My interests are quite varied.

Okay, so I've made a few posts about crossovers between Godzilla and Evangelion in the past, and I'm currently in a Godzilla mood due to some recent ongoing developments regarding the mobile game Godzilla Battle Line, so here I am with another info drop.

So there's this collectible card game called Battle Spirits. It's jointly developed by Bandai and Sunrise, has been running since 2008, and has been adapted into multiple animes, mangas, and video games. It mostly does its own things, but a game that lasts as long as it has is bound to get offers to collaborate with other properties. In 2015, the game had its first collaboration with the Godzilla brand, adapting its iconic monsters into the Battle Spirits system, and in 2021, the same would be done for Evangelion, but it wouldn't be until 2023 in which they released a card set explicitly based on the Godzilla vs. Evangelion multimedia project, and that's where this guy comes in.

This is Jet Jaguar -ver.JA02-, a fusion of the Godzilla character Jet Jaguar with the Evangelion mecha Jet Alone. Quick rundown for those who don't know, the former is an advanced size-shifting robot created by a human scientist who gained sentience and decided to become a superhero, defending the Earth from the evil kaiju Megalon and Gigan alongside Godzilla. The latter is a lifeless autonomous mecha developed by Japan Heavy Chemical Industries, a rival to NERV, that operates without a pilot and runs on its own internal nuclear reactor, its only major weakness being its lack of an A.T. Field.

Anyone else remember the Super Mario Bros. Super Show made back in the day by DiC Entertainment?

...of course you do, why am I even asking that question? Without that show, we wouldn't have YouTube Poop as we know it.

Well, a few days ago, internet artist @theycallhimcake revealed to the public a 1-to-1 recreation of the Mario Bros. Plumbing basement set from the show's live-action segments as a world in VRChat, and so the series has been on my mind lately. I only ever saw the show and its sequels on DVDs we got at grocery stores during our youth, and for what they were, they were pretty fun. What's cool about this world is that there are VHS tapes you can interact with that let you watch every episode from all three series. All 65 episodes of SMBSS (including the 13 Legend of Zelda cartoons that would air every Friday in place of a Mario cartoon), all 26 episodes of SMB3, and all 13 episodes of SMW. Plus some other bonus tapes hidden around the room.

Anyways, being in this Mario mood, I went to the wiki pages for the shows just to look through what facts I could, and here's an interesting one: the Italian and European Spanish dubs of the show didn't use the iconic "Mario Brothers Rap" as its opening theme song, at least not initially, instead opting for a new theme song simply titled "Super Mario", and was performed by Christina D'Avena in Italian and by Soledad Pilas Santos in Spanish. The song itself was composed by Mediaset composer Massimiliano Pani while the lyrics were done by Alessandra Valeri Manera. Now, I think it's a pretty good song, though I'm remiss to say it's better than the OG rap. I mean, come now, it was used in the movie for Pete's sake! But I haven't really been able to get it out of my head since I heard it, so that should say something at least.

Okay, so, before Transformers, there was Microman, a series of 3.75-inch figures made by Takara after the 70s energy crisis made making 12-inch figures not a viable strategy. The story of the toyline was that the figures were actual size, composed of refugees from Micro Earth doing battle against the evil mutants known as Acroyears. This "actual size" gimmick would eventually lead to the creation of the Micro Change subline, where they introduced robots that could transform into everyday objects, like audio cassettes and cameras and such. This subline would be merged with Takara's other toyline Diaclone in the west to become the Transformers, and eventually both toylines would be retired when Takara decided to reimport the Transformer brand to Japan.

Of course, there were brief revivals of Microman every so often, including a few that focused on licensed characters, such as Batman, Godzilla, and even Rei and Asuka from Evangelion. But the one of focus for this post was 1998's Replica Microman, a series of reissues of old figures for the new millenium which lasted for about five years. In the year 2000, they released a figure dubbed "M18X Lady Command Arcee", a white-and-gold redeco that was given out as part of a Lucky Draw contest, with only five of them ever having been released. The name is obviously a reference to the Transformers character of the same name, and what makes this interesting is that this figure predates Arcee's first-ever proper toy in the Transformers line released in 2001 for that year's BotCon.

Happy Goku Day, everybody (or Piccolo Day, depending on who you ask). For today, here's a neat Goku fact you may or may not know already, but I think is pretty nice: when chapter 163 of the original Dragon Ball manga released, a contest was held where readers of Shonen Jump could submit a new gi design for Goku to wear during the 23rd Tenkaichi Budōkai. Designs were sent, and this was the winning design, redrawn by Toriyama himself for the cover art of chapter 173. Goku didn't end up wearing the gi during the tournament itself, though, as he just went with a variation of his previous attire, though I do quite like the look of this one. The two shades of orange, the hexagonal Turtle School symbol, the white belt, the boots with the blue ribbons. I've seen how a number of minor outfits get referenced in video games, but it would be nice to see this gi appear in a game at some point. Maybe in a future update to Sparking! Zero or something.

Before the Famicom was brought over to Western markets as the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES for short, there was a period during its development where it was known as the Advanced Video System, or AVS. After the Video Game Crash of '83, Nintendo tried to market their device less as a gaming console and more as a home computer/entertainment system, and the AVS was redesigned with a more computer-like design to sell that image. This, in turn, led to the Famicom's different attachments being given more computer-like designs to match. This redesign would eventually be turned down due to how expensive it made the product, eventually begin further reworked into the familiar NES we all know today, but in the process, there are a few interesting what-could-have-beens that we can find in early promotional material.

Poker Night at the Inventory: Zombie Edition

What final boss actually broke you?

Feed your dashboard by answering my question, blogger.

I mean, I can't really recall when was the last time a final boss really got to me. I've always been more of a casual gamer, and even those more intense games that I've played, the final boss was never too difficult for me.

How many video games are in your backlog right now?

Feed your dashboard by answering my question, blogger.

What's your comfort game?

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What's your favorite creature from any video game world?

Feed your dashboard by answering my question, blogger.