vlog - netherworld-produced vhs tapes

so, many people have been having issues with NISA's latest PC outing with Disgaea PC. stuttering, issues with the graphical settings, and generally buggy stuff have been bothering players this week. and in my case, the framerate's so slow at essentially 5fps on my low-spec rig that i pretty much can't play the game.

well, at the very least, NISA's been listening to these issues and even asked players to post their computer specs so they can work on a fix. the fix is reported to come out tomorrow on the 2nd. nice to see NISA values their community and community feedback when it comes to their stuff.

'course, if Disgaea PC still doesn't run well on my computer, at least i got the PSP version of Disgaea 1 to fall back on. still don't really regret buying it if it means the possibility of more NIS games on PC/Steam. >w>

in the meantime, enjoy some 90's inspired demonic doofery with the dudes at Mega64. i'll just be here trying to get some more stuff done for this place.

and wondering where the hell they managed to get that prinny costume.

MAKAIPUNK - building a netherworld travel diary

so first week of the new year went pretty well so far. managed to grab a couple obscure ps2 games, been working on getting my sleep schedule back on track, been helping out with quest writeups and design for that WoW private server i mentioned in my last non-jukebox post, and even got back to practicing my hand at pencil drawing. alongside a variety of other things. one of which was getting a cold last week and having to suffer through that.

been cleaning up a bit of my room a while back; my drawers and cabinets, mainly. stumbled upon a handful of drawing pads and various notebooks i had shoved in there when i moved into my new bedroom. they're a bit worn with age, but a majority of the pages of them are unmarked, so i'll use them for drawing instead of using a lot of printer paper for it.

the book before and after the new cover. art by airana@DA

that aside, stumbled upon a hardcover notebook with the title of "Forum for Excellence" and "The Warren Conference Center 2002" on it. so yeah, seemed pretty old, but the pages were all in perfect condition, oddly enough. from what my dad told me, he got it at a meeting way back when but never seemed to had used it. as for why i shoved it in my own cabinets when i got my own room... okay, to be honest, i'm not even sure why i had it there to begin with.

so now that i've rediscovered this little gem, i figured i'd make use of it and get started on a project i've been meaning to do for a while: making a "journal" of sorts centered around the world of Nippon Ichi Studio's Disgaea game series.

might seem like an odd project to write about on here, but it's been a while since i did a MAKAIPUNK thing anyway, so have a bit of a warmup on my end before i get back to bigger things. like hopefully chapter 3 of the Disgaea 1 manga readthrough thing. or maybe some game reviews or something. i don't know.

gen's thoughts - Disgaea PC? Disgaea PC.

okay i know it's going to be a while before this game gets released and get the funds to play it but shut up let me gush

caught word on my steam activity feed that several of my steammates joined a "Disgaea PC" community group. i initially thought it was just a fanmade pc adaptation of the adorably demonic strategy rpg, but nope. it's an official game group, and it wasn't long until i found the steam page for the game, too. come February of next year, the first game in Nippon Ichi Software's Disgaea series will see release on Steam.

already said some stuff about the Disgaea series last year for the first part of my Disgaea manga review thing, so i'll leave that alone. though, uh... i should at least get back to that readthrough at some point. outside of being a port of the first Disgaea game Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, Disgaea PC will include all content from the Afternoon of Darkness PSP rerelease, as well as enhanced textures, an updated UI, keyboard/mouse and controller support, steam achievements, and cloud saves amongst other features they didn't bother to list on the steam page. there'll also be steam trading cards that players can craft into badges to show off on their profile, as well as get some nifty emoticons and backgrounds out of it alongside coupons that they'll probably never use.

that's pretty much the gist of it from what i can gather off the steam page. though why is this titled with "gen's thoughts" instead of MAKAIPUNK? and maybe it should've been titled STEAMPUNK instead?

well, i kinda got a couple thoughts concerning this rerelease, and really, i kinda keep MAKAIPUNK focused on the more doofy-yet-informational NIS stuff. as for STEAMPUNK, this isn't a review of a steam game. so yeah.

anyhow, more wordy thoughts under the cut.

MAKAIPUNK - Manga Senki Disgaea CHAPTER 2

one day i'll learn to start doing MAKAIPUNK installments on a more frequent basis.

er, yeah. anyhow.

last time we left off with the manga readthrough, our princely protagonist Laharl woke up from a two year nap and found out that his father King Krichevskoy died. not really caring about that, Laharl decides to take the title of overlord for himself. and some guy named Vyers showed up, i guess. gen then went on a break from MAKAIPUNK for like three months to do shit involving the Playstation 2, bandicoots, Steam games, cosplay, and JoJo's Bizzare Adventure. alongside other things. ahem.

so yeah, let's get this back on track. will Flonne assassinate the king? will gen remember how to write these kinds of readthroughs after an entire winter? let's find out.

MAKAIPUNK - Disgaea Character Collection fanart gallery

2015. a new year, a fresh start. hopefully i'll work on posting crap more frequently here.

been dawdling as far as the next part of the Disgaea manga readthrough is concerned, but MAKAIPUNK isn't solely about the manga stuff. generally it's more about the lesser-known NIS/Disgaea stuff, and that being said, here's a bit of a treat for everyone to start the year off.

in 2003, some time after the release of the first Disgaea game on PS2, Dengeki Playstation printed the Disgaea Character Collection: an artbook with a bevy of official, concept, and promotional art from the first game, as well as some tidbits of lore, developer/voiceactor interviews, info on plot, endings, and some other gameplay things, among various other visual nifty stuff.

the artbook did see an english localization in 2006 under the name The World of Disgaea, published by the now-defunct Broccoli Books. i am planning on snapshotting some bits from the book eventually, but we're focusing on a different aspect of the book at the moment.

the original japanese Character Collection featured two pages of artwork drawn by fans of the series. curiously, these pages are absent in the english version, but i guess nobody in the US would know any of the artists who drew any of the pictures, being on the other side of the planet and all.

scans of the original japanese artbook do exist on the net, but for legal reasons, i won't be putting up any links to the full scanned book. though, considering these pages are absent from the english release, might as well put them up for posterity. that and the fanart here is pretty good for the 2003 era. if blogspot's iffy on showing the fullsized images, alternate imgur links exist here and here.

also of mention is that the japanese artbook for Makai Kingdom (Phantom Kingdom in Japan) has a fanart section like this. no scans of the artbook currently exist, but i'll probably snap some shots of the fanart if i can get them in decent quality.

happy new years, everyone. let's make this a great one. <3

MAKAIPUNK - Manga Senki Disgaea CHAPTER 1

oh god oh man oh god oh man this got done really late i'm so sorry

er, anyhow, when we last left off with our readthrough of the Disgaea manga, i gave a little primer on the Disgaea franchise, gave some information on the publication of the manga and some other details, and actually read through one/two pages of the manga before ending off there and spending a whole month on two completely different articles, and subsequently taking over half a month to do other things.

oh and we got introduced to angel trainee Flonne and our setting for this story i guess

i am definitely a bloke who keeps things on schedule and finishes things in a timely manner.

that being said, let's get rolling. heads up, you might need to click on some of the images to get a better look at them.

MAKAIPUNK - Manga Senki Disgaea INTRO

insert art (courtesy of minitokyo)

... the joke is the japanese title for the Disgaea series (Makai Senki Disgaea).

that aside, welcome to the first installment of MAKAIPUNK, a segment where i talk about stuff and media related to the Disgaea games and other games developed and published by Nippon Ichi Software (NIS). why does this segment have the same name as the url for my art tumblr? because i think MAKAIPUNK is a cool word. adding "punk" to any word just increases its coolness.

i beared mention of both NIS and Disgaea back when i did my readthrough of Tsubame the Ninja, but i didn't go too heavy on them since that wasn't the main focus of the review. plus outside of the publishing label's name ("Prinny Books"), it didn't really have much to do about Disgaea, which is why i didn't feature it under the MAKAIPUNK category. taking that into consideration, i guess now is better than any other time to explain what the heck Disgaea is.

vlog - let's go to the convienence store~

trying to break the constant lull, i guess. have a cute Disgaea video.

original video is from niconico. another dude on youtube had the video up a few years back, but they closed their account. so of course i'm going to be the dingus who rehosts it.

lyrics are here, and some info on the meme the vid is based on are here. konbini is one of my favorite niconico memes, in all honesty; the vids based on it are p adorable.