From Zeroes to Heroes: The Story of Mario Kart Zero

 Introduction

In our current era, there are only three video game series that I can confidently say have the status of being legit household titles: Super Smash Brothers, Pokémon, and Mario Kart. Since its debut in 1992, the latter series has remained a perennial favorite, appealing to audiences in both competitive and casual play. Despite that, within the Mario Kart community lies a slightly more obscure subset of fans—the hacking community. Right now, Mario Kart 8 and Mario Kart Wii boast some of the largest modding communities, with Mario Kart Wii, in particular, featuring thousands of custom tracks, additional game modes, and even third-party online servers, a decade after the official one shut down. However, this article aims to shine a spotlight on a lesser-known hacking community, the Mario Kart DS hacking community. In addition, I wanted to talk about the history and coverage of one of its most influential hacks from 2012. So, rev your engines, buckle up, and join me as I explore one of my favorite ROM hacks growing up—Mario Kart Zero.

A Reconditioned Classic - A Look at FE11's Localization

 Introduction

When I love a game, I try to learn as much about it as I possibly can. One of the things I find most fascinating about many of the games I play is how they change in their respective localizations. I really enjoy examining the text, graphics, and minute details in the Japanese versions and comparing them to their English counterparts. I love seeing how the localization team attempts to adapt a piece of media and judging how well they manage to transfer the original message. I also enjoy trying to get into the developers' and localization teams' heads to understand why and how something was changed. That's why I've always been a big fan of Clyde Mandelin's Legends of Localization website and have even bought some of his books.

One of my favorite games is Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, and up until recently, it was the only Archanean FE game to be localized into English. Naturally, I wanted to learn more about how different FE11 was in English compared to its Japanese counterpart and other languages. While there are some wiki pages and sites like The Cutting Room Floor that list localization changes, there were no dedicated articles that compiled everything and discussed these changes in depth. That’s why I’m here today to share this blog post where I list and discuss many of the localization changes in FE11, in the same style as Clyde Mandelin's Legends of Localization series

Floral Fantasy: The Adventures of Sakura Taisen (Part 1)

 🌸Introduction🌸

Sakura Wars, also known as Sakura Taisen, is a game series that’s lingered on my radar for a few years. The game's name surfaced occasionally in casual conversations, but my knowledge of it was fairly limited. It wasn't until much later when I heard that Sakura Taisen's characters and mechs were featured as DLC in Super Robot Wars 30, which brought my attention back to the series.

Furthermore, last summer, since I had just graduated from college and had a lot more time on my hands, I had been catching up on a lot of anime. In particular, I was watching a lot of older mecha series, and over time I decided it was time for me to try out this Sakura Taisen game. So, I downloaded a Sega Saturn emulator, the two disk files necessary to actually play the game, and the fan translation. Once, I got everything set up, I went right into the game. And as such, I wish to share my playthrough with all of you in a two-part blog post.

A Knight's Burden: A Character Analysis of Matthis - The Dashing Fool

 Introduction

It's hard not to notice the series' large cast of characters when you play through the Fire Emblem franchise. Excluding boss characters, enemies, and NPCs, there are still hundreds of playable characters that span across the 17 mainline games. In fact, there are almost as many FE characters as there are Pokémon... probably. Anyways, amongst these colorful characters: some are loved, some are well-liked, some are forgettable, some are disliked by many, and some outright send people into a visceral rage when they’re even remotely brought up. Today, I’m going to discuss a character that’s part of the latter category. So, buckle up and get ready as I fly you to Macedon to talk about the courageous yet fear-ridden cavalier known as Matthis.

Swords and Syntax: How Fan Translations Shaped the History of Fire Emblem

Introduction

When it comes to Fire Emblem's long history, something that I find to be a bit overlooked is the history behind its fan translations. Since the series didn’t have much of an official foothold in the West until relatively recently, you’d imagine that a lot of the fandom lived and died based on the fan translations available to them. Despite that, there isn't much comprehensive coverage or documentation that pertains to the full history of these fan translations online.

That's a bit of a shame because a lot of the history of these translations is interesting in their own right. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that a lot of the drama regarding some of these translations rivals a lot of the internal drama regarding the development of the games themselves. That’s why I wanted to take it upon myself to document the numerous fan translations that exist for the series in one comprehensive blog post. So sit back and I hope you enjoy!

Unboxing a Special Mail Delivery: A Review of Popful Mail (Sega CD)

⭐Introduction⭐

Nihon Falcom is a company that, for a little over forty years, has developed and released games and series that have fundamentally changed the face of role-playing games while also receiving international acclaim. They are often credited with pioneering the action role-playing genre, as well as popularizing the use of personal computers in Japan. While their most well-known games consist of series like Ys, Dragon Slayer, Trails, and The Legend of Heroes, I wanted to talk about a slightly more underrated game from Falcom—Popful Mail: Magical Fantasy Adventure…or just Popful Mail for short.