Dendy Chronicles is a web series that tells story of unlicensed NES clones, known as Dendy, in Russia in 1990s and about games for it.
Kinaman is a 23 years old russian guy and a retro gamer. He started to make retro video games reviews just recently, and already gained some local popularity. Some people call him 'russian video game nerd' and make related jokes, well, he is for sure. What makes him different from other local VG reviewers is the things he is talking about. Instead of just swearing all the time, he reminds us how crazy early console gaming experience was in Russia in the past. Major reason why I like to watch reviews of popular english-speaking VG reviewers is that they show me sort of an alternative reality, because here things were very different. I think it could be interesting for people outside of Russia to see an alternative reality too, that's why I decided to make english subtitles for Kinaman's videos.
First three episoded dedicated to all the games about Mario that were released for Dendy. There are a bit more games than you could expect.
Episode #1 - Super Mario part 1
Episode #2 - Super Mario part 2
Episode #3 - Super Mario part 3
Episode #4 - Ghostly Village
Episode #5 - The Lion King
See also:
The Curse of the Gray Elephant (translated by DeniSS, CamaroSS, and Sobol14)
A blooper from previous video
An extra scene from previous video
How to use subtitles in YouTube player:
You can enable them with the CC button at the bottom right, or, in case of the embed player, with the triangle button at the bottom right and then with CC button in the pop-up menu.
To make subtitles background opaque that makes them easier to read, press B button on the keyboard. You also can change font size with +/- button, and there are other settings available under the CC button.
Disappointed by the lack of M.C. Mario.
Don't worry, there are two more episodes about Mario games, M.C. Mario is there.
Very good series! I'm willing to see Super Mario Bros. 2 subtitled! Also, does anyone know somewhere i could buy "2"?
I got half way through the first one, very cool! Great videos, it was a heck of a lot different in Russia, but you hearing the US stories must be cool because they're all very different from yours.
I watched the complete episode and I liked it.
It people want to see a Japanese perspective there are the game center CX which are quite interesting when they talk about history of specific game companies. But this is a commercial TV show so sometime you have to take it with a grain of salt.
That was great!
Hope the rest will get translated soon :3
Watched the first episode, good stuff. Thanks for the translation.
Do Russians come out of the womb deadpan?
While translation of next episodes is in progress, you can watch similar but earlier Kinaman's work - 'The Curse of the Gray Elephant', an hour-long video, practically a feature, that is focused on the Dendy thing in general. It contains much more swearing, though. English subtitles by DeniSS, CamaroSS, and Sobol14. They need a bit of proofreading, hope this will be done soon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJQr3tnjHlg
Shiru wrote:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJQr3tnjHlg
LOL @ Chinese pirates... At
04:46 there's a distorted picture of Pegasus Seiya from the
cover of volume 14 of the Saint Seiya manga, but he's wearing part of
Virgo Shaka's armor (or "Cloth", as the armors are called in the series) and holding a light gun! I never thought they would promote Famiclones with that! Although there are 2 official Saint Seiya games for the Famicom...
Shiru wrote:
English subtitles by DeniSS, CamaroSS, and Sobol14. They need a bit of proofreading, hope this will be done soon.
FWIW, the English subs are sufficient about 90% of the time. Lots of grammatical mistakes, typos, and some phrases that could be rewritten to sound more eloquent -- if they need help cleaning them up, please let me know and I'll be happy to do the editing! -- but overall it was over an hour of total enjoyment for me. (Oh, and my Russian is really, *really* bad, but there are certain sentences I can understand which I could translate better I guess; I sure as hell couldn't translate the entire thing!!!). For example, the caption "Stolichnaya" (Столичная) should just read "(Stoli; Russian vodka)", because here in the US those small bottles are usually samplers, and contain different kinds of alcohols. I doubt anyone would know what Stolichnaya is...
This gives me a lot of insight to what Landy (of LandyNES) went through. In fact, just moments after starting the video, I sent him an Email with said Youtube link. I'm certain it will put a big smile on his face. :-)
But thank you for the links -- I had a wonderful time watching these.
Actually, I corrected typos (not grammatics, though) in The Curse of the Gray Elephant and sent that version to Kinaman yesterday, but he haven't updated it (yet). I'm sure there is much more that is possible to improve.
Very entertaining and informative. Playing pirated Famicom games in black & white in mid 1990s.. that's devotion.
I really liked the "curse" too. It was really enjoyable. I can't wait to see the other ones. It's a shame that I cannot understand it without subtitles since there must be some subtleties that we lost because of the translation or cultural differences.
How is the translation of the SMB2 episode going?
Great! This is all very amusing. :-)
And now I see how the pirates got away with it. Some of these Mario hacks appear at least plausible as Doki Doki Panic to Super Mario Bros. 2: Mario Madness. In fact, even the Flintstones game could be thought of as a loose adaptation of the Super Mario World animated series if you think about it.
I watched all 3 parts when the first one was posted here, even though I don't understand russian. But I'm going to re-watch parts 2 and 3 with subtitles of course.
I could imagine how pissed I would have been if I had bought Super Wonderful Mario (aka Super Mario 5, aka Super Bros 5) as a kid, only to come home and discover that it was Super Mario Bros 2 with a hacked title screen.
I hope you russians had the ability to try the games in the store before you bought them.
I don't really remember how it was in early years, don't think I ever managed to get into a branded Dendy shop - but generally (in other shops) it wasn't possible to ask to just show a game, they only check it if works (not everywhere) when you bought it. Later, in second half of 1990s, in many places it was possible to see a game before buy.
By the way, I personally knew Super Mario Bros. 2 as Super Mario USA until I got access to the internet. So it was a common thing that the same game was known under 2-3 titles.
Btw, is there a patch or GG code available that will remove the powerups from a normal copy of Ninja Gaiden / Shadow Warriors? (like in that Dendy version that kinaman showed). Would be interesting to see just how hard the game becomes without them.
Oh, I forgot to complain about the subtext being white only; there are many places where it's almost impossible to read what is said.
Edit: Thanks, Shiru!
Press B in YouTube player to enable solid black background for subtitles.
Quote:
Btw, is there a patch or GG code available that will remove the powerups from a normal copy of Ninja Gaiden / Shadow Warriors? (like in that Dendy version that kinaman showed).
Nevermind, I hacked it myself (for those who want to know, you just need to change the two bytes at file offset 1DA9B-1DA9C from A5 01 to A9 1C).
Does it also makes 1up bonus crash the game?
Also, regardiing the bug in Shatterhand/Solbrain that has been shown in The Curse of the Gray Elephant, CaH4e3 figured out what caused it a year ago. He posted about it in his blog, but it is in Russia.
Here is an automatic translation (it's bad but it has the broken code). At the time, I had luck to get not broken game once. Every other copy of the game I saw had the problem, but they always were on multi-game carts, and working one was a single game, so a lot people were searching working copy of a game for many years, without any luck.
Quote:
Does it also makes 1up bonus crash the game?
No. My change marks all powerups as immediately taken, so you'll never see any laterns at all. That's not exactly the same as in the Dendy version, but it's the effect I wanted (i.e. no powerups).
nice! it was very interesting.
Translation of Episode #3 is available.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOzCQ9egtZs
Additionally, two small extra videos from The Curse of the Gray Elephant are translated too, one of them is a blooper, and other is an extra scene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XTRMg9SVN0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr9KxOXrjtI
That "Mario Fighter" game... I'm scarred for life... ._.
That Mario Fighter bollocks really topped the cake, I'll say. (><)
@Shiru: Do you know if there are any plans to subtitle the new Battletoads video that was uploaded a couple of weeks ago?
This video is from Kinaman's other series that has two videos so far, it is of 'let's play' kind. I'm not really feel ready to translate it yet, as it is long and complex (live dialogue), but I consider it, if people think it could be interesting for them.
I'm interested, thank you!
9999-in-1 and 100-in-1 are my cartridges, dumped by CaH4e3.
Download
link (10-november-2009)
A new episode is out and translated. It is about the infamous, the most difficult game for Dendy/NES that everyone know for sure - Ghostly Village.
Episode #4
Oh dear, 20 FPS games on a Dendy? Down to 16FPS now?
Edit: Not that bad actually, it gives you more reaction time for an impossible game.
I have a rant about frames-per-second ████-waving ready to flow from my fingers, but I won't litter this topic with it.
LOL at the end of that video. Mowgli is now a furry.
Quite funny! Didn't see that last one coming, though. :-)
Kinaman currently runs few related projects in parallel. Here is an overview.
- 'Dendy Chronicles', a scripted series that is focused on specifics of Dendy gaming - pirate games, problems, absurdity, etc. New episodes come out rarely, like once per two months. It takes that much time because people who helps Kinaman to film it are living at another cities, also because props needs to be prepared (bought and delivered). Kinaman does not even own a camera yet, although he going to get one soon.
- 'On the Kitchen', an unscripted let's play series. Kinaman with a guest beats a difficult game, or not so difficult one, but in some special way, using a real Dendy. This series is scheduled one per month - althouhg it still involves filming and help of other people, it takes less time to make.
- 'Kinamania Live' is a realtime let's play that uses an emulator. It is mostly Coulthard's project (one of guys that helps Kinaman), they host it together and beat two games per episode, while answering chat questions. Games that are played here are selected of those that aren't suitable for other projects (too easy, too good, etc). This is not strictly scheduled, but may be 1-2 times per month.
- 'Dendy Memories', the most recent unscripted series. Kinaman tells stories about his own gaming experience with Dendy and certain games. No schedule is given for this series yet.
As for translation, 'Chronicles' are easiest, because it is scripted, so it is well structured and worded. 'Memories' are more difficult, because it is unscripted, with pauses, corrections, and thoughts not always worded well. Both let's plays are really difficult for me, because it is always two hosts, they constantly interrupt themselves and each other, and sometimes talks too quiet as well.
Here is the first episode of the 'Dendy Memories' with subtitles.
The sixth episode is translated. As it was announced in the previous episode, it is about Aladdin games.
Besides the english subtitles, four first episodes now have spanish subtitles by Emiliano Figueroa.
I had no idea they would do something like the solder blob to select games!
tepples wrote:
I have a rant about frames-per-second ████-waving ready to flow from my fingers, but I won't litter this topic with it.
Unrelated, but did you ever actually type this up somewhere?
I'd have to watch #4 again in order to get it flowing, and right now I'm too busy with other things like my game math library and figuring out the best way to back up external images linked to on the BBS.
Thanks for the subtitles.
Dendy Memories #3 - Robocop 3
Next episode of the Chronicles is sheduled for August, and next Memories for this month.
Only 20 seconds of subtitles? edit: nope, they start again after 55 seconds.
Sorry, I somehow managed to miss that part, despite I watched the whole video few times. Thanks for report, I'll fix it.
That latest video seriously needs a lowpass filter, high persistent whining noise on there.
A short video,
Memories under the Christmas tree. Translations for the latest large videos will follow some time later.
I notice the music in #7 is playing a little slow. I guess it's a cover of the Dendy version of that SMB3 tune!
I happened to notice "Dendy Memories #6: Prince of Persia" also has English subtitles now:
http://youtu.be/ycEdqMlZpq0
"How much is 8-bit?" the movie:
https://youtu.be/moCpLJjAPNI