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Japan Pickups: Wizardry (Part 2)

Tuesday, June 27th, 2023

I bought 38 books home with me from Japan, and the vast majority of these fell within two categories. Here we’ll look at the Wizardry books!

The above are guidebooks for the first Wizardry game. The left is for the NES release, and the right is more generic and covers the original version of the game, which the book itself reveals was released on the following systems:

Both of these guides are full of maps and tables and monster data, as well as detailed strategy on how to navigate the dungeons. They both seem like extremely useful guides to what is a famously difficult game.

I love also that the NES guidebook was obviously used by someone, as is evidenced by an attempt to complete some of the (partial) maps. This is also present in some of the other guidebooks shown here.

Here we have two different guides for the Famicom (since it was never released on the NES) version of the third Wizardry game. Why are there two? My assumption is simply that the license was granted to more than one publisher, especially since both of these contain official game art. The book on the right in particular is a beautiful tome, including not just screenshots of but also the official art of all the game monsters.

Here we have five guidebooks for the Game Boy ‘Gaiden’ games. As you can see I have three different books for the first game (Suffering Of The Queen) and one each for the second two. Once again these are impressive books (especially for their small sizes), chock-full of art and maps and tables and even featuring lots of color.

The above is a shot of how monster data is presented in the books for the first, third and first Game Boy games in the series. You can see how the books began to include official art, and then for the Game Boy versions the official art became the showcase!

I can still recall playing Wizardry VII when it came out, and I would have killed for a guidebook like the one shown above. It’s very thick (300+ pages) and seems loaded with game info but it also – based on adverts inside – seems to be one of four different guides for this enormous game! The book on right is the for the much-maligned Wizardry ‘adventure’ and is full-color and mostly screenshots. It’s a good way to get an idea of a game I’ll likely never play.

These two are a mystery. They are for the same game (seen in my previous post), and published by the same company within one month of each other. Both books seem more or less the same in terms of content (maps, guides, monster and item data etc.) but it’s presented differently in each (both are quite fancy and full of colored pages). It’s as if the same publisher published two unique guidebooks for the same game at the same time?!?

Here we have a Wizardry novel (based on the second game and published in 1990) and volume two of a Wizardry manga! There have been at least three manga series over the years, and I believe this one (from 1989) was the second.

The art is of-it’s-time, and based on an old review I found (and translated) online the story is derivative of other fantasy series that were popular in those days (like Lodoss War). I actually saw this entire series for sale (8 volumes) but it was pricey and (more importantly) very heavy so I didn’t buy it.

The last half-dozen or so pages of the manga contain this weird pseudo-magazine, which is itself referenced in a couple of the hint guides shown above. The Wizardry book rabbit hole seems to run deep!

If you were following my blog during the trip you may have seen a photo of the above. I hesitated at first due to its extreme cost, but on the last day I bought it since I didn’t want to regret. It’s a book from the official Wizardry ‘TRPG’ (think Dungeons & Dragons) which was released in Japan in the mid 1980s. From what I can tell this was a somewhat popular game, had quite a few books released, and has had two rereleases since.

The manual contains loads of material, including a few short adventures. It’s delightful to see it seems to be a literal translation of the game into a TRPG, with dungeon maps and monsters that resemble those from the games.

Speaking of the official Wizardry table-top game:

I saw these in January and regretted not buying them, so I was happy to see Mandarake still had the set! To my surprise it was still brand new and sealed. Of course I had to open it:

It’s five monsters ostensibly from the game series. They appear to be made from pewter, and are fairly detailed for their sizes:

I’ll never paint or even use them of course, but their fun treasures for my collection. You may have seen in my recent trip I saw another in this series, but the box for this set reveals that there were an incredible 24 sets of Wizardry miniatures?!?

It was fun finding and buying all the above during the recent trip. Yes some were pricey, but some weren’t as well. I’m positive I don’t even remotely have all the guidebooks for this series, but I probably have enough at this point. Now it’s time to dive into the GB versions and put some of these books to use 🙂

Posted in Books, Collecting, Games, Retro | 1 Comment »

Japan Pickups: Wizardry

Thursday, February 2nd, 2023

This will be the last of my Japan pickup posts. While I have a few other items that will eventually be shown here, I’m going to end the series with my favourite items that I purchased during the recent trip: Wizardry games.

As many of you know, I’ve sold off a large chunk of my game collection these past five or so years. Amidst this I chose to focus on collecting one series, and it’s Wizardry, which I’ve been playing since I was a boy! I’ve bought games in the series before in Japan (all the way back to our first trip in 2002!) but this time I really hit the jackpot.

The game on the left is a Saturn port of an adventure-style Wizardry spinoff, which is apparently quite poor. On the right is the Saturn port of Wizardry VI and VII, two of the series best. It’s supposed to be a good port, albeit somewhat slow. I’d never seen either before and was surprised how reasonably priced they both were.

Here’s the PC Engine port of Wizardry 5. I now own four versions of this game! According to what I read it’s a fairly good port, but the slow CD speed makes the SNES version the one to play. This one was about the cost of a brand new game.

Here’s a couple of curios: Wizardry Empire II and Wizardry Dimguil, two Japan-only games. As I’ve mentioned on the blog before Wizardry continued in Japan long after it ended in the west and all sorts of weird and wonderful installments were made. Without getting into needless detail, the Empire games introduced certain innovations without straying too far from the old game design, while Dimguil is a faithful installment in the old style that also added polygon dungeons and enemies.

And here we have Wizardry Xth, Wizardry Alternative Neo and Elminage III. The first was the game that ‘modernized’ Wizardry and would eventually lead to the Class of Heroes RPG series (and it’s own spin-offs!). Busin-0 is the Japan-only sequel to the last Wizardry game ever released in the west (Tales of the Forsaken Land) and Elminage III… well let’s say it’s an important ‘Wizardry adjacent’ game 😉

None of these – or the preceeding PS1 games – were cheap, and in some cases cost more than a typical new game. All are in fantastic condition, complete with box and all inclusions. If you’re keeping track then no, I can’t play any of these since I don’t have the Japanese consoles. Except for Elminage of course (I still have my PSP), which I plan to play one day.

I also found these four hint guides! Two of them are for games shown above, but the other two are for games I don’t have. Throb of The Demon’s Heart is a SNES game, and if I ever see it for sale I don’t doubt the price will bring a tear to my eye. Likewise for Wizardry Xth 2, the PS2 sequel to the one I bought. Why are Wizardry games so expensive! It’s not like there could be many collectors focused on this series?

The books are all great, packed with details such as dungeon maps, monsters, items and strategies for building your party. The latter ones are full colour (and fairly lengthy) but the SNES one – almost 30 years old now! – is all black and white. The above pic is an example page, which shows a fiendish dungeon that appears to be mapped on the face of a cube!

Speaking of books, when I saw the above packaged as a set I was literally speechless. They were in one of Mandarake’s glass cases, tightly bound together, and I didn’t know what they were at first. The price was high, and when I asked for a look the cashier misunderstood me, took them out, and rung them up! Of course I bought them, and I’m happy I did.

They are a six-volume series of hint guides for the first four Wizardry games. The books seem to be written for computer players (they reference Japanese systems of the day such as the FM-7 and PC-88) although I’m sure they work with any versions of the games. The interior and cover art is beautiful, the the detailed contents astounding!

The first and third games have two books each, and the other two just one. The extra books (for games one and three) are dedicated ‘monster manuals’ with two pages for every beast! These books are magnificent and such an incredible find: a ‘grail’ item I didn’t even know existed.

Speaking of treasures, I also bought the Wonderswan version of Wizardry 1. This was expensive: in fact it was the 4th most expensive game I’ve ever bought, at about thrice the cost of a new game. This is because it’s very rare, and because it was complete including an unused sticker sheet:

I have a Wonderswan, and plan on playing through this one day. Yes it’s in Japanese, but google translate these days is a wizard (no pun intended) and will more than suffice.

And the bonanza didn’t stop there! I found the above trio at Mandarake Nakano, and spent at least one minute deliberating before handing over my credit card and buying the three most expensive games I’ve ever bought. These are the (Japan-only) Gameboy Color versions of the first three games in the series, and are in fantastic condition. One of the biggest deciders in me splurging on these is the fact I can play them all on one of my many GBC’s, and will.

With 12 new (old!) games and 10 books my Wizardry collection expanded a lot this past trip (here’s an old post about it)! And yet I didn’t buy everything I saw, since even for a no-budget Wizardry collector some items were a bit too pricey, such as a factory sealed Empire II (the same one I bought for ~$40) for $300+, a 3DS Elminage game for $130 (which I couldn’t play since the 3DS is region locked) or a ‘greatest hits’ version of Busin for $100+ (I own the USA version).

And then there was the above soundtrack CD for about $220, which suggests that it is spectacularly rare.

Or these metal miniatures for tabletop RPG play. Give they are sealed, and probably insanely rare, I was a fool for passing on them at ~$70. If they’re there when I next visit (they won’t be) I’ll get them for sure.

Despite this bounteous haul, the two items I was really after – both of Jun Suemi’s Wizardry art books – eluded me. Both are very expensive now, so if I ever do find one I’ll be paying out the nose.

And when I do, you can read about it here 🙂

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Japan Pickups: FF Books

Thursday, January 19th, 2023

The Fighting Fantasy series was popular in Japan in its heyday, and the first 33 titles were translated and released in the early to mid 1980s. As a diehard collector of FF books I’ve been lucky enough to obtain a few of these Japanese versions over the years, but this past trip was by far my most successful in terms of new additions.

The above four were purchased at RPG bookshops (yes, that’s a thing in Japan) in Nakano and Akihabara. Collectively they cost me about $130, with half that being Creature of Havoc (the lower right book). All are in exceptional condition for 35+ year old books, and the (2nd edition) of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain even included a small cardboard ‘postcard’ that can be used to make dice if you don’t have any handy:

Incidentally the obi (paper wraparound) on the cover of Warlock identifies it as a worldwide bestseller, which was absolutely true when this 1984 edition was published.

Creature of Havoc includes images and writeups of the preceeding 23 volumes, as well as adverts for other gamebook series the publisher also licensed (such as Tunnels & Trolls and what looks to be a Japanese book called ‘Dice Fantasy’). It also includes the above advert for a Japanese release of Tasks of Tantalon! I wasn’t aware it had ever been translated; I suppose it now gets added to my ‘list’ 🙂

In addition to the four original FF books, I also bought 4 books in the Sorcery! series: original 1984 imprints and reprints from 2002. As an offshoot from the FF line these are a little bit less expensive these days, and the four in total cost me about $70. As with the FF books these are in pristine condition, with nary a hint they’ve ever been read.

Each of the original books includes a pull-out adventure sheet printed on ‘vellum’ paper with this lovely translated map on the back!

The Shamutanti Hills included this! One of the delights of buying used books is often finding unusual bookmarks from the previous owner inside, and in this case it seems they were using what seems (according to google translate) to be a coupon for a student discount on a ticket to see the Ghibli film Nausicaa upon its original cinematic release in 1984!

One thing I love about Japanese imprints of the FF books is that they are physically smaller than the western ones (even the US versions) and therefore a bit more pocket-sized. And yet the print quality is exceptional and the fine line-art characteristic of the books is reproduced beautifully. In 2000 the (new) Japanese licensor started reprinting some books in a much larger format, and I have to say they look even prettier! You’ll also note an inclusion in the above photo of one of the 2002 reprints: a quick-reference for section numbers on the left side! Why didn’t English versions ever implement this?

In 2021, the Japanese licensor (Group SNE) published a box-set of five new imprints of classic FF books. I really wanted to find this in Japan but failed. Happily though, I found this:

It’s the second box set, which was only released very shortly before we arrived! It reprints Appointment with F.E.A.R., House of Hell, Deathtrap Dungeon, The Port of Peril and Stealer of Souls. It’s a beautiful box, and it’s obvious this collection was produced by a company deeply respectful of the series heritage and importance. It cost ¥8250, or about $64.

The inclusion of Stealer of Souls is notable, since this was book 34 of the original FF line. Japan stopped at book 33 (Sky Lord), so this is the first time this one has even been translated.

Each book includes a pull out ‘vellum’ character sheet and the print quality and ‘feel’ of the volumes is magnificent: many levels above the recent Scholastic versions. Japanese fans of the series are receiving a real treat with this release!

It also includes a small booklet history of the FF series, as well as a general critique of the books and their historical importance. This is the first time I’ve ever seen all the books – including the new ones published in recent years – numbered together in one chronology. This book (which is entirely in Japanese but google translate is magic these days) also mentions that the 2021 box set was ‘printed to order’ and sold out due to ‘high demand from loyal fans’ which explains why I couldn’t find it.

Lastly – and most unexpectedly – I got the above. It’s a Back To The Future choose-your-own-adventure style gamebook published by the licensor of the FF series and using a similar trade dress! It’s rare that I ever discover a book not on gamebooks.org, but here you go! I would imagine this would be of a lot of interest to many different collectors, and yet this was dirt cheap (about $6) compared to everything else in this post.

The entries – 565 in total – are accompanied by stills from the film, and the blurb on the back suggests the goal of the player is to essentially do what Marty accomplished in the movie. It would be interesting to see how the author invented a gamebook out of the plot, but to give you an idea here’s a translation of a random page:

As I said google translate is a wizard these days, and I suspect I could actually play this entire book via the translator. Maybe I should?

I bought every FF (or related) book I saw this past trip, and these are amongst my most prized possessions. They’re not cheap (for books I can’t technically read) but I’ve developed a new approach to my collections recently after having sold out of MTG and a good chunk of my video games. It makes me wonder, had I found myself once again faced with the bounty of pricey Japanese books I saw in 2017, how much less daunting those prices would have been…?

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The Bonkers Picross Book

Tuesday, September 20th, 2022

I bought this last time I was in NYC:

KLS and I both enjoy Picross puzzles, and even without opening it I knew I’d be buying it. Here’s what the cover says:

Summer 2022 Anime Feature?!? Fun, beautiful and easy to draw? Dream co-star feature?!? Sheep with presents??!?

This was my sort of book!

Picross is the puzzle where you fill in squares in a grid to make a picture according to the numbers along the edges of the rows and columns. If it says 4 that means 4 connected squares. 4 2 would mean an unconnected blocks of 4 and 2 along that line (or column). It’s fun 🙂

The book is loaded with puzzles – over a hundred – and they get difficult almost immediately. The above photo are all the ‘easy’ ones they have, and after these you dive right into this sort of madness:

The difficulty difference between the eggplant and whatever the above is is tremendous, and it would take a great deal of time to solve.

But this book has incentives for beating the puzzles! When you finish one you can answer the question next to it (which seems to usually be ‘identify this character’) and submit your answer to win a prize, some of which are very nice:

As befits an anime themed puzzle book, many of the prizes are for anime/game fans as well. Alas the submission for entry was September 19 (yesterday!) so it seems I’ll miss out.

If you’re some sort of Picross god and have no trouble with that 45 x 50 shown above, this book has you covered, since it even has several large fold-out puzzles including this lunacy:

That’s 60 x 200, or 120 times larger than the goat I did above. This would be a monumental achievement to complete. I wonder how long it will take me?

And if you’re just masochistic, the book even includes some (harder) colored picrosses, including this fold-out one:

Yes, it is as difficult as it looks.

Oh and if you’re wondering what these look like when finished, the book also includes the full solutions to the previous issue, which it seems was anime-themed as well:

Since I’ve done the easy 10 x 10 puzzles I’m moving on to a bigger challenge: a 45 x 50 one featuring characters from the Bastard!!! anime:

I’ll follow up if I ever manage to complete it 🙂

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World Book

Thursday, May 5th, 2022

Back in the late 1970s dad briefly worked as a door-to-door salesperson for World Book encyclopedia. In those days World Book was sold exclusively via door-to-door sales and the company actively recruited teachers since the encyclopedia was marketed toward families with children in schools. Dad apparently wasn’t great at the job, but it led to our family receiving a full set of World Book, which would have likely been prohibitively expensive for us otherwise.

Recently I found in an ‘abandoned book’ pile a copy of the 1964 edition of the F volume of World Book. Flipping through it brings back a lot of memories since when we were kids this was our Wikipedia. If ever we needed to know anything, the answer was in our World Books!

F is 512 pages long, most of which are black and white, and the above is representative of most entries. The writing is succinct and the vocabulary easy, and it’s clear this attempts to be a comprehensive reference that doesn’t bog down with technical details.

Since it’s catered (if not aimed) at children, the entry for fractions is many times longer than the one for force and organizations such as 4H and Future Farmers of America have much longer and detailed entries than I would have expected.

As a child I read all the volumes voraciously, and especially loved the lengthy showcase entries with lots of colour. Examples in this volume include flag (there’s more than a dozen pages like the above), flower and fish:

Farm has a long and comprehensive entry, but perhaps surprisingly the longest one in this volume is furniture with 16 pages.

The most spectacular entry is frog, since it includes an anatomical drawing featuring transparent overlays. I remember several volumes had these in them and as a child these were dazzling (and the plastic hadn’t warped as it has in this nearly 60-year-old volume).

Of course this was a legitimate encyclopedia, and not just intended for school report projects. As such it includes plenty of entries perhaps not of interest to the average child:

It’s also a time capsule of 1960s America. I only skimmed through it, but I found quite a few items that would likely be different in a 2022 edition, such as this introduction to fur:

Or a six-page article on fallout and fallout shelters:

There’s also an article on faith healing that very nearly flat-out says it is legitimate medicine, and the entry on Florida mentions (factually, in 1964) that it was the most politically democratic US state. An article on factories discusses how they can beautify neighborhoods and the free enterprise article goes into some detail about how Americans are the most prosperous, healthy and happy citizens in the world…

Warts-and-all, World Book was an incredible resource to us as children, and I have many happy memories of reading the volumes almost cover to cover. In preparing this entry I was astonished to learn it still exists as a physical resource, and you can buy the 2022 edition today for a mere $999!

One of the joys of using these as a child was reading all the other articles you pass by on the way to the one you’re looking for. I hope that kids today, with Wikipedia likely the principle resource for their school reports, haven’t lost the joy of learning just for it’s own sake by browsing through an encyclopedia.

Posted in Blog, Books, History, Retro, Time | 3 Comments »

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