After a two and a half month stretch between updates last time, which I thought would be the record, I have tested everybody's patience once again by bumping that record up to a 3 month stretch. It is 3 months to the day since my last Bowser Shrine update, and this has been only the second update since June. I feel that this is unacceptable and that I'm doing a great injustice to not only Bowser, but you loyal fans as well. Although I have apologized for these lack of updates before, it still keeps happening. I will humbly apologize once again, and I will make sure that a 3 month stretch remains the record, and that things will be moving forward steadily from here.

(** Warning! Incoming excuses! **)

This has unfortunately been a slow year for The Bowser Shrine due to a lot of outside influences and extracurricular things. In the first quarter of the year, I was laid off from Dell in part of a global downsizing the company was doing. Through an internal reference and a lucky break, I was able to find a very good opportunity as a Junior Systems Administrator at a provincial health insurance company. This was a challenging position offering plenty of potential and career advancement, and was definitely quite a step up for me. I work as an administrator and supporter of the entire company's Unix/Linux servers on a small team, and we are the highest tiered support. I had only taken a basic Linux fundamentals course in technical school (college), and never provided support for it before. This naturally came with a high learning curve, which is still very steep for me today 8 months later.

For example, I had recently offered to provide 24/7 on-call support for an entire month straight in order to gain experience quickly. This means I could be paged to fix a problem remotely, or come in to work in order to fix a problem at any hour of the day. It's been 3 weeks so far, and thankfully the pager has not gone off too many times. I get a little bit of overtime for carrying the pager, even if it doesn't go off, and certain fixed overtime amounts when it does. Eventually I will put into a rotation, and would only have to do this for about one week for every five or six weeks. Although I dislike having a job in which work follows me home, I knew this was what I signed up for, and it would be great for my career advancement. Still though, while I have recently focused hard on my career, The Bowser Shrine project is something I've been envisioning for years, and seeing slow lack of progress has been discouraging, even depressing.

I even joked once, either in a past update, or in a few e-mails, that "I seriously need to get laid off again so I can finish The Bowser Shrine!". I actually was only half-joking when I said this. The bulk of what you see here on The Bowser Shrine today was during a long stretch of time where I was inbetween jobs after being laid off from my prior programming job (before I started at Dell). It was fantastic having so much uninterrupted free time during those months, but unfortuntely, it just wasn't realistic for very long in the real world. Besides, with an upcoming economic recession on it's way (or perhaps already here), I should be grateful that I'm still employed full-time.

In all truthfulness, there were many opportunities over the past few months in which it definitely was possible to whip up an update. I believe if I learn better time management and balance things better, I will be able to get more things done and deliver. I've said this before, but really I should think about doing more frequent, smaller updates, to give a greater appearance of activity. I will try to do this going forward, and I will try to pump out a string of updates until the end of the year to make up for the past year's slowness. I've also mentioned before that I don't like to make excuses very often and post them, or really talk much about extracirricular stuff. It's all Bowser here, and that's the way it should be! Ok, now on to much more pleasant things (i.e. Bowser stuff).

(** End of excuses. **)

As a preview for this update, this one will mostly feature plenty of new/updated media. We're mostly talking about new renders, screenshots, etc. Unfortunately I didn't quite have time to get to the latest mailbag questions, and fan fictions that have been submitted recently. These usually take the longest, and I am planning a separate mass update to finally catch up. I've recently had 3 mailbag submissions over the past couple months, and a backlog of about 8 fan fictions dating back to even last year! I will maybe try to post a fan fiction a week or something to finally catch up on this, because I've really felt guilty for making everyone wait so long. Alright, lets get this update going!

So I went Paintballing with some friends a couple months ago one weekend and just happened to fix my gaze upon the rule board that I'm sure is often deliberately overlooked (LoL at "No head shots" being scratched out!). To my astonishment, in the lower right hand corner of the board was an image of a bipedal, spikey-back turtle-like character just like Bowser! Upon closer look, I couldn't believe just how similar this creature was to the Koopa King! He had 3-toeclawed feet like Bowser, a rippled soft stomach like Bowser, a spikey tail and back like Bowser, and even armcuffs like Bowser! The only thing that looked a bit different obviously was his head and face. This character definitely looked pretty serious and mean with his scoped paintball gun and his... train conductor hat? Haha, I thought the parallels that could be drawn to Bowser were pretty remarkable, and this character must serve as the enforcer of the rules, and discourage non-compliance! Anyways, I thought this was really cool.

If you thought that was cool, check out what my good friend GimpyFish62 did for Halloween this year. Using a stencil, Gimpyfish was able to carve a pumpkin in the shape of Bowser's face, and light it from the inside with a candle so it could be clearly seen! Is this cool or what!? It is so accurate and finely detailed, it's almost a perfect replica of the Koopa King's mug! Bowser's lit face almost looks life-like; it's almost scary! I don't even know where the reference must have come from, as I cannot recall any sort of render where his face looked like this from this angle. Anyways, I thought he did an amazing job, and I'm sure everyone else who saw it on display loved it as well.

Next, at long last I have finally found a larger resolution image of the crouching Bowser render! After months and months of searching everywhere, I finally found it on the Mario Party DS Official European site, which was done in flash. It was a few months ago while I was at work that I found the image, and it was through following the external links at the bottom of the Mario Party DS entry at the Super Mario Wiki. After clicking on the official European Mario Party DS site, I finally found the crouching Bowser render sliding in after I clicked the "Minigame Madness" header. As you could imagine, I was extremely excited to see this, but knew looking at the background that I had my work cut out for me

I knew that it would take a lot of very precise work and time to extract this Bowser render from it's background, and leave a clean edge. I unfortunately had my very accurate mouse (Intellimouse Explorer 3.0) that I normally use for graphics and gaming wear out, and I had to take the time to find a suitable replacement (eventually picked up the Microsoft Habu Gaming Mouse by Razer). During this time, it turns out that somebody else must have also come across this render on the flash site, and already moved forward in cutting out the image, and posting it on the Super Mario Wiki. It was then that I had about 3 dedicated Bowser searching fans e-mail me almost at the same time stating that they had finally found the mysterious crouching Bowser render. Although I had found it quite a while earlier, (but just hadn't edited it myself yet and posted it), I still wanted to shout out to the eager ones that also found it and e-mailed me. They were (in order of e-mail reception time): nintendweeb64, Brittany Webb, and Jake Meadows.

The artist who cut out the Bowser render and posted it on the Super Mario Wiki did a great job, although upon closer look, I was able to tell that it was cut out from somewhere (the edges were jagged, and Bowser's claws may have been shaved down a bit). I was also able to see small evidence of the blue background as a thin 1 px border around the image. This is being very picky, as the image still looks very good, and looks almost official. I saw this as a challenge though, and thought that I could get the image even cleaner and smooth looking. I knew to do this, however, I would have to cut out the render pixel by pixel, in very time-consuming work. I decided to give it a shot.

Good grief, the process was like a paleontologist excavating a dinosaur! And since Bowser kind of looks like a dinosaur, I kind of did feel like a paleontologist in a way! Anyways, it took a very long time, but I cut out the Bowser render pixel by pixel, and believe I have an even more refined render to display and share. So now, I bring to you, my version of the ferocious-looking crouching Bowser render. Comparing it to the current Super Mario Wiki crouching Bowser render, I hope you will agree with me that I got it a little bit sharper looking and more accurate, although the differences are very slight (especially against a white background). Hopefully in the future, an even higher resolution version of this render could be found. Nintendo still must have the original stored somewhere, or else they wouldn't be able to use it on all of their promotional material. This Bowser render has got to be one of my absolute favourites, and it was totally worth the time extracting it as accurately as possible. The way how he's crouched down in a near pouncing position, with that mischievous cheek-to-cheek grin across his face, is just priceless. He looks almost like a linebacker in Football! Perhaps they'll reuse this render if they ever plan in making a Mario Football spinoff game!

I would have to say that the "Bowser renders" section is my favourite section of The Bowser Shrine so far. I love seeing so many different character artwork drawings of Bowser, or the even more detailed and realistic computer generated renders of him. It's great seeing how often Bowser's depiction will go through certain phases or versions, yet still remain accurate and true to the original character. I had found another character artwork drawing of Bowser that I never saw anywhere on the internet before in my instruction manual to Mario Golf 64. It displayed a confident fist-pumping Bowser holding a golf driver in his other claw. I decided to scan it in high resolution, and then carefully edit and clean up the image, ready to post it as an unofficial render. Since the image was fairly small and was in an instruction manual, and I did the scan in high resolution, a lot of the grains and material the paper was made of are visible, albeit slightly. I have also found several higher-resolution Bowser render versions than ones I already had on The Bowser Shrine, and have updated them accordingly. I also even did a few updates of some renders that were the same resolution and size, but didn't have a watermark that a specific website put on them. Look for the blue-bordered thumbnails in the Bowser Renders section to find new/updated Bowser renders now available on The Bowser Shrine!

Some great fan screenshots from Super Smash Brothers Brawl have also been posted for this update, and are available for viewing in the Bowser Fan Screenshots section. Jeff Sikkema offered a few interesting shots, one of Giga Bowser staring into the abyss, and another of a smaller Bowser getting his head stuck in the mouth of a larger Bowser! Must have been some lucky timing with some of these. Holy Aura Dragon also submitted five funny screenshots that are bound to amuse. For example, one had Bowser offering to shake a paw, which looks pretty hilarious seeing Bowser acting nice and all. He has a look on his face like "put 'er there pal!", as he coughs up some smoke. You really have to wonder what his intentions are! Do you trust him? I also loved the one which has Bowser looking tough and gruff, with an intimidating glare that's as if he's saying "What are YOU looking at!?". Doesn't Bowser just do the best poses and impressions?

Alex Hobbs also submitted a second wallpaper of retro touch, which included Mario versing Bowser in World 8-4 of Super Mario Brothers. The wallpaper is sort of like a screenshot, with the Super Mario Bros. title screen pasted above. It is a small wallpaper, only 800 x 600 pixels, so it would probably work best as a centered wallpaper, instead of titled or stretched. That way, it won't get in the way of your icons.

As for other media updates, I have also added a few screenshots I have come across that I didn't have posted on The Bowser Shrine yet. I have included 3 small screenshots to the upcoming Mario & Luigi RPG 3 (tentative title), which will have Bowser as a fully playable character from the beginning! All 3 images are pretty small and rough, and eventually I'm sure there will be higher quality and larger images available closer to release date. Other games with added official screenshots include: Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Mario Tennis, Mario Kart Arcade GP, Super Mario Galaxy, and Super Smash Brothers Brawl. I have also added a larger resolution, and clearer image of the Mario Kart 64 box in the Bowser Box Art section.

Lastly, I have added a link to Mario Resource, formerly known as Nintendo DS Resource. I remember stating that the webmaster had planned to expand the coverage to include all Nintendo consoles and handhelds on my Links page when it was still Nintendo DS Resource. It looks like this would be the result. Mario Resource is a fan site devoted to bringing news and information about Mario, Mario games, and Mario media. Like a lot of fansites *hint* *hint*, it is still under ongoing construction, but is updated quite frequently (ok, they've got me on that one!).

Whew, we've finally reached the end of another enormous update. Actually looking back, I really don't have a huge quantity of new content, and the update probably felt bigger and longer than it actually is. The extraction of the crouching Bowser render and searching for new screenshots is what probably took up most of the update time. I'm beginning to wonder if it's actually taking me as long to write the update notification post than it is to actually do the update! My goodness, my updates just keep getting longer and longer it seems! Many apologies to your eyes for having to read so long and hard.

Summary:

1 link added to the Links section
7 screenshots added to the Bowser Fan Screenshots section
1 wallpaper added to the Bowser Wallpapers section
1 box art updated in the Bowser Box Art section
9 renders added/updated to the Bowser Renders section
1 screenshot added to the Bowser Screenshots section for Super Mario 64
2 screenshots added to the Bowser Screenshots section for Mario Kart 64
2 screenshots added to the Bowser Screenshots section for Mario Tennis
3 screenshots added to the Bowser Screenshots section for Mario Kart Arcade GP
1 screenshot added to the Bowser Screenshots section for Super Mario Galaxy
1 screenshot added to the Bowser Screenshots section for Super Smash Brothers Brawl
3 screenshots added to the Bowser Screenshots section for Mario & Luigi 3

As stated earlier, be on the lookout for another update coming soon to catch up on several fan fiction and mailbag submissions. When is "soon" from me? Time will tell. Next weekend I will be at a big Super Smash Brothers Melee tournament, which has quite a few big names coming, including my good buddy CAOTIC from Australia (one of the top Melee Bowser players in the world like myself). It should be fun, I cannot wait.

*Scrolls up* Just look at this update! All those words... it's not even a short story anymore, it's a novel! What did I write here my life story!? When am I going to get it that I need to make shorter and more frequent updates? Once again, sometimes I just need to learn to