Category: Books

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!

Japan Pickups: Wizardry

June 20, 2024

Once again I made a few additions to my Wizardry collection this past trip, although for the first time in many years of Japan trips I didn’t add any actual games. Here’s what I got:

These are guides for the 6th and 7th Wizardry games, and as with typical Japanese game guides they’re in depth and comprehensive. One of the Dark Savant guides seems to be a transition of a western guide written by the developers (SirTech) but the other is Japan specific and written by a self-proclaimed ‘Wizardry Expert’! It’s worth nothing that I already have other Japanese guides for both games, and it’s quite possible others may exist!

This is a collection of three short stories set in the Wizardry game world. While I can’t read this, I’m guessing they’re all set in the world of the first five games, since things got a bit weird after that. This is yet another in a growing list of Japanese Wizardry novels I own, which now also includes…

This is an absolutely beautiful set of four more Wizardry novels, each by a different author and published in 1992. They share the trade dress of the first three games, and based on the extensive English on the front and back covers, seem to tell stories influenced by the games.

Each of these small hardcovers features a few colour art pages at the start, and have wonderful black and white illustrations throughout:

This is a lovely set of four books, and I dearly wish I could read them! For their quality they were extremely inexpensive as well.

Incidentally there have so far been two English-language Wizardry novels, one released decades ago and one only last year (by the write of Goblin Slayer no less)! I own both and have read the first, which was better than I expected.

My last pickup this trip was something I’d been hunting for a while: Wiz Ball, the Wizardry baseball card game (yes you read that correctly). This is actually the expansion to the original release, which still eludes me…

This contains additional magic and item cards to expand the main game. It seems as crazy as it sounds, and translations of the cards show that the various items improve things like batting strength or running speed and (as with the RPG) can only be used by specific characters. The magic cards utilize the same names as the game, but where Mahalito is an explosive damage spell in Wizardry, here it ‘increases ball speed by 2’!

Why does this product exist?!? Who ever thought to pair a technical and complicated computer RPG with a baseball card game? I’ll never know, but I’m glad I finally own it 🙂

Golden Stamp Books

March 14, 2024

Some months ago I purchased this for only $3.50 at a local antique store:

This was quite a find, not only because it’s Australian, but because I owned this exact book in my youth!

It’s a picture book of reptiles that came with a sheet of gummed stamps. The lucky owner would separate the stamps and stick them into each entry like they were putting a postage stamp on a postcard. The stamps in my copy have been stuck, but the back cover shows what the unused sheets would have looked like:

And here’s the charming instructions for the reader:

The book is 48 pages long, almost all of which are dedicated to a single animal with a picture and several interesting paragraphs. As a child I would have loved this. All the famous and well-known reptiles are included, like crocodiles, goannas and this old favourite:

But the true wonder of this book is that it also includes many lesser known – and possibly even nigh-unknown – beasts such as the Tryon Gecko, Master’s Snake and the good old Scrub Mullet:

I can vividly remember in the schoolyard, when my lesser-educated peers were yapping on about crocodiles and frilled lizards and I started dropping facts about Curl Snakes, Dtella Geckos and Krefft’s Tortoises! Immediately they recognized a master herpetologist in their midst, and rightly admired me for my knowledge 🙂

This book was first published in 1973, but I would have of course got it years later. I had other titles as well. I don’t remember exactly which ones, but I believe I had at least a sea life one and one about fossils or minerals. A quick search online reveals that many titles in the series were printed well into the 1980s. Here’s a selection:

The Golden Stamp Book series was popular not just in Oz but also in the USA and England, and no doubt other countries as well. Educational, fun, and lovely to look at: these were great books to have when we were kids 🙂

Robot Claw