Category: Books

Japan Pickups: Wizardry

  • January 16, 2026

This past year Wizardry Daphne broke into the top 50 mobile games in Japan, so I shouldn’t have been surprised on this recent trip to actually find merchandise! There were sections in both Animate and Gamers in Akihabara like this:

If you look closely you’ll note that not all of the above is actually Wizardry merch, but what there was a mix of Daphne and Blade & Bastard (the new series of novels and manga) items. The quality ranged from good to dubious such as this (which I obviously didn’t buy):

So what exactly did I buy? For starters, this acrylic of a character from Daphe that I had rolled (on the gacha) only a few days before:

Her name is Alice and she’s an irredeemably evil cleric possessed by an ancient god. She’s also the best healer in the game right now, and immediately went into my party!

This is a small notebook designed for mapping. It’s a curio today since all modern games have automaps, but for nostalgia value alone of course I was buying this. Even better was a black t-shirt with a simple red ‘W’ on the front and this extraordinary list on the back:

That’s an amazingly thorough list of all the games, and even included some I’d never heard of. The last western-developed one was Wizardry 8 in 2001; you can see how the series has shifted entirely to Japan since.

I also bought the badge and the pillow. The pillow was a ripoff, but I wanted to get the free-with-purchase bag (in the lower left) which required a total spend over ¥7000, so it made up the difference.

Speaking of Daphne, this was release only days before our trip:

Daphne is a beautiful game with particularly good character and monster design. This is a hefty artbook and I look forward to reading it.

But as happy as I was to find the above, it paled compared to me finally obtaining one of my grails:

This is Jun Suemi’s legendary artbook simply titled ‘Wizardry‘. First released in 2006 it had become highly sought after and the price had risen to hundreds of dollars in recent years. Happily it was reprinted in a revised and expanded edition just a few months ago and it’s now mine!

I’d been after this for over a decade now. I’d even purchased it twice on Amazon (the second time for $250!), and both times the orders were subsequently canceled and refunded. Several years ago I held a copy in my hand in Surugaya in Osaka and didn’t buy it since at the time I was awaiting delivery of one of the orders that would be canceled, and memory of that event had haunted me ever since. I even recall looking at the book on a Japan trip way back in 2006 and I always regretted not buying it (which was probably for weight reasons).

This is an important book in many ways and I’m so very pleased I now own it. I think I’ll dedicate a blog post to it in time.

In addition to the two artbooks above, I was astonished to find this on the shelves. I don’t know the exact term for these, but in Japan newsagents and bookstores sell these mini-magazines packed with another item, usually some type of bag. This one couples a little booklet on the history of Wizardry (“the excitement and the despair”) with a pouch bearing the logo. This was fairly common since I saw it in many newsagents and bookstores. I love that Wizardry is still very much in the public conscience in Japan 🙂

Some more books. On the top are the two most recent Japanese issues of Blade & Bastard, with the bonus postcard that came with issue 6 on the left. On the bottom left is a Wizardry 5 hint guide (for the SFC version) and a Wizardry novel entitled ‘Does the Wind Reach the Dragon’ from 1994. I own dozens of Wizardry books now but always seem to find more. How many exist?

Blade & Bastard incidentally is a novel series written by Kumo Kagyu, the creator of Goblin Slayer. I theorize that the Wizardry rights holders noticed Goblin Slayer was essentially set in the world of Wizardry so approached him to create a ‘true’ Wizardry story. I read the novels and manga adaptation of Blade & Bastard, and I’m enjoying it quite a bit. There’s even an anime forthcoming!

The above was the most expensive single item I purchased in Japan. It’s a hefty box set campaign for the Japanese Wizardry TRPG. With four booklets, a large selection of maps and a wonderful DM screen, this is an impressive product. I believe the cover art is Jun Suemi as well.

The above is a clear file. It was very expensive. Much more than you think. It was in fact so expensive that only a King or a Fool would have purchased it. There was no information about its provenance, and I assume it was promotional and is at least a decade (even decades) old now.

The truth is I fell in love at first sight and it’s now one of my favourite items in the collection 🙂

Speaking of love at first sight, I went into a tiny and somewhat dingy retro game shop in Akiba and spied these in a showcase:

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but my Wizardry game collection is complete. I own all the games that were physically released, even to the point of having original and rereleased versions of many of them. But I don’t have all the computer versions, and I’m always on the lookout for more.

So I approached the employee – a young woman – and she gave me a weird look. I said I’d like to see something in the showcase and as she took me over she said in accented but good English “You want to see the Wizardry games don’t you?”

It was my shirt! I was wearing a Wizardry shirt which she’d noticed, and as it turns out this young lady was a Wizardry fan. This was extraordinary since she was no older than my students, and yet she quickly convinced me she was a true fan. She took me to a few other cases to show me other games they had (all of which I already owned) and she also knew about the merchandise at the other Akiba shops. She also played Daphne. My favourite quote of hers: “Ah these games can be hard on a Gen-Z like me, they’re so difficult!” (Yes, she labeled herself as a Gen-Z which surprised me.)

At any rate, these were in the showcase:

I don’t usually leave prices on items when I blog them, but this time I did and if you’re interested you can work out how much I paid. These are complete boxed versions of Wizardry 5 and 6 for the FM Towns and both are in immaculate condition. The contents of each are similar:

The manuals are 100+ pages, and each comes with a game CD and a 3.75″ floppy for save games. The middle book at the top is a setup guide, and that’s a customer response card (with the dragon from the cover on it) at top right. The packaging of Wizardry 5 in particular, with the embossing and metallic inks, is just beautiful:

It goes without saying that these are the first FM Towns games in my collection!

As for (let’s call her) ‘Wizardry-chan’, I asked her if she had seen the clear file at Beep and she hadn’t. I showed her a photo and she zoomed in to the price and gasped. I told her I had purchased it and she was speechless and looked at me like I was either a King or a Fool. I wonder which one she decided on?

  • Posted in Books
  • Robert

Some Gamebook Reviews

  • December 2, 2025

Back in the summer when our bathroom was being renovated, I ‘lived’ downstairs with Zoffy. I took the chance to grab some unread gamebooks from my shelf and play them. Here are my thoughts.

Star Bastards, successfully kickstarted in 2016, is supposed to be a newly rediscovered ‘long lost’ gamebook from the 1980s. I think it largely misses the mark both as a work of fiction and a game.

You choose one of two roles before you begin (law enforcement or a fugitive) and the story involves the cop chasing the criminal through space. I played the fugitive and in my first playthrough won (I think?) in fewer than 25 entries. The ending was vague enough that I wasn’t sure if it was a good or bad one, but I had no interest in trying again.

The game has lots of overly complex systems, almost none of which (including combat!) I used in my playthrough. The writing, while verbose, often lacks detail and the comedy is weak and breaks the fourth wall in a way that doesn’t really work.

While the book has more art than most modern gamebooks, it’s fairly amateur and in some cases visibly pixelated as of the source files were low resolution.

This book is a miss. I actually own the second in the series (a fantasy tale) which I’ve read isn’t ‘as good’ as this one so it’ll probably sit on my shelf a while before I read it.

Secret Of White Monks Abbey, released back in 1985, is a strange book. It’s unlike the others included in this post in that is is (almost) systemless and every entry is a single full-colour page. But while brief, it’s a little more complex than your typical choose-your-own-adventure.

There are only 46 entries, and a single playthrough includes only about 10 to 15 of them. The entries are very short and as a result the story is very disjointed with frequent and unbelievable location changes.

It’s not a difficult book, and trial-and-error alone got me all the endings in well under an hour. None of the endings made any logical sense, and in the end it’s not ever even fully explained what’s going on in the titular mansion.

While obviously written for children, I wonder if a young reader would have enjoyed this even way back in 1985?

The House On Sentinel Hill is a Lovecraftian book released in 2022 which of the ones in this post is closest in format to a Fighting Fantasy book. It’s a well written and structured book which suffers from a very high difficulty.

Set in 1926, you play an investigator visiting an abandoned (or is it?) old house in New England and quickly getting mixed up in all sorts of cosmic horror. The story and writing are both strong from the start, and its cinematic in style and very faithful to the works of H. P. Lovecraft. It’s also got lovely, creepy art.

But it’s difficult. Not only does it have a punishing sanity mechanic (like the Call Of Cthulhu RPG), but the default player stats lead to failed rolls 58% of the time. There’s a lot of instant deaths, many of which have no preceding hint or warning, and most of which are distinctly grim.

When I played these books – since I was taking notes to review them – I decided to play them faithfully and not cheat. For this book this meant many deaths. I was so intrigued by the setting and the story that I kept trying and ended up playing it over half a dozen times before putting it down. I kept getting stuck at the same point: entering combinations into a weird alien machine. While several of my attempts had me visiting bizarre dimensions and being killed by various cosmic beings, flipping through the book showed me there was still a lot I never saw.

I wondered what I had done wrong and eventually sought a hint online. I managed to find a Reddit post by the author himself who gave a vague hint which didn’t help at all. Other reviews commented on the difficulty as well, and some specifically cited the same combination that stymied me! I never did find the solution.

It’s a good book, but too difficult.

Western gamebooks aren’t common, and Raining Hammers may be the only one I own in a collection that now numbers well over 500 books. This is a book written for adults, with mature themes and writing, and takes a realistic (as opposed to fantastic) approach to its story of a lone gunman on a mission of revenge.

From the start this one works against the reader. The author made the unusual choice of writing the book in third person, which doesn’t work in a gamebook. It doesn’t feel like a gamebook either, as if the author wrote a normal book and then tried to turn it into an interactive one.

The first entry is almost a novella at six dense pages of tiny font, and sometimes I went from entry to entry with no decisions to make. It’s mostly linear, but also has occasions where you can revisit areas which don’t work in the context of the story. The gambling system also feels like it should have been cut, but perhaps if it had been this would have felt even less like a gamebook.

I think this one tries hard, and almost works, but in the end felt more like reading a novel than playing a game. I didn’t win, but I also didn’t care to try again. I think its legacy is that at 26 years old now it remains one of the very few gamebooks in its genre.

Nightshift is the best of these five by a wide margin. I was dubious at first since this is a book with no combat or even dice, but the puzzle-based gameplay is clever and the story well-written and very creepy.

You play a hospital worker who finds themself trapped in a hellish dimension full of demons, witches and all sorts of other weird denizens. You wander the hospital seeking a way out, and must solve many puzzles to find the true path to victory. I’d liken the story to Silent Hill or Hellraiser and it can be genuinely creepy at times.

As mentioned the writing is excellent, and the author skillfully avoids the usual pitfalls of gamebooks set in the modern world. At first the cause of the madness is unknown, but the slow reveal of what’s actually going on is done skilfully. I was particularly impressed by how well this worked through multiple attempts, where initially innocuous events sometimes take on a very different meaning.

The puzzles range from typical inventory or codeword based ones (do you have the brown key?) to math puzzles, word games and some that are more complex and clever. While dice are not needed, you will have to keep careful notes if you hope to beat this one.

This is the first in a series of six books by the same author, although I don’t think the stories are related. I was impressed enough I bought all the others, and look forward to playing them. This one is recommended.

  • Posted in Books
  • Robert

The Men Who Turned Their Homes Into Arcades

  • May 13, 2025

The title of this entry is taken from the above book, which I bought a few months ago. It’s a beautiful ‘mook’ (magazine book) showcasing home arcades built by dedicated Japanese enthusiasts. While it’s in Japanese, I was able to read it using a translator.

I’ve also become a fan of topic-specific Japanese books like this, and have already purchased (and read through) similar ones about the history of certain game genres. The writing and detail in those impressed me, so I had high hopes for this one as well.

I was not disappointed: this book is fantastic, and the mania of some of these collectors fills me with profound respect. Page after page of beautiful photography shows rooms – sometimes multiple – of Japanese homes where every square inch is now dedicated to reproducing a Game Center in their house. We’re not talking one or two machines, but ten or more, including massive things like fishing games or even hydraulic sit-down cabinets.

There’s loads of wonderful and awesome anecdotes, of which the following is just an example

  • One man modified his home to add a massive external door on the second level so large cabinets could be installed from outside using a crane.
  • One man – a massive fan of the train game series Densha de Go! – has an entire room dedicated to arcade cabs of the series and even twice rented a train line so he could play his arcade cabs on actual running trains.
  • There are several stories of people having ceilings/floors reinforced to handle the weight of games, or removing doors, closets or even walls to make extra game space.
  • One guy took years to ‘brainwash’ (his words) his wife into letting him get his first arcade cabinet. A few years later he had a room full.
  • One man installed public toilets in his house incorporating fixtures he obtained from a closed Sega arcade!
  • Another man obtained an electricians license so he could rewire his home rather than pay someone else to do it.
  • One guy built his Game Center into a closet so it didn’t eat up living space can be invisible to guests (or family) when the door is closed.
  • An accountant converted his business waiting room into an arcade!
  • Several of the home arcades include common 1980s-era arcade extras – such as drink machines or coin changers – but one guy took it further to only include Showa-era coins in his money changer. (This is like a retro USA arcade only using 1980s quarters for their machines.)

Most allow friends and local children to play the games, and many are members of enthusiast clubs. The latter is important since maintenance is often cited as a big issue and being in a club would make it easier to find someone with the skills required to keep 40+ year old tech working.

I’d love to be able to do this myself, but for many reasons that’s impossible so I enjoyed living vicariously through this wonderful book. It was successful enough for a second volume, which I also own, but I’ll probably leave reading that one for when I return: