i've gathered a few (a shitload) of pictures from taiwanese auction sites recently, in an attempt to discover new and interesting unlicensed games or pirate originals. something i mostly failed to do, having now amassed what mostly amounts to thousands of blurry photos of generic pirate carts. but i'm not letting all that bloody time go to waste, so i'm going to shove them up on here, starting with the megadrive unlicensed stuff, because there's quite a bit of it. don't hold your breath for the rest, it all depends on if i can be arsed sorting it out and uploading it, which i probably can't.

neofuji is now "on" youtube, with a five-part complete playthrough of squirrel king and a video of selected levels of the universe soldiers (both of which are by gamtec, a company that i'm going to cover on here at some point in the distant future). that's pretty much the sort of thing i'll be uploading - you won't get any of me being "hilarious" or anything. so! here it is.

i just noticed in the site stats that more than 60% of the total pageviews are of the message board - considering that no one posts there, i can only assume that these are all visiting spambots trying to unleash their pornographic payload on my board. but! i haven't seen an actual spam post in ages. so i'm both slightly proud of my crappy board software for successfully fighting off all these would-be spammers, and slightly depressed that you can't run a simple little message board on an unpopular site these days without extensive measures to fend off adverts for ch34p \/y@gr4 c1a|íss and hot underage anime hermaphrodite grandmas and stuff. ah well, that's the internet for you i suppose.

Recently a number of games based on old Taito properties have appeared (some of which I reported on in previous posts here), then disappeared, then reappeared with a new name and characters. which I thought was quite odd - Taito have never been averse to exploiting their old licenses, after all. These are all the titles I'm aware of:

• Elevator Action (Wii)
  European release listed by Nintendo with its original title. Now seems to have resurfaced as "Spy Games: Elevator Mission" (in the US) or "Elevator Combat" (in Europe). Developed by Dreams.
• Pop'n Pop (Wii)
  Also appeared on European release list alongside Elevator Action. Now being released in the US as "Balloon Pop" and in Europa as "Pop!". Developed by Dreams.
• Wild Western (DS)
  Box and screenshots originally posted on European distributor site, title screen had a Taito copyright. Released in the US as "The Wild West" with a Majesco copyright. European version (as yet unreleased) appears to still carry the "Wild Western" name though. Developed by Happy Happening.
• Kiki KaiKai 2 (PS2/Wii)
  Announced in Japan by Starfish, then cancelled, reappeared in the US under the title "Kiki Kai World" then "Heavenly Guardian" with a different lead character, and in Japan as "Yukinko Daisenpuu ~Sayuki to Koyuki no Hie-Hie Daisoudou~". Chances of European release: practically fuck-all. But its happening, against all odds. Wii/PS2, named "Legend of Sayuki"
• Shin Chuka Taisen (Wii)
  I'll mention this here because its circumstances are somewhat similar to Kiki Kai World, but it isn't really a Taito license - although the original arcade game was published and distributed by Taito, it was developed by Hot-B. As far as I can work out, Taito still owns the original game, but Starfish (as the current owner of various former Hot-B IP) has the rights to the title and characters, so they don't have to deal with Taito to release this. Being published in the US as "Monkey King: The Legend Returns".

So! What's the reason behind all of this? According to a spokesperson from UFO Interactive, the publisher of many of these games in the US, "To make a long story short, Taito, who is now owned by Square [Enix], had some issues with us and we had to let the title go" (the title in this case being Kiki KaiKai 2). So, evidently Taito, probably under orders from Square Enix, are withdrawing the licenses from all these smaller companies (many of which have a history of working with Taito) but why? are they just being arseholes? were there quality concerns? (many of the recent games from these developers haven't been all that well received, after all). or maybe they're shifting development back in-house, which could be a good idea, because Space Invaders Extreme is brilliant. (if that was done in-house? argh i dunno)

neofuji is in need of someone who a) knows chinese and b) doesn't mind translating any old shite i throw at them on a drunken whim, mostly relating to obscure taiwanese video games and stuff like that. if this is you, email me! thanks.

well this has been a long time coming. way back when the Test Icicles were still together, I discovered an extremely obscure handheld games console with an amusing name, and started writing something about it for this site. that something turned into the makings of a fairly massive feature, which lay mostly untouched and unfinished for two years after my old bastard host deleted all my files - every so often i'd add something or bugger around with it, but never to any great extent. until last month! when for some reason i finished the bloody thing up. so, finally, neofuji 2008 presents the handheld that time forgot (because its games were all crap) - The GAMATE!!

i've amassed a bit of information about the Super A'Can from various sources, which is now here. i'm just uploading it in this state because i don't plan to do anything with it, but some of it seems to be stuff that isn't online anywhere else, so there it is.

well it's 2008, not much has changed, i've been updating the simple list when the mood takes me, and i'm fighting a losing battle against spam on the message board. but, as usual, i feel obliged to mention that i've been working on some stuff, which might end up on the site at some point. see you in 2009!

I've changed the board software from Kareha to Electron Board, which is an updated version of something I wrote two years ago. Back then I didn't know what I was doing, and now I still don't know what I'm doing... but I've cleaned it up a bit and got some of the bugs out in the past couple of weeks, so I want to give it another shot. It's not quite ready for a public release (the HTML in particular really needs sorting out) but hopefully it won't break this time.

something for the people interested in the simple series (probably most of you, considering I don't have much else on here) - simple series forum!. certainly worth joining if you're a fan of that sort of thing.

as for site things, i'm maintaining the simple list, 505 Games is almost slightly interesting again (no thanks to the Raw Danger haters at 505 UK), and I've got some other stuff in the works, but I'm still too lazy to finish any of it up. business as usual, really.