Weekly Status Report: 2025/09/28 to 10/04

WOW. WHAT A WEEK.

Before we jump into the Kinnikuman stuff: I hosted that interview for Project Mike on Monday. The person I interviewed was lovely. It was magic. Couldn't have gone better. I'm shooting for December for Project Mike to maximise ad rev. Remember: the first 28 days of ad rev for Project Mike will go to Mike McFarland's GoFundMe.

So now for the stuff you're REALLY here for...

The ENTIRE MUSCLE section has its assets in place. This was A LOT of work. This section was tedious because it uses a lot of still images, so to keep it entertaining, there are a lot of custom animations (and animations are not done yet). One thing I'm particularly proud of is reintroducing the "TV turn on" effect from waaaaaay back when I did my Tama and Friends video. I even pulled up the old project file from 2023 to see how I did that effect. I used that same effect to do a "change channel" effect.

The only parts that are not filled in are the background (which I am going to use a nested sequence for), the MUSCLE NES game, and anything I filmed.

Speaking of which: I filmed yesterday! I spent about an hour and a half filming myself playing with and showing off different Kinnikuman toys. I will be showing:

• Kinkeshi figures

• Mattel M.U.S.C.L.E. figures

• Hard Knockin' Rockin' Ring Wrestling Arena

• M.U.S.C.L.E. Mega-Match Game

• Mattel C.U.T.I.E. figures

• Ultimate Muscle Micro Wrestlers

• Super7 Mega Man M.U.S.C.L.E. figures

I also took the opportunity to take all the gameplay videos I recorded in May onto a flash drive and import to my desktop. That includes:

• Kinnikuman: Muscle Tag Match

• Tag Team Match: M.U.S.C.L.E.

• A ROM hack of Muscle Tag Match that replaces characters with Ultimate Muscle characters

• Ultimate Muscle: Legends vs. New Generation (including gameplay captured with my high school friends!)

While these were all captured on real hardware, I unfortunately had to use an emulator for Galactic Wrestling on PS2. The disc I bought for the game isn't being read by my PS2, so I resorted to sourcing the ISO and playing it on PCSX2.

Work has begun on the longest section: 2002 Ultimate Muscle. That section alone is an hour long, but I don't expect it to be as tedious since I'm using a lot of anime footage instead of leaning on custom animations and me playing with toys... granted, I am using footage of me playing with toys in the 2003 section, but still.

I'm noticing more YouTubers uploading their own retrospectives of Ultimate Muscle. This gives me hope my video will do at least decently.

Given I bolted through editing 30+ minutes of video (and that's including a day I was under the weather -- I got flu and COVID shots on Wednesday, which hit me Thursday), I expect this video to be done in a few weeks. Keep it here. Early premiere will be on Discord. Video will be posted on whatever Saturday this gets done.

Anyways, back to work!

Weekly Bonus:

So I decided to use some M.U.S.C.L.E. toys as bowling pins... You can see the "ball" on the right.