Wow. It's actually been a full year since I picked up this domain. I've been meaning to update this page since October, but, as they say, better late than never.

What is GemuBaka?
GemuBaka is a collection of works from the GemuBaka collaboration. The name is derived from the Japanese loan word for game as well as “baka,” which in one of its variants means “crazy.” In a literal sense, the phrase means “game crazy,” which would describe one who is crazy about games. Fortunately, that describes us perfectly. GemuBaka catalogs the works of the GB team and spans a wide range of video game topics to include features, previews, reviews, editorials, FAQs and more. Pretty much the only item we do not feature here is game news – a facet we see as fairly pointless considering about a million other sites would be reporting on the same thing. Our scope does not stop at current systems as we look back upon past systems from the 1980s forward. While it doesn’t always happen, we try to update the site with at least one new feature every weekday, however, at the minimum, there is at least one update every week.

Who is GemuBaka?
GemuBaka is the collaborative efforts of nestlekwik and MixMasterLar. The two authors became accquainted while working on projects through Rithum Interactive, including Rithum News, a video games-based Web site that covered video game news while producing original features and reviews on a daily basis. Although the site was scrapped in early 2008 in favor of a more ambitious project from the company, the two still saw potential in what they had to offer in their writings, forming GemuBaka nearly six months following the close of the site.

Nestlekwik has been writing about video games for the past seven years, being published and holding positions at sources such as Blogcritics.org and self-published materials before joining Rithum. Since then, he has spread out to work with sources such as Diehard GameFAN.com, J2Games, Video Game Collector Magazine, Arcade Heroes, Bemanistyle and more. Nestlekwik has been playing games actively since 1985 and has lightly dabbled into nearly every aspect of the video game industry, which includes app development, independent game conceptualization, journalism, public relations, marketing and more.

MixMasterLar joined up with Nestlekwik at Rithum News and has stuck with the cause since that time. A fairly well-known member of the DDR culture and a lover of the fighting game genre, Lar helped shape the J2Games segment The Nestlekwik Happy Hour and launched the Objective Tangent line of editorials for GemuBaka. Also a video game reviewer, Lar has contributed to sources such as J2Games and Video Game Collector Magazine.

Haven’t I seen some of your work on “x site?”
Most likely. As stated earlier, GemuBaka is an active contributor to a handful of other gaming sites past and present and the GB site serves as a sort of HQ or portfolio for our works, along with any original musings we decide to craft exclusively for the site.

Just to clarify, so there are no confusions, we are not a scraper site. We do not just pull someone else's work from another site and report it as news. GemuBaka only reprints work when a member of the site creates an original work for another site and we are given permission to reprint it on our site. Thus, you should know any article posted on this site comes from its original author. The site is more than a collection of works from other sites as we do produce original materials for the site as well. You can view any site-exclusive material on our GemuBaka Exclusive Feature page.

I've oft mentioned that when I fly through some of the older games I check out, maybe it should be worthwhile for me to actually review these items for the site and do something with them that is worthwhile.  I came to an impass the other week when staring at a wall of Xbox 360 games to try out, I just couldn't decide what to check out.  With the backing of a couple of people, I decided to embark on what I dubbed "The A to Z Experiment."  Starting from the beginning of what is available to me, I am attempting to run through the catalog of games from A to Z, no matter how horrible or how uninterested I am in the game.

The breakdown is as follows:  I have five days to play through the game before I have to give it back.  Through that time, I will post a review of that game on day six, right here on GemuBaka.  I will also be doing an achievement breakdown - my goal for each game is 50% completion, which would be 500 points per retail game.  I am going to test an achievement feature on the forums of 360Voice.com to see how well it goes, but in any case, that will provide GemuBaka with more achievement-based content, like I've been meaning to pick up on.

The first of many reviews is up and live on our site, with a full review of 2K Sports' All-Pro Football 2K8.  I hope you enjoy the project as I trudge on to my next "A" game.

A few months ago I had made a few mentions of our Alexa ranking and having aspirations of dropping below 2 million in rank.  Not only have we dropped below 2 million, but our rank has improved by 2.2 million, putting us at less than 600,000.  I'm quite surprised, really, but am grateful for anyone that stops by and visits the site.  We have more content and projects underway, so I'm hoping to do even better in the rankings to have some leverage to improve the site.

Here are some other accolades I've noticed for GemuBaka recently:

* After only two weeks on the site, our Vanguard Princess submission to Diehard GameFAN was the nineth most-read article for July and maintained top 10 status both weeks, with a current peak at #3.

* We posted another world exclusive for a video game, this time with photos for Dark Presence's arcade control panel.

* After 15 days of full stat tracking, we've noticed a large increase in unique visitors and page views.

* Our top 10 YouTube videos now sit at 116,539 views, with our channel being visited more than 5,500 times.

* After a year, our J2Games content has been viewed 32,613 times.

Sure, it's nothing amazing, but at least someone is taking a look at our content.  To those people: Thank you.

"Do you know what time of the week it is? Time to talk about what happened these last seven days: If you are an Xbox, you might be jealous that nestlekwik showed up to game 5 days this last week. Happy happy joy joy! This wasn't just low-key gaming either... our score bounced 637 freakin' points! Can you believe it? In one week? YES! Getting 40 achievements has that effect.

I was lucky enough to sample 2 new tasty treats during the week! Game names are Beat'n Groovy™, and Silent Hill Homecoming. Look for us in the leaderboards... maybe... Also, I think nestlekwik's favorite game last week was Beat'n Groovy™. He played it on 4 of the days.

And that's all I got. I'm not a writer... just an Xbox"

I suppose my Xbox 360 is happy, considering I received 360Voice.com's Happy badge.  I'll have some thoughts up soon on Beat'n Groovy and Silent Hill Homecoming, but I've been loading up some of my older games to record them onto my Xbox 360's blog (the service only records your per-game statistics from the point you play them after signing up for the site and only when logged in to Xbox LIVE).  Going through my stack of games, I can see that I need to set aside some time to play some more of them, mainly in that I need to start Eternal Sonata, Condemned (yeah, finally) and Soul Calibur IV's tower mode and finish Battle Fantasia, Crackdown, Guitar Hero, LEGO Indy and Burnout Paradise.  Really, there's more I need to get to than that, but that's kind of what's just at the top of my pile.  Once I don't have to deal with school, I'll probably take a few days to kick back with a bunch of my games.  Needless to say, once this week's recap hits, I should be jumping quite a bit in the standings (I'm #33,779 in Gamerscore with the registered users now, going up more than 2,000 places) and my Xbox should be quite happy as a result of it.

If you want your Xbox 360 to write blogs for you, check out 360Voice.com.  Not only will the service keep tabs on your playing habits, but you can also shoot for additional achievement badges, meet new players, tackle challenges and view an insane breakdown of your achievement point details.

Unfortunately, I haven't been touching much aside from my Xbox 360 this week other than my Nintendo DS, loading up small bouts of My Japanese Coach, Metal Slug 7 and Rhythm Tengoku Gold.  Having studied Japanese for a year now, My Japanese Coach thankfully tested me and shot me up to the middle of the first tier where I'm forming scentences instead of learning how to count to ten and greet people again.  I haven't learned very many new things so far, but the learning process has been pretty entertaining and hopefully I'll stick with it and the knowledge will stick with me.  I don't know what to say about Metal Slug 7, really.  It's Metal Slug.  You run and shoot, sometimes throw grenades, occassionally jump and die when you can't keep up with it.  I've been toying with the beginner mode, which puts a heavy machine gun in your hand as your default infinite ammo weapon - say hello to my little friend!  While I had a minor translation quirk with Rhythm Tengoku Gold in one of the mini-games, I've figured everything out and the game is such a blast to play.  I still can't believe Nintendo hasn't done anything yet to promote the U.S. release of this game in 2009.  Let's just hope it's because they are focusing on the remainder of 2008 and the holidays and we'll start seeing some more publization of this marvelous game.

As always, check out our affiliates J2Games, Bemanistyle and Play-Asia.  At J2Games, we're gearing up for VGXPO in Philadelphia, which is almost only a month away (finally), Rob has done an opinion piece on the LittleBigPlanet fiasco, Flack dismantles a Defender cabinet for our viewing pleasure and the legendary Bill Kunkel treats us to a publication detailing the state of gaming 10 years after the launch of Pong.  Bemanistyle, of course, remains the #1 site for rhythm gaming, detailing the remainder of the Rock Band 2 system releases, the IIDX DJ Trooper special edition packages (from Konamistyle, no less), weekly downloads and more.  In the next few days, you'll see a recap posted here on the progress DJ Max Fever is making as Gemubaka impatiently waits for this music game translation that won't insult its fans.  Play-Asia is going to be rocking the two newest Dreamcast titles, so if you're a freak for the white box, you should definitely check them out.

So, yeah, because of school, GemuBaka is starting out slower than I wanted it to, but that's alright.  At least the site is more than a welcome message at this point and we're already starting to crawl the engines and receive ping responses, so I'm happy about that.  Just stay tuned because we're only just now getting started and we hope any reader will be able to pull something entertaining from GemuBaka.  Lar and I are finally back on track to record a new Happy Hour, so look out for a new episode very soon.  Thanks for your support!