra is a weird custom thing. How do I solve this?

…I don’t know, and it sucks that any possible solution is so complicated.

You might be asking why would I only want a feed, when the point of using these websites is to participate in a community, to which I laugh. I have never been an even remotely social internet user. Comments might make the day of no name bloggers (like me), but I have never liked making them, or engaging in futile discourse with strangers.

I am sure there is a way to make what I want happen— except for Discord— because it’s a closed garden, but I don’t know how to FIND the tools needed to achieve this.

Complaining and bemoaning the state of the modern internet aside, I am done with Twitter, or 𝕏, for the foreseeable future. I have no intention of using any of these new Twitter alternatives. And I made what should be my final posts from my account.

Due to changes affecting this platform, this account is now inactive. Please visit my website, https://t.co/kM0N30VpZx, if you wish to contact me.

— Natalie Neumann (@ElectricNigma) July 28, 2023

…And I also made one final post on my old shitpost account, Psycho_Shatter.

If I was a horse's mother, I'd fuck that horse, because that horse is a motherfucker!

— Vincent Dawn (@Psycho_Shatter) July 28, 2023

…I think about horses in a sexual context about as much as the average cis woman.

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Official Game Collections Continue To Be Worse Than A ROM Folder (Double Dragon Collection Announced)

I have incredibly mixed thoughts about retro re-releases that take the form of collections. I think emulating games is great, and emulated games are often better than their initial release on original hardware. Much of this is due to the robust features of emulators. Display, sound, and control options, support for mods and hacks, save states and rewind features, and that’s just the basics. When emulating games on one’s own, there are a plethora of choices available, and the experience is customizable. However, that is not true when talking about a publisher approved re-release, or a collection of older titles.

While official emulation has gotten far better over the past twenty years, I feel that these publisher approved releases somehow feel cheaper and less robust than the unofficial alternatives. A lot of the time, they feel as if their goal was to be ‘good enough’ and not much more. Trading in a slew of options for only a few, and offering far fewer ways for players to enhance and alter the game to their liking. And when ‘improvements’ are made, they can feel like downgrades.

Just to name an example, I think the changes to the font in the recent Mega Man Battle Network collections is downright baffling, and makes the game look far worse than an unofficial emulation. And while I understand the purpose of borders when playing games that weren’t made for 16:9 displays… they just look tacky. Either make the game run in 16:9, or put HUD information, like health, money, ammo, or a map, off to the sides, or just make the border black. And for the love of crap, if you are making a PC port of this collection, please let people run 4:3 games in a 4:3 window.

I could also rag on the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters for changing the game’s sprites to look worse than the originals, but I think that horse has been thoroughly sodomized…

…What was the topic of this section again? Right. This past week, Arc System Works announced Double Dragon Collection. A title that, to me, should be a cavalcade of obscure and bizarre titles from the late 80s and 90s, because of the excessive number of releases and ports the series saw. From the Atari ST to the Zeebo, Double Dragon has been all over the damn place, and it is filled with curious oddities worthy of being preserved. Yes, I am saying that Double Dragon II: Wander of the Dragons should be preserved. Because… what even was that game?

As such, I could not help but get a bit miffed when the Double Dragon Collection was revealed as simply a compilation of the most boring choices possible. Double Dragon (NES), Double Dragon II: The Revenge (NES), Double Dragon III: The Rosetta Stone (NES), Super Double Dragon (SNES), Double Dragon Advance (GBA), and the subpar 2017 retro revival Double Dragon IV.

It doesn’t include 2012’s Double Dragon Neon, the mid-90s fighters Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls and Double Dragon (Neo Geo), or even the original arcade versions of the first three games. …Even though they re-released those three games back in 2015… and you can still buy them. I know the Double Dragon series is home to a smorgasbord of rights issues, and it’s possible that they don’t have the rights or proper code for some of the more obscure ports. But they should have the rights to all those titles I just mentioned.

…Now, I went on this tirade before re-reading the article that announced this, and realizing that this is merely a Switch exclusive going for $30 or less (based on the Japanese price). While the PS4, Xbox One, PC via Steam, and also Switch will all receive emulated versions of Super Double Dragon and Double Dragon Advance.

So, what exactly is this? Well, it sure isn’t an attempt to compile the entire Double Dragon series in a single package. And when compared to the robust $40 2018/2020 NES compilation, Double Dragon & Kunio-kun Retro Brawler Bundle, it’s a piece of freaking trash. That was a collection of 18 (arguably 14) NES games, 11 (arguably 7) of which had never been officially released in English. This is two games available on Nintendo Switch online, two shitty beat ’em ups, and two good beat ’em ups you can buy separately.

Gotta say, I’m not a fan. I think the title is kind of a lie, despite technically being true. And it is really weird that this collection was announced on the same day the latest title, Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragon, was released. When this probably should have come out before the new title that would have had a longer, more involved, development cycle.

Stuff like this makes me think that game publishers probably really shouldn’t be in charge of their history. Because if you are going to do something like this… please, do it right. Please offer something better, or comparable, to piracy.

…Golly is it dumb that there isn’t just some big, fat, wet, stinking Double Dragon, Kunio-kun, and River City collection with, like, 60 games (counting each version as its own game). Instead, you gotta make that collection yourself.

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In a future story, I should create a fictional RSS feeder called Dope. A name auditorily reminiscent of Digg, referential of the dopamine that comes from consumption, is a punchy monosyllabic word, and is also derived from the phrase ‘straight dope.’ …Or maybe it should be D093 and be this weird underground thing all my characters just so happen to be into.

Also, I am trying something new with the formatting here and giving each segment its own header image. Almost like a real website. …Gosh, what if I could TF into a website? …Actually, that’d be hot as shit. Maybe Natalie TF’d into Natalie.TF and nobody noticed. After all I am canonically just Akumako after she got identity death’d by a bodysuit.