Every First Episode in the Winter 2023 Cour

Now that the Winter 2023 cour has come to an end, what better time to discuss the anime that aired this season. This season I have watched episodes from quite a lot of anime. Of course there are some series that I haven’t been able to watch due to them not being available on a platform I use, they are the continuation of a show I haven’t seen, or they don’t seem interesting enough. I will be going through the first episodes of every anime I have watched, and will be giving my thoughts about the series from it, and anime in general this season.

So in no particular order let’s start…

‘Inu ni Nattara Suki na Hito ni Hirowareta.’, or ‘My Life as Inukai-san’s Dog’. First things first, ‘inu’ means dog, so that is quite an appropriate name. This is a bit of a strange anime. In the first episode, the protagonist has somehow become a dog and gets taken in by a classmate who believes that she has found a stray dog. Because of this, the protagonist seems to find himself in some unusual ‘situations’. This is not something that I plan on watching further.

Farming Life in Another World, is another isekai anime where after the protagonist dies, and they get to reincarnate in another world with a wish of their choice. Instead of bringing a smartphone, or getting to live a quiet life, the protagonist chooses to be able to start a farm in their new life. This anime takes some of the elements of Slime 300 to an extreme, with the protagonist gaining a magical farming tool, which gives him some OP abilities as he starts his new life and builds a farm isolated in a forest with wild animals, although it doesn’t seem like it will stay that way for long. The first episode starts off in medias res, with a lively town, and then jumps back in time to show the start of the protagonist's journey. This farming anime seems a lot better than the previous fantasy farming anime we got.

Continuing the theme of isekai we also had ‘Campfire Cooking in Another World with my Absurd Skill’. This anime also starts off in medias res with a brief cold open. After that, this anime starts off as a parody of summoning isekai, with the protagonist getting summoned to another world along with a few other people who are each heroes. The protagonist’s special ability is online shopping, which allows him to purchase items online which instantly appear in front of him. Not thinking that his ability is useful, he parts his way from the adventurers and goes on his own path. This is a unique idea for an isekai, but it seems like it will make this into a food anime.

Next is ‘Saving 80,000 Gold in Another World for My Retirement’. In this isekai anime, Mitsuha gains the ability to travel between earth and a fantasy world. After she finds out about this ability, Mitsuha decides to use it to manipulate the people of the kingdom and use items from earth to gain money and fulfil her capitalist dreams. She found herself in this fantasy world after being manslaughtered and falling off a cliff, ‘Reborn Rich’ style.

‘The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady’ is another isekai in this season. This anime is actually a pseudoisekai series as it doesn’t reference the world the protagonist came from and has no impact on the plot of the series. The only thing that you could argue came as a result of her reincarnating is that she creates several items that resemble things found on earth. In the anime, noble society seems to be rigid and formal, whereas she is able to be much more relaxed and casual. It isn’t clear why they chose to make it an isekai, or if it is just to capitalise on the isekai hype.

‘Chillin’ in My 30s after Getting Fired from the Demon King’s Army’ is another fantasy anime, but this time it's not an isekai. In this anime, Dariel -- the protagonist -- is fired from the demon lord’s army by the new rulers as he doesn’t possess magic. After being fired, Dariel finds himself wandering in the forest where he meets a human girl. He ends up finding out that the reason he didn’t possess magic was because he was actually a human.

‘Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte’ is another otome anime. Instead of the protagonist finding themselves in an otome world, instead the two main characters while playing a game gain the ability to communicate with the characters in the game. This is a unique take for an anime, but it doesn’t seem like a very interesting idea. The producers of the series include DMM and NetEase Games, which seems to be an interesting combination. The female main character has the same voice actress as the female main character in ‘Fruit of Evolution’.

Getting on to the second season of ‘The Fruit of Evolution’, a continuation of another unique isekai. The second season of the show continues after the first, and is set in the academy they travelled to, with Seiichi as a teacher. This season doesn’t seem to be as interesting as the first, and has a very different style to the first.

‘Reborn to Master the Blade: From Hero-King to Extraordinary Squire’ is an anime where the protagonist, who was formally the king, is reincarnated in the distant future as a newly-born girl after deciding to devote his next life to becoming the strongest swordbearer. The OP theme sounds similar to some of the music from ‘Spy X Family’.

‘The Reincarnation of the Strongest Exorcist in Another World’ is another reincarnation isekai. The protagonist died in a scene that resembles ancient Japanese folklore, and he is reincarnated as a minor noble in a European-style world. Instead of just relying on European style fantasy, this series incorporates elements of asian mythologies, which is quite unique.

‘Handyman Saitou in Another World’ is another isekai, where someone from a specific profession finds themselves in another world where they can utilise their skills. This series also starts off with a cold open showing Saitou with his party in a dungeon. The episode is made up of a series of vignettes focusing on snapshots of different characters.

Bofuri season 2 also aired this cour. It seems like a weird time to air, as the first episode takes place at christmas, which was a few weeks before the episode aired, although it did have a premiere of the episode before christmas.

There is also the second season of In/Spectre, which is more of the same as the first season. In the first episode Kotoko gives a plausible explanation for a bad mystery and then reveals that that was just a solution she had made up, and what the real cause was.

I have also watched the first episodes of several other anime series this cour, such as ‘Spy Classroom’, ‘The Tale of Outcasts’, ‘ONIMAI’, ‘The Iceblade Sorcerer Shall Rule the World’, and ‘Tomo-chan Is a Girl!’, but I won’t be going into those as this video is starting to get a bit long.

Overall a lot of anime seem to have poorer animation compared to previous seasons. There have been a few unique anime this season as well.

So what did you think about the Winter 2023 season? Did you agree with my assessments, or did you think something else? Leave your thoughts down below. If you liked this video, consider liking the video, commenting down below, and subscribing so that you don’t miss any future videos.

Who Actually is Marie? (Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs)

Hello and welcome to another video. In this video we will be having a look at the anime series ‘Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough For Mobs’. This video will of course contain spoilers for the first season of the show.

‘Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough For Mobs’ was an unexpectedly popular isekai series from the current cour (クール). The protagonist is forced by his sister to complete routes in an otome game she is playing, so that she doesn’t have to go through difficult or monotonous parts of the game, and for an unknown reason wakes up after being reincarnated in a fantasy world matching the game as a character ‘Leon Fou Bartfort’, a character who does not appear in the game. The game’s main character is supposed to be a girl called ‘Olivia’ who the male characters at the academy are supposed to become romantically involved with. When he arrives at the academy, Leon finds that Marie has taken her place at the academy.

As a character who wasn’t at the academy in the original game, Leon has to use his insight about the world he was in in order to raise his rank and standing so that he would be able to attend the academy in the first place. Similarly, it is implied that Marie was also reincarnated into that world, and that she has also been able to replace Olivia by using knowledge that she has brought from playing the game in her own world. In scenes from Marie’s perspective throughout the series, Marie also comments on aspects of the game such as characters’ weaknesses as the series progresses, and there are scenes where she tries to find the saint items that the protagonist normally collected over the course of the game. To go beyond all doubt as to whether she is a reincarnate, Luxion, Leon’s AI assistant actually references her as being a reincarnate and using her knowledge, when talking to Leon near the end of the final episode of the season.

So who is Marie, and why does she appear to be the only reincarnate other than Leon in this world?

It is entirely possible that there are other reincarnates in this world, and that the series only focuses on these two who happen to gain success in the new world, but if there were others, it would make sense that more things in the world would be different as a result of these mob characters, as opposed to the storyline of the actual game that the world is based on. Even if other people were reincarnated as mob characters, you would expect that at least some of them would end up in high-up positions, and that some of them would tell others that they had been reincarnated. If this were to happen the characters in the series would likely have heard about some people claiming to have been reincarnated. Because of this, it is likely that the only two people that have reincarnated into this world are Leon and Marie.

Because of this, Marie and Leon being the only ones reincarnating, must have some significance. Marie is probably actually Leon’s sister from before he reincarnated, the one who made Leon play the game. So what is the reason for believing that Marie is actually Leon’s sister?

Marie in the series knows things about the plot of the game and the world that it is set in. Because before the reincarnation, Leon’s sister was playing the game, it would make sense that she would have this knowledge about the game. If it was just some random person, they would be unlikely to know about the game, especially in depth, so Marie would likely be a younger person, and someone who had played the game.

If two people were to reincarnate together, it would make sense that they had some sort of connection, rather than them just being two random people. If Marie is Leon’s brother, they would definitely have a connection to each other. At the time of their reincarnation, they weren’t just two people who were related to each other, they were constantly in contact with each other, as Leon’s sister was making him complete the game for her, and their relationship at that time happened to be very strained, and they were not getting on well with each other.

Another huge piece of evidence that Marie might actually be Leon’s sister is that Marie came from a very similar scenario to what Leon’s sister would have come from before they reincarnated. As expressed by Marie in episode 4 of the series, Marie also had a brother, and she also had him play monotonous parts of the game for her. Even if she wasn’t Leon’s sister, it could still be possible that she had a brother in her past life, although a sister having a brother would eliminate a lot of people from being able to be Marie. This is because the average number of children in Japan per mother is less than 2, meaning that a random girl in Japan having a brother would have less than a 50% chance. What’s more is that it would be incredibly unlikely that a random girl with a brother would have forced him to play the game in the same way that Leon’s sister did. This lends great credence to the fact that Marie is actually Leon’s sister from before he reincarnated.

None of this actually guarantees that Marie is Leon’s sister, but it definitely supports the idea, and would make sense from a writing perspective. Because of this, it can reasonably be claimed that Marie actually is in fact Leon’s sister.

None of this actually guarantees that Marie is Leon’s sister, but it definitely supports the idea, and would make sense from a writing perspective. Because of this, it can reasonably be claimed that Marie actually is in fact Leon’s sister.

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Katarina Never Reincarnated (HameFura)

Disclaimer: This article was written as a YouTube Video script, and hence may make reference to audio of visual elements not available on this page.

Before we begin, this video will contain spoilers for the first season of the isekai anime series ‘My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!’. If you are worried about spoilers, consider bookmarking this video, and coming back after you have watched the series.

After my previous video about Hamefura, and which ending Katerina actually got, did better than any other on my channel, although I guess that is to be expected since that is the only video on the channel, I decided to make another video about the series.

In Hamefura, after Katerina Claes, the show's main character hits her head, it is established that Katerina is the reincarnated form of a Japanese schoolgirl who enjoyed playing otome games, and that before she died, she was playing the game ‘Fortune Lover’. It is also later established that Katerina died as a result of getting hit by a car. The series Hamefura, is shown to be set in the world of Fortune Lover, with the characters from Fortune Lover being people in the world of Hamefura, and Katerina herself being one of the characters from the game.

So what if Katerina isn’t actually in the world of Fortune Lover at all? I’m not just saying that the world Katerina is in isn’t exactly like the Fortune Lover game, I’m saying that Katerina isn’t in the world that she is shown to be in, in the series at all. Throughout the series, Katarina isn’t actually dead, and what is shown to be happening is just in Katerina’s head.

At the start of the series, when Katarina hits her head on the ground, we are shown that this is when Katarina remembers her past. In reality, this point of hitting her head is likely the point that Katerina first steps into this world, and her ‘memories’ of her life in this world are just fabrications created by her mind. Katarina’s transition to this world, and her belief that she has been ‘reincarnated’ is a coping mechanism in order to help her cope with the trauma of being hit by a car, as her delusional state can separate her from the reality of her injuries. In this world, her injury from supposedly hitting her head on the ground has likely been given to her as an ‘equivalent’ to her injuries from the car. Based on this, Katerina likely has a condition known as psychosis.

Psychosis is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “A severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality”.

Psychosis can be caused by extreme stress or trauma, and can result in people seeing or hearing things that aren’t real. According to health direct (https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/symptoms-of-psychosis), this can include delusions of grandeur such as believing that one has special powers or is an important religious or political figure. In the world in which Katerina has supposedly been reincarnated, she is in a world with magic, and where she can do magic, and one in which she is a noble from a prominent family. It is clear where these influences for this fantasy world came from. Around the time of the accident, Katarina regularly stayed up late in order to play Fortune Lover, and was constantly thinking about it, as shown through her regular conversations about the game with Sasaki Atsuko. This also explains why in her delusion, her friend Sasaki Atsuko was also ‘reincarnated’ as Sophia Ascart, who would become one of her friends in this new world.

So where does the series actually take place then? The answer is probably a hospital bed. After the accident, she would likely have been taken to a hospital for treatment, and this is the place where she would live out her delusion. In episode one of the anime, there is a conversation between two maids in the garden observing young Katerina “- She’s been acting strange since she got injured. - But the doctor said everything was normal...”. This is possibly not a conversation between two maids in the garden as we are led to believe in the show, but instead a conversation between two people around Katerina in the hospital, whether medical staff such as nurses or family members. This conversation was likely overheard by Katarina and incorporated into her fantasy. The maids in the anime are shown to be in the foreground, with Katerina working away in the background. This distance between them could represent Katarina overhearing them talking from some distance away, and it being incorporated into this delusion as people away from her speaking.

This can apply whether Katarina in the hospital awake or in a comatose state. Claire Wineland, who at the age of 18 spent two weeks in a coma after surgery described her experience as wandering around the Alaskan wilderness. Regarding when her body was being kept cold, she said “I remember sitting there and staring at the most beautiful scenery ever for hours and hours … it would be freezing cold but I didn’t care,” and continued “Everything that happens in the real world, you hear, you’re aware of … You kind of know what’s going on. But it goes through this weird filter thing … It turns into something else when it hits your consciousness”. This shows how a comatose person can still be conscious of their surroundings, and that the brain tries to make sense of their stimuli, in order to try and create a world around the person that seems to make sense (https://abcnews.go.com/Health/teen-explains-life-coma/story?id=32473542).

In the series, Katerina has a judgement event in which she gets accused of the crimes that she would have normally committed during the course of the game. Due to her actions however, these events never happened, as Katerina had spent this time instead trying to avoid the death flags associated with these events, and the main cast defends Katerina saying that Katerina would never do that. Of course nothing bad comes out of this for Katerina, as she didn’t do anything wrong and this event is explained away as magic having been used to make those girls act that way towards Katerina. In reality, due to her understanding of the plot of the game, Katerina encounters this event because in her mind, it is an integral part of the plot of the game. However, as she hadn’t done any actions that would result in this outcome, her brain tries to correct her story, by having her friends defend her, and explains away the judgement event happening even though there was reason for it with magic.

Later on in the series, Katarina is able to talk to the real-life counterpart of Sophia Ascart, her friend Sasaki Atsuko, which allows Katerina to get important information for the series such as the location of Maria Campbell, and the true identity of her kidnapper. This takes place in a scene in which she meets the Sasaki Atsuko from her original world in a classroom setting, and ends with Atsuko telling Katerina to accept her new life in her fantasy world. This meeting is likely Atsuko talking to Katerina in the hospital one last time, about the game that they used to spend hours talking about. This is why she is able to find out new information about how the game ends, and to help her find Maria. This information fits perfectly into being the solution to the problem at hand as Katerina’s brain tries to make all the information it is receiving fit together in some logical way. This conversation is likely a ‘final conversation’ between Atsuko and Katerina in which Atsuko can see Katerina’s situation and wants to say goodbye.

Another thing to take into account is how throughout the series Katerina eventually comes to terms with the car accident that resulted in her ‘death’. Initially, it is made clear that before spending time in her new ‘world’, Katerina lived in Japan, but it is not made clear how she ended up in the world of Fortune Lover. Later on in the series, it becomes clear that Katerina ‘died’ in a car accident. This represents how initially after the accident, Katerina couldn’t accept what had happened to her. The later reveal of the car accident represents how after time thinking of her situation, she eventually starts to realise what had happened to her and comes to terms with it, now knowing what had happened to her.

In conclusion, the world that Katerina has found herself in in Hamefura, is a fabrication created by her mind in order to allow her to cope with her injury, and allow her brain to process the stimuli it receives into something that appears to make sense.

That’s all for this video. If you enjoyed the video, consider leaving a like, comment any thoughts or ideas about future videos down below, and subscribe so that you don’t miss any future videos. If you want to watch similar videos, I have the channel wIS, which deals with more general pop culture stuff, and I have the channel underlined which deals with gaming. I will pin both in an i-card in the top right corner of the screen. With that, that’s the end of this video.

How Super Mario Bros. Does Scrolling

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Super Mario Brothers, released in 1985 is probably one of the most famous video games of all time, spawning countless incarnations and spin offs. Super Mario bros helped to define the modern side scroller and platformer genres. It’s simple mechanic of trying to get from the left off the level to the right by jumping on platforms whilst avoiding obstacles helped to cement it into the hearts of people everywhere. 

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So how does scrolling work in Super Mario Bros? One thing to keep in mind that compared to many modern computers, the 8-bit NES is fairly low powered, utilising a variety of the cheap 6502 processor that was popular at the time. Another thing to keep in mind is how graphics on the NES worked. NES games worked on the basis of a 256x240 screen. Everything that you saw on screen was made up of 8 by 8 tiles in the background, which combined into 16 by 16 groups of pixels called blocks. 8 by 8 or 8 by 16 sprites could be placed on top, which could be placed anywhere, although only 8 of these can be drawn in a given scan line.

Many early games on the NES did not even feature scrolling, instead opting to use static screens for different levels, or games like 'The Legend of Zelda' only scrolling under controlled conditions such as when changing between these static screens.

One thing that you’ll notice playing the original Super Mario Bros is that the screen can only scroll right. As you run to the right, the screen scrolls with you, but if you decide to go back the other way, the screen doesn’t scroll back with you and you hit the side of the screen. If a power up happens to go off the left side of the screen, you’ve lost it.

This mechanic of the screen only scrolling one way is intrinsic in simplifying how scrolling works, in order to allow for Super Mario Bros. to have clean scrolling like it does.

Super Mario Bros levels can be quite long. The NES can not hold an entire level in memory, instead it can only load a much smaller section of the level into memory. It holds the loaded section of the background in what is called a name table. The NES can hold 4 nametables, which consist of one byte for each 8 by 8 tile contained in those nametables, as well as space for storing colour palette information for the background. Each nametable consists of 32 tiles in width, by 30 tiles in height, for a total of 960 tiles. This is 960 bytes in size, and the attribute table, which is what stores the colour palette information, takes this up to a total of 1024 bytes, or 1 kibibyte. A screen displayed by the NES uses one of those name tables, and the tiles from them are displayed in the screen.

Scrolling on the NES basically works by applying an offset to which part of the nametable is being viewed, and as the visible portion moves past the right-most part of the nametable, it loops over back to the start.

Now, the NES could use this for scrolling with one of these nametables, but then this would just be the same screen repeating over and over again, as this is the size of the visible portion of the screen.

Instead, scrolling on the NES typically uses what is referred to as mirroring, more specifically, nametable mirroring. There are a few different types of nametable mirroring, which all join up different nametables and are generally used when doing different types of scrolling. Vertical mirroring joins nametables on a horizontal plane to each other, effectively creating a 64 by 30 sized nametable, twice the width of what is visible on the screen.

This is all well and good, but this only accounts for a level two screens wide, unless you want to have the level repeat again. If you’ve ever played or watched someone play Super Mario Bros., you’re probably very aware that levels can be much wider than two screens. So how does Super Mario Bros. achieve having much wider levels?

This has much to do with the fact that only half of the nametable when using this nametable mirroring method is visible on screen. Because only half of the nametable’s tiles are visible on screen, this leaves the other half to have its tiles freely manipulated without this change being noticeable to the end user. When a row of tiles disappears off of the left-hand side of the screen, it can be updated with the tiles that come after the last tiles on the right hand side of the nametable. This process continues as the screen scrolls further, so that when the visible portion of the screen reaches the right of the nametable and wraps back around to the start of the nametable, the tiles there have been replaced, making it seem as though the level continues past this point. To answer the question why Super Mario Bros. only allows you to scroll one way, well the answer is that it is to simplify the scrolling process, as you only need to keep track of scrolling for one direction to replace tiles, as if you allowed scrolling both ways, you would also need to account for replacing tiles as you scroll left, which makes it a lot more complicated.

Of course there are games on the NES that do allow scrolling both left and right, and games like Super Mario Bros. 3 allow you to scroll in all four directions, but how that is done can be a topic for another day.

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The Oldest Flash Game on 4399

Video games have been a part of our culture for a long time, so what about flash games? For many people growing up in the early 2000s, flash games are a part of their childhood. People visited lots of different sites to ply these games, whether it be newgrounds, kongregate, or some other gaming site. In China, one of the largest and most popular flash games sites, was and still is 4399.com.

4399 has a huge range of flash games, and in recent years has moved into the realm of html5 and other online game types. Each game on 4399 has a special number ID assigned to them, and these can be seen in the urls. Going through the lowest numbers listed on the site, numbers such as 1 & 2 aren't available, but 3 is. Checking the wayback machine on archive.org, these pages don't exist in even the oldest captures, so it it unknown whether these pages ever existed, or if they were deleted shortly after they were created.

Link to the oldest game: http://www.4399.com/flash/3.htm

Looking at the page, the game is called Invasion of the Galactic Goobers, and was published on the site on the 15th of May 2004. It is a simple clone of Space Invaders, but with a bit of a twist, with the addition of boss fights.

Japanese Anime For Gameboy Advance (Script Version)

Disclaimer: This article was written as a YouTube Video script, and hence may make reference to audio of visual elements not available on this page. The original article written about this topic, as well as references can be found HERE.

2003. Back when Amazon was little more than a glorified bookstore, and when Netflix and Chill meant to order a DVD on Netflix and wait for it to arrive in the post. 2003 was a year before prevalent online video streaming, and although there were sites and programs like Napster and LimeWire which allowed you to download music and videos, they weren't exactly legal. The only real way to easily access films and TV at the time was to go to a video rental store and rent a VHS Tape or DVD, that or just buy the video outright. Apart from the lack of streaming, not everyone had a phone that they could use a a portable media player to watch videos.

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Video game consoles have had a lot of accessories throughout the years. So what about for watching videos on a portable console such as the Gameboy Advance? You are probably aware that in the West, the Nintendo GBA had special cartridges released in 2004 that featured low resolution TV show episodes.

In Japan however, Gameboy Advance Video did not exist. Instead they had their own system of playing videos on the Gameboy Advance. This technology is apparently so unheard of in the west that unlike for the Western Gameboy Advance cartridges, Wikipedia doesn't even have an article for their Japanese counterpart.

In Japan in 2003, AM3 created their own system for playing videos on the Gameboy Advance, a whole year before the Gameboy Advance cartridges were released. This system was called 'Advance Video', which admittedly has a name very similar to 'Gameboy Advance Video'. AM3's system used a specially designed cartridge that could play videos off of a standard Smart Media card inserted into a slot on the side.

These cards could be purchased either with content already on them, or as blank cards which could be taken to a kiosk to have an episode written on them. There were also packages that included both the adapter as well as a card, or you could buy your cards and adapter separately. After you watched a video, you could keep the card to rewatch the video later, or you could use a kiosk to rewrite the card with a new video. Something interesting to note about these cards, is that they are partially transparent.

These cards can hold up to 24 minutes of animated content on a standard 32 megabyte card, or 192 minutes on a 256 megabyte card. The videos are compressed using a proprietary video compression technology developed in conjunction by Act Image of France, as well as IMAGICA Corporation, which is also known for HDCAM compression.

4 titles were available for the launch in May 2003, and the adapter was available for 3200 yen. To use the kiosks to rewrite cards, it would cost you between 100 yen and 500 yen, depending on what exactly you wanted to write on the card. To purchase a new blank card, it would cost you around 1800 yen. These kiosks were called 'Advance Gacha', and were designed to be able to be set up in convenience stores and toy shops. This system was similar to the kiosks set up to allow people in Japan to write Famicom Disk System games onto disks. AM3 planned to set up over 10,000 of these smart media copying machines in Japan by the summer of 2005. These systems were distributed in conjunction with Happinet Co.

A large number of anime titles were made available. The original series announced to be distributed were 'Detective Conan' and 'Time Bokan'. These were all available on prewritten cards, with the first episode of 'Detective Conan', 'The Roller Coaster Murder' being available in a bundle with the adapter, for only 600 yen more than the cost of the adapter itself. That's a pretty good deal if you ask me, considering to just get a blank card will set you back 1800 yen.

With the initial release, you are also paying for the novelty of portable videos. Hasbro's VideoNow also launched in 2003. Although the VideoNow discs were available at a lower price-point, there are several disadvantages. The original VideoNow only worked in black and white, whereas the Advance Video supported colour. The VideoNow player could only be used to watch videos and had no support to play any games. The VideoNow had a much smaller screen, and did not support any kind of rewriteable format.

According to the website for lik-sang, a former importer of Japanese products, content for AM3's Advance Video was planned to be released in stores on CDs, which could then be later transferred to cards. It isn't known whether any CDs with content were ever made or released. This idea is however contradicted by an article by ASCII corp., which claims that the content would utilise DRM that tied data to hardware in order to prevent unauthorised copying. This DRM would make it very hard to write content onto the Smart Media cards yourself. The system adopted a special ROM-specific ID system recorded for each file, so even if it was copied onto a commercially available Smart Media card or even another card with a different video on it, it could not be played. This would be encrypted with DES encryption and use a 128-bit encryption key which would be recorded in the media ROM, and would need to be verified before a video could be played back. Despite this, data from computers and cameras could still be recorded to the memory cards, although this likely could not be accessed with the Advance Video adapter.

When the Western Gameboy Advance Video cartridges were released, they used DRM to stop them from being played on the Gamecube Gameboy adapter, as the owners of the rights to the television series were worried that users would watch their shows on a bigger screen, or even try to record their episodes. AM3's Advance Video adapters however work fine in the Gamecube Gameboy adapter. While we are comparing differences between the two systems, while the western Advance Video cartridges sat flush with the GBA as they were standard sized cartridges, in order to make room for the Smart Media card slots, the Japanese system required a larger cartridge. The adapter is 55 mm long, which is about 1 cm less than an original Gameboy cartridge, meaning it stuck out of a GBA by 2 cm. Interestingly, as the width of a Gameboy cartridge is also about 55 mm, this means that the AM3's Advance Video cartridge is a perfect square.

The player has several functions that can be used whilst playing back video. The system can play and pause using the 'A' button. It can also fast forwards and backwards, using the right and left buttons on the d-pad respectively and by pressing and holding forwards and backwards, you can change between 1x speed, 2x speed, 3x speed, and 4x speed. Some material would also support chapter menus, although earlier content such as the Detective Conan Roller Coaster Murder Case did not. Titles such as the Pokemon titles would support basic interactive menus which allowed the selection of either the main movie, or short commercials for other Pokemon movies.

The player contains no decoding chip, but instead uses the ARM7 CPU of the GBA in conjunction with the specially developed FastVideo codec to allow for video playback. This allowed the player to be built at a low price-point as it did not have to contain any custom chips. Video can be played back at 30 fps and at a resolution of 240 x 160 pixels, the full resolution of the GBA screen.

Lik-sang, also expected a wide range of content to be released for the system including animated content, aka. the anime shows, game and movie trailers, similar to what is available on the Pokemon cards, pictures, music, educational software titles, ebooks, as well as karaoke.

This is also backed up by a 2004 GameSpot article which claims that AM3 was also planning to release other peripherals that would work with different types of media. These included: Advance Picture for still images, Advance Music for music, Advance Comic for manga, and Advance Navi for maps.

According to ASCII, AM3 would release animated content at first, but planned to also release other content such as eBooks, so that the GBA and GBA SP could be used for educational materials. Nintendo however prohibited the company from using the technology to distribute any games or adult materials.

Looking at listings for the Smart Media Player on Amazon.co.jp (which can be found by searching for 'AM3' under the category 'TV games'), it can be seen that cards were released for many anime series including, but not limited to: Meitantei Conan/Detective Conan also known as Case Closed, Pokemon, Lelere's Genius Bakabon, Crayon Shin-chan, and Time Bokan.

These releases could have either television series episodes or movies on them. During the time of the Nintendo DS, smart media cards continued to be released with Nintendo DS branding on the packaging, although they were still the same GBA cartridge design. AM3 would go on to release DSVision, which was a similar concept to the Smart Media Player except it took Micro SD/TF cards and was housed in a special DS cartridge that looked similar to a DS flash cart.

The ActImage codec was announced by Shinji Hashimoto, the executive officer of Square Enix to also be planned for use in the GBA game 'Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories', which did feature rendered cut-scenes. Although from research I cannot find whether it was in fact this codec used to compress the video used in cut-scenes, it likely was due to this announcement.

In 2005, am3 would also provide 'Poke Park Advanced Navi' at PokePark, the world's first Pokemon theme park, which was a video utilising the Advance Video technology and could be written free of charge onto a card using an 'Advance Gachapon' system. They also operated a lending system there, where a guest could pay 2100 yen to rent a system with the card and movie, 2000 yen being given back to the guest on the system's return.

Currently, there does not appear to be much information on the internet about the AM3 Smart Media Player, or at least it is not easily accessible. Many sites that contain information about the product such as 'lik-sang.com' are no longer available, and many western sites did not cover this product as it did not have an international release, unlike Gameboy Advance Video. It is likely that the Smart Media Player was not released internationally, due to the success of Gameboy Advance Video, and it's much simpler nature only requiring a cartridge for each video, instead of a bulky adapter with fancy media cards. Some information can be found through listings on sites such as Amazon.co.jp, which is not normally used by people outside of Japan, which makes it hard for people to discover AM3's Advance Video smart media player.

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The Speedrun That Broke the Dropper

Bigre's the Dropper Map for Minecraft 1.5 has been a popular extension to Minecraft speedrunning, as one of the most popular and influential downloadable Minecraft maps of all time. It was to be expected that Dropper speedrunning would span into many categories for the many different ways of playing it.

Any% is a popular speedrunning category that asks for a player to try to get from the start of the game to the end any means necessary. It typically allows for users to skip levels, missions and items as long as they end up at the finish. They also normally allow the player to use glitches and bugs to their advantage. The Dropper any% speedrun requires for the player to get from the start area to the end area in the shortest amount of time possible. Timing starts as soon as you enter the door, and ends as soon as you enter the end area.

So how exactly do you get from the start of the game to the end area as quickly as possible? Do you have to play all 17 levels to beat the game, or only the first 16 to get to the end area? There aren't any level skips in the Dropper are there? Well, no there aren't. There are no points in the games where you can find a way to skip a level or go to a level later on. It's always one level at a time.

Remember when I said that any% normally allows for you to use glitches? Well, while there may be no official level skips available, glitches can be used to skip levels. After you complete a level, and before you attempt the next dropper, your spawn point automatically changes to above the next dropper in order to allow you to automatically spawn above that dropper if you fail there. There is no need to even use the set spawnpoint buttons on the walls. This automatic spawn setting can be used to your advantage, or at least where your spawn is originally set can be.

Although when you start you spawn in the water out the front of the starting area, your spawnpoint isn't actually set there. You can test this by digging a hole in the wool under the water and drowning yourself. Whether from Bigre testing the game before going to the start for the release version, or for some other reason, your spawn point is actually at the final checkpoint before level 17. This means that if you are able to die before your checkpoint gets set elsewhere, you can travel straight to the last level. From here, you can simply run backwards to get to the end area. So this means that if you are able to die pretty much straight away, this would be the fastest way to speedrun the game. But how do you die at the start? There is no way to die in the water area outside of the first dropper, and if you fall down the first dropper but die, your spawn has already been reset meaning that you will instead respawn at the first level.

The thing is though, that you actually can die in the first level before your spawn point is set. If you die pretty much straight away in the first dropper, you can die before your respawn point is set. By going to the side as soon as you drop, you can gain just enough momentum as you hit the side of the dropper to die. From here, after you respawn, you can just run backwards and as soon as you reach the end of the tunnel and start falling down, you have finished the speedrun. In version 1.5, you can reliably do this in around 25 seconds for a complete run. This run completely breaks the game and takes away any challenge from playing. This has resulted in the speedrun.com leader boards for the map delisting the any% category, although for many other games strats that trivialise beating the game don't justify delisting a category, it would make sense regardless to keep the run in order for people to learn about this strategy.

How I Discovered A New Dropper Speedrunning Strategy

 The Dropper by Bigre may be one of the most famous Minecraft Maps of all time. The relatively simple concept of falling down and avoiding obstacles in order to survive getting to the bottom has spawned a huge genre of popular Minecraft maps over the past 8 years.

When you start the game or look at the download page, it only gives you a few simple instructions. "The Goal - Survive and Finish the Game", and "The Rule - Don't Break Blocks". The game gives you a few other basic rules and tips such as to play on version 1.5, but that is the gist of it. Now with these rules there is something that was left out, one important rule that most people wouldn't do because it would normally seem like cheating, but isn't. This one change could completely change the way that people are able to play the map. Although this method of playing the game is much slower than playing the game normally, it can make levels much easier, so easy in fact that on most levels with hard to do parkour jumps, you can be almost guaranteed to make them.

This one missing rule is that there is nothing that stops you from placing blocks. You may be thinking, "How do you place blocks if you can't break blocks to get them in the first place?". There are a few different ways to get things that you can place. The most obvious time that you are given blocks that you might be able to use are beds that you can find in a chest. Other than that, you can get blocks that drop from entities. While you think that this might be included in the rule saying that you can't break blocks, it isn't because blocks and entities are different. Of course the natural assumption is that you can't break entities for blocks, but if the rules don't prohibit it, it's allowed. So, how do you get blocks from entities in the Dropper? There are two ways. One is by crashing the boats on the toilet level so that they break and drop planks as well as sticks, the other is from sheep that can spawn in the game. The easiest way to get blocks is to get them from broken boats, and you only need a few in order to make your jumps easier.

By collecting planks of wood, you can bridge across the 3-block jumps in order to make them significantly easier, and allowing some of the hardest parkour jumps to be done with almost 100% accuracy. The reason why 3-block jumps are so hard in this version is because in version 1.5, you are unable to sprint.

Now is a video of my attempting the Dropper using this strategy, and although I don't do very well, and die quite a few times, I do quite well without any practice, finishing all 17 levels in less than 13 minutes.

You can  download the map for yourself at the following link: https://www.planetminecraft.com/project/advpuzz-the-dropper-2-new-levels

25 Ways Noobs Lose in Minecraft

• Blown Up By Creeper
• Blown Up By TNT
• Digging Down Into a Ravine
• Digging Up into Sand
• Dragon's Breath
• Drowning
• Ender Dragon
• Falling into The Void
• Falling Off a Tree
• Hitting A Villager Next to an Iron Golem
• Hitting A Zombie Pigman
• Hitting an End Crystal
• Looking at an Enderman
• Ocean Monument
• Pillager Outpost
• Running Into a Cactus
• Shot By a Skeleton
• Stepping in Fire
• Swimming in Lava
• Traps in a Jungle Temple
• Trident on Pigs
• Using a Bed in the End
• Using a Bed in the Nether
• Using a Weakness Potion on Yourself
• Using The Wrong Kind of Rockets

{}2B2T, The Oldest Server In Minecraft

There are quite a few older servers, but Crazy Fools UK has its own custom WaterWorld, which adds a touch of its own to the regular game. While the server is public, they say that anyone wishing to join it must pass a simple intelligence test. Sources: 4

The main world of MinecraftOnline, Freedonia, was created on the same day that Minecrafts Survival Multiplayer was opened to the public. While the original founders allegedly still own the server, no one runs or moderates it any more. Although there is some debate about which existing Minecraft server is the oldest, most people believe that MinecraftOnline is officially the oldest of all Minecraft servers. Sources: 4

Since its commissioning in 2010, Freedonia has been rebuilt and restored several times, making it the longest continuously running world in the world. Since it has been running for so long and has always been open to the public, it is filled with numerous cities and sites. Since its release five years ago, tens of millions of people have logged on to Minecraft. Sources: 3, 4

You may be one of the only nerds who has never set foot on the virtual equivalent of game blocks, which some have dismissed as a waste of time, a distraction from the real world, or even a bad idea. I have a lot more free time and even then I don't like video games or other people. Sources: 3

I downloaded a copy of the game, created a character and paid a visit to a friend's suggested server. After killing a few Noobs in Spawn and visiting some random monuments, I returned to the server for a few more hours. Sources: 2, 3

It was claimed that Ant had more respect for the server before Rusher found out about 2B2 T, but he has since stated that he is no longer on the server. Sources: 2

On February 25, 2017, construction began on a new, completely underground base on the rock shown, but ChromeCrusher found it two days later. The server descended into chaos after YouTuber TheCampingRusher made a video about 2B2 T that reached over 2.8 million views in two years, as shown below. Two days after the video, it was shown in an IGN video that described the server as "the oldest server in the world and the oldest in all of StarCraft II." Sources: 2, 5

This was designed to appeal to new players to help the community spawn as oldfag slowly lost ground to attract more Minecraft YouTubers who wanted to conquer 2B2. Thousands of fans tried to join 2b2 T, causing the original community to gamble on it, only to be drowned out by the thousands who joined in a queue to prevent players from overflowing on the server. Sources: 5

The server has also become popular with many YouTubers, such as French, and a You Tuber called FitMC, who is a regular server, has taken the opportunity to expand his channel to over 150k subscribers, who enjoy over 1.5 million views per month and more than 1 million subscribers on YouTube. Sources: 5

In 2019, the term "Oldest Anarchy Server in Minecraft" became synonymous with 2B2T, helped the server appear in several videos for meme compilation on YouTube, and became synonymous with 2b2. T he Born 1990, at the age of 30, 1 / 2 is an American gaming YouTuber who is best known for his popular memes and memes about gaming and Minecraft. Sources: 2, 5

He first created his account in November 2008, but only uploaded it in 2012 and has since uploaded more than 1.5 million videos and over 2.2 million views. Sources: 2

In the 2016 YouTube invasion of 2b2, also known as the Rusher War, Fit was chosen to lead Team Veteran. On June 1, 2016, a large YouTuber named CampingRusher uploaded a video to 2B2. A war is raging on one of Minecraft's longest-running servers, all because of a YouTube video. Sources: 1, 2

The rest of the battle unfolds in a series of racist memes that shock you with gore porn and monstrous gadgets designed to make the server literally unplayable. The battle is, as you might expect, between diamond swords and lava buckets, but it is not just a war in an imaginary space. This is the kind of war that servers like 2B2-T want to be in, and they're there for the right reasons. Sources: 1

The images in this post contain content that some readers might find offensive, and some of them may offend some people in the community. Sources: 1

I don't think I'm alone at the site now, but I should probably go just to make sure. I can't believe all these secrets are still hidden in the ruins of anarchy, and according to Cbs 2, I'd put one piece at a time for a fortune. It's cool to see Ziggy Base again after three years, it's always interesting to learn about the secrets She # Ve hidden over the years. Now it is time to move on, I'm pretty sure they're all alone , so I shouldn't have to worry. 

Cited Sources

• https://www.facebook.com/MinecraftCommunityCreations/videos/secret-bedrock-bunker-in-2b2t/232323491216539/ 0
• https://kotaku.com/minecrafts-worst-server-is-at-war-with-youtube-1786999271 1
• https://youtube.fandom.com/wiki/FitMC 2
• https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xywekq/the-worst-place-in-minecraft 3
• https://www.oldest.org/entertainment/minecraft-servers/ 4
• https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/2b2t 5

Anime on the DS - DSvision

Image From: Link

When the Nintendo DS launched in the 2000s, it still did not have an built-in web browser. This meant that users could not easily access the internet (except using a special internet browser cartridge which had not yet been released), and this made steaming services nigh impossible. Streaming services at this point were not common online either for any platform. This was a time before YouTube, and when Netflix still operated by mailing DVDs. This meant that if someone wanted to get anime or other media on the DS it had to distributed physically.

After the Japanese company AM3 released their Advance Video Smart Media Player in 2003, it seemed like the next logical step would be to release an equivalent for the much newer and more powerful Nintendo DS hardware, and DSvision released in 2008 would be just that.

The system, comprising of a cartridge similar to the format that would later be used for Nintendo DS flash cartridges was used. This was a standard DS sized cartridge with a slot on the side, into which a micro-SD card could be inserted. This micro-SD card would contain the movie that you could watch on the system, in a similar way to how the smart media cards held the content for the Gameboy Advance Video. Pre-recorded micro-SD cards could be purchased, or one could buy content on the now defunct official website dsvision.jp, which sold content that could be transferred to the micro-SD card using a program known as 'DSvisionラック' or 'DSvision Rack'. Unlike the previous Advance Video for the GBA which planned to have different content types, and was not able to within its lifespan, the DSvision sold books on the official website that could be read on the DSvision. In addition to traditional books, the service also sold manga as well as educational materials. Quite notably like the previous system (the Advance Video), the DSvision had Pokemon titles including full movies which could be purchased for download, with many in the 300-500 Yen price range. The full movie MewTwo Strikes Back was available for 500 Yen in its entirety or over 85 minutes runtime, and it could fit onto your micro-SD card only taking up a measly 184 MB. And even more impressive some manga titles were available for download for a price of only 32 Yen. Some animated content could even at one point be downloaded from the DSvision website for free, including the first episode of やわらか戦車 (Soft Tank), a popular online animated series that ran for over 50 episodes, as well as モフ☆モフ (Mofu☆Mofu), which was another short online animated series.

At this point is is unknown what type of DRM was used or if a user could load their own content onto the micro-SD card to be read by the DSvision cartridge. The DSvision system would never quite catch on, and this would be another great idea that for better or for worse would not be released internationally. The DSvision website and the AM3 website would eventually disappear along with AM3 itself and it would never be seen again.

Image From: Link

15 Ripoff Temple Run Games for Android

It seems like just a few years ago, that it was popular to play temple run, and if you were cool, or maybe if you weren't you would play some of the weird and wacky takes on the style. There are some fairly mainstream takes on the endless runner genre, but we will ignore those today to see if we can find some that are a bit less mainstream. A lot of clones appear to use the same template, with just slightly different assets. The list of 15 of these games is below.

• Dark Temple Jungle Run
• Jungle Run Lost Temple
• Lost Temple Run - Endless Run 3D
• Pixel Temple Run
• Run Monster Run!
• Spirit Run
• Temple Final Run
• Temple Final Run 2
• Temple Home Rush
• Tempe Horror Run
• Temple Jungle Run Oz
• Temple Spirit Run
• Tomb Runner - Raider Rush
• Warrior Princess Temple Run
• Zombie Run HD

5 Oddly Specific Android Apps

There are a lot of different apps on Google Play. Some of them try to go for the broadest appeal like music apps and social media, others attempt to hone in on the most specific things they could possibly be for. These are 5 I found whilst exploring Google Play. For these apps, the name says it all.

Cargo Surveyor
Designed for cargo surveyors, this app seems to have a bit of everything they could need. It seems incredibly robust if you are in this field, and it seems to have extremely good ratings too. Apparently it hasn't been installed much, as installs according to Google Play is only on "500+".

Genetic Helper
This is an app designed to help automatically convert DNA sequences to the complimentary DNA, mRNA, as well as tRNA. This app has a solid 4.2 rating. This one is a bit more popular with "10,000+" installs.

Knots Video Guide FULL
Google Play seems to be full with a lot of knots guides apps. This one seems to be quite good with a total of 58 knots to learn to tie. It has a great 4.4 star rating as well as '50,000+' installs. Reviews like this app because it is free and has no ads, even with great videos to teach knot tying.

Scarf Fashion Designer
This app is to help people with their scarf needs. It has rather mixed reviews at an average of 3.8 stars. This one is the most popular yet, with over one million installs. This app does however also have in-app purchases.

Step By Step Shoe Lacing Guide Pro
You may think, doesn't everyone know how to tie shoes, but not everyone does, and that isn't really the point of this app. With a solid 4.6 star rating and over 50,000 installs, this app seeks to teach people how to lace up their shoes, with over 50 lacing styles either practical or decorative, and allows your shoes to be a little unique if you care for that.