Category: Books & Comics

Japan Pickups: Gamebooks

  • June 27, 2025

It was a good Japan trip as far as my gamebook collection goes, with both old and new products found. This post lists everything I bought.

I’ve got a lot of Japanese Fighting Fantasy gamebooks (about 2/3rds of the original run) but somehow the third book – Forest Of Doom – had eluded me. I was surprised to find a copy for very cheap (¥1000) at Mandarake.

According to the publication history, this is the 17th edition from March 1986. For a nearly 40-year-old book it’s in astonishingly good condition, as if it just came off the press.

Japanese FF books included pull-out adventure sheets and this is perhaps the best example I have yet seen. I don’t think this book was ever opened, much less read, and it’s now got a permanent home in my collection.

I also bought the book on the left, which shares the cover art of Dungoneer, the first rulebook for the Advanced Fighting Fantasy RPG. The Japanese book has a different title (Advanced Fighting Fantasy volume 1) and is slightly shorter, with some material removed. It seems Japan compressed the three AFF volumes into two, but there’s detail here I have yet to discover. Again this book was extremely inexpensive (¥500!) which shocked me since I wouldn’t have hesitated to pay twenty or more times as much.

I finally found the 4th Group SNE FF reprint box set, which allegedly published early in 2024 but I had never seen in my previous three trips. This collects the Sorcery! set and Secrets Of Salamonis, which receives its first Japanese printing here.

These trade-sized reprints continue to be definitive, with beautiful presentation, paper quality and reproduction. The bonus book in this set is unsurprisingly the Sorcery Spell Book.

Even though I already owned five (!) complete sets of the Sorcery series (including the Japanese versions from 1985 and 2004) I’m happy to add this new set to my collection.

To my surprise there was also a fifth reprint box set available! I later learned this one was only just released, which explains why I saw it in many bookstores. It contains a collection of five books, including two new to Japan: Howl Of The Werewolf and Crystal Of Storms.

Two of these are particular interesting. Starship Traveler hasn’t been reprinted in over two decades, and it’s long been rumoured the reason was due both the cover and internal art. This reprint seems to confirm both, with a new cover and new internal art:

The copyright page reveals the art was taken from the TinMan digital version of the book, and while the style is different from the line art common to the series, the reproduction is excellent and overall I think it suits the book well.

Scorpion Swamp has never been reprinted (in any language), and there have been a few theories as to why including art or the author not allowing it. And yet here it is, with a new cover and internal art:

The above picture contains the original art on the left and the art from this reprint on the right. As you can see the artist (who also did the art for Secret Of Salamonis) has drawn new versions of all the old pieces, and his style matches the series perfectly. The art is copyrighted 2025 to Ian Livingstone and I suspect this was done to enable future reprints, possibly including in the new American Steve Jackson Games versions? Let’s hope this means the other books that have never been reprinted will see new versions as well.

Moving away from Fighting Fantasy, to my surprise I found this:

This is a gamebook based on the Xevious arcade game! I would have thought this was somewhat well-known amongst hardcore gamebook collectors (how many exist?) and therefore I was surprised it only cost me ¥1000.

Flipping through it is most definitely a robust gamebook with inventory and systems, almost certainly modeled after a FF book. Even though it’s a different publisher, the back of the book even includes ads for other gamebooks including FF and the Back To The Future one I bought a few years ago.

What a strange beast this book is! The art inside shows almost no space battles, instead seeming like a standard adventure with fights against monsters and villains. Xevious also had some novels written about it, but I don’t know if there’s any connection between those and this gamebook.

Speaking of space-themed Gamebooks, the above was almost inadvertently found in a bargain bin at BookOff and cost a mere ¥100! I thought it was Star Wars related at first, and was shocked to realize it was a gamebook.

This is an interesting CYOA style book where each section has at least a half-page illustration. The text seems simple enough that I think this will be playable with a translator. While it’s not licensed item, the Star Wars ‘homages’ are obvious, from the cover to the hero’s robot which looks exactly like R2. Based on an add on the final page, this seems to be the first in a series of two books; I’ll be looking out for the other on future trips!

And lastly we have a Queen’s Blade book, Alicia the Dark User of Wonderland. I’ve got a lot of these two-player books which sprung from a US series called Lost World but took on a life of its own when rebranded with anime girls in Japan. I see these occasionally in Japan but often skip them since they’re a bit heavy and I don’t want to fill my suitcases with them 🙂

  • Posted in Books & Comics
  • Robert

The Strong

  • December 16, 2023

We’re in Rochester for an early Christmas and today visited The Strong museum. We’ve been here before but they’ve had a major expansion so it was time to see the new attractions.

This included a massive room housing the Video Game Hall of Fame, as well as a fantastic interactive exhibit on gaming in general. We played lots of games and had a lot of fun but it was the many, many displays of toys and games and associated paraphernalia that I particular enjoyed. Here’s a selection of only a few of the interesting things we saw:

That’s a prototype table for the official Lord Of The Rings pinball, as well as the actual (playable) table on the right.

Here’s the Vectrex 3D accessory, which is famously rare. I’ve never seen one, much less a boxed one!

The above are two examples of overproduced Atari cartridges once buried in New Mexico. Long considered an urban legend, this was proven to be true after they were dug up a few years ago and the city donated a few to the museum.

An actual World of Warcraft server ‘blade’ that housed one of the realms for several years! This is physically about as big as a skateboard.

An actual Atari store display from the early 1980s, stocked as how it would have been in those days. I wanted to grab one of the catalogues!

The above is a fascinating item. Those of us that have been around for a certain vintage recall these home-packaged games but to think this one has survived for so many years!

An original piece of hand-painted art that was scanned and used as a backdrop for an early Leisure Suit Larry game! They also had other prototypes and original art examples, including of consoles and arcade games.

Speaking of original art, that’s a hand-drawn sketch of Sonic The Hedgehog done by the original designer!

A lcd game based on those Japanese ‘nammeyano‘ delinquent cat art photos from the 1980s. This is an example of how varied the museum collection is. (Needless to say I’m not showing any of the vast display of more common game or toy items.)

Esoterica like the above I love seeing: an ancient McDonald’s happy meal box (from the late 1980s) and a series or Japanese World of Warcraft scratch-off cards that came with meals over a decade ago!

Or this unopened box of Pac-Man candy. This (which is about the size of a playing card) is 40-odd years old.

And some Donkey Kong ‘action figures’. I imagine the one on the right wasn’t a big seller!

A variety of game-related books. I’d love to read the two on the left, and last year I actually bought and sent the calculator one to Bernard!

Bridging video games and other pastimes, look at these two sets! Kristin recalls she even had the one on the right and put them on her bedroom door.

Here’s some rpg miniatures from decades ago. The grenadier ones even came painted! They also had lots of early D&D products and even an original photocopy of one of the earliest design documents co-written by Gygax and Arneson!

Look at this absolutely beautiful (not to mention unusual) board game based on the BBC Narnia series! I’d love to play this one.

A Wonder Woman trio: artwork for an unmade Atari pinball, a box of colorforms and a funky looking record with ‘songs and stories’ on it.

This is a talking doll invented by Edison and produced in the late 1800s! It’s a little retro-futuristic isn’t it? It’s also in extraordinary condition for something that is over 130 years old. I wonder if it still talks?

Speaking of dolls, the above is apparently the world’s most glamorous ‘teenage doll’. This is another fantastic condition and sealed-in-box item that is decades old and full of nostalgia.

Can you guess who the above doll is? It’s a pretty good likeness for when it was released (the 1970s)…

The above toy set of ‘missiles’ was released in 1958 and appears to be cardboard cutouts. I googled this and it was popular and rereleased (and updated to plastic) several times into the 1970s! What boy wouldn’t want to play with world-destroying nuclear missiles?

The museum was incredible, and there’s so much to see. It’s bigger and better than ever and I’m glad we visited it again. I hope you liked seeing some of the many wonders we saw.

Panini Warhammer

  • August 10, 2022

Panini has been releasing sticker albums for decades now and the format has barely changed: you buy an inexpensive booklet with pages full of empty spaces waiting for stickers to be applied. The stickers are of course purchased separately in packs, like trading cards. Collecting them and sticking them in the album fills out the pages until you have a nifty picturebook. Aimed mostly at children, hundreds have been released – and continue to be released – since the 1970s.

Unfortunately, very few of these ever make it out of Europe. In the 1980s for instance Panini released loads of such albums for every imaginable kid-friendly film, but most were Europe and the UK only. A few were released in Australia when I was a kid, but they weren’t of little interest to me (Smurfs, football albums) so this was never a big part of my childhood.

In the years since I’ve bought a few more while on trips to the UK or Europe (a few different Star Wars ones, a WWE one) but with the exception of various sports albums or properties for very young children Panini still seems to mostly ignore the US market, and I’ve never had much experience with collecting the stickers or filling an album… until now!

When Panini announced a Warhammer 40k sticker album I was astonished, since it seemed so out-of-field compared to their other properties. But given how many other sets they have recently published – based on films, video games, toys, sports and even animals – it’s not unusual. It’s very specific though, and certainly aimed older than most of their other albums. The initial announcement was tempered (for me) by the followup that it would be England only, and exclusive to physical Warhammer stores. Bummer. However shortly after it was released sellers offered it on Amazon, which is how I got my album and a box of sticker packs.

It’s a beautiful album, full colour and crammed with detail and information. There are 204 stickers to collect, and each pack also comes with one of 50 ‘hero’ (trading) cards. The stickers are glossy and come in several shapes and sizes, some with various types of foil or holographic coating.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been opening packs and sticking the stickers into the album. With 50 packs I only had 200 stickers, and knew I wouldn’t be able to complete the album, but I hoped I’d make a good effort. It’s been a lot of fun, and now I know had Panini products been widely distributed in Australia when I was a kid I would have gone bonkers for them!

I’m impressed with how seamlessly the stickers match the book. In photos the page looks more matte than it does in real life, and when stuck (and aligned correctly) it can sometimes be difficult to see where book ends and sticker begins. A completed page doesn’t look like an array of stickers as it did back in the older versions (such as in the Gremlins book from the 1980s, shown in the photo at top).

The first and last page of the book contain 6-sticker murals. I was unable to complete either of them, and the above is as good as I got. There are many 2 or 3 sticker murals as well, most of which I completed. As you can see, the stickers align together nearly seamlessly (although I will admit I was extremely careful when applying them).

That’s a shot of two of the trading cards. Of the 50, I got 34 which I think is a good approximation of how many stickers I managed to get as well (about two-thirds). The cards are ok and have nice art, but are more a bonus than a reason to buy this collection.

Worth mentioning is the lore of 40k. If you know anything about Warhammer (which is a table-top strategy game played using miniatures) you know it has a bonkers story, and the snippets of lore in this album reinforce that. These aren’t just soldiers in robotic armor fighting orcs and demons: there’s all sorts of madness on both sides of the eternal war that is our future 38,000 years from now!

Once I had finished opening all my packs, this was the only one double-page of the album I managed to fully complete. Can you see the 11 stickers in the above photo? As I said I estimate I got about two-thirds of the stickers, which means I got about 60 doubles (which will go to Adam). Panini has a service where you can purchase individual stickers directly (for £0.28 each) which is nice for diehards, but I’m happy with my incomplete album and won’t try to finish it.

Overall I’m extremely impressed with this collection, and would love for them to not only make more genre-specific ones (such as Dungeons & Dragons or Ultraman!) or at the least sell more of them in the USA!