The story of Our Lady of the Boombox...

As you may know I am a huge fan of fighting games. I rarely talk about Sega fighters, and I might do a deep dive on them someday. For now I wanted to focus on some of my favorite stage art of all time. There were many stage designs in the various fighting games that I loved. Exotic jungles, busy metropolitan intersections, racetracks, heavy metal mosh pits, and other amazing backgrounds sparked my imagination. Of the dozens, and dozens of fighting games that I had played in my life there was a detail that was burned into my brain. It influenced me so much that I had to redraw it, almost from memory some 15 years later.

You might remember that Sega was one of the first studios to go all in on 3D fighting games with Virtua Fighter back in 1993. As their technology improved they tried other ideas with their fighting engine. They released a lesser known title called Fighting Vipers. The title from November 1995 featured young characters in armor, as opposed to traditional martial arts masters. The stages were set mostly in city locations. One of which was in a concrete pit with walls covered in graffiti. One of the pieces on the wall really stood out to me because it made a religious icon instantly accessible to my generation. It was inspired by the Rest In Peace murals featuring the Virgin Mary. In this case it was a tribute to Honey, the character that the Bayside stage belonged to. As a Mexican-American I grew up in the Catholic Church. I was well familiar with the art, and iconography used by the church. Jesus, his apostles, the saints, Pope’s and various figures adorned not only the walls of the churches we visited, but also abuela’s house. The image of the Virgin Mary was one of the most important figures for the Latin community. Specifically it was Our Lady of Guadalupe. The short version of this visual was that it was adopted by the natives of Mexico in the 1500’s. It lead to many of the native Aztecs to convert to Catholicism. 

Many years passed, and I got a chance to play hundreds of games in the arcade, and at home. I would reflect on my favorites, and the things that made them unique. I would have long talks about it with my brothers, and friends. This was before I started writing things down on a blog. While talking about favorite stages in fighting games I mentioned the graffiti in Fighting Vipers. I lamented that my favorite piece wasn’t featured in the Sega Saturn version of the game. By that time most of the arcades we used to visit had closed down, and those that were around never had Fighting Vipers. The only proof that the art I loved had ever existed was from a tiny screenshot in one of my Japanese gaming magazines. I sketched it out one day as best as I could remember. Mind you this was almost 15 years after the arcade game had come out. The fact that it was a close approximation of the actual art showed how much I was moved by the graffiti. It really turned the iconic figure into something that 20th century kids could relate to. I’m sure that it stood out to the other Latinos that played the game.

I posted the sketch on 1UP, and talked about how I would like to redo it in color. Sure enough a few months later I had an illustrator version of it. Unfortunately looking back on my hard drive I couldn’t seem to find the original file. Thinking about it 2010-2011 was about the time that my older Mac computer crashed, and I lost a lot of data. If it weren’t for some CD backups that I made I would have lost years of files. It wouldn’t be hard for me to reproduce the piece. Chances are it would look a lot better if I did. I still loved the pose, and look of the original drawing. It wasn’t exactly how the Sega original appeared, but in my memory that was how it always was. To be honest it wasn’t be the first time I recreated the graffiti from a Sega game in Adobe Illustrator.

I was a huge fan of the Jet Set Radio games, and little by little managed to recreate all of the game icons, in Japanese, and English! As well as the small, medium, and large graffiti pieces. I was hopeful that someday I might be able to use them in some sort of modded game about graffiti. But for now that was my story on Our Lady of the Boombox. I hope you enjoyed the art. Did you ever recreate any of your favorite stage art, graffiti, or logos? Let me know about it in the comments section. As always if you enjoyed this blog, and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

Jet Set Radio graffiti submissions - A 1UP classic from March 21, 2012

Heya friends, did you remember to submit your entries to the Jet Set Radio Graffiti Contest yesterday? I loved the game so much and the prize pack was so cool that I wanted something that might be different enough from traditional graffiti work to win. Unfortunately I was so busy at work, prepping for my gal's b-day, Wondercon and on other personal projects that I only managed to get two pieces produced. The first is the small piece. I wanted to make a simple piece that used colors familiar with the original Jet Set Radio. The green and yellow motif came up several times in the logo designs and map markers in game. I wanted to add a different twist to the graphics while keeping it in the theme of the original JSR.

I thought of punching up the greens and making them look more neon. I would be able to do that in Illustrator and add gradients to make them more unique. Also since the tech in JSR is slightly futuristic then so should the graffiti itself be. I thought that the piece should have drips that flow up instead of down. If only I had more time I would have done other neat visual tricks...

I did manage to put in something that I don’t think anyone had tried before. I printed up some of my classic graffiti pieces on glossy paper and spent a few days cutting them out.

Then I taped those paper graffiti pieces onto a wire stand and arranged them in front of a “wall of fame.” The wall was actually a piece of foam that was painted with stone texture paint. The roll down steel door was actually a piece of cardboard spray painted silver.

I then organized the pieces on a table in the break room at work and began snapping pictures. This was done the morning that the entries were due, just a couple of hours before the deadline in fact! I took two of the best pictures and made an anaglyph 3D image in Photoshop.

If you have the red and blue 3D glasses then you’ll see that my piece actually has depth. I hope the people choosing pieces for JSR select my entries. I’d love to see the reaction of players when they paint "Atomo in 3D" in the game and then look at it through the red and blue lenses. 

Do you think my entries have a chance at winning? Did you submit any pieces to the contest?

As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

The rarest game CD's I have - A 1UP classic from March 15, 2012

Today the gems are being imported to the playlist. Here are the rarest gaming CD's that I have.

The Jet Grind Radio and Jet Set Radio Future soundtracks are a must-own item for any player. These two can be picked up on Amazon and a few other sites.

The rarer releases that complimented the original soundtracks were the music samplers. They had some of the songs featured in the game yet which weren't on the official soundtrack. Even with all these releases Sega never managed to have one definitive soundtrack which had all of the music featured in the original Jet Set Radio.

Ollie King was a sort of spiritual successor to JSR. The soundtrack was created by Hideki Naganuma, the person that wrote about half of the songs featured in both JSR games. Crackin' DJ was from the rare Sega arcade title which featured original scratch DJ tunes.

The NiGHTS soundtracks and remixes are probably not as rare as the JSR Samplers, except for the original NiGHTS into dreams… soundtrack that is. The OST is probably the jewel of my entire CD collection. I keep the soundtrack in mint condition. It goes for a king's ransom on eBay and I plan on holding onto my copy forever. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!