A superbike and some romz.

Hello everyone I've got two topics today. Firstly a new book transcribed The Mystery of the Silver Star and the last bit of holiday road testing an R4 with a 3DS, with a few roms added.  

We'll get the book out the way first as its not that important. Number 84 one of the last Hardy boys books released here, is the Mystery of the Silver Star. A book revolving around the sabotage of a new carbon fibre wonder bike, but of course is much more involved. The guy riding, Keith Holland can be thought as a prototypical Chris Boardman or Victoria Pendleton for those who like to bang on about women in everything. But much more Chris Boardman. His rival Gregg Angelotti can be though of as a bad boy of competitive cycling. A pre smack Lance Armstrong, if you will. 

The story itself isn't bad, its not awful by any stretch and its localization is hit and miss. Words like neighbours get their u's but other words like tires are not properly localized. 

You can of course read both books here and here.

Two ROM talks.

We took the R4 from the bootsale on holiday, we reinstalled CFW on it after the original SD card got borked, and we have to say it performed OK. Playing a fan translation of SaGa 3 and Golden Sun via MGBA, works well alongside playing Pokemon Picross again because the crash wiped out all your progress. 

These however are not the two rom talks, though. First up is Golden Nugget Casino. A perfectly serviceable casino sim, that is basically ruined by being clunky. It's OK for what it does but its not horrible, just dull. 

The last one however, is Rainbow Islands Revolution. A fuck awful incarnation of a beloved platformer, that seems to rely on touch screen antics for everything. You control Bub in a bubble via the touch screen and also draw on the touch screen to create rainbows to block / kill enemies. If that sounds clunky and unwieldy then you'd be absolutely correct. There is no non touch screen controls to make it any less clunky and I can't be bothered to go back and see if they have the proper Somewhere Over The Rainbow theme. 

Part of Taito's disastrous updating of its old IP for DS era. I've heard that Bubble Bobble Revolutions isn't bad apart from its Myxomatosis suffering Bub n Bob boxart. Arkanoid DS is boring as hell and I actually own that on physical (£1.49 paid and still feel cheated) much to my dismay. Can remember an old Rev Flattop review of it saying how dull it was and that only after much work does it offer a secret, much better mode.

In fact it took until Bubble Bobble Neo for Xbox 360 and Wii for it to improve and the Switch version (4 Friends) while taking a lot of directions from mobile games, is still playable, says how much the brand wasn't harmed. by the DS / PSP era games. 

EDIT.

Oh and finally, saw this today and RPG nut as I am, wonder why we don't have a golden age of sail / pirate JRPG. Can think of nothing else but upgrading your ship, treasure maps and dungeons and carving out trading routes for a stylized 16th century earth, all European powers sailing to Zipang and Cathay down to the new world and Caribbean. Now that would be worth playing.  

Ibiza All the rest

 We're back and have been for a few days now. Last week was TV based nonsense and as I hardly had it on, is an easy write up. This is all the rest.

Animals.

Saw quite a lot of lizards that we didn't see the last time we were here. Helps that we were staying on the west coast around San Antonio, which seems to be a stronghold. Not many cats  though there were a few strays and such, what I saw most were dogs. Good bois of all sizes and shapes including  one with dreads and a sad boi with wheels. Most fun was watching this lab scrounge up a football and race around with it with many "Ven aqui's" to get him to behave. 

Venus Ven Aqui 

Quite a lot of crabs on this side too, with your Marmorata crab being the crab of choice clinging to rocks and in pools. Though the other type I saw had nice tortoiseshell brown legs with white knees and a white stripe across its carapace and eyes. Not sure what this was and couldn't get a photo of it, but if I strike it lucky searching, you'll be updated. Oh and before I forget quite a lot of sea bream and of quite massive sizes too, they will come along with you when you swim, been calling them the supreme sea bream team. Which is nice.

Marbled Crab

Area.

We stayed at the Azuline Bergantin hotel.  A really nice place outside of San Antonio, good food and I'd recommend it in a heartbeat. Does get overrun with 18-30 type crowds so if you don't like seeing young women with barely much on around the pool (or young blokes come to think of it if that floats your boat) then I don't know what's wrong with you. 

There are some good beaches and that and its worth walking round past the popular beaches to stop at the ones further along as the small bay is silty opposite where we stayed. Reggae reggae has some rocks and I spent a few days near there relaxing and just watching the wildlife. A patch of sea lavender was quite a draw and I've got an unknown blue butterfly photo of it relaxing there. 

Prices have gone up and its over run with Africans selling knock offs but these do not detract too much, the apples have always been there. But you can still shop around and get stuff as there is a Spar on nearly every corner. San Antonio is worth a trip out to, as its the nearest big town, San Joseph not so much as its a one horse town, stop here for a drink if you are stuck here though, its really chilled and friendly. 

All in all one of my all time great vacations. 

Ibiza part1 the TV

 This will be a nice short post, as apart from a few occasions, I've yet to switch it on. 

True I have seen all the bits, they normally have, Wheel of Fortune, Doraemon etc. But if I'm honest nothing that stands out. It doesn't help that the only English is Channel 5 and it's few variants.

So I'll say the best thing I saw was in the dead of night on Telecinco, where they offer airtime over to amateur bands. Miramusica, 9/6/25, Miguel Gil & Moises Preto a drone piece for what looks like guitar and Ableton live, I only flicked halfway through so I don't know the title. Let's just say la musica es mejor.

Oh and Richard Vaughn is still punting English for the Spanish on TVE2. Somethings never change.

Ibiza 25

 Just a short one here, you all know how I hate mobile for stuff like this. 

We're in Ibiza at the mo so expect a longer less placeholder version of this when we return.

Origami Productions 2

 So you'll be wondering what that big wall of text means at the base of last weeks post is. Well all I can say is that after a long time wrestling with Jim Breens online Kanji Guide I can say that this is sort of what it means. I'm nowhere near fluent (base Kana and a few stray Kanji learnt) so take this with a severe pinch of salt. I'll happily supply a better scan of the back sleeve, but be warned tiny black Kanji printed on what can only be described as the envelope paper you get bills sent to you on are not conducive to good identification.  

2006. The Shibuya Scene. Yoshi Tsushima drawn to the genreless Jam session community, leaves his job at Victor Entertainment and in 2007 joined the session scene group Jamnuts (comprising one of the 30 or so members). They released a smash album,  from which many of them would go on to be solo artists in their own right. From these roots it seems that he had quite a following. 

From such a wide musicianship, drawing on a variety of black music* through to live improv, inevitably generates such strong performances, following this up with a best selling artbook / CD**. These unconventional artists with their rebellious styles, gain support from those artists affiliated to the Fuji rock festival, and were regulars of both these media. 

Indie artists both from inside Japan and those underground artists further afield provided mixes to this making it the smash hit it  is. 

* You can listen to them cover Outkast's Hey Ya here. 

** A cursory search comes up nothing, unless I've mistranslated (and that's a distinct possibility) then its not on line. But here is a small something that you browser will auto translate, here. 

Origami productions comp

 This is what I was hinting at yesterday. A real mystery of dance, and such. 

Origami productions is a Japanese lablel that is for downtempo / lo-fi hip hop beats to study.  From listening to this obscure comp, I feel as half of these would fit a good teen slice of life anime. Most of these sound like the opening titles theme especially the last few tracks, which are hip-hop. 

So what is it.

This is a 13 track compilation of songs from the Origami Productions back catalogue, its housed in an Origami paper sleeve and has some info in Japanese on the back. There is a QR code linking to a Spotify playlist if you really want to listen on the go. The music is mostly downtempo with some classical and lo-fi hip hop thrown in. It really has no title and is split between three different entities, Origami productions, Fragment inc. and Big Turtle (Recording) studios.

Looking on discogs, the latest song released is 2018 (Ovall Winter Lights) but apart from that has no date, title or indeed information of any kind in English. I'll see if I can do a translate from dictionary (not AI) though its been a while. I'll also throw up some scans here if anyone wants a playlist, I'll not share any songs here (let's face it there's a track list and most if not alll will be on Youtube if you want to dl) but I may have to be brave and ask on the forums there how to add this, as its not straight forward. 

 Also found something else while doing an image search for this. Not sure what this is and is also obscure AF. Origami Amarades.

Infinity

 Might do two posts this week, as I have a genuine mystery as well as a new book transcribed. 

The Infinity clue is the 68th book in the series here and the boys are having to face a strange plot involving nuclear power, earthquakes and a bomb threat. Oh and an albino  terrorist thrown in for good measure.

There are no differences  as its part of that era where we got hardback versions with identical texts and that means no localization. 

The boys are visiting Biff Hooper's uncle at Bayridge nuclear powerplant, where he works,  when an earthquake goes off jepordaizing it's security. The area has no history of quakes or of being on a fault line presents the boys with a challenge. 

There are a few nice touches such as a trip to the Smithsonian museum and a mysterious geologist group. Also thrown into the mix is the theft of a cursed diamond owned by missing racehorse magnate, Arthur Rutlidge. A theft of which the Hardys and Chet Morton are accused of. 

A nice touch is Chapel Island a place where 18th century English is still spoken, which the boys visit over the course of the mystery, and could be based on this place.

Anyway you can read them here and here.