Thus revealed, the creature buried its nose in the tire-tilled soil...
February 15, 2004
.htaccess crap, ebay and ENOUSAI, and SC needs a Super Turtle!
Category: Miscellany

Apologies to anyone who tried to visit the site between 8:30 PM and 10:30 PM tonight -- I was mucking around with the .htaccess file again to see if I couldn't set the log file not to record image requests. Sadly, that endeavor was a failure, but I did make it so that all people typing "scary-crayon.com" into their browsers get redirected to "www.scary-crayon.com", in addition to simplifying the image blocking script by a couple of lines. I can't figure out what went wrong with the log mods, though -- my guess is that the server won't let me mess with the log files, so all attempts to do so ended in error. After all, it won't let me delete them, so I can see why it wouldn't let me modify them. That really sucks. 🙁

Anyway, I think everything's in working order now (if not ideal working order), but if your experience proves otherwise please e-mail me and let me know what's wrong.

In other news, I had a lapse and went crazy on ebay. Here's what I bought:

TMNT Movie Star Splinter MOC 1992

Robo Pit 2 SONY Playstation PS1 BRAND NEW

Mutatin' Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle figures

TMNT Ninja Turtles Venus Action Figure Loose

Yep. That second one -- Robo Pit 2 -- showed up yesterday (yes, I know, already?!?), so it's been kind of neat playing that again. Years ago I owned a bootleg import version of the game, which I enjoyed so much that I kind of felt guilty about its being a bootleg -- I'd have legitimately paid for the game if I'd seen it in stores, but it was only available in Japan, and being a somewhat obscure title it was kind of hard to come by even in the import market. I consoled myself by thinking it was okay to enjoy the bootleg, because it's not like I understood what the hell was going on, and figuring out the options, etc., took a lot of guesswork and trial and error. So eventually I loaned the game to a schoolmate, along with two other games I really liked: MediEvil -- which, unlike Robo Pit 2, I'd bought new, when it first came out, for $40 -- and the first Dead or Alive, which I got new, after it had been around for a couple of months, for $20.

He lost them.

So ever since then I've been wishing I could play them again. Dead or Alive is around, though hard to come by these days, and MediEvil is pretty rare, but if I were willing to pay $20 on ebay for a game I already paid $40 for, I could get it again (and someday I may) -- but I'd always thought Robo Pit 2 was lost to me forever. And then the other week I just happened to run a web search for it and found out that apparently, in November 2003, it received a quiet domestic release. And I freaked out and searched for it on the websites of all of the major game retailers -- EBgames, Gamestop, etc. -- nada. Not even a "this item is out of stock" listing. And there's next to nothing on GameFAQs about the game. I found a listing on HushGames.com -- I thought maybe the site had been so named because they sold games that had been released "hush-hush" -- and placed an order, but almost a week later I received an e-mail telling me that the game was unavailable and that my order had been cancelled. I started thinking maybe a cruel joke had been played on me -- that the game was supposed to have gotten a domestic release in November, but it never actually happened.

And then, as a last resort, I went to ebay. Surprise, surprise -- there's a guy auctioning off boatloads of copies starting at $6.95 a pop. I thought it was too good to be true -- maybe he was selling the first Robo Pit, which did get released here, and which I already own -- or at the very least that he was selling copies of the import, given that the image displayed in the auction is from the import cover (note the Japanese text). Still, I bid on one, and won, of course, since nobody else has heard of the game, and prepared to say, "Oh well." It showed up a mere three days later -- a Valentine's Day surprise -- and when I opened that envelope and saw the pictures on that jewel case alongside text I could read, my eyes went wide.

It's my game!!!!!! IN ENGLISH!!!!!!!

Unfortunately, it wouldn't recognize my old import game savefile, but still there was much rejoicing. I rebuilt OIKITEWA (my old robot; years ago I wrote down the kanji characters I'd randomly chosen for its name and asked Sherwin how they were pronounced) as best I could, called this one "OIKITEWA 2", and began at the beginning. This time I actually knew what was going on -- which unfortunately isn't really all that interesting -- and there doesn't appear to be any music in the US version of game (I swear there was music before), but it still looks and plays like Robo Pit 2, and that's what matters. And if these weren't enough to convince me that I was really playing Robo Pit 2 again, several fights into the game ENOUSAI -- whom I no longer have to call "that fucking vicious demon robot with the flaming sword" -- randomly showed up to dish out one of his signature five second massacres. I missed you too, you evil bastard. And eventually I'm going to kill you and steal your damned sword, just like the old days.

OIKITEWA 1 sporting the flaming sword of ENOUSAI.

Just something else to distract me from my writing. By the way, that rejection from Playboy still isn't here. Tuesday, maybe?

So if you checked out the ebay purchases above, you've noticed that among them are two Mutatin' Turtles figures. Perhaps you chalked my purchase of them up to my love for TMNT, but perhaps you wondered a little more about them. After all, I've got tons of Turtles -- though not tons of April, or Splinter, or Venus -- why should I want more of them? And why figures so dull? Well, properly speaking, it's not them I want...

It's them. Or just one of them, really. Like this one. Unfortunately, these things go for waaaaay too much on ebay -- you see how much I ended up paying for the loose Venus, and that was only because I managed to thwart a bid sniper at the last second; I'm sure it would've cost me even more if I'd bid higher from the start -- and rabid collectors will go to extreme lengths to secure one, so I don't think I've got a shot at winning one. But that Super Turtles review is Scary-Crayon's NUMBA ONE -- the first page of the article has been viewed 1675 times since the site opened, compared with 166 views for the next most read article, the Drawing Blood review, and the main page itself has only 1072 views to its credit. The root splash gets even less. So you can see why I'm so bent on acquiring a Super Turtle -- SC needs one, because given our focus on action figures, it's only appropriate that the thing serve as a mascot of sorts. But I can't get one.

So if all else fails, I'm going to bloody make one.

Granted, I'll need more accessories than the Mutatin' Turtles to pull it off, but they'll be integral to the process. I'll also need paint, not to mention THE HEAD OF A MASKED WOLVERINE FIGURE -- that's going to be difficult to come by, since Wolverines go for a lot too, unless I can find a mangled one or an appropriately sized candy topper. And a chiseled breastplate would be nice, to cover the normal Turtle's undefined belly, and other stuff, like small turtle shells to serve as shoulderpads, but you're getting the idea now. The whole thing would even make for a good SC feature, if I can get all of the parts...

If you've got any spare parts to contribute to the SCARY-CRAYON SUPER TURTLE FRANKENSTEIN FUN and want to help, e-mail me and let me know. 🙂

And that's a wrap for this entry.

-posted by Wes | 12:04 pm | Comments (0)
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