Category: Books

Japan Pickups: Games

January 15, 2025

I’m using ‘games’ here to describe video games and ‘TRPGs’ (as tabletop games are called in Japan). This is the category in which I’m always hunting for items on my trips and this time I was very happy with my finds…

It’s been a while since I’ve found a new Japanese Fighting Fantasy book for my collection, so I was pleased to see this JP version of ‘Out Of The Pit‘, the FF Monster Manual. Unlike the western version, it’s published at the same size as a normal FF book and is therefore a chunky little volume. The cover is a little tattered, but it’s in otherwise excellent condition and included its obi and even an advertisement for the Japanese Warlock magazine.

Speaking of which, I bought ten more issues of Warlock, which I found once again at Mandarake in Akihabara (where do they keep getting these from?). These weren’t cheap, but with this addition I now have 75% of the entire run of this magazine, including the first and last (#63) issues.

Moving onto one of my other collections, I found the above three Wizardry games. The leftmost had eluded me for years and was surprisingly inexpensive (about $30) but I didn’t even know Summoner had a PS2 version and didn’t hesitate to pay through the nose for it (~$100) when I found it in Nagano on Christmas Day. The last is the JP physical edition of the recent Wizardry 1 remake. Alas I was unable to find the special edition of this release, which comes with a lot of bonuses. One day I will…

This is a remarkable guidebook for all three Game Boy Color remakes of Wizardry 1 – 3. I’ve got many Japanese Wizardry game guides in my collection now, but this may be the best I’ve yet seen.

It starts with some lovely colour pages detailing the history of each game…

And then goes into detail about the specifics of the GBC versions of each title, including monsters, items and maps. Most of the book is in colour as well.

Each game gets its own section and as a result the book is fairly lengthy. The GBC versions of these games are rare and (very) expensive these days, so this book would have a limited audience. But I have all three games and will one day play them again and when I do this ‘bible’ will be extremely useful!

The above is the 1991 revised edition of the Wizardry TRPG rules for the tabletop game based on the video game series. I have read that the Wizardry TRPG was immensely popular back in Japan back in the day – competing even with D&D – but this is the first time I’d found a basic rule book for sale.

It’s got all the usual sections common to RPG rulebooks, and I like that the character sheet resembles those in the video games. I wonder what this game is like to play?

Speaking of the TRPG, I also bought the above. The two on the left are adventures, and on the right is a gamesmasters screen! These date to a few years before the rulebook above, which suggest they were intended for the first edition rules (which I’ve never seen). These were expensive, and only a maniac would buy them if he couldn’t even read them…

The above was an incredible find, not only because I’d never heard of it but also because I have since read it is ‘extremely rare’! It’s a Wizardry card game named after the ultimate wizard spell ‘Tiltowait’!

The description said it was ‘opened but never played’ and while the flimsy cardboard box had seen better days the cards themselves don’t show any evidence of use so I’m guessing the description was accurate.

Amusingly this is a reskin of Uno using monsters and spells from Wizardry as card art. From the included rules it seems ‘Tiltowait’ is the Draw 4 equivalent and other spells (‘Haman’ etc.) correspond to the other effect cards in Uno, with a few additions such as counter and discard spells.

The last game pickups from the trip were the above Switch titles. All of these are compilations of arcade games – mostly shooters. Taito Milestones 3 was purchased not just because it includes Cadash but also all three Rastan games and both Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Islands. It’s one of the very best arcade compilations I’ve seen! The game on the right is the special edition of Mushihimesama, the insect-themed Cave shooter.

Lots of treasures here, but alas my grails once again eluded me. The hunt will continue in future trips…

Japan Pickups: The Weird Stuff

June 21, 2024

I love finding unusual and unexpected things in Japan, and this post shows off a few of them.

This model kit was extremely inexpensive (about $8) and the box is so lightweight I imagine the kit itself is tiny and has very few pieces. But look at it: a kappa! Of course I was going to buy this! And since it’s glow-in-the-dark, it won’t even matter if I don’t paint it. I’ll make this one day and blog it when I do.

In the game center post I did while I was in Japan I showed a photo of Friday The 13th metal rings in a gacha, and as weird as those were they were somewhat common and I saw them in many machines. One day, in a dingy alley in Akihabara, I found another metal ring gacha, only this time it was Star Wars. Here’s the five rings it contained:

This was the only one of these machines I encountered the entire trip, and when I found it there was only one single item remaining in the machine. Of course I bought it, and I think you can guess which one I wanted. Here’s what I got:

It seems the gods of luck were smiling on me that day 🙂

The above is a Magic The Gathering Japanese promo sticker from 2023. It seems these were randomly given to players who played in official events (in Japan) last year although even the official Hasbro announcement only lists 12 stickers (not including the capybara) but the store I purchased it from had many more. It’s a cute and unusual MtG mystery item!

I bought this book at a wonderful bookstore in Akiba, and it’s an encyclopedia of legendary and influential RPGs from the early days of computer games.

This is an incredible book, full of information and details about many games I hold dear, and I’ll be reading this one using my phone translator!

What I particularly love is that it includes many games we didn’t get in the west, such as Seal of Haja for the PC-88 (shown above). This book was also the first in a set of three, and I already regret not picking up the other two 🙂

Here’s another curiosity: a wafer biscuit with ‘chocolate sticker’ that expired 8 years ago and that I paid about $5 for. The packaging will suggest why I bought this, and if you need a further hint you can re-read this post from last year. Suffice to say this will be opened and have its own blog post soon enough…

And last but certainly not least, we have the above article of jewelry. At first it looks like a standard crucifix, but looking closer we see it is actually:

A crucified Ultraman! At first glance this may seem unforgivably blasphemous, but be mindful that this is from a different culture, and the Japanese idea of crucifixion (which was a common method of execution almost into the 20th century) isn’t as singular as it is in the west.

This piece of jewelry is actually in reference to a famous scene in episode 13 of Ultraman Ace, from 1972, where several Ultras were caught and crucified by an alien:

This had not been the first time crucifixion was shown in an Ultraman series, but to my knowledge it was the last. (As an aside you could probably write an academic paper on the use of crucifixion in many different tokusatsu shows up to and including Evangelion.)

A motley and weird collection of pickups then. Which of these would you have purchased?

Japan Pickups: Gamebooks

June 21, 2024

For the first time in years I didn’t find any Fighting Fantasy gamebooks for my collection this past Japan trip. This is perhaps not surprising since I already own 70% of the Japanese imprints, but you can bet my search will continue.

So what did I find?

I bought two more issues of the Japanese Warlock magazine, including #5. I now have 72% of all the issues, which is surely impressive considering I don’t even live in Japan? Maybe I should start trying to actually read some!

I was surprised to see two brand new rulebooks for the Advanced Fighting Fantasy RPG, and although I don’t actively collect this I couldn’t resist picking both up. I wonder how many people play this RPG in Japan?

As for actual Gamebooks, I picked up the above motley trio. The one on the left translates to (approximately) ‘Find The Great Heritage‘ and seems to be a systemless time traveling book with a female protagonist and terrible art:

The middle book is the first in the 2012 Japanese Grailquest reprint series, which I now have three of. As with the others I own this seems to be an enhancement of the original 1980s versions, with an expanded game and additional content at the end. It’s also got brand new – often creepy – art:

I wish these enhanced versions were released in English.

The last of the three gamebooks is a Japanese version of the first Fatemaster book (‘Treachery in Drakenwood’), which is further evidence that just about every gamebook series seemed to find its way to Japan. It’s mostly identical to the UK version, but includes a nice pull-out character sheet and map:

Lastly, I picked up the two Queen’s Blade The Live gamebooks that I didn’t yet own:

An explanation of exactly what these are is probably beyond the scope of this post, but let’s just say I find it hard to imagine anyone heading to their game store to play Lost Worlds/Queen’s Blade with one of them!

Robot Claw