GadgetLab

When 3 of 3 released patches made by The Geofront are now official games you can buy. And soon this will join the other two as having an artifact in the real world (physical copies). Haha. If you're reading this, go buy and play Crossbell. Go buy and play Ys vs.

A screenshot of the credits for Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga. Programmer Nate "Ribose" Book Programmer, Non-Scenario Editor EnDavio Video Editor Jack "Chuji" Mills Contributor flamethrower2 Special Thanks Derek Heemsbergen (that's me!)

Many moons ago, in the nascent stage of my career, I did a small amount of scenario editing for what would become the Geofront's fan localization of Ys vs. Trails in the Sky. Now that project has finally coalesced into an official, sanctioned release. I'm grateful to be credited alongside this team.

We don’t use AI for subtitles. Every line is carefully timed and translated by real people (who cry during finales and debate Best Girls, just like you).

I'm happy that so many people enjoyed this. It took a lot of time to get a chocobo unit to 95 faith but it will be worth it when I die and am embraced in the loving arms of Monster Jesus, amen.

In Final Fantasy Tactics if a unit gains too much faith they leave your party to go find God. Have you ever wondered what would happen if you had Beast Tongue and got a monster unit to maximum faith? Of course you haven't. No one has.

refint/games has detailed the Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga Digital Limited Edition and new online multiplayer-focused features ahead of the remaster's launch on October 10 for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC: www.rpgsite.net/news/18660-y...

I still find it wild how anime fans, by and large, generally disowned Nobuhiro Watsuki and his work the moment he was outed as a pedophile. Meanwhile, Harry Potter fans keep finding new excuses to support the thing while the creator is actively working to exterminate trans people.

A post by Rebecca Johnson: “I finally learned how to teach my guys to ID the passive voice. If you can insert "by zombies" after the verb, you have passive voice.” A tumblr respond from mightymur: “The final, brilliant word on passive voice. "She was killed [by zombies.]"<--passive "Zombies killed [by zombies] her." <-- active”

Because it feels relevant as we continue to evaluate the media and our representatives’ statements, my favorite way to identify the active vs. passive voice.

Fun fact, the very first story I wrote for Inverse was about Gnosia - and boy it still fucking rocks. One of the visual novels of all time - go play it www.inverse.com/gaming/gnosi...

A graphic with a photo of Brennan Lee Mulligan that says "Phone Bank with Zohran, Wednesday, October 8th at 6pm."

TONIGHT (and especially for followers outside of NYC who want to get involved):

Join @brennanleemulligan.bsky.social on a special phonebank at 6pm!

Sign up: volunteer.zohranfornyc.com/phonebank-fo...

“We’re just worried about you. You haven’t been outside in weeks. You just keep playing Ys X: Nordics. It’s not healthy.”

a cartoon pokemon is sitting in a box with its mouth open and smiling . ALT: a cartoon pokemon is sitting in a box with its mouth open and smiling .

Happy to find fun things to look at, at least!

Still, you’re entirely correct about the giggling.

I can hear @futuregadgetlab.bsky.social and his dork ass giggles every time he sends me targeted links for anime merch. And I'm always tempted because it's aimed at me and he always finds the good stuff!!! But leave my wallet alone! I'm not strong enough to get back into anime. 🥲

My blood ran cold reading this statement.

The guy is now on X crowing about beating cancel culture (in itself a red flag) and pivoting to right wing grifting, all while other concerns about attribution and sourcing in this book loom like an iceberg. And that's who Bitmaps stand together with now.

Ever seen a company just self-immolate themselves?

That's what's happening here. 100% self-inflicted, and throwing EVERY bit of goodwill they managed to scrape up into the dumpster. Meanwhile, the author is crowing on Twitter about how he "beat cancel culture."

Stupid, stupid, *STUPID* move.

All That Glitters Is Not (Harmony) Gold Egyptian-born director and producer Farouk “Frank” Agrama had entered the entertainment industry in 1960, when he served as producer for drama film Hub fi hub. In the years that followed, Agrama would produce numerous low-budget pictures, including 1972’s The Godfather’s Friend and 1982 B-movie Dawn of the Mummy.130 In the mid-1970s, Agrama added distribution to his repertoire as he began working as a rights broker between North American studios and Mediatrade, a film mass-media company owned by nowdisgraced former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. According to The Financial Review, “Agrama acted as a middleman, buying low from studios such as Paramount or 21st Century Fox and selling high to Mediaset.” A few years later, Agrama met a pair of businesswomen from Hong Kong at a trade fair in Cannes, France. Agrama, along with 131Katherine Hsu May-chun and Paddy Chan, agreed to enter a partnership to serve as a broker for international film rights. In 1979, Paddy Chan founded distribution company Harmony Gold in Hong Kong. In 1983, four years after the foundation of Harmony Gold, Agrama opened his own film and television production company, Harmony Gold USA. Not long after Harmony Gold USA’s foundation, the two organizations began to negotiate with Tatsunoko Productions to acquire the rights to distribute 1982 science fiction anime, The Super Dimension Fortress Macross.

Agrama, as well as Tatsunoko founders Kenji Yoshida and Ippei Kuri and Tatsunoko executive Koki Narushima132, negotiated personally for the property, before ultimately coming to a tentative merchandising deal on January 15, 1984. A formal license to Macross was signed between the Hong Kong-based Harmony Gold, Ltd. and Tatsunoko on September 11, 1984.133 The finalized granted Harmony Gold the rights to “present, reproduce, record, publish, release, exhibit, distribute, perform, broadcast, diffuse, display, market, edit, dub, translate, arrange musically, transform, dramatize and otherwise adapt and prepare derivative works, based on, advertise, and otherwise dispose of and exploit the underlying series, and any and all versions, character, stories, setting, titles, music, sound track and effects, animation, artwork and all other components thereof, using any methods or devices of exploitation.”134 Harmony Gold would transfer these rights to Agrama’s Harmony Gold USA by the end of 1984.

130. IMDB, “Frank Agrama”, n.d. 131. Patrick Boehler and Lana Lam, "Italian prosecutors say Hong Kong women were key to a massive money-laundering scheme", 2013 132. Ferreira, Samantha. “Megaton: Harmony Gold Loses the Rights to Macross in 2021,” 2017 133. Ferreira, Samantha. “Megaton: Harmony Gold Loses the Rights to Macross in 2021,” 2017 134. “HARMONY GOLD, USA, INC. V. TATSUNOKO PRODUCTION CO., LTD., Dist. Court, CD California 2017 - Google Scholar,” 2017

“Frank Agrama.” n.d. IMDb. Accessed March 9, 2023. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0013261/. Chessell, James and Paola Totaro . “How Bruce Gordon, the Man from WIN, Helped Catch Silvio Berlusconi.” 2015. Australian Financial Review. March 6, 2015. https://www.afr.com/ companies/media-and-marketing/how-bruce-gordon-the-man-from-win-helped-catch-silvioberlusconi- 20150302-13sqe2. “Italian Prosecutors Say Hong Kong Women Were Key to a Massive Money-Laundering Scheme.” 2013. South China Morning Post. October 5, 2013. https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/ article/1324781/italian-prosecutors-say-hong-kong-women-were-key-massive-money. Ferreira, Samantha. 2017. “Megaton: Harmony Gold Loses the Rights to Macross in 2021.” Anime Herald. September 15, 2017. https://www.animeherald.com/2017/09/14/megaton-harmonygold- loses-the-rights-to-macross-in-2021/. “HARMONY GOLD, USA, INC. V. TATSUNOKO PRODUCTION CO., LTD., Dist. Court, CD California 2017 - Google Scholar.” 2017. Google.com. 2017. https://scholar.google.com/ scholar_case?case=13613987763006822039&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr.

Fuck it. The Bitmap Books situation has me pissy so here's a new excerpt from my book draft, with sources.

Note the actual citations, and reputable sources of information.

Note this is an older draft, before I found some additional context.

YouTube video by T B Skyen How Final Fantasy Tactics tells its story through design | TBSkyen

NEW VIDEO, all about the character design of Final Fantasy Tactics, especially the storytelling done through the designs of Ramza and Delita

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPow...

Some old advice about starting big projects (game translation projects in my case, but a lot of it is probably universal)

#gametranslation

genuinely there's like so many fucking youtube channels out there that go into SNES rpgs just as deeply, if not more so than what this book does, and even include japanese games because they realize that trying to document RPG history and cutting out 2/3rds of them is stupid!!!!

that escalated quickly

I was just praising the Guide to Japanese RPGs to family because it was well-researched and written with sincere care--but now I'm not recommending anything this company sells going forward, if that level of QC is no longer going to be there. The right-wing grift is just icing on the cake.

Like I don’t know how you simultaneously undercut your argument for being a meaningfully decentralized platform while *also* doing a racism while *also* doing a transphobia while *also* proving to everyone you’re too petty and involved in forum drama to hold your position but Graber pulled it off

So let me get this today’s drama right:

* Jay followed noted transphobe Jonathan Chait
* Blacksky user Link pointed that out that’s fucked up after the past week
* Link was banned on Blueskys appview presumably by Jay
* But Link is also hidden from Blacksky b/c it still uses said appview

I'm not a particular fan of blocklists given all the prior and current abuse inherent in them, but Bsky can not say they are an option for composable moderation, and then block them when their favorite transphobes get angy about it.

If I didn't know better, I'd say the people running BlueSky don't actually believe in decentralized moderation

here’s how the rest of the #Eeveelutions react to bathtime… 🛁🫧✨

o(〃＾▽＾〃)o

Also, I appreciate the support, but @timeextension.com is a news website, I doubt they knew about this lol.

If anything my concern is more with the publisher bsky.app/profile/bitm...

Let's also not forget the time Quest64official ran a charity for the author, only for the author to backstab him