> PUT CPU IN VAX

comment to trade/gift/etc;
here's the card index on my main site!

Recently I've been sucked into playing NDS Shiren the Wanderer after picking it up from a local gameshop, and I blame this partly because of how similarly it looks to Chunsoft's other more famous mystery dungeon, PMD Red/Blue Rescue Team. but as a longtime PMD fan, Shiren doesn't play too similarly or nicely, and I'm still getting my ass handed to me hours later. I'm writing this as an intro to understanding Shiren as a PMD player I guess.

First off, as most roguelikes, you're supposed to die, learn, repeat, and improve. Talking to NPCs and doing certain quests moves you along in getting party members or special items, or even letting some stores open up. It's not something intended to be done right first try at all, no matter how many of the first-town puzzles you complete.
Let's talk about main differences from early PMD - you can save/quit anywhere, but once you've fallen, the game autosaves. This condition can be avoided only three times in one "run," where you'd need to send out a rescue, like in PMD. There's a rescue decoder here, which you'll find useful if you really want to save a run if you happened upon good items. When you are knocked out in battle, you lose everything - all of your items, levels, and cash. There is no Kangaskhan rock, but you can store items at storehouses in towns and come back to them later, however, there is drastically more limited space. You can make up for this by saving "Jars of Storage" and loading them up with items in the storehouse. Town layouts aren't like PMD and you move linearly to enter the main story dungeon. You can unlock other dungeons through sidequests/postgame, but again, it's not like stopping by a post and selecting which dungeon you'll enter. In this game, you cannot recruit enemies like in PMD, but you can eventually recruit 3 wandering NPCs after fulfilling brief sidequests. Oryu and Kechi are fairly useful but eventually are likely to die past early Table Mountain, from what I've seen. Oryu has the special ability to blind enemies, and Kechi can sometimes offer to give you a massage, which will either give you crazy stat boosts, horrible debuffs, or do nothing at all. Pekeji isn't really worth having on your team unless you're completely stocked on onigiri, from which I've heard he needs about 7-8 to actually become powerful. Else, he'll drain you of all of your food (or he will refuse to move forward and abandon your team), which is hard to come by as it is. Also, the more frustrating thing is that you cannot view the HP/status of your party members and can only vaguely gauge it based off their dialogue and behavior; if they're at low HP/'in trouble,' they'll run from enemies. Since there is no configurable tactics, you have no control over your party members and they tend to almost always chase after enemies, which is either a good thing or a huge detriment later.
Since there's no moveset/'attacks' like in PMD, you need to obtain good weapons and shields and keep buffing them up with Earth and Wind scrolls and the smithy. I hear something like 30+ buff on one item is good enough for endgame, but I haven't been able to get anywhere near that. As it is a mystery dungeon game, RNG is so finicky that it's easy to get through even three whole dungeons without seeing a single weapon to pick up. Also, traps and attacks can ruin your weapons by removing 1 boost level via the rust mechanic. You can counter rust by using a Scroll of Plating to seal up your shield and weapon. Also, different weapons have different strengths, and Pickaxes act like the 'mobility scarf'/ 'super mobile' and 'absolute mover' IQ skills. IQ skills don't exist here either.
You can meld weapons and other items together to make even better upgraded ones that you'll likely need for postgame, except I don't know enough to explain the mechanics since I haven't finished the sidequest for that. Gaibara's jar sidequest will eventually unlock Melding Jars to accomplish just that.
Also, a lot of items you will collect will be 'unidentified' until you reach the town, but you can deduce most staffs by usage. Traps exist in this game but for some reason, party members and enemies can't trigger them.
There are a lot of items with shared mechanics to PMD, just with different names, statuses as well.

items - TODO: ADD SCARF/ARMBAND EQUIVALENTS

Shiren the Wanderer	PMD
Weeds	Plain Seed
Rice Ball	Apple
Big Rice Ball	Big Apple
Giant Rice Ball	Huge Apple
Rotten Rice Ball	Grimy Food
Wood/Iron/Steel Arrows	Stick/Iron Thorn/Silver Spike
Medicinal Herb/Restorative Herb	Oran Berry/Sitrus Berry
Herb of Sight	Eyedrop Seed
Bitter Herb	Doom Seed
Dragon Herb	Blast Seed
Herb of Confusion	Totter Seed
Herb of Life	Life Seed
Little Belly Seed	Hunger Seed
Happiness Herb	Joy Seed
Herb of Invisibility	Vanish Seed
Herb of Revival	Revive Seed
Kigny Seed	Violent Seed
Scroll of Confusion	Like a full room Totter Orb
Scroll of Light	Luminous Orb
Scroll of Blessing	One-item Cleanse Orb
Great Hall Scroll	One-room Orb
Knockback Staff	Blowback Orb; Roar
Staff of Postpone/Paralysis	Stun Seed, kind of/just like it
Accelerating Staff	Quick Seed; Agility
Staff of Sloth	Slow Orb; String Shot
Switching Staff	Switcher Orb; Baton Pass
Pain Sharing Staff	Rebound Orb; Counter, DOES NOT WORK LIKE PAIN SPLIT.
Doppelganger Staff	Decoy Orb
Sealing Staff	Silence Orb

traps

Shiren the Wanderer	PMD
Summon Trap	Pokemon Trap
Spring Trap	Warp Tile
Pitfall Trap	Pitfall Trap
Curse Trap	Sticky Trap
Landmine/Big Landmine Trap	Selfdestruct/Explosion Trap
Log Trap	Gust Trap

The kecleon/thief mechanic is still employed for robbing stores in-dungeon, except I'd say it's more evil in this game, since if you happen not to have enough money to pay for an item, you simply cannot leave the store (in town) and must end your run/soft reset. Couriers act a bit like Kangaskhan rocks in which you can send your items down to your starting point if they're in a jar.
Fay's puzzle feels similar to Makuhita/Marowak's Dojo except it's a little better in a different way since it teaches you gameplay skills, although one can argue the latter is more for grinding up levels.

I honestly feel like Super Mystery Dungeon is closer to Shiren 1 than Blue/Red Rescue team, in which the GUI feels like the most similar thing in the long run. Super and GTI carry over the wand mechanic, and looplets feel like an homage to armbands, even though scarves are pretty much the equivalent. You can also talk to wandering Pokemon who may give you items or allow you to recruit them, much like the wandering NPCs. On the other hand, the most recent Shiren (Dice of Fate) feels much more like an old PMD game down to the spritework.

Obviously since they're two different games, there's still a lot of wildly different mechanics that you'll have to get used to. But have fun and enjoy the grind!

Slowly but surely I'll get all the Layzner interviews and articles translated over the years, I promise it. :-) We're starting off with OUT Magazine's July 1986 interview with Ryosuke Takahashi on what makes Layzner special from his other works.

[ORIGINAL ARTICLE, i apologize for the poor photos but here it is. OUT volume 9, '86.]





[translation]

Takahashi Ryousuke - Why Layzner now?

Eiji is a near-miracle who was born the way he was meant to be born.

After finishing the TV series, Mr. Takahashi is busy working on the video version of Layzner.
"Episode 38 is considered by some to be a trailer for the video, but that is not true (laughs). For now, I want to complete the story that ended in a half-baked way here," says Takahashi, so we took time out of his work schedule to interview him again. Now the true nature of Layzner is revealed.

"Politics" portrayed as a reality from which we cannot escape

● First of all, I would like to ask you about the position of Layzner among the works you have made so far.

Takahashi: In the vein of Dougram, Votoms, and Galient, Layzner has not changed that much from my point of view.
The one thing that has changed is the planning. In the case of Dougram, the project had already been decided to some extent within Sunrise, and the design of the robot was also decided.
The fact that the robot was already decided was as important to me as the story itself, and it was as if about 50% of it was decided.
So, working on the stage that Sunrise had provided for me was the starting point for my robot work.
For Votoms, I started with the design of this kind of trend from Ookawara (Kunio) and the rest, and I created the story by myself, but for Dougram, I co-wrote the story with Hoshiyama (Hiroyuki).
So I was the director and author of the story, but Kanda (Takeyuki) became the director in the middle of the project, and Dougram was his first robot work as a director.
In a sense, Votoms was the crystallization of what we had developed in Dougram and what we had not been able to do. In the meantime, the sponsor's situation changed, and Sunrise's voluntary control over the robot design of Galient shifted a little.
Votoms was perfectly presented by us to the outside world, but with Galient, they asked us to do it this way, and to a certain extent, they set up restrictions.
Still, as for the planning, the company (Sunrise) and I worked together, but with Layzner, the planning and basic setting was done in the Sunrise planning office, and they asked me to make the content in this direction.
In contrast to Votoms, which had the fewest restrictions, Layzner was an original work and director work under these more restrictive conditions, and I did my own work or creation within that context.

● In terms of the semantic content of the works, what is the relationship from Dougram to Layzner to each other?
I think one of the characteristics of Takahashi works is the element of politics.

Takahashi: The idea of intertwining a situation of competing forces in the near future with the conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was part of Layzner's planning, so I just used it as a straightforward way of involving politics in the story. However, I do have personal concerns of politics.
In Layzner, I don't depict politics and the feelings of boys and girls as going hand in hand or, on the contrary, as hopeless, but I think I am more lenient in that area than in Votoms. Chirico lives a life that has nothing to do with politics, and if he has no expectations, it's like a storm or an earthquake: he just has to figure out how to get through it. It's a very cold relationship of "why should I care?"
In the case of Layzner, they are involved in politics, and the protagonists believe that to some extent they are creating their own environment, so they are not saying that they are not responsible for it.
And Dougram made it more assertive: if a 15-year-old boy feels the political situation, he has to be physically active, and Crinn Cashim moves, and he is complicit, and then worries about it again.
Votoms is more like a fantasy where you ignore that kind of thing, and Galient is taking that route to some extent. So with Layzner, I tried to bring it back because it is a reality that you can't escape from.
Whether it's the relationships around you or social situations, it's impossible not to relate to something as long as you live in it in real life.
Becoming an adult means that you are a child born into a society, and now you are going to create that society.
For David and his friends, they participated in the Mars Experience School, got involved in an incident, and three years later, they are now old enough to be directly involved in society. I think that having that kind of involvement that cannot be withdrawn is growth, and it is one step toward dirtiness, taking on more and more contradictions.
But I think that our life itself is an accumulation of creating such inextricable relationships.

Eiji's father's parents were German and Japanese

● Regarding Eiji, the character at the center of the story, where does the reason for his being the main character come from?

Takahashi: Eiji was set up in the planning from the beginning as a mixture of an Earthling and Gradosian.
At the end of World War II, German rocket engineers were taken to the U.S. and the Soviet Union, right?
Eiji's father Ken, who was of mixed Japanese and American descent, was abducted by Gradosians on the moon before the first Apollo mission, and his mixed Japanese-German father gave birth to a child of mixed Gradosian and Earthling descent this time. So, what kind of life would this protagonist lead? That was my way of participating. If someone else had done it, I think they could have created a character who was energetic and determined to protect the people of the earth, but in my case, I wondered why he was mixed-race and what position I should put him in.
I thought about the whole story and decided that Eiji was there as a practical allegory to connect Grados and the Earth.
Therefore, he strives to prevent the two from fighting. When they still fight, he takes the side of the weak so that they do not die out. And when the situation is reversed, he has to take the other's side even though they have been the strong one and the other has been the weak one. Being of mixed blood, he is always in the middle, in the midst of both sides, and in a position to consider both sides.
Such an existence is almost a miracle. But there are times when things act out in reality by something close to a great coincidence.
For example, the Wright brothers were born with the ability to make airplanes at a time when the technology to do so was available. In this sense, I am presenting Eiji as a man who was born by chance.

● In addition to this structural outline of Earthlings vs. Gradosians, I think that the outline of children vs. adults, which is also intertwined with what you mentioned earlier, was also strongly emphasized in Layzner.

Takahashi: At the end of part 1 with episode 24, the screen goes white and it's over, but even internally, I was told there was no suggestiveness (laughs). But for me, the message is dangerous there, so I kept it as quick as possible. Personally, I did not want to get too involved in that area.
I mean that when a nation or a group of nations make an event with a certain will, the biggest event is a war. Then, on the verge of losing control of the battle, they always turn to young people.
As a matter of fact, even in World War II, there was a suicide squad, and they would tell the members that their young, pure hearts could possibly be the driving force behind the final national salvation suicide torpedo. How could that be? Even those who go on suicide missions know that's pretty much what they're doing, but they can't say they don't want to go, and they can't run away from it. At the end of part 1, a situation that has been created by adults is destroyed in the same way. And when it breaks down, they ask a young person to help them. It is a desperate request, but the young people go.
It is extremely vain to say that it would be better to oppose them. This is after the important things have already been taken care of. That's why I didn't want to go too far into that area.
My original idea for Layzner was to have 52 episodes in which the children do not return to earth, and the story ends when they do, but the main writer and co-creator Itou (Tsunehisa) wanted them to return to Earth after about the fifth episode and fight to protect it. There was a big discrepancy there, so there was a battle between the creator and the creator (laughs). That's how it ended after 24 episodes.
That is why I thought that if the children returned to Earth and the adults' world remained the same, the children would have no more opportunities to participate in the story. I felt that it would be difficult to create the story after that.
That is why I thought that part 2 would not continue unless the Earth side of the system was destroyed in such a way (laughs).

● To say "appeal" would be an exaggeration, but what is it that you wanted people watching through Layzner to feel? As a final note (laughs).

Takahashi: I would like people not to underestimate the importance of human contact. Basically, we are trying to value human beings, but even if it is someone else's pain that you don't feel, you can use your imagination to compensate for it and make it your own. I want people to use their imagination in that good sense and make their relationships with others more intense. That is why Layzner's theme is communication.

(Recorded on July 2)

Special thanks to WindiiGitlord on twitter (and Niko) for this wouldn't have happened without the both of them. Check out Windii's profile for any JPN translation commission requests, I highly recommend her service.

putting this shit together for reference. will add as the days go on..!

WEBSEC

The Dangers of Google’s .zip TLD <- hey this actually ended up being relevant.
https://medium.com/@bobbyrsec/the-dangers-of-googles-zip-tld-5e1e675e59a5

RE
Fractureiser - Minecraft Malware Analysis
https://github.com/fractureiser-investigation/fractureiser/blob/main/docs/tech.md

HARDWARE
Samsung S Pen Internals
https://rishifranklin.blogspot.com/2015/02/samsung-s-pen-internals.html

it's been an unfathomably unproductive weekend. I'm getting antsy since I haven't been posting anything for a minute either. Had a mediocre burrito and listened to some Soda Stereo and now I'm binging books to say I did something.

i liked the ending of the rocket man, fascinated by the line of "content is everything" in the fire balloons, and really a fan of no particular night or morning. i'd like to read that one again for reference because i like the dialogue. the visitor is also going to stick with me for a while.

read my espionage book and while a lot of what i wrote fits in accordingly, i'll have to rethink some other aspects.

binged all of barry s4 last night and was thoroughly impressed. lots of dialogue and scenes to simmer about.

feeling a little guilty for having so little to report back with.

mm, maybe it's counterintuitive to make a playlist on a blogging site rather than a youtube playlist, buut i want to try making this a habit.

i have a stupid goal of coming up with 80s playlists for nearly every country, but i have to start small first. ehehehe.

gonna dump my findings of the month


Karvan - Səni Görəndə



Karvan - Bilərsən

I can't find any english articles on the group so I'll rely off poorly Google Translated content. Karvan (Caravan in english) was an Azerbaijani pop group led by Sevinj Karimova. It was founded in 1984 in Baku but was disbanded due to the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. Alas, I can't find anything on Discogs either... Will keep tabs and see if I can dig something up later.



黄敏华 - 过气晚装

Zeta Wong is a singer from Hong Kong who won several singing competitions and her song Challenge supposedly even became an official song for the Olympics in 88. There may be more discography info missing but I could at least scavenge up discogs pages with her names: https://www.discogs.com/master/1623683-Zeta-Wong-Korea-%E6%8C%91%E6%88%B0 and https://www.discogs.com/artist/6284569-%E9%BB%83%E6%95%8F%E8%8F%AF.



Динамик / Dynamic - Воздух Свеж

Dynamic is another Moscow-originated music group from the 80s. It was short lived, only existing in 1982, until it became rebranded as Vladimir Kuzmin and the Dynamic group. I haven't dug too deep into their music so perhaps I'll come back to writing more on them later.
There's a cool little article on their work here https://vk.com/wall-174586524_62.



Harun Kolçak & Nur Yengi - Yeniden Aşkın

Both are singers from Istanbul with fairly extensive discographies. Yengi in fact is an actress and one of the most popular Turkish singers from the 90s. I'm getting lazy now so I'm not sure if I'll investigate further.



Доктор - Я схожу с ума

Okay, this is a weird case. I genuinely cannot find any info on this band at all. I'm unsure if it's mislabeled or not, I've found another band with the same name and release date but the vocals and production sound nothing alike. Maybe I can ask around on VK or some leddit site later. For now they remain a mystery.

-UPDATE-
Thanks to my friend Ulysses, the actual song has been found. Календарь - Ты снишься мне. Unfortunately, I have just as little information on this group. Man...






Zdravko Čolić - Pusti Pusti Modu

"Dubbed the 'Tom Jones' of the Balkans." I think that's a good enough summary. I'm a fan. I can't outdo this. He's a Bosnian Serb from Sarajevo and one of the most popular singers of former Yugoslavia. God bless.



Дисплей - Иностранка

Okei, I'd recommend listening to the full set that's on Spotify, it's great. Back to artist descriptions, it's a Ukranian synth/rock band composed of Vadim Lachuk and his wife Ellen Kreis. Will have to dig into their other work but the album this song is from is great.



Форум - Белая ночь

Lastly, I gotta finish it up with a demo(?) of White Night from Forum. I was gonna talk about them in this article but I'm saving up my autism for perhaps a solo entry on their group. I'm genuinely surprised that I haven't heard this version until last week and I'm a bit obsessed with it.

Thanks for bearing with this week of my musical adventure. Peace.

given that i finally have a spot to put this somewhere, here's a heartfelt paragraph on that accursed space probe

The Voyager probes are humanity's greatest achievement. Not only did we reach out past the limits of our solar system, but we cried out to the universe to tell it that mankind exists. Or maybe that mankind existed.

We provided a record of our existence. That we're capable of death and destruction, but also creativity, love, and tradition, for better or for worse. We tried our best to encapsulate music and culture for the enjoyment of whatever else stumbles upon it. Perhaps it was a shot in the dark. Maybe, it will get crushed, turned to dust, or simply be regarded by others as trash. But it was an attempt at a kind of immortality, to trace the word with our fingertips. None of us know how many cultures and civilizations crumbled before us. I'm sure that other civilizations tried their hardest to quantify events and science and things they loved, but so much of it has been wiped. Even in recent years, so much information has been lost and now there seems to be a path paved for more of it to vanish. Who says that all record of our existence won't be lost? Maybe it is selfish to think that we are so important, when in fact any changes we make in the grand scheme of the universe has no cosmic effect on anything at all. But what if we really are the only ones? There's no way for us to know really. By extending our hand to the great unknown we showed it the heartbeat of the world. The Earth's heart may stop but its memory is preserved there.