I was going to say "keep going, you'll have to beat the price of gas for me to drive over to my parents' house and dig the N64 out of the garage," but I guess at $50 it's cheaper just to buy it again...

These are Laverne and Shirley speech bubbles, designed to ensure that neither speech bubble can complain about not getting top billing.

本 is typically a more formal way of expressing "this," but in this context it's closer to "source" or "origin."

Japan's name uses the same characters in both Chinese and Japanese, but is pronounced differently: "ri ben" in Chinese and "ni hon" in Japanese.

I disagree. To me, "ok" means adequate and unremarkable.