New Year, New Software Toy

In my pastime of fooling around with emulator programs of various old microcomputers, I took notice of a new program under development that emulates not just the hardware but the old-fashioned monitors they were connected to. It's been suggested how the fuzzy picture tubes were part of the experience, and once the first working version of the program had been released I found it amusing. At the same time, as that version could only emulate the text-only Apple 1, the experience did seem somewhat incomplete.

Heading home for a Christmas vacation, I got out of the habit of checking the site on a very regular basis just to see how things were progressing. When I got back, though, I discovered there'd been the promised update adding Apple II emulation, which does add colour graphics to the mix. As it's still a work in progress, though, the Apple II emulated is 1977's best technology, loading programs off sound files meant to represent cassettes. I already knew the Apple II's cassette interface was very finicky; I suppose I'm still looking forward to the promised floppy disc emulation. Still, with only a little work I was able to load a version of "Breakout," the game Steve Wozniak specifically designed the computer to be able to play. It's at least a beginning.

New Year, New Anime Industry Crisis

Just like the last time it happened, I first saw the news another anime (and manga) distribution company in North America was closing up shop signing on to a particular message board. I charged into the thread with part of me sort of hoping I hadn't seen what I'd seen in the title, but another part of me did have the feeling that this time, it made too much sense...

Even if Bandai Entertainment didn't have the absolute highest profile or the best reputation (leaving the original opening and closing songs out of their release of Zeta Gundam seemed to hobble them that way for years) among the North American anime companies (although they did seem good at getting their titles on TV), I always seemed able to find things in their catalogue that looked interesting. For a while, after the really sudden and shocking shutdown of Geneon (although I suppose there were some signs of cost-cutting there before the end that might have drawn more attention than they did) and the crumbling of ADV Films (one of their titles handed over to Bandai, although ADV did wind up reshaped under a new name), I had the somehow amused feeling they had managed to navigate through the crisis in the anime industry in standout shape... but then something like the problem that had hit them with Zeta Gundam seemed to bite hard, and all of a sudden they were always finding a new way for things to go wrong in the eyes of too many, whether it was just releasing DVDs that would freeze up in the players, having to mail out replacement discs after a release got encoded with monophonic audio, or leaving out some vital component of the more expensive original Japanese releases. Still, even that unfortunate and somehow sad slide into shabbiness, it doesn't quite seem to have been a "we're taking our ball and going home" shutdown; at least some of the handful of titles they still had plans to release might yet see official releases over here.