Confession: I retired this segment from the site for a while due to the Archive’s Twitter account doing some fence-sitting about cryptocurrency, and leaning towards being in favor of it. As a tyrannical SJW, or whatever idiots on Reddit call you when you say that their forest-destroying Monopoly money sucks ass, I didn’t feel like indirectly providing free PR to a site getting in on that racket.

But now that crypto’s value has completely plummeted to a level so far below rock bottom that it usually entails a Budd Dwyer-style public suicide, I’m a bit more okay with it. Regardless of any idiot in charge, the Archive still does provide a valuable service to culture. So it’s time to look up some cool shit that it has.

Video Games: The Ultimate Gaming Magazine

Video Games: The Un-Googleable Magazine is, like GameFan and Incite, one of those publications I remember reading when I was younger. Until I started looking at some issues for this post, I couldn’t really remember much aside from its import section. Back in The Day, I was in love with the import sections of gaming magazines. It was tantalizing; telling me about all these cool looking, weird games that I will never see because they were all on the Saturn and go fuck yourself Bernie Stolar. Fucking loser ass bitch.

Anyways. Japanese games. This issue in particular, April ’96, introduced me to the Megaten series. Specifically, Devil Summoner:

Read that first sentence. We very nearly had this in the States! Imagine a world where America’s first taste of Megaten was Devil Summoner, and not Persona. Imagine not having to wait until I’m in my fucking 30’s to play Soul Hackers! I’m not sure what stopped Devil Summoner from getting over here, but I will take this opportunity to blame Bernie Stolar for it anyway. Dogshit brain stupid idiot fucker. Kiss my ass, Bernie.

This particular page really caught my imagination. Back in the The Day, when there was no YouTube or The US Army Presents G4, that was all you had. Something that these old mags were really good at was using great screenshots. These days, I know that Megaten games involve you fighting static sprites where the animation is limited to shaking back and forth. But back then? Kid Me spent a lot of time daydreaming in class, imagining all sorts of different scenarios of how this game could have worked. Maybe I’ll finally learn more than 10% of the Japanese language and get around to playing this.

Oh wow, remember back when you could talk about killing nazis in video games without a bunch of weirdos sending you pictures of their gun collection in front of a sticky note with your home address? Feels so long ago.

Hold on, an inappropriate anecdote in a small blurb? Did I write for this magazine?

I don’t want to post every single page from this issue, but I will post a couple of reviews/previews that have that off-the-cuff writing that I’m actually pretty fond of.

you. damn. right.

yeah, there is definitely an alternate timeline version of me who wrote for this mag.

Check this shit out, they even covered fanzines! Or, at least the concept of a fanzine. That’s awesome.

This is a pretty good issue of a magazine that was better than I remember it being. But there is another reason why I thought it would be a good idea to talk about it. Let’s take a look at the masthead:

Now, editorial aside, there’s a name on the staff that’s really sticking out for me. See if you can find it. Give up?

Yes, that Larry Flynt. I very recently found out that, in addition to Hustler, Larry Flynt published a number of gaming magazines. In fact, he even published America’s #1 PC-Engine publication, TurboPlay! Video games and porn, truly a man after my own heart. A real shame about all the antisemitism and allegations of child molestation, though. Still good magazines; he only published the gaming stuff, and left his fucked up beliefs to his porn.

Conan O’Brien

A couple weeks ago, I was laid out, sick as fuck with a stomach bug. This week, I’m laid out, sick as fuck from my second COVID shot. Combine this with YouTube randomly recommending me Conan clips, and this led to me checking the Archive for full episodes. Sure enough, they are here.

The thing is, I missed out on the whole Late Night train. Growing up, my parents were big fans of Jay Leno. For anyone who has never seen Jay Leno, he is a man made in a lab to see if science could create a being with no concept of humor whatsoever. Watching a painfully unfunny idiot look at typos in the newspaper was enough for me to write off the whole concept of a talk show. Got better things to do, like staring at the fucking wall.

As such, you’ll have to forgive me for delivering the world’s coldest take: Conan is really fucking funny. I mean, the dude was a writer on The Simpsons, back when that still meant something. Taking this format of interviewing famous people and making jokes about current events, and making shit that is completely off-the-wall and legitimately hilarious is awesome. Take this nine minute segment I’m about to embed here. There is more humor in this one, for lack of a better term, throwaway segment, than other shows have in an entire season.

In any event, I suppose that it’s better late than never when it comes to watching good TV.

Funky Horror Band

I have been looking for the Funky Horror Band’s music for a long time. FHB, for the uninitiated, are a fake band (think along the lines of The Gorillaz) made up of cool looking aliens that made some pretty nice music in the late 80s-early 90s. That kind of New Jack Swing inspired Pop music that only Japan could pull off. Gorgeous stuff.

Anyways. Of course the Archive has their stuff available for download, which I went ahead and did. It sounds awesome. Also, “Magical Trans Circle” lol.

That’s it for this month. So long as there aren’t any more NFT-related shenanigans in the future, I’ll keep this segment going. The Internet Archive is too important a resource to lose to a bull shit form of fake money that’s even more fake than the shit we have to use in our day to day lives.