Artist is Onono Imoko
As always with every February update, it’s Lunar New year and this one belongs to the Snake. It goes without saying if you don’t know what your lunar animal is, you can check this link here to see what it is. For my nerds out there (which make up like 90% of you), “LNY” has become popular enough the world over to be treated as an event for most online communities, including anything video game related. So whatever social community you represent, don’t forget to get your freebies and enjoy the atmosphere.
This short and sweet video is done by the legendary Majin Obama; a figurehead of sorts for the FGC and “living abroad in Japan” sub-culture. Probably one of the funniest people I’ve come across over the years, he’s also one of the rare ones that is able to philosophize about various nerdy topics. Some of my inspiration to start my blog came from him (amongst other pioneers). If you never heard of him, I highly suggest you start off with his famous (infamous?) Obama Tales series. This isn’t the first video he’s done talking about arcades, so make sure to check out his channel and archives for related material. It’s worth it.
Speaking of living legends, we can’t go any further without talking about the SMHUP / STG God among us Jaimers. Unlike many other silent enthusiasts of this very niche genre, Jaimers has always spent the effort to detail how he approaches scoring in any game. He plays A LOT by the way, and all of them are extremely well documented on his channel. Enjoy the Radiant Silvergun run above and the amazing soundtrack it has (video is silent until 1 minute in). Remember to turn on captions for the scoring commentary.
Shifting gears a bit, I wanted to bring to everyone’s attention that a documentary channel (Gravitas) I use to watch back in the day on one of those “freemium” ad supported streaming services has put their catalog of stuff on YouTube for the low price of absolutely free! Pretty crazy considering most of this stuff was paywalled back in the day in one form or another. For whatever reason if you can’t see this YouTube channel or the above video, use any VPN you wish and set your location to North America or Canada.
Finishing off the “old but new” theme, we have a video from long time recommendation The Proper People. I’ve always said to my wife that in another lifetime if I had never met her, there’s a good chance I would have been an Urbex enthusiast travelling the world getting into weird and obscure places. Since I don’t live in that timeline, we can all watch other folks brave getting caught by authorities and dying in obscure out of the way places from the comfort of our living room.
Artist is Onono Imoko
Artist of the month is the talented Onono Imoko. Their style is particularly familiar to old school manga reading folks, because it’s the one that was extremely popular for magazine covers for quite some time. The bright, neon colors with bold lines became a staple familiar “look at me!” advertisement on magazine racks and display shelves. Feel free to check out their Pixiv page for additional links, works, and of course NSFW stuff if you’re so inclined.