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bisexualhobi · 2 years

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Yeah the way they went out with a half assed comeback? like why couldnt they have announced the break after the LV shows (or way before but ya know)... I think it would have been way better received whereas the lead up to what was simply a boring ass anthology money grab with not even a Muster concert in Korea was so underwhelming and disapointing. I do think as you have kinda hinted at before there was some serious almost power struggle going on with the company and I think their refusal to do even choreo for those music shows gave me the vibes of just fulfilling contractual obligations. I know I'm being a broken record but its just so frustrating how much better the whole thing could have been handled and particularly RM and Yoongi in how they worded things in that dinner live... their feelings of losing direction /being pushed a certain way were definitely valid and I did feel for RM but also the complete lack of accountability and humility just gave it such a hollow tone.

in my opinion it does show a lack of..... ugh i don't wanna say humility bc i think that word doesn't quite nail what i'm going for but it just comes across as tone deaf and highly unlikeable.

as i've said before - people get tired of someone that keeps winning and yet at every chance keeps reminding everyone of when they were losing. like holy shit dude we get it. you had it hard. that's life. what the fuck else do you want us to say? you are literally at the top of the fucking world now - let it fucking go already.

bts built their entire platform and appeal on the story of being the underdogs. bc everybody loves rooting for the underdog. but the problem w that narrative (and that i am 99% sure they never accounted for bc well - WHO in their right mind imagines they will become the single most popular artist of the 2010s) is that once they blew the fuck up that narrative was automatically rendered obsolete. bts can no longer claim anyone and anything is against them - (because even if they are who the fuck cares) - and that they've had it tough (because even if they have what the fuck does that have to do with the present). their success and popularity is so massive that everybody that follows them nowadays is aware that they are untouchable and have a multimillion business and a fandom that blinds them from anything.

all of that coupled with some very shitty management in the past two years has made bts' success a double edged sword.

on the one hand they grew exponentially thanks to the pandemic - on the other they kept crying about how they couldn't have concerts while people were dying by the millions.

on the one hand they managed to break into the US with two grammy nominated english songs - on the other they lost so much credibility bc of it some of their own fans stopped supporting them and the new fans that came in no longer cared about the music, just about the money and the achievements and the merchandise.

on the one hand they made millions off the english releases and sponsorships that came with it - on the other they put themselves in a position where the company saw the money coming in and kept pushing them for more while they burnt out creatively and have locked themselves in an insular echo chamber that no longer lets them grow as artists.

but then again, when you have the poor billionaires lamenting over how hard it is for them no one really gives a fuck except the people that made them billionaires in the first place. the rest of the public is just gonna see conceited celebrities who were fine with reaping the benefits of their own selling-out until it came back to bite them in the ass.

#asks #bts #long post

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super-famicom-star-inactive · 3 years

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Friday Special #9

January 30th, 2021

So I was digging through my bag of DS and GBA titles, and noted that one of them was a Game Boy Advance VIDEO cartridge that contained the first two episodes of Sonic X. Popped it into my DS to relive some nostalgia and it occurred to me that there isn’t anything like this anymore besides those PSP UMD VIDEO disks that had whole movies on them.

So where did they come from and how did they come to be?

For this week’s Friday Special, we’re gonna find out.

For a little backstory, the Game Boy Advance handheld console was released back in 2001 and it was marketed as the successor of the Game Boy Color. With its resolution of 240 x 160 pixels (which was a lot at the time), 15-bit RGB Color Support (it was capable of producing 512 colors in character mode and 32,768 simultaneous colors in bitmap mode), and Dual 8-bit DAC for stereo sound, it was a fascinating machine and a work of technical art. It was super successful world-wide and garnered millions in sales.

So what exactly were the Game Boy Advance Video titles?

The Game Boy Advance Video cartridges were a special class of cartridges where based on the amount of memory, it featured one to four episodes of popular shows of the time like those from Cartoon Network and Nicktoons.

Here is the complete list of games:

GBA Video Movie Pak vol. 1

Shrek

GBA Video Movie Pak vol. 2

Shrek 2

GBA Video Movie Pak vol. 3

Shark Tale

GBA Video Movie Pak 2-Movies-In-1!

Shrek

Shark Tale

GBA Video Movie Pak 2-Movies-In-1! Vol. 2

Shrek

Shrek 2

The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron vol. 1

"Brobot"

"The Big Pinch"

"Granny Baby"

"Time is Money"

All Grown Up! vol. 1

"Susie Sings the Blues"

"Coup de Ville"

Cartoon Network Collection vol. 1

Ed, Edd 'n Eddy: "Stop, Look and Ed"

Courage the Cowardly Dog: "Magic Tree of Nowhere"

Johnny Bravo: "The Perfect Gift"

The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: "Crawling Niceness"

Cartoon Network Collection vol. 2

Codename: Kids Next Door: "Operation T.U.R.N.I.P."

Courage the Cowardly Dog: "Courage the Fly"

Johnny Bravo: "Balloon Platoon"

The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: "Mandy the Merciless"

Cartoon Network Collection Limited Edition

Ed, Edd 'n Eddy: "Key to My Ed"

Courage the Cowardly Dog: "The Queen of the Black Puddle"

Codename: Kids Next Door: "Operation M.I.N.I.G.O.L.F."

Dexter's Laboratory: "Big Sister"

Cartoon Network Collection Platinum Edition

Codename: Kids Next Door: "Operation T.O.M.M.Y."

The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: "A Grim Surprise"

Courage the Cowardly Dog: "Cowboy Courage"

Ed, Edd 'n Eddy: "The Luck of the Ed"

Cartoon Network Collection Premium Edition

Dexter's Laboratory: "Double Trouble"

Courage the Cowardly Dog: "The Shadow of Courage"

Johnny Bravo: "Cookie Crisis"

Ed, Edd 'n Eddy: "A Glass of Warm Ed"

Cartoon Network Collection Special Edition

Ed, Edd 'n Eddy: "Oath to an Ed"

Johnny Bravo: "Beach Blanket Bravo"

The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: "Billy and the Bully"

Dexter's Laboratory: "Dexter's Rival"

Codename: Kids Next Door vol. 1

"Operation R.E.P.O.R.T."

"Operation N.O.-P.O.W.U.H."

"Operation B.R.I.E.F."

"Operation D.O.G.F.I.G.H.T."

Disney Channel Collection vol. 1

Lilo & Stitch: "Slushy"

Kim Possible: "Ron the Man"

Disney Channel Collection vol. 2

Lilo & Stitch: "Poxy"

Kim Possible: "Rufus in Show"

Brandy & Mr. Whiskers: "To The Moon Mr. Whiskers"

Dora the Explorer vol. 1

"3 Little Piggies"

"The Big River"

Dragon Ball GT vol. 1

"A Grand Problem"

"Pan's Gambit"

The Fairly OddParents vol. 1

"Foul Balled"

"The Boy Who Would Be Queen"

"The Information Stupor Highway"

The Fairly OddParents vol. 2

"Father Time"

"Apartnership"

"Ruled Out"

"That's Life"

Nicktoons Collection vol. 1

SpongeBob SquarePants: "Pizza Delivery"

The Fairly OddParents: "The Big Problem"

All Grown Up!: "Chuckie's In Love"

Nicktoons Collection vol. 2

SpongeBob SquarePants: "Nature Pants"

SpongeBob SquarePants: "Opposite Day"

Rocket Power: "The Big Air Dare"

The Fairly OddParents: "Odd Ball"

Nicktoons Collection vol. 3

SpongeBob SquarePants: "Squeaky Boots"

The Fairly OddParents: "Tim Visible"

Danny Phantom: "Attack of the Killer Garage Sale"

Pokémon vol. 1

"For Ho Oh The Bells Toll"

"A Hot Water Battle"

Pokémon vol. 2

"Playing with Fire"

"Johto Photo Finish"

Pokémon vol. 3

"Pokémon, I Choose You!"

"Here Comes the Squirtle Squad"

Pokémon vol. 4

"Beach Blank-Out Blastoise"

"Go West Young Meowth"

The Proud Family vol. 1

"Twins to Teens"

"Tween Town"

Sonic X vol. 1

"Chaos Control Freaks"

"Sonic to the Rescue"

SpongeBob SquarePants vol. 1

"Bubblestand"

"Ripped Pants"

"Jellyfishing"

"Plankton"

SpongeBob SquarePants vol. 2

"Mermaidman & Barnacleboy"

"Pickles"

"Hall Monitor"

"Jellyfish Jam"

SpongeBob SquarePants vol. 3

"Walking Small"

"Texas"

"Hooky"

"Mermaidman & Barnacleboy II"

Strawberry Shortcake vol. 1

"Meet Strawberry Shortcake"

"Spring for Strawberry Shortcake"

Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! vol. 1

"Depths of Fear"

"Planetoid Q"

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles vol. 1

"Things Change"

"A Better Mousetrap"

Yu-Gi-Oh! vol. 1

"Friends Until the End Part 3"

"Friends Until the End Part 4"

Although the first of the GamePaks (the other name that they went by) started to appear in 2004, the original name was GBA-TV a year earlier. The first cartridges to be released in May of 2004 were when Majesco was able to acquire rights for 4Kids properties such as Sonic X and Yu-Gi-Oh! for the earliest released titles. Later in June, select shows from Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Nick Jr., and Funimation were added to the line-up when Majesco acquired the rights. The Disney Channel soon was added as well late in November of that year, creating even more cartridges for the roster. That next November in 2005 was the time for when Majesco was able to acquire the rights for Shrek, Shrek 2, and Shark Tale from Dreamworks, where for the first time, the Game Boy Advance Video series would now feature full-length movies, which was a marvel at the time due to the Game Boy Advance’s limited memory.

In total, 36 cartridges were made in the entire line-up with more slated for released but were cancelled for various reasons, whether they be because of low sales of previous cartridges or copyright issues.

Here is the complete list of cancelled games:

Drake & Josh vol. 1

"Pilot"

"Dune Buggy"

Even Stevens vol. 1

"Swap.com"

"Stevens Genes"

Kirby: Right Back at Ya!

Ugly Betty vol. 1

"Pilot

"The Box and the Bunny

Sonic X vol. 2

"Missile Wrist Rampage"

"Chaos Emerald Chaos"

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles vol. 2

Yu-Gi-Oh! vol. 2

Speaking of copyright, there is a reason that the GamePaks were only viewable on Game Boy Advance systems as well as the first two DS systems but not the GameCube's Game Boy Player accessory. It was because the owners asked Majesco to make it so that making the games incompatible with the GameCube’s GBA Player would protect their properties from getting ripped onto VHS tapes and DVDs, which was what the Player was capable of doing. It would not have mattered however, because the low quality would have shown on the TV, making the ripping process useless.

The low quality of the cartridges were due to the heavy compression of files in order for them to fit on a GBA cartridge, causing noticeable artifacts on the screen, even more visibly on a later system like a DS console. The low quality was the biggest disadvantage for the Game Boy Video cartridges as they eventually became obsolete by the late 2000s/ early 2010s when the DSi was released with no backward capabilities.

Despite them being obsolete by today’s standards, they can still be found online on shopping sites like eBay and depending on the condition can go for a pretty penny. The rarest one in the entire roster is the cartridge for Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! vol. 1 as only a limited number of copies were made and are now so rare that they can fetch almost $200 on eBay, where that is the only shopping site to even have them for listings.

It should be mentioned that around the same time, Sony was releasing PSP UMD (Universal Media Disc) Video disks for their PSP systems that were capable of playing whole movies, but that’s an article for another time.

Thoughts From the Head

As stated above, I actually do have one of the Game Boy Advance Video cartridges in the form of Sonic X Vol. 1 that I had bought years ago at a local video game store. It still works, and although you can definitely see the age on a DS screen, it’s still super impressive how much they had to compress in order for the data to fit.

It’s still a really neat piece of history and it’s something that would’ve never happened in today’s age of gaming with everyone being as tight-lipped about copyright to the point of it being detrimental to creativity. That being said, if you have a GBA, its succeeding systems or the first two DS systems, I’d say to track them down while you can, especially if your favorite show is on the list (unfortunately, I have no hope of getting the Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! vol. 1 cartridge as that is like trying to find an ant in a haystack but I have the Sonic X one and that’s good enough for me).

Here’s some photos of mine!

So do y’all think about all of this? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Thank you for reading!

#my voice!#retro gaming #gaming #irl #game boy advance #history #Friday Special

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