Wow. It's actually been a full year since I picked up this domain. I've been meaning to update this page since October, but, as they say, better late than never.

What is GemuBaka?
GemuBaka is a collection of works from the GemuBaka collaboration. The name is derived from the Japanese loan word for game as well as “baka,” which in one of its variants means “crazy.” In a literal sense, the phrase means “game crazy,” which would describe one who is crazy about games. Fortunately, that describes us perfectly. GemuBaka catalogs the works of the GB team and spans a wide range of video game topics to include features, previews, reviews, editorials, FAQs and more. Pretty much the only item we do not feature here is game news – a facet we see as fairly pointless considering about a million other sites would be reporting on the same thing. Our scope does not stop at current systems as we look back upon past systems from the 1980s forward. While it doesn’t always happen, we try to update the site with at least one new feature every weekday, however, at the minimum, there is at least one update every week.

Who is GemuBaka?
GemuBaka is the collaborative efforts of nestlekwik and MixMasterLar. The two authors became accquainted while working on projects through Rithum Interactive, including Rithum News, a video games-based Web site that covered video game news while producing original features and reviews on a daily basis. Although the site was scrapped in early 2008 in favor of a more ambitious project from the company, the two still saw potential in what they had to offer in their writings, forming GemuBaka nearly six months following the close of the site.

Nestlekwik has been writing about video games for the past seven years, being published and holding positions at sources such as Blogcritics.org and self-published materials before joining Rithum. Since then, he has spread out to work with sources such as Diehard GameFAN.com, J2Games, Video Game Collector Magazine, Arcade Heroes, Bemanistyle and more. Nestlekwik has been playing games actively since 1985 and has lightly dabbled into nearly every aspect of the video game industry, which includes app development, independent game conceptualization, journalism, public relations, marketing and more.

MixMasterLar joined up with Nestlekwik at Rithum News and has stuck with the cause since that time. A fairly well-known member of the DDR culture and a lover of the fighting game genre, Lar helped shape the J2Games segment The Nestlekwik Happy Hour and launched the Objective Tangent line of editorials for GemuBaka. Also a video game reviewer, Lar has contributed to sources such as J2Games and Video Game Collector Magazine.

Haven’t I seen some of your work on “x site?”
Most likely. As stated earlier, GemuBaka is an active contributor to a handful of other gaming sites past and present and the GB site serves as a sort of HQ or portfolio for our works, along with any original musings we decide to craft exclusively for the site.

Just to clarify, so there are no confusions, we are not a scraper site. We do not just pull someone else's work from another site and report it as news. GemuBaka only reprints work when a member of the site creates an original work for another site and we are given permission to reprint it on our site. Thus, you should know any article posted on this site comes from its original author. The site is more than a collection of works from other sites as we do produce original materials for the site as well. You can view any site-exclusive material on our GemuBaka Exclusive Feature page.

Super Fighter Team’s first “modern-classic” put the developer on the map, molding a Chinese-developed Genesis game into a reworked and more polished RPG players could tackle in the U.S. or in PAL territories.  1996’s Xin Qigai Wangzi was given an English facelift by SFT in 2006, resulting in the first commercial Genesis game since 1998 – Beggar Prince.

Given the original title translates to The New Prince and the Pauper, it should come as no surprise Beggar Prince borrows its initial premise from the classic Mark Twain work.  Bored with the confines of the castle, the Prince of Shatt sneaks out of the castle and meets a pauper who uncannily resembles him.  Predictably, the two trade places but unbeknownst to the kingdom, the minister has been plotting to overthrow the king and upon witnessing the switch, throws his plan into action.

Seeing as the title is on the Genesis format, even though Prince is a 2006 release, players can’t walk into the game with a 2006 mentality.  That being said, Beggar Princes looks amazing compared to other games on the system, with a ton of detail placed in the environments and while the character models are small, they feature a lot of color, and the spell effects receive the same appropriate attention.  The sound drags down the presentation quite a bit, however, as most of the music is forgettable but the effects do their job.

Thankfully, the developers squashed a great number of the bugs plaguing the original Eastern release, but the title’s extremely challenging game play may make or break the title for players.  In Eastern RPG fashion, the enemy encounters are frequent and since players control no one more than the Prince the entire game, players will have a long quest ahead of them.  Also, unlike most turn-based RPGs, Prince has quite a bit more strategy involved thanks to the stamina system (which can be a good thing depending on how much you like to think).  While players will uncover a good amount of spells, weapons and items to use, the monsters are brutal if players don’t level up properly and the challenge may turn off a number of people.

Those who are looking for a challenging RPG will be right at home with Beggar Prince but the casual need not apply here.  If you’re willing to take the dive, however, you’ll find a visually appealing game that will last you quite some time.  The title is only available in nicely packaged limited quantities at superfighter.net and if production stops on the game, it may raise beyond its current $40 retail value.

GemuBaka Final Review Score: 3 of 5

Again, it's a long time coming, but with exams wrapping up for the week, I'll have a monkey off my back in a couple of days (well, at least until the next semester piles more work onto me) and I'll be able to be a little bit more serious about updating the content here.

After picking up a handful of games for the Xbox 360 thanks to a buy two, get one sale, I've been going to town on DJ Hero and my latest review work has me plugging away at the Xbox LIVE Arcade title Gyromancer.  With the lineup of newer games to play in what little time I have, I was thankfully able to meet up with my achievement goal for the years' end as I finally ran my tally past 50,000.  I haven't had much time to play games lately and coupled with the near year I was without a functional 360, it's kind of sad to think I should really be somewhere in the neighborhood of 60,000-70,000 points right now.  That can't be changed, however, and it's not like I'll lose sleep over that fact - I have things like work and school to do that for me.

DJ Hero has been an interesting experiment so far.  I still prefer playing games such as Crackin' DJ or beatmania, but, obviously, DJ Hero is much more accessible (and recently relavent) than those two titles in their purest form.  I'm a bit mixed on some of the music choices - most of them are alright and mixed with satisfying effort, but, there are other mixes that have no business being paired and just sound downright awful when the mix artist just fades between chorus lines just to sneak them in.  But you have some fantastic mixes such as "Insane in the Membrane" vs. "Spooky" that are quite memorable.  Outside of the music itself, I'm wondering just how accurate the controller is.  Even though I can rack up 95 or so percent on the hardest of songs, the weird timing windows on the sracthing and other various mishaps such as with the way too loose crossfader and turntable spins (I activated rewind just by scratching not even a quarter turn in some cases) constantly destroy my combos.  Playing just for fun, though, DJ Hero has been a great experience that I plan on tackling further.

With how busy I've been recently, it's really taken a toll on how much I've been able to contribute to other sites as well.  I've had a few blurbs on Arcade Heroes and a few reviews here and there on Diehard GameFAN, but I've been working with Eddie at Bemanistyle.com for the most part on extending our coverage of music games.  In a very surprising event, Naoki Maeda himself assisted us with a piece written in regard to the spread of the Playstation 2 into Central America and we've had an increase in the number of reviews published (some originating from my early work you can see on GemuBaka) along with a game contest in correlation with Aksys Games.  On Diehard GameFAN, though, I've had a number of high traffic pieces including an interview on the upcoming independent release of Hypertension along with news on the first DSi-only game System Flaw and it turns out my piece on Vanguard Princess stands as the 50th most-read article ever published on the site.  Once I have more time, though, I'll be able to contibute as normal and you'll definitely see more activity make its way over to GemuBaka.

For now, I'm almost about to call it week so I can charge my battery - between multiple jobs, I've been working all seven days for most of the weeks from November through this month, but I'm catching a break after my final exam on Thursday.  As such, I'll be catching up on things a little in the next few days, so, hopefully, we might even see that brand new Happy Hour along with MixMasterLar!

-nestlekwik

Man, I've been getting caught up in the scheme of ignoring the site, haven't I?  It's really a shame but by no means has it been intentional.  I've stepped up to more responsible positions on both Diehard GameFAN and Bemanistyle.com, which has really had me going and it has also pulled in a lot of fruits from my labor.  On top of that, you have to factor in work, school (which has amped up considerably due to the fact we are nearing the end of the semester) and having a personal life and it's been understandable that I haven't been able to keep regular tabs on poor, ol' GemuBaka.  The spirit is still alive, however, if you check out the sites I regularly contribute to, as, recently, I've dug up some really cool features that have garnered a lot of attention online.

Perhaps the one odd aspect I find with this very site is it seems the less I update here, the higher and faster the Alexa rank and hits per week improves.  Maybe I should just sit back and enjoy the progress, but, then again, eventually we'll just hit that brick wall where it becomes hard to improve and the figures sit in a back-and-forth limbo, which, admitedly, we've already kind of had troubles breaking through with the 300,000 mark on Alexa.  I just feel too bad that the last site exclusive we've had until now was printed back in September, but, at least everything is still standing here and our figures have remained relatively constant.  Again, thanks to anyone who makes the effort in clicking on anything we feature on the site.  It makes the effort worthwhile.

Recently, there has been a number of great items we've been able to feature on affiliated sites and those will be making their way here in due time.  I really do wish I had more interesting topics to speak of, but with all of the above going on, I just haven't had any time, really, to even play video games, which is a further bummer considering I have purchases such as Tekken 6, LEGO Rock Band and more sitting around at home.  Every busy time period eventually has to hit a downtime, though, so expect to see more goods in the near future including our trademark, honest reviews, more interviews, more features and, if I can ever get around to it, a new Happy Hour complete with MixMasterLar!

-nestlekwik

It's been a long and winding road but this week I finally have Video Game Collector Issue #11 in my hands.  What originally started last year before a number of snafus led to the magazine not being printed, I was contacted when my summer began to give the magazine another go.  After reworking nearly all of the issue, we finally have a finsihed product that had seen numerous changes from its initial conception.  Even though there has been a lengthy amount of time inbetween this issue and its previous release, I still have my loyalties set with the publication and I would hate to see it cease publication.  Unfortunately, with a huge number of changes to the contents, there was a good chunk of content I worked on that got cut from the issue, but the end results still impress me and I got to work along with a group of very dedicated and close companions.

The new issue has shipped and should be reaching the mailboxes of subscribers soon - if it hasn't arrived to them already.  Issue #11 marks my editorial debut in a print publication (that wasn't created by myself) and it shifts its focus from the 1970s of the Atari VCS to the more modern timeframe of the late '90s to early '00.  The shift may be a bit radical and it might seem odd that a magazine dedicated to collecting would look at such a recent spread of years, but when you consider we are fast approaching Sept. 9, 2009, it should really make a lot of sense.  I put my all into this issue and crafted a majority of the content inside as it really resonates with my interests in gaming.  Our system feature recognizes 10 years of the Dreamcast on U.S. shores with a few insights on prototype and independent games for the system and our theme features focus on one-on-one 2-D fighting games and rhythm-based games.  As such, the issue is packed full of interviews with those involved with the games and we have a couple of really great retrospectives written by Kristina Potts.  With the rhythm gaming features, I was able to enlist the help of my great friend Eddie from Bemanistyle.com to provide insight on the music game articles and MixMasterLar even got in on the action with a review.  It was a fun, yet bumpy experience, but the end result has made everything worth the effort.

In issue #11, you'll find the following features:

*A new Cast in Plastic feature detailing fighting game characters in model form
*A full two-page spread on the development and rebalancing of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix featuring an interview with the game's producer Rey Jimenez, as well as an interview with David Lloyd and Larry Oji of OCRemix on remixing the game's soundtrack
*A full four-page spread on DanceDanceRevolution featuring a forward by Eddie of Bemanistyle.com - the #1 music game news site based in the U.S. -, a rundown of the valuable Playstation One U.S. releases of the series, a full series U.S. release list, info on collecting the series' U.S. soundtrack releases, a look at reocurring themes in the series, importing DDR titles, the future of the series and more
*A two-page interview with Cryptic Allusions based on its independent Dreamcast music game release Feet of Fury
*A new Made in Japan feature revisiting rhythm-based games that missed the U.S.
*A full retrospect of every The King of Fighters release prior to the recent release of XII
*Kristina Potts breaks down a number of 2-D Neo Geo fighters outside of SNK's most popular franchises
*An interview with Tomm Hullet of Konami based on the Silent Hill franchise, which is also recognizing its 10th year in 2009
*A six-page photo checklist of every U.S. Dreamcast game officially released at retail
*Michael Thomasson details the Dreamcast's Propellar Arena prototype
*14 new reviews of fighting, rhythm and Dreamcast games detailing their value and whether or not they are worth playing
*And, of course, our full video game price guide, which is now approaching 14,000 prices

Hit up the Video Game Collector official Web page if you want to inquire about ordering a copy of issue #11 and while you're there, if you like what you see, back issues are also available for order.