I bought the above four on this recent trip, which now takes my Japanese Fighting Fantasy collection to over 75% complete. These were purchased at Mandarake in Osaka, which is where I had the conversation with the Japanese collector, and I couldn’t help but note that each of the above cost more than the total cost of the four books he was deliberating on buying. I sympathized with him that people like myself were the cause of the prices of these books continuing to go up every year.
The Freeway Fighter is notable. The used shops in Japan bag all the books with notes about their condition. Usually these are simply things like ‘missing obi’ or ‘damage on cover’ or ‘writing inside’ but for this book it simply translated to ‘this is new’. I can believe this is literal, because the book is in absolutely pristine condition, especially for something 38 years old!
Incidentally all four of these contained their original unused adventure sheets. The same store had a second copy of Rings Of Kether without the adventure sheet that was ¥2000 cheaper, so I suppose that’s the ‘value’ of the sheet!
I also picked up the above 9 issues of Japanese Warlock magazine. I could have even purchased more (at another store), but I didn’t expect to find so many and hadn’t kept track of the ones I had already bought. I paid a pretty penny for these (about $25 each on average), and even the cheapest issue cost more than any I had bought on previous trips. I’m very happy that I bought large lots of this magazine before the prices started becoming unreasonable!
These are all in immaculate condition. When I first learned Japan had published their own version of Warlock I never imagined I’d ever see a copy: now I own 92% of the 63-issue run! I think completing the entire series is possible, since most of the ones I am missing are random issues from the middle years, which remain some of the less-expensive issues.
I don’t know much about this, except that it’s a Japanese version of a very limited and difficult-to-obtain recent (Australian!) board game based on Fighting Fantasy. This was a bit big and a bit heavy but also not very expensive (about $40) so of course I had to get it. I haven’t even opened it so that’s all I can say for now 🙂
Temple of Flame is the second in the Golden Dragon series of gamebooks from 1987. I’ve actually got a few imprints of this book, but this one was very inexpensive (only $2) so I couldn’t pass on it. To my surprise it came with a tiny insert about gamebooks!
It folds out into 16 pages of dense micro-font text with game reviews and previews and discussion of how to enjoy gamebooks. I would have loved something like this included with the books I bought as a child, and I’m happy it survived all these years and is now in my collection.
I bought the above four Queen’s Blade books this trip. Almost every trip I usually buy one of these, and I now have about half the entire series. This trip they seemed more common, and unlike many other gamebooks the prices seem to have gone down – I didn’t pay more than $6 for any of these four.
Queen’s Blade is a weird thing, derived from a western gamebook series (Lost Worlds) and yet having taken on its own identity in Japan. The books are attractive and if the prices continue to drop I may start buying more in the future.
I saw more gamebooks than on any previous trip. Not just old ones, but brand new publications as well (like the Mashle one above). I saw evidence of collections being sold – Surugaya in Osaka had maybe twenty different Lupin gamebooks – as well as a higher awareness on behalf of sellers of the rarity and collectibility of what they had, such as Dragon Quest and Gundam books that I’d previously seen – even bought! – sitting on shelves for under ¥500 now in showcases for many times that price. Many of these Japan-only books often catch my eye, but I usually move on since I have no history with the series. This trip was the exception.
The above were in a showcase in Surugaya in Akihabara. I had bought a Wizardry item from the same case (it’ll be in the next post) and something about these books intrigued me. There’s precious little information online but I determined this was the complete three-book ‘Sexy Game Book‘ series from 1986 and that they are rare and sought after. While they were expensive I’d never seen them before and doubted I’d ever see them again, so I bought all three!
Astonishingly, this is a combination of gamebook and gravure pinup. Almost every entry has a photo – many in colour – and the stories feature monsters in real-world settings and seem to be evocative of something like Kamen Rider or other 1980s Japanese science fiction. The books are written in first person and despite the imagery seem to have a serious tone.
They’re also, to use the Japanese word, ‘ecchi’, which means they contain (tame) nudity! These are extraordinary books, obviously for adults, and are evidence of how big the hobby was in Japan in those days. I doubt I’ll ever own anything else as unusual as these, and I’m happy to have them in the collection!