Cookie's Bustle!

What's Cookie's Bustle?

It's a game about Cookie Blair, who's dream is to win the big games at Bombo World! There's all sorts of wacky stuff that happens in the game!

Well, why are you talking about it here?

Consider

THE GREAT COOKIE'S BUSTLE STREISAND EVENT OF 2022-2023 [ONGOING]

Starting late 2022, someone started copyright trolling in order to scrub most of the main parts of the western internet's history of Cookie's Bustle. It's notable in that if you look on the other sections of the international internet e.g. japanese video websites footage and information is still online. I suspect whomever it is, it is western in origin as a result. Still the lengths this person / party would go to was extreme. They would take down videos and pages and downloads galore. It is noted that Vinny Vinesauce did stream it and the VOD and any mirrors of the VOD have been taken down from most of the mainstream western internet [if you look hard enough in the back alley weird spots you can still find this stuff it is just things that aren't publicly known]. This situation still seems to be ongoing to the current day, we will have to see if in a few years they will back down or not.

This is mostly a page of links to articles and other webpages about Cookie's Bustle. Hopefully this page will not get taken down.

Links

Someone is trying to erase Cookie’s Bustle from the internet

Someone Is Trying To Erase This Obscure Japanese Video Game From The Internet

Cookie’s Bustle (Japanese Video Game Obscurity)

Cookie's Bustle Mobygames Page

cookies-bustle neocities page

orangecarnation's Cookie's Bustle Page

Cookie's Bustle situation summary

Cookie's Bustle situation summary - transcript

Your one-stop shop for the latest Bustle

A point-and-click adventure game produced and published by Rodik, Inc. in 1999, Cookie's Bustle follows the adventures of Cookie Blair, a 5 year old girl from New Jersey who thinks she is a teddy bear, as she travels to the South Pacific country of Bombo World to compete in their international sports tournament. Along the way, Cookie would uncover the secrets behind the aliens who crash landed in Bombo World 100 years ago, and the worsening terrorist activities that have arisen due to the Bombo government's collaboration with said aliens.

Cookie's Bustle was released only in Japan, and was considered almost lost media in the English-speaking world until a leak of 70 long-lost Japanese games from a collector in 2018. Since then, interest in the game has gradually increased, until December 2022 when uploads of the game itself and footage around it were summarily taken down by copyright strikes.

  • Links of game and game-related media
  • How do I play this game
  • Legal information so far on the game and its copyright situation
  • Fan-translation project
  • Theories and updates
  • Timeline of events

Links of game and game-related media

  • Torrent of the game itself
  • Lossy rip of game "Special Sound Tracks" CD
  • Various pre-configured VMs with Cookie's Bustle installed
  • Scans of the Official Game Guide
  • Decompiled game asset rip (for modding, translating, and general content mining)

How do I play this game?

  1. Just run it on Windows 10
    Cookie's Bustle actually runs pretty well on modern Windows.
    1. (Optional) Set your non-unicode locale to Japanese if you want to be able to read the error messages and text during install. Otherwise this isn't needed as the game itself doesn't render text.
    2. Mount the Cookie's Bustle .ccd or .iso (depending on which version you grabbed). Use WinCDEmu for the .ccd; Windows should be able to mount .iso natively.
    3. Run the setup (just click the usual next button).
      Uninstall the bundled Quicktime and install Quicktime 6.5.2 (grab it from oldversion.com).
    4. Right-click on the Cookie's Bustle shortcut in your start menu, go into properties, and enable the "640x480 resolution" option under the Compatibility tab. You don't need any other compatibility options (and enabling them might actually cause problems, like the game keep asking you about the serial code).
    5. Run the game with the disc still mounted. Ignore the pop-up warning saying that the game is written for Windows 95/98/2000 only. Enter the serial code; one possibility is CB1W-30003-1007-66.
  2. Run it under a VM
    1. For a more authentic experience, you can try running Cookie's Bustle under a VM. Technically, the game was written for Windows 95/98/2000, but it runs on XP as well.
    2. The choice of guest OS and virtualisation software (VMWare, VirtualBox, QEMU) is up to you.
    3. Different people have reported different and conflicting results on which combination runs best — it depends on your system and YMMV.
    4. If you don't have the time to set a VM up yourself, you can just download a pre-configured one and then import it. See the #the-game-links channel in the Discord for several.
  3. Run it under Wine
    For the Linux and macOS users. See the WineDB page for configuration details.
  4. Can I use DOSBox(-X)?
    Unfortunately a bug prevents Quicktime from functioning correctly under DOSBox-X. So until that bug is fixed you'll have to try other options.

Legal information so far on the game and its copyright situation

Entities involved in the ongoing copyright strikes:

  • Brandon White: the person under whom several copyright entries are filed at Interoco
    • Ukie: UK trade association for the video game industry, responsible for the majority of Youtube and Twitch strikes
    • Web Capio: Member of Ukie and realtime anti-piracy services provider, responsible of some of the strikes
    • Graceware, Nintendo: Companies that Ukie has claimed to issue strikes in the name of
      Trademark filings:
  • A trademark filed in the UK by a “Keisuke Harigai”
    • Categorical trademarks filed and Live in the UK by a “Keisuke Harigai”
    • Several categorical trademarks filed (pending) in the US. (Yes, there were clothing items, seen in Macworld photos.) (EDIT: Shirts were found on an archived merch site.)
  • The company Graceware, under which the US trademark is filed and some copyright strikes are done
    • Change Address or Representation Form, filed by Brent Sausser for Graceware, Sl.
    • Brent D. Sausser’s employment
  • Several filed Copyrights with the author as “Brandon White”, and a password that is essentially his name:
    • A render of a 3D model of Cookie, with the wrong shader (compared to the game and other renders)
    • Several Renders of this model as well, with a different shader
    • Encrypted ”Source Code”
    • Encrypted “Gameplay Concept” (Registered a month after every other Copyright.)
    • Monochrome 2D Cookie’s Bustle logo (JPG).
  • Ukie has done copyright strikes before on behalf of other games (e.g. Fall Guys), but has ignored any attempts at contact about these strikes on Cookie's Bustle so far, and “Graceware, Sl.” does not exist on their members list.

Fan-translation project

As of 14/2, we're nearing completion (90% of all voice lines, and 100% of all in-game movies) of a first draft of English translated subtitles for the game. There are also some early prototypes for injecting subtitles into the game via modding the code (written in Lingo, as this is a Macromedia Director game).

We still need transcribers to double-check our Japanese lines, translators to proofread our English lines, coders to improve the subtitle code, and other language speakers to produce translations for languages other than English. Drop a note in the #translation-project channel of the Discord!

Theories and updates

1. Is the copyright striker a collector scum who wanted to have his copy all by himself/artificially increase its scarcity?

It is unlikely that the original collector who got his collection leaked back in 2018 is behind these copyright strikes. Both the collector and the leaker joined the Discord server, and the former explained that he is fine with the leak.


2. Who is behind the copyright strikes?

Regardless of the actual identity of Brandon White, it is clear that Ukie, a UK trade association for the video games industry, is the majority executor of the recent flurry of strikes.
More to come.

Timeline of events

1994

Rodik, Inc. is founded

1994

Rodik releases 金高慎一郎・姓名学事典 Kanetaka Shinichiro Seimeigaku-Jiten, a fortune-telling software that analyses names by applying numerology to the number of strokes.

15/10/1996

Rodik releases 桃源紀行 To-Gen-Kiko, another fortune-telling software that analyses people's names.

18/3/1999

Rodik releases Cookie's Bustle.

16/2/2000

Cookie's Bustle featured in MACWORLD Expo Tokyo

2001

Rodik transitions into an R&D company.

Somewhere between 2003-2005

Rodik closes doors.

6/2018

Cookie's Bustle resurfaces on the Internet alongside other obscure Japanese games in a leak, including Labyrinthe.

2-4/4/2019

YouTube channel Classics of Game uploads 8 videos showcasing Cookie's Bustle gameplay footage.

Late 12/2022

First round of summary copyright strikes by Ukie begin, taking down almost all online hosted copies of the game and videos of gameplay footage.

22/1/2023

Streamer Vinny of Vinesauce streams Cookie's Bustle.

10/2/2023

Japanese Twitter user "C. Blair" uploads rip of Cookie's Bustle "Special Sound Tracks" CD.
Password to RAR archives on Interoco listing discovered.

14/2/2023

Web Capio, member of Ukie, begins issuing copyright strikes.

vgfacts page