Archive Raiding: Protoshops

(sigh) I have a feeling I'm going to regret this. :D

Back in 1998 and 1999, in between bouts of playing Doom II, I took my first tenuous steps into the world of Photoshopping. Actually, that's not even quite right; I'd never even heard of Photoshop at the time, or of anyone screwing with photos for comedic effect. Hell, I didn't even have the internet at the time. Somehow I arrived at the idea independently, taking taking a bunch of lo-res images and trying to weave them into (mostly offensive) comedy gold with the crudest instrument imaginable: Microsoft Paint.

These shocking(ly bad) images have never been seen on-line, until now:

White House and Durty Nellys
Last Modified: ‎11 ‎August ‎1999, ‏‎19:54:16

This, my friends, is the very first 'shop I ever made. Not very funny, but I think the photo editing is actually fairly decent for a first attempt. Even my Dad was kind of amused by the results. I was pretty proud at the time too, printing this out and sticking it on my bedroom wall afterwards.

For those wondering, Durty Nellys is a semi-famous pub in Co. Clare, one that we visited a couple of years previously while in the area. Both the White House pic and the Durty Nellys one were taken from Mindscape's World Atlas 6.0, which we'd picked up for our then still-new PC in October of 1998.

Satellite on Collision Course
Last Modified: ‎11 ‎August ‎1999, ‏‎19:51:54

In the wake of what's happened since, a satellite crashing into the middle of a city doesn't seem quite that chortle-worthy any more. But I never thought this was really that funny; It was just something seemingly easy to throw together on an idle Sunday morning. I still managed to balls it up though. I couldn't even manage to spell "footage" right. :D

Sadam and Adolf Movie
Last Modified: ‎11 ‎August ‎1999, ‏‎19:49:00

Because nothing says "funny" like crazy-ass dictators. (You can definitely tell I was a big South Park fan at the time.) Having said that, I'd still probably go and see this, mostly just to see what the hell it actually was. I have to imagine the English/Russian/German hybrid language it's apparently in provides a lofty linguistic barrier to get over though.

Stalin Scandal
Last Modified: ‎15 ‎August ‎1999, ‏‎16:25:28

You know what's funnier than dictators in space? Implied bestiality.

I remember throwing this together one Saturday afternoon, showing off to a mate I had over. Man, erasing backgrounds, pixel-by-pixel in Paint - He must have been bored out of his fucking mind. Mind you, this was the same mate I made sit through the whole Ocarina of Time ending. He was probably used to it at that point.

Eiffel Tower
‎Last Modified: 01 ‎January ‎2000, ‏‎15:42:38

Sorry, France. I was just kind of pissed off at being forced to learn French at school at the time. Wrecking your national monument with some crude airbrushing certainly showed those teachers a thing or two though.

If you press your face right up against your monitor, you might be able to see that I copied and pasted several of the people in front of the tower multiple times. I'm not really sure why. I guess I was drunk on photo manipulating power at the time. And why wouldn't I be with a cover-mounted version of Ulead Photo Express now at my disposal?
---
And just like that, we're done. Not too long after I made this, my whole focus shifted over to birthing my atrocious web site on some newly acquired web space and churning out dodgy content for said site. My Protoshopping days were over.

I do remember two more of these that existed at one point though. One was a statement proclaiming the shitiness of the school I was going to back then, with all the teachers signatures 'shopped in from a sick note I had at the time. The other, which I'm not sure if I actually ever saved, was the Mona Lisa with a Hitler moustache and Nazi armband. Yep, real highbrow stuff. The world will never know what it missed out on.

Great (Cheesy) Moments in Marketing

So, every now and then the dairy companies here put out an ad to remind people that cheese still exists. Last year they did just that and came out with this...thing:



Now, I wouldn't say I hate children, but the combination of these four photos of this gurning little bastard angel never fail to send me into a page-eviscerating rage.You know what would be a more effective ad for cheese than pictures of a mugging, little cretin's "cheesy moments"? Anything!

That's not even my only problem with the ad. "Packed in my lunchbox, in a tasty sandwich, or just as a snack - it tastes great any time of the day!" This kid really spun that obvious line of marketing spiel when they asked him about cheese? What does that mean anyway? "It tastes great any time of the day" - His favourite thing about cheese is that its flavour isn't time-dependant? That it doesn't taste like poop between six o'clock and seven thirty and scorched pubes after eight?

Looking at just the ad, the "what's yours?" also seems to stick out as a bit of weird grammar, given the fact that the kid has multiple cheesy, irritating moments shown here and not just one. What's actually happening here is that the ad is doing an really poor job of asking people to submit their own photos, to a contest running on the website at the very bottom. They really expected people to decipher this on their own?

I guess a few people must have though; It's still up at the moment, with a page of genuine-looking, winning pictures on it. I would have entered myself too, but it's actually damn hard to hold a camera steady with a brie wedge squelching around in your ass crack. (Now that's a cheesy moment.)

Oh, and also,

Hey, How About Some Random DKC 2 Screens?

Being a bit short on space, I've had my SNES hooked up to my PC via a TV card and an RF cable for a few years now. I was never really happy with the picture quality though, so I decided to get a composite cable to hook it up instead back in August. I managed to find a cheap, knock-off version of the original cable on eBay for a few Euros and while I was testing it out, I took a few snaps of Donkey Kong Country 2 running through it. To be honest, I don't think the cable made huge improvement, but it did eliminate the need to fine tune the SNES channel's frequency to fix the picture all the time -  a huge improvement in itself.

So anyway, let's check out those screenshots:



(Sigh) Never forget.



It was 1998 by the time I got around to playing this, but I still thought it looked incredible at the time. These beehive levels were easily amoung the prettiest.



Ferrying the Kongs around as Squaks was a pretty cool mechanic, but man,...



Fuck those zingers!



And finally, here's Dixie bolting towards the roller coaster in Target Terror. Is it just me or does Dixie not get nearly the recognition she deserves? That helicopter ponytail was pretty much the best thing in the game, and DKC 2 was a freaking awesome game. (Screw the haters.)

Dos Title Screens: The Final Chapter

Besides the freeware games I had in 2008, I also screencapped the title screens from the handful of retail and demo DOS games I had at the time to use as folder pictures. What can I say? I didn't have a whole lot going on at the time. :D I present these images to you now, with links to the game's demo underneath if there is one:



Command & Conquer

While you can hit up the link above for the DOS demo, I should probably mention here that EA have actually released the Windows versions of the first three Command & Conquer games as freeware in the last few years. You can get those from the following links:

Command & Conquer
Command & Conquer: Red Alert (Soviet Disc | Allied Disc)
Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun



Cannon Fodder



Cannon Fodder 2



Championship Manager 2: 97/98



Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons



Doom II

Hit the jump for more.

Video: Outback Boogie in Malebrawonga

Over the past few weeks I've been on a crazy campaign of sorting out and tidying up all my old stuff. During the course of that, I decided to dig out try my hand at digitizing a cassette copy of Outback Boogie in Malebrawonga, a long out of print Zig and Zag single, released in Ireland in 1992. After two nights of fiddling around with a hi-fi, an extra long audio cable and Audacity, this is what I came up with.Yeah, not great and I don't have the artwork either, sadly.

Man, are RTÉ ever going to re-issue this stuff? If they put out a collector's edition of Never Mind the Zogabongs for Christmas, with the non-album singles included, I don't see any way it wouldn't do well for them. If they actually put in a bit of effort, maybe added a DVD with the music videos and a bit of a making of documentary or better yet, the also long out of print Nothing to Do with Toast video, they could have a Christmas No. 1 on their hands.

Hell, if the released that version of Never Mind The Zogabongs digitally, we could make The Christmas No. 1 live up to it's name once again, wiping the smiles off the faces of thousands of X Factor-loving children (and idiots) the country over, and in the end, isn't that what Christmas is all about?

Retromags Non-Release: Total Game Boy Color Issue 2

Damn it! That'll teach me to have a look through the Retromags downloads section before embarking on a new mag. Assuming it was too obscure for anyone to have, I ploughed into the process of scanning in this old Game Boy Color-focused magazine from 1999, digitizing about twenty pages and cleaning up two, before I discovered that wonderman had beaten me to the punch by a few months back in June. Not that I'm mad or anything; I just wish I'd checked first so I'd be further along with my next scan now. Well, seeing as I put a bit of work into it I thought I'd share the two almost-finished pages here for your viewing pleasure.

The magazine itself, I don't remember being particularly good. I didn't get that far into it scanning-wise, but the first few pages feature a entirely fabricated story on the nature of the Super Game Boy 2, as well as the repeated use of a promo shot featuring the most 1999-looking kid of indeterminable gender you're likely to see today. So, basically a mixed bag then.

Like most gaming magazines I ended up picking up in the late 90's, this randomly appeared in my local supermarket for a few issues and with no internet access or a decent newsagent anywhere around, I eagerly snapped them up and spent weeks pouring over them. The result of which, in this case, was me coming to the conclusion that I absolutley needed to get a Game Boy Colour. Looking back, I'm damn glad I held off until the Game Boy Advance rolled around. The GBC didn't really last candlelight and I'm struggling to come up with even ten games worth owning on it. I've got to admit it: did look pretty cool though.

(That lime green one was pure sex.)

deviantArt Updates 20/10/11

Man, has it really been almost a month since I posted anything on deviantArt? Well, never mind, today I'm making up for it with probably the most deviations I've put up in one day since I joined. On the older side of things today we have Flowers, a wallpaper I made in 2000 of some of my (bad) secondary school art work; Doodles 3, a set of doodles from about 2008 that I recently scanned in from a few old sketch book pages; and Core, one final image I made with Peter Blaškovič's Flame program in 2010. Based on a crappy photo I took in September, Roller Tray brings things a little more up to date in a nice, trippy fashion. While Negadoodles comes from a sheet of doodles I drew only last Wednesday to test out some old biros and highlighter pens. The original version I quite liked, but turning it negative gave it a really cool look, I think. Also: Westlife breaking up; The Stone Roses getting back together. Final proof that there is some justice in the world after all. :D