Renkon

five levels, playable in-browser via the link above or the embed below.

forgot to mention this here: Game Center Betty, the Nagao rhythm game arcade famous for being a semi-official cat hangout, and which was featured prominently in the recent manga & anime Kimi wa Houkago Insomnia (Insomniacs After School), apparently took substantial damage from last night's earthquake: the manager says they and their cats are fine, but their cabinets weren't as lucky. The full extent of the damage isn't yet known, but they did share a photo of the exterior damage, as seen above.

They have an established crowdfunding portal via Ci-en that they've been using to keep their cats fed and generally subsidise operations, so if you feel inclined to help out, you may want to check it out: subs start from ¥500/month. (Here's an English rundown of how to use Ci-en, should you require it.)

I didn't realise it going in, but 2023 was a milestone year for Shmuplations, the online repository of translated vintage Japanese game interviews: it's ten years old! The site was originally launched by founder and primary translator blackoak as an external host for the STG-related translations they'd been dumping on a certain STG message board, with the occasional dalliance into material covering other genres.

From 2015, the translations produced for the site have been largely crowdfunded via Patreon, with patrons being able to influence what gets translated from month to month; thanks to all those backers, the Shmuplations archive currently sits at almost 450 translations, with an ever-growing vault of material to potentially translate for decades to come, and while I'd like to think we can count on a certain level of public support for the foreseeable future, I certainly don't take anything for granted, so to anyone who's deemed Shmuplations worthy of financial support: thank you, and I hope it's been worth your while.

I've been helping out behind-the-scenes since... 2018, I think?, and while I sort of hesitate to talk on behalf of the site for fear of overstating my involvement—blackoak still does most of translations, handles all the money, runs whatever socials are out there, etc—I also know that blackoak's appetite for self-promotion is virtually non-existent, so I feel an obligation to be a little more assertive: not just for the sake of attracting backers or whatever, but because I really don't think Shmuplations gets the broader recognition it deserves for the sheer amount of material it has curated, and if I've gotta plant that flag, so be it.

Shmuplations posted another 27 interviews this year; read on for a run-down, and some other off-the-cuff observations from 2023:

Tune in now! https://www.twitch.tv/mrnuclearmonster