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The Early Days

Sunday, October 27th, 2019

In the last year I’ve added a few interesting games to my collection. They’ve come from various sources, but they’ve all been ‘rebuys’ of games I used to own back in my youth.

Even though I can’t actually run any of this software, the nostalgia value for me is high. I’ll cover them in reverse historical order…

The above two were purchased at a local comic show about a year ago, and I paid a mere $2 each for them. The seller had even more, including the second Xeen game and some early Heroes of Might and Magic titles, but none in as good condition as the above.

I bought Might and Magic 3 back in 1991 when it was first released, and it was amongst the first boxed PC games I ever bought. I recall loving it at the time and (probably) testing Bernards patience by how much time I spent using his computer! I’d been a fan of the series beforehand, and had played the first two in pirated form, and was pleased to own the latest iteration. I continued playing the series well into the Heroes offshoots, and once arriving in the US had a great time replying MM2 on an Apple and then the Genesis, as well as the NES and SNES versions. A great and important RPG series.

The SSI ‘gold box’ series of AD&D computer games were amongst the more important and influential RPG games of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Tabletop RPG fans had been dreaming of computer versions of their favorite game for years and SSI delivered in spades. Starting with Pool Of Radiance in 1988 there were many games (and spinoffs) in the series and I played them all! I recall particularly enjoying the Krynn titles, including the two above, the Amiga versions of which were given to me with an Amiga 500 by a colleague.

In fact the gold box was one game series that spanned the shift to the USA, since I even purchased Unlimited Adventures for Macintosh after moving here and wrote – and somehow put online in those very early days – my own ‘module’ called Dead Swamp Destiny (for which I even designed the enemy sprites!). Ah I wish I could load that up and post screenshots to this blog today 🙂

The gold box series is now long dead, but the basic game design lives on in countless tactical games still going strong today (such as the Fire Emblem series). But I’ll always remember the series as one of my favorite of all time.

And speaking of favorites, the above is the 1987 USC64/128 release of the original Wizardry (which first came out in 1981). I bought this copy earlier this year for $40.

As you can see it’s complete and in amazing condition. Does the disc work? I’ll likely never know, but I couldn’t resist this piece of history. Wizardry isn’t just an important game to my personal gaming history, it’s one of the most important games ever released, and has gone on to directly influence the design of many other juggernaut game series including Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest.

I’ve got a collection of many Wizardry titles for seven or eight systems and many spinoff games (the series and its variants is still going strong in Japan) and the ‘dungeon crawl’ is to this day one of my favorite game styles. Over my decades many a long hour has been lost in the labyrinthine mazes of the Wizardry series, and I hope many are still yet to be lost in my future…

Posted in Blog, Collecting, Games, History, Otaku, Tech | Comments Closed

Postcrossing Century!

Saturday, October 19th, 2019

The other day I received my 100th Postcrossing postcard! I thought it appropriate to give an update to celebrate the occasion!

In the 10 months since I sent my first card I’ve received cards from 27 countries and sent them to 32. While I have sent cards to Australia, South America and South Africa, I have yet to receive any from there, so I’m still waiting to have a card from every continent (bar Antarctica of course). Here’s the stats:

Cards ‘expire’ after 90 days, which means you can request a new address even if one doesn’t arrive. While the South African one was technically expired, it eventually arrived and was registered by the recipient who lives on a tiny island off the west coast of Africa and said his mail service is sporadic! I’ve had three other expired cards to date, all to Eastern European countries.

You can see Germany is above and beyond the most popular country for Postcrossing, but I have to say I’m most surprised by China. While it’s a bit scary to be given addresses in that country (since it’s difficult to write Chinese characters!) I’ve never had one not arrive so I must be doing ok 🙂

The cards themselves run the gamut, but since I have requested classic tourist cards, animal cards and pinup cards I tend to mostly get those. I’ve made it clear I’m interested in the stamps as well and get a great selection from all over the world.

The Russian scientist stamp is great isn’t it? Germany has a few series of lovely connected landscape stamps and Japanese stamps are always graphic and very pretty. Take a look at the effort this guy put in to cram as many stamps as possible on his card from Japan:

Or these two Chinese cards:

Of the cards themselves I love them all, but some have been particularly notable. I’ll feature two here, both Australian postcards but neither being sent from Australia! This one came from Germany:

And this one from Taiwan:

The latter is particularly great since the card itself is old – maybe 1980s – and I imagine she either found it in her parents collection or in a used bookstore! (And no, there’s no way people sending cards to me would know I am Australian which makes both of these even more amusing!)

These days I can send up to 11 cards at a time, and receive about 10 a month on average. At that rate I’ll get to 200 sometime around next August. Let’s hope at least some of those come from the Southern Hemisphere!

Posted in Art, Blog, Collecting, Miscellaneous, Postcards, Stamps | 1 Comment »

Triple Force Friday

Friday, October 4th, 2019

Today, as you all know, is Triple Force Friday! This means it’s the day product is in stores for not one, not two, but three upcoming Star Wars properties: the new film (The Rise of Skywalker), the TV Series (The Mandalorian) and some game no-one cares about. Naturally I hit the shops after work, giddy with excitement. What did I buy?

Target was mostly underwhelming. Yes there was a spiffy endcap, but isn’t it just the same basic design as the last two films?!? Also you can see that the shelves weren’t exactly bursting with choice, especially when you ignore (as we all should) the Funko stuff. They had a pittance of new figures like these:

As well as two lego sets, a t-shirt, some stuffed droids (?) and one or two instantly forgettable other things. Nothing grabbed me and I left empty-handed.

Barnes & Noble was my next stop and as you can see they had a nice little display. Overall it was better than Target with more variety including what looked to be a giant spoileriffic book that I didn’t open. I did learn though – from the packaging of the figures, that the new film will feature a speeder chase on a planet called ‘Pasana’, non-Tattooinian Jawas (!) and this dude:

I was mildly excited by the stuff at Barnes & Noble but not enough to buy anything, and left empty-handed.

Walmart was my next destination and the less said about what I saw there the better. Given that Walmart was hyped (by who?) as the go-to destination for TFF one would imagine they would have something. But no; it was the usual barren wasteland of no Star Wars toys. This was depressing to a fellow with money burning a hole in his pocket so to alleviate the despair before I left for the mall I picked up $20 worth of soup:

At the mall I skipped over to The Disney Store which – finally! – had a nice display. They had clothes and figures and hats and lightsabers and a few other things including these for a staggering $50 per set:

Fifty dollars for three medallions just like the ones that came free with POTF figures in 1983?!!? Who’s going to buy these??? And they had three sets! Madness I proclaimed loudly as I walked out empty-handed and beelined for the LEGO store.

Now this is what I was looking for! They even have a TFF sign! But look: just look at that Star Destroyer kit!!! So what if it’s $700 and so big that there’s literally no-one alive that would have a place in their home to display it? It’s a beauty indeed and would be so much fun to build. That the sort of lunacy one expects to see on a day about Star Wars product. Oh and they had this too:

(Yes I know the photo was taken at Target, but they had it assembled at the LEGO store and it’s truly the stuff of nightmares.)

Anyway I bought nothing at LEGO, which means on Triple Force Friday after a couple of hours going to all the usual stores I left with… nothing!

So I went and dropped over a grand on an iPhone 11 Pro Max so the trip wasn’t a total waste 🙂

Posted in Collecting, Miscellaneous, Movies, Otaku, Tech, Toys | Comments Closed

Supreme Leader Snoke

Saturday, September 14th, 2019

The ‘big bad’ in the last two Star Wars films was this guy, Supreme Leader Snoke:

He remains a mysterious and somewhat controversial figure, and everyone has a theory about him. I wonder with The Emperors (apparent) return in The Rise Of Skywalker later this year if some of our outstanding Snoke questions will be answered?

I doubt it.

At any rate, recently I found this in the clearance aisle for $2 and couldn’t say no:

Apparently this wasn’t the first time I took a liking to this figure since when I got home I saw it on my shelf! I’d bought it again, albeit for an 85% discount. So – and considering it had been years since I had done so – I decided to (shudder) open this one!

Look at that lovely gold cloth robe! Look at the detail on the sculpt down to the obsidian ring on his left hand (although the scale of which unfortunately doesn’t allow for a legible sculpt of the Dwartii tunes inscribed on the band). Overall, at first impression, a good figure.

However – and this is a big disappointment – it can’t stand. The feet are just too small and the center of balance too high enough for him to stand. This is perhaps why he’s almost always sitting in the films?

Anyway let’s see what’s under that cloak:

Not much about Snoke has been officially revealed (or likely even established) but apparently his gold robe was inspired – at the design level – by Hugh Hefner! His name is also an obvious derivation from the fact that initially he had serpentine features. But in the end he’s an old disfigured alien wearing a flashy bathrobe and slippers.

As a figure he’s incredible poseable:

And with no small amount of effort and the cloak removed, I even got him standing:

Sadly an idle breath in his direction knocked him down.

His cloak was returned, and he’ll now forever live in a box. Unless you want him, in which case please say so in the comments.

As a Star Wars character it’s unsurprising that even such a minor (albeit important) character as Snoke has seen many different figures:

Even if we’ll never actually know who he really was, at least there’s a toy of him to please every type of fan 🙂

Posted in Collecting, Movies, Otaku, Toys | 3 Comments »

Two Treasures

Thursday, August 22nd, 2019

I picked up a bunch of weird stuff during my California trip. Here I’ll show two of them.

This LCD Star Wars pinball game cost me $15 which wasn’t bad considering it was new. A glance on eBay tells me I wasn’t ripped off. The guy that sold it to me made mention of treating it carefully since the plastic packaging had become brittle but of course I was going to open it!

And here it is! Note the poor sticker affixed between the buttons, as if after they made it they realized they forgot to brand it! You’ll also see that the only Star Wars evidence in the actual game screen are the droids on the backplate…

The batteries had of course leaked (it’s 24 years old!) but not seriously and it was an easy clean. I popped two more in and:

It has flashing lights, a vibration function and very, very poor gameplay! Also the game itself has nothing to do etc Star Wars, and I imagine the others in this like (such as a Barbie game) play identically 🙂

A curiosity though, already in a box never to be played again!

Following on, I also bought this for $5 at an amazing antique store in Gilroy:

A European Panini sticker pack from 1983! Panini made gazillions of sticker sets for just about every sport and licensed brand you can imagine and sadly they barely distributed outside of Europe. So I never got any Dark Crystal or E.T. or Pope John Paul II stickers in my youth…

The ‘original’ art stickers in this set are strange and difficult to look at for long periods, but most of the stickers were from the cartoon;

I bought this in the hope of sending you all some He-Man nostalgia via future postcards but the adhesive is too weak after 35+ years and these will therefore remain as priceless additions to my collection 🙂

Oh and even though this post was just supposed to be two treasures… here’s some of the rest of my purchases:

Posted in Collecting, Games, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Retro, Tech, Time, Toys, Trading Cards | 4 Comments »

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