Anime Web Turnpike: Guests' Web Picks

Special Guest: Jason Ng
President of UnagiArts: Anime You Play!

I became an obsessed anime otaku in 1994. I rented Bubblegum Crisis (subtitled) from the video store and after that, it was all over for me. I've been wasting my life away on anime and Japanese video games ever since.

While surfing the net, I found a Bubblegum Crisis game patch for Doom in 1995. This patch was great! It was so much fun running around blasting enemies while Priss swore Japanese obscenities at you! But the patch always fell short of my desires. As I played it, I always wondered why the author didn't replace "this" or modify "that." There was too much doom in BGDoom.

Then there was Duke Nukem 3D; what a great game. While playing it I realized how close Duke's world was to that of Bubblegum Crisis. I asked a couple of times in the BGC newsgroup why no one made a game patch for Duke.

In 1996, I bought a book called, "Duke Nukem 3D Construction Kit," by Joe Grant Bell. After reading a few pages, I realized that a Bubblegum Crisis patch could be made for Duke Nukem... BY ME!!!

In August of '96 I released a pitiful 12 MB game patch that only replaced a few weapons and some sounds. However, everyone in alt.fan.bgcrisis loved it. Over the next year I reworked it four different times adding new weapons, sounds, music, artwork, rendered hardsuits, boss monsters, and finally cinematics. One year later, the patch evolved to it's final form: PRISS NUKEM SE at a whopping 32 MB!

With the PrissN game engine already built, it was easy to crank out Nene Nukem, featuring everyone's favorite anime redhead. Around that time UnagiArts was formed with the exclusive purpose to create a game patch for each of the four Knight Sabers.

UnagiArts' next project was a game patch for Shadow Warrior starring Sylia Stingray. UnagiArts upgraded its computer department to include in-house 3D rendering. In May of '98 Sylia Warrior was released, featuring Japanese voice quotes, new weapons, hardsuit renders, sounds, artwork and hilarious cinematic sequences.

Next Project: Redneck Rampage. In April '98 I played the demo for this game and loved it. By this time I was quite good at game development and cranked out Linna Rampage within 4 months. What happens when you drop a heavily armed Japanese woman in the middle of the Deep South? You get utter wackiness!

That is the brief history of how I became an anime game developer. And I'm not through yet! I'm currently working as Japanese sound manager for the new Bubblegum Quake 2 project. In addition, I'll be making a game patch for Duke Nukem Forever when it hits the shelves.

The Official Bubblegum Nukem Web Page-Priss Nukem, Nene Nukem, Sylia Warrior & Linna Rampage can be downloaded from here:
http://www.dim.com/~mackys/bgcnukem.html

Anipike not being responsible for Acts of God or the vaguaries of humans ;)
this column will appear 'as and when' articles come in. New articles will
be announced on the "New List" page. (So original, da yo..^^)

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