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Had this one running on a few evening drives this month. Always fun to see a creator you know showing off a whole new set of skills.

And if you don't actually enjoy exploration and experimentation and just want to skip ahead to the part where you collect kudos for the 100% ORIGINAL DON'T STEAL Ghibli avatar you boiled a small lake to generate... well, there's plenty of other endeavors out there. Go find one that speaks to you.

I've got pictures on envelopes and index cards, on the cardboard backing of notepads, in the margins of class handouts. I've got sketches that were colored with highlighters because they were the only thing to hand at the time. If you love the process of making art, you'll find a way to make it.

A pile of eight headshots and character sketches on A4 paper, primarily in pencil, alternating between comic book and anime styles.

The backs of the same pages, revealing that all of the previous sketches were done on spare printouts and scratch paper.

I'm about a million and a half years late rolling up to the "art is too expensive!!11!" dunking contest, but seriously: looking back, about 80% of everything I drew as a teenager was done with cheap pencil or a Bic ballpoint on the back of an old printout.

I can't read stories like this without thinking of my own dad, who was already happily braising his brain in a deep pot of Russian-funded anti-vax/NATO/5G hysteria. This current generation of unregulated chatbots would have absolutely broken him.

Oh, hey. My cousin painted that one during his brief stint in the German gaming industry. Good times.

I ran across this article while trying to track down some biographical information on Kondō last year, but definitely appreciate the thought.

My pleasure - the Japanese gamebook market is a fascinating and extremely underexplored portion of geekdom, so it's always nice to see other people taking an interest in it.

ゲームブックのブームって、いつまでだったの？（データから見る） | なんだかこのごろ、毎日のように生き延びているな… 「ゲームブックはなぜ廃れたのか？」というテーマは、ゲームブックブロガーであれば誰しもが一家言をお持ちであろう、

Between 1985 and 1987, hundreds of domestically authored gamebooks flooded the Japanese market as dozens of publishers tried to jump on the Fighting Fantasy bandwagon at once. There's a fairly comprehensive statistical analysis of the genre's boom and bust if you're interested in a deeper dive:

Strictly speaking, the Japanese gamebook boom was already starting to cool by the time Warlock JP got into full gear - Yasuda and Yutaka were therefore relatively quick to pivot the magazine to broader RPG coverage, initially focusing on Tunnels & Trolls.

Small point of correction: while Yasuda spearheaded Warlock's Japanese edition, its actual editor-in-chief was Tama Yutaka, another pioneering figure in Japan's tabletop scene. In 1989, Yutaka was replaced by Kōshi Kondō, best known as the founder of game design company Adventure Planning Service.

Save 35% on Mohrta on Steam Mohrta is a nonlinear FPS adventure through the strange and otherworldly. Explore a vast selection of unique environments, slay an enormous cast of bizarre creatures, and upgrade your arsenal of multi...

The game's currently going for 35% off as part of Steam's Winter Sale, but you can also grab a demo on Itch if you're so inclined.

Screenshot from Mohrta showing the chunky, coffin-wielding golem Ru'uk posed in front of the white-stoned remains of a mausoleum.

Screenshot from Mohrta centered on the vendor Bra'ago, a green-furred horned lion with a fondness for hookah smoke.

Screenshot from Mohrta's Brume Factory level. A distant lavafall provides glowing red illumination to a towering assembly of giant gears.

Screenshot from Mohrta's Festival of War level, showing a pair of hulking, harlequin-esque figures in bulky maroon outfits and pointed hoods guarding a circus tent.

Capping the year by blitzing through Mohrta, a GZDoom-powered Souls-lite sheathed in pleasingly chunky retro-visuals channeling equal parts '80s anime and Metal Hurlant-ish weirdo-fantasy. It's scrappy in places, but so committed to its vision that it's easy to overlook the occasional rough edge.

The box of the mighty “Barbarian” fireworks battery, featuring 280 shots and all the sub-Conan imagery you could possibly want.

Nahhh, 25 Schuss is bush league firepower ‘round these parts.

German "Cyborg" fireworks package from 2019, showcasing a cheaply-rendered 'borg lady with a glowing Terminator eye.

Reject modernity, etc.

Picture of a German fireworks product called "Jokers (sic) Inferno," dominated by an evil clown made up of equal parts fire and AI slop.

Oh, yeah. Predictably enough, imAI was all over fireworks packaging this year, replacing the usual "early 2000s graphics card box" aesthetic with a Twitter feed's worth of garish, over-rendered slop.

Photo of a package of fireworks, featuring a fire-eyed (and flagrantly AI-generated) cyber-wolf surmounted by the words “WILD THROAT.”

Y’know, I’m used to a bit of questionable naming when it comes to German fireworks, but…

In all honesty, much of this wouldn't really surface unless you can read Japanese. Lodoss was enough of a cultural touchstone for Kadokawa to put out an entire 264-page book of interviews with key personnel behind the franchise in 2018, but in-depth English-language sources are pretty scarce.

- As a final bit of trivia, Deedlit's prominent "bamboo ears" were a bit of a happy accident, a product of the replay artist's lack of experience with fantasy art. Not really knowing what elves were supposed to look like, he turned to the Gelflings from Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal for inspiration.

- Note that Lodoss also benefitted from the fact that the company bankrolling it, Kadokawa, actively tried to push its promising IP into as many media types as possible. The original Lodoss novels were thus commissioned as a potential tentpole for a YA imprint Kadokawa was spinning up at the time.

- Part of that greater prominence was due to the fact that computer and video game magazines like Comptiq actively ran RPG-adjacent content to capitalize on the interest in role-playing generated by the ascendant CRPG and JRPG movements. By the mid-'90s, that trend had effectively died off too.

- Speaking of low sales: while Japan still has an energetic tabletop scene, RPGs were more mainstream-prominent in the '90s, before shifting interests and a publishing downturn led to a crunch fans call the "Winter Era." Brands like Sword World survived, but never quite regained their stature.

- Wizards had also killed support for the Japanese edition by the time this article was originally published, likely due to low sales: the 5E PHB apparently sold less than 9,000 copies in Japan, and D&D only scraped by as a premium-priced product aimed at a very small group of enthusiasts.

- D&D 5E was actually translated into Japanese in 2017/2018 - the 2022 release was a new version put out by Wizards of the Coast after they yanked the license from the game's original distributors, Hobby Japan. (This was fallout from WotC's 2020 legal spat with Gale Force Nine.)

- It bears saying that the Lodoss replay was explicitly commissioned by the magazine as a way to introduce readers to D&D, which had come out in Japan a year earlier. Group SNE co-founder Hitoshi Yasuda, who conceived the project, helmed a similar replay for the Japanese version of Traveller in '84.

- Group SNE wasn't a company when Lodoss started serialization, and only incorporated once Mizuno began turning it into a novel. As the story goes, Mizuno had to quit a full-time job at an electric company to finish the book, and making Group SNE "legitimate" was done in part to appease his parents.

Thanks for article, @robertinthewires.bsky.social - a few notes and comments on the piece:

- Syntax Error was a gaming group co-founded by Mizuno in '83. While Group SNE's founders included several folks from Syntax Error (and its name pays homage to that fact), the two were separate entities.

Hope-Fokker Capital Ventures wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Featuring Marilyn Hope-Fokker and a sad Santa that just got a pink slip from her

Blast from the past...a very Drugs & Wires seasons greetings from 2015 🥲

Dates & Wires: Augmented Edition | Winter Sale 2025 by Io Black A sale by Io Black, 50% off Dates & Wires: Augmented Edition

As per usual, the discount applies to both the Steam and Itch versions. And if you've already grabbed the game and had a good time with it, why not drop a quick review?

Save 50% on Dates & Wires: Augmented Edition on Steam The year is 1995, and you're newly single and ready to mingle in Stradania, the dysfunctional micronation whose chief exports are pig iron, human misery, and radioactive souvenir mugs. Sample the nigh...

If you missed the call on last month's big anniversary sale, good news: we're knocking 50% off of Dates & Wires, our visual novel of questionable alt-history cyborg hook-ups, until January 5th!