Q*Bert and More Easter Display Pieces

Happy Good Friday Eh?  Here is a little crafts post to help you give a bit a retro tone to your Easter Display.  This year I found some great cut outs to use as standees. First off, right from their big comeback in Wreck-It Ralph is the cast of Q*bert!

The simple design and the large size of each character should make them easy to cut out and colour.  You could even create a little pyramid and put the characters and eggs on it for that authentic arcade feel. :)

These and the ones below are from the Shrinky Dink line.  I hear these are coming back. I recently bought a Simpsons one, so I will be displaying those here on the blog in the near future. 

When I was looking for Q*Bert I came across these old Donkey Kong Junior Puffy stickers.  Gosh, I haven't seen these since 1989.  A friend and I won the two sets of these at the Exhibition.  I still have mine, I wonder if he has his?  Probably not.  

For all the years Inspector Gadget has remained a popular TV show, (He was/is on three times a day if not more on Teletoon Retro.) I can't say I recall seeing a lot of merchandise for him.  I am guessing a lot of it was really rare based on the prices you find online.  So I felt pretty lucky when I stumbled across these.  This Set of standees has some really great art.  

 

Always nice to have something involving a rabbit for Easter and who better then Roger?  It's not really a standee, but this little cut out is bound to be fun to fool around with. 

Super Mario-Kun In America! As Well, Kid Icarus and Donkey Kong Jr Manga?

It's very interesting that this image found in the March/April 1989 issue of Nintendo Power has art drawn by Yukio Sawada. This artists would later do the manga Super Mario-Kun. The artist took on some Zelda as well. I wonder if this was his first ever contribution to Nintendo? If this lead into Super Mario-Kun, or if in 1989, he had already started on the Manga? There is so very little information regarding this long running Manga series online. I always found that strange, considering how popular Super Mario is. Another point of interest is that I have seen on E-bay Donkey Kong Jr and Kid Icarus mangas that seem to have been drawn by Yukio prior to his work on Super Mario-Kun.

Even though the page says there are 7 forest creatures, I can see an 8th, can you?

Here's some pictures from Youji ga Asoberu Family Computer Ehon - Donkey Kong Jr. It was published by Nintendo / Hikari no Kuni back in 1985. I have no idea if the artist is Yukio Sawada, but the styles are certainly similar. It's very rare, though you can find it on E-bay from time to time, listed at some insane price.

Gotta love the how to draw page! (Which only shows how to draw his face for some reason. There was probably more inside the book.)

It's interesting that the Snap Jaws are drawn like little crocodiles instead of bear traps.

This is the Kid Icarus Manga. It usually goes for $50, or so. Fairly expensive. It was published in 1987. It looks like the Mario-Kun artist worked on this as well.

Symphonic Sunday

Before I get to the real meat and potatoes posts of the day, here's some inspiring music I found on Youtube the other day. Each one is of a symphony doing a the music from a different classic game, both old and new alike.


Give this one a chance it gets really nice. It's like you can imagine Lisa Simpson jamming to it at one point. XD


I think Super Mario Galaxy has my favorite Nintendo soundtrack for a game since the SNES days. This music is so great. You can feel the wind in your hair as you dash from tiny planet to tiny planet in the Gusty Garden, see the wonder of the Battlerock and feel the sorrow or Rosalina every time....sigh.


LOL this one was the best. XD

Now to get back to blogging some hot stuff...

Donkey Kong Phallic Bank

I was originally going to post about this, just cause I thought this item was cool. It's a molded plastic Donkey Kong Bank from the early 80s. It went for an insane price on E-Bay. It probably didn't cost more then a couple dollars when it came out, but the person was asking along with Q*Bert for $80. I thought that if you could find one of these cheap at a flea market, or garage sale it would make such a nice Tiki like accessory for a Hawaiian luau party. Get a couple and carve a hole in the bottoms and string em up with lights inside. Pretty retro.
Then FallenAngel wrote back laughing at the things shape. He thought up some very naughty applications for it. I really don't think it would make a sturdy dildo, but he is correct, the shape is just right! XD Maybe it could reinforced by filling it somehow. Though, I hope you have a very big and willing hole to fill it with! :P

Money goes in...

...but you gotta cut it open to get it out. Don't ya hate that? :(

Here he is with Q*Bert another character with phallic issues....

Adonix Does Donkey Kong (And Disney too.)

Adonix and I had spoken about Donkey Kong Country Return in the past. He had been dying to do a little Donkey Kong for some time. It was only yesterday that he was influence to do this cute piece by browsing some old Donkey Kong images. Donkey Kong just turned 30 so those nerd specs on him are pretty appropriate! :P Though I think Adonix just wanted to make a sweeter geekier Kong. It's a wonderful silly and sexy tribute to Gamings #1 simian.

Donkey Kong Country Returns was such an awesome game. Check out this concept art with a node to Konkey Kong Jr Math. Too bad the pterodactyls didn't stay in the game. At least we finally got some dinosaurs in a Kong game though. :D

A little while ago Adonix sent me a super sweet gift image of Flynn Rider from Disney's Tangled. He looks spot on, but is way more buff! Sweet! He is such a charmer with those eyes. He could convince anyone to take their pants off. Who wouldn't want to run into him naked and illuminated by the lanterns? Hey Rapunzel, get your hair out the way!!! :P My version had little less hair bloking the view! :P

Adonix is currently open for commissions! Check out his info here:

Adonix Commission Journal

Recommended Play: JR To The Rescue

While I will give Nintendo credit for making many of their classic Game and Watches available on their modern handhelds, I always felt like they could do more. I've heard it said time and again from friends that in a day and age when simple fun games have become a huge draw on systems like the ipad why the hell doesn't Nintendo do some sort of spiffed up re-release of their classic Game and Watches? True on the Gallery games we got 'modern' modes. Yet, these often bastardized the originals by forcefully inserting characters such as Goombas and Bullet Bills in to replace the classic Snap Jaws and Nitpickers. The worst offense of all to me was Princess Toadstool always being used to replace Pauline. The bitch felt like she wanted to erase her from existence. :P Just kidding. Really though, It always felt so insulting to the classics. It's like Nintendo feels embarrassed of their original creations. Maybe it's due to some sort of internal rivalry that still exists in the mind of Myomoto regarding series creator Yokoi.


It's stuff like this, along with the fact that Nintendo has never made the arcade perfect versions of their biggest classics like Donkey Kong, Mario Bros and Popeye available to players that has always baffled me. I mean, we got emulation, but Nintendo stands to make a decent buck by offering these over the NES ports. Nintendo seems to have a lot of internal grudges if you ask me. XD Anyway after the DSI wares release of the same old Donkey Kong JR Game and Watch it looks like someone did take note that there is a missed opportunity here.


And so incomes Divernova Games with JR To The Rescue. A game that uses graphics inspired by the Mario Vs Donkey Kong series and any number of ipad games to create a very fun new take on an almost 30 year old classic. The graphics are sharp, with all the characters looking a bit like puppets. The little music score included is pretty brilliant for the modern mode and the game even features an extended ending animation. There are options to fiddle with the sound effects and even play the game in a black and white mode that kinda resembles the original game a bit more.

The word kinda can be used to describe a lot of aspects of this game. It kinda plays like the original, but it doesn't. Jumping for the key requires you to push up. The controls are kinda loose. The vine jumps at the start and far right of the screen no longer land you points for falling over a Snap Jaw. The fruit kinda works the same, but is now faster. So the clock work rhythm is kinda off. The scoring is also a bit off. JR no longer gets 9 points for taking out Snap Jaws on the lower level. That's a shame. As well, he doesn't always clear out the right amount of enemies when he lands back at start. This can result in some cheap deaths. And Jr kinda has most of the personality found in the original game.

Now I realize the makers wanted to have the game to have a certain look, but JR just isn't as charismatic as he was back when he was hand drawn. This is something 2D seems to always have over 3D sprites. Game and Watches feature some of the most beautifully drawn sprites of their day. They still stand the test of time today. This game does too have it's charms, but whereas JR seemed to have a little more brains and cunning in the original, his looks echo more of a simple minded ape in this version. The new take on JR in the early 80s drew many fans to the game alone. He had lost his clothes and gained Pac-Man eyes. But, hey, the same can be said of this version. I found this game by doing a google image search and instantly clicked the fascinating picture depicting the play field. Cosmetic changes draw us in and offer us something new and exciting to look at. That's what game design should be all about. Nintendo was all about this in the 80's. We were constantly getting new takes on the characters. It still happens today from time to time as well. Sadly I think it's Something Nintendo themselves forget about, especially when they over use their generic Mario 3D sprite in print and game media. At least this JR doesn't run along the same lines of Mr. Game & Watch who has been said on sydlexia.com, to be an insult to everything the Game and Watch team tried to create.

"Mr. Game & Watch's design is somewhat of an affront to the spirit of the Game & Watch series. Whereas Mr. Game & Watch is exceedingly generic and nondescript in his design, most Game & Watch protagonists were anything but. Series creator Gunpei Yokoi and his team worked very hard to give each title unique graphics and make each character as distinct as possible despite the limitations of the hardware. The characters in Game & Watch games have distinguishing eyes, mouths, noses, even ears sometimes. The only characters that look anything like Mr. Game & Watch are the NPCs you rescue in Parachute and Fire. It is no small tragedy that Nintendo has paid tribute to its successful handheld franchise by turning the series' most generic sprite into its public face. Nintendo should be ashamed of themselves for doing this. I know I am."

All that said, I do recommend the game. It's free and even if it wasn't, as a Game and Watch fan I could see myself dishing out a couple bucks to play it. It's not perfect, but I can only hope we will get more that is, if we support it. You can download it from the creators site for free here:

http://www.divernovagames.com/index.html

These screens are from the Donkey Kong II Game and Watch, but the same character model is used. Note that JR did the peace, or victory sign long before Mario did. XD

As you can see there was a ton of personality here. As a young gamer I fell in love with the little simians charms. Donkey Kong Jr Looks like an old 1920's Cartoon character in the original Game and Watch. This art style was applied to most games characters of the series. I think this was a very smart tactic that really drew in a lot of players young and old to the series.

A rare image from a guide for Donkey Kong 94. It seems to retain a very classic cartoon feel to the characters. Something Nintendo no longer seems to promote.

Nintendo was all about changing it up back in the day, like with this eye grabbing take on King Koopa and the beaked Troopas. (Based I am sure on the game sprites look.)

Joey and the Serpent Sequel

Hey guys. Long time no blog. Well I had a crazy week. Lots of ups and tons of downs. I dodged a nightmare, or two and am now kinda back on track. I wanted to post up a new image by FallenAngel. This is a sequel image to Crays picture. I really like the idea of having the two of them as friendly rivals. I still need to name this guy! Anyway here is what happened next after the two flexed by the pool...



I think I finally decided on his colors here. Fallens skin tone is nice and dark and mixes well with his pink frills. I really like how he made his bubble butt shine in the sunlight. XD Fallen insisted on making Joeys leg just like a real Kangaroos and it looks great. I think he did a great job on the pose, showing off the best parts of the boys and really giving them both strong beefy builds. Joyes arms are so big and thick. His pectorals are gigantic too!!! XD The image of two guys embracing on a diving board is something I personally feel strongly about. :) Thanks Fallen!

One of the reasons I was out of it this week and not blogging was the release of Mario Vs Donkey Kong Mini-Land Mayhem on the DS. I didn't even know this game was coming out. The chance to rescue Pauline from DK is rare these days, so I all over this game. So much so that I completed it in one night! Even though it borrows heavily from the 2006 game, it does at least finally put Pauline back in the game instead of just having her in the opening and endings. It never felt right that Donkey Kong wasn't carrying her over his shoulder and running away with her after each battle in the last title. I recommend this game a lot. There is a lot of fun to be had as you create your own levels and reply it over and over. I hope this leads to more Pauline. I wish they had a midnight release of Donkey Kong Country this weekend in Canada.

Urbanmusiq is an 80's baby.. XD

Gosh now that I am in my 30's I guess I should be feeling my age. I do miss the 80's. Things have changed so much since those simple days. Thanks to video game companies many of my favorite playmates as a child are still alive and well. Since Mario has been everywhere since before Christmas I have been considering ordering up some fan art of him. Urbanmusiq was itching to do this for some time. (No doubt Ink-B's Mario had some influence.) So I suggested doing the original Nintendo crew of heroes, in a specific pose and let Uranmusiq get to work...that was yesterday!!! XD This kid shoots out fantastic art faster then Namco produced Pac-Man Machines!

With a nostalgic tear running down my cheek, I humbly present Urbanmusiqs Donkey Kong age Mairo and friends:




Mario has never looked so heart warming and sexy. The boy glows off the page and right into the center of your heart. This is how Mario should have looked in his prime. A cute muscular young man, able jump over barrels and climb hundreds of meters high into the sky after his beloved Pauline. ^o^ What a charmer he is, he has a total early 80's pinup feel to him.

Mario is a very sacred character to me. He is attached to so many childhood memories and I am not too found of the Mario porn we see all over the net. There are very few people I would entrust with making Mario sexy and Urbanmusiq is at the top of that list. Urban captured a side of Mario that is so young and virile. Oh how I dig those shoulders, they look like they could break into a Micheal Jackson dance routine any second. Pauline would so faint if he did! Mmmmm MMMMMMMMMMMMM how hot is it that neck line of his shirt, so low revealing the top of his perfect chest? I just love that handsome face covered in blush and completed with a big strong chin! XD Hee hee. I got the Donkey Kong board game when I was really small. Urbans Mario with his detailed coloring and milky skin actually reminds me a lot of the playing pieces and box art. The game art was very detailed and well shaded. I still own a copy of it. A Mario for the ages. We went all out and went with the tradition black hammer instead of the brown mallet used in later art works.


Pauline is very succulent beauty! Her expression filled cartoony eyes are such a wonderful bright blue that they light up the picture. ;) He gave her some nice bouncy barrels! XD hee hee. She's a curvy sexy match for Urbanmusiqs Mario. He did the video game worlds first D.I.D. justice. (That's damsel in distress.) Seeing her here, elegantly poised, makes me long for her to become more a part of the series once again.

And of course I had to request my favorite Nintendo character as a young kid here as well. The often neglected, eternally cute Donkey Kong Junior. Urban got him as perfectly adorable as any official art. He's so chubby and cuddly! I read somewhere that there was a manga featuring Pauline and Donkey Kong Jr working in a circus. I always kinda felt the two of them would have a bond and maybe even a long time friendship. I can see Pauline taking care of Jr like the mother he never had.




The first sketch was already making me squeal! My heart started to race when I looked at it. Thanks Leon!!! You made this a Canada day to remember!!!!!!



The First Nintendo Game I Ever Owned.




Urbanmusiq Really got me in an 80's mood. Strangely enough I heard this song for the first time today while driving to work. :O







Here is something I wrote regarding my feelings of Donkey Kong Jr the NES game when I was in college. ;) LOL I should have fixed it up. I submitted to a web site years later when JR was going to come out on the Gameboy E-Card Reader. I don't expect you guys to read this. XD


How do you rate a classic game? How does anyone really inside, or outside the industry , come up with a rating for a game character that has touched the lives of so many children and adults over more then two decades? . So in order to do a proper review, let me share with you, my tale....

Donkey Kong Jr introduced me to the world of Nintendo. Oh I knew of Donkey Kong, but doubt I had played it before that Christmas of 83, or was it 84? Ah, never mind. The game was Donkey Kong II Game and Watch. My sister of 17 gave it to me. She had saved for weeks. I was never so delighted in my life. To an outsider it was two simple screens. In the mind of a child, it was an entire clock work world, living, breathing, beautiful to behold and easy to be engrossed in. The box art filled my fantasy's with images of floating platforms up high in the sky. A place where Nitpickers swooped and Snap Jaws looked hungrily for their next meal. It was from then on that JR was right up there with Pac-Man as one of my all time favorites. But good things are often lost with time. It may have only been a little over a year, before JR vanished in his Game and Watch form from me for sometime.

JR's games, unless one had a computer, were indeed hard to come by in any decent shape. (My parents were not to happy with me hanging in arcades and I do believe I only once got a chance play DK JR in an actual arcade.) Luckily friends of mine did have computers. The first true home arcade conversion I played was actually not on a disk, or cart, but on a tape! It was great, but I really only got to play it a couple times and so I longed for a copy of my own.

It wasn't until the advent of Nintendo that I was able to get my hands on a copy. It came about when my complete deck malfunctioned and had to replace it. Ah, I remember it well; I had the choice of the same deck, or the one with Super Mario Bros and one other game. And I have to admit (even when I saw the equally popular Popeye cart on the same shelf,) it wasn't a tough choice. All that was needed for me, was to see JR's plucky face as he reached for a fruit on the box's cover.

Donkey Kong JR takes the 'King Kong theme' of Donkey Kong to the same levels the film 's squeal did. This is the story of poor misunderstood youngster who only wants to do good. Unfortunately human forces (i.e. Mario) belay him that right. Also in keeping with the traditions of the movie, the settings have changed from the big city climax, to the dense jungle. (Was Mario only trying to return DK to his home? We may never know.) In the movie Dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts are used. In the game Mario gains the help of Snap Jaws, T-Rex, or Alligator like living bear traps with the ability to climb and an appetite for young monkeys. (These creatures, I assume later became the model for Kremlings in the 'Country' games on Super Nintendo.) These like the later Koopa Troopas came in two color types that dictated their personality. The red, like the red Troopas travel calmly back, forth, up and down vines and platforms in constant search of Donkey Kong JR. The Blue being the more suicidal of the two, had no problem going in one set direction, even if it meant falling from a vine to capture a meal below. Mario seemed to keep an endless supply of these, where reds could, at first be taken out of the level for good with a well dropped fruit.

Instead of pterodactyls we find two different kinds of Nitpickers. Big nasty Crow like fat ones guard DK's main cage along with many Snap Jaws. The second variety are thin egg laying chicken like ones who hinder JR in his most vertically challenged stage. The egg dropping ability was pretty much a first in games and is another ability that was carried on by a famous Super Mario enemy, Lakitu. Another character who would later appear in many games was also introduced here, the common platform circling spark.

The game play is very different from Donkey Kong, but it should be expected since the characters of Mario and JR and so drastically different. And from this game spawned many elements that were later used in the Super Mario bros series of games. Introduced was the ability to climb vines, jump on spring boards and throw projectiles (albeit only vertically down in this game.) The now common floating Island/Tree platforms were also first seen here. These became a staple of many side scrollers even to this day. The final first, my be the less obvious, but Keys were first used here, in the world of Nintendo anyway.

In JR the player had to learn to watch the enemy characters and learn when the best time to attack was. Like who to leave alone and when and when not to jump into the action. JR took the game play in Donkey Kong to the next level. You could choose the speed JR climbed and descended down a vine. For the early 80's this was a very big deal. Even in today's games alternate means of transport along harsh terrain are always welcome. Interestingly enough Snap Jaws are also effect by this. This keeps the game play fair and adds an element or physics to the game.

As the game went on the enemies got faster, smarter and more plentiful. After awhile the Red Snap Jaws, which you though you could get rid of for good would come back in full force from Mario's stash. And once back the player might find themselves dealing with enemies in places they had never, nor would not want to.

Music in the game is extremely catchy, just as it was in Donkey Kong. From the classical music intro, to the 'panic' like music during the games climax stage, it's all catchy and fits very well.

Like so many of the early Arcade games finishing the story didn't have to be your only objective, it was seeing how many neat things would happen as you passed each loop too! Alas like so many of Nintendo's first games to hit the system, cart memory space was indeed limited. Gone were the cut scenes, the two Mario's (Luigi?) hauling away DK and the introduction to the story. Gone was the chase scene where JR clung to a magic Umbrella as he followed Mario to his hideout. And gone was DK kicking Mario away in the ending, when the one in red and blue just won't give up. I always wondered why in 1987, they didn't upgrade the American versions. I guess video game companies have always been a little lazy, eh?

No matter. The game, graphics and sounds were otherwise of Arcade quality and if you didn't know what was missing, you never would have thought any less of the game anyway. This year JR's NES conversion will once again grace the video game screen in yet another medium. I don't find it surprising at all the he was one of the first chosen to have his NES game converted to the GBA via game cards.

JR is too me as much a favorite Nintendo game as Mario 3, or any of the like. He introduced me to world that has grown much larger and more and more interesting over the long years. His sweet innocent presence in this game and all the ones there after has always filled me joy. Nintendo, thank you for the memories and never forget, it all started with an Ape and a Plumber....


Ice Cream Trucks here in Toronto used the Donkey Kong II box art for their logo!


Another favorite game of mine was Donkey Kong Hockey. I still own a version of this and Punch Out! :)


My Donkey Kong JR Table Top I got off of a local seller back in 2001.







I don't have this box...... :(

See you guys next time!